Authors: O.Z. Livaneli
Showing her the box he held in his hand, he suddenly asked, “Do you know how to play this GameBoy?”
Startled, Meryem shook her head.
“Why not?”
“I don’t know,” Meryem said.
The boy did not give up. “We have a car, but my mom had an accident, you know. That’s why we’re going by train to my grandparents’ house in Istanbul. My mom’s afraid of airplanes.”
Meryem listened to the boy and nodded.
He started to hum again and began to play with his odd-looking toy. Then he thrust his shoe with the unfastened lace toward Meryem, and said, “Tie it up!”
Meryem immediately bent forward, but the boy’s mother looked up and said, “Shame on you, son! Is that the way to talk to your elders? You’re a big boy now. You can tie your own shoes.”
“But isn’t she a maid?” asked the boy.
“No, she’s not.”
“But she looks just like our maid.”
The woman smiled at Meryem, and said, “Please forgive him.”
“It’s all right,” Meryem replied. “I can tie his shoelace for him.”
Yet she felt reluctant to do so in front of the others since she did not know how to tie a bow. She hesitated, and the boy tied his own shoelace, huffing and puffing indignantly as he did so.
Meryem realized that, for the first time in her life, people were speaking to her politely. It seemed like a miracle to her that a woman who could so openly read a magazine with a naked woman on the cover as well as a woman who argued with men should treat her like a human being.
Meanwhile, the young woman next to Cemal said, “Have a good journey.” It was not clear whom she had addressed, but the man opposite her said, “You, too.” Everyone nodded.
“This is Peter Cape, an American journalist,” continued the young woman, introducing the man next to her. “He’s come to Turkey to interview people for an article he’s writing. He wants to talk to all kinds of people. I’m his translator.”
She took two business cards out of her bag and handed them to Cemal and the boy’s father. “My name’s Leyla. Peter would like to ask you a few questions if you don’t mind.”
“Not at all,” the short-haired man on the opposite seat readily replied. Then he said something to the American in the foreign language that Meryem had heard earlier. He spoke it with difficulty, but he was eager to communicate with the journalist.
“We’ve visited many parts of Turkey,” said Leyla. “We’ve traveled to the east, to the west, to the Black Sea region, as well as the Mediterranean. We’ve ridden on trucks, and climbed up to mountain villages on donkeys. Now we’re taking the train. Peter wants to meet people of all backgrounds.”
The American took out a small notebook and asked the man opposite him a question. Leyla translated.
“He asks what you do as a job.”
“I’m a urologist. And my wife works in a bank.”
“Do you live in Ankara?”
“Yes.”
“Some of the people we’ve talked to say that the clash between the supporters of the right wing and those of the left in Turkey is over. Today, the country has three poles: Turkish nationalism, Kurdish nationalism, and political Islam. Do you agree?”
“No,” he said emphatically, without taking pains to hide his surprise and discomfort. “I will never accept that the Republic of Turkey is divided in any way.”
He knitted his brows and raised his chin, as if he thought that by saying anything more he would be accused of being a traitor, giving secret information about his country to foreign spies.
Without consulting Peter, Leyla continued, “Please don’t misunderstand. He’s not saying that Turkey is divided. He’s saying that there is polarization—the country has three centers of attraction.”
Somewhat bewildered, the man fell silent, trying to puzzle out her meaning. Taking advantage of her husband’s silence, the woman entered the conversation.
“There is no such division,” she said. “On the one hand, there is the modern and secular Kemalist Republic. On the other, there are the Kurds and the Islamists who are trying to destroy the Republic.”
Leyla translated for the journalist.
“Does this situation frighten you?” Peter asked.
“Yes, a little, in fact,” she answered, “because everyone knows what the Kurds have done and how many people they’ve killed.”
She paused and continued reproachfully, “They’ve done it with the aid and support of Western states.”
“What’s frightening about it?” Peter asked.
“The Islamists want to turn this country into another Iran. They want to veil all Turkish women, like those ‘cockroaches,’ who cover themselves in black from head to toe. If they could, they would force us all to veil ourselves immediately.”
“What do you think about the riots in the universities over the Islamic headdress?”
