“All right,” I said, finally giving in, “so what brought you here, man?”
There was a silence.
“Look, bro,” he replied, “to make a long story short—” He took a photograph out of his pocket. It was like stained glass. But black-and-white. A clutch of guys, young and old, looking all pumped up, like they were celebrating something. One of them stared straight out of the photograph, straight at me, smiling brightly. I was reminded of photographs of a lynching I once saw on a Harlem wall; photographs of people smiling as if they had just accomplished some major shit. The guy in the photo had a mustache and a gold tooth in the lower right side of his mouth. He was holding a bottle; I recognized it as olive oil. There was an improvised fuse sticking out of it. There seemed to be a demolished store in the background. I examined the proud crowd in the front. The guy holding the bottle could be seen most clearly. He was young. The photo preserved him, it seemed, best of all. The more I looked at him, the more I examined his features, the more amazed I was. My eyes narrowed to blades. My amazement turned into other things. Into rage. Into disgust. My eyes were like a welding machine gradually finding its focus.
I’ll never forget. Never. Damn it. My world went topsy-turvy. Like that. I forgot about my bruised ribs.
I couldn’t wait any longer. One evening a few days later, I was on Çıngıraklı Bostan Street again. I knew that the door of the building always stood open, that the superintendent was rarely around.
I ran up those three floors and found the door, easy as cake. I knocked. I knew his wife had died a few years ago. And that he hadn’t married again.
He opened the door himself. He looked me over. I imagined pushing my way in, the door smashing his face flat like a tomato.
“I grew up in this neighborhood, amca,” I said. “I heard that Müzeyyen Teyze passed away, so I thought I’d drop by and give my condolences.”
“It’s been quite awhile since the lady died, son. Where did you hear about it?” Coming from this guy, the word “son” made me sick to my stomach. How? Why? What son?
“I was abroad.”
“So our news makes it all the way over there, huh?” He smiled. A hushed, stolen smile, like that of a hyena. Then he relaxed. “Come in,” he said finally. “Come on in and sit down.” He opened the door for me and stood aside.
It reeked of mold, moisture, perhaps urine inside. It was a crowded condo. There was a chestnut showcase by the entrance full of never-used fine china. The door to the guest room was open; the furniture was carefully covered. He invited me to the living room, where he spent his time when he wasn’t in the coffeehouse. He had set up a little corner for himself. It seemed he’d laid the paper he’d been reading on the coffee table before he got up to get the door. His glasses were on top of the folded paper. A pitcher of water, a glass, what appeared to be a saccharine box, his cigarette box, and his lighter were also on the table. Now, where did he keep his service gun, I wondered. Next to the chair hung a calendar and framed newspaper clippings about the chief’s exploits, photos of him when he was younger. One of the headlines read: Anarchist Hunter! Another: Peace and Quiet Reign in His Neighborhood! I didn’t recall having any peace and quiet in this neighborhood, but never mind.
He took off his leather slippers and made himself comfortable in that corner of his. Ağa to us all. The chief, even if retired. I perched on one of the couches.
“I went to Oruçgazi School back in the day,” I said.
“Whereabouts did you live, son?” he asked. That corner, that ağa performance, deserved a proper nightshirt, of the long, flowing, imposing variety. But he was wearing a pressed shirt and pants. Old habits, I thought.
“We lived on Oruçgazi Street.”
“Really, in what building?”
“Oruçgazi Building. I’m the son of Asaf Bey.”
“I don’t think I know him.”
My father’s name was not Asaf; I hadn’t seen my old man in twenty-five years. I decided not to beat around the bush any longer.
“You must know my mother, though.”
“What’s her name?”
“She passed away.”
“I’m sorry. May the remaining live long.”
“May everybody... She had an injured back. She had to take an early retirement for medical reasons, got to the point that she couldn’t even leave the house anymore.”
“We should all be blessed with good health. But that’s just life, I guess. Things happen.”
“Yeah, they happen to some, but not to others. I’ve always been curious. I mean, I’ve always wondered exactly how it was she injured her back.”
He was becoming visibly uncomfortable. He looked tense.
“Back then, they said she’d injured her foot jumping rope with her students. And then one thing just led to another.” He’d swallowed the bait. “Isn’t that right?”
“You have such a great memory, amca! How on earth do you even know that, let alone remember it? And why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’?”
“Did you ever see her around back then? In the street? Here and there? You ever look her in the face?”
That tensed the guy up even more.
“What do you mean, son? Why would we look at a woman like that? Of course we wouldn’t, she was a sister to us, here and in the afterlife.”
“Right,” I said, leaning in toward him. “So would you look her in the face like this?” We were eye to eye. “Like this?” He opened his mouth. But he couldn’t make a sound. I let my own voice rip. “Is that the way you treat your sisters, brothers, sons, and daughters? Huh? You two-bit punks?” It was as if a festering boil had burst within me, like the pus was bubbling up, spewing out of my mouth, out of my nose. “Pieces of shit!” My jaws were almost locked with disgust. “Beatings! Thrashings! Honor killings!” I was on him in two steps, an unstoppable surge of words gushing through my mind. A refrain: “Dungeons, tortures, executions...”
I strapped him firmly to the chair with duct tape, taking care not to rough him up too much. I gagged him. He was old, too old. I remembered my grandmother. Look at him, look at my grandmother. My mother wasn’t religious at all, but my grandmother prayed five times a day and fasted during Ramadan. She was opposed to the death penalty, just like my mother. Back during the coup, during that era known as “September 12,” when these guys were stringing people up, my grandmother, may she rest in peace, would say, “They’re human beings too, my son; they’re our children too, all subjects of Allah.” She’d cry silently. A kind of dry, tear-free weeping. Perhaps, being a woman, there were no tears left in her at that age.
The guy stirred as he slowly came to. Once he understood that there was no way he was getting free, he surrendered to the chair.
“Look,” I said, “I’ll remove the tape, but if you raise your voice, it’ll be real ugly for you, believe me.” He nodded. I took off the duct tape. He coughed.
“Listen, son, you’re making a big mistake. I’m an old, very sick man...”
“You are very sick, true, but yours is a different kind of sickness,” I said. “And you know what? You’ve made everybody else sick too. You made the whole damn country sick...”
“Look, son, the apple of my eye, I’m a retired civil servant of this country.”
“I’m not your son, not the apple of your eye, not your anything. And I am nothing to that state of yours. And it’s nothing to me.”