UNIT 9
The Republic of Turkey Is a Parliamentary Democracy
A Nation Is Composed of Individuals Who Desire to Live Together
As I was walking up the hill to our house with Dad, I kicked at the dirt road. Dad told me twice not to âkick up a dust cloud.â He doesnât understand. AyĆeâs mom wiped all the dirt off my shoes. I donât want my friends Gökhan and Hamit to see my shiny shoes. Theyâll know I went to a concert or something. AyĆeâs mom gave me a slice of Ćokella-covered bread wrapped in a napkin with little blue flowers on it. She said I should eat it at home, since I didnât eat it at her house. Mom hugged me when I got home, real tight. With wet eyes, she said, âWhat did you eat? Did you sleep?â When I gave her the bread, she pulled off the napkin. It was a little greasy, but she folded it up and put it on the shelf. âWhereâs HĂŒseyin Abi?â I asked. Mom turned around with her back to me.
I could hear Hamit and Gökhan.
âAli! Come outside, Ali!â
I thought we were going to play ball with the other guys. But that wasnât why they wanted me. I asked them too: âWhereâs HĂŒseyin Abi?â I wanted to give him his Ibelo lighter. âHeâs bummed out,â Gökhan said, taking a drag on his cigarette. He smokes because heâs grown up now, and thatâs what revolutionary big brothers do. Gökhanâs brother gave him a pocket knife a while back, and he always carries it. âDid your silkworms make cocoons?â I asked him. âWho cares about those dumb silkworms!â he said. âWeâve got more important things to do. Now listen good.â When we got to the vacant lot, Gökhan threw his arm around my shoulder.
âWhere have you been?â
âNowhere.â
âYou stayed with those rich people, didnât you?â
âThey arenât rich. Theyâre just richer than us.â
Something happened while I was gone. Everyone seems different. Older. They walk with their elbows out and their hands jammed in their pockets. They look hard and tough, like revolutionaries. Gökhan breaks the news.
âWe decided something while you were away. Weâre going to do a protest.â
He leans close and speaks in a low voice.
âAll of us. All the guys in the neighborhood have been collecting yoghurt containers for the last couple days. You know, the plastic white ones. Itâs against the law now to sell old tires in Ankara. We canât find any tires anywhere. So we went through the garbage for yoghurt containers and we asked restaurants for them. We have plenty now.â
So much has happened while I was at AyĆeâs. Does time pass more quickly in my neighborhood than in Liberation?
âAli, are you listening?â
I canât pull my strings out of my pocket, not in front of all the other guys. Gökhan looks at them. Then he looks at me. I have to ask him. I have to.
âDoes HĂŒseyin Abi know about this?â
âNo. Weâre strong enough to do it alone. Like Mahir Ăayan!â
When I looked at Gökhan for a long time without saying anything, he got mad. Everyone gets mad when I do that.
âStop dragging it out, Ali! Are you in, or are you out?â
The other boys are all looking at me. I put my hand in my pocket and squeeze my strings. I want to close my eyes. If I close my eyes, maybe Iâll be back at the concert. And even though a part of me wishes I was there, another part is ashamed for wishing it. Hamit is trying to smoke a cigarette, but heâs so useless. I look at Gökhan and nod âyes.â He smiles and slaps me on the back.
âI knew it! I said to everyone, Ali never talks but heâs got guts. Heâs brave.â
Nobody laughed. They all grew up while I was gone, I guess. I was going to tell Gökhan about the swans. I read about them last night, and I think I understand now. But heâs changed, or I havenât changed. I know he wouldnât even listen to me now.
Gökhan pointed at the ground. When the big brothers have a meeting, they all squat on the ground. Thatâs what he wants us to do. Heâs trying to cup his cigarette in his hand. Heâs learned how to flick the ash with his middle finger. Weâre doing the protest early tomorrow morning. When the bus stops between our neighborhood and the one down the hill. Itâll be empty then.
Evening came, and still nobody told me where HĂŒseyin Abi was. Mom and Dad arenât talking, and I donât know why. After dinner, Mom divided the slice of Ćokella bread into three pieces. We ate it together. Dad asked what the âstuffâ on top was. He smiled while he ate. He asked three times.
