The Flea Palace (38 page)

‘But grandpa, what if I step on them by mistake?’ exclaimed the five and a half year old.

‘If you step on them, the genies will get into you. They will twist you out of shape,’ roared the seven and a half year old.

‘Like you’ve got a giant head!’

Hadji Hadji intervened: ‘Don’t talk like that with your older brother. Neither the genies nor Allah will like those who don’t respect their elders.’

The five and a half year old tilted her head, tugging her pinky-ginger pleated skirt. Utterly immobile for a while, from the corner of her eye she then looked at her older brother only to see the other pouting at her. Without a sound she slid closer to her grandfather.

‘The genies have a sultan. They call him Beelzebub. Never do they dare to disobey his orders, but there are times when they get involved in all sorts of intrigues without his knowledge. The genie gang comes in all types. The genies are like humans, some are good, some wicked. Some are devout, some infidels. There are three types of genies: firstly, there are some in the form of snakes or bugs, secondly are those in the shape of wind or water and last but not least, there are those who take the form of humans. It is this last group that is the most menacing of all! You can never tell if they are really humans or genies. They throw weddings that last until dawn, eating, drinking and dancing to the rhythm of drums and
zurnas
. If you ever happen upon a genie wedding late at night,
you should instantly turn your head. Don’t ever try to sneak a look! When you get up to go to the bathroom at night, don’t ever take even one step without uttering Allah’s name aloud! Particular attention needs to be paid to thresholds because that’s where the genies like to linger. The only way to eschew the genies is to not do anything without uttering Allah’s name. If you forget to do so, the genies will surely reach you and meddle with your life!’ repined Hadji Hadji, leaning his aching back on one of the pillows piled up on the couch to build an Osman afterward. The little girl next to him cowered and moved in tandem, as if glued to the old man.

‘The most horrible one is the “Crimson Broad”. When she haunts a woman who has just given birth, she’ll never let go of her prey. All night long, she mounts the new mother’s chest as if riding a horse. Only at dawn does she leave the poor thing drenched in sweat and fear, but the next night, she’s back there again, this time attacking the cradle, throwing the baby up in the air like a soccer ball.’

‘Oh I remember her,’ the seven and a half year old blurted out, eyeing his siblings, ‘She came to their birth!’

‘Of course, she would! If, instead of having the birth her way, your mother had called for your deceased grandmother, there would be no quandaries. Your grandma, peace be upon her, would certainly have managed to get rid of the “Crimson Broad”, but the poor soul passed away without seeing her grandchildren.’

Deeply vexed by their grandfather’s response, the five and a half year old and the six and a half year old grovelled at once. While the little girl’s lower lip drooped down, the boy had started to suck his thumb which was already thinned out from constant sucking.

‘And you better be cautious about the “Black Congolos” too, the most merciless of them all… She disguises herself as an aged woman, wandering on the streets, waiting for her prey at street corners. She asks questions to the passers-by: “Where are you coming from?” and “Where are you going to?” she
inquires. “Which family do you descend from?” she further asks. If you stumble upon “Black Congolos”, you have no other choice than to respond to her questions by using the word “black” each time. Say, for instance, “I am from the black ones” or “I come from the black town”. Only then will she leave you in peace. Every so often she asks for an address. If you don’t know the address, I pity you. She takes out her cane, whacks you on the head and beats you so bad that…’

His words were ripped apart by the ringing of the phone. The seven and a half year old reached for the receiver with no hurry. Yes, they had finished their breakfasts. No, they were not being naughty. Yes, they were watching television. No, grandpa was not telling tales. No, they were not turning the gas on. No, they were not messing up the house. No, they did not hang off the balcony. No, they did not play with fire. No, they did not go into the bedroom. Really, grandpa was not telling a tale.

However, that day his mother must have been in need of confirmation for she insisted: ‘If your grandpa is telling tales simply say, “The weather is cold,” and I’ll understand.’

