Snow (8 page)

—Yes, it’s clear.

—Then answer this question: What good can come to this country if women uncover their heads? Give me one good reason. Say something you believe with all your heart. Say, for example, that by uncovering themselves they’ll get Europeans to start treating them like human beings. At least then I’ll understand what your motives are and I won’t shoot you. I’ll let you go.

—My dear child. I have a daughter myself. She doesn’t wear a head scarf. I don’t interfere with her decision, just as I don’t interfere with my wife’s decision to wear one. 

—Why did your daughter decide to uncover herself—does she want to become a film star?

—She’s never said anything of the sort. She’s in Ankara studying public relations. But she’s been a tremendous support to me since I’ve come under attack over this head-scarf issue. Whenever I get upset about the things people say, whenever I am slandered or threatened, whenever I have to face the wrath of my enemies—or people like you, who have every right to be angry—she calls me from Ankara and—

—And she says, Grit your teeth, Dad. I’m going to be a film star.

—No, son, she doesn’t say that. She says, Father dear, if I had to go into a classroom full of covered girls, I wouldn’t dare go in uncovered. I’d wear a head scarf even if I didn’t want to.

—So what if she didn’t want to cover herself, what harm could come of it?

—Honestly, I couldn’t tell you. You asked me to give you a reason.

—So tell me, you shameless brute. Do you mean to tell me that this was your thinking when you allowed the police to club these devout girls who have covered their heads at God’s command? Are you trying to tell me that you drove them to suicide just to please your daughter?

—There are plenty of women in Turkey who think the way my daughter does.

—When ninety percent of women in this country wear head scarves, it’s hard to see who these film stars think they’re speaking for. You might be proud to see your daughter exposing herself, you shameless tyrant, but get this into your head. I might not be a professor, but I know a lot more about this subject than you do.

—My good man, please don’t point your gun at me. You’re very upset. If the gun goes off, you’ll live to regret it.

—Why would I regret it? Why would I have spent two days traveling through this miserable snow if not to wipe out an infidel? As the Holy Koran states, it is my duty to kill any tyrant who visits cruelty on believers. But because I feel sorry for you I’m going to give you one last chance. Give me just one reason why your conscience doesn’t bother you when you order covered women to uncover themselves, and I swear I won’t shoot you.

—When a woman takes off her head scarf, she occupies a more comfortable place in society and gets more respect.

—That might be what that film-star daughter of yours thinks, but the opposite is true. Head scarves protect women from harassment, rape, and degradation. It’s the head scarf that gives women respect and a comfortable place in society. We’ve heard this from many women who’ve chosen later in life to cover themselves. Women like the old belly dancer Melahat Sandra. The veil saves women from the animal instincts of men in the street. It saves them the ordeal of entering beauty contests to com-pete with other women. They don’t have to live like sex objects, they don’t have to wear makeup all day. As the American Black Muslim professor Marvin King has already noted, if the celebrated film star Elizabeth Taylor had spent the last twenty years covered, she would not have had to worry so much about being fat. She would not have ended up in a mental hospital. She might have known some happiness. Pardon me, sir. May I ask you a question? Why are you laughing, sir? Do you think I’m trying to be funny?
(Silence.)
Go ahead and tell me, you shameless atheist. Why are you laughing?

—My dear child, please believe me! I’m not laughing! Or if I did laugh, I was laughing out of nerves.

—No, you weren’t. You were laughing with conviction!

—Please believe me, I feel nothing but compassion for all the people in this country—like you, like those covered girls—who are suffering for this cause.

—Sucking up to me will get you nowhere. I’m not suffering one bit. But you’re going to suffer now for laughing about those girls who committed suicide. And now that you’ve laughed at them, there’s no chance you’ll show remorse. So let me tell you where things stand now. It’s quite some time now since the Freedom Fighters for Islamic Justice condemned you to death. They reached their verdict in Tokat five days ago and sent me here to execute the sentence. If you hadn’t laughed, I might have relented and forgiven you. Take this piece of paper. Let’s hear you read out your death sentence.
(Silence.)
Stop crying like a woman. Read it out in a good strong voice. Hurry up, you shameless idiot. If you don’t hurry up, I’m going to shoot.

—“I, Professor Nuri Yılmaz, am an atheist”—my dear child, I’m not an atheist!

