More: A Novel (35 page)

My God … I just can’t forget. Forgive me. Even if you don’t, make sure someone finds this paper. I beg you.

That was all. I didn’t know what to think. Ahad’s drunkenness was no secret, but I’d never heard him beg God for forgiveness. I turned the paper over. On the back of it was a plan. Ahad had roughly sketched out the plot and marked a spot on Dust Street as X. Next to it he’d written
tree
. I laughed. He must’ve been really drunk when he drew this plan. Only the two of us would know which tree that was. In between the sycamores lining Dust Street on both sides was a single olive tree. We used to ignore the sycamores and refer to just the one as
tree
.

Ahad must’ve written it out of habit. No one else could’ve made any sense out of this plan but I, unfortunately, could. In fact, I was the only person in the world who could make anything out of looking at this picture … but there was one thing I couldn’t figure out. To take a piece of paper and write such things, to put it into a bottle and bury it … it wasn’t like Ahad at all.

“No way!” I said. “There’s no way!”

I thought maybe I was imagining it. It really didn’t seem possible. Ahad, standing here, digging into the soil with his hands, and then burying this bottle! There was absolutely no way! After all—then an image flashed in my mind! The image of Ahad, years ago, when I rose early and left the house to get food for the world’s most beautiful girl, passed out on the chair … sitting right in the spot I was standing now, appearing to have watched the dirt road all night long. I closed my eyes and tried to visualize it down to the last detail. I was looking for something, but I didn’t find it. There was no bottle to be found in that picture. He’d passed out and there was no bottle around him. Because the bottle he’d imbibed till morning to then toss the paper into was no other than this one! It was the bottle I’d smashed with the shovel just now! It lay in the dirt in three pieces … the note and the plan really did belong to Ahad! And I really had never known my father.

I had to make a decision at this point. I could either let Ahad back into my life or crumple up and throw away the note. Which was for the best? It didn’t take me long to make up my mind. After all, I’d spent my childhood with two pirates named Dordor and Harmin!

Peering at the piece of paper in my hand, I walked until I was in line with the olive tree. The cross on the plan was quite close to the tree. The edge of the dirt road. I was standing over the spot Ahad had marked. I looked around. There was nothing that seemed out of the ordinary. Whatever it was that had my father begging for forgiveness appeared to be right underneath me. Whatever it was he couldn’t forget was below the ground …

Putting the piece of paper in my pocket next to Cuma’s frog, I started to dig. As I dug I was wondering what I would find. There was no possibility of guessing what it was Ahad was hiding, however. He would’ve buried the world if he could find a hole big enough to bury it in. So I was prepared for anything. I just kept on digging. Breathlessly … all the breath I’d taken up till then was enough. I thought about every remorseful letter of those sentences and sweated. At the same time, I wondered if there was any way of kicking the shit out of the stroke of luck that brought me to that bottle! But then I’d think of the moat. I felt annoyed that I was wasting my energy when I should be working on that. What could it be that Ahad couldn’t forget, anyway? Could such a thing even exist? The Ahad I knew had absolutely no conscience whatsoever. If he had, I’d been spared it. I didn’t know what I felt or what my life would look like from now on. I just plunged the shovel into the earth. Then I heard a sound. The sound of metal against metal!

I kneeled down to part the earth with my hands and saw it: a metal cabinet with two doors. It just lay in the earth on its back like that. It looked like an ordinary filing cabinet. It was a least a meter high. I lunged at its likewise metal handles and tried to open its doors, but it was locked. Standing up, I grabbed the shovel and swung it as hard as I could. Nothing happened. I swung again and this time one of the doors caved inward. That made a gap, admittedly small, between the two doors, and all I had to do was put the shovel in there and crank. There was a sound like bones breaking, and I tossed aside the shovel.

Kneeling again, I reached into the hole and pulled the doors open. Then I started laughing. I’d never found any treasure before in my life! All the money Ahad had ever made from smuggling migrants was at the tips of my fingers. They were stacked inside clear bags just staring at me. I pulled out one of the bags and raised it into the air to peer at it. As I laughed I spoke to Ahad:

“This is what you couldn’t forget? The money you made off all those poor souls? This is what you were begging God to forgive you for?”

