Bliss: A Novel (6 page)

The sense of superiority felt on the mountaintops did not last, especially when the soldiers had to remain in the open for many days. Rain and snow soaked them to the skin, and they forgot how it felt to be dry. Their wet clothing froze at night, adding to the torment. At such times, the soldiers thought the rain would never stop, and they imagined a life wrapped in nylon but forever soaked to the skin. Even worse was when the whiz of bullets was mixed with the sound of the rain.

Cemal, like many of his comrades, carried a plastic bag when he was out on an operation. He did not want to relive the nightmare he had been through with Abdullah.

Abdullah, a native of the city of Niğde, was a bright young man who liked to laugh and amuse his comrades with endless jokes. One late afternoon, three months before his discharge, their unit had been out on patrol. The soldiers knew that land mines lay in the snow under their feet, but they could only push forward and take their chances. It was difficult enough to recognize mines in daylight, let alone in the slowly descending darkness. Each step they took might send them to their death, and each time nothing happened, they breathed a momentary sigh of relief.

No sound except the crunch of boots on snow broke the silence until a thundering explosion shook the earth to its core. Instinctively, the soldiers threw themselves to the ground. As they did so, they saw Abdullah go flying through the air; he had trodden on a mine.

Cemal was closest to him. Oblivious to the fact that he could set off another mine, he crawled on his belly toward his wounded comrade. He did not look good. Cemal grabbed him, trying to hold his head in his lap.

“My eye!” Abdullah screamed, in a state of shock. “Something’s in my eye! Oh, how it hurts!”

His face was a horrid sight, drenched in blood, but Cemal forced himself to grip his head and look at his eyes. An empty socket gaped where the left one had been. Abdullah still moaned in a voice that was faintly human, “It hurts, it hurts.”

The leader of the group and the other soldiers now reached them, and Cemal heard the captain shouting furiously over the radio trying to reach the operator, “Hawk 3, Hawk 3, there’s a man here seriously wounded. Send a helicopter!”

A voice crackled on the other side. Darkness was falling. It was too dangerous to fly. They would have to hold on till dawn. The voice on the wireless was so calm, as if unconscious of the life draining away there on the snow.

Blood poured from the hole in Abdullah’s face. Cemal had no idea what to do. Should he plug it with a rag? All he knew was that his comrade could not last much longer. Even if the chopper came right away, he might not live.

The young captain’s voice was hoarse as he continued to plead, trying to convince the other side. “I beg you, please, come! He can’t last till morning. Please save our brave comrade. It’s not dark yet.” He continued to give the coordinates.

The radio was silent.

Cemal was looking at the bloody stump where Abdullah’s foot had been. As he tried to subdue the rising fear and panic spreading through his body, he saw the severed limb a short distance away. Like some alien object, the shattered leg and ripped boot lay together in a pool of blood. Cemal’s only comfort was that Abdullah was now unconscious, overcome by the pain.

Captain and soldiers gave each other measuring looks as they wondered what could be done. Suddenly, as if in answer to a prayer, the rumble of an engine and the whir of propeller blades broke the stillness. The soldiers looked up, and a helicopter appeared over the ridge of the nearby hill. They began waving frantically, and the chopper slowly descended, stirring up a flurry of snow.

The soldiers knew the helicopter would not land, but hang a few feet above the ground, and they would have to hurl Abdullah through the open door. PKK guerrillas might see the chopper, open fire, and kill the pilot. The army could not afford the negative propaganda of losing a Black Hawk for the sake of a single wounded private. The medics on board were shouting for them to hurry up. The helicopter hovered, scattering snow, as the team on board shouted to them to hurry, though their exact words were drowned by the clatter of the engine.

A few soldiers picked Abdullah up from Cemal’s lap and carried him through the blinding swirl of snow to the helicopter. Swinging the limp body back and forth, they threw it toward the door. The medics leaned out to grab the boy, but he slipped through their hands and plummeted back into the snow. Meanwhile, Cemal had picked up Abdullah’s foot, still warm, and flung it into the chopper. Maybe it could be sewn on at the hospital.

