Young Turk (47 page)

‘And keep in touch.’

‘Of course, sir.’

He hung up.

I started packing while panic tore at my guts.

The first flight out was to Vienna. I would have to spend a night there, then pick up a BEA flight to London. No extra charge. Âşιk Ahmet’s contacts had rearranged things perfectly.

There had been no awkward questions at customs and immigration. Obviously, it had not occurred to the police that I might run away.

Melek had been allowed to accompany me to the departures lounge. She had approached one of the immigration officials, told them we were newly married and very sad to part even though it was only for a few days, and could we stay together until I boarded my plane. The man, looking implacably officious, just melted and waved us through. Talk about the contradictions in the Turkish character!

So we sat huddled on adjacent chairs, like mourners keeping vigil by a corpse.

Indeed, we were sitting around a corpse: our love. I knew that. Did she? I had realized, on my way to the airport, that I was about to kill the most precious thing in my life in order to save myself. I had turned – seemingly overnight – into the coward I had feared I was. The mere fear of arrest, of trials in dubious courts, of prison and torture was making me desert not only all my ideals – ideals entrusted to me by Atatürk as well as Âşιk Ahmet – but also my beloved country and my equally beloved Melek. I was exchanging my full-frontal confrontational Turkey for the veiled treachery of Europe. What a paradox! And I was doing it with deliberation, with my eyes wide open. So there was no longer any sense in lying to myself. I was not coming back – certainly not in the foreseeable future. And while many would condone my desertion, would even praise me for being wise like Hikmet and many others, I knew I wasn’t just another Turk forced into exile; I knew I was not withdrawing in order to fight another day. Nor was I disowning my country, as some bigots were bound to intimate, because, as a Jew, I was still considered by many as a non-Turk, or, at best a half-Turk. I was running away simply to save my skin. Decamping, like all cowards, at the first sign of trouble. I was failing myself – and everybody who had believed in me. And there was no way back, no chance of redemption, from such a failure.

I plucked up the courage to look at Melek. For a mad moment, I had the urge to seize her, tear off her clothes, run my body all over her body, make endless love to her.

I mustered all the integrity I had left and mumbled, ‘I won’t come back. You know that, don’t you? I won’t have the courage.’

She tried not to cry. ‘Yes.’

‘When I told you I was afraid of my fears, this is what I meant. But I never expected it would be so soon. That I’d succumb so easily. I can’t tell you how ashamed I feel, if that means anything any more ...’

She nodded.

I held her hands. I asked my burning question, though I knew what her reply would be. ‘There’s another option. If you come to England ... I can lecture ... Turkish language, literature ... My college more or less asked me to ... We’d have enough to scrape by. And we’d be together.’

She smiled. ‘It’s tempting ...’

‘But?’

‘I can’t.’

‘Why not?’

‘I’d wither there.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘I belong here, Davut. I’m not one who can be transplanted.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do. In my guts. I’ve thought about this more than you think ...’

‘Even so ... Give England a try ...’

‘No. Maybe that’s the fear I have. That I might like it there. And choose to stay. I don’t want that. There’s much to be done here.’

‘You can do it from England.’

‘You can. And I’m sure you will. I can’t.’

‘What about our love ...?’

‘It will live on.’

‘Melek – it will die.’

‘Does love ever die? Never! It just moves on to another plane ...’

‘What good is that? If we can’t feed it? If there’s no touch ...?’

‘It will find a way to feed itself.’

‘You’re only saying that to make leaving you – abandoning you – easier for me.’

A sudden anger clouded her face. ‘What else can I say?’

I faced her – as bravely as I could. ‘The truth.’

Only her tears moderated the fury in her voice. ‘Very well. Âşιk Ahmet was wrong when he said all I had to do was keep my honey sweet and you’d come back for it. You won’t – ever. No matter how sweet I keep it. Your fears will send you running all over the world. Here and there you’ll pick up honey and feel saved. But, sadly for you, they’ll be synthetic – a semblance of sweetness at best, never pure honey. Even if you have a thousand women from every continent, you’ll never find a kindred soul like me. Never find a body so welcoming. Loins made just for you. You’ll be lost for ever. A wandering prick gradually putrefying.’

I began to cry. ‘That’s too cruel.’

She wiped her tears with her sleeve. ‘You wanted the truth.’

The loudspeaker announced my flight.

The fire, barely flickering in our eyes, went out.

‘One other thing. Even crueller because it concerns your soul. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you’ll find you’ve stayed here. You’ll realize you’ve never left our soil – neither our country’s nor mine. Or if by chance you manage to transplant a limb here and there, your mind will always return. Your conscience will be more unforgiving than my body.’

Again the loudspeaker announced my flight – this time in English.

‘That’s your flight.’ She brushed my hand with hers. ‘Goodbye.’

She turned away, walked a few paces and then ran.

My dear child,

In the beginning, there is Death.

I’m trying to think which one of you told me that. Sadly, memory turns wayward with age. It was from a Türkmen storyteller, I remember that. Yet I have difficulty recollecting the features of all my boys and girls, even their names. Which is why this letter does not have an addressee and is written as much to you personally as to all of you. On the other hand, maybe this is a good thing. This way I can abstract all my students – particularly those I love (how many are there? One thousand? Two thousand? Five thousand?) – into one, conflate them, as it were, into a kaleidoscope so that rather than running hither and thither in my mind trying to find them, I give myself a shake and up you all come in wondrous shapes and colours.

So to the beginning.

Death is sitting opposite. And she – yes, female as you rightly intuited – is just the way you described her in a song. (Am I confusing you with one of my girls? Or my wife?)

