Birgül Oğuz

HAH

Translated from the Turkish by

Kenneth Dakan, Alexander Dawe, Mark Wyers,

Alev Ersan, Arzu Akbatur, Abigail Bowman,

Feyza Howell, Amy Spangler, and Kate Ferguson

World Editions

breda 2016

Published in Great Britain in 2016 by World Editions Ltd., London

www.worldeditions.org

Copyright © Birgül Oğuz & Metis Yayınları, 2012

Published by arrangement via AnatoliaLit Agency

English translation copyright © Kenneth Dakan, Alexander Dawe, Mark Wyers, Alev Ersan, Arzu Akbatur, Abigail Bowman, Feyza Howell, Amy Spangler and Kate Ferguson

Cover design Multitude

Image credit © Mark Adams/Millennium Images/HH

The moral rights of the author and translators have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

First published as HAH in Turkey in 2012 by Metis Yayınları

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

isbn 978-94-6238-075-2

This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.

This translation has been published with the support of TEDA—Translation and Publication Grant Programme of Turkey

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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RETURN

MY MOTHER DIDN’T GIVE BIRTH TO ME. On a whim she left me there under an acacia. And it came to be that I found myself at the foot of Acacia. It rustled and I held on, rustled and I held on. When I was still no larger than a bean I became the dark shadow of that looming tree.

Thank God my mother set me free too soon. I am cool and I am all alone. I am the image and the shadow and the oasis to the spirit of Acacia, dripping from its heavy boughs. Sentience is anguish to the soul and I never tasted of it. I am solitude. I am that which is distant to the world.

Eternal blessings be upon my ungracious and unmerciful mother. And them? Hah! They lie in ruins. They say the world is light and mortal flesh is heavy. They say that since the dawn of time our flesh is stuffed with dirt. One by one they come, speaking with a single voice: World, oh world, an ill-begotten sin! Thrusting out their chests and throwing back their heads, they tumble to their knees, opening and closing their mouths like dried-up wells. No words only lumps in their throats. No words only hissing: Let the world burn down to the ground, we’ll have nothing more of this! And then the words go dim. Their hands and feet twitching like wounded animals, their torn tufts of hair, their popped buttons and their bodies turned to stone—all goes silent. A stuffed silence, a hushed silence. Before long another mourner comes and another and with each new mourner there is another burst of fire. They all rise together and fall together. Pressing their heads upon the floor, they wail until their words grow dim: Why died I not from the womb? Why did I not give up the ghost when I came out of the belly? This world shall have its claim! Shall have its claim!

But suddenly they are dusting off their clothes and shrugging their shoulders. They say, what else can we do? Here we are after all. Might as well stay, what else can we do? It is written in the stars. Etched in stone. Life goes on. You cannot bury yourself with the dead. God knows we vainly tried. God grant us long life. We shall endure. He is now in a better place. Peace on earth. Take us one by one. Thou art in heaven. Prayers and funeral halvah. He was taken too soon. You see God loved him dearly. He works in mysterious ways. Nothing that we could do. Shrouds have no pockets. Plenty of prayers and halvah. Our days are numbered, pine nuts and semolina on a low flame, a better place, inherit the earth, patience, halvah, ah, time.

Wherefore is light given to him that is in misery, and life unto the bitter in soul? Even if I had a mind I would not understand: Why did these people not breathe their last as they left the womb? Would they not now be sleeping and at peace?

I do not have the eyes to look them in the eye and make them go away. I tell myself that they will just go. They know something. Something brings them together. All these different prayers, these ah and vah, fluttering on all the lips. All the hands cupped in prayer in the air are holding invisible bowls filled to the brim with sorrow. And again these ah and vah. Why in the world these ah and vah in this endless wasteland, nothing but a godforsaken cactus land?

They do not know that the shadow of a tree is a fallen thought. A single breath will scatter it. And then Acacia shakes, sways twice, rustles thrice, its leaves rustling like when my mother left me on a whim.

If I had the words to speak I would cry: Go away! See this ever-tightening ring. Lips are still moving and the wind is growing more violent. What a suffocating ring. Patience, halvah, ah, time, and on and on. Filling in the solitude, a foot-stamped solitude.

And the way they stared up at the sky. What a strange reckoning in their eyes. Oh those eyes, sapping my strength. See here! In this solitude, there are no eyes. But what’s that up in the sky? For the love of a thousand djinns and ravens and grey foxes. What is that up in the sky? Is God a chariot slowly being lowered on strings?

