The writer had said, ‘Don’t wander around too much. Be careful. You know that better than I. It’s obvious that you’re in trouble. Wait for my return to decide what you are going to do. Zelal should first get out of hospital and recuperate. I’ll join you, and then we’ll think of a permanent solution. And mind you don’t forget; you are responsible not only for yourself but for Zelal, too. It’s your mutual decision that will determine your fate — not yours alone. At the moment you are safe in the house. If you are careful, no one will be able to locate you. If anything happens, call me straight away on my phone.’
He really was safe in that house — safer than ever before. No one would come and set fire to the place. No one would drive him out. The house would not be raked by heavy machine-guns during night raids, the walls would not be full of bullet-holes. For the first time he had access to money in his pocket — even if not in his own name. The writer was smart; he knew about these things. If anyone was following us he could potentially track us down from a bank account. But here Mehmut had a secure bank card whose pin number he knew and which he could use if he needed to. He even had a mobile phone provided by the writer.
The man who had supplied all this — was he a human or a guardian angel? — had embarked on a journey to the burnt mountains, houses riddled with bullet-holes, derelict villages, charred landscapes and mourning houses. Mahmut could not understand it. Did comfort disturb him, too? Was he a little nuts? He could not make out the answer to these questions.
When he put it to him and tried to find out, Ömer had said, ‘It’s hard to explain, but perhaps you can grasp my situation. Did not you and Zelal say to me, “If you are looking for the word, then go and look for it in its place”? In fact, I’m heading to your homeland for the same reason that you went up the mountain. I’ve been in a state of confusion for a very long time. I have to pull myself together. I have to come to terms with everything, with everyone, with myself.’
‘Why our region, abi? I’m not saying don’t go — don’t misunderstand me. But it’s our homeland, our land. We would give our lives for it. But what’s someone like you going to find there? Poverty, hopelessness, burnt-out and wrecked villages, mined and deadly roads, hamlets where the traditional songs may no longer be heard, countryside that has lost its herdsmen and its flocks … And the area is dangerous. Operations have started up again — landmines and all. After the war, what is let in our homeland for people like you?’
‘Perhaps there is still something. If there is still a slim hope, a light, perhaps it has remained there. In our youth we used to believe that we would save the world. Of course we didn’t succeed. We were defeated. Most of us gave up the struggle, surrendered and toed the line. But there was always something lacking within us. That’s what I’m in pursuit of.’
‘In other words you’re going to look for what is lacking in you in our homeland. Insallah, you’ll find it, abi.’
‘There is a saying — I don’t know whether you’ve heard it — “The morning light comes from the east.” There is something stirring, alive in the east, a sign of life emerging from death, a hope of change. But perhaps it just seems so to me; perhaps it’s intellectual romanticism, the illusion of a writer. However, an inner voice tells me that I shall achieve something there, that even if I don’t find what I lost I shall understand better why I lost it. It has something to do with my son. Perhaps following in your footsteps to the east will help me to understand, find and regain him.’
Mahmut had not quite grasped what the writer was talking about, but he had sensed the integrity in his heart. He kept remembering his saying ‘perhaps’ and understood that there were some things the writer could not unravel either. For the most part he had been curious about the writer’s son. If a man saw his woman blown to smithereens before his eyes what would happen, how would he live, how does he manage not to become a killer? If I had found the person who shot Zelal I would have killed him. You die on the mountains, in war, and you kill; however, you don’t kill each other out of revenge. There has to be a cause for which people die and will kill; an abstract thing, born of ideas. Neither soldier nor guerrilla knows the other. If there weren’t a war and they could meet in the village coffee houses they would be friends. There are many guerrillas whose mates, cousins and neighbours are soldiers. There are even those whose brothers are soldiers. There, in the midst of gunfire, you are a heartless weapon of destruction, anonymous and without feeling, just like a stray bullet, a mortar or a mine. If you start to think about this, you won’t be able to fight as you did before. God forbid that you should begin to have doubts! Once you have doubts, you are inished as a ighter. First you question why you are fighting, and then it gradually starts to seem meaningless; in time you will forget why you are fighting, lose focus and become confused. Finally you will end up being regarded as a murderer or a traitor, a traitor to that side or this — whereas you had set of on this road to be a hero.
Perhaps the writer’s son had originally wanted to be a hero, but apparently he had failed and run away. Who knows why? If you see your woman killed in front of your eyes, you either kill or run. But the son never saw who killed the mother of his child. Dirty work, treachery. One plants a bomb or one lays a mine; now they are all remote-controlled. Then whom it strikes is the luck of the draw. He thinks about the mines he has laid and shudders. When you lay mines or plant bombs in rubbish bins and buses, when you are operating in a city, you don’t know who it will strike: treacherous hand, treacherous bomb, treacherous heart. But still you do it. Someone has to do the dirty work for the noble cause of the people, to comply with the leaders’ orders, for victory. You have to accept from the start that the ‘one’ will be you. This, too, is a kind of heroism; self-sacrifice. The whole issue is about having no doubt that this dirty work contributes to the inal victory; not asking what sort of victory is won by killing or maiming innocent people, wasting innocent lives. Not questioning the leadership or the organization even for a moment. If you question, if you doubt, you cannot function. Everything is organized for you not to think, not to hesitate. Isn’t it like that in the army, too? Let us say you are a soldier, a Turkish soldier. Can you afford to challenge the legitimacy of an operation on which you are engaged? God only knows what would happen to you if you were to question your superiors! You cannot ight asking questions. Even at home, as a child, if you ask too many questions grown-ups say, ‘You mustn’t delve or dwell on that. You mustn’t think too deeply, or you’ll lose your mind.’ It’s the same in war.
He is thinking about all this as he goes down the slope between the shanties decorated with spindly poplar trees, colourful geraniums and fuchsias flowering in tin flowerpots. From the yellow rambling rose trying to climb a wall of one of the jerry-built houses he stealthily picks a few buds to take to Zelal. There are no roses at home, but they are the flowers of love, the flowers of fairytales. She likes wild flowers: snowdrops, the harbingers of spring, bluebells, yellow daisies and purple wild tulips. Now, like the townspeople, I’m taking her roses. What more can she want!
As he approaches the main road he looks carefully around. Among the long-coated headscarved women waiting for the bus, girls in jeans, poorly dressed men with sweaty armpits and creased jackets with sagging pockets at the bus stand opposite he notices two rather tall men in dark suits, with dark complexions, standing very straight. Taking cover behind the electricity posts, he observes the men. They are some way off. He cannot make out their faces, but it is clear they are not from round here. Mainly people from the Black Sea and from Sivas live in the shanties on the hills that overlook the capital from a distance; the people in the district on the one side of the hill are from Sivas and Corum and the people in the district on the other side are from Kastamonu, Cide and Inebolu.