Before long, the wedding party arrived.
At the front was that same dilapidated car, decorated here and there with red ribbons. There were balloons of all colours tied to the door handles. Billowing behind the wing mirrors were two silk banners with writing on them. At the gate the car manoeuvred a little backwards and forwards, and when it failed to make it through, Hacı Veli gestured a little from the front seat, and they rushed to open both sides of the gate as far back as they went. And then the car swung slightly to one side, almost as if it knew what it was carrying, and now, at last, it made it through the narrow wooden opening. It drove up to the house in first gear, blowing its horn, followed by a stream of townspeople. Hacı Veli and the groom stepped out of the car, leaving the bride with her sisters and brothers. Her father stood to one side, beaming and saying nothing, while the groom and the best man went to the back of the house and, amid great excitement, clambered up on to the roof. The groom stationed himself beside the flagpole, and from there he gazed down at the people below, and the streets, the trees, the houses, and the gardens beyond them. You would have thought he was about to leave this world for another dimension, and was bidding everyone and everything in it farewell. The best man watched with him, narrowing his eyes as he joined his hands behind his head. Then he handed the groom a bulging purse. The groom took it in his palm first, as if to weigh it, and then he turned it upside down and threw it off the roof. The children who had been waiting below went tumbling after the silver coins as they clattered across the yard. In their struggle to get the most coins, some fell to their knees, others jumped across the yard like frogs, some crept as furtively as cats.
Then the groom climbed down, buttoned up his jacket, and respectfully opened the car door. As he and his veiled bride walked towards the door, arm in arm, the crowd applauded them.
A fearless boy raised his arm and in a voice everyone could hear, he called, ‘Shall we fall in love?’
The bride and groom stopped walking.
The clapping stopped, and with one voice, the crowd called back to the boy, ‘Let’s fall in love!’
With his hand still in the air, and in a voice that was even louder, the boy cried:
The harvest lies before us like a carpet
And here you see us, mad with joy.
Uncle, we have brought the bride
This mountain rose.
The crowd began to clap again, and the bride and groom began walking again. They had gone just a few steps when another hand went up in the crowd, and a middle-aged man going white at the temples shouted out loud enough to burst the veins in his neck, ‘Shall we fall in love?’
While the bride and groom stood still, the crowd again called back with one voice: ‘Let’s fall in love!’
Keeping his hands raised like the boy before him, the man called out:
Before us stands a great door,
Inside all manner of grain.
May he who would part these lovers
Be sent crawling far away.
The bride and groom moved again towards the door, as the crowd applauded. Then someone else in the crowd called out: ‘Shall we fall in love?’ Some spoke of dipping their thumbs in henna, and the first night, and heads resting on bosoms; others spoke of fresh lambs, and embroidered pillows, and prosperity; yet others spoke of water flowing like ribbons, and cypress trees, and plenty, but Ziya could no longer bear this much happiness and jubilation, and for a moment he thought he might cry. After that, he climbed over the wall, taking with him the thoughts still in his mind; the applause grew softer as he walked along the cobblestone streets towards the edge of town. In actual fact, he wasn’t walking at that point. It felt more as if the town was slipping beneath his feet like a carpet, a bright embroidered carpet scattering warmth and noise in its wake, and suddenly Ziya found himself back where he had conjured up his dream. Back on the edge of that bed. He was still sitting there, leaning into the night. And now, very slowly, he stood up, and for the next few moments he walked just the same way he had walked in his dream, feeling his way across the room towards the window. Falling on to the sofa, he looked outside.
It was still pitch dark; all that could be seen was a gauzy patch of white, fluttering in the distance. And because nothing else could be seen, it was the patch of white that brought that distance into being, and once it came into being, it mixed in with the darkness and the silence that reigned over it, and once it had done so, it lost all shape, and the more it dissipated, the more strangely and heavily it loomed over the horizon. Which he could not quite see. Which he could only imagine. But it seemed to him as if it was pressing down and down on that patch of white and slowly crushing it. It grew thinner, and thinner still, until suddenly it vanished, and at that exact moment, the night began to fade. Little by little, the sky grew lighter. When he looked out at the hills in the distance, he could just about see the rocks, and the ledges, peeping through the mist. And here and there he could almost see a tree rising above the skyline. When the sky got a little brighter, he could see the plain at the foot of the hills, and the dirt road winding through it, the sheep pens to the right, the line of poplars, a few houses facing in the opposite direction, and the trees in these houses’ gardens. A giant postcard, Ziya thought. A giant postcard, seen through frosted glass. To view it more closely, Ziya leaned over the sofa, and craned his neck. With reverence, he saw how gently the dirt road cast off the night. He saw how the cliffs shimmered with a serenity that seemed, as it echoed, to caress every hill and field, as the land itself became some sort of giant creature, slowly rising. He saw how the frosted undergrowth began to rustle with whispers, and how each rock, each blackberry bush, each heartless thorn came back into being, and each tree back into light. He saw how the air was thick with hisses and pops that blinked like little lanterns, jingled like little bells. And as he saw all this, he thought, what a beautiful place this is. Just imagine, a place where you can hear sound and silence, all at the same time.
With this, he stood up. Curious to see more of the place where he’d been living, he ambled slowly through the house. The walls were painted white, and there was one medium-sized room, and a narrow kitchen looking out over the side yard. Beyond it was a small, dark section with a concrete floor that could, he thought, be either a bathroom or a pantry. How different from the view he had just seen. How disappointing. For a time Ziya just stood there, staring, and asking himself if he could ever get used to such a place. But then he thought: is there anything on earth that a person can’t get used to? He threw on his clothes, as quickly as he could, and stepped out of the house to do a bit of exploring, get a bit of fresh air. Once outside, he spied a wooden bench just to the left of the door. It had cushions. He settled himself down on one of them.
The sun was just rising over the hills, and there, on the dirt road, he could see Kenan walking towards him. Walking towards him, bringing with him the sparkle of every moment he had passed through to get this far, and the strange green quiver of every leaf in the vineyard.