Zelal knew that fairytales could not last for ever. And that in real life one cannot attain one’s desires and live happily ever after. But the couple’s love was so powerful that the tale of the prince who had come to save the little Sultana who was fleeing from the wicked giants and monsters could not end badly.
She thought how much she loved her man. She felt Mahmut’s love in her whole body, in her every limb, everywhere from the strands of her hair to her most intimate parts. She thought: Whatever the end was going to be it was good to have experienced this. To how many of his servants does God grant such a love! If I had not followed the black lamb that night up hill and down dale and left the village; if those men had not raped me; if Dad had been unable to spare his daughter, risk disobeying the code and secretly let me go, I would not have met Mahmut. Zelal was amazed at a person’s fate. She blessed that night. She thanked Allah for what had happened to her. Hope shone within her. Soon I shall recover and get out of this room. We will go towards the sea. I shall give birth to Hope.
She heard the door of the room open slowly. She looked towards the door trying to see who had turned up. She remembered that Nurse Eylem was on duty. She never neglected visiting all the patients on her wards when she was on night duty, whether they summoned her or not. She could tell not only a patient’s physical state but also their state of mind just by looking into that person’s eyes. She never asked what Mahmut was to me, who we were or what our troubles were. She did not speak much. However, she saw and listened with her heart, and she understood us.
In the redness of the breaking dawn, Zelal dimly saw the shadow in front of the door. It was not Nurse Eylem. It was a fairly tall well-built man. Then she heard a muffled sound. A gun, muted with a silencer or wrapped in cloth, went off. For a moment she thought that the noise had come from outside, from the hospital garden. Two more shots were fired. And then … the elderly woman’s thin shrill scream. A commotion in front of the door. Shouts, swearing and another shot. The echo of footsteps — heavy boots — of someone running down the corridor. A familiar sound to her ears. A familiar face that disentangled itself from the darkness and slowly took shape, that forcibly recalled itself to her memory: Kekê Mesûd!..
Sirens, bustling, lights switched on one after the other. People on duty filling the room, doctors, nurses and the security guards that were too late.
She saw that it was Nurse Eylem lying on the floor. She heard the young woman say, moaning with pain, ‘I’m not seriously wounded. He shot me in the leg.’ She saw how the blood flowing from the head and chest of the elderly patient who lay on the bed in front of the door had stained the white sheets red. She watched them put Nurse Eylem on a stretcher. She observed how they had intended to wrap the dead patient in bloody sheets and carry her away but then gave in to those who argued against destroying the evidence. Instead, they eventually pushed the old woman still in bed into the corridor. Through the door, where both sides had been opened to allow the bed out, she saw people gathered, petrified with fear: she saw doctors, patients, carers and employees. Everything was dealt with as if Zelal had not been in the room, as though her bed was empty. The morning call to prayer rose from the loudspeakers of the nearby mosque. It must be half past five, she thought. The day is beginning. I’m alive. The old woman will not be able to see the sun, for she is no longer alive.
Zelal pulled the bedcover over herself and hid under the white sheets. She wanted to merge with the white and vanish. Cleaners arrived with buckets and mops. She observed them through a slit she had made in the sheet in which she had wrapped herself. As they moved around her bed they commented to one another, ‘That’s some sleep! She hasn’t stirred, even with all this commotion!’ She made herself even smaller under the sheets. They are not going to leave me like this. In a while the police, the gendarmes, the security guards and the doctors will all come and question me, she thought. I’m deaf and dumb. I have become deaf and dumb. I’ve become a mute. No one will be able to get a word out of me.
She thought about her neighbour in the next bed. Had the poor woman had a premonition? Had she been horrible to me because somehow she knew that her death would be my responsibility? If she had not changed beds with me yesterday evening, I would be the one dead. She had not believed me when I said I had seen someone sinister at the door. She had said that it was normal for people to pop their heads round the door when it was ajar and for me not to worry. She did not believe me, but I did see a person: it was Mesut Abi. Death personified. He was in my nightmare, too. That was why I screamed in my sleep. I saw him. His face was the face of the Devil. It was the Devil I saw at the ward door disguised in the image of my Mesut Abi who used to bounce me on his knee, take me on his back to school when the Delice stream flooded and carry me over the water, who patted me, protected and watched over me calling me ‘my sky-eyed sister with the gold-stranded hair’, becoming as fierce as a lion if any of the village children so much as harmed a lock of my hair.
She had understood that the Devil had taken possession of her brother the day he came to the hamlet with the two evil men. His voice was not his own and neither were his looks nor his gait. The Devil had torn out his heart and taken it away. He had stolen Mesut’s heart and entered his body. Her poor brother had become a devilish traitor.
Kekê Mesûd was unique. He was fearless and could be a somewhat brutal at times. He had such a way of wringing a hen’s neck, putting a knife to the calf’s throat that I was always frightened. But as far as my mother and I were concerned, he was an angel. He was loyal to his ancestry, to the customs. His uncles loved him, too. After the villages had signed up for the militia and my father had left the village and we had gone down to the hamlet, they had said that Mesut should stay in the village, but my father had not let him. He was just beginning to grow a beard when they took him.
Zelal remembers that night. The night they raided the village and filled the military vehicles with men amid shouted orders and oaths and took them away. They had left only her old grandfather who could not walk — although not before kicking him a few times to see that he really was disabled. They had taken her father and her Mesut Abi with the other men. Her father had returned three days later with swellings and bruises on his face. He was limping. He had not said much. He had told her, ‘They maintained that we were aiding and abetting. Provisions will no longer be given to anyone who comes to the door, even if that person’s my own son.’ Shouting and crying, her mother had asked about Mesut. ‘He’ll be back in a few days. Don’t bellow like that, woman, I told you he’ll come, didn’t I? What has the boy got to do with the mountain and the organization? They’ll let him go. Don’t worry!’
Her father was right: Mesut had returned to the village a few days later. He didn’t look at all good. He had been beaten up. He had gone straight off the barn and crouched in a corner and had lain there for days without eating, drinking, speaking or communicating. He heard neither his mother’s begging him to eat at least some soup, nor his father’s words of advice and comfort. He was in shock. Who knows what they had done to the boy for him to lose his reason, they said, and they had even brought a hodja to say prayers over him — but in vain.