Yet in appearance both Jiyan and the town are so welcoming, so inviting, so friendly that Ömer sometimes has doubts about himself. Or am I making all this up? Is it all about me, a man in his fities going through a mid-life crisis, Jiyan, a small-town widow, and the town, a poor underdeveloped eastern town? Am I making up a love story, a legend of the east to overcome burn-out, the boring routine of life, to be able to write again?
He wanders around the streets, strokes the stray dogs, greets the tradesmen and spends time in the coffee house. The owner now knows that he drinks his coffee without sugar and that he likes a glass of water with it. He is delighted that ‘our author’ has come. Even those who have not even heard of his name until now, who haven’t seen one of his books, call him ‘our author’. People talk about him. Pupils come and ask for his autograph. Because they are not able to find his books they have his autograph in their school notebooks or the girls have it in their diaries. They part from him giggling with delight. Although it is not his custom he has a shave at the barber’s just for a chat. He visits the town hall and talks to the mayor. He goes to the Culture and Solidarity Association and then, to be even-handed, he goes to the District Governorship and drinks tea with the Governor and listens to his complaints. When the Commander asks, he does not decline his invitation to have a drink and a chat. When evening comes and darkness falls and the sinister armed special force in camouflage and snow masks begin their daily display of terror in the streets that open on to the market square, he realizes that he is not intimidated as he was on the first day and that he has got used to it. They are all a part of the town and its secret: the key to the puzzle. It is only the town’s cats that he has not yet got to know. Cats are in the streets, in the shops, on the walls, in front of the doors, everywhere. When you approach them they disappear; they vanish into thin air, become invisible. Or are the cats the carriers of the secret? he thinks sometimes, laughing at himself. This idea would please Elif. She is a cat person. She always used to say that without knowing each individual cat and its nature you don’t really know a place; you haven’t made it your home. I haven’t been able to get to know the cats. I haven’t yet become part of this place. The cats do not disclose the town’s and Jiyan’s secrets. They hide them in the quivering of their whiskers.
Even though it appeared that everyone including the Commander, the hotel-keeper, the Governor, the cassette-seller, the organization and the military had believed the rumour that he had come here to write a book, he knows that in fact no one really believes it and that everyone has a different story about him. For them I am also a mystery. And what about Jiyan? Does she know, does she understand why I am here and why I didn’t leave within a few days?
She never asked why I was here. In any case Jiyan did not really ask any questions. Once, when he had not been able to cope with things and had asked himself out loud, ‘Why am I here?’, she had said, ‘To seek and to cleanse your heart.’
‘What am I seeking?’
‘What is missing … What you had and then lost.’
What I had and lost: my youth, my enthusiasm, my dreams of self-sacrifice and revolution, my vision of a better future — well, we were going to save the whole world, all mankind, weren’t we? — my son who became a stranger and slipped from my heart and … and the word.
‘Why do I want to cleanse my heart? What is the dirt in my heart?’
‘Not dirt. Let us say rust. You have got carried away by the spell of your readers, your books and your reputation. Your signature has become your cocoon. It has wrapped you up soft and warm. It has distanced you from human suffering. I was curious. I thumbed through your books again; before you became famous you wrote about poverty, hunger, the underdog, the victim, the worker, men crushed yet resisting, and then I saw that you had stopped writing about these things. As you became more famous as the writer of ‘the psychological depths of love, of people, the postmodern novelist of alienation, east-west conflicts’ your books began to sell more. But you had broken away from your roots. You had become estranged. And then…’
He had secretly been annoyed, angry, but on the other hand his admiration for this fearless woman grew.
‘But I don’t just write novels, I often discuss the subjects you mentioned in articles I write for newspapers and so on. Literature is a different kettle of fish. I’m in no position to turn out ideology in a novel. My readers would not appreciate that, and if no one reads my books I won’t be able to convey the more universal messages about humanity and conscience that interest me.’
He realized that he had gone on the defensive and was ashamed; he became defiant. ‘Aren’t you being unfair, Jiyan? I never shirked from defending the truth when necessary.’
‘When necessary, yes. But when you begin to weigh up when the time is right to deal with a subject and when it is not, then you have digressed from the subject. You have put it at arm’s length and alienated yourself from it. You have now become the judge. Can one judge between hunger and satiation, death and life, love and hate? And you know you said “to defend the truth”. Defending the truth is looking on from the outside. One has to live the truth, not defend it.’
‘Is that the rust you mentioned?’
‘Forgive me. I’m afraid the word exceeded its intention. I always speak rather plainly, just as I feel. The more I love, the more openly, sometimes harshly I’m inclined to speak. I love you. That’s why I’m saying that your heart does not support you. It wants to have the rust wiped away and shine. That’s why you are here, and you are in the right place, Ömer Eren. The fountains of the west have dried up. It is no longer possible to be purified there. Here we still have fast-flowing water. Water that is cool and healing, even though the blood of brothers mingles with it from time to time. And if only we can cleanse it of the blood … Knowingly or unknowingly, you came to wash in this spring.’
‘It’s true I was looking for a healing spring, cool water that would quench the aridness and dessication within me, my withering, my thirst and that would wash and purify my heart. Perhaps you are right. I did come here to look for water, but now I’m not sure if the spring is here. This climate is too harsh, and, what is more, as you have said, the waters have mingled with blood.’
‘They say that flowing water does not retain dirt.’ She realized that their conversation had become too serious, and she said, ‘Since we have been talking about springs, I would like to invite you to ours to eat trout. They have closed the mountain pastures but one can still go to Soğukpinar during the day. Some enterprising citizen has put out a couple of tables and created a trout pool near the water. Our people like that kind of thing. They are enthusiastic about tourist amenities, even though they don’t always show it. At this hour there is no one around. Anyway folk are wary of going into the countryside, of going too far from the the towns. We’ll take my step-sister and my brother-in-law, too, if you don’t mind. A widow shouldn’t be seen alone with a man, isn’t that right? Even if that man is “our author”!’