More: A Novel (42 page)

On that narrow street, I was alone with the Arab boy … He was shouting. But I couldn’t understand him. He was speaking in Arabic. He was shaking, walking backward into the wall behind him, and then, startled, stepping forward, only to walk backward again because he couldn’t approach me, either! He rambled and seemed scared nearly to death. He wept, even as he hollered at me and smacked his tears away. He put his hands in his pockets and turned them inside out to show me that they were empty. Two small, white pieces of fabric dangled on either side of his pants as he continued to weep. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to turn and run but was frozen in place. What could I possibly do to someone on my lonesome? Those drunks had been my skin! Now I felt like I’d been flayed! In all the lynchings I’d taken part in over two years, I’d never been left alone with the victim! So I was frozen in place and beside myself, and I cried out. Actually, I just thought aloud. Very loudly:

“I’m scared too! Do you understand me? I’m scared too!”

But the boy understood nothing. In fact, my yelling scared him even more. Right then I felt moisture on my lips as I parted them to say something. It wasn’t sweat. I was weeping. I was also weeping, now. Reaching out my hands, I started walking toward the boy. “Don’t be afraid!” I was saying. “Don’t be afraid!” Perhaps I was talking to myself and not him.

When I advanced upon him, he stepped back, tripped and fell. He sat up but remained on his knees. Hands raised, he shook his head and talked through tears. “Don’t!” I knew he was saying. “Don’t come near me!”

I couldn’t understand him, but I could guess! Yet I was crying at least as hard as he was and wished only that no one on that street had to remain afraid. I grabbed the boy’s hand that was raised to shield himself from me and went down on my knees to try to embrace him. At the same time I raved.

“Don’t be afraid anymore! Don’t be! Please, don’t be afraid! I beg you, don’t be afraid!”

The boy shoved at me with both hands to try to get away. But I wanted to hug him harder, have him lay his head on my bosom and to tell him, “There’s nothing to be afraid of any more!” I wanted him to believe me! For the first time after many years, I was really touching someone …

Then abruptly he shoved me away, squirmed out of my grasp, and got up, taking off with all his might. Like the man who’d run past me in that square at the first lynching … the boy darted past me like a ghost and his footfalls faded like a dream. I remained on my knees, weeping as I stared at the wall at the end of that alley … weeping for Felat … for Cuma … for all those dead Afghanis … for my mother … for Dordor and Harmin … for myself … and even for Ahad …

Now I stood on that noisy street and wept as I watched the man in front of me. He’d been folded into the glass cube for minutes. People surrounded him, applauding, whereas I wanted to take a hammer and smash it … the cube, and my past … to free us both. Him, and myself …

I had three hours till my plane took off. Holding a ticket to Rio de Janeiro I’d bought months in advance, I circled the airport. According to the plans I’d once made, the World Lynch Tour would continue on the continent known as America. But for whatever reason, I didn’t feel like entering the building. Instead I got on a cab and said, “To the nearest pub!” I had time after all.

We halted in a district whose residents, judging by their looks and gaits, were at least as dark as the walls they leaned against, and I got out. I was about to step inside the pub when one of the shadowy figure approached me. He was a pro. He’d figured out my addiction at a glance. We went to a nearby playground instead of the pub. That was where he kept his stash. But he had one shortcoming: I was sure he sampled everything he was selling! He asked me where I was from.

“I’m Turkish,” I said.

“Why didn’t you say so, brother!” he said and we started afresh. “Here I’m thinking, is this guy
Albanian
? Russian? What’s your name?”

“Gaza. Yours?”

“Edip … but around here they call me Oedipus! Oedipus
the Motherfucker
! You dig? Meaning I jump your mom!”

“But that’s when it’s your own moth—”

“
Wha
?”

“Forget it! How much for the stuff then?”

“Hold on, brother! Let’s have a chat! Not everyday a guy comes from the motherland … Want me to roll you something?”

“No thanks! Is this Subutex?”

“Yes! Made in France! Hip shit! I have Buprenex, too, that stuff’s British! Oedipus the Motherfucker! You dig? I do your mom! How many?”

“I’ll tell you how many when you tell me how much it is!”

“OK! Cool! Don’t be mad! What team you on?”

“What?”

“Football! What team?”

“All of them!”

“Come on! I do your mom! How can that be?”