What do you want? Out of the way! Thanks but no thanks. Play your part and then get out. Get out! Speak, Acacia. Hey! Say something: thank them and drive them out! Speak!

*

God come out wherever you are. Anyone who hears Gül even once will never be whole again. Something strange splatters over us. From her. Nasty, vile, unbearable.

But Gül is oblivious. She turns her back on the fresh grave. She brings this house of mourning down upon us. Hiding under the covers, she hisses at our souls. She leaves her body behind, like a dark house, and she is gone. In this new place, she peers into her soul sharpened with anger. Solitude for Gül! Solitude! An image, a shadow, an oasis to solitude.

What else does she wish for? Gone is her respect and deference to these customs. Spilling venomous tears, splattering tears. She says that we lie in ruins. We never should have been. We are an ancient mistake. Why is Gül like this? Was she born into a house of mourning? But really, what does she know?

If we didn’t say it the days would. And if they do not have the power to say it then unravelling space would stand up to her. Gül! Come here! Come back! How can you die before you are dead? Can consciousness be buried alive?

Luckily her lips falter and not her heart. For once a heart is a heart it begins to pound, with all the hearts of the world. The ancient law, the ancient loom and the ancient cause: it does not think, it pounds. Or else it would not be a heart.

Truth is, the human soul has been stuffed with dirt since the dawn of time. But is knowing only of the mind? Those who think with the heart know that it is beautiful to behold the eyelids of the dawn.

Isn’t it, Gül? Say it. Isn’t it?

And so she will rise to her feet. And she will grieve with us in the house of mourning.

She will rise to her feet. She will shoulder her grief. Or else she is not Gül.

*

Never-Ever-Again

Acacia and I are labouring in dreams, shimmering in the darkness, nothing more than joyous oblivion, the only two truly free in this world.

‘Gül! Come here! Come back!’

Never again! Don’t make me speak of the sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain, the prayers splattering against the walls like jelly, the sharp scent of lemony cologne, men, women, and children like dark veils scattered across the room, roasted halvah, ash and smoke, day and night a house quietly crying, and the way I fell from that balcony alone, and that fig-lined road I plodded and that long meadow.

Gül! Come! Gül!

Don’t make me speak of how I pulled out the pin of time too soon, stopping Mother from giving birth and death to me, and how I sacrificed my final word, or how I was irreverent, beyond the law, liberated, mute, unborn; do not make me speak of how memory fell out of currency as I clung to solitude.

‘Come back! Gül! Come back!’

Never! If to remember is to return in all the languages of the world, I shall not remember, not a single thing.

‘Come! Gül! Come back!’

They do not know. To remember you must forget. But I cannot remember. Is that right, Acacia? I cannot remember. Speak. Acacia?

‘Gül! Come back! Come Back!’

But this is an ancient law, and this loom is even older. And everyone knows: the first syllable in remembering is ah, and the second vah. And how many syllables are there in forgetting, Acacia?

How long will my strength hold out?

*

After all those hours of circling Gül, her merciful halo, we chose not to pose that awkward and ill-omened question: ‘On which end of the knife will you gather?’

*

Which was flowing, space or time? How many times has Acacia shed leaves, burst into life again? And what kind of a ring was it? Three, seven, forty days passed. And there were so many more after that. In the distance Acacia was rustling. The world was so heavy. I was so few. And in my vault of language there was only ah.

I let it slip: Ah.

On such a gale.

I am telling you just how it happened. Was it a storm of leaves or a raven’s flight? I looked and there were four shovels. The next thing I knew they had sliced into me. I looked. I was a what. A shadow with no acacia. A scar on the crust of the earth. And then four people bearing on their shoulders the hushed shadow that I was. I did not look back. I am Gül.

And Acacia was rustling. Could I hear?

‘Come again!’

‘What?’

‘Come again!’

‘Eeey!’

‘Come again!’

‘Vah!’

They grabbed me, stuffed me into the body of a dark woman, stood before me and said:

‘Hah’.

STOP

AH! SHORTLY AFTER SHE HEAVED a long sigh and came to her senses, these were the three sentences we pieced together from the sounds minced in her mouth and spilt from her lips into the air we were breathing like pain refined:

‘Take me out of this woman.’

‘Draw the curtains.’

‘Get out.’

