Excerpt from The God of Small Deaths
(Küçük Ölümlerin Tanrısı)
by Cihan Yurdaün
translated by Hardy Griffin
Doğan’s lifeless body bumped into one of Istanbul’s many small docks. He had no ID on him. There were bruises and nibbles from bream, mackerel, and bluefish; in the water’s rage, the body had quickly begun to rot, and plastic bags and seaweed were wrapped around it. Fishermen, believing at first they had landed enough food to feed the extended family, reeled in a nameless son.
His face and his name were no longer his own. The water had separated these from him. To save the body from further suffering after its exposure to the cold misery of the sea, it was immediately buried in the graveyard of the anonymous.
The graveyard of the anonymous was in a state befitting its name. It waited patiently in an obscure corner of Istanbul, paying no heed to those who walked upon it, stretching out like an ownerless, wounded animal. To allow more human bones – more nameless, anonymous people to be buried by gravediggers who struggled to catch up with the increasing numbers – the planting of gravestones had been forbidden. The scattered sticks used in place of stones reflected the chaotic spiritual nature of the uncanny, barren plain.
It was a typical Istanbul morning, with the clouds complaining to god to wake the sun. Then, as a cold wind from the north hit this barren earth from time to time, the impossible was born. At first, he could see nothing, he could not even breathe. His body was wrapped in its burial sheet in the flesh of the earth, in the bosom of darkness. Unable to comprehend where he was or what had happened, Doğan struggled upwards as if he were underwater moving towards the surface, until he felt he had pushed above ground. The sounds of chains, pulleys, and prayers rang in his ears.
Escaping the earth, emerging from his own grave, he took his first breath in the ice-cold slap of the wind. His lungs burned. Tears leached out of his eyes. He struggled to loosen the shroud that was tight as a straightjacket, and, ripping it off like a mature bug coming out of its cocoon, tossed it aside. He was chilled. His mind was a blur. He tried to remember what had happened. The last image that came to his mind was of looking directly at the Sarayburnu peninsula from within the cool sea. His eyelids and his body had become heavy as if he had been submerged in a deep sleep.
Now the earth had vomited him up completely naked. How was this possible? His heart started to beat violently, like a wild animal caged against its will in his chest.
When he tried to remember the moment of his death, a deep, consuming and heartbreaking sadness enveloped him. It seemed this irresistible power rose up from inside him and broke over all of Istanbul. It coated his eyes with pain. In that moment, he heard hundreds of people crying, or drowning in their own anger and broken dreams and hatred. Their voices rose on all sides, their faces betrayed their desperation. If he could have stayed a moment longer, he might have heard them speak and understood clearly what they were saying.
Opening his eyes once more, he was in the same spot. He checked his body – everything seemed to be where it should be and working. Wrapping himself in the ripped pieces of his shroud, he began walking. He must see the city, see what had happened to him and what he had become.
Before trees or gravestones, or cats, wild grass, flowers, caretakers, or quite possibly before the dead themselves graced any Muslim graveyard in Istanbul, it must have a mosque. In this enchanted city, there isn’t a Muslim cemetery that doesn’t have one. He walked toward the mosque that the distant minaret pointed to.
When Doğan stepped inside, the imam was leading the Morning Prayer for two old men. What could Doğan say to them? He stood still and waited, as if he himself were another verse to be deciphered. The congregation of two saw the boy before the imam. The two old men blanched on seeing him in the dirty burial shroud. At this dawn hour, who but Azrael would enter the mosque in the guise of a young man in a burial shroud? One of the men kneeled – fell to his knees, in fact. The other’s legs trembled and he nearly threw himself at the boy’s feet and begged for a few more years. They began to pray.
The imam understood what had happened, and he took this flesh-and-blood ghost by the arm, leading him into his adjoining chambers. “What a state you’re in, what happened to you?” he asked. Seeing this, the old men breathed deeply and returned to their senses, experiencing a mixture of relief and satisfaction. Either this child was not the Grimm Reaper but just a boy in a bad way, or perhaps imams were friendly even with Azrael. The fear of death was re-instilled in the two men, who would treat the imam with the proper respect and donate to the mosque generously on the next religious holiday.
