Ziya froze.
Then something came over him. His ears began to roar. Throwing down the catapult, he ran towards the bird.
He could hardly believe it. ‘May God save the poor thing,’ he thought. ‘Dear God,’ he prayed, ‘don’t let it die.’ But it was all too much for him — the blood, the flapping, the flying feathers — and he didn’t know what to do. Tears streamed down his face as he looked away, only to lean down again to see if there was anything he could do, and each time he did so, he punched himself in the knees. To take on the bird’s suffering, perhaps. Or at least, to mirror its movements and play its shocked and agonised shadow.
It was while he was flailing around like this that the bird went stiff.
Ziya didn’t have the heart to look at it for long. The trees were hanging over him like a many-eyed monster. Pushing his way through the undergrowth, he raced back to town as quickly as his legs could take him, and without so much as a backward glance. His heart rebelled at the pace. He was choking, not breathing. His hair, his forehead, his trousers — they were all drenched in sweat. There was so much water running into his eyes that he couldn’t see. The only time he slowed down was to wipe the sweat from his brow. But this meant he had to raise his face, and whenever he did that, the sun went straight into his eyes. He had to lower them to increase his speed again. And that is how he made it to the edge of town without seeing the red tractor with its trailer full of manure, or the horse cart, or the three women in headscarves, or the boy with the cane and the shoulder bag following close behind. Suddenly Ziya stopped. He straightened out his clothes. Blurred by anxiety, he stared at the rows of houses. For a moment, he saw people pouring out of every window and door. He heard a roar. He saw them pressing down on him, waving their arms, and shouting, ‘What have you done? What have you done?’ And of course, that unnerved him, made his heart beat that much faster. Best, he thought, to hide his fear. Best, he decided, to seem calm and collected. Just then, an old woman appeared before him. An old woman whose chin jutted out so far as to touch her nose. She was looming out at him from the courtyard wall on his right, lodged between the hanging vines and the tin flowerpots, and the shadows of the vine leaves swaying overhead. Beyond them were houses, and other courtyards, and trees of all sizes and telegraph poles; and you could see all these in the old woman’s eyes, which were squinting, but shining with a fire as large and loud as the town itself.
She stared and stared, until finally, with a voice like a wooden rattle, she said, ‘So tell me, my boy. Why were you running like a fawn from a gadfly just now?’
‘No reason,’ said Ziya.
Resting her elbows on the wall and leaning over as far as she could go, she said, ‘Don’t lie to me, boy. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing’s wrong,’ said Ziya.
With these words, a flame shot through him and his mouth went dry.
And then there came the voice of Ali the Snowman. Floating over the rooftops: ‘Snow for burnt hearts, snow for burnt hearts!’ Startled, Ziya looked up with a grimace and let out a silent sigh. Then he composed himself and began walking again. But he didn’t get very far. The old woman had used the vines to hoist herself over the wall as fast as a squirrel, and now she stood before him with her breasts hanging like yoghurt-pouches. It was clear from her expression that unless he gave her satisfaction she would bar his way.
She paused for a moment to adjust her scarf. In the same dry rattle, she said, ‘So tell me, what made you run so fast that the soles of your feet were punching that rump of yours?’
‘Nothing,’ Ziya said.
The woman turned for a moment to watch the red rooftops ripple under the hot sun.
Then she fixed her eyes on Ziya’s. ‘Hmm.’ In a warmer tone, she said, ‘So nothing’s wrong?’
Something in her voice was as soft as her breasts.
‘Nothing,’ Ziya replied.
But the old woman was not fooled. She could see Ziya was shaken, just from the way he kept shifting his weight. As her eyes slithered over his body, she wiggled her chin.
Ziya kept his eyes on the road ahead. Calmly, he walked on. But inside, he was still running, running from a fire. He couldn’t catch his breath. The ache in his side was killing him. He got home that day walking slowly and calmly, though inside his body he was running. Sprinting across the courtyard, passing under the trees and through the huge shadows cast by their leaves. Hurtling through the door, racing into his room to throw himself on to his bed. He cried a few miserable tears there. He would have made a noise, too, but he gave up on that idea when something in the kitchen began to clatter. So instead he bit his lower lip and buried his head in his quilt. Above him he could hear some tapping, flaring and vanishing, and then flaring once again. Then he could hear water dripping in the kitchen. Intermittently at first, and then faster and faster and faster. Ziya kept his eyes on his patterned quilt. Rows and rows of yellow flowers with green leaves, all shivering in the wind. He followed those rows to the place where they almost converged, almost bent into each other as if to hide from an inaudible whine. At the edge of the bed they merged into a thick line that looked as if it might, at any moment, dissolve into the room. Now he could see a stain spreading across his quilt. A deep hole, that’s what it looked like, until, after shifting his head, it became a small mound. For a time it stayed still, this stain, as if trying to outdo the little table in the corner. Which in the end, it did. Then suddenly it stirred. As it stirred, it grew wider. As it grew wider, it grew feathers, more and more feathers, and claws, and wings. Then it began to beat its wings just as wildly as that little bird he’d hit. Ziya watched all this in amazement through moist eyelashes while some strange force dried up the veins on his tongue and squeezed all the air from his throat. He told himself that this creature flapping so wildly before him was an apparition, nothing more, and that the bird he’d shot was far away, lying beneath the trees outside town. Still he could not shake off the thought that this was the bird’s soul pursuing him.
At that moment the bird stain went stiff — stiff and still as the table behind it. But not for long: a few minutes later, the stain began to beat its wings again, and then, just as suddenly, it stopped. This repeated itself over, and over, and over again. Over and over, that sweet, silent bird he had left for dead so far away came back to life only to die once again in front of Ziya’s eyes. With each death his sorrow was harder to bear. He could hear the roar of a tractor outside, and the echoes of horses whinnying in the distance. Whinnying through their discoloured teeth, throwing back their manes, sending their complaints soaring over the tops of the tractors and through the air, into every nook and cranny of the town, leaving only the scent of horsehair and sweat in their wake. Except now, blending in with them, was Ali the Snowman’s shrill voice. ‘Snow for burnt hearts! Snow for burnt hearts!’ It did more than just blend. It was as if that voice knew how much pain Ziya was in. Forcing its way through the sweat and the horsehair, it swept right up to Ziya’s window to look inside, before returning, just as fast, to the table in the village meydan. Ziya shivered in his bed. Then a wave of anger swept through him, and he swallowed hard. ‘That stupid voice just won’t leave me alone.’ And then, as the stain grew yet another beak, and yet another pair of beating wings, his eyelids grew heavier, and he fell fast asleep.