These two men are from our region. A person knows his fellow countrymen from their mien, their gait and their appearance; he knows them from the way they swing their arms and the way they walk, from their nervous scanning of the surroundings and their tense stance like that of animals on the prowl. I am not suspicious of others but of my own people. I am wary of them because they look as though they are from the east. How terrible is that! Well, what about me? Am I not nervous like them, ready to flee like a trapped animal? If they saw me they would recognize me, too — immediately realize that I am a Kurd.
The two tall swarthy men stand there combing the surroundings with their eyes. A bus and two minibuses stop briefly and the stand becomes relatively empty, but still they wait. Perhaps their minibus or bus has not yet arrived. Perhaps they are from Sivas; the Alevis there look like us. I am being overcautious. He remembers the words he heard during the training on the mountain. One of the comrades from the capital who had been to university and had come to train them had said, ‘Being paranoid does not mean that you are not being followed.’ Perhaps I am right to be wary. He considers all eventualities: they could be from the state, from the organization or they could be from Zelal’s family. When he thinks about the last possibility a chill runs down his spine, despite Ankara’s late June heat. He breaks into a cold sweat. So as not to attract attention he retreats slowly back up the slope and turns into the first street he reaches. He has the same bad feeling in his chest as he did when he went off to fight on the mountain. A feeling as though millions of voracious insects are chomping at his heart, as though a cold bubble of air comes from his chest and grows and bursts inside him. When the fighting begins you no longer feel afraid and you don’t think any more. You programme yourself to kill so as not to be killed. While you fight you are as brave as can be. And even now, if the men drew their guns and came at me, fear would vanish. Waiting is the worst. As you wait, you think, and the more you think the more you fear. He remembers that he is unarmed. He has not had a weapon since he and Zelal came down from the mountain. He does not want to carry one any longer. Recalling the arms on the mountain, he smiles to himself. How absurd it would be to wander around the city with such weapons! He looks at the rosebuds that he still clasps in his hand. The thorns have pricked his palm and have made it bleed a little. As he walks slowly between the shanties he feels that roses are safer than weapons, that they protect people better. No one would suspect somebody wandering around with a bunch of roses. Such a person would be less likely to get shot. His fear and panic evaporate as he walks, but, still, he decides to go down to the main road from the south side of the hill and catch a minibus from the bus stand immediately before the one he had just approached. I mustn’t get into trouble because I’m trying to take a short cut.
The minibus is so full that he can hardly get on. He holds his arm in the air trying to protect the roses. They must not be crushed; nor must they wilt before he arrives at the hospital. Someone in the crowd accidentally jabs his bad arm, which aches horribly. To avoid arousing suspicion and being interrogated he has not received professional medical treatment for his injury. He had not even mentioned it to the writer. If he had, Ömer would have had a trustworthy doctor friend look at it. However, he does not want to get the man into more trouble. His wound is healing by the day. Zelal had laughed when she was dressing it one day and said, ‘You were shot from behind while running away. The bullet just grazed you, so don’t make a fuss.’ How smart she is. Some men find it hard to deal with clever women. He knows it can be hard, but it does not bother him. He loves everything about Zelal, including her mental agility.
His arm keeps aching. I hope to God the wound does not open up again. He clenches his teeth and keeps quiet and focuses on keeping the roses safe. The minibus is crammed so full that passengers are hanging on right at the door. The vehicle does not even stop at the bus stand where the two tall men are waiting. What a good thing I did not wait at that stop! Anyway the minibuses on this route are infrequent. If I had waited there I would not have been able to get on at all. Every cloud has a silver lining. Ignoring the pain in his arm or the jeopardy to the roses, he cranes towards the minibus window and tries to see the stand. He glimpses one of the men still waiting there, leaning against the post of the bus-stand. Perhaps I am mistaken. I’m nervous and overexcited. It’s because I’m frightened. Fear makes a person imagine things.
He has known fear ever since his youth, and he knows that it exaggerates the object of fear like a magnifying mirror, distorts it and makes it worse. From the depths of his memory a saying or proverb comes to mind: ‘A rabbit does not run away because it is frightened. It is frightened because it runs away.’
We wanted to run away from fear, to conquer fear; we thought we could quickly cross to the other side of fear like crossing the border. Now the more we run, the greater our fear … He is overcome with despair. You think that things have sorted themselves out, that your luck has changed, that it’s smiling on you, and suddenly you see the frightening dark night again. Not even your love, though it is as mighty as the mountains and vast as the sky, will suffice to reach the daylight. However firmly you embrace the ones you love, you cannot keep them, you cannot protect them — neither Zelal nor Hevi. What we experienced beside the spring in that secret corner of the grove that did not allow even light to penetrate was a dream, a fantasy, a story, or another life that we visited through God’s wisdom. Real life is full of hazard.
He feels totally exhausted. His head is spinning, and if he was not in a public place he would slump to the ground. He thinks it would not even be possible to slump in the overcrowded minibus. He would just stand there suspended. It was not déjà vu. He had already experienced this feeling of anxiety a long time ago in his childhood when, stuffed like tinned sardines in the trailer of a tractor, he went to work with others down on the plain. It was anxiety about the days to come rather than claustrophobia that had caused his sense of panic. Is life something like this? Is a better life, another world, not possible?
He had asked this question for the first time as a small child, as he rested his cheek against the chest of the black-nosed puppy he had clutched when their village was evacuated and they had to migrate to foreign parts, to foreign regions, to places unknown. Behind them the village had been set on fire. The onions in the garden ready for harvesting, the mandrakes and the spindly pear saplings, cats, dogs and chickens were burning fiercely. Those who could had taken a few of their large animals, cows and goats, with them — not to raise but to slaughter and sell when required. Such a lament rang in his ears that it was as though a sob had broken forth from the village and mountain and had echoed on the peaks and reached the migrating caravan. Was life something like that? If it was like that, what was the point of it? The question had gone round in circles in his childish head and was answered in the language of a child. If it is like that, then better that it isn’t; if it is like that, then better not to live. Years later when he had become a young man and was looking for the answer to the question ‘But how?’ he had realized it was not that simple.