We drew the curtains tight. The September sun hung in the air behind the silken purple curtains, uncertain and pale like the afternoon moon. Gül was lying rigid in bed. We left the door ajar. Walking toward the big room at the other end of the hall we were like a displaced tribe.

The light coming through the window drew a dusty curve around the furniture and fast became dense. My sister Gülnigâr just stood there in the doorway. Words had gone dim. But there were the sounds, sounds masterfully stitching one moment to another. The jingling of teaspoons in glasses, the slurping of lips sipping tea, prayer beads, clack clack, a sigh, tick tock, and after making a mad dash out of Gül’s room and bashing repeatedly against the walls of the house until turning to jelly, a syllable falls at our feet: pa

At that moment everyone looks down at their feet, clack clack, and what to do, they say, patience. One must bear it, may God give you peace, may God give him peace, give them peace, give all of us peace, just as long as we are all given peace.

Seaweed-sinuous, I then wound my way free of these sounds gathering us all into one and started to collect the tea glasses. In one hand a tray, my other hand laboured away: Take the glass, put it on the tray, take the saucers, stack them up.

‘Dear, put that tray down. We’ll take care of it.’

‘No, no. I’ll do it.’

A full ashtray here. A spoon over there. Gliding around the armchairs, bending left and right, leaning over coffee tables, careful not to step on the kids on the floor, I whirled around this damp mass of pensive people like an air bubble.

‘Give me that tray. C’mon now dear.’

‘I’ll pour tea.’

‘Okay, my dear. Okay, honey. All right, sweetheart.’

A glass. Take it. One more. Pour it. I fill it up, oh how I fill life up. Without getting caught up in their gazes, gazes hardened the moment they fixed on the fresh grave standing right there in the middle of the room. Without my feet getting caught up in those gazes.

‘Where is the sugar bowl?’

‘The sugar bowl? Oh honey, we’ll take care of it.’

As if I had been doing this job for a thousand years, as if I were older than both death and mourning, as if I were the attendant, assistant, tea-maker, weeper for everything, everyone, all of them, as if I were the knower of the smell emanating from this fresh grave, the very one, the oldest of all, me.

‘Aunt Şükran, where is the sugar bowl?’

‘Yes dear, the sugar bowl.’

‘Stop it, Aunt Şükran, please.’

‘Yes dear.’

Hopping my way to the kitchen with the tray full of thirty-odd glasses, I was proud of myself for having done everything the right way at the right time and I was crying. One way or another, I had to stay in the moment, in the edgeless, restive moment. And they? They were in awful shape. Watching the fresh grave in the room. From the broad winged-door that opened suddenly before them, in astonishment they were watching, you know, it, ha! Cold. Unwelcome. Bizarre. Damp.

That’s why it was like a room full of water. That’s why the wind there was a heavy, heavy wave, spumy at the tip. That’s why it took many moments for their eyelids to move up and down and why their breaths were nothing but a few round bubbles rising from the corners of their mouths to their temples. That’s why everyone who entered the room slowed down at first and then stopped as their gazes hardened. And sounds were spilling on the fresh grave like sugar cubes calmly melting in water. A shower of dead butterflies.

‘Did you say something, love?’

‘It’s nothing.’

Yet, once upon a time no one was mortal. We, for example, and Papa too.

‘Come on, honey. Say it.’

‘I didn’t say anything.’

Whatever. What do I care? God does not love his children. So what? Because you will see it in his eyes, on the postcard tacked to the icy window of the door, he is waving to the enthusiastic crowd in front of him, Fidel—oh man, is he dead, too?—waving to us as well as all the stuff that makes it a room. It’s there in his eyes. He is waving to us, to this damp crowd of pensive, mourning women, children and men seemingly scattered randomly among all the stuff in the room. And if you come closer and look awry you will see in his eyes the still uncompromising quietude of a herald who got caught up in the truth—isn’t that something? But what about Cuba, who is gonna love Cuba?

‘We will sweetheart because he can’t.’

‘But Aunt Şükran …’

‘Tell me honey. Don’t bottle it up inside. Tell me.’

Oh God, come out, come out wherever you are. This is the third day, until this evening. I know. Just come out wherever you are. Since this indelible crime of living is a stain on me, tell me, where is the sword I will brandish, where is the door through which I will leave?

