When he asked why she did not go to the village very often and what had happened to the mansion, she had said with the same sad, soft voice, ‘The village was evacuated. It was because of a disagreement within the clan. My father had already left the village anyway. The family had moved here, to the town. But we used to go back in the summers. There are mountain pastures, it’s cooclass="underline" the air and the water — everything is good. Then when war broke out my family refused to join the militia. Don’t imagine that it was because they were on the side of the rebels on the mountain. Being part of the militia is considered collaboration. That really would not be in keeping with clan law. Besides, contrary to what one would expect, it would be dangerous. When they refused to join the militia, pressure from the state increased. The rebels on the mountain thought they had found an easy prey and began harassing them. In other words, there was no peace any more, and everyone migrated. After that the military evacuated the village. My father also had houses in the town, but they loved the village and the mountain pastures. They were their — how should one say it? — their kingdoms. In our parts, whether you are a clan leader, a khan or an agha you are lost in the town, your sultanate lies in the countryside.’
‘What happened to the boy who did pictures, who painted the panels of this mirror? Tell me something cheerful. Tell me that he studied art, he became an artist, that he holds exhibitions!’
‘Became an artist? … The things we suffer here are too painful to make light of. Fairytales are not real. People do not attain their desires and live happily ever after. It was better in the past, before the war. There were people from this region, the villages, who got somewhere, but now…’
He saw that the young woman’s eyes had become misty and that her lips were trembling slightly, and he regretted his thoughtless words.
‘The boy who painted pictures is dead. One cannot become an artist here. Depending on one’s background and nature, one becomes a guerrilla, a terrorist, a traitor, a separatist, a collaborator, a martyr or an informer. Or you are captured dead. You are going to be angry with me again, and you are going to say don’t politicize instances of oppression or injustice, and don’t fight for your right to justice. Well, how do we fight for our rights? We have only our dead, our suffering and our privation.’
What impressed Ömer was the extreme sensitivity, the defiant fragility, the heat of a volcano about to erupt that was concealed beneath Jiyan’s hard shell, her serene poise. When she became excited, emotional — and the smallest incident, a word used randomly or a memory were enough for her to get excited and emotional — a shadow would pass across her eyes, the left corner of her mouth would twitch slightly and lift, and her long, slim fingers adorned with silver rings of multi-coloured jewels would begin to tremble imperceptibly. What had she been through, what had she witnessed, what had she left behind? He did not know. Was she really so mysterious? Or was she just a charming, pretty woman, and was Ömer writing the scenario with his writer’s imagination and his own troubled mind? Her harsh, clipped eastern accent that to someone else might seem unattractive, her speeches that resembled theatrical tirades and which bordered on affectation, her enigmatic silences were all a part of her. When local women who came to the chemist’s shop to buy medicine, to have their blood pressure taken or to ask for advice, and men in local dress resembling that of the peshmergas, young girls with or without headscarves began to speak to the chemist or Jiyan Abla in their own language, he realized how much a part of the community she was, and he was astonished. When Jiyan passed them in the street, the men raised their right hands to their chests and greeted her with an exaggerated respect peculiar to the region. Sometimes the women asking for a cure for their troubles or an ointment for their wounds would hug and kiss her, sometimes take her hand in theirs and lovingly hold it fast. No, Jiyan was not merely the product of his poetical fancy, the heroine of a novel that he had created influenced by the strange mental state into which he had descended. She was the fruit and the essence of this wild impenetrable land whose soul and mystery was impervious to invasion. A unique and cherished fruit, a beautiful and splendid essence.
When she invited him to come and see her house, her naturalness, her recklessness and her self-confidence had amazed Ömer. A young, pretty — and respected — widow in a provincial town in the east of the east, who did not shrink from inviting a strange man to her house. So confident in herself, so comfortable. The confidence and comfort deriving from a conviction of her invulnerability.
Jiyan’s home … The large sitting-room that gave one the feeling of walking in a white cloud, cream-white curtains, white armchairs and the white carpet that covered the floor from wall to wall — for this reason one had to leave one’s shoes outside on entering — her study with its bookcases with glass doors and elegant desk, and now this room where they had lain beside each other naked, satisied and happy; her bedroom.
They were standing in her bedroom in front of the panelled mirror on which fairytale birds and the many-coloured flowers of the mountain pastures were intertwined. Jiyan was standing behind Ömer’s right shoulder. Her face, surrounded and shadowed by her black mane of hair that had fallen on to her shoulders, was reflected in the mirror. Ömer turned his head slightly back to the right and his lips found her lips straight away as though it were not the first time but the thousandth time, as though she were his wife of many years whose body’s every point and curve he knew by heart. As a sot but burning fire spread through his throat from his tongue and from there to his breast and towards his stomach he had thought of two things: Jiyan was the same height and she did not avoid his lips. Was it from indifference or from desire; at that moment he could not decide.
The long black hair spread out on the pillow of the woman wrapped in white embroidered linen sheets beside him now seems at that moment to Ömer, even more feminine, more sensual, more inviting than her naked body. A meddlesome sliver of light filtering through the folds of the tightly drawn curtains strikes her hair and roams through her curls. Without her hair her face would not be so attractive, thinks Ömer. The total change when she lets down her hair, her transformation into the likeness of a legendary goddess stems from this. The spell of this woman is in her hair. It’s as though the magic would be gone if she cut it. He thrusts his hand through her black mane. He winds her curls around his fingers. He wants to say to her, ‘My woman.’ There is a term of endearment associated with every woman, and he associates the expression ‘my woman’ with her. If he had a good voice, if he could sing, he would sing that folk song he loved in her ear so that only she could hear:
There is myrtle in front of your house
Oh, water doesn’t flow upstream, my woman …
Take the dagger, my woman, strike and let me die
Oh, let me be a slave at your door, my woman…’
Yet Jiyan is not his woman; he senses this. She has been the woman of only one person and she has always remained so. She is no one’s woman any more. She is mistress of her own body. She is a jet-black lynx that uses its body as it pleases, taking pleasure but not offering itself, not allowing the male to have the feeling of possession but not trying to possess. The moment you think you have tamed it, it reverts to wildness. He remembers the tone in the young woman’s voice as she said ‘my husband’. Had those men wanted to say that she was connected with her husband’s murder? It was evident that they had never heard the passion, the longing with which she said ‘my husband’; evidently they did not know her. In any case, even if they had known her they would not be able to understand her. The lawyer had said it was a ‘great love’. What was it that nurtured their love, made it grow and made it survive even after death? Jiyan’s loyalty to the husband she lost was intertwined with this land, the sufferings, the hopes of this land and its war. For this reason even if the object of love is absent it retains its power. As for me, I’m the stranger. The good stranger but from outside. Her relationship with me depends on the boundaries of her body and her desire and with me will vanish off the face of the earth.