Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

A small explosion … almost no risk … from a distance. Supposing they had proposed a suicide attack? I would have said no outright; I wouldn’t do it.

The man continues as though he has read what is going through his mind. ‘Look, the organization isn’t asking you to do a suicide attack. It takes precautions to protect the lives of its troops. You press a button from a distance, a key on a mobile phone, and click. That’s all.’

The images on the screen: dead, wounded, dead children, wounded children, women, men, young, old, dead … Scattered bodies, blown-off legs, arms … Blood, blood, blood … An organization that does not use suicide bombers but remote control to protect its troops. Troops’ lives, leaders’ lives, commanders’ lives, people’s lives … The writer’s daughter-in-law’s life of whom he said, ‘We didn’t even find all the scattered pieces’ … The life of his son who had been crippled and who had fled.

What have I done! What was I thinking? What was I calculating a second ago? Didn’t it pass through my mind that they might have proposed a suicide attack? Didn’t I weigh up the pros and cons? That means that I was ready to do the other; to press the button that the man talked about. In a suicide attack there is belief in the cause, there is self-sacrifice. A faith that is deep enough for you to sacrifice yourself, devotion at the risk of one’s life. With a remote click you kill only others: the innocent. One more dead, one less dead, that is the whole difference; but that one life less or more is your own life, your very own life.

The waiter brings the other man’s kebab.

‘Give us tomato sauce and plenty of butter, eh,’ says the man.

They remain silent until the boy brings the sauce. As he tries to pour hot sauce from the pan on the man’s plate, some of it spills on the table. A stain of dark congealed blood spreads over the bare white Formica table. Mahmut has his eyes fixed on the blood. The stain grows and grows and covers the whole table, everywhere. It gushes from the screen of the television in the corner. It flows from the face of the man opposite. His feet touch the blood. It is rising. It comes up to his throat. He is drowning in blood…

He regains consciousness with the man’s voice. The waiter is bent over him, he pours cologne on his face and tries to get him to drink water. The water runs over Mahmut’s face, his chest and wets his shirt. The mixture of the strong smells of sauce and cologne assails his nostrils. He feels sick.

‘It’s all right,’ says the man in Turkish, ‘my friend was not well anyway. Look, he couldn’t even eat his kebab. And what with the heat. It’s nothing. It’s over. Just let him recover, and I’ll take him home.’

Mahmut’s chest is tight. He fixes his eyes on the top of the table. There is not even a tiny red stain on the table. There are just knife marks on the dirty white Formica, thin lines … The waiter must have wiped the stain immediately. I had a nightmare. There is neither blood nor the stranger.

But the stranger is there, facing him. He is grinning or smiling, depending on how one interprets it. He is not teasing and not at all hostile as he says, ‘Or can’t you stand the sight of blood?’

Mahmut is silent. I thought I could stand it, but perhaps I can’t now. Perhaps the man will give up. Perhaps he’ll leave me and go. ‘There’s a lot of blood,’ he says gathering all his strength. ‘There’s a lot of blood in the world. There’s a lot of suffering. You’re right. I can’t stand it. Stop following me, whoever you are, stop following me. I’ll disappear. I won’t harm anyone. Neither the state, nor the organization, nor the hevals … I haven’t done anything till now. You’ve seen that. I’m not a traitor.’

‘Well, how soft you are! Why do they take people like you into the organization, especially into the mountain troops! Never mind, it’s not my business. Pull yourself together a bit. Drink some water. Nobody is born a traitor. It’s something they become. If you begin to question the cause, the leadership and, especially, the bloodshed, you are beyond hope. Blood gets shed; that’s how it is. If you’ve recovered, let’s go. We’ve been here too long. We’ve made a spectacle of ourselves.’

He doesn’t have the strength to stand up and leans on the chair. The man is paying the bill in the corner. If his head weren’t spinning, if he had the energy, he could run out of the door and mix with the crowd in seconds. But nevertheless he makes a move. He leans on the side of the door to stop himself falling to the ground. The man comes to the rescue and holds his arm like a friend or an elder brother.

‘We’ll go somewhere quiet where you can recover.’

He leans on the man as they walk, as they get into a taxi and as they enter a large park with a tea garden. His knees shake with each step as though all the blood in his veins has been drained. In his mind he goes through his three-term meagre medical repertoire. Tiredness, agitation, nerves; my blood pressure might have fallen. The wound seems to have healed, but there might be an internal infection, bleeding. Iron deficiency, anaemia, something in my brain: it could be all of these. And all this has happened for the sake of a kebab. I will never be able to eat one again.

In the tea garden surrounded by green plants they sit right next to the pool with a fountain in the middle. The man orders tea. ‘Prepare some lemon and mint tea for my friend. For medicinal purposes. With plenty of mint and a lot of lemon. He isn’t very well.’

Just look at the state I’m in; like a little boy who has been beaten and intimidated. I’ve thrown myself at my executioner’s mercy, and I’m almost begging him for mercy! He slowly gets a grip on himself. He takes a sip of the lemon and mint. It does him good. ‘The heat knocked me out,’ he says. Then for some reason he lies. ‘I had already eaten one portion of kebab. It must have been too much in this heat.’

‘It was too much.’

Both of them know that it is the deadly reality behind this everyday idle talk that is too much.

‘What was done to our people was also too much: The captivity, the tyranny was too much. If it weren’t, why should so many people, young and old, women and men, take to the mountains? You wouldn’t have gone, and neither would I. Who wants to die or kill? The war isn’t over. It continues on every front. The organization needs you, and you need it. At least, so that you can clear your name in your own eyes. What does the leadership say? The honour of the organization is your honour. If you lose your honour then you become nothing, you lick the dust.’

The same old expressions that he knew by heart. Words that were pleasant to the ear, uplifting, that gave courage to and strengthened the militant. When said with conviction, they were words that ennobled a person and reminded them that they were human beings. It was all true, too. Why should so many people suddenly take to the mountains? Speeches, promises, guerrilla stories that had become legends … Were they all it took to pluck so many people from their homes, their families and their schools and drag them off to an adventure that would end in death?

All that the man had said was true. It was true but there was something shady in his speech. The words were in their proper place but something — what? — didn’t seem right.

Mahmut keeps on stirring the tea in front of him. He listens to the tinkling of the teaspoon on the tea glass. There is no longer terror or fear, nor that cornered feeling inside him. There is a strange calmness, a deep sorrow and a strange regret that he feels — not for what he has done but for being alive.

‘Find someone else for the attack. If necessary, I’ll take to the mountains again. Besides, I have never witnessed these jobs done like this. How should I know who or what you are! Is this how orders for an attack come? I don’t know.’