—Keep reading.

—My child, you’re not going to shoot me while I’m reading this, are you?

—If you don’t keep reading it, I’m going to shoot you.

—“I confess to being a pawn in a secret plan to strip the Muslims of the secular Turkish Republic of their religion and their honor and thereby to turn them into slaves of the West. As for the girls who would not take off their head scarves, because they were devout and mindful of what is written in the Koran, I visited such cruelty on them that one girl could bear it no more and committed suicide. . . .” My dear child, with your permission, I’d like to make an objection here. I’d be grateful if you could pass this on to the committee that sent you. This girl didn’t hang herself because she was barred from the classroom. And it wasn’t because of the pressure her father put on her either. MIT has already told us she was suffering from a broken heart.

—That’s not what she said in her suicide note.

—Please forgive me, but my child, I think you should know—please lower that gun—that even before she got married, this uneducated girl was naïve enough to give herself to a policeman twenty-five years her senior. And—it’s an awful pity—but it was after he’d told her he was married and had no intention of marrying her—

—Shut up, you disgrace. That’s something your prostitute of a daughter would do.

—Don’t do this, my son, don’t do this. If you shoot me, you’re only darkening your own future.

—Say you’re sorry.

—I’m sorry, son. Don’t shoot.

—Open your mouth. I want to shove the gun inside. Now put your finger on top of mine and pull the trigger. You’ll still be an infidel but at least you’ll die with honor.
(Silence.)

—My child, look what I’ve come to. At my age, I’m crying. I’m begging you. Take pity on me. Take pity on yourself. You’re still so young. And you’re going to become a murderer.

—Then pull the trigger yourself. See for yourself how much suicide hurts.

—My child, I’m a Muslim. I’m opposed to suicide.

—Open your mouth.
(Silence.)
Don’t cry like that. Didn’t it ever cross your mind that one day you’d have to pay for what you’ve done? Stop crying or I’ll shoot.

(The voice of the old waiter in the distance.)

—Should I bring your tea to this table, sir?

—No, thank you. I’m about to leave.

—Don’t look at the waiter. Keep reading your death sentence.

—My son, please forgive me.

—I said read.

—“I am ashamed of all the things I have done. I know I deserve to die and in the hope that God Almighty will forgive me . . .”

—Keep reading.

—My dear child. Let this old man cry for a few moments. Let me think about my wife and my daughter one last time.

—Think about the girls whose lives you destroyed. One had a nervous breakdown, four were kicked out of school in their third year. One committed suicide. The ones who stood trembling outside the doors of your school all came down with fevers and ended up in bed. Their lives were ruined.

—I am so very sorry, my dear, dear child. But what good will it do if you shoot me and turn yourself into a murderer? Think of that.

—All right. I will.
(Silence.)
I’ve given it some thought, sir. And here’s what I’ve worked out.

—What?

—I’d been wandering around the miserable streets of Kars for two days and getting nowhere. Then I decided it must be fate, so I bought my return ticket to Tokat. I was drinking my last glass of tea when—

—My child, if you thought you could kill me and then escape on the last bus out of Kars, let me warn you. The roads are closed due to the snow. The six o’clock bus has been canceled. Don’t live to regret this.

—Just as I was turning around, God sent you into the New Life Pastry Shop. And if God’s not going to forgive you, why should I? Say your last words. Say, “God is great.”

—Sit down, son. I’m warning you—this state of ours will catch you all—and hang you.

—Say, “God is great.”

—Calm down, my child. Stop. Sit down. Think it over one more time. Don’t pull that trigger. Stop.
(The sound of a gunshot. The sound of a chair
pushed out.)
Don’t, my son!
(Two more gunshots. Silence. A groan. The sound of a
television. One more gunshot. Silence.)
 

He Kissed My Hand

love, religion, and poetry: muhtar’s sad story

After Ipek left him at the entrance to Halıl Pasa Arcade and returned to the hotel, Ka waited before climbing the stairs to the second-floor branch headquarters of the Prosperity Party; he spent some time mingling with the apprentices, the unemployed, and the idle poor who were loitering in the corridors on the ground floor. In his mind’s eye he kept seeing the director of the Institute of Education lying on the floor in his death agony; racked by remorse and guilt, he told himself that he should be phoning some of the contacts he’d made that morning: the assistant chief of police, perhaps, or someone in Istanbul, or the news office of the
Republican,
or someone else he knew. But even though the building was teeming with teahouses and barbershops, he couldn’t find a single place with a telephone.