I looked. Gülnigâr was pointing at the street door with her eyes. She was pressing a pair of shoes tightly to her bosom. And the street her eyes were pointing at—I looked and there was the door. Shoes. A heap of them, on top of one another, upside down, a mess. And Gülnigâr asks with her eyes: ‘How many dead?’

Gülnigâr turned around and left. In the hall Gülnigâr shrank, she faded. Gülnigâr is going to Gül, where else could she go? She would also ask her, with her eyes: Were you able to count them? And Gül would reply: pa.

I, on the other hand, was standing tall, holding on tightly to the tray in my hand. There was something in the air, but what? I was looking with squinted eyes, measuring the distance between my sisters and me, just how long is this hall? They are, I told myself, all together. Only I am all alone. How many syllables are there in this so-called ‘we’, I asked. How many people fit into a single syllable? Oh, God! Where is the sword I will brandish, where is the door through which I will leave?

For a long time I have been thinking as I stop and look at this long paragraph, with my forefinger pointed at my temple. For three long days I have been making tea crying, and I have been thinking constantly. A tall-sad barrel at my temple. I stop. Like an air bubble whirling and floating, I am in a swirl of thoughts. I won’t stop. Because there is yet another possibility.

‘C’mon dear, go to the back room and get some rest.’

‘I’m fine here.’

Which one? That is the whole question. What’s to do? Yes, that is the whole question.

‘Put that tray down.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Then will you please not stand there like that.’

‘I will.’

My tribe is crying because God does not love his children. He writes these dark black books of fate but I wonder if anyone reads them; well I don’t. I will never honour a God who doesn’t honour me. What unites me with my tribe is simply an ache. It is the ache of a heart heavier than human flesh. So what? Each heart knows its own bitterness. Is this something to talk about, while I can just find peace with this fresh knife blossoming in the palm of my hand, and whenever I wish? You see we don’t die, have we ever died, we are all stuck here. Suffering brings people together, but doesn’t hold them together. Don’t count me in, I don’t belong with my tribe. A tea-maker, weeper, attendant, assistant, that’s what I am.

‘You’re worrying me.’

‘Aunt Şükran, leave me alone.’

‘At least sit down.’

‘I beg you Aunt Şükran, will you please leave me alone?’

Oh God, come out, come out wherever you are. Tell them so they won’t mistake me for Fidel. I know what compromise is. I can put up with it and I can make tea too. The semolina will roast for halvah and I’ll keep an eye on it. Once in a while, I will just spoon straight from the pan. I’ll wash the dishes left on the third day of mourning, dust off the seventh, and set the table on the fortieth. Fidel can’t do it. But I can. Yet I am sickened by the ease of it. I don’t get entangled in the truth. And even if I did, what then? I’ll immediately snuggle down and sleep next to it. Take it, I say, you can have the crowds to yourselves! Take it! It’s all yours! But I don’t get stuck in it. Something holds me back. Here. Watching the teapot. And a knife grows in the palm of my hand.

‘C’mon, eat some of this halvah.’

‘I don’t want any.’

‘Just a little bit, for me.’

‘Aunt Şükran, I don’t want any.’

No one else but I brought Gül out of the solitude that she immersed herself in. She thought she was Job in the early days of his suffering. I told her, no you are not. When the time comes, I’ll also slip her this knife growing in the palm of my hand. But to whom do we justify ourselves?

Gülnigâr? Hah! She is a fool. She could watch the fig-lined road, the long meadow, for years and years with a pair of footprints on her bosom. She no longer has a mouth or a tongue. From having looked at the world so long, Gülnigâr is nothing but an eye. That’s why I wouldn’t even catch her eye, let alone slip this knife in her hand. Because when I look Gülnigâr in the eye, I see a pair of deep wells gazing back.

‘Then eat a piece of this börek. For me, please.’

‘No.’

After all it was again I who had been thinking dumbstruck in doorways when the neighbourhood dogs killed Trotsky. We were little then, too little to understand. But once we got to the scene and saw the cat-shaped emptiness that was once Trotsky I understood how brittle was this law that rendered us sisters and kept us together.

See, we were little, and without understanding what was going on we looked up at the halo of consolation, at that dull drone of adults. And something strange was drilled into our hearts. A new eye, one for each of us, opened bleeding inside our breast. Until that day, the world was one to each of the six eyes we had. The world, then, was the essence that tied us together. Yet the eyes that opened in our breast never—but never—ever saw that one world again.