“It can! I’ve been to all their games. How much for the Buprenex?”

“Oedipus the Motherfucker! You dig?”

There were kids right there next to us … on the slide, the swings, the seesaw … especially the slide …

“What?” I said.

Oedipus rambled and swaggered at the same time. In the meantime kids slid off the slide like corpses.

“
The Motherfucker!
You dig?”

“I don’t.”

“
Wha?
Edip! Oedipus! Edip! Oedipus! You dig?”

The kids continued to fall. They laughed, collided with one another, slid. Then one kid started climbing up the slide as soon as it was empty, clutching the sides. The slide was so tall, however, I wasn’t sure he’d make it to the top. Right then I thought of the game Dordor and Harmin used to play where they would wave at the boats carrying tourists. And I also played a game. I put everything I had on the kid making it to the top. All my attention was on him now.

“You buying or not?”

“What? Give me a minute!”

“Want me to roll something?”

As hard as he tried, the kid’s feet kept slipping so he couldn’t go more than halfway up the slide.

“No thanks!”

“I do your mom! You dig?”

And the kid fell down for the last time before giving up. Then he walked towards the ladder like the rest. The slide was empty. I looked at Oedipus
the Motherfucker
. Then I put down my bag and ran. If the kid couldn’t do it, I would! I slipped with my first step onto the slide and fell on the ground. Oedipus was yelling:

“What’re you doing? You fool! Forget the Buprenex, no good for you!”

I laughed where I lay … That was all I could do: laugh. And it felt good … As I got up and dusted myself off, I turned to Oedipus and said, “Keep it!”

“
Wha?
I do your mom!”

“I quit!”

“What?”

“Everything!”

Then I grabbed my bag and ran. Oedipus was still yelling in my wake and, I’m sure, swaggering!

I got in the first cab I saw and said, “Heathrow Airport!” Then I closed my eyes to conjure up once more the frog pictures that had covered that playground.

I was reading a news item I’d been on the lookout for. It was about a Kurd in Switzerland who was murdered by his family for being homosexual. There was a photo underneath the item. The photo of a wedding ceremony. The urn holding the murdered young man’s remains and the blond, bespectacled man carrying it stood before an applauding crowd. The man had a smile on his lips and tears in his eyes. So they’d been able to get married after all.

Looking at the urn, I asked quietly, “Felat, could this be you?” I folded the newspaper shut, trapping my whispered question between its pages. I got to my feet. I opened the carriage lid and retrieved my bag. Taking a few steps down the narrow corridor, I waited for the airplane hatch to open. The entire way, I’d leaned my head against the window and watched the cotton field of clouds and the sunlight irrigating it. “I really have to skydive one day and fall through the clouds,” I’d thought. To fall down to Earth like a raindrop … then, to trickle into the soil like a raindrop and rise again to merge into those clouds … Really, a piece of me was already in those clouds. In fact, they carried pieces from every person who’d ever passed through the world. For every one of them had cried. Even the toughest among them had shed tears at birth. They were in the water circulating within the atmosphere: all the tears of the world … I’d imagined parachuting through my own tears …

The hatch opened and I inched forward. When it was my turn to exit through the hatch, I paused in the threshold and drew the warm air into my lungs. I might not be in Rio de Janeiro, but in a short while I would be setting foot in a land at least as hot.

The Pakistani border guard stamped my passport when he saw my Schengen and USA visas. I was able to enter Pakistan, the pro-Turkey country I descended on without a visa, only thanks to Europe and the USA’s collateral. No surprise there, I thought. No surprise there …

Out of the dozens of cab drivers that swooped down on me on my way out of the airport, I tried to pick the crookedest one. What I really sought was an illegal glint in the eyes. My years in Kandalı had taught me to recognize that glint. I’d grown up under the gaze of illegally glinting eyes. And now, a pair was in front of me once more. Two little devils sat cross-legged in an angelic face and stared at me. As soon as our eyes met, he bolted toward me and spoke in English as he took my bag:

“Welcome to Islamabad!”

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Babar,” he said.

I allowed Babar to lead me past the crowd of one-armed beggars, three-way pickpockets, and quadruple-tongued touters, moving through the path he cleared. We walked until we halted in front of a thirty-year-old Mercedes, and Babar said, “There, that’s my palace! Mobile-palace!”