The seven and a half year old hesitated for a moment. A nocturnal gleam slid from his moss green eyes. There followed a prickly silence. When the gleam had disappeared, he had already changed his mind. Without feeling the need to lower his voice or take his eyes off his grandfather, he answered in an indifferent voice: ‘No, mom, the weather is not cold. However, grandpa does keep telling us creepy stories.’

‘You seem to be in good spirits today, Professor,’ Ece sitting at the front row twittered in the most glib voice she could manage. She was dressed in pitch black from top to toe, as usual: black lipstick, black nail polish, black eyes made to stand out with black eye pencil. I took out the copy of ‘Sickness Unto Death’ from my briefcase and placed it on her desk.

‘I have indeed come to class in good spirits, but whether I’ll still be in this state when we are done depends on you. Let’s see if the articles have been read,’ I said, proceeding with a typical introduction to a typical Thursday lecture.

‘We have read from, “In Praise of Folly”, by Erasmus. The part where he mentions Fortuna we compared to Machiavelli’s Fortuna. Entirely read, analyzed and memorized!’ Ece spoke up.

‘Fine, then can somebody please tell me what sort of a thing this Fortuna is?’ I asked, taking pains to address not Ece but the whole class.

‘For sure, a female,’ Ece raised an answer, apparently pleased with trampling whatever prudence I maintain. ‘In both Machiavelli and Erasmus, Fortuna is personified and feminized and because she’s a female, it’s no big surprise that they don’t find her reliable. The church fathers shared the same opinion – and we Turks are no different. We say destiny is either blind or a slut. If blind, she can’t see what she distributes to whom, so can’t be expected to be fair. If a slut, she’ll have nothing to do with fairness anyhow. At times there’s a wheel in her hand. At other times she herself forms a wheel by swirling her skirts.
Hence the expression ‘Wheel of Fortune’! There is no way of knowing when or where she’ll stop, bringing who-knows-what to whom. According to Machiavelli, Fortuna controls half of our lives and there’s nothing we can do about that part. However, it is possible, even if only partially, to make Fortuna obey our demands. Since each and every one of the fountainheads of political philosophy happen to be male, it looks like in the persona of Fortuna they are unanimously searching for ways with which to bring women to their knees.’

‘Huh? So this Fortuna you are talking about is our good old
Kader
?’ Cem blurted out, apparently having not the slightest problem in revealing his ignorance on the assigned articles.

In the ensuing fifteen minutes or so, constantly interrupting each other’s sentences, they talked about our good old
Kader
.

‘I think it’s really cheap to criticize Machiavelli from the standpoint of contemporary feminist paradigms,’ said the curly-haired girl with the glasses whose name always escaped me, and who I knew did not like Ece one wee bit but for some reason always sat behind her. ‘The issue is, do you think you’re living a life that’s been drawn up for you ahead of time? Has your life been determined a priori? That is the question we need to ask. In struggling against
Kader
, the man’s clearly coming to terms with religion. Neither Enlightenment nor progress would’ve been possible without breaking away from Fortuna, or bringing her to her knees, if you will.’

Ece stretched tautly as she crossed her legs. She does this repeatedly, knowing too well the beauty of her legs. So far, I have not seen any colleague suffer serious academic damage for getting mixed up in some sort of a love affair with a student. If someone is hunted down for this reason, it is because he would have been hunted down in any case. At any rate, I do not reciprocate Ece’s interest in me. Not because I am worried it would reach my colleagues’ ears. What really matters is not what the academics pretend not to know, but what the students pretend to know, for female students always talk. They can never hold their tongues. Each one has a close
friend to confide in, each confidant another one of her own, and so it goes. Complete disenchantment! All of a sudden you are not the ‘esteemed, unknown’ professor you once were, always watched by prying eyes from a distance, but an ordinary mortal whose weaknesses, lunacies, baloneys and fixations are paraded in front of all. To be with a young girl could indeed provide a pleasant boost to self-esteem for middle-aged men, but that comes at a cost: it is a shaky status bound to shatter any time. It might easily capsize at the very first flick. Then, all the letters you have written, the confessions you have made and the secrets you let slip will altogether vex you. Your sexual performance will be the talk of town and before you it, know you’ll have become the butt of all jokes. It is not worth it. I never considered any female student of mine to be worth all this. Not even Ece.

