Orhan Pamuk - A Strangeness in My Mind

Trusting the kind doctor, Mevlut did so, thinking he’d be examined straightaway, but instead they put him in a queue with a whole host of down-and-outs, standing in their underwear, carrying their things, since no one was allowed to leave anything anywhere lest it be stolen. Like worshippers entering a mosque, the men in the queue had also taken off their shoes, and they were holding them, sole to sole, with their shirts and trousers neatly folded on top and, on top of the clothes, the medical forms the doctors were supposed to stamp and sign.

After two hours of standing in the cold corridor in a queue that wouldn’t budge, Mevlut found out that the doctor hadn’t arrived yet. It wasn’t even clear what sort of checkup this was going to be; some said it was an eye test, so that anyone able to feign shortsightedness convincingly could hope to weasel out of serving; others announced menacingly that when the doctor arrived, he wouldn’t be checking their eyes but their asses so that all the queers would be weeded out. Terrorized at the prospect of anyone running his eye or, worse still, his finger over that most intimate place and, by some mistake, being singled out as a queer (this second worry would recur throughout his army days), Mevlut forgot his own nudity and started to talk to the other undressed men in the queue. Most, he discovered, had likewise come originally from a village and were now living in poorer city neighborhoods, and every single one, down to the dumbest wretch of them all, proudly declared that he had someone “pulling strings” for him. He thought of Hadji Hamit Vural, who had no idea Mevlut had even been conscripted, and soon he, too, was boasting of some pretty solid backing that would allow him to coast through military service.

This was how from the start he learned that, by frequent mention of friends in high places, he could protect himself from the cruelty and spite of other recruits. He was just telling one guy, who also happened to have a mustache (Good thing I let mine grow, Mevlut kept thinking), that Hadji Hamit Vural knew absolutely everyone, and what a fair and generous philanthropist he was, when a commander yelled at them all to “Be quiet!” They trembled into submission. “This isn’t the beauty parlor, ladies. No more tittering. Have some dignity. This is the army. Giggling is for girls.”

As he drifted in and out of sleep on the bus to Burdur, Mevlut kept thinking back to that moment in the hospital. Some of the men had used their shoes and clothes to cover their nakedness as the commander walked past, while others who had seemed to cower before him couldn’t contain their laughter as soon as he was gone. Mevlut felt he could get along with both types, but if this was what the whole army was like, he feared he might end up left out and lonely.

But until boot camp was over and he had sworn his oath of enlistment, he didn’t even have a spare moment to worry about loneliness and belonging. His unit would go on long runs every day, singing folk songs as they went. They had to tackle obstacle courses, perform gymnastics like those Blind Kerim used to teach in high school, and learn how to salute properly by practicing hundreds of times a day on other soldiers, real or imagined.

Before reporting for military service, Mevlut had long imagined the beatings doled out by officers, but after just three days on the army base, they’d become a routine, unremarkable sight. Some fool got slapped for wearing his cap the wrong way even after the sergeant had warned them about it many times; another idiot failed to keep his fingers straight when he saluted, and down came a smack on him; someone else fidgeted for the thousandth time during a drill, got an earful of humiliating insults from the commander, and was told to drop to the floor and do a hundred push-ups while the rest of the squad laughed at him.

They were having tea one afternoon when Emre Şaşmaz from Antalya said, “Man, I can’t believe how many stupid, ignorant people there are in this country.” He had a shop that sold car parts, and Mevlut respected him because he seemed like a serious guy. “I still don’t understand how they can be so dumb. Even a beating doesn’t straighten them out.”

“I think the real question is whether they get beaten up all the time because they’re so dumb, or if they’re so dumb because they get beaten up all the time,” pronounced Ahmet, who had a haberdashery in Ankara. Mevlut, who’d ended up by chance in the same squad as these two distinguished characters, figured you at least had to own a shop before you could make sweeping statements about stupid people. The unhinged captain of the fourth company had it in for a private from Diyarbakır (in the army, you weren’t allowed to use the words “Kurd” or “Alevi”) and treated him so viciously that the poor fellow hanged himself with his own belt while in solitary confinement. Mevlut resented the two shopkeepers for their relative indifference to this suicide and for calling the private an idiot for having taken the commander so seriously. Like most privates, Mevlut also thought about suicide every now and then, but he, again like most, was able to laugh it off. One day shortly thereafter, the two shopkeepers, Emre and Ahmet, were walking out of the canteen in high spirits when they had the misfortune of catching the lieutenant colonel in a bad mood. Mevlut watched from afar with quiet satisfaction as the colonel gave them two slaps each on their clean-shaven cheeks for holding their caps wrong.

“As soon as I’ve finished my military service, I’m going to find that asshole colonel and stuff him back down the hole he crawled out of,” said Ahmet from Ankara as they drank their tea that evening.

“I don’t really care, man, there’s no logic in the army anyway,” said Emre from Antalya.

Mevlut respected Emre for being flexible and confident enough to put the slap out of his mind, though the view that there is no logic in the army was not his own but a favorite slogan among the commanders. If anyone dared to question the logic of an order, they’d shout: “I can withdraw your pass for two weekends in a row just because I feel like it or make you crawl through the mud and wish you’d never been born.” They would always make good on their promises.

A few days later, on receiving his first slap, Mevlut realized that a beating wasn’t as bad as he had thought. His squad had been sent out to clean up some trash, for lack of anything better to do, and they had picked up all the matchsticks, cigarette butts, and dried leaves they could find. They had just scattered for a cigarette break when an enormous commander (Mevlut still hadn’t learned how to tell rank by the insignia on the collars) appeared out of nowhere, yelling “What the hell is this?” He got the squad to line up and then gave each of the ten privates a smack with his huge hand. It certainly stung, but Mevlut was relieved to suffer the thing he had so feared — his first beating — without too much damage. The tall Nazmi from Nazilli had been the first in line, so he’d really felt the force of the blow, and afterward he looked like he could have killed someone. Mevlut tried to be comforting. “Don’t worry about it, my friend,” he said. “Look at me, I don’t mind, it’s over already.”

“You don’t mind because he didn’t hit you as hard,” said Nazmi in anger. “Your face is as pretty as a girl’s, that’s why.”

Mevlut thought he might be right.

Someone else said, “The army doesn’t care if you’re pretty or plain, handsome or ugly. They’ll beat you all the same.”

“Don’t kid yourselves, guys. If you’re from Eastern Anatolia, if you’ve got dark skin and that darkness in your eyes, you will get beaten up more.”

Mevlut didn’t join this debate. He had managed to preserve his pride by reasoning that the slap hadn’t been brought on by any mistake of his.