“I committed suicide, and then rose up out of the grave” – he wasn’t so naïve as to say that to the imam. Is that what had happened? Was he sure? No, instead he followed a logical progression that was much more advantageous in getting on his way: I left my house, I saw a couple of guys, they beat me, I blacked out, they took everything I had, then I opened my eyes here. As he put on some used clothes that had been donated for the needy, Doğan easily dissuaded the imam from his initial insistence on going to the police, and once he had ashamedly accepted enough money for the trip home, he was on his way. Certainly he felt wretched having to lie to the imam and give him a fake phone number.
Doğan had to go to Berk’s door for the spare key. The sea had not taken his life but it had made off with his keys. Maybe he really hadn’t died, and they had mistakenly buried him thinking he was dead. So how had his body stayed in the water for so many days? Shouldn’t it have rotted? He checked his body again. It was sound. Maybe he was immortal! No, no my dear, had such a ridiculous thing ever been possible?
On meeting him outside the door, Berk was astonished.
“I thought you’d gone, Doğan. You missed the funeral…”
“I didn’t miss it, I went and now I’ve come back… I lost my keys.”
“You didn’t miss it? What do you mean?”
“I was at the graveyard.”
“Incredible… How did I not see you?”
This time, Doğan entered his house alone. Berk wanted to say some things but couldn't. Doğan's sharp glance stopped Berk before he could utter a single word. Doğan wanted to be alone and he wanted to ruminate. He sat on his grandfather's couch, the fabric of which had not originally been dark brown but had become so from dirt. He closed his eyes.
The following days did not pass easily. He had to get used to living his new life, in a new house. There were many things he had to take care of. Inheritance, sleep, food, and house chores – all the worldly affairs tended to slip his mind. It was such a burden to think of corporeal trivialities without first knowing who or what he was.
Despite the slowly turning gears of the state bureaucracy, in a relatively short period of time, Doğan had transferred the deed of his grandfather’s house into his name. At least the money left from his grandfather’s estate would tide him over for a bit before he would have to find a job.
Meanwhile, Berk had started finding a reason to come over almost every day. As the days went on, Doğan acclimated to the presence of this good-hearted man. Doğan came to throw off his wildness. Berk was a smart, knowledgeable man and it was a pleasure to speak with him, for he spoke steadily and calmly as opposed to Doğan’s jumbled, over-laden spurts of conversation. He reminded Doğan of the sycamore at the orphanage.
*
Would a person ever resemble a tree and a tree a person?
* When Doğan first brought up the subject of death, Berk frowned. He stayed quiet for some time. He paced around the living room, then he began giving advice almost as if he were giving a lecture in a classroom. He spoke of philosophy, and recommended a number of books. But reading would require sitting still, whereas Doğan could never cease moving. He felt suffocated, as if his chest were being crushed, as if some darkness were descending; his hands began to shake and he rushed into the street to wander around.
When he fell into thinking about the instant of his own death, the feeling he had experienced in the graveyard violently returned and threatened to drown him. In these moments, Istanbul turned to a living hell in his heart – Doğan felt the painful struggle of the city’s entire population. When he ran to the terrace to look at the city, he couldn’t see anything. Where were they? He rushed into the street and began searching for something. As he wandered, he looked in people’s faces, looking for the pain he felt, but he couldn’t find it. When he looked in the mirror, deeply, beyond the skin, no secrets came to light, only the cold gaze of the eyes, and the frozen expression on his face.
Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night and remember the diary. The instant he took it in his hands, he would lose himself in the dark brilliance of his mother’s words. Was he himself the cause of this much pain and suffering? How would he find a solution to his existence, from whom would he get help?
