‘Study and get a career. I’ve set aside everything I can to ensure your future. I’m going to send you to university. You are going to study. You will become a doctor. If not, you can become a teacher. I couldn’t do it for your elder brothers. I could not save them from the mountains, but you will be saved,’ his father used to say.
‘You cannot be saved on your own. You cannot be saved by selling your people. You will be saved with your people,’ his elder brother used to say. When they went to pick cotton or nuts in the summer the bigger boys from the towns used to lower their voices and say, ‘The workers, the proletariat, will be saved by revolution, by socialism.’ In the camps in the mountains, the comrades who trained them used to talk about the salvation of the Kurdish people and explain that it would not be individual salvation, just as his brother had said. However, the answer as to how the Kurdish people would be saved was less clear. It would change from time to time.
Only the Doctor said anything really original. ‘The key to salvation is within the people themselves. If you really know why you are here, what you are fighting for and if you believe in yourself and the job you are doing, you will be close to salvation. The salvation of a person and the people comes from their attaining an identity and their proud and confident sense of belonging.’ His statement was clearly significant, but it was less straightforward than Marxist dogma. For this reason some were suspicious of him. If someone said something tricky to grasp — not the standard revolutionary maxims committed to memory by most of the mountain leaders — one should approach that person warily.
When they arrived with all their belongings — pots and pans, beds and quilts wrapped up in bundles in the kilims handwoven by the women — that they had carried on their backs and dragged all that way, with their poverty and homelessness, and their fears, desperation and rebellion, to the banks of the streams of the other city where the capital city’s sewage flowed, the question had already been answered. A prison sentence awaited; like a seal of fate, an irrevocable, irreversible, iron-clad sentence.
A discordant polyphonic choir composed of poverty, deprivation, abuse and humiliation had provided the answer. What Mahmut wanted was to be considered a human being, not a doormat; just Mahmut, the person Mahmut, the man Mahmut — not a contemptible separatist. It was that simple, straightforward and innocent … Afterwards it became compulsory. It was the mountains. The mountains that would not let you be Mahmut but called you as a conscript to the liberation army, a hero, a guerrilla, a havel Mahmut. The mountains that promised to take those wriggling along the ground like worms, hanging around the shanties and rubbish heaps of the cities, without food, work or hope, and carry them to the peaks, to a world in which they could live without fear or shame … The mountains that sucked the blood of so many and spat out the dregs, that, at the risk of your life, brainwashed you into believing that there was no other life and never would be. The mountains from which he ran away…
Now here in the minibus, the wilted and now crushed yellow roses in his hand, squashed between people packed tightly like sheep being taken to the market for slaughter, miserably thinking that he has been unable to find the right answer to the question, he is afraid that he will yet again fail the lesson of life.
He is confused, troubled and exhausted. If he could sing a folk song it would cheer him up, but this is impossible on the bus. He feels suffocated, stifled. Gathering up all his remaining strength he calls out that he wants to get off — without paying heed to where he is and without worrying as to whether anyone is following him. His voice is like a cry for help. The driver brakes suddenly, and the passengers lurch forward and fall on top of one another. As Mahmut hurls himself out the door he does not even notice the man who gets out behind him.
While Zelal waits for visiting hours and for Mahmut to appear at the door she closes her eyes and pretends to sleep so that she does not have to speak to the elderly patient next to her. A few days have gone by since the woman had been operated on and put into the empty bed in the room. The first day she had barely regained consciousness; the next day she had started to come round, and since then, apart from when she slept, she had not stopped moaning and groaning. ‘How can I wait until a single room is free? How can I lie here among peasants — Kurds to boot?’ she wailed. She cursed the hospital management and the insurance company, asking every nurse when she would be able to move to a deluxe single room. ‘Do you know who I am?’ she demanded and would cry when no one paid attention to her.
The more the woman went on about ‘peasants’ and ‘Kurds’ the more Zelal’s patience was tried, and in a thick eastern accent she had raged, ‘Why are you going on about having to share a room with Kurds and peasants? I’m the only one here! Or are you seeing double, you old witch?’
The elderly woman was not to be intimidated. ‘What are people like you doing in this place? This is a private hospital — not for the likes of you! Before long you will be driving us out of our own land, our own hospitals. You Kurdish separatists! I guess it’s not your fault. It’s the fault of those who have put you here!’
Zelal had not backed down. ‘Now look. Don’t go on like this, or the real PKK will be along — and then you’ll be for it!’
When Mahmut came in to visit with the battered yellow roses in his hand — he had learnt from Ömer about bringing patients flowers and thought the sight of them would make Zelal feel better — the expression on the face of the woman in the next bed was a sight to behold. It was a mixture of fear, contempt and despair … Meanwhile Zelal had cheered up. She thought to herself: It serves you right! Be terrified, you horrid old witch! She winked at Mahmut who was nervous anyway when he saw a stranger lying in the bed that formerly had been empty. Zelal had said loudly in her best Turkish, ‘This lady does not like Kurds very much.’
Mahmut held out one of the rosebuds to the old woman saying, ‘Why is that then? Kurds, Turks, Arabs — aren’t we all human beings?’ He added politely, ‘Get well soon!’
The woman did not actually decline the rose but put it beside her pillow without a word of thanks and turned her back on the couple. Zelal knew that she was listening to them, trying not to miss a single word.
Mahmut described the house Ömer Eren had arranged for them at length. He spoke Turkish when necessary so that the woman did not get suspicious. Chiefly he talked about the house’s garden to please Zelal, mentioning especially the roses, pansies and the expanse of grass. He was cautious. He did not utter the writer’s name; he referred to him as abi. And he did not give away the location of the house. It did not matter how much the woman heard. She would not be able to work out whether the little palace was to the west or the east.
Zelal asked in Kurdish rather sadly, rather indifferently, ‘Ya paşê? And after that?’
‘After that? After that will be fine.’ If it worked out they could stay on as caretakers in that house, at least until they had managed to recuperate a little, until the writer returned and a place could be arranged near the sea.
As Zelal listened to what he was saying with closed eyes and a faint smile on her pretty face he thought that they were sharing the same dream and was happy. Since those days when they stayed in the cave on the mountain, his wound washed by the healing waters of the fountain and dressed with the heat of Zelal’s kisses — how many days, how many weeks had passed, perhaps even a month, he didn’t know — it was their sharing the dream of salvation and happiness that kept them alive, strong and hopeful. Until the stray bullet came and killed the hope in Zelal’s womb, their dreams were full of life as though they could come true at any minute. Now perhaps once again … once again … The light entering the window struck Zelal’s face, which had grown slightly thinner and appeared drained, and her corn-coloured hair spread out on the pillow. The rays on her face promised new hope.