Death and the Dervish (Writings From An Unbound Europe) (25 page)

You aren’t particularly wise, you aren’t particularly eloquent, my good Zaim. Yes, he liked me, so much that he went away almost breathless, and we’ll continue the torture tomorrow.

Zaim looked at me confusedly, searching for words. “Look, I’d like to ask a favor of you.”

Did he also look at my face to see whether it was withering from his words? I encouraged him, listlessly, for old times’ sake:

“Tell me, Kara-Zaim. Freely. Something’s troubling you.” That was what the other one should have said to me, a little before.

“Well, nothing’s really troubling me. But here they don’t know who I am; they think that I’ve always been this shortwinded and wretched. I’m not talking about the mufti, but about the others.”

“Has something happened to you?”

“Nothing’s happened. They say I’m no longer fit for the service.”

“Are they going to let you go?”

“Yes, they’re going to let me go. So I thought, maybe you could tell the mufti to keep me. I’m not for the military anymore, but I can guard gates better than most. I get a hundred piasters a year . . .”

“The mufti gets twelve thousand.”

“The mufti is different. So I say, if a hundred piasters is too much, let it be less, let it be eighty. Let it even be seventy. Seventy a year, is that really too much? This is what I wanted to ask you.”

Well, usually seventy piasters a year isn’t much. You won’t get fat from those seventy piasters, my dear Zaim, you who made a bad mistake by not dying on time. But forgive me if

can’t pity you, I’ve been wrangling with the devil for a long time, and my entire body has been battered; not one of my bones is in its place.

“You aren’t fit for the military,” I said, thinking nothing. “But you can carry a gun. And you can carry a yataghan. How much would you want to help me free an innocent man? He’s been imprisoned for no reason at all; he’s done nothing wrong. Would you do it for a hundred piasters?”

He looked confused.

“I don’t know whether you’re just asking me this or talking about something that could really happen.”

“Give me an answer.”

“That’s not easy. While I was still the real Kara-Zaim, I would have done it for nothing. But now, if it’s an honest affair . . . a hundred piasters?”

“Two hundred.”

“Two hundred piasters! O merciful God! I’d be able to live for three years on two hundred piasters. And an innocent man? Where is he?”

“In the fortress.”

“So two hundred piasters. And an innocent man, in the fortress. I can’t do it.”

“But twenty years ago you would have? Even if he were in the fortress? Only if he were innocent, imprisoned for nothing?”

“I would have.”

“But now you won’t?”

“Now I won’t.”

“Then forget it.”

“Is this a joke or are you serious?”

“A joke. I wanted to see how much you’ve changed.”

“Well, I have. And if they let me go, should I look for you”?

“If they do, I’ll find you some work.”

“Thank you, I’ll remember that. But still, say something to the mufti tomorrow.”

He wanted to remain on this white path from the gate to the house, at any price. A reflection of the mufti’s importance also fell on him, an insignificant man, and it certainly appeared to him that in this job he was closer to the old battlefield hero than he would have been kneading dough in a bakery or tending a garden bed. And that hero meant more to him than anything in the world.

He met me later the same day, around evening, in my darkest hour. As I was on my way to the gate of death, he rushed out of the fog, fell from the sky in front of me, in a place where there was no reason for us to meet, not for us, not for our eyes, not for our moods. I did not know what mine was, his was beaming with joy. His wheezing sounded victorious.

“They’ll let me stay,” he said, full of enthusiasm. “I won’t have to go. That is, they’ll let me stay. They asked me what I
talked with you about, and I told them. Then they took me to Malik, and I told it again. That about the light and the battlefield, and your offer of two hundred piasters, and the rest, if I were out of work. Malik laughed, a good man, he said, that was about you, and I also said, it’s true, he’s a good man. And so, that is, you don’t need to say anything tomorrow.”

“All right.”

He did not even know how I had helped him.

We should kill our pasts with each passing day. Blot them out, so that they will not hurt. Each present day could thus be endured more easily, it would not be measured against what no longer exists. As things are, specters mix with our lives so that there is neither pure memory nor pure life. They clash and try to strangle each other, continually.

