The people of Flower Hill resorted to unheard-of remedies to try and heal the distortions caused by Wind Sickness. The women strapped their husbands to bedsteads and divans with stout ropes, but when the ropes were loosened the muscles of their knees and necks collapsed. Their spines caved in, flaccid as dough. For days on end men lined up at the bonesetters’ doors. There were men in plaster, men with their backs tied to wooden planks, and men with their necks encased in metal hoops.
These incurable distortions opened the way for endless debate on Flower Hill; a different suggestion issued from every throat. The women left off singing the water song and every day they keened a different lament, ‘Backs are bent in bandages of wood; necks are aching, knees don’t hold.’ Holding their stooping backs, the men walked sideways to the coal depot and gathered by the stove. They looked for a cure for their condition, but however much they talked around the problem they arrived only at a dead-end. Yet the debate went on and on. Some said the remedy was to have a bus service, and they made written applications at the coal depot, some signing with names and some with fingerprints. Then, with their sideways walk, they took their applications to an official building. But no bus service came. Some said it had come but gone back because of the mud on Flower Hill, or that the wind had stopped it. Dreams and twitching eyes were regarded as good omens for the bus service. Woollen bandages were wound round the necks and backs of the men as they all watched the road. When the bandages were undone, smoke from the stoves was applied to their contortions and steam to their necks and backs. The steam rose and a cloud formed. After the snow, rain fell on the settlement for days. Water dripped into the huts, and in the dripping rain which dissolved and crumbled the walls the twisted necks of the Flower Hill men and the tearful eyes of the women remained unchanged. The women waited for days on end at the gates of the chemical factory but the deathly-white pills they got from the workers were useless.
As the white pills were no good they followed the advice of the oldest bedridden woman in the community. At the beginning of spring they gathered to pray. They took their husbands’ underwear and the bandages that had been wrapped round their backs and necks and climbed up to Wind-Curse Point where they heaped up the bandages and clothes, set fire to them and circled round the fire. At each circling they beat their breasts, invoking ‘My lord of the black eyebrows and tapering moustache’ and prayed to God to remove their husbands’ deformities. The bandages and underwear burned to ash and the women took hope from Wind-Curse Point and went back home where they waited for days sitting by their husbands. But the prayer for a cure was not heard and did not work. With their deformed necks and backs, the men who had been ill that spring were unable to keep their jobs. The simit-trays and lemon boxes stood empty in the gardens, construction builders were turned away in ones and twos from the building sites. Every day they met and turned up at the gate of a different factory, holding their heads as upright as they could. They stuck their hands in their pockets and secretly straightened their backs but with their weakened spines and wilting necks they could find no work at the factories.
At the time the men of Flower Hill were struggling to find work, a shiny blue sign — ‘Nato Avenue’ — was hung on the wall of one of the chocolate factories up Rubbish Road. United by curiosity they marched with their sideways walk until they arrived under the street sign, but as they could not figure out what the writing on it stood for or why it had been put up, they turned back. They were quite pleased, but after lengthy discussions they decided this road could not possibly be an ‘avenue’. Some said an avenue must be made of asphalt and some insisted that asphalt had nothing to do with it, but a road could only be called an avenue if it had rows of apartment blocks or trees planted on both sides. Others suggested that an avenue must have buses and taxis. Two other people recovering from Wind Sickness thought the street sign was a good omen — it meant that Flower Hill would soon have water, buses and electricity. Discussions went on, and they finished up by speculating on the meaning of ‘Nato’. Some said that once upon a time the papers had written about Nato, and others that the radio played folk songs from Nato. One said it meant ‘Armed Force’, another, ‘Bombing’. The hut people were upset by this talk of arms and bombs and did not warm to the name. They came in a body to Güllü Baba’s place. He listened in silence. In his own mind he attributed the deformity of the Flower Hill men to the erection of the street sign. He struck the ground with his stick again and again and asked, ‘Can it possibly be that Nato has some connection with deformity?’
Once Güllü Baba had suggested this, the hearts of the Flower Hill people trembled and all kinds of ideas were put forward. Some made guesses about the men who had put up the street sign, where they came from and where they’d sneaked off to; some asked what business was it of anyone whether they were deformed or not. They swore, and the women raged at the wind and the street sign. Some people wanted to know in what language ‘Nato’ meant ‘deformity’ and others were obsessed by the question of why the sign didn’t simply say ‘deformity’. In the end the whole matter reached an impasse. Those who said ‘Nato’ had no connection with ‘deformity’ and who had come out and explained to everyone that it was a ‘big institution’ to do with the state, fell silent. And one night the men and women of Flower Hill took down the street sign and threw it over Wind-Curse Point. The women returned to their huts cursing and the men assembled and kissed Güllü Baba’s hand.
Güllü Baba’s stick touched the backs of those who kissed his hand. Head in hand, he sank muttering into the depths of his wisdom. He introduced the subject of the pockets of ‘language-cells’ in the right side of the head — and to these he attributed the fact that Nato Avenue could not survive as a name. He explained that it was impossible to erase the name Rubbish Road from the minds of the Flower Hill dwellers. After Güllü Baba’s explanation, the name of the road remained always Rubbish Road in the settlers’ language-pockets.
~ ~ ~
Before he got the Wind Sickness Güllü Baba had worked in a little biscuit factory. Being blind in both eyes he had used his stick to take part in the walking game against the wind on Rubbish Road. His rise to the rank of spiritual guide on Flower Hill had come about when trembling and in tears he had cured Sirma. From then on there was discussion for days on end among the women in the settlement as to whether anyone who was blind could weep or not, and eventually, it was decided that the tears which flowed from his blind eyes were a powerful and holy water. Rumours were rife that God regretted making him blind, that He had asked him whether or not he wanted eyes, and that Güllü Baba had asked for a powerful mind instead of eyes. His knowledge of things unknown to anyone else was attributed to his blindness. As more and more people witnessed him talking with his stick and listening to the earth, no work in the neighbourhood was undertaken until Güllü Baba’s hand had been kissed. They believed that the Bird of Luck would perch on the head of anyone touched three times on the back by Güllü Baba’s stick.
The stick was the same age as Güllü Baba’s blindness. While he was working on a dam construction job he had fallen from a height and lost his sight. There was a song composed by Güllü Baba himself about his blindness which everyone on Flower Hill knew, but Güllü Baba sang it best of all.
The eye’s the mirror of the soul, it’s said,