He knew there was another solution. He felt it deep inside; and that was to face violence, cruelty and pain instead of turning one’s back on it. He wasn’t strong enough to do it. He didn’t believe in salvation. What he had seen during his time in Iraq had strengthened his belief that mankind could not be saved and that humanity would not triumph over evil, cruelty and war. He watched with some amazement, trying to understand his peers — girls and boys, northern, southern, Middle Eastern, European, American, Australian, Japanese, Turkish, blond, dark, all those young people — who voluntarily rushed to the centre of the fire, the blood and the cruelty for the sake of solidarity with life and humanity. They were all very different, but they all had something of Olaf in them. Even if they seemed to be there for others, they were actually there for themselves.
One day he was trying to photograph children in hospital; some without arms, others without legs, all wrapped in rags, lying on top of each other on beds with torn mattresses in a ward where the walls were riddled with bullet holes, bloodstains and dung beetles and cockroaches thriving on the dirt and blood. He came across a young French doctor from the organization Médecins Sans Frontières and asked her why she was in that hell. The answer was ‘Because I feel responsible for what is going on here. Because I can’t tolerate such a world. I don’t want to collaborate with bandits, be an accomplice in crime.’
‘You are only saving yourself, easing your conscience by feeling you are of use. That’s all.’
‘Your problem is solved if you can square your own conscience with that of humanity as a whole. I think I’ve been able to do that.’
‘What power does conscience have? The winner is always the one who uses violence, the one who is strong. We see it all the time.’
‘You are wrong. We win in the long run. Brute force will destroy itself. The world will change.’
‘How?’
He felt that the young Frenchwoman with the dishevelled hair who had not slept properly for God knows how many nights had an answer. It was evident that she had not even had the opportunity to shower — the city water was cut off and she, too, had helped to carry a few jerry-cans of water to the hospital — and while looking after patients she had come close to being ill herself. If she didn’t have an answer that she believed in, had faith in, then she wouldn’t be able to carry out the job she was doing; she would not be able to bear it. Deniz was afraid of measuring himself on the scale of that answer. He had just asked himself, ‘How?’ He hadn’t even asked the question aloud.
He gave his valuables to a child who was begging amid the ruins, and, not telling anyone, he left for Baghdad with very little money in his pockets. When he reached the city after risking all sorts of danger including death on the hazardous roads, most foreigners had already left. The young people who had come in solidarity, the teams of human shields, had scattered. Nobody was in a position to deal with them, and there was no work for them in a Baghdad on the verge of defeat. Some of them had given up; others had decided that passive resistance was pointless and had armed themselves to organize militant resistance. Deniz found Olaf in a hotel in which western correspondents were staying.
The young Norwegian was preparing to go back. He said, ‘There is nothing more I can do round here. I’m a pacifist. I don’t use weapons. And there is nothing here except weapons, violence and death. I’m going home now.’
Deniz had tagged along with Olaf, and together they had escaped from that region of chaos. After the desert, the blood, the turmoil and suffering what he needed was an oasis where he could rest his tired soul, a dark cave to which he could retreat like a wounded animal, a place where he could lick his wounds. This time, instead of hiding in a dream world and lies, he was going to take refuge in oblivion, in disappearing and becoming an anonymous stranger.
He came across the mysterious Devil’s Island of his childhood by accident when he started working as a night porter at a small hotel run by a Turk who had come to Oslo to work years before. A photograph hanging on the wall by the stairs leading to the rooms on the upper floor: a sheer cliff pounded by the foamy waves with a ruined castle on top and a deep blue sky … A nebulous image stirring in his memory, a feeling of déjà vu, mists clearing from a corner … I know this place. Then another step forward: I want to go there.
While he was killing time staring at the wall in front of him during the long Nordic nights, this ordinary Norwegian scene, one of hundreds of islands, thousands of cliffs along the coast of the North Sea, became a dream that slowly turned into an obsession. His dreams were illuminated by a fleeting memory that surfaced from the depths of his mind, a distant recollection of the island of which the little boy had said, ‘I’ll come back here when I grow up, and I’ll meet the Devil.’
A refuge where no one would be able to find him and destroy his peace … A land where bombs don’t explode, where its dead don’t lie in scorched streets stinking of blood … A real island where he could live naturally, peacefully and simply just like the fish, the cats, the wind and the earth; a place where successful, grumpy, cruel or conceited grown-ups didn’t point accusingly with their menacing fingers and give him condescending looks. I shall be happy there, and I shall be free. I shall be me.
He knew neither the name of the island nor its location. He wondered if the place had a name. It was so many years before. I was only a child — so how can I remember it? Candy-coloured dolls’ houses with decorated Christmas trees visible through the windows, empty streets in the early twilight, a strange old man sitting in a rocking-chair, a woman with baskets on her arms who kept appearing and disappearing, the castle ruins on top of the cliffs, the Devil’s Castle, the dark-blue sky, the toy ship that connected the island to the mainland…
I must call my mother. She will know. He wrestles with himself for a moment. If I call her, she will interrogate me again. She will ask why I abandoned my brilliant career as a war photographer and fled. There will be that condescending, accusing, hurt tone in her voice once more. He will ache inside. He will feel sad.
Still, he calls her with a deep longing in his heart that he doesn’t want to admit even to himself; impatient and fearing to hear her voice … But, he tries not to show it. His tone on the phone is as calm and natural as if they had spoken only the day before.
‘Hello, Mother. You know that island we went to when I was small, where we spent the night? You know, the one with the Devil’s Castle? Do you remember where it was?’
‘You are incredible, Deniz! Not a peep out of you for almost two months … Good thing you remembered that island. At least we know you’re still alive!’
‘Don’t start straight away, Mother. I told Dad I had left Iraq and was in Norway.’
‘So you think that’s sufficient, do you?’
‘Yes, Mother. I do. I don’t think you need to know more. Anyway do you remember what the island was called and where it was?’
‘I can’t remember the name, but I can recall roughly where it was. What are you going to do there?’
He lies. ‘I told my girlfriend about it, and she wants to go there during the holidays.’
He has no girlfriend; he is all alone. He knows it will make his mother happy to think that he is with a girl. My solitude has always hurt my mother. He feels guilty and sad. He pities both himself and his mother. The only way to eliminate this bad feeling is to enter a world where dreams and lies are intertwined.