8

      
My God, I have no one besides You and my brother.
¹

AFTERWARD I WENT TO SEE HASSAN, SEVERAL TIMES, BUT HE was not at home. One of his stablehands, the older one, had also been looking for him, and found out that he was with his friends, in prison. He said that they had gone out the night before, around midnight, and beaten up some youths in the Latin mahal, badly, hardly a one of them got away unhurt. It was the youths’ fault; they had started it, and now they were getting their wounds tended with damp cloths while Hassan and his friends sat in prison. That’s how their binges always end, he said; they lock them up whether they’re guilty or not, and release them when they pay; Hassan and his friends never remember whether they’re guilty, but they usually are. And they’ll release them this time, too, only they want a lot, since the youths have been badly hurt and come from good families. Only Hassan won’t pay so much; he yells and says that he’s sorry he didn’t hit them harder, and he’ll do it when he gets out, because he’s never met such impudent bastards. The stablehand said that he would bring the money; Hassan doesn’t care about money, only about his spitefulness, but what’s spiteful about sitting in prison? Of course, they aren’t behind bars or in the dungeon, but, you know, in some room. Still, it’s sunny outside
and dark in there, and it’s even hard to spend an hour there, let alone more, if one doesn’t have to.

He’d tell Hassan that I was looking for him, and to come and see me immediately. That is, as soon as he’s bathed and changed, because he always gets his robe so filthy and full of lice that he has to take it off in the yard, so he won’t bring any of those nasty bugs into the house. And I ought to stay in the tekke, if it’s important, so we won’t go looking for each other like two idiots; but if it’s not important, then no matter, we’ll see each other soon enough. Maybe it’s better if Hassan sleeps a little, because he hasn’t had a wink of sleep since the previous morning, although he can go without sleep for three days and nights, and he can also sleep as long; you only wake him up to eat something in his slumber, and then he’ll continue, like an animal, if I’ll excuse the expression. Damn, when he was born they broke the mold.

It was not for no reason that I was trying to find him, and I did not want him to comfort or encourage me. I did not know why that idea had come back into my mind. In fact it had not been mine but Hassan’s, although I considered it my own, and wanted to talk him into doing it. I had mentioned it to Kara-Zaim, and backed out when he refused. But it seems to me that it had occurred to me earlier, when I saw the light in the mufti’s face go out, when I saw how futile everything was that I was saying and doing. We had to break Harun out, to bribe the guards so that he could escape, to send him to another country, so that he would never be seen again. This was the only way that he would ever leave the fortress dungeons: my shameful performances would not help him at all. With Hassan and Is-haq everything would be possible. With Is-haq everything would be possible. Maybe Hassan knew where he had hidden, and Is-haq would certainly have agreed to it. Unlike Kara-Zaim, Is-haq did not suffer from his memories; they could not stop him.

Thoughts of that rebel encouraged me, and I was overcome by an irresistible need to act, to do something. I felt a
healthy restlessness and excitement: everything was possible, everything was within arm’s reach, only one must not give up. It is difficult until you make up your mind; all obstacles seem impassable, all difficulties insurmountable. But once you shrug off your indecision, when you defeat your faintheartedness, then unimagined paths open up in front of you, and the world is no longer cramped and threatening. I imagined heroic feats, discovering many an opportunity for genuine courage, prepared tricks that would have deceived even the greatest caution. And I became more excited and agitated as I became more certain, in the depths of my heart and in the remote folds of my brain, that all of this was just empty dreaming. No, I did not think about it consciously; I was not dishonestly warming two opposite desires in my heart. My thoughts were undivided and sincerely tried to find the best way to free my brother. And the more sincerely and more energetically I did that, I say, the stronger the conviction became somewhere within me, like an indistinct whisper from the dark, like a certainty that is present but neither spoken nor thought about, that such an endeavor could not succeed. And I had only called Is-haq because he was unreachable. I could have hoped for him to come as much as my soul was able, and honestly, because this desire could not come true. My hidden instincts, which protected me even without my conscious will, generously granted me such beautiful, noble thoughts, without curtailing them: they knew that these thoughts were not dangerous, that they could not turn into deeds. But they helped me to take revenge for the shame that had filled me as I stood before the mufti.