Doğan pulled himself together during Berk’s visits, asking questions to try and solve the puzzle, and thereby feeling slightly more human. Berk insisted, but Doğan didn’t care about university; he was looking forward to talking with Berk, especially about death. Whenever the subject came up, however, Berk became irritated and tried to shy away from it. But it felt like whatever Berk was trying to avoid found him again with Doğan’s return. He became aware of the darkness in the boy, which worried him, and he wanted to do something about it.
In the evenings, they would chat. Berk told him what he knew as if he were Doğan’s private tutor. One evening they were at home and Doğan’s movements were restless, he changed places a few times and played with the things around him. He had not completely gotten used to the house. If he dug around a bit more, he felt as if he would make new discoveries about his mother and grandfather. As it was, who knew how many times he had turned the house upside down.
Shortly, he brought the subject around to death again. He was not sure how to address Berk. He threw the words into the room thinking they would find their place themselves.
“I have another question about death.”
“Well then, I guess there is no escaping it, ask away.”
“Is it possible there are people who never die?”
Berk frowned, not because he was upset but because that’s what he would do when he was thinking.
“Someone who never dies? How do you mean?”
“A normal person, like you and me, he just does not die... is it possible?”
“A normal person? That doesn’t sound normal to me, I don’t quite get it, doesn’t he get hurt, is that why he never dies?”
“Not exactly like that. He dies but he comes back to life in his own body…”
“You mean he’s immortal?”
“Something like that… have you ever heard of it? Is it possible?”
“There are legends, stories, and epics of course. But not exactly the way you describe it. For example there is something called reincarnation… Being reborn after death as someone else, something else… Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Something like that. The real issue is coming back to life, not being someone else.”
“There are those who come back from the dead. There is Lazarus, for example, who rose from the dead. He is a religious character who is very important for Christianity because Jesus revives him. Of course, there is Jesus himself who is believed to have risen from the dead. But I think you are curious about immortality….”
“Well I guess so… Who can be immortal? I am curious about that.”
“There are many stories like that. For instance Hızır is mentioned both in Islam and Judaism. He is immortal – he is said to have lived for centuries and been a guide to people, even prophets, in his time.”
He paused for a moment.
“Of course there are also the gods of mythology who are immortal. They are similar to human beings but they also have the powers of gods. In fact the Greek and Roman gods, Zeus, Apollo, Hades, Athena, are similar to humans in many respects. The focus of their divinity lies in specific areas, such as war, fertility, the underworld, or the seas. At the same time, they have their own ambitions, wishes, and desires, like humans. They disguise themselves and come down to the world, to wander among the people, act as they wish, and communicate with people – guiding them or mostly tricking them. In fact, they were believed to live on top of Mount Olympus, which is thought to be in our country. It is just mythology…”
“How do you know all this?”
“It is out of necessity Doğan – when you teach literature and write a book, you have to know this kind of stuff.”
After a short silence, Doğan finally spoke what he had had on his mind for a while:
“But in reality, nobody is immortal, are they? Nobody can come back to life in their dead body? There are no gods like the ones in your stories, are there?”
Berk smiled in an affectionate but also concerned way at these childish questions. These types of questions reminded him of the period in his past when some things seemed distinctively black or white. He thought he had done a good job of assessing the real source of Doğan’s curiosity about immortality and coming back to life – he had connected it to his grandfather’s death, his mother’s absence, and his supposedly rough childhood.
“My dear Doğan, there would be no life if there were no death, never forget that! Well how can I put it into words, death defines life and makes each moment precious. It terrifies us to have a little control over it but the most important thing here is to live our lives as best as we can, completely, realizing ourselves. This is the only thing that gives us power over death, that adds meaning, gives us strength to be able to drop some things. Or else, as I said, death is in human nature, and defines us as humans. It’s normal. As a matter of fact if a person doesn’t die he’s the one who is abnormal.”
His face started to glow and, smiling, he carried on.
“If someone is immortal, he is either not a human or he is a made-up character like in stories or legends, a vampire, a demon or – how should I know? – maybe he has a deal with the Grim Reaper or is a deformed god.
