~ ~ ~
I’ll swoop from the huts like a bird,
I’m a Garbage Hill youth,
See how I’ll spread the word
For Cemal the Kurd.
In the early spring, Kurd Cemal knocked on Garbage Grocer’s door, now Garbage Chief, carrying a white-flowering branch as long as his arm and accompanied by two of his gunmen. The story went that the huts on the garbage hills were originally founded ‘in Kurd Cemal’s name’. He was the one responsible for the restless spreading of the huts. One morning he had come to the garbage heaps, far down Flower Hill at that time but now submerged under a rash of huts. The place was like a devil’s lair; not a soul was to be seen but the truck drivers. Round about was pure desolation. As the early sun struck the mounds, Kurd Cemal could hardly see for the gleam and glitter of fragments of tin and broken glass. He compared the surrounding scene with his own village and wept, and when he had wiped away his tears which dripped on the glitter and mingled with the water trickling down the garbage, he established his authority on the slope. He divided up all the neighbouring land into plots and sold them. After the wrecking of the original huts had stopped, one by one he gathered the young layabouts who wandered aimlessly about the huts and distributed knuckledusters, money and guns. The young fellows called themselves ‘Pot Belly’ and ‘Dragon’. They were swift as seabirds swooping from the roofs, as they opened the way for Kurd Cemal. They learned to say — ‘Here in garbage land we’re the ones to lay down the rules and regulations’. Gunfire replaced the noise of wreckage and demolition, and so began the ‘Youthful Days’ of the huts on the garbage hills.
From the first day of Flower Hill, Kurd Cemal’s name turned up in thousands of different stories. There was no one who did not know how he would keep his finger on the trigger and fire Bang! Bang! and how he would dress up in winter in a felt coat and in spring would carry a flowering branch. He appeared for the first time knocking at Garbage Chief’s door and Garbage Chief humbled himself and stood up to meet him. But while Kurd Cemal and his henchmen were deep in conversation with Garbage Chief, the people of Flower Hill suddenly rose in a body and poured into the street. When they heard that Kurd Cemal was to become a member of the Town Council they came running up, and the unemployed formed into a long line. The women with their water cans made a circle round Garbage Chief’s red-tiled hut and forced Kurd Cemal to stop beside the water tankers. To rouse his sympathy they pretended to pick a quarrel and tore at each other’s hair and faces. Kurd Cemal applauded them as they made this show of beating each other up. He announced his wish that Flower Hill be given shining new water taps as soon as possible. He promised the men who stood in his way asking for work in the factories that he would find them jobs when he joined the Town Council. Then he and his men marched along Panty Way and, as they disappeared from sight, Garbage Chief’s front door, garden and hut interior filled with people. But Garbage Chief was silent, his lips sealed with a mouthful of concrete, and not a word of his conversation with Kurd Cemal leaked out. All the same, Kurd Cemal’s comings and goings on Flower Hill turned into a rumour that he would open a cinema in the middle of the garbage hills.
But Kurd Cemal was on the point of opening up a brand new squatters’ quarter, not in the middle of the garbage hills but where they ended. Finding a way round bureaucracy, he promised Garbage Chief money and land for a single hut and asked him to spread the news in the factories and workshops of Rubbish Road that the forest land beyond the garbage hills was being turned into heath, but to say not a word to the Flower Hill folk. While Flower Hill was approving velvet curtains and black leather armchairs for Kurd Cemal’s cinema, Garbage Chief was going the rounds of the factories and workshops of Rubbish Road. ‘Anyone who wants can become a hut owner here’, he said, whispering Kurd Cemal’s name in the ear of the workers who wanted to own a hut. Then he sold building plots in Kurd Cemal’s name.
One night the workers left the factory and scattered to the forest land behind the garbage hills; they dug up the heath and levelled the earth. Then they set up random huts from breezeblocks. Four days later they were completely surrounded by menacing trucks and behind the garbage hills, that ‘film’ ran for days in Kurd Cemal’s ‘cinema’.
Welcome huts
Good riddance trucks
While the glittering screen of the garbage hills showed the smiling faces of weary workers, the cement dust stopping up Garbage Chief’s mouth blew away through the streets of Flower Hill, and they heard how he had taken money from the workers. The people laughed for days at their own innocence and henceforth all such swindles were known as ‘Kurd Cemal’s Cinema’, a name which spread to other neighbourhoods and factories. Tricks were played so thick and fast it became a byword and soon the name ‘garbage hill’ was forgotten among the hut people and replaced by ‘Kurd Cemal’s Cinema’. In that cinema, days merged with darkness, darkness with the moon, the moon with the stars.
Spring passed into summer.
~ ~ ~
Şerme, Şerme! Wakey wakey!
Rust-stained face
And sweatcloth ready.
Şerme, Şerme! Wakey wakey!
When the foreman of the nightshirt appeared in the corridor of the refrigerator factory, the workers used to shout a warning, ‘Şerme! Şerme!’ so no one would be caught napping. They would throw bits of tin at any sleeping worker and make a noise to wake him up.
For Bald Ali these noises in the assembly line which could make a sleeper miss a heartbeat and jolt him awake to the conveyor belt were no more than a blanket. So he never woke up to the yells of ‘Şerme! Şerme!’ When the foreman shook him by the shoulders, he stretched out his feet against the wall and buried his head among the sacks. He thrust his bent elbow at the foreman, who took his card number to file a report. Then, after making a silent tour of the assembly line, the foreman stood by one of the workers who was hanging components on the conveyor and checked his speed by his watch. When he saw drops of sweat dripping on the conveyor belt from the cloths round the workers’ necks, he pursed his lips, afraid he might be tempted to say ‘take it easy’, and hurried out. After he had gone, swearing and laughter broke out along the sliding conveyor belt. One of the workers picked up a longish wire, tied a rag on one end and dipped it in turpentine. It was a tail for Bald Ali, which he lit with a match, hooked on, then slipped away. Ali caught fire and fell on the floor, his clothes smouldering. ‘Fuck you all!’ he shouted aflame. Breathless, he tore off his shirt and trousers and stood stark naked. He bit his hand in fury and as he explored his hurts he began to cry.