Still searching, he went into an establishment whose door read THE SOCIETY OF ANIMAL ENTHUSIASTS. There was a telephone here but someone was using it. And by now he was no longer sure he wanted to make a call after all. Going through the half-open door on the other side of the front office, he found a hall whose walls were decorated with pictures of roosters; in the middle of the hall was a small fighting ring. Suddenly Ka realized he was in love with Ipek. And realizing that this love would determine the rest of his life, he was filled with dread.

Among the rich animal enthusiasts who enjoyed cockfights, there was one man who would remember very well how Ka came into the hall that day, sat down on one of the empty benches in the viewing area, and appeared to lose himself in thought. He drank a glass of tea as he read the list of sporting rules posted in big letters on the wall: 

No rooster touched without permission of its owner.

A rooster that goes down 3 times in a row and doesn’t peck its
beak will be declared a loser.

Owners may take 3 minutes to treat a wounded spur and 1 minute
to dress a broken claw.

In the event a rooster falls down and his rival steps on his neck, the
fallen rooster will be brought back to his feet and the fight will
continue.

In the event of electricity outage there will be a 15-minute time-out,
by which time—if power is not restored—the match will be
canceled.

When he left the Society of Animal Enthusiasts at a quarter past two, Ka was trying to figure out how he might induce Ipek to escape with him from Kars. The lights were out now in the old lawyer Muzaffer Bey’s People’s Party office, which Ka now noticed was only three doors down from Muhtar’s Prosperity Party—separated by the Friends’ Teahouse and the Green Tailor. So much had happened to Ka since his visit to the lawyer that morning that, even as he entered the branch headquarters of the Prosperity Party, Ka could scarcely believe he was back on the same floor.

Ka had not seen Muhtar for twelve years. After embracing him and kissing him on both cheeks, Ka noticed that he now had a large belly and his hair was thinning and turning gray, but this was more or less what Ka had expected. Even in university days, there had been nothing special about Muhtar. Now, as then, one of those cigarettes he chain-smoked was hanging from the corner of his mouth.

“They’ve killed the director of the Institute of Education,” Ka said.

“He didn’t die; they just said so on the radio,” said Muhtar. “How do you know this?”

“He was sitting at the other end of the place Ipek called you from,” said Ka. “The New Life Pastry Shop.” He told Muhtar what they’d seen.

“Have you called the police?” asked Muhtar. “What did you do next?”

Ka told him that Ipek had gone back to the hotel and he had come straight here.

“There are only five days until the election, and everyone knows we’re going to win, so the state is knitting a sock to pull over our heads. It’s prepared to say anything to bring us down,” said Muhtar. “All across Turkey, our support of the covered girls is the key expression of our political vision. Now someone’s tried to assassinate the wretch who refused to let those girls past the entrance of the Institute of Education, and a man who was at the scene of the crime comes straight to our party headquarters without even stopping to call the police.” Muhtar paused to compose himself and then added, with some delicacy, “I’d appreciate it if you called the police right now. Please tell them everything.” He passed him the receiver as a proud host might offer a refreshment. Once Ka had taken it, Muhtar looked up and dialed the number.

“I’ve already met the assistant chief of police. His name’s Kasım Bey,” Ka said.

“Where do you know him from?” Muhtar asked, in a suspicious voice that irritated Ka.

“He was the first person Serdar Bey, the newspaper publisher, took me to meet this morning,” Ka said, but before he could continue, the girl at the switchboard had connected him to the assistant chief of police. Ka told him exactly what he had seen at the New Life Pastry Shop. Muhtar lurched toward him and, with a clumsy gesture that was faintly flirtatious, pressed his ear up next to Ka’s and tried to listen in. To help him hear better, Ka lifted the receiver and held it closer to Muhtar’s ear. Now they were so close they could feel each other’s breath on their faces. Although Ka had no idea why Muhtar would want to be part of his conversation with the assistant chief of police, instinct told him to go along. He explained that he had not seen the assailant’s face but described his build as tiny, and then he took care to repeat these facts.