There was silence. Berk didn’t want to go overboard.
“You shouldn’t take any of this too seriously. Don’t be scared of death, just accept it as it is and live. You have a very long life in front of you.”
To see the effect of one’s words on those across from you… It was one of the best parts of teaching. He thought Doğan should sleep on the things he had said to digest them – to make the walls of his brain flexible. He went back down to his apartment feeling the joy of having helped and guided a young person.
Doğan found himself in a completely different frame of mind. He went to his mother’s room, sat on the bed, and grabbed her diary. Yes, now he was sure, this room had originally been his mother’s. One part had come to mind. The diary was now his holy book. One metallic question ringing in the ear: Who are you then? Who are you? What are you? It is death that makes humans human, and life precious. The undead is not human.
If he was not human what was he? He went through the closets again like a lunatic. He found one of his mother’s old dresses. It was a purple, with an open back, similarly low cut in the front, with straps and narrow slits – a short, simple dress. Although a strong boy, he was slim, and had no trouble putting it on. He looked at himself in the mirror a long time. With his pale skin and dark eyes, he was beautiful. Did he look like his mother? He had never seen a photo of her. He even found her old make-up, but he couldn’t find a photo. In fact, she had written in her journal that she had not liked any of them and had torn them up.
He tried to make himself up with the powders, rouges, and eyeliner he found. When he’d finished, he had become the clown ready to jump down the tunnel of fear. Not knowing how much he could put up with this image of himself, he turned off the lights and went to the couch in the living room that looked onto the terrace. His heart beat thunderously and blood attacked every inch of his body, especially there. The front of the dress tented. His eyes were closed. He tried to think of himself as a woman. He imagined his mother in the same spot: Hating as she wrote in her diary…
Doğan went on the terrace. He hadn’t noticed it was this broad. The air was cool. The terrace railing came only to his waist. He stepped onto the other side of the railing, and leaned against it. Istanbul sparkled but the street he looked at lay in darkness… He heard classical music – Berk must be listening to it. How wonderful, what an extraordinary night to be human… He closed his eyes and opened his arms, letting himself fall into the void. No one heard a boy embrace death again – maybe it was a large trash bag, a needless weight… The city was busy with its own garbage.
His face and his name were no longer his own. The water had separated these from him. To save the body from further suffering after its exposure to the cold misery of the sea, it was immediately buried in the graveyard of the anonymous.
The graveyard of the anonymous was in a state befitting its name. It waited patiently in an obscure corner of Istanbul, paying no heed to those who walked upon it, stretching out like an ownerless, wounded animal. To allow more human bones – more nameless, anonymous people to be buried by gravediggers who struggled to catch up with the increasing numbers – the planting of gravestones had been forbidden. The scattered sticks used in place of stones reflected the chaotic spiritual nature of the uncanny, barren plain.
It was a typical Istanbul morning, with the clouds complaining to god to wake the sun. Then, as a cold wind from the north hit this barren earth from time to time, the impossible was born. At first, he could see nothing, he could not even breathe. His body was wrapped in its burial sheet in the flesh of the earth, in the bosom of darkness. Unable to comprehend where he was or what had happened, Doğan struggled upwards as if he were underwater moving towards the surface, until he felt he had pushed above ground. The sounds of chains, pulleys, and prayers rang in his ears.
Escaping the earth, emerging from his own grave, he took his first breath in the ice-cold slap of the wind. His lungs burned. Tears leached out of his eyes. He struggled to loosen the shroud that was tight as a straightjacket, and, ripping it off like a mature bug coming out of its cocoon, tossed it aside. He was chilled. His mind was a blur. He tried to remember what had happened. The last image that came to his mind was of looking directly at the Sarayburnu peninsula from within the cool sea. His eyelids and his body had become heavy as if he had been submerged in a deep sleep.
Now the earth had vomited him up completely naked. How was this possible? His heart started to beat violently, like a wild animal caged against its will in his chest.
