Three women took Yildirim away and pandemonium broke out in front of the coffeehouse. News took wing from Flower Hill that Lado had been knifed, and whoever was still asleep woke up. Lado, dripping blood, escaped by the back door, carried off by gamblers from another neighbourhood.
~ ~ ~
The morning after Lado ran away, there was a raid in the graveyard. Flower Hill, which had enjoyed its gambling joints and its fifteen coffeehouses as a result of the row over the Ramezan drum, once again displayed its ingenuity, managing to acquire a gang of marauders who stripped the huts of all their possessions, while the people were in hot pursuit of the meaning of ‘anarchist’.
Repeated gunfire was heard from the graveyard, then it dwindled to a single shot and was silent. Three seagulls flying towards the silence heard that three young strangers hiding in the graveyard had come to Flower Hill to kill anyone who ventured out at night. The birds flew back screeching to the huts on the hill.
While the three young corpses were being removed from Flower Hill, most of the squatters laughed at these ‘bird-word’ rumours. With the music of Lado’s name still ringing in their ears, very few admitted to liking the foreign word ‘anarchist’. Very few ever listened intently to the radio or cast an eye on a newspaper. Since the tough guys of the garbage hills had been trying to free the community for some time from the fear of being shot or killed, the passion for gambling outweighed the rumours. Fiery words soon died down after the graveyard episode but long before Flower Hill’s name was inscribed on the map of the garbage hills, an underlying fear of the unfamiliar word ‘anarchist’ had begun to stir and spread among the folk. As the men sat in the coffeehouses, drugged with gambling, the word leapt out of the graveyard into the huts, feeding their fear, and soon those who had lost their mates and had to walk by themselves hardly dared go near the graveyard. After the workers’ quarters were searched, the Flower Hill women seized on this foreign word, and those who wanted to frighten their husbands told a string of horror stories which spread to the huts. Certain prominent squatters, whose profound and special knowledge had impressed the community, vied with one another to settle the meaning of ‘anarchist’, and competition fanned the flames of fear. Ill-omened comments on Yildirim’s speech to the gamblers and his stabbing of Lado began to get around and he ran away from Flower Hill, afraid of being mistaken for an anarchist. His flight gave people the idea that anarchists must be sheltering in their midst. One of the squatters tried to talk himself out of his fear by introducing the unsuitable subject of a man called ‘Bolshie Memet’ who had killed 99 people in his village.
That very night four daredevil youths of Flower Hill one by one wrapped themselves up and wound black yashmaks round their heads, and from then on not a single squatter could be seen in the back streets at night. Flower Hill groaned under the oppression of the ‘Black Gang’ which did not actually murder people venturing out at night but did succeed in gradually undermining their lives. Within a month there was no-one left on Flower Hill who had not lost half his earnings to the ‘Black Gang’. The number who emptied their pockets into the Black Gang’s hands in just three nights running topped 1500. On the fourth night Sefer the janitor broke down in tears and sobs, and beat his children for not crying along with him.
The hut people’s common sense — and no-one had yet discovered where it lurked in a human being — could find no good reason why a bank should open a branch on Flower Hill at that time. A crowd of squatters gathered in curiosity at the door of the bank and their children shouted and snatched flowers off the garlands hanging against the walls. Those flowers too, like others on Flower Hill, afflicted by pollution from the factories, wilted before anyone could smell them. But when the bank opened Flower Hill acquired one more avenue and a gleaming blue ‘Bank Avenue’ was hung over the street.
On the opening day Garbage Chief swaggered in with his money and created a commotion, boasting of the benefits to be gained. This forged a bond between the bank and the community. The daughter of a squatter, famous on Flower Hill for his stubbornness, brought two chickens to put in Garbage Chief’s fridge: ‘Tell your father to put money in the bank instead of eating chickens’, Garbage Chief carelessly suggested. The girl put in the chickens and rushed back to tell her father what Garbage Chief had said. Her father whose tough argumentative temperament had earned him the name ‘Colonel’ rushed out of his hut and made straight for Garbage Chief’s door. He angrily demanded his two chickens back and returned home. The very next day he bought a refrigerator, set it against the wall of his hut and, when he had consoled himself somewhat for the insult, went to the bank and put in all his money.
News of this event spread through Flower Hill and increased the Colonel’s reputation. But when he took out his savings book and showed it off to anyone he could collar, a certain chill entered into his relations with the squatters. ‘Anyone can put anything they like in my refrigerator,’ he bragged, and his wife irritated the Flower Hill people and got on the women’s nerves with her ‘All our money is in the bank, thanks to Garbage Chief.’ Everyone went and bought a refrigerator where Garbage Chief had bought his and took it to their hut and, setting it against the wall, went off to the bank in ones and twos. Their hearts overflowed with joy as they thrust their savings books into their bosoms, but an endless race for possessions followed. Whenever anyone bought anything for their hut the rest only had to see it to follow suit. Soon the tradesmen discovered the inclinations of the Flower Hill people. One of them managed to sell a set of liqueur glasses to every woman on Flower Hill and from another tradesman all the squatter women bought red net curtains.
~ ~ ~
While the race for possessions on Flower Hill was going full speed ahead, Kurd Cemal built a cinema in the middle of the garbage hills, the cinema the squatters had all dreamed of long ago. A squatter who stayed at home hungry because of his humpback and was insultingly known as ‘Lentil’ beause of his stature, found a way to fill his belly by hefting a sandwich board about — a new experience for Flower Hill. He tossed it up on his hump and began to shout the patter he had learned by heart, ‘Love, cruelty, bloodshed, bitter revenge’. His convincing voice boomed through the settlement and turned the race for possessions into a race for the cinema.
In the cinema Crazy Gönül dropped asleep.
At the cinema door her face was wet with rain. When the man in the ticket-office saw the water dripping from Crazy Gönül’s hair and lashes, he let her in without payment. Crazy Gönül skipped in gleefully. ‘Have you no home, girl?’ asked the ticket man. Crazy Gönül shrugged and stuck out her tongue at him. The ticket man grabbed at her breast but Crazy Gönül jumped back swearing and he laughed.
Crazy Gönül’s husband — Huge apartment blocks
He walked wearily along the street of apartment blocks, a carpet on his shoulder. In the next street he stopped and looked up, and his glance collided with the scream of a loudly-painted goldenhaired woman. Then two porters appeared alongside Crazy Gönül’s astonished husband. While selling the carpet he was arrested for stealing it and thrown into prison where he ripped open a man’s belly.