Except one of the palace’s gates was jammed shut. We tried the other one. I ended up in the backseat listening to Babar talk at me in the rearview mirror.

“There’s this hotel,” he said. “A very good hotel! My uncle’s hotel. An absolute palace!”

Babar was a palace freak.

“All right,” I said. “Let’s go.”

The car, with a webbed crack spreading over its windshield, started up, and we were on our way. Babar chattered ceaselessly and likely speculated about the things he could sell me. Was it a woman I wanted? Or a boy? Drugs? An antique carpet? I decided I’d save Babar the trouble. I knew for sure what I wanted:

“I want to go to Afghanistan.”

He laughed and said:

“Then I’d say you’ve gotten off at the wrong stop!”

“You’re right,” I said. “There’s been a mistake … Can you fix it?”

He didn’t reply straight away. He considered. Asked the first thing that came to his mind:

“You’re a soldier?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a tourist.”

He laughed again.

“If you’re not a warrior, you’ll be bored in Afghanistan. War all day long! Nothing else! Even the journalists don’t go there anymore. They’re all here. They hang around in Islamabad to write about the war in Afghanistan. Because it’s all the same!”

“Maybe I’ll find something to do,” I said. “But I have to get past the border first … preferably without showing my passport …”

“If it’s heroin you want, I’ll get it for you!”

He assumed I was here to get my share of Afghanistan’s notorious heroin. It was my turn to laugh.

“No thank you … I just quit!”

“Then get a visa!” he said. “I can get it for you … I can take care of it!”

The profit margin of crossing the border illegally must be so small he was trying to point me toward other transactions. But I knew what I wanted. Grasping both seats, I pulled myself forward and bent toward Babar’s right ear to say:

“I have a friend. An Afghani … he came to me as an illegal immigrant. So I need to go to him as an illegal immigrant, get it?”

He didn’t, but it didn’t matter. He was a true salesman and he couldn’t let me leave until he sold me something. It was easy enough to nod as if he understood. So Babar nodded and talked at the same time.

“There’s this truck! My uncle’s truck! You can jump on and leave! Takes apples to Afghanistan. He’ll take you too. But it’ll cost you! Because this truck, it’s like a palace!”

“Deal,” I said.

He tried his luck a final time:

“Want a woman?”

Once again, I laughed … “From now on, I’m an apple, Babar. What would I do with a woman?”

“Well, there you go! I’ll get you a woman so she can bite you!”

“Forget it!” I said. “Wouldn’t want to get anyone kicked out of paradise!”

He didn’t get this either, but he laughed. This was why I liked salesmen. Life was always a breeze with them and not everything had to mean something. Right then I thought of all the people who cashed in their lives like poker chips for a chance to get into heaven. “Let them all wear down the gates to heaven,” I thought. Personally I wouldn’t go somewhere I was kicked out of. Ever! I wasn’t that audacious. Not that audacious! Not anymore …

We’d arrived at the hotel. The hotel, owned by one of Babar’s countless fake uncles, was so decrepit it was leaning against the buildings on either side to stay upright. Babar, however, saw something else:

“What d’you think? Like a palace, isn’t it?”

It was my turn to pretend I understood. It was the least I could do. Along with Babar, I beheld the palace that wasn’t there.

“Yes!” I said. “An absolute palace!”

The place all those people had come from, passing through the reservoir in Kandalı to get to the West, that was where I was now: the East. In the Peshawar region on the Afghanistan border, the Pakistani army clashed with the Taliban, the blood of the casualties spilling into the Bara River. Bara went on to spill into the Kabul, which went on to dry out on its way to other rivers. Then whatever was left of the desert spilled into the Indian Ocean. Considering how many of the world’s battlefields were situated next to rivers, the oceans must be filled with fish that fed on human blood. And I sat on the lawn of my hotel and fed on one of them.

The truck Babar arranged for me was due any minute. I was trying to replenish myself before the long journey ahead. Even the migrating birds had changed their route due to the smoke billowing out of Peshawar. So we would pass through the border at a point farther south to head toward Kandahar. There would be no apples in the bed of the truck … just me and some artillery … according to Babar, several crates of Kalashnikov rifles awaited their owners in Afghanistan. They must be giddy with anticipation. I was sure they were eager as children, waiting for the moment they would get to pick up their Kalashnikovs and fire at everything that moved. After all, a Kalashnikov was never merely a Kalashnikov!