Then suddenly I felt my face changing. My lips came together first, and then my eyes filled with tears. I was no longer laughing. I was thinking of Ahad. Maybe he really had lived in remorse. He might even have been ashamed of the life he was leading. He hadn’t touched the money he made off those people’s desperation but instead hidden it away. He hadn’t wanted to spend it. He’d even felt so bad on a night of intoxication that he’d hoped someone might find the money and relieve him of his burden. Perhaps I’d never met the real Ahad. So, would I be touching the money? Absolutely yes, as I was just Gaza as usual!

I started taking out the bags one by one. But there were so many that I thought it would be easier to just pull the cabinet out. Instead of walking back and forth a dozen times, I could just drag all the money to the shed inside the cabinet … I took the shovel and began digging around it again.

Half an hour later I’d managed to make a short incline on one side of the hole. I’d latch on to and haul out the cabinet. I leaned over and pulled, gripping the gaping cabinet with both hands. Although with difficulty, I was able to budge it. Taking small steps backward, I maneuvered it from its spot and tried to move it up the incline. The only thing I saw was the inside of the cabinet. I kept my eyes on the bags of cash that moved slightly every time I pulled. Then my gaze slid to the hole the cabinet came out of. The space left over from the cabinet … I could see inside ever so slightly. And I suddenly stopped and looked up. I looked up at the sky. I saw clouds merging with one another. I still hadn’t let go of the cabinet. I could sense its weight throughout my entire body, but couldn’t move. I only looked at the clouds. I didn’t want to see anything else. But then I became unable to see them either, for tears were filling my eyes. The sky shook as I looked up at it.

“Of course …” I said. “Of course … of course … could it be any other way?”

No matter that I didn’t want to at all; I bent down my head again to look into that pit and the bones inside. Bones merging into one another like the clouds in the sky. I started to scream.

“Aaahhhhhhh!”

And started yanking on the cabinet.

“Aaahhhhh!”

And I tried to haul the cabinet up the incline.

“Aaahhhhh!”

Maneuvering the cabinet onto the dirt road, I shut up. I took a single step toward the pit and saw everything. Then I immediately stepped back and closed my eyes. But unfortunately, being a chess player, everything I saw engraved on itself on my mind even if didn’t want it to. I thought,
So it turns out this money is a prize for whoever finds what’s underneath
.

Two bodies broiled by the soil, stripped to the bones … two skeletons curled up lying side by side. They still had clothes on. They were covered in dust and disintegrating with time but they were there. Around what was left of their wrists and ankles were chains. Clearly they’d been tied up before being killed and buried. Ahad had been the one to do it. I felt nothing.

Eyes shut, I simply nodded. “Of course!” I said. “Of course! What were you expecting? To see something pleasant? You looked at the sky a minute earlier, see anything pleasant there? Couldn’t forget the money he made off the poor fools, could he? You idiot. There, that’s what he wasn’t able to forget. Open your eyes, just open them!”

I sank to my knees and opened my eyes. Dust covered me. Eyes on the cabinet and the hole, I listened to Ahad. I heard his voice saying there was no need to lay asphalt over Dust Street … I always nodded. “Yes, Dad, that’s right,” I said. “You’re right, who needs it?” Here I was, nodding again. Not much had changed since then.

We had one olive tree. Only that one we called
tree
. Because I called it that. Because I’d planted it. That’s the spot the piece of shit had pointed out to me! “Plant it here!” he’d said. It was all floating past my eyes and around my ears. Everything! I sat there in the dirt road, watching us. Watching a boy plant an olive tree with his father’s hand on his shoulder. Back then, I’d loved Ahad! I had no one but him! That’s what he used to say: “We have no one but each other!” and I would nod.

Now I was nodding again. I was also weeping a little, I think. But only a little! “Don’t cry!” he used to say. “You’re not to cry!” I’d immediately wipe away my tears. That must have been why the word
freedom
always made me think of crying as much as one liked.

My hands shook. I was sure by now that it wasn’t due to the cold or fatigue! Had I frolicked over these corpses all those years? What about my mother? Had she known about these deaths? Maybe that was the reason she’d tried to run away from Ahad! She’d wanted to flee her husband whom she’d found out to be a murderer … yet she’d wanted to get rid of me too, hadn’t she? She was just as cruel as Ahad! In fact, maybe it was my mother who had killed these people! Why not? For someone who considered burying her own child alive, how hard could it be to kill a random stranger?

