“Who are you people? Anarchists? Communists? Separatists?”
“What’s that? You mean you don’t even recognize this little neighborhood bastard? One of many, right? You’ve fucked yourself up in the head, old man, all hung up like that about those ‘illegal organizations’! If you’re law and order, then hell yes, I am an anarchist!”
“Son, I’m telling you, I’m sick, I’m alone, I don’t have anybody. Don’t you have a conscience?”
“And who do I have? Who did my mother have? Huh? Tell me! I have every bit as much a conscience as you do, no more, no less...”
“Don’t you have any fear of Allah?”
“Yeah, right. You picked the wrong guy to ask that question to.”
“I’m sick, I...” He was babbling.
“Wait,” I said, “I got just what you need. This’ll heal you up for sure.” I took out the knife. “Or how about I just carve your prescription into your skin here, how’s that sound? That’d make a snazzy tattoo, huh?”
He fell silent. Then he started moaning and praying, murmuring the Kelime-i şahadet. I was sure there must be a prayer book in a bag somewhere, and some holy Zamzam water in the fridge.
I grabbed his face with my left hand, then I took his left, which was strapped to the chair, with my right. Almost like I was going to kiss it and put it to my forehead. Right.
“What did you do to my mother? Tell me, blow by blow.”
“Who fed you such nonsense, son? There is no such thing! I swear—”
I squeezed his hand. His bones gently cracked in my hand. Like pretzels.
“Look,” I said, “no bullshit. Why did you take her in?”
He pulled himself together. Then, with some defiance, he said: “She was muckraking at her school. We heard about it.” My mother had been a member of the teachers’ union. She was a first-rate union organizer.
“What else? Is that all?”
“And a retired colonel from your building came to see me.”
“No kidding? So?”
“They were trying to put together a petition to kick a whore out of that building. But your mother, she said, ‘Everybody has the right to a private life, we have no business butting in,’ and sent the petitioners away.”
“How many times I’ve heard that story. It must’ve been sooo fuckin’ hard to swallow for you macho assholes, huh? So what else?”
“She had to be cut down to size. That’s just the way things were back then.”
“Back when?”
“Before 1980... Times of anarchy... chaos...”
“But it’s still like that now, isn’t it? How was it back then? Tell me, how?”
“She was a divorced woman, she had to be reined in.”
“Is that so? ‘She was a divorced woman.’ Why don’t you come straight out and say it: She was a bitch. A cunt. You never had the guts, though, and you still don’t, do you?”
“God forbid! I could never say such a thing! No! Never!”
“Well then?”
“I sent my guys for her, and we took her in.”
“And?”
“We were just going to give her a good tongue-lashing and let her go.” Then he let it slip: “But she was one of those... those women. Long on hair...”
I knew the saying: “And short on reason? Watch your mouth, asshole!”
“Sorry, I mean, your mother, she started mouthing off about rights, justice, constitution, schmonstitution...”
“Ha! You and your schmonstitution. You assholes turned it into a schmonstitution, right? But go on. What then?”
“Then... it was a police station, son, every place has its rules.”
“Cut the crap! What happened next?”
“The one not helped by berating deserves—”
I knew that saying too: “A beating?”
“Yes. We roughed her up a bit.”
“Did you put her on falaka?”
“No, I swear to God, we didn’t have any such thing at our station.”
“Well, where were all those people wrung through falaka then?”
“They’d be picked up and taken away, we sent them away...”
“To where?”
“How should I know? I was only a civil servant of the state. How should we know what the state was up to?”
Ah yes, how could they know? So many of my friends were wrecked on falaka, endured suspension, were electrocuted through their genitals, even eyeballs. I’m sure some were sodomized with truncheons or Coke bottles. I was never arrested, never tortured. I was more into mischief and thuggery than all that education, reading, writing, and oration. I never finished high school. I got my college education in coffeehouses and movie theaters. My hangout was a body shop in Dolapdere. I didn’t mean shit to the state and its crews. Yet I always heard things from my friends at the coffeehouse in the neighborhood. As much as they could tell, anyway. After all, how could someone talk about such things? I mean, who could you tell? And who would believe you anyway? No way, no human being could possibly do such things to another. I’d always feel guilty when talking to people who had been tortured. I still do.
“Where did you hear these things, son?”
“It’s fresh news to me. I just found out... Okay, so did you electrocute her?”
“I’m telling you, we didn’t have those kinds of things at our station. We didn’t know anything about them.”
“Did you...” His eyes widened. “Stick... anything up her?”
“Have mercy! God forbid!”
“Okay, how did she break her foot and her back?”
He was silent again. Then: “She tried to run, fell down the stairs.” A pause. “Down two flights.”
“And you mean to tell me you guys did not throw her down?”
“No, no, I swear.”
“And then?”
“We took her back to the neighborhood.”
He was silent again. They left the woman on the street. Her legs, her back broken. Up until then, I thought that she’d been taken to the hospital directly from school. At the hospital, those butchers, so-called doctors, somehow failed to see the damage to her back.
“Son,” he said, “you’re young and still naïve. You don’t understand. A divorced woman, her mind up in the air, misguided.”
Okay. Either a poor, wretched woman, or a witch. The same old story. Then on with the patronizing, on with the witch hunt. I kept quiet this time.
“Look,” he said, “I have money, take it, let me go, I beg you...”
I put on my gloves. I went through the apartment. I didn’t have to dig around for long before I turned up his service gun, in a closet in the bedroom. A .45 caliber Kırıkkale. And next to it, bullets wrapped in cloth. His truncheon made of black rubber. I pocketed the gun and the bullets. In the same closet I found three bundles of American dollars.
“There must be some fifty, sixty thousand dollars there,” he said.
There’s a retired civil servant of the state for you! Ha! I didn’t bother asking him where he got that kind of money.
“Take it all, just leave me alone now. Go.”
That’s when I moved behind his chair. I took out the garrote I’d made in my hotel room. I swung it before his eyes. He let out a low-pitched scream. I held the wire by the handles and in a single, swift motion had it firmly around his neck. I leaned in and, my lips nearly touching his earlobe, asked: “How’s that? Does it hurt? Here’s your chance to see for yourself which is more effective: Palestinian suspension, rope, an oiled noose, or” — I tugged at the wire — “this. You came into this world without a prayer, punk, and now that’s how you’re gonna go.”
I heard the liquid dripping from the chair. He was soiling himself. I remembered my grandmother again. Those times when she was incontinent. I stopped. I thought. They say one nail drives out another, but does it really? Fuck it! Is that the way you’re going to deal with this goddamn monster?