By the time Garbage Owner’s white car had driven down Rubbish Road and disappeared from sight, all hell had broken loose before the cardboard houses as screams and shouts from the gypsies rose and fell. The gypsies banded behind Mahmut their chief, charged at the garbage, and the huge mound which stood beside the cardboard houses was hurled noisily in gleaming pieces in the direction of the huts. The noise of gunfire from the policemen as they aimed in the air was drowned in the rumble of the collapsing garbage.
After the policemen had scattered in the Flower Hill streets, a ditch was dug on the garbage slopes. A row of bears lumbered to the ditch and jumped in. And in a flash, cans, stones, bottles piled up at the back of the ditch. As the policemen made a move towards the gypsies, the stones and cans and bottles were thrown to the bears who hurled them all at the policemen. The hut people gathered on their rooftops to see how well the bears had been trained. But to Crazy Dursun the bears’ endeavour seemed tragic; he knelt down crying, chin in hands. While the bears were brandishing stones with all their might, he jumped from the roof in tears, and crossing to the gypsies gathered stones to help the bears.
The hut people who had climbed up to their rooftops to watch, leapt down when the policemen left and rushed to the cardboard houses. Gypsies and hut people mingled together, but Crazy Dursun stole away from the uproar and went back to his post on his mother’s roof. Once again he fixed his eyes on the cardboard houses and gazed at the garbage hills through a mist of tears. Silence settled on Flower Hill. Well after midnight the gypsies and the hut people fell into a deep sleep.
Three of Garbage Owner’s men came to the garbage mounds and one crept up to a cardboard house and silently set it on fire. Flames leapt from house to house. The seagulls’ feathers frizzled, the bears’ hides were flayed off their backs and the stench of burned flesh and feathers enveloped Flower Hill as it awoke to the gypsies’ shrieks.
Out in the street they saw the gypsies walking round and round the ashes which had been their homes and the birds circled overhead. Half asleep, they made for the garbage mounds where Chief Mahmut sat by the dead bears and gypsies, surrounded by the survivors. The hut people drew round them at a distance and watched in silence as the gypsies struck palm to palm and muttered in Romany. The dead bears and gypsies were buried up on the garbage mounds.
New cardboard homes were set up as the ashes of the dead blew through the Flower Hill streets. Tomato paste was smeared on the seagulls’ burns; their wings turned red.
~ ~ ~
Snow fell.
The Flower Hill people woke from their deep shivering sleep to the booming of the Ramazan drum. Behind the drumbeats lights sprang up, and the drummer walked the streets of Flower Hill turning darkness into a road of light. As he flourished his drumstick he opened his mouth and chanted some folk verse to the huts still buried in darkness. But just as he was about to beat his drum he heard a voice from the dark, ‘Get the Hell out of here!’ His stick remained poised in the air as a shower of oaths poured on his drum, his drumstick, his hand, his face and the noise he was making. It was impossible to pass beyond the barrier of oaths so he retreated in silence and in the early hours of the morning he beat on the ornate doors of the Flower Hill mosques with their tin minarets. Rallying a crowd of squatters behind him he made for the district he had just been chased from. In the cold snowy daylight they could hardly see one another but a slanging match broke out. The hut people got hold of the idea that the man who cursed the drummer was one of the Kızılbaș sect, and Flower Hill was soon agog with an ever-growing story about the Kızılbaș.
Daughter with father,
Mother with son,
All whirled about.
When the dancing was over
The candle went out.
By noon the next day the ritual assemblies of the Kızılbaș, their Elders and disciples, their sacred tree and the gifts presented to the Elders, were no longer secret from the rest of the hut people. They discovered that the Kızılbaș of Flower Hill belonged to fifteen different fraternities. They learned by heart the name of each fraternity, called after its presiding Elder, and the birthplace of every Kızılbaș member. Once they had established where the disciples lived they moved on to scrutinize their sexual habits. Debate raged on how ‘the candle went out’ during the Kızılbaș rituals, while the sun withdrew, shedding a dim half-light as suggestive as the tone of their conversation.
By the time it grew dark, they had divided on the question of whether the Kızılbaș fasted or not. Those who claimed that they ate only raisins during Ramazan went back to their huts after the evening prayers, and the rest who had no such conviction about the Kızılbaș went the drummer’s way, to gather all the musical instruments they could collect from the huts.
A band was formed from a baǧlama, a tambourine, a banjo, a fiddle, a zurna and a drum. As though they were off to a wedding they headed straight for where the Kızılbaş lived, the squatter musicians in front and the troublemakers in the rear. They played until daybreak, marching up and down in front of the doors of the Kızılbaş community. The man who had cursed the drummer panicked and boarded up his door and window. Demonstrating the famous Kızılbaş tolerance he lay sweating under five layers of quilt, taking refuge in daydreams. As he fell to dreaming the music stopped and a quarrel broke out between the squatters who had rushed indignantly out of doors, and those parading up and down the road. The quarrel grew with the speed of the light that was now illuminating the huts. Those hut people who had come from many different villages and settled down together now formed a united front. While the fight dragged on, the one and only coffeehouse which served the Flower Hill Industries fell into the hands of the Kızılbaş squatters, and that was how during the brief nights and long days they spent together in their huts the rest of the hut people gained deeper knowledge of the truth about the Kızılbaş of Flower Hill.
Only after a whole year, when the community had settled down, was Flower Hill ready for a visit from the Kızılbaş Elders. A long time ago the Elders had come to the city having heard that the Kızılbaş had huts there and were preparing wonderful ceremonies in their honour. Unaware that these Elders who circulated the huts begging for handouts of money and gifts had been turned away by the squatters, an Elder and his son set off from a distant city with the same idea and came to Flower Hill, claiming blood ties. He also brought along an impressive stick to beat the Kızılbaş who did not observe their duties. His followers believed he was held high in God’s esteem as he had eaten nothing but butter and cheese from the day he was born. But on Flower Hill his stick was of no use to him. No one took any notice even when the squatter in whose home the Elder was a guest spread the word that this Elder had long ago predicted men going to the moon and the invention of television. The squatter’s hospitality to the Elder and his son went on for months, but when he realized that no one had any respect for them he finally turned them out. For a time they wandered about appearing at people’s doors hoping for handouts. The Elder left his stick as a keepsake and withdrew to be with God, never to return. His son took up business, put aside his father’s stick and began to sell fake blue jeans.
The other squatters had not the slightest change of heart when they heard about this sad turn of events. The quarrel which had gone on in secret broke out into occasional fisticuffs in the alleys. Gradually all their anger focussed on Flower Hill’s single coffeehouse which the Kızılbaş had taken over as their property, swelled into fury at their own ineffectual raids on the coffeehouse, and eventually exploded. Fifteen coffeehuts sprang up in fifteen separate corners of Flower Hill in a single day, and rage and quarrels were replaced by gambling and coffeehouses. Gamblers from other squatter areas began to frequent Flower Hill and rumour had it that a famous gambler, nicknamed ‘Lado’ on the garbage slopes, would be moving to the hill.