Oya Baydar - The Lost Word

‘So I need to show Sir an identity card. It’s not that easy. It’s as though Sir went up to the mountain pastures in the summer and came down when it took his fancy. Now let’s talk straight. This is a chance given to you, an opportunity to live. The leadership is testing you one last time. There are volunteers in line to do this job, comrades, sound people waiting for orders, who have not betrayed their folk. In short, the decision is yours. You must know that the girl’s life depends on your decision.’

Not to let it show that he is in a panic and trying to speak normally, he says, ‘The girl has nothing to do with the organization.’

‘Her brother picked up your trail. In other words, the girl is in our hands.’

‘Even if her brother were an informer, he wouldn’t touch Zelal. A man who has joined the organization, gone up the mountain would not bow to custom just because he had become an informer.’

‘You are naïve, heval,’ says the man with genuine pity in his voice and unexpected compassion. ‘People don’t discard beliefs and customs like changing a shirt. Customs and beliefs are instilled in us. Of course we love, but, by God, we still kill! And if the man has confessed, what does that mean? He will ingratiate himself with both the organization and the state to keep his life on an even keel. My last word: we’ll stop the girl from being harmed if you make up your mind. We have a debt to settle between us. We traced you by trailing the girl with the help of her brother.’

Mahmut tries to work it out. What should he do? Appear to have accepted the job of carrying out the attack and try to smuggle Zelal away? How? Where to? Besides, are the men stupid? If you escape from one, the other will catch you. And if I did press the button, who is to say they’d release the girl alive? If the man carries out the honour killing, will I appeal to the police in my state? If I’m caught, what will happen to Zelal? Let’s say I wasn’t caught and that they didn’t harm Zelal. How will we live without drowning in so much innocent blood? Oh, writer abi , writer abi! Why did you go and leave us? Why did we say to you, ‘Go and look for the word in our homeland.’ You will find the word and you’ll write books, so what amid all that blood and all that suffering! You didn’t realize that the word wasn’t so distant. See, the word is here!

He keeps quiet. They both keep quiet. Another tea, and some more mint and lemon tea. In the pool in front of them goldfish are swimming around waving their tails. Mahmut is watching the goldfish, his mind completely blank. He remains silent.

‘Is the girl really safe?’ he asks a little later.

‘If you carry out the job without any hitch you’ll get the girl. Nothing should happen, but let us say there’s a slip-up: if you tell us in advance who we should get in touch with we’ll deliver her safe and sound to them.’

‘Write the number down now somewhere. If something should happen to me you can let the writer Ömer Eren know.’

As soon as the number is written he realizes that he has made yet another tactical error, that he shouldn’t involve the writer in this business. The man has done so much for us — and what am I doing for him in return? I’m embroiling him in this dirty business. I’m putting him at risk.

‘What have you got to do with writers and people like that?’

‘When we got into that trouble, when Zelal was shot at the coach station, he looked after us. He didn’t ask who or what we were. He’s just a decent man. I wouldn’t want any harm to come to him. Anyway he’s not around any more.’

The die is cast, he thinks. I’ve accepted the job. He feels a wrench when he remembers that it used to be called ‘duty’ not ‘job’. If only I could believe that this was a duty that I willingly carried out as a sacrifice for the liberation of my people and its leaders. He becomes absorbed again with the fish undulating in the pool. They keep moving in so little water. They are prisoners, stuck where they are, helpless; but they don’t know it. But I know. I know it all.

His mind feels numb. Like when a person loses a lot of blood and feels drained, his brain tingles agreeably. It is that sort of feeling, a state of drowsiness.

‘Where and when is the job to be done?’ he asks to put an end to the torment as quickly as possible.

The man holds out a mobile phone. It’s small, the latest model, the type women use.

‘You will be called on this phone. You will be told the place, the time and the details. The device is brand-new and the SIM card is, too. You must never use this phone either before or after the attack. When the job is done, destroy it. There is no need to panic. They won’t be long in calling.’

His hand trembles as he takes the mobile and puts it in his pocket. Just like the moment he took delivery of his weapon and made his guerrilla pledge. With one difference: then it was from pride and excitement; now it is from fear.

He looks carefully at the man once more. He’s familiar, very familiar, yet a stranger. He’s evidently from the east. A Kurd but not someone he knows from the organization. He doesn’t recognize him either from the camp, the mountain or from battle. In his mien and his attitude there is something foreign that doesn’t belong to ‘us’. If people were to ask, ‘What is it?’ he wouldn’t be able to say. But he senses it.

‘Why me? How can you trust me? Since when has the organization coerced elements that have fled the mountain into such action? Supposing I left this place and went straight to the police and told them everything.’

‘You wouldn’t, you couldn’t do that. Everyone can inform, but you cannot, heval. Don’t forget, the girl is in our hands. If you do anything underhand then we’ll let the girl’s brother loose on her. I have no idea whether the act has been forced on you or not, who gets it done in what fashion. I passed on the orders to you, that’s all. Come on. Let’s go. You go first.’

‘The girl in your hands,’ my Zelal. My woman. The one I love. The mother of the dead Hevi and the unborn Hope. The mountain sprite, the wood nymph in Mahmut’s fairytale had not grown up with stories, was not besotted with a legend other than the legend of the mountains. ‘The girl in your hands’ knows numbers. She knows how to love and make love. She knows death and suffering. She longs for the sea she has never seen and does not know, and dreams of being united with that sea. ‘The girl in your hands’ waits for me in a hospital ward, in the bed beside the grumpy old woman, for visiting time tomorrow, for me to be with her so that she can cuddle up to me, speak her own language and lift her heaviness of heart. The girl in your hands …

He walked slowly out of the large park full of tea gardens, kiosks, pools and trees into the street. He had not altogether shaken off that strange state of numbness, the feeling of exhaustion. He was in no rush. Hurrying is for those who have people waiting for them, those who have work and those who have a destination to reach. He did not look back to see whether the man was following him. What was there left to be frightened of, to conceal? He should in fact be thinking what he was going to do, but he was thinking of Zelal. Of her body, her passion, her cleverness, the fiery way in which she offered herself, her snuggling to his breast like a baby. He thought about the fairytale life that they had had in the lea of the grove on the mountain. The tale of love that he never tired of telling himself which enthralled him anew with every telling.

‘Let’s stay here like this. Let’s not leave the grove and go down the mountain ever,’ Zelal had said one day. ‘Let’s live here for as long as we live. Like the first man and the first woman. Just the two of us, masters of our own destiny like the antelopes, rabbits and birds.’