Gül asked the first question: What kind of a person is God? After that day her soul was sharpened by rage and denial.

But Gülnigâr didn’t ask any questions. She put her right hand on her left breast and incessantly weighed the pain of a heart. With her other hand she assembled all sorts of cat things—food and water bowls, whiskers fallen out here and there or hair gathered on the carpets and the smell of sleep that permeated the pillows—in a photograph where an emptiness the shape of Trotsky was most revealing.

As for me, I thought Gül was right but foolish, while Gülnigâr was just plain foolish. God was kind of strange, yes. But so what? Obviously we had to make do with the God we’ve got, to find a way to appear to be compromising with the world, and in the meantime to immediately form a gang and take action. There was an essence that kept us both in life and living, that tied us to each other and to the world. I was sure. Because we grasped the world. But neither the world nor consciousness could kill us. So apparently we were something more than these things.

‘Oh, dear, what is it that keeps you thinking, tell me?’

‘Nothing.’

So while Gül lay under the blankets and devoted herself to a soul sharpened by anger and denial, and while Gülnigâr was wandering from one room to another like a pensive stain with the imbecilic quietude of a person who’s got over death, I gathered on the doorsills. I knew that we had the strength to walk and that we had to take a step, but somehow I couldn’t name that step. What should we do? How were we to fill in the emptiness that remained after Trotsky? That was the question.

‘Nothing … what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Aunt Şükran, enough, I beg you, please.’

So that is how I got to this day thinking the way I do, endlessly. The whole question was to show that we took sides. To dare. Which side or how to dare, that was unknown, but the knife was ours. And yet ‘dare?’ they always said. ‘Hah! The excuse for defeat.’

If only they would forget me here. I wish they would draw the curtains tight and just go away so that it would be only me and the barrel on my temple. Wish I could just dig myself a tall-sad hole, slip inside and fall asleep. And, sleeping, turn into solitude. Far away.

Because they love their mothers early, and their fathers close to their deaths. This is what they know best. Fathers, however, shouldn’t be loved; they’re too fragile for that. Once they are loved, they quickly get shorter and die. People call this mourning first, and then law. It happens like this. The child takes the gun. On the tip of the barrel: an indecipherable father. Then terrible things happen. Broken glass and stain. Buckshot and ash. And before you know it, Father is a pale emblem in the sky. A hollow coin no longer in currency.

You see, I needed a father whom I would defeat. I would make him fall out of my favour when I was weaned. I would no longer sing his praises when there was hair on my pudenda. If he slipped, I would immediately step on him, and grow taller. Then I would get my gun and my moustache would begin to grow. Only some time later, I fell for the colour of the world, I would say, ah ah ah, but long after that, this time on the tip of another ill-omened barrel: They were the exultant and terrible wings of youth! So, neither life nor the world could harm my rightfulness: a good apprentice should always surpass his master, right?

As for me, I am the accident caused by a bullet. I am the failed apprentice of an already wounded father.

‘At least get some sleep.’

But I have something within which transcends affectation. And the rest? Hah! Grief, ah and words words words.

SPEAK

I TOO WAS BORN ATOP Cumhuriyet newspaper. Year: nineteeneightyseptember.

Nearly everything that happened, happened before me. I only heard about it. On my behind the giant black type of the newspaper upon which I was born. A lump in my mouth that grew as I chewed: there was yet another possibility, I was told, and it was so very—so very very—very wonderful. They told me, and I sat, hands upon my knees. A chill set in, starting from the type on my behind. I lost my baby teeth, one by one, to the lump in my mouth. A tank crossed my pillow, I grew feverish and coughed. I became, listening to the most wonderful of possibilities.

It was back in the days when I could not swallow egg whites. The curtains always drawn because outside there are vipers and centipedes. From a picture above my bed poverty peers down at me, a long snotty gaze, barefoot every morning. As for me, I have only just opened my eyes to the world, to the morning. As soon as I slip out from under the blanket I begin to run. Three bedrooms, one living room, me scurrying on two weary feet. Where is everything? Everything is right where it belongs. Me too? Me too. And I am all too aware of what I must beware while growing up.

Them? They had their kaaba. But our kaaba was different. Every morning, around breadcrumbs, a glass salt-shaker and steel spoons, we gathered. ‘Look,’ Papa was saying, a peach seed in his hand, ‘one peach means a thousand peaches.’ When Papa said that, I noticed my dangling feet, the muddled curves they drew in the air. It was as if I were waking up to a dream, feeling the burbling of the seed stirring in my stomach. I was clinging more tightly to the spoon in my hand and, when alone, slamming the stem of the spoon against the table, ‘they have a kaaba,’ I was saying, ‘but the peach seed is ours.’

