Three Flower Hill men had postponed marrying a second wife from Unity Hill because of an alert that the huts there might be demolished, but as soon as the danger was over they each looked around and took a second wife. Then one of the legally married wives murdered her fellow-wife with two stabs of the knife in the street. Another legal wife came from Foundation Hill to Unity Hill to stir up trouble and was carved up by her husband who had taken a second wife. After that, the third squatter’s new wife took all her bits and pieces and ran away. This woman managed to save her life, but the number of men and women who failed to save their lives increased every day. Ehmail the squatter who ran the grocery shop on Unity Hill heard that his wife who worked on Foundation Hill in the bulb factory had gone bareheaded and tossed her hair in the men’s faces as she passed the coffeehouses. He set out for Foundation Hill and tore out her hair until she bled. Some time later, when they had gone for a stroll one evening and she had refused his arm, he played the dictator even further. Forcing his wife back into his hut he strangled her with a piece of wire.
Although the other male squatters did not turn out as tyrannical as Ehmail, those women who lived on Foundation Hill and managed not to get shot or stabbed were considered to be of ‘exceptional ingenuity’. But Unity Hill became the stage for their raids, and only two male squatters succeeded in raising a family there with their second wives.
~ ~ ~
The coffeehouses, empty now since the men’s withdrawal from Foundation Hill, were taken over by male squatters from other neighbourhoods and by workers and their bosses from the Rubbish Road repair sheds, and when the gypsies moved downhill a little from their cardboard houses, this put the finishing touch to Foundation Hill. The upper floors of the workshops in the Flower Hill Industries filled up with ‘Knocking Shops’ crowded with bareheaded, barelegged women whom the squatters called ‘Them’. ‘They’ kept their shops closed by day but at night they started up playing and singing and the huts vibrated with piercing whistles.
From the first day she set foot on Foundation Hill everyone’s attention was drawn to a huge woman, one of ‘Them’. This woman, whose name was Emel, had muscular legs like a man’s, a huge head and cropped hair dyed yellow. Whereas many of ‘Them’ with provocative names like Angèle and Marie walked with downcast eyes, Emel brazenly paced the streets like a loaded mule, indifferent to the squatters who cursed her to her face. One step in every three she stopped and raised her jutting chin, then took one step forward wagging her butt three times to right and left and swinging her breasts. Soon after Emel came to Foundation Hill the squatter women in their homes were giggling and mimicking her walk. She grew famous amongst them as ‘Emel the Mule’, but in the coffeehouses she was known as the ‘Half-Hour Lay’ — from her boast to men that no man ever lay with her for less than half an hour. Those who heard the sad story of her life from her own lips broke down in tears and everyone knew how her husband had gone to prison for robbery and had killed a man there. All the garbage hill neighbourhoods heard of her accomplished swearing at men who whistled after her but it was rumoured that the ‘Half-Hour Lay’ was a fake. There were heated arguments amongst the men as to whether or not she was a genuine woman. She swore at the men who wanted ‘a half-hour lay’, and tried showing her breasts. But the pleasure she took in her walk was spoiled by these rumours. The testimony of a squatter postman who had seen her in a distant neighbourhood sitting amongst women with a baby in her arms, was not considered valid. Every time the ‘Half-Hour Lay’ passed the coffeehouses she was insulted and attacked. Finally rejecting Foundation Hill where people at every corner touched her up and cheered her on to bare her breasts, she departed swearing and crying.
When Emel the Mule had gone, Crazy Gönül’s star rose again. She often reminded them of Emel’s walk and her way of swearing and laughing. There was a sudden increase in the number of men rapping at her door, and the young men of Foundation Hill, with their predilection for the ‘Knocking Shop’ names, called her ‘Kristin’.
While Kristin ran about among the huts weeping and swearing, ‘Night Clubs’ opened up in the narrow alleys off the main road. Yellow, blue and red lightbulbs — the kind that flashed on and off — were fixed to the doors of the night clubs, but the lights winking at the huts died out within three days. The gypsies waiting to perform at the night clubs played the most lively airs on such touching strings that the melancholy of people who had come to shed their depression melted away in drifting clouds of smoke. Seductive coquettes seated side by side some way from the tables leaned forward to reveal their bosoms and licked their pouting lips with pink tongues, but failed to console the clients. People slipping into a melancholy coma under the influence of alcohol and gypsy music were secretly offered hashish. They flew with the drug and, with fluttering wings, alighted on the gypsy tree of life. And for those who alighted, the gypsies opened the door to worlds of feeling and perception. Intimacies which began in the night clubs grew stronger in the cardboard neighbourhood and in the coffeehouses of Foundation Hill. After some time the gypsy way of life overshadowed the squatters who lived on Foundation Hill. Fragments of the gypsy language passed into the squatters’ slang and gypsy rhymes like ‘Aynur gudunur,Ayudumgudumu’entered the children’s games. Gypsy children carried bags of lotto counters and hung about every corner on Flower Hill. In the early hours of the morning the gypsy women left the cardboard neighbourhood, bosoms stuffed with cigarette packets, and scattered through the streets of Knocking Shops. And now Güllü Baba’s last dream, forgotten by the squatters, came true.
People overflowed onto Foundation Hill to see the community of huts founded on the crust of the garbage hills, the gleaming garbage slopes and the grass and flowers sprouting from the iridescence. Until the workers from the Rubbish Road factories appeared on the scene waving their banners, the gypsy voices went on echoing round Flower Hill.
Flower Hill Gudu Hill
Acknowledgements
The translators wish to thank John Berger for his belief in the book and for his consistent interest, good will and encouragement.
Thanks are due to Michael Freeman for his numerous helpful suggestions and for his enthusiasm and sympathetic support throughout the project.
Above all we owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Latife Tekin who has never failed to respond generously to requests for occasional clarification and background information.