“Oh, come now. This isn’t a natural spring, my dear fellow. They pump in city water, through a pipe.”
The man turned to the woman:
“They use pipes to fill it up. They lay down pipes along the bottom. You see?”
Then to me:
“But then … well … the water bubbles up?”
“On holidays or when the weather’s warm … But it’s cold now so it’s not running.”
To the woman:
“It’s not bubbling because it’s cold. You see? They bubble it up in the hot weather to cool people off …”
He turned to me:
“OK but … then they throw plastic balls on top and the water keeps the balls up in the air, keeps tossing them up in the air. That’s what they do, right?”
He must be in his fifties, she’s not much younger … And here they are, prattling about fountains and balls … They have more of the child in them than I do. I’m happy to be free of the pain of not seeing you; I feel fine now, absolutely fine. The woman leans over, listening. We talk about Taksim, other mosques, the city squares, the Bosphorus, the Maiden’s Tower. Then the conversation dries up. We are silent for a while. I begin to search for a line of poetry to recite to you. A line about rainy weather, mountain roads, mules, bells … it must be out there, somewhere — don’t such things exist?
Now the man is telling the woman about the Maiden’s Tower, the Haydarpaşa Train Station, the Selimiye Barracks …
Then the three of us fall silent again, as if to mull over the important things we’ve just discussed. Except, for me, there’s no doubt about it. There cannot be a thought I’m not ready to entertain. I can see you coming through the gate. Running over to me. I can see us arm in arm.
Just then the man says:
“Does the water freeze in winter?”
What can I say to that? I feel my sadness leave me again:
“It freezes,” I say. “It freezes and the children skate on it.”
He turns to the woman:
“He says it freezes in the winter, children skate on it.”
What do you think, my love? Does the Beyazıt Fountain freeze over in the winter? Anyway, that’s what I told Sergeant Murtaza and his wife Hacer Ana. Yes, I said, it freezes over.
Rage: A Human Habit
I tied him up tight, hand and foot. I sat him down in the corner. His eyes were flashing. He was shaking, rocking with rage. His face was yellow. But I was certain it wasn’t fear that did that. It was fury, pure fury. There was no point, though, in making him angry. But that wasn’t because I feared he might do something. Or pounce on me, if I untied him. That rage would dissolve the moment I set him free. What about me, though? I wasn’t about to give up on him. I liked seeing him cornered, with nowhere to go.
“What’s it to you, anyway? What’s it to you?” He was screaming.
“What’s it to me?” I raged. “You’re asking what this means to me? Look around you. Every house and garden in this city is in danger. No one can sleep easy …”
I knew I was exaggerating, but I kept going.
“Come on now, it’s not as bad as all that,” he managed to say.
I hit right back at him.
“You say it’s not so bad, but just by saying that, you’re admitting how bad you really are,” I said. Of course, it doesn’t look so bad to you. Just think of the other side of the coin for a minute: a coal man’s summer, an iceman’s winter. Skiing down a summer slope, swimming in a winter sea.…” My imagination ran out.
“So look,” I said instead. “You have no right. That’s why tying you up is — ”
“Set me free!” he screamed. “Set me free!”
“Do you repent?” I asked.
I knew he couldn’t. He didn’t have it in him to pretend. He calmed down:
“You’re exaggerating, sir,” he said.
For a while neither of us spoke. He saw now that I was not going to waver. He began to plead with me. He was sorry. May God make me an Arab if I ever do this again!
I pretended to think it over. Then I gave him my most poisonous smile:
“You think I’m going to fall for that?” I said. “You don’t mean a word you say. You’re a liar. A chicken ass! Don’t think you can hide from me! You don’t feel any remorse — you can’t.”
I stopped. I glared down at him.
“Don’t you know lying is wrong?” I said.
“Yes, you’re right. It’s wrong,” he said. “But you’re being too hard on me. You know as well as I do this is something you can’t promise not to do again.”
“A sinner repents,” I said.
“What do I know about sin?” he replied.
“You’re evil,” I said. “Pure evil.”
“Huh! Now you’re talking. Tell me what makes this evil.”
I gave a few examples. He wasn’t convinced. He was determined to prove to me there was nothing evil in this.
“Evil,” he said. “You keep calling it evil. But when will you understand that you’re just masking real evil, and with all these excuses you’re only setting it up,” he said. Then he went on, “In the past I felt like you didn’t know what you were doing and I knew you had a pure heart. But here’s what I can see: you’re masking the really big evil here, masking it with these little, innocent evils,” he said, and so the preaching began.
I shut him up.
My exact words were: “Shut up, dog. Shut up and tell me exactly what you think the really big evil is.”
“The really big evil is injustice.”
“And we who feel wronged …”
“Look who’s so high and mighty! But you have a soft spot for pickpockets and thieves. Even murderers are better than me in your eyes. You fear them. When they’ve paid their dues, when they’re back on the streets and walk back into the coffeehouse, you stand up to greet them. Oh, I’ve seen plenty of that with my own eyes — mayors and rich men and bigwigs, standing up like that in coffeehouses, for murderers …”
“Stop spouting nonsense,” I said. “Take a good long look at yourself instead.”
“I’m not doing anyone any harm,” he said. “If I knew I was doing harm …”
“With this sort of thing, there’s no difference between knowing and not knowing,” I said.
But now he was past listening:
“By inventing all these small evils, you’ve turned the great evil, the real powerhouse evil into desperation. But in my world everything is unjust, everywhere we turn, there’s evil, a great powerhouse of evil. And now you’re attacking my desperation, my only hope, my only source of pleasure, my only joy, my only …”
“Your only sin.”
“Yes, my only harmless, innocent sin.”
“I tied you up tight, didn’t I?”
With that I untied him.
“So go,” I said. “Go do what you want. May God help you!”
He was gone in a flash. He was practically flying. You’d think that Chance itself was waiting breathlessly at the door. What were the odds of his avoiding instant death? One in ten, I thought. One in ten.
To cut down those odds, I ran out the back way. I didn’t go to every last place he might visit, I just went to a few. Here and there I was able to reduce his chances to one in a hundred.
“A word to the wise,” I said. “I’ve let him loose, he’s outside again, he’ll be here any minute.”
“If he wants to come, let him come,” they said.
“What do you mean, let him come? How can you say that? After all those fine words about honor and dignity? He’s a menace to society!”
“You’re a real piece of work,” they said.
They weren’t taking me seriously, I could see that. Really, they weren’t equipped to take it any other way. So I played it differently, to make it worth their while to stop him.