Though the truth was, that so wonderful, so very very wonderful possibility was no longer in currency. Only those like myself, who bore print on their behinds, witnessed the noise of remembering it. We had dwindled away, till all that remained was we and a seed. That’s just how few we were, you see; no, even worse, it was akin to defeat, being so few, that much I knew even back then. ‘Still,’ Papa was saying, ‘you go on standing as if you’re tall.’ I parroted him: You shall stand as if you’re tall. And you shall appear less few than you are. And you shall produce. And you shall not forget.

Got it?

Got it!

Thou shalt produce! Thou shalt produce! Thou shalt produce, at all times, produce! And I understood it all so well, so very very well that, as soon as I picked up the peach seed, I ran out into the street, spread my arms wide, dived into the four-o-clocks, my knees and my elbows scabbed-over wounds, and kalin!, I chanted, alone, kakalin kakalin kamaya!

Seasons passed, by the by, days and hours deepened. The click of a cog. The bending of light. The hand showed afternoon. This was back in the days when I measured my height by handspan.

I went home, covered in child dirt and child sweat, my left hand balled into a fist, my right fist grasping a gnawed pencil, I leant over the notebook, I huffed, my forehead creased, weary and broken, without a moment’s thought, I erased it all and started from scratch: ‘Ali produce a ball. Oya produce an apple. Ayşe produce a book …’ But the throbbing in my earlobe would not stop, it descended to my heart, and from there to my Achilles’ heel: ‘Zehra produce milk. Kaya produce to school.’ As I wrote my hair got tangled in my eyelashes and the world blustered at my brow: It’s classmate, not comrade! What do you mean, ‘Noses!’ That’s the name of a holy man! Shame on you!

I was ashamed. They nailed me to the wall by my earlobe, and I was unable to rend myself free.

And so throughout that recess that I spent fastened to the world by my earlobe, I looked at my feet dangling in the air and I thought, a lot. They were always together. Only I was alone. They would never understand anything. I would commit it all to memory. I who had become, listening again and again to the most wonderful of possibilities. But what had I become, what was it to them? I let out an ah! and a long breath escaped from my chest. And as soon as it did, it passed through the drone of the classroom and into the smell of eggs, cookies, and pee, through the rubbish and the toilet muck and into the steam on the windows, surrendering itself—sss—to the weight of hours. It was then that I noticed the great leader looking at me out of the corner of his eye from the opposite wall where he had hung for years. And as soon as I did, the tear in my eye clotted. Vinegar ran through my veins. The nasty, sour taste of apple in my throat, my voice grizzled, my eyes shining, I said: ‘Pssst! Did you use the word comrade too?’

It was back in the days when I measured my weight by the teaspoon.

An incessant rain of chalk dust would weigh heavy on my eyelids. I never spoke on the way home. As the light of day bent, fading away, stitch by stitch the thread binding me to the world would come undone. One half of me would fall asleep, the other silent.

At the knock-knock on the door in the evening, I would brush the dust from my eyelids and ask, ‘Who’s there?’ That’s when Papa would enter. And with him the drone of the world. And the drone of giant, black turbines, the burble of acidic plaster, the noise of files and hammers, the smell of burnt oil and polyester, all of it would enter. He would enter, dragging his feet. I would grow up, aware. I would take the saltpepperbread to the table.