âWhatâs this stuff called?â
Mom said it was âĂukella,â and then, âLike I told you, Ăukella!â I didnât say, âItâs called Ćokella.â Weâll never have it again anyway.
I went up on the rooftop. Thatâs when I saw him. HĂŒseyin Abi! Heâs in Gökhanâs house, sitting there with BirgĂŒl Abla, still as can be in the light of a candle. Gökhanâs uncle died in the fighting, so I guess they have an extra room for HĂŒseyin Abi. He has to live with BirgĂŒl Abla, so he canât sleep at our house anymore. HĂŒseyin Abi has his head in his hands. BirgĂŒl Abla is petting his hair. I got down from the rooftop and sneaked straight over to Gökhanâs house. If I sit real quiet under the window, they wonât hear me. But I can hear them. And I can see them if I peep real careful. When HĂŒseyin Abi talks, it sounds like something is stuck in his throat, or like he needs a glass of water.
âMy stomachâs turning, BirgĂŒl. I can still smell the blood. I feel like Iâm going to throw up.â
âDarling ⊠My love.â
âThey say that if it werenât for us revolutionaries, Ăorum would have turned into another MaraĆ. After seeing Ăorum, I canât imagine what the MaraĆ Massacre was like. Those fascists gouged out the eyes of children! I saw it.â
âVictory will be ours, HĂŒseyin. Never forget that. A reckoning will come one day, and theyâll pay. Think about that, and donât think about anything else.â
âBirgĂŒl, I canât think straight anymore. Youâre the only person I can confide in. My brainâs not working anymore. Not like it used to.â
âDonât say that! Itâs not true. Forget everything. Tomorrowâs a new day, and we have to mobilize. The fascists are escalating the violence, but the people are ready for all-out war. Pull yourself together. I mean it. My love âŠâ
HĂŒseyinâs snot is running. I canât see it, but I know itâs running. Down his throat, kind of warm, kind of sweet. Thatâs why he was talking like that. He makes a fist and punches his knee. He needs to talk and talk so he can get the snot out of his throat.
âDo you remember, BirgĂŒl? Iâve already told you about what happened to me and Guerrilla Zeki in Giresun. But I donât think I said anything about a man we met in Gökçeali village. That guy was so proud of us. Zeki Abi had just talked for an hour and a half about the exploitation of the hazelnut workers. Then that man insisted we go home with him and be his guest. When we got there, he showed us a calendar and said, âGo on, read it! Read it good!â He shouted it out, like everything he said. It was an old calendar from â68. One of the dates was circled, and written there, in pencil, was: âHĂŒseyin Cevahir, Nahit Töre, and Ziya Yılmaz came today.â The man looked at us and said, âYouâre sitting in the exact same spot as the revolutionaries who came before you.â It knocked the wind right out of me. We drank ayran with that guy and we all cried. It seems so silly now!â
HĂŒseyin Cevahir. I know who he was. He was friends with UlaĆ, and Mahir. All of them got killed. But I get it mixed up. I donât remember who died where. I shouldnât forget. I mustnât.
âI remember something else from that night. When Zeki Abi was talking about exploitation, he got the crowd to chant: âDown with the Oligarchy!â A man in the front row kept saying that slogan, over and over. But instead of saying âoligarchy,â he was saying, âDown with Aligarısı.â I guess there was some bad blood between him and another villager named Ali, and he got a kick of out of changing the words to âDown with Aliâs wife!â Anyway, the guy named Ali came up to him, mad as hell. The fists were flying! Me and Zeki Abi managed to pull them apart. Our lecture on ruling-class theories was completely upstaged, but we just about died laughing. I remember looking at the crowd and saying, âThis is what it is to be alive!â That feeling, like splashing your face in a mountain stream. Mad Hasan made me feel that way, too. Have I told you that one? No? The army was in Keçiören, searching for Mahir and the others. Mad Hasan the Woodchopper marched right up to an officer, waved the ax he always carries, and said, âLook here, major. Iâll bring this down on the middle of your skull and make two majors out of you. Leave those kids alone!â Oh, how we laughed.â
HĂŒseyin Abi isnât laughing. Heâs talking about laughing, but heâs not laughing at all. He wasnât like this before. Is it because of BirgĂŒl Abla? Girls can mess with your head.