When he tried to remember the moment of his death, a deep, consuming and heartbreaking sadness enveloped him. It seemed this irresistible power rose up from inside him and broke over all of Istanbul. It coated his eyes with pain. In that moment, he heard hundreds of people crying, or drowning in their own anger and broken dreams and hatred. Their voices rose on all sides, their faces betrayed their desperation. If he could have stayed a moment longer, he might have heard them speak and understood clearly what they were saying.
Opening his eyes once more, he was in the same spot. He checked his body – everything seemed to be where it should be and working. Wrapping himself in the ripped pieces of his shroud, he began walking. He must see the city, see what had happened to him and what he had become.
Before trees or gravestones, or cats, wild grass, flowers, caretakers, or quite possibly before the dead themselves graced any Muslim graveyard in Istanbul, it must have a mosque. In this enchanted city, there isn’t a Muslim cemetery that doesn’t have one. He walked toward the mosque that the distant minaret pointed to.
When Doğan stepped inside, the imam was leading the Morning Prayer for two old men. What could Doğan say to them? He stood still and waited, as if he himself were another verse to be deciphered. The congregation of two saw the boy before the imam. The two old men blanched on seeing him in the dirty burial shroud. At this dawn hour, who but Azrael would enter the mosque in the guise of a young man in a burial shroud? One of the men kneeled – fell to his knees, in fact. The other’s legs trembled and he nearly threw himself at the boy’s feet and begged for a few more years. They began to pray.
The imam understood what had happened, and he took this flesh-and-blood ghost by the arm, leading him into his adjoining chambers. “What a state you’re in, what happened to you?” he asked. Seeing this, the old men breathed deeply and returned to their senses, experiencing a mixture of relief and satisfaction. Either this child was not the Grimm Reaper but just a boy in a bad way, or perhaps imams were friendly even with Azrael. The fear of death was re-instilled in the two men, who would treat the imam with the proper respect and donate to the mosque generously on the next religious holiday.
“I committed suicide, and then rose up out of the grave” – he wasn’t so naïve as to say that to the imam. Is that what had happened? Was he sure? No, instead he followed a logical progression that was much more advantageous in getting on his way: I left my house, I saw a couple of guys, they beat me, I blacked out, they took everything I had, then I opened my eyes here. As he put on some used clothes that had been donated for the needy, Doğan easily dissuaded the imam from his initial insistence on going to the police, and once he had ashamedly accepted enough money for the trip home, he was on his way. Certainly he felt wretched having to lie to the imam and give him a fake phone number.
Doğan had to go to Berk’s door for the spare key. The sea had not taken his life but it had made off with his keys. Maybe he really hadn’t died, and they had mistakenly buried him thinking he was dead. So how had his body stayed in the water for so many days? Shouldn’t it have rotted? He checked his body again. It was sound. Maybe he was immortal! No, no my dear, had such a ridiculous thing ever been possible?
On meeting him outside the door, Berk was astonished.
“I thought you’d gone, Doğan. You missed the funeral…”
“I didn’t miss it, I went and now I’ve come back… I lost my keys.”
“You didn’t miss it? What do you mean?”
“I was at the graveyard.”
“Incredible… How did I not see you?”
This time, Doğan entered his house alone. Berk wanted to say some things but couldn't. Doğan's sharp glance stopped Berk before he could utter a single word. Doğan wanted to be alone and he wanted to ruminate. He sat on his grandfather's couch, the fabric of which had not originally been dark brown but had become so from dirt. He closed his eyes.
The following days did not pass easily. He had to get used to living his new life, in a new house. There were many things he had to take care of. Inheritance, sleep, food, and house chores – all the worldly affairs tended to slip his mind. It was such a burden to think of corporeal trivialities without first knowing who or what he was.
Despite the slowly turning gears of the state bureaucracy, in a relatively short period of time, Doğan had transferred the deed of his grandfather’s house into his name. At least the money left from his grandfather’s estate would tide him over for a bit before he would have to find a job.