The soldiers lifted Abdullah once more and pitched him toward the helicopter, but he landed on the ground again. The third attempt was successful, and the chopper rose into the air, disappearing over the ridgeline even as the body was still being pulled on board.

Cemal had thrown Abdullah’s foot into the helicopter instinctively. From that day on, he began to carry a plastic bag on patrol with him. If another comrade stepped on a mine, he would use it to collect the pieces. And he knew that the other soldiers were prepared to do the same.

In the evenings, over their meals of canned food, tea, and a few carefully concealed cigarettes, they talked together, often sharing their deepest secrets. Perhaps, the following day, they would pick up the torn limb of one to whom they had revealed their intimate thoughts the night before and stuff it into such a bag.

Relaxing in his bunk after having washed himself so thoroughly, Cemal remembered a voice he had heard now and then while listening to PKK guerrillas on the wireless. It was a voice he recognized. Sometimes it made a direct appeal: “Soldiers of the Turkish Republic, surrender before it’s too late. Save yourselves. Tie up your commander and bring him to us. Or else you won’t live through the night.”

Upon hearing this, the newest of the reserve officers would grab the radio, and shout back, “You son of a bitch, come and do it yourself, if you’ve got the balls!”

The laugh, which would then crackle back from the other side, caused Cemal to shudder. It was a laugh he knew well. Memo … his childhood friend, his buddy, his brother, his confidant, Memo. Cemal recognized Memo’s laughter. During the long summer days in their village, Cemal and Memo used to lie down on the meadow and watch the clouds move slowly in the blue sky. As they dreamed of their future, a future they hoped to share, the thought that they would become the worst of enemies one day had not once crossed their minds. How could they have believed it! Yet, now, one was a private, fighting in the Turkish army, and the other, a guerrilla in the Kurdish separatist movement. As two old friends, now they were fighting against one another, hoping to kill the other. This was a fratricidal fight that had been going on for more than fifteen years. A fight that had cost the lives of more than thirty thousand people, both Turks and Kurds … Some of the young men from Eastern Anatolia who had joined the army to do their military service had ended up on the mountains like Cemal, and others, like Memo, had joined the Kurdish separatist guerrillas, who fought against the Turkish soldiers.

As Cemal listened to Memo’s husky voice on the wireless, he was not sure whether he would be able to take aim at Memo and kill him if they ever met on these mountains.

ILL-STARRED GIRLS SUFFER

On the day on which it seemed Meryem’s mother had become pregnant, she had dreamed of the Virgin Mary. Candle in hand, the Virgin approached her and said that she would give birth to a girl but would then pass away, leaving her daughter behind.

As Meryem’s aunt later told the story, her sister had woken up in terror and insisted that she interpret the dream immediately. She had refused and advised her not to talk about the vision before morning since it could bring bad luck.

Meryem’s mother did not return to her husband’s bed that night. She was still trembling from the dream and needed her sister’s comforting warmth. Hugging her twin, she fell asleep in her arms.

As soon as the first light of day began to enter the room, she woke her sister, and pleaded, “Now tell me what it meant.”

Meryem’s aunt, who had a talent for interpreting dreams in a positive way, replied soothingly, “I think Mother Mary wants you to name your daughter after her.”

“What about passing away and leaving the child?”

“No one lives forever. Why should you be different? We’ll all die one day. Even Mother Mary passed away.”

When Meryem’s mother died in childbirth, the family remembered the saint’s wishes and named Meryem accordingly.

Whenever Meryem thought about this story—as well as countless others—she was certain that she lived in a world full of magic, full of holy people who appeared in dreams and talking animals and trees. She regretted that nothing miraculous ever happened to her and wondered if there might be something wrong with her.

