Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

Skipping a little, she continues to read:

‘But if legends and epics are turned into opium for the people and the cadre, then revolt will be tyranny. If heroism becomes a shield for tyranny, if violence is considered its twin, then legends and epics become stained with blood. Now the whole question is to return to the innocence and humanity of the legends of our foundation and liberation.’

‘That’s how it continues. I don’t know whether it means anything to you.’

‘I think I understand. It’s like a non-rejectionist, non-external message of peace.’

‘Recently he had concentrated all his strength, all his work on a peace programme focusing on the Kurds’ right to live without fear or violence and the happiness of our people. Of course, it was extremely difficult. What we had experienced rendered such Gandi-like notions fanciful, reconciliatory and almost impossible. Now, after all these years as our people continue to kill and be killed, people are starting to appreciate that he was right.’

‘Do people really understand? Can the language of violence be answered in another language? Do you believe this?’

‘I believe it. We believe it. Here we have succeeded in creating a vital line that is fed from the mind and heart of my husband. I, Diyar, our lawyer friend and others here who you know and don’t know have taken a chance on peace.’

‘Taken a chance on peace?’

‘Yes, taken a chance on peace! He was thinking of collecting these articles under the heading, Taking a Chance on Peace. You in the west and we here talk a lot about peace. There are peace talks, peace societies, peace initiatives … Everyone has their own version of peace, and everyone understands peace as the surrender of the adversary. This is because we only understand peace in a military-political dimension. We forget that of humanity and conscience.’

‘That’s because the dimension of humanity and conscience is an abstract concept’

‘You are mistaken. What can be more concrete than human beings and conscience? But to be able to take a chance on peace, a price has to be paid. No one is prepared to pay the real price. Sometimes the price can be as severe as death; sometimes it is considered surrender. For those who fight, the state of war turns into a way of life, a habit difficult to break. It seems to people the only way. Take this notebook. In it you will find some of the ideas we have talked about. You can keep it. I had a photocopy made for translation. When you have learnt Kurdish you can translate it yourself — or you can get someone else to translate it.’

As she pick up the other notebooks and put them in the drawer a tiny mouse suddenly pops out from under their feet. Ömer prepares to kill it.

‘Wait, wait! Don’t hit it,’ she says in a low voice. ‘Let it go. Hear what it says right at the beginning of this book: “Violence can begin with shooting a gazelle. After that you cannot draw the line. And as the deer dies, only the bewildered sadness in its eyes remains.”’

Concerning Mahmut, Zelal and Fate

While Zelal was burning with a longing for the sea that she had never seen, Mahmut was dreaming of the metropolis, the refuge for all fugitives and all those who were wanted by the authorities. For Zelal the sea was synonymous with escape, salvation and freedom; and for Mahmut it was the the cities and towns that clasped those who sought refuge to their bosom. If a stray bullet had not pierced their dreams that night and killed Hevi they would have already reached the town by the sea.

He has left the hospital, and as he is walking preoccupied, pensive and a little anxious, he recalls that dreadful night. He cannot decide whether everything that happened was God’s curse, the Devil’s trap or if the Almighty Protector who spares and forgives had felt sorry for their purity of heart and bestowed a favour on them.

He had done something crazy. It wouldn’t have mattered if he had been on his own, but he and Zelal had done something really mad.

The madness was in not fleeing from the mountain earlier. There were people among the mountain troops, especially new recruits, who deserted from time to time. During the first days of his arrival he had witnessed the execution of a very young guerrilla who had been caught trying to escape during combat — just like I did — when they had been cornered on a slope. He had thought that if they were not treated so harshly there would be no men left to fight. It is not sufficient to talk about steel-hard discipline. You have to implement it for it to work as a deterrent. But he couldn’t stomach the execution, the boy’s eyes full of fear, his crying for his mother as he begged for his life to be spared; the cold-bloodedness and especially the high-handedness of those who issued the execution order and the inhumanity of those who carried it out — all this had grieved him. In those days I was a new recruit, I was inexperienced, had faith and was a part of the mythology, an anonymous hero of the liberation army. Today I, too, am a deserter.

Attitudes against deserters changed from time to time. Sometimes they would be stricter, sometimes more lenient. And sometimes a blind eye would be turned. However, there were specific rules about escaping. Previously one surrendered to Barzani’s forces and they would deliver the deserter to the border. Nowadays one either defects to a village protected by the militia or surrenders directly to the nearest police station. There are also those who flee and vanish without trace. They say that Istanbul and Izmir are full of such people. If you have not been sentenced, if the state is not after you, if there is no record of you, if no one has squealed and mentioned your name, the safest thing is to give yourself up directly. Should luck go your way, you will save your life, you will stand trial and be given a short sentence. And if you become an informant everything will stay on track.

He thinks to himself: Everything will stay on track, but you will be off track. If you are an informer you will squeal on the hevals. You will tell where they are, you will tell of their plans and get them destroyed if needs be. You cannot merely give misinformation or lie. Is the state stupid? Would it have itself ridiculed? Of course not. First of all they test informants to see if they are the type to betray their comrades, their own people. You can go through all this, too, but still your new masters won’t trust you. Someone who betrays once will do it many times. Informants are those whose hearts are tarnished with fear, who have sold their comrades to save their own skins. Wouldn’t someone who sells their comrades also sell the masters they have clung to if they were in a tight spot? The state knows this better than anyone.

Mahmut walks among the crowds with an uneasy heart and mind. I couldn’t have done it. I couldn’t have surrendered. Thank God I didn’t. I chose the most impossible, the most difficult way, but I did not become a traitor. I deserted from the organization, the mountains and the state — from everything. And everything’s compounded by Zelal’s flight from the code of honour. What a fix we’re in! The craziest thing of all was to attempt to flee with my unhealed wounds with Zelal who was pregnant with Hevi. What happened that night was not God’s curse but fate’s blessing. If the stray bullet had not found Zelal’s womb, then how would the writer have noticed us? If we hadn’t run into him there, we would have been in even greater trouble. They say that every cloud has a silver lining. Well, perhaps it’s true.

His dear mother used that expression. When they were still in the village before it had been evacuated and burnt, while there were still animals and flocks of sheep and goats, she used to say when wolves used to seize the lambs, ‘If that bad wolf had confronted you, if something had happened to my children’ … and comfort herself. When his eldest brother took to the mountain she had said, ‘Let’s hope for the best. Supposing they had come and shot him or I had found my dear boy’s body riddled with bullets like Zara’s Seydo.’ When the village had been evacuated and they had seen the fire in the distance as they fled, she had cried, had lamented for her village as though for a loved one. But even then she had said, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining. Supposing it had burnt with us in it’, and his father had not known whether to cry or laugh in their circumstances. When they came down to the town and lived in a shanty with a tin roof and walls of reeds and mud, windows with thick plastic stretched over them instead of glass, she had said, ‘Thank God we’ve got a roof.’ It was then that his father had exploded for the first time: ‘That’s enough, woman! The more you give thanks, the worse off we are!’