Meanwhile, Berk had started finding a reason to come over almost every day. As the days went on, Doğan acclimated to the presence of this good-hearted man. Doğan came to throw off his wildness. Berk was a smart, knowledgeable man and it was a pleasure to speak with him, for he spoke steadily and calmly as opposed to Doğan’s jumbled, over-laden spurts of conversation. He reminded Doğan of the sycamore at the orphanage.
*
Would a person ever resemble a tree and a tree a person?
* When Doğan first brought up the subject of death, Berk frowned. He stayed quiet for some time. He paced around the living room, then he began giving advice almost as if he were giving a lecture in a classroom. He spoke of philosophy, and recommended a number of books. But reading would require sitting still, whereas Doğan could never cease moving. He felt suffocated, as if his chest were being crushed, as if some darkness were descending; his hands began to shake and he rushed into the street to wander around.
When he fell into thinking about the instant of his own death, the feeling he had experienced in the graveyard violently returned and threatened to drown him. In these moments, Istanbul turned to a living hell in his heart – Doğan felt the painful struggle of the city’s entire population. When he ran to the terrace to look at the city, he couldn’t see anything. Where were they? He rushed into the street and began searching for something. As he wandered, he looked in people’s faces, looking for the pain he felt, but he couldn’t find it. When he looked in the mirror, deeply, beyond the skin, no secrets came to light, only the cold gaze of the eyes, and the frozen expression on his face.
Sometimes he would wake up in the middle of the night and remember the diary. The instant he took it in his hands, he would lose himself in the dark brilliance of his mother’s words. Was he himself the cause of this much pain and suffering? How would he find a solution to his existence, from whom would he get help?
Doğan pulled himself together during Berk’s visits, asking questions to try and solve the puzzle, and thereby feeling slightly more human. Berk insisted, but Doğan didn’t care about university; he was looking forward to talking with Berk, especially about death. Whenever the subject came up, however, Berk became irritated and tried to shy away from it. But it felt like whatever Berk was trying to avoid found him again with Doğan’s return. He became aware of the darkness in the boy, which worried him, and he wanted to do something about it.
In the evenings, they would chat. Berk told him what he knew as if he were Doğan’s private tutor. One evening they were at home and Doğan’s movements were restless, he changed places a few times and played with the things around him. He had not completely gotten used to the house. If he dug around a bit more, he felt as if he would make new discoveries about his mother and grandfather. As it was, who knew how many times he had turned the house upside down.
Shortly, he brought the subject around to death again. He was not sure how to address Berk. He threw the words into the room thinking they would find their place themselves.
“I have another question about death.”
“Well then, I guess there is no escaping it, ask away.”
“Is it possible there are people who never die?”
Berk frowned, not because he was upset but because that’s what he would do when he was thinking.
“Someone who never dies? How do you mean?”
“A normal person, like you and me, he just does not die... is it possible?”
“A normal person? That doesn’t sound normal to me, I don’t quite get it, doesn’t he get hurt, is that why he never dies?”
“Not exactly like that. He dies but he comes back to life in his own body…”
“You mean he’s immortal?”
“Something like that… have you ever heard of it? Is it possible?”
“There are legends, stories, and epics of course. But not exactly the way you describe it. For example there is something called reincarnation… Being reborn after death as someone else, something else… Is that what you’re talking about?”
“Something like that. The real issue is coming back to life, not being someone else.”
“There are those who come back from the dead. There is Lazarus, for example, who rose from the dead. He is a religious character who is very important for Christianity because Jesus revives him. Of course, there is Jesus himself who is believed to have risen from the dead. But I think you are curious about immortality….”
“Well I guess so… Who can be immortal? I am curious about that.”
“There are many stories like that. For instance Hızır is mentioned both in Islam and Judaism. He is immortal – he is said to have lived for centuries and been a guide to people, even prophets, in his time.”
He paused for a moment.