In primary school, her friends used to tell stories of miracles—how they heard birds talking like humans, or how a family ancestor had alerted them to danger. Once, something similar happened at Meryem’s home. Her revered grandfather had appeared to the family and warned them not to buy large amounts of soap.

“If you do,” he said, “you will burn.”

They did not heed his advice and bought bar after bar of soap at the market. The house did catch fire—as if lit by invisible hands. Meryem’s father and uncle had great difficulty in extinguishing the flames. They ordered everyone never to disregard such a warning again.

When the grandfather made another appearance and told the women of the house to change the day of their weekly visits to the public baths, making the trip on Thursdays rather than on Wednesdays, the family obeyed the command.

Meryem loved going to the baths, which required special preparation. Food was cooked and fresh towels and clothing prepared. Then all the women, young and old, would crowd into a cart and set out, looking forward to a long day of entertainment.

At the baths, Meryem secretly studied the drooping breasts of the naked women around her and wondered whether she, too, would have such strange things one day. In this ancient building, where the sun’s rays turned pale upon passing through the thick glass of the domes, the older women briskly rubbed Meryem and the other children until they glowed rose pink, and then almost scalded them with bowls of steaming water, rinsing them clean. She always noticed a pungent odor emanating from the closed partitions at the back of the room. When she asked about it, she was told, “It’s the smell of depilatory … you’ll understand when you’re older.”

When Meryem grew taller and sprouted two buds on her chest, the women, admiring her young, slender figure, finally introduced her to the secret part of the baths. They took her to one of the compartments, prepared a foul-smelling mixture, and removed the hair from under her arms and pubic parts.

“You must get rid of all the hair there,” they told her. “If any remains, it’s a sin. Use this to remove it from your body.”

Soon Meryem began to carry out the procedure on her own without allowing anyone to come near her.

Depilation was the most tedious part of these days at the baths; the most pleasant was sitting in the cool room afterward, enjoying a meal of stuffed vegetables and little pasties.

Meryem tried to find a way to see the grandfather’s ghost who had made these predictions, but her wishes were never fulfilled. Her prayers were of no avail; nor was it any good to rub her eyes, and murmur, “Grandpa, Grandpa!”

Her mother’s father had been a wrestler, while her paternal grandfather had been a mystic who went by the name of Sheikh Kureysh. One stormy day in the dead of winter, the sheikh had walked barefoot out of the house into the snow. When asked where he was going, he replied, “To Horasan.”

Some onlookers began to laugh, saying that he would not take a few steps before his feet froze solid, let alone reach Transoxiana. Despite their mockery, he kept on walking. The few villagers who followed him for a while later reported that, when a pack of ravenous wolves saw the old man approaching in the snow, they had stopped howling and turned meek as kittens. According to legend, the sheikh walked all the way to Horasan and back.

No animal, not even the most vicious or venomous, disturbed the holy man. Snakes and scorpions crawled harmlessly over his hands, up his arms, and around his neck. He was immune to evil, and he passed on this power to the newly born infants of the family by spitting in their mouths. Thus, the members of the household gained protection from all danger.

Everybody believed that the spirit of Grandfather Kureysh was forever present in the family home. That was why stairs creaked, doors slammed, and strange noises sometimes came from the kitchen.

After listening to these tales told nightly among the household, Meryem was sure that her grandfather’s spirit would rescue her, but no matter how hard she tried to open herself up to these visions, he did not appear. Even during the visit to
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Baba’s tomb, she had not experienced anything special, except shaming herself. The villagers often recounted how, long ago, when Russian troops had occupied their homes and slaughtered many of the men in the nearby streambed,
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Baba had rocked the sky with thunder and lightning and showered the enemy with hailstones. The Russians had scattered in fear. It was certainly
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Baba, too, who caused the Russian commander to put a revolver to his temple in his headquarters at the largest mansion in the town and pull the trigger. Disbelievers claimed this miracle was prompted by a telegram the officer had received from Moscow earlier on that November day in 1917, but few of the villagers agreed. Even if true,
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Baba must have sent the message.