He stopped talking again. He looked down trying to avoid meeting Ömer’s eyes. It was evident that he was deliberating what to say. Then he lifted his head as though he had come to a decision and spoke looking straight into the other man’s eyes. ‘There is no one who remembers the woman’s birth and her childhood. It is as though she suddenly appeared when she was sixteen or seventeen. And after that she studied abroad. She calls all of her father’s wives “Mother”. The woman who appears to be her mother on her birth certificate, let us say her real mother, is dead. We know nothing about her.’
‘Couldn’t she have been adopted? Or could she have come into the family through the exchange of brides — you know, what they call berdel? They say that in this region there are people who do not know how many children they have or remember their names.’
As soon as he had had spoken he was sorry; he was ashamed of himself. I said, ‘this region’, displaying all my white Turkishness. These strange lands that we believe harbour every disease known to man! I used the Commander’s language. I betrayed Jiyan. I got caught up in the story, and I began to contribute to it. Instead I should have shut the man up immediately.
‘If that were the case, it would be known. Here such relationships cannot be hidden. It’s out in the open. It’s just the right subject for you, Ömer Bey. These are the kinds of things that happen in novels, don’t they? They never seem very plausible when one reads them.’
‘Thank you for your suggestion, but there is something I still find difficult to believe. Let us say this scenario is true. What does it matter to the state whose daughter she is? I mean, what is the objection in the political sense? Or what has it got to do with me?’
‘Let us say danger rather than objection. I have a hunch that the lady’s husband was murdered because he learnt some of the truth. And his wife did not prevent his execution. She could not. At least she kept quiet.’
The Commander using the term ‘lady’ when he talked about Jiyan annoyed Ömer almost more that what he actually said. It was the macho culture’s language of bogus respect that used the word lady in contempt, like an insult.
‘Now I’m really confused. Where does this information fit in the Jiyan Hanım legend?’
‘It seems I should speak more openly. I’m not saying that the chemist had her husband killed. There are those who believe that that’s what happened, but there can be no condemnation without evidence and proof. I say that she could not prevent her husband’s murder and, most importantly, that although she knew the murderers she did not denounce them. She did not denounce them because…’
‘I can tell you that she still loves her murdered husband. She is still attached to him.’
‘That’s true. As far as I have heard the man was an important Kurdish sympathizer. He wrote books and so on. He did his doctorate in France. He lived for many years in Europe, in Sweden, I think. They say that he had a great influence in the chemist’s development. There was a difference of more than twenty years between them. It is true that she was attached to her husband. However, it fails to explain everything. I haven’t delved very deeply into the subject. According to the reports I have read, her husband was a Kurdish nationalist. However, he was against violence. I’m a soldier, Ömer Bey. I’m involved in the war and the security side of things. I keep my political judgements to myself. However, I can tell you this much: in this area such a person is the target of every hawk from every section.’
Ömer did not want to hear any more, and the Commander did not want to tell him any more. The conversation had ended and both of them understood this.
‘I hope you are not angry and that you have not been hurt. What I told you was to warn you, to protect you,’ the Commander said in a friendly tone. ‘And perhaps in a way you are right. You know I told you that we get intelligence leaks. Sometimes they want to mislead even us. I mean, disinformation spreads this far. I have moments of doubt, too, about who knows the truth or, more to the point, who plans and dishes out what is presented to us as the truth. I’m a soldier. I cannot always gauge who is right and what is just. Soldiery and war do not allow this type of analysis, Ömer Bey. This conversation did not take place between a commander and a writer; it was just between two friends, I rely on your understanding in this matter.’
‘I understand. Thanks. Don’t worry. Of course what we have discussed will remain between us. If you ask me, this is all very complicated. We reputable novelists don’t like such complicated stories. We consider this the stuff of crime writers or of mediocre writers who seek to embellish their work with intrigues and conspiracy theories. Perhaps the truth, I mean the truth about Jiyan Hanım, is much more ordinary than all these conjectures, these conspiracy theories. But thank you again, both for informing me and for trusting me. What you have told me won’t go any further. Don’t worry. You are right, even if the truth is in the hands of certain people, we are all being manipulated.’
The two men, about the same age, shook hands in a friendly manner. It was a warm, simple parting without ceremony but one that neither of them would forget. A current of feeling reaching from person to person, man to man, flowed between them.
When Ömer had passed through the garrison’s barbed-wire gate with its sentry boxes and watchtowers and reached the road, he paused for a minute at the top of the slope and looked at the dusty, grey, barren town bleakly lying in the valley below. The dilapidated houses mainly with flat roofs, virtually identical government buildings placed without the least nod to aesthetic considerations, schools, some lead domes sparkling under the sun, a few minarets and the market road which from this viewpoint looked thoroughly seedy, neglected and rundown. And the poplar trees … The poplar trees in rows with crows perched on their branches. Then he turned his eyes to the mountains. The mountains that rose on all sides to spite the town’s dismal wretchedness, their peaks quite white with summer snow, their slopes fresh spring green and with cataracts gushing from the precipices. He remembered Mahmut’s words, ‘We look at the mountains, abi, and we listen to them. It has been like this for generations. The town is captivity, the mountains are freedom … Or that is what we think.’
He feels upset when he thinks about Mahmut. What will they do? What will happen to them? Has his helping them been of any use? By embracing Mahmut and Zelal how much can we solve? How can people be saved one by one? How can they keep their heads above water? In my youth I believed in individual salvation. We used to say that malaria would not end with killing the mosquitoes one by one, without draining the swamps. Did I say being saved? Well, who will save me? Who will save us?
He took off down the slope with rapid steps, a great number of unanswered questions hanging over his head and about his feet. Thinking about Jiyan with a solid lump in his breast, impatient to be reunited with her, and trying not to think about Elif, he walked back to the town.