“Of course there are also the gods of mythology who are immortal. They are similar to human beings but they also have the powers of gods. In fact the Greek and Roman gods, Zeus, Apollo, Hades, Athena, are similar to humans in many respects. The focus of their divinity lies in specific areas, such as war, fertility, the underworld, or the seas. At the same time, they have their own ambitions, wishes, and desires, like humans. They disguise themselves and come down to the world, to wander among the people, act as they wish, and communicate with people – guiding them or mostly tricking them. In fact, they were believed to live on top of Mount Olympus, which is thought to be in our country. It is just mythology…”
“How do you know all this?”
“It is out of necessity Doğan – when you teach literature and write a book, you have to know this kind of stuff.”
After a short silence, Doğan finally spoke what he had had on his mind for a while:
“But in reality, nobody is immortal, are they? Nobody can come back to life in their dead body? There are no gods like the ones in your stories, are there?”
Berk smiled in an affectionate but also concerned way at these childish questions. These types of questions reminded him of the period in his past when some things seemed distinctively black or white. He thought he had done a good job of assessing the real source of Doğan’s curiosity about immortality and coming back to life – he had connected it to his grandfather’s death, his mother’s absence, and his supposedly rough childhood.
“My dear Doğan, there would be no life if there were no death, never forget that! Well how can I put it into words, death defines life and makes each moment precious. It terrifies us to have a little control over it but the most important thing here is to live our lives as best as we can, completely, realizing ourselves. This is the only thing that gives us power over death, that adds meaning, gives us strength to be able to drop some things. Or else, as I said, death is in human nature, and defines us as humans. It’s normal. As a matter of fact if a person doesn’t die he’s the one who is abnormal.”
His face started to glow and, smiling, he carried on.
“If someone is immortal, he is either not a human or he is a made-up character like in stories or legends, a vampire, a demon or – how should I know? – maybe he has a deal with the Grim Reaper or is a deformed god.
There was silence. Berk didn’t want to go overboard.
“You shouldn’t take any of this too seriously. Don’t be scared of death, just accept it as it is and live. You have a very long life in front of you.”
To see the effect of one’s words on those across from you… It was one of the best parts of teaching. He thought Doğan should sleep on the things he had said to digest them – to make the walls of his brain flexible. He went back down to his apartment feeling the joy of having helped and guided a young person.
Doğan found himself in a completely different frame of mind. He went to his mother’s room, sat on the bed, and grabbed her diary. Yes, now he was sure, this room had originally been his mother’s. One part had come to mind. The diary was now his holy book. One metallic question ringing in the ear: Who are you then? Who are you? What are you? It is death that makes humans human, and life precious. The undead is not human.
If he was not human what was he? He went through the closets again like a lunatic. He found one of his mother’s old dresses. It was a purple, with an open back, similarly low cut in the front, with straps and narrow slits – a short, simple dress. Although a strong boy, he was slim, and had no trouble putting it on. He looked at himself in the mirror a long time. With his pale skin and dark eyes, he was beautiful. Did he look like his mother? He had never seen a photo of her. He even found her old make-up, but he couldn’t find a photo. In fact, she had written in her journal that she had not liked any of them and had torn them up.
He tried to make himself up with the powders, rouges, and eyeliner he found. When he’d finished, he had become the clown ready to jump down the tunnel of fear. Not knowing how much he could put up with this image of himself, he turned off the lights and went to the couch in the living room that looked onto the terrace. His heart beat thunderously and blood attacked every inch of his body, especially there. The front of the dress tented. His eyes were closed. He tried to think of himself as a woman. He imagined his mother in the same spot: Hating as she wrote in her diary…
Doğan went on the terrace. He hadn’t noticed it was this broad. The air was cool. The terrace railing came only to his waist. He stepped onto the other side of the railing, and leaned against it. Istanbul sparkled but the street he looked at lay in darkness… He heard classical music – Berk must be listening to it. How wonderful, what an extraordinary night to be human… He closed his eyes and opened his arms, letting himself fall into the void. No one heard a boy embrace death again – maybe it was a large trash bag, a needless weight… The city was busy with its own garbage.