“No!” I was hollering. “No! I’m not going to end up like them!” Whatever the truth, it had to surface! Who knew how long these people’s families had been searching for them? It all needed to come to light! “Enough!” I yelled. “I’ve had enough!”

I would go to the police. To the gendarmerie! To a prosecutor! Find out who these people are and track down their families, I would tell them. I don’t need any more corpses in my life, I would say. I don’t need any more darkness! I’d even go to the governor!

He’d said, “If there’s anything you need, we’ll be here.” Yes, there was something I needed! I did now! There were to be no more secrets on this plot of land! What I needed was the truth! I’d even touch people if I had to! I’d touch them and beg! “Help me!” I’d say. “There, these are the bodies! Now tell me what happened! What happened to me? What happened to my life?”

I stood and walked to the pit. “Wait here! I’m coming! I’m going to get you out of there! It’ll be all over soon!” I was saying at the same time … but suddenly I was silent. For I’d glimpsed something that choked me up. I stood rooted in my spot. It was something I perhaps should never have seen. But it was too late now. I’d come too close to the pit and seen the piece of fabric wrapped around one of the skeletons. It was green … with a purple flower print … it was the same dress as the one in the only photograph of my mother!

“Why would you want to know that?” Ahad used to say. “So you find out where her grave is, what then?” When I insisted, he’d say, “At a village. Just some village … I wouldn’t know where to look now if I wanted to find it!”

The night I was born, he’d caught my mother at the cemetery and scooped me up before running to the hospital. Then he’d told the first white coat he came across that his wife was at the cemetery, dying. An ambulance went and returned, and Ahad, had said, staring at the body of his wife, “Take care of my son!” Without even waiting for dawn, he took my mother away to bury her. Neither the mosque in Kandalı nor the cemetery occurred to him as he senselessly drove in the truck for hours. Then he’d gone into a village, had had the funereal prayers carried out, and buried her there. That was Ahad’s story!

“No one heard!” he’d say. “No one found out about your mother trying to kill you. Don’t you tell anyone, either! This is our secret. Do you understand me? It’s enough that you know!”

It was enough that I knew! It was enough that I knew that my mother tried to kill me, was that so? I was yelling:

“Is that so, Ahad! No one can know except me, is that it? Then who is this woman? Isn’t she my mother?”

My voice bounced off trees, jarring their trunks and causing the last leaves on their dry branches to fall off. They crumbled as they drifted about and landed on the woman in the green dress.

“Ahad’s story!” I was shouting. “How did I ever believe it? How could I?”

My tears trickled into my mouth, and I gulped each one down like a morphine sulfate capsule. I didn’t want to know or see anything any more. Going down on my knees, I began to drive forward the dirt on the edge of the pit. To push it in by the handful! Hollering and weeping as I did!

“We’re burying holes here, not the dead!” I said. “Mother!” I said. “Ahad!” I said. I shook my head. I turned to the skeleton lying beside my mother and asked, “Who’re
you
?”

I saw the trousers it was wearing. Its shirt … I could tell it was a male but tried to avoid thinking. I shook my head so I wouldn’t understand. I pulled my mother’s photograph from my pocket and tossed it into the pit as well, covering it. All I wanted was to bury and forget it all. To pull an earthen quilt over it all and end the matter. I wasn’t seeing them anymore. Neither the chains around their wrists, nor the clothes, nor my mother’s photograph, nor the bones nor the skulls! I piled the clumps of dirt over them so fast I’d lose my balance and fall over onto my face. I’d get dirt all over. Under my nails, in the roots of my hair, between my teeth, everywhere!

I kept it up until Dust Street was restored to its previous state and closed the hole. There was one last thing I had to do. Pulling Ahad’s note out of my pocket, I stuck it into my mouth, weeping, and ground it up as much as I could between my teeth before swallowing. I was breathless …

I wiped the sweat off my brow with the back of my hand and looked up at the sky. But I saw nothing that was beautiful … truthfully … I saw nothing that was ugly either.