When A Nation at Work came on, ha-ha, right!, corns of wheat would fly across the screen, a potato dish would traverse the table and rice and pickles and tractors (you shouldn’t say ‘shit’ in front of the teacher sweetheart), a great big mess of breadcrumbs, salt, threads, empty spools (God very well could have spoken to ‘noses’ rather than ‘Moses’, sweetheart, don’t be hard on yourself), when the plates were emptied we would gather the individual crumbs on the tips of our individual fingers, we could not let our eyes meet because the shame of being full would come between us (but don’t let yourself get nailed to the wall like that again, okay, sweetheart, just keep the word comrade to yourself), meanwhile the stomachs of right-wing chestnuts had already burst, having gorged themselves on the blood of workers, but the conquest of the sun was near (you are the salt of the earth, don’t forget that), but there was no surge, just the limping likes of me with print on their behinds, the noise of remembering was thick and had glued everyone to their homes, wheat rained down, like snow falling (to remember you have to forget, sweetheart, whatever you do, never forget), falling and falling, piling up in the middle of the table, three fingers high, salt and snow were one and the same to all of our two eyes, we would wait in respectful silence and before long he would come, Lenin, no taller than a salt-shaker (the world neither defeats nor is defeated, sweetheart), he always came on the eighty-second day of the revolution, dancing a jumbled dance on the snow, merrily making his way across the table, each time our eyes would well up with joy, but there was something sad in those footprints, sad and heavy and we would grow silent (and death only concerns the dead), as we remained silent the corns of wheat would somersault through the air, there was a bitterness, to the wheat and to watching the wheat (and that’s why, even at seventy you’ll plant olive trees, and you shall appear stronger than you are), we couldn’t raise our heads, our heads were heavy, because knowing was heavy, because a single corn of wheat meant a thousand corns of wheat (and you shall produce but don’t forget: though they be of you, they are not yours), the corns turned somersaults, crashing into the wall, the giant wall shook, it shook and it fell, it was distant, heavy, our backs grew cold, our foreheads creased (you are of me, the milk of my soul, but you are not mine), we were drinking tea when an oil-blue sand rained down on the waters of the gulf, it wasn’t sand but wheat, it rained down on the water, we were right, it made us wrong, we were right, it made us wrong, we were right, it made us wrong.

And when left alone, I slammed the stem of the spoon onto the table and said, ‘It’s no good,’ because except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die it was no—just no no no—no good and I took the saltpepperbread from the table.

No one was growing shorter, it was I who was growing taller. Whenever the stem of the spoon banged against the table, every time it was I, always I who grew taller. I was growing, everyone knows, my head outgrew my age. I didn’t stop, I couldn’t stop, I grew and grew until I extended all the way to myself. I gathered up the tea glasses and the fruit plates and stretched out on my bed.

What a long day, I said. How far the night is from the morning.

The branches of the linden tree were clacking on the window. As my eyelids grew heavy the wind passed over the long meadow, turned down the fig-lined road and disappeared. When just then a door creaked open and a light came on at the other end of the hall. At first I tried to get up but then I was too frightened to move. That’s when I saw Papa, he was dragging a chair. Hah, I said and got out of bed, let me too have a look to see where everything is.

The door was ajar. Papa had dragged the chair to a makeshift corner of the room and was sitting there. At that moment an ominous drill bore down on my heart. Something was raining down upon Papa, some thing: black wheat, dead butterflies, or an early afternoon silence. As if Papa were a clock that had stopped, an acacia that had ceased to rustle. Thinner than he was, darker than he was, more solitary than he was.

What was Papa thinking, tall-sad Papa, was he watching a rose that had sprung up out of nowhere on the parquet, he’s going to reach out for that rose, Papaaa! Papaaa!

But he doesn’t. He presses his right hand to his left breast and I see: from Papa’s left breast something seeps pssst little by pssst little into the air: the drone of giant, black turbines, the burble of acidic plaster, the noise of files and hammers, the smell of burnt oil and polyester.

I got it, it was no good, absolutely no good, again and again I got it: this is a struggle, a daring, that costs life. Its price will be paid secretly and pssst slowly pssst. And when the time comes Papa will depart saying, there is yet another revolution.

I was glued to the spot, I grabbed onto the windowsill. I swallowed, but a sour, guilt-like taste remained in my throat: part polyester, part egg white. It was as if I’d seen Papa crying.

And so it was with that taste in my throat that I searched for a door, yet another possibility, another door, one that opened up not to Papa, not to the world, but to me. And is it death, I said. I am Gülnigar.

Seven nights and seven days passed. I paced the hall with its two doors. The door to the street opened many times. There were times when I counted forty pairs of shoes, times when I counted seven, or three. I passed through countless sentences, patience, mercy, ah, time. I drank water and I wept. I passed out halvah to twenty-eight households. I recalled the old-good-little-just days. I pressed Papa’s footprint to my chest. But I did not become anything. Then I raised my hand and stood up and upon the blackboard of my heart in giant black letters I wrote: I AM NOT YOURS.

The flag passed down to me was blackened and shot through. It was with this flag that I would mourn daring and my Papa. And then, after brushing the earth off myself, I would go forth, and dare.