“Those actions are all directed from some central headquarters. What they wear is not a scarf but a political symbol. That’s the way it started in Iran. They plan to plant thousands of headscarfed women first in the universities, then in government offices. Next, they’ll want to use the Arabic alphabet or demand that Friday become an official holiday. Finally, they’ll establish a Shari’a state—something like the Taliban.”
“But don’t you think that a student has the right to dress as she wants?”
“Not if her aim is to support a political agenda. Our grandmothers also covered their heads, but these women cover their heads in a different way. For them it’s not a normal headscarf, but a political symbol, a uniform.”
“What do you mean?”
The woman struggled to explain. Then, all of a sudden, she pointed at Meryem. “Look at her,” she said. “This girl covers her head but not in the way they do. This is the way the traditional Anatolian woman covers her head, unlike how those freaks do.”
Meryem was embarrassed. Everyone in the compartment was staring at her dirty headscarf. Even the non-Muslim foreigner was looking at her.
“Where are you from?” Leyla asked.
“Near Lake Van; that is, from Suluca,” Meryem stammered.
Peter then started to ask more questions, and Leyla translated.
“Are you Kurdish or Turkish?”
Meryem looked at Cemal to see if he objected to her speaking. He did not seem to mind, so she whispered, “Praise be to God, I’m a Muslim.”
“He didn’t ask that,” said Leyla. “He asked whether you’re Turkish or Kurdish.”
“Where we come from, Turks and Kurds are mixed,” Cemal interrupted. “They’ve always married each other—but our family is more Turkish than Kurdish.”
From Cemal’s appearance, Leyla understood that he was a soldier, and she told Peter this.
The journalist then became very interested in the young man, and after a few more questions, they discovered that Cemal was a former commando who had fought in the mountains. Peter wanted to know what kinds of things he had encountered during his service. Were Kurdish villages really razed to the ground? Did the village guards tyrannize the local inhabitants? Had any of Cemal’s friends been killed? How many guerrillas had he himself killed? What did he think of the actions he had taken part in? Had he crossed the border into northern Iraq? Had he ever been wounded?
Cemal soon began to feel uneasy. He was afraid that if he talked too much, he would be giving away military secrets and betraying those who had died in the service of their country. The brotherhood of soldiers followed unwritten rules. One was to stay out of such conversations.
The stranger who was questioning him had never been in the mountains. No bullets had whizzed over his head. He had never felt the all-pervading fear of stepping on a land mine. He had not lived in the open, soaked to the skin for days and nights on end. Cemal could not explain this to him, so he gave evasive answers, “I don’t know much. I was in a supply unit away from the fighting.”
Peter finally realized that Cemal would not give him any information.
“Tell the journalist that Kurds in this country receive equal treatment,” the doctor said abruptly. “He should stop trying to stir things up. Whoever is a citizen of the Turkish Republic is Turkish. It’s similar to America. There are many different people in the U.S.: black, white, Hispanic.… Aren’t they all American? So are we all Turkish, and we won’t let anyone divide our country.”
Peter Cape listened politely. “But in America,” he replied, “everyone speaks the language he or she wants and dresses as he or she chooses. Kurdish education and Kurdish television are forbidden here, aren’t they? It’s also against the law to go to school wearing a ‘turban.’ That’s all I was asking about.”
For more than a month, Peter had been traveling around this remarkable country so full of conflicts. He had never been to a land that had so many different lifestyles. Even to say that the people in the compartment were all of the same nationality would be difficult, and this was only one of the things that amazed him. The war in the southeast between the PKK and the Turkish army had lasted fifteen years. Tens of thousands had been killed, but that did not prevent Turks and Kurds from living together or marrying their children off to each other. What an extraordinary contradiction!
Although there was no current dispute between the Alawites and the Sunnites, they did not let their families mix; if that happened, blood would flow. On the other hand, it was only on the mountaintops that Turks and Kurds were killing each other. If you looked at it objectively, after so many millions had migrated to the cities, many of the larger ones had a considerable Kurdish population, yet there was no sign of a Turkish-Kurdish dispute within city boundaries.
Turkey was a Muslim country, but the Turks appeared to have a strong dislike for Arabs and Iranians. Apparently, Turks considered themselves Western and European. They admired and imitated the West, but they had a deep-seated distrust of it as well.