‘Why don’t we just simply confess that we can’t control our lives? I may be held responsible for what I do but I can’t be blamed for what I spark off,’ Ece said, watching my every move all the while. ‘I’m from birth the daughter of this or that person. I can choose neither my father nor my nation and certainly not my religion or language. If they’d asked my opinion, I’d have preferred to have been born in another environment; if refused the alternative, I’d rather not have been born at all. It’s that simple. If you had been born somewhere else, rather than a scarf on your head you would have had a cross on your neck,’ she poured out. Though she had turned back, it was not clear as to which one of the three headscarfed girls she had addressed her words.

‘I too believe in destiny’, answered Seda, always sitting in the middle of the always together headscarfed threesome.

‘But that’s not at all what I’m talking about,’ grumbled Ece the blabbermouth. ‘You believe in a divine justice. Things are what they are at the moment but you think some day everyone will be held accountable for what they did in life. The debauched will be punished in hell, the gullible rewarded in heaven and so on. You retain a notion of justice in your mind.
Otherwise your faith will smash to smithereens. Fortuna is exactly the opposite. She has nothing to do with the other world, so solidly mundane!’

‘Frankly guys, I have a hard time understanding why you got so hooked up on this Fortuna,’ interjected Cem, bringing his chair closer to the wall as if getting ready to flee through the window. ‘The real question is not Fortuna or anything similar but concerns the very difference between a line and a circle. If you believe this life you are living is a line, you might just as well presume you’ll triumph over the past, reach the future. However, if it is a circle which your life resembles, rest assured that there is no such thing as “progress”. Are you at peace with recurrence or not? That’s the fundamental issue. A man like Machiavelli can’t be at peace with recurrence because that requires acceptance of the sullen fact that the life you live now, you’ll live again and again, that tomorrow won’t be any different than today – exactly the same question as Nietzsche asked of Rousseau. When you’re alone, at the loneliest hour of your life, say, if all of a sudden a teensy weensy devil descends all the way from hell and exclaims, “Have no fear, I guarantee you, there is no such thing as death, if anything, there is only recurrence. Every single thing you’ve lived until this very moment, you’ll live all over again. Then again and again. Forever…” How would you feel then? How many of us can tolerate living our lives over and over again? Those who can put up with Fortuna’s whims will never go mad. It’s that simple. To endure life, a man like Machiavelli has to cut the circle somewhere and transform it into a line. Only then can the idea of progress surface, and along with it, the notion of individualism.’

I looked at my watch; five minutes left to the end of the second hour. ‘Once again you manage to surprise me with your ability to deviate from the subject matter,’ I muttered as I took out my pack of cigarettes, indicating a break. ‘Next week you’ll have completed all the readings and we’ll only talk about what you’ve read. No one will blabber without proof.’

During the third hour, I lectured and they listened without a comment. While everyone else took notes, Cem looked out the window and Ece munched half a pack of bitter chocolate. A speck of chocolate, almost black, stuck there on the side of her lip like a naughty mole.

‘Mom, why are you taking us with you?’ whined the five and a half year old.

‘Come on, isn’t this great? Don’t you want to see where your mother works?’ the Daughter-in-Law said, as she held more tightly onto the hands of the two children forcing them to adjust to the speed of her footsteps. How on earth she was going to restrain the kids at the box office all day long she hadn’t quite yet worked out, besides which she was afraid of angering her boss, but she was too high-strung to think rationally after the fight with her father-in-law. As they neared the end of Cabal Street, she slowed down and looked back over her shoulder. The seven and a half year old was two metres behind them. Despite the inquisitive looks of some passers-by, he seemed remarkably happy now that he had stepped outside Bonbon Palace after two years.

Soon the lump of anguish the Daughter-in-Law was used to savouring whenever she watched her older son chased away the wisps of worries pullulating from her mind. Though she knew too well that her oldest child would be the shortest to live with her, among all her children it was he that she was most deeply attached to. Children born with a lethal illness, unlike their peers and siblings, belong only to their mothers and always stay as such.