If anyone considers this strange, or even unlikely, I can only say that the truth is something very strange, and we convince ourselves that it does not exist because we are ashamed of it, as we are of a leprous child, although in this manner the truth is not rendered less alive or less truthful. We usually beautify our thoughts and hide the vipers that
slither within us. If we hide them, do they not exist? I am not beautifying anything, I am not hiding anything; I am speaking as I would before God. And I want to say that I am not a bad or strange man, but an ordinary one, more ordinary than maybe I would like to be, the same as most people.

A reader with good intentions might tell me: you’re dragging things out too much; you’re philosophizing too much. I would respond immediately: I know. I’m spinning this meager thought out to a great length, shaking it like an empty jug when you cannot get another drop out of it. But I am doing that on purpose, to delay telling about what upsets me even today, several months after it all happened. However, beating around the bush will not help. I cannot avoid it, and I will not stop.

I should also mention one other thing. I found the night-watchman at home; he had been up for a long time and had already come back from the bazaar, but he met me grumpily, with a frown, as if he had just woke up. There was no trace of his earlier talkativeness and desire to keep me, no trace of his attention and kindness. He wanted to get rid of me as quickly as possible. He got angry when I asked him what he had wanted to tell me the night before:

“I said everything I had to say. Why would I hide anything?”

Was it possible that I had made such a mistake? I had thought about our conversation for a long time, and not so much about what we had said as about its meaning. He knew something about me; that was certain. I mentioned that to him, and he swore upon everything and everyone that I had misunderstood him. Night is one thing, but day is another. God knows what he might have thought while talking such nonsense, and what I might have thought listening to it. Now I had become obsessed by things that he had not even dreamed of. What does he know? And what can a man know—he wailed in a tearful voice—who roams
around all night long, tired as a dog, and who can hardly wait to get back to his poor shack and crawl under his torn blankets? He’s got four mouths to feed besides his own, in such evil times, and he’s had enough, more than enough, without having to worry about other people’s affairs. But then his anger subsided, and he said in an unexpectedly calm, even kind voice that he would like to help me more than he would anyone; something is surely gnawing at me, since otherwise I wouldn’t have come to hear him tell me what he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t even know what I want. And it seems that I don’t, either.

Had I heard something the night before that had not existed in his words, or had something happened to him?

I left without having discovered anything, and—he was indeed right—without knowing what I needed to find out.

When the afternoon prayer ended I was weary and tense, tortured by thoughts about freeing my brother, a task that had become less and less likely due to obstacles that appeared in droves. I rejected the idea even in my thoughts. I was bereft of all hope, even my false hope, and began to reconcile myself to the torture that would be repeated with the mufti the next day. I was weak, broken, and exhausted by the difficulties that I had been imagining all day long, and it seemed that I would not have been so fatigued if I had actually had to deal with them, or if I had still expected them.

Mustafa’s children came into the tekke garden. At first they played jacks on the stone tiles in front of the tekke; they also had lunch there, and then started running around, like puppies. They jumped over the roses, tore up the snowberry bushes, and broke branches off of the apple-trees; they shouted, laughed, screamed, cried; I thought that we would have to leave the tekke and the garden to them and move wherever we could. I shouted at them several times, then called Mustafa when he came out of the house and told him that the children were bothering me, that they were making too much noise.

“They’re waiting for dinner,” he said, without having heard me.

I said louder: “They’re bothering me. Tell them to get out.

“Two are mine, three are hers, from before.”

I gestured with my hand: get them out or I’ll go crazy!

He understood and left angrily, grumbling: “Now even children bother them!”

When the racket died down I surveyed the damage, hoping that it would be greater. I wanted to be angry, I would have freed myself from thoughts that had not left me for days, and sat under the grapevines, above the water, which was still shimmering with the setting sun.