Peter was also surprised at the amount of nudity he found in the popular culture. On one hand, the police prevented female students wearing the Islamic headdress from entering universities, while, on the other, the television and newspapers were full of pornographic sex, even during the holy month of Ramadan. He found it very difficult to understand.
Peter had repeatedly witnessed the symptoms of a paranoia about a divided country, which turned people into fiery nationalists. Like the doctor opposite him, whenever a Turk heard the words “Armenian,” “Kurdish,” or “headscarf,” he would become upset and go into a long rant about Atatürk, the blond, blue-eyed founder of the Turkish Republic. Portraits and statues of him were prominent all over the country. There was no town square or government office where his image was not present.
When Peter first arrived in Turkey, he had visited a very cold northeastern city and witnessed a peculiar scene in front of the courthouse there. The cold was intense—at minus eighty degrees it seemed possible that even hell might freeze—but some men dressed in colorful Ottoman costumes and carrying musical instruments were waiting outside the courthouse in the cold. Leyla told him that the group represented a symbolic Janissary or Ottoman military band. “Nowadays, each municipality seems to have one,” she added.
“Why are they waiting outside in the freezing cold?”
“Someone from this city has been appointed a government minister. They’re waiting for him.”
“When is he going to arrive?”
“That’s anyone’s guess.”
Snug in the warm comfort of his car, Peter Cape decided he would photograph the state minister’s arrival. He waited for a long while, and he could see that the musicians were getting colder and colder. Although their moustaches were slowly freezing solid and their hands were turning blue, they did not leave.
Leyla told him that the city was famous for its cold weather, and that the great seventeenth-century Ottoman traveler, Evliya Çelebi, had mentioned in one of his books that when he was crossing a narrow road, he saw a cat jumping from one roof to another. It was so cold that the poor animal froze in the air halfway from one roof to the other.
“I can understand why it froze, but why didn’t it fall down?” Peter asked.
Leyla told him that was what Evliya Çelebi’s stories were like: full of exaggeration.
Now the bitter cold, which could freeze a jumping cat, was transforming the military band into statues of ice. They waited for more than an hour. Finally, a convoy of cars appeared in the distance. A cavalcade of big black Mercedes, accompanied by police cars, drove up, one after the other. The minister, a short, plump man, who looked like one of the peasants from that region, was quickly surrounded by fawning attendants. He paid no attention to the Janissary band but went directly into the building. Those unfortunate musicians made an effort to play a march, but could not produce more than a few weak notes with their frozen fingers, the joints of which had lost all feeling. The drum itself shattered when the drummer struck it. Neither the minister nor those around him saw or heard anything, but the band had done its duty and welcomed the minister in proper fashion.
Peter felt as if he had traveled back in time. He asked Leyla who the minister was, and she told him that he was a former tradesman, a minor wholesaler of foodstuffs. One day he had joined one of the more conservative parties. When the party succeeded in the elections, he had become first a deputy, then a minister.
“What a lucky guy.” Peter Cape laughed.
“Most of them are people like that,” Leyla added, somewhat angrily. “Many people, such as provincial merchants or those who’ve never been able to hold a good job, or others who need political immunity in order to avoid being prosecuted, join a party, then make people wait outside in a temperature of minus eighty degrees.”
The minister, who had obtained funds from the state budget to make investments in his hometown, was visiting the city to lay the foundation of a sports center named after him and a park named after his deceased father. That was the reason why a foodstuff merchant—really not much liked—was being welcomed as if he were a Seljuk sultan.
Peter Cape had seen many strange things in this country. He had seen oppressive, dark Anatolian cities, full of coffeehouses crowded with chain-smoking men with sunken cheeks and thick moustaches, narrow roads, dreadful poverty, and heard of starving people who hanged themselves from trees, young people who committed suicide by throwing themselves off the Bosphorus Bridge, purse snatchers who almost ripped the arms off the women as well as taking their handbags. He had experienced communal taxis side by side with Cherokee and Lincoln four-by-fours, minibuses and limousines, five-star hotels, parties along the Bosphorus that were more extravagant than the tales in the Arabian Nights, firework exhibitions, people walking around in Afghan outfits, naked models, heavy-metal fans in Beyoğlu bars, Satanists, rock singers, youngsters with red or green hair and body piercings. This was a country that defied definition and was almost impossible to comprehend.