He knows that all this is pointless; that if they want to they will find him wherever he goes. I wasn’t anyone significant; just an ordinary fighter with the mountain troops, that’s all. They wouldn’t have let me get away if I had been someone special. Most of those executed were important comrades or just boys like Hıdır. So why do I keep thinking that it was our side that shot me? Who could tell where the bullet came from in all that confusion?
He reaches the entrance to the cave and with one last effort pulls himself inside. The cave is peaceful and cool. He is beginning to feel slightly drowsy. Although Mahmut thinks it comes gradually, sleep pounces on him. I must have lost a lot of blood. It isn’t safe here. I mustn’t fall asleep. I must reach the other side. There is an impenetrable area in the middle of the woods over there where thorny shrubs intertwine with dwarf oaks and birches. Neither the guerrillas nor the soldiers use that place. If you intend to hide, that wood is good and safe, but there is no escape out of it. Once you are surrounded, you are finished.
With one last effort he takes off his cartridge belt — many loops are empty — undoes his shutik, pulls off the shirt stuck to his body, and, winding his sash under his armpit and over his shoulder from the back, he binds the wound tightly. It is the first time he feels such intense pain. It is deeper than a flesh wound. It spreads to the bones. His collarbone is probably damaged; no, not damaged — completely shattered. Clearly he will be disabled for life. Luckily it’s the left arm, he says to himself. He feels faint. I must get to those woods opposite. It’s not safe here. They will hunt me down like a rabbit here. As he struggles to get up his head touches a warm soft pillow. He lets himself go. I must get to the woods … I must … I … must … get … In the damp coolness of the cave, his head on the soft warm pillow, he sees a myriad stars in the dark-blue sky. Stars colliding and falling like balls of fire…
You put your head in my lap and passed out. You slept. I couldn’t make out your face. You were wounded and bleeding, your chest and your back were bare. When I ran my hand over your head and your chest; my fingers touched your thick, soft hair. I shivered and felt funny. No, I was never afraid of you. When I realized someone had entered the cave I retreated to the deepest, darkest corner. In the light that filtered in from outside I could see that you were wounded. It is in our tradition to help the injured. If a wretched, wounded man took refuge in our fields, neither my mother nor my second mother asked or considered which side he was on. Sometimes my father would ask, ‘Who are his family?’ My mother would stand up to him responding, ‘Whether he is from the mountain or from the state army, he is still a human being, his mother’s darling, so what does it matter?’ And my second mother would back my mother up, saying, ‘Your son is in the mountains, and two brave boys from my village are soldiers of the Turkish Republic — the TC — so what does it matter?’
The men who raped me, were they soldiers or guerrillas? I have no idea. It was getting dark. I had left the herd in the valley below, and I was looking for the lost black lamb among the rocks at the top. As I jumped from stone to stone and rock to rock I must have strayed quite far. Somebody grabbed me from behind. I couldn’t see his face. They forced me down, pulled up my skirt, pulled off my trousers, tore off my knickers, parted my legs and raped me. The first time — I don’t know how many they were and how many times — I shouted not from fright but from pain. I struggled, kicked, punched and tried to escape. The last one said, ‘Don’t be afraid.’ I can’t remember now if he spoke Turkish or Kurdish, but I understood that he told me not to be frightened. He caressed me all over if somewhat hurriedly; he kissed me, too; both before he entered me and while he was inside. He had a beard. He rubbed his beard on my face, my lips, my nipples, my belly and even my female parts, softly, caressingly. I realized that he didn’t want to harm me. The pain between my legs was increasing. I was hurting and bleeding. I was wounded inside. But the fear in my heart had faded a little. Suddenly an arrow of fire shot between my legs, passed through my stomach and struck my nipples, then my throat and my lips. I released my fingers that were clutching the earth and the grass, and dug them into the back and the arms of the man on top of me. I didn’t want to hurt him, just to hold him. I wanted him to stay where he was, not to get up and leave, to remain there like a protective shield. I didn’t want him to throw my bleeding body to other bastards. Perhaps he understood: perhaps not. The others called him, not with words but with a whistle. He said something as he got up from me. I couldn’t understand what language it was or what he said. My head felt numb. Then they hurriedly went away. I could see their rifles dangling under their armpits from where I lay. I was tired, but I wasn’t entirely worn out; I was no longer afraid either. What worse could happen? I walked over to the spring close by, and I washed myself thoroughly all over. I felt purified, cleansed. I looked at my reflection in the water. How they would jeer at me as the raped and abused seed of a whore if they knew! Yet the iridescent reflection rippling in the water was still the same me. The stain on my honour had been washed clean away with the water. Could it be that my face was shining more than usual? I couldn’t see myself in the shimmering mirror of the water; I saw with my inner eye. I had become prettier. I had grown and become more feminine. There was a midwife in the village who used to tell dirty stories to young brides and women, caress our budding nipples whenever she could and feel our private parts with her finger, saying, ‘Let’s see if you are a virgin.’ She used to giggle as she told my mother, ‘Look out for that daughter of yours. She’s got the fire of a whore.’ Even if she hadn’t said it my mother always kept an eye on me in any case. I wasn’t allowed to play mothers and fathers or get too friendly even with girls, let alone boys. It wasn’t that she was afraid something would happen to me or that I would lose my virginity. She was frightened of the code of honour and wanted to protect me.
When you put your head in my lap and slept I could have got up quietly and run away, I didn’t run away. While I was stroking your naked chest, that arrow of fire shot through my groin and rose to my stomach, my breasts, my nipples, my throat and my lips. I was enveloped by a sweet, sinful feeling. Do I really have the fire of a whore? Do I lead men on? Am I really a sinful slut, as people get my second mother to say instead of saying it themselves? Are they right?
Zelal remembers all this as she lies in the white bed of the whitewashed hospital ward with a severe pain in her stomach, the taste of pus in her throat and rust in her mouth. And she remembers that long road she used to walk along with the boys to school when she was a small child. They would pinch her, try to squeeze her breasts and pull down her pants. She would think of her mother and be afraid. She loved school, but sometimes because of this she did not want to go. She would insist that her brother took her. The road went through a mountain pasture covered with snow in winter and tall flowers and grass in spring and met a stream. At the point where the stream was at its shallowest and calmest, forgotten by the waterfalls and the foaming waters close by, there was a ramshackle wooden bridge with a rope for a rail. When the water rose, it left neither bridge nor stepping-stones. Once, as she was crossing the bridge with her mother and her brother, the rope they had been holding on to broke and she and her mother had fallen into the stream. Luckily the water wasn’t high at the time, so they survived the accident with few injuries. Then she had also stayed in a room like this with white walls and white beds in the county clinic. There was another child in the next bed. His name was Süleyman. She will never forget him. They had amputated one of his legs and one of his arms at the hospital in the city. And now they had brought him to the clinic because his wounds would not heal. The boy’s mother wept and cursed all day long. Zelal had cried her eyes out, terrified they would cut off her arm and leg as well. Her mother had tried to console her saying, ‘He was a naughty boy. He walked where he shouldn’t have and stepped on a mine. You have no business with mines and such things. Don’t be afraid.’