âAnd there were those women in BĂŒyĂŒkkayalı village, in UĆak. âCominâ is how they pronounced âcommune.â They couldnât get enough of it. âTell us more about comin. We donât care about Marx and Lenin. We want to listen to comin.â We planted lots of pine trees along the village road there. The women tittered when we named it âLove Road.â One morning, as we all headed to the fields together, there was this girl on that road, early one morning, the sun not yet up, the sky all purple, and she started singing: âAnd there was UlaĆ / UlaĆ like the sun / Comrade UlaĆ giving up his life / My heart burnt to ashes âŠâ Wow! What a voice! The song ended. Complete silence. My heart was bursting in my chest. For a moment, the world was one. Then that girl said to me, âHĂŒseyin Abi, people need to feel the revolution deep in their souls, or it means nothing. You know what I mean?â Such pure goodness. I could feel it. Do you understand, BirgĂŒl? Because I sure as hell donât. How can such goodness and such evil exist under the same sky? I donât understand!â
I didnât cry. But I felt like I did that night when HĂŒseyin Abi made me a kite, and the kite was swallowed up in the darkness. I think BirgĂŒl Abla is hugging HĂŒseyin Abi. It sounds like heâs talking into a blanket.
âBirgĂŒl, Iâm going to Fatsa next. Everyone in the cityâs been rounded up. Theyâre being tortured. Our comrades are hiding out in the mountain villages. They have no other choice. We havenât been allowed to build a new life. Now we have no choice but to fight to the death.â
I could hear them breathing, the two of them. I peeked through the window. HĂŒseyin Abi kissed BirgĂŒl Abla. Right on the lips. Then on the neck. Like in the movies. After that, I didnât look anymore. Itâs shameful. But itâs nice to do what theyâre doing. If it wasnât, HĂŒseyin Abi and BirgĂŒl Abla wouldnât do it. Itâs revolutionary, so it canât be shameful.
âAli. Ali.â
Gökhan whisper-yelled my name outside the door. Dad was having bread and olives for breakfast, but not âa piece of cheese the size of a matchbox.â Bread and olives are plenty nice, thatâs what I think. I went straight outside. All the guys were there. They were carrying yoghurt containers in big black bags. Hamit said to Gökhan, âBirinciâs no good. I wish we had Bafra.â Heâs been smoking only since about yesterday but Birinciâs not good enough for him! Gökhan flicked his ash and spoke.
âHĂŒseyin Abi gave a talk when he came back from Ăorum. You missed it because you were staying with those rich people. Anyway, he said we need to attack âwith all our mightâ and âoverthrow this whole fucking order.â He even said âfuck.â We all laughed, but HĂŒseyin Abi didnât. Somethingâs happened to him. I donât know what. But we decided to cheer him up. Weâve collected 702 yoghurt containers, sonny boy!â
It was still real early. The sky was purple. Hamit threw his arm around my shoulder. Gökhan smiled. We were all carrying giant black bags, and we were so happy walking down the hill. Our feet went clop clop on the road and the jiggling bags went plop plop on our backs. It was all mixed up at first, but then our feet clopped together and the bags plopped together and we were making one sound. Nobody else was out on the road. Gökhan went out ahead of us and started walking backwards. We were laughing as we repeated it after him, quietly, so we didnât wake everyone up.
âHey, Revolutionary Youth / Battle time has neared / Take up your weapon / Against imperialism ⊠Deniz GezmiĆ, Mahir Ăayan / They died for the revolution / Revolutionaries might die but / The revolution lives on.â
At that moment, I understood what HĂŒseyin Abi was saying to BirgĂŒl Abla, about the mountain stream. We were walking together, and my heart was getting bigger and bigger. I could feel it in my chest, a huge heart. And I didnât have goosebumps, but I...