Anyway, naked she is – Death. Voluptuous. Bountiful breasts. A perfect oval vagina, wide open like the Creator’s mouth – which is what it is, of course – about to annunciate Âşιk Ahmet’s new beginning.

About to – not immediately. She’s nice, Death is. She will let me write this valediction. I’ve made her tea and put a fresh packet of cigarettes on the table. She’s even stroking my feet – bliss. My soles never recovered from the
falaka
lashes in prison.

As you know, my child, I’m not a religious man. But looking at Death, so desirable, so eager to bring me to life again, I now hope that my new beginning will be an extension of my old life, but with more, much more time with my Leylâ.

(Come to think of it, there must be another Death – the male one. He who wreaks havoc and deluges the world with rivers of blood. But no matter how hard he pursues us or breaks us, she – our beautiful Death – saves us. And makes sure we live again. And love again.)

Imagine: a new time with Leylâ ... How long is it since she died? Was it only yesterday? Fifteen years? No matter. She left me her aura. So, in effect, she never died, never abandoned me.

You don’t really know about Leylâ and me, my child. Nobody does. Discretion became such a set pattern in our lives that we kept everything about our relationship secret. These days, I keep thinking maybe we were too evasive, maybe we should have told our story. Maybe, for once, life should contradict Shakespeare’s Antony and not inter a person’s goodness with her bones.

So here goes ...

I am from peasant stock. Born with the twentieth century. In Amasya. The family had some land and an apple orchard. Big family. Grandparents, uncles, aunts, the lot. Which meant we just about scraped a living.

Like most boys, I went to the
medrese
. Unlike most boys, I got to love learning. So the
hoca
recommended me to the local
a
ğ
a
. The latter, unlike most of the rich, was a charitable man and agreed to pay for my schooling. I was sent to Sιvas. I left home just as a widower uncle brought his new wife, Zeynep, all the way from Yozgat. She was hunchbacked. ‘A hard worker’, he boasted, to make it clear that he wasn’t interested in her otherwise. I hated him thereafter.

I did well at school. I had an inspirational teacher, Vartabed Uncuyan, an Armenian. He opened my heart to poetry. I loved him.

Then the First World War came. And with it, the Armenian Passion. Sιvas, with its considerable Armenian population, suffered the worst. My wonderful teacher, Vartabed Uncuyan – and his family – were among the first to be killed; and his school was smashed up.

Somehow evading troops, brigands, deserters, refugees and the killings, I made my way back home. I was as near mad as a boy of fifteen who has seen unspeakable horrors can be. Mercifully, little had changed in our backwoods. A few deaths from age or illness – including the uncle who had married Zeynep.

The family had allowed Zeynep to stay. For she truly was a phenomenal worker. Worth three men at least. And a gentle, caring person to boot. She transformed our home into a haven. And with so much love pouring out of her, she looked beautiful. Despite her deformity. Beautiful in non-specific ways just as a day remains beautiful no matter how hard man tries to despoil it.

I witnessed this beauty in all its aspects. I looked into her soul. Something about me, perhaps the fact that I still mourned my Armenian teacher, made her regard me as a kindred spirit. So she kept an eye on me. Helped me in the orchards, saved me extra portions of food, filched cigarettes from the men. Always very discreetly, needless to say. After all, she was still a young woman – barely thirty years old – and I was fast moving to a marriageable age and you know how we all think that if a man and a woman are within arm’s reach they are bound to throw themselves at each other.

As it happened, we did throw ourselves at each other. But not in the usual way.

One morning, when I was at the well drawing water for the animals, I saw her at her window. She had just risen and was washing herself. She was stark naked. I watched her and was rooted to the spot, as if she were a
houri
visiting earth. She saw me but did not cover up or withdraw.

Thereafter, every morning – except when she had her monthly flow – we trysted like that. I at the well; she at her window. I think she took pleasure in showing herself to me because I was the only person in the world who looked at her not as a hunchback or a hard worker but as a beautiful woman.

This went on for months. By then I was deeply in love with her and was thinking that in a year or so, when it would be my turn to seek a wife, I would marry her.

Then calamity struck ...

Death has finished her tea. And she has stopped stroking my feet. Here I am talking about Leylâ – I haven’t even got to her yet – when I should have been rattling away like Polonius, giving you some home truths ...

What if I offered Death another cup? Do you think she might ...? Yes, she says, she’d like one. And she’d like another cigarette, too ... Good, I’ve got a bit more time.

All right.
Home truth one
: Turkishness. The real meaning. It’s galaxies apart from the so-called Turkification that the so-called Kemalists are advocating. (Atatürk must rage in his grave every time he hears his name so misused and debased.) Let me tell you what Kemalism really means. It means building a nation on solid foundations like social justice, freedom of worship and equality for all, not least for women. It means the provision of health, education, wealth and happiness for
all
our citizens, whatever their race or creed! It does not mean separatism or elitism! It does not mean robbing Jews, Armenians and Greeks with outrageous taxes as we did in 1943! It does not mean persecuting Kurds, Lazes and our other minorities because they have different cultures and different languages! It does not mean embracing demented notions like this new pan-Turkism craze that seeks to ingather the Central Asian Turkic peoples and create an ethnically pure, ultra-nationalist, ultra-Islamist empire! True Turkishness means rejoicing in the infinite plurality of people as we rejoice in the infinite multiplicity of nature! It means rejecting all the ‘isms’ and ‘nesses’ – including Turkishness. It means renouncing single cultures, single flags, single countries, single gods and embracing – and preserving – every culture, every race, every faith, every flag, every country, every god for its difference and uniqueness. It means being both a Turk and a citizen of the world, both an individual and everybody!