Elif thinks: They lost their daughter, their granddaughter and I lost my son. So we’re quits. I don’t know whose grief is deeper. How does one measure grief? I don’t know that either.
THREE
With Whose Bullet Was I Shot?
Mahmut remained standing until Ömer Eren had walked slowly to the end of the intensive care department corridor and disappeared down the stairs beyond the glass door. He gazed after him for a long time, trying to gather his thoughts, to understand what had happened that night. His mind was in utter confusion, in turmoil. Nothing fitted into place. For instance, that writer … There was something strange about the man that Mahmut couldn’t figure out. There was his sudden appearance beside them when the gun went off and Zelal fell to the ground. Then his accompanying them to the hospital and taking care of everything without asking who they were or what had happened. His voice trembling when he said ‘Son’ and his eyes misting over, ready to cry at any moment. It was all very strange. Let us say that it’s because he’s a really decent person. If it had been simple kindness he would have brought them to the hospital where he knew some doctors and the set-up, handed over some money and gone off. Why should the man care? What is more, it’s obvious that we are in trouble. We are fugitives. We have come down from the mountain, we’ve got blood on our hands and we are illegal. This much is quite obvious. The man sensed this, he understood, yet he wasn’t afraid; he didn’t walk away. A strange man, somebody well known. If he hadn’t been a famous writer I would have said he was a secret agent sent to tail us.
As he crouched from fatigue in the corridor, he felt embarrassed by his thoughts. He felt a pang of sadness. The mountain makes one suspicious. It turns people into enemies. You start being afraid of the slightest thing; you doubt even your comrades. His father used to say, ‘People are scorched and hardened by the mountains, softened and mellowed by the plains.’ Not that he disliked the mountains. Where I come from, the mountains are like our ancestors, our saints. Each one has its ghosts and spirits, its names that don’t exist on maps or atlases. People speak to the mountains and pour out their hearts; they plead with them and seek refuge there, and sometimes they curse them for claiming our sons and daughters. My father didn’t say those things because he disliked the mountains but because he was wise and knowledgeable and he wanted his children to have a better life. Perhaps it was because he had lost hope that people could live on this land like human beings, without fear or hunger. Perhaps it was so that his children would be saved.
Mahmut has crouched down in the hospital corridor with his back against the wall, his eyes closed, weary from exhaustion and lack of sleep. However, his mind is still crystal clear and he is thinking of the mountain tale he and Zelal lived together. Their love story that is nothing like the ones in novels, television serials or in the films he hasn’t seen or watched … A legend that befits those told by the dengbej on long winter nights … One day in the future will they also tell the legend of Mamudo and Zalal? The heroic epics of the dengbej always end in glory, but the love stories are usually sad. Wicked characters come between those who love but only death unites lovers. He shudders. Ours will be a happy ending. All will be well. It doesn’t matter if it doesn’t become a legend or tale, if the dengbej don’t tell our story, as long as my Zelal recovers and she loves me.
He thinks about their coming down the mountain to the plain, to the city, to be among people. Then … He returns to the moment he does not want to remember but which never leaves his mind, to that moment when he is filled with a horrible feeling that sticks to him like tar. The more he tries to chase it away, the bigger and deeper it gets. The moment that is the end and the beginning. He doesn’t know if it is the end or the beginning.
He goes whirling into a dark tunnel with a searing, intense pain in his left shoulder; he doesn’t know if it is a knife wound or the bite of a poisonous snake or a scorpion. He remembers his own voice, his scream and that he whirls out into daylight from that endless dark tunnel. Then he begins to roll down a hill. If he wants, he can make one last effort to cling to a bush or rock, to stay where he is or call for help. He doesn’t. He lets himself go. He no longer feels any pain. His body feels as though it is made of sponge, rubber and rags instead of blood, flesh and bone. His mind is alert, quicker and clearer than usual. He wonders if they will shoot at him. He feels like a stranger observing the event from outside, like a television cameraman — once foreign television people came to the camp; that was where he saw them — as if he is watching an action film. He feels no fear, just curiosity. The bleeding from his shoulder gets worse as he continues to roll down. The blood smears the grass and the rocks. If they want to catch him, they can track him down from the trail of blood. If only he could stop for a moment and stand up, tear a piece off the shutik around his waist or, if that didn’t work, from his other clothes and wrap it tightly around the bullet wound to reduce the bleeding. But he can’t stop; he mustn’t. He has to roll all the way down to the dwarf oak trees and from there reach the depths of the woods and hide his tracks.
He knows these parts like the palm of his hand. He is familiar with every nook and cranny, every possible hiding place. The meadows, pastures and playgrounds of his childhood; the secret places of passion, innocent escapades of precocious village youths … Hillsides that were once green, then burnt black and which are becoming green once more … Who can stop the life that bursts from nature? Who can destroy for ever the seeds that hide in the depths of the earth? And who can prevent them from sprouting and cracking the soil, staying alive in defiance of death?
Even though the fighting is carrying on above, it is clear that it is gradually dying down. The shots are becoming less frequent, and the noise of the guns is quieter, further away. The only sounds in that odd moment of silence between the bouts of gunfire are the flapping wings of the frightened thrushes and the monotonous humming of the wasps that seem to have confused night and day. Today the operation lasted a long time, late into the day. This is not very common. Sometimes you fight as a duty; sometimes it is a matter of life and death. You are wound up to kill in order not to get killed. And at other times you fight with fury and passion, for the cause, for victory. That was how it was this time. New recruits who had just joined and had been sent fresh to the front — many of them still children, some of them young female guerrillas — were fighting, their belief in the leadership, the organization and the cause still intact. These people offer their lives, and their faith is as hard as a rock. They don’t retreat, run or surrender even if they know they will be killed. Death is a part of the saga. It is not the end, it is merely the prologue for becoming the hero of legends. They are so young, so far removed from death and have so little to cling to in life that they are afraid of pain, but they are not afraid of death. That is the reason why the conflict has lasted so long.
And how about me? What did I do? Did I run? That horrible sticky pitch-black feeling … No, I didn’t run; I was shot. Shot! It wasn’t my first combat so why should I panic and run? If I were to run, I would have done so long ago, when I had all those chances. I didn’t run. I was shot. Had he not stopped himself at the last minute he would have shouted at the top of his voice: ‘I was shot! Shot!’
The soldiers use the north and we the south face of the mountain when retreating. As though they have come to a tacit agreement, weapons are silent as the soldiers return to their barracks and the guerrillas to the mountains, the survival instinct prevails, and life overcomes death. They say that once the operation is over and both sides have begun to retreat, soldiers and guerrillas who happen to meet on the road do not draw weapons on each other. Perhaps it is just a rumour, but, still, it makes one feel better.