‘Good morning,’ he said, still catching his breath. ‘You’ve woken up early. Maşallah! I thought you would sleep until noon, at least.’
‘Good morning,’ said Ziya, rising to his feet. ‘But why did you think I’d sleep so late?’
‘Don’t you remember? You were in pretty bad shape when you got here last night. You were drunk out of your mind. It was pitch dark when you got here. Your friend Ethem and I — we only just managed to get you from the car to the house. It was so hard to hold you up that the three of us went zigzagging through the vineyard.’
‘I remember that, but only vaguely,’ said Ziya, examining his forehead with his fingertips, as if he were trying to read the lines the night might have left there. ‘I’m sorry — before leaving the city, I had too much to drink.’
They sat down together on the cushions.
‘Or was it that your city friends threw you a goodbye party?’
‘No,’ said Ziya, smiling faintly. ‘There wasn’t any party. Just two friends, having a drink. The same friend who brought me here. I don’t remember, but I probably introduced you to him last night.’
‘Yes, you did,’ said Kenan, and then he added, ‘I wanted him to stay over but sadly he refused. As soon as we had brought you in, he left.’
‘Don’t worry. He loves driving at night. He’ll have made it back to the city, no problem.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ said Kenan.
There followed a short silence, while they both watched the hills beyond rising above the plain, the cliffs behind them sparkling in the sun and the pine forests shivering in the mist, sending up little white clouds that looked like smoke signals.
‘So this is how I made my entrance?’ Ziya asked drowsily. ‘I arrived in Kenan Eli, drunk out of my mind?’
Kenan smiled faintly.
‘Do you know what, though?’ Ziya said, still sounding very drowsy. ‘Even if you set out for Kenan Eli sober, you’d be drunk by the time you got here.’
‘Except that Kenan Eli is not the name of this village,’ said Kenan. ‘This is Yazıköy. As you know.’
‘Of course I know,’ said Ziya.
Again they fell silent. Every time they paused, after all, the view swept in to capture their attention, and take it as far as the eye could see, and deeper, ever deeper, until, for just a moment, it became a shimmering veil of shadow, light and rainbow, only to return to itself with the speed of light. But for that same moment, Ziya’s face would brighten, as if caught by a distant torch. Not just his face. It was his entire being. It was his soul.
So it was after the view had swept in and out again like this that Ziya turned slowly to look Kenan in the eyes.
‘What a beautiful place this is. I can never thank you enough.’
Kenan smiled sweetly and opened his arms. ‘There’s no need to thank me,’ he said.
There was another short silence.
Then Kenan asked, ‘Why did you wake up so early? You must have been so tired, after that trip. I wish you’d managed to sleep until noon. Did you wake up because you didn’t know where you were?’
‘Don’t even ask,’ said Ziya, and he made such a grimace, you would have thought he’d just been stabbed in the stomach. ‘I had the most bizarre dream. That’s why I woke up so early. And this dream of mine, it wasn’t just normally bizarre. It was off the scale. I still haven’t managed to shake it off. Certain parts have stayed with me.’
‘Dreams are like that, though.’
‘This was something else, Kenan. This was beyond strange.’
‘How?’
‘In my dream, I was going to return my key to a woman who was supposed to be my landlady but things kept happening to me, things I could never have imagined. For one thing, this woman who was supposed to be my landlady just talked and talked and talked, there was no shutting her up. She was telling her life story, of course. And a few other people’s life stories, for good measure, plus the history of the entire city. . and in the middle of all that, she would make these bizarre pronouncements — as if someone else was speaking through her. Whereas in real dreams, as you know, there’s hardly any speaking at all. Which is why, please believe me, this dream I had doesn’t really seem like a dream to me.’
‘Are you sure you aren’t exaggerating? That’s what it seems like to me. If it isn’t a dream, then what is it?’
‘I don’t know. It was just bizarre. Beyond bizarre. For example, when I was leaving that apartment, I heard paper rustling, and because the landlady was following me out, I asked her about it, and she said it was probably her maid, going through the dossiers. But when I reached the lift, the girl who was supposed to be her maid walked out of it, carrying a handbag.’
‘And?’
‘What this means is that the maid was outside the apartment when I heard that paper rustling. The landlady was following me to the door, as I just said. And also. There was no one else in the apartment at that moment. So where did all that rustling come from? No, this was something other than a dream, I assure you.’
‘I think you’re exaggerating. And anyway, things like that happen in dreams all the time. Like once, I met myself as an old man. My older self hobbled right up to our door and rang the bell. I opened the door, and there he was, with his white hair and his long beard and his humpback, but in spite of all this, I recognised him instantly. He was wearing a dervish coat, which was white, with a silver collar that glinted like sunlight. And when he walked, he dragged his right leg slightly. I can’t be sure about that, but that’s how it looked to me as we walked together out of town and into the orchards. We sat down at the foot of a good-sized walnut tree and stayed there for a long time talking. And while we talked, a white bird came bursting out of his coat. It flew round and round, just above our heads. I had this dream many years ago, but I can still see my older self, with wrinkled hands, a lined forehead and that long, long beard. I have no idea if I’m going to look like that when I’m older. To tell the truth, it still worries me, even now. . But to go back to your dream, let’s just say that it’s something like mine. Let’s agree for a moment that the things you saw were not things you saw in a dream. If they were real, you would have to have gone back to the city in the middle of the night to return the key again. But you didn’t do that. Did you?’
‘Of course not. No way I could have done that. Not even if I’d wanted to.’
‘And that’s just it. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. If you didn’t go back there in the middle of the night, then it was a dream.’
Ziya raised his head to look out at the hills again, and the steep cliffs rising above them, and the pine forest, rustling green. Looking deep into the forest, he saw its noises changing colour. He felt its scent against his cheek as he breathed in its silence.
‘I can’t be sure,’ he said. ‘Maybe this is a dream, too. I just can’t be sure.’
3. Peace
That first day Kenan wanted to take Ziya into the village. He spent a long time trying to convince him. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘My mother made all this food. They’re expecting us.’ But Ziya wouldn’t budge. He’d not even unpacked, he said. He needed some time to catch his breath. And how much could they have prepared, anyway, when he’d only been invited the day before? And so it was that, for the first time in many years, the two friends ate breakfast together at the table they’d set up next to the wooden bench. As they ate, birdsong pecked away at the cheese plate’s faded purple borders, while the flowers and the grass and the pine trees puffed out clouds of scent that hovered in the air, glistening like olives. Each time this vision came to him, Ziya would put his tea glass on the table, which seemed now to be as great and wide as nature itself, and then he’d bend over, and lift it up again. Having finished eating and poured themselves more tea, they both lit up cigarettes, and looked out over the hills and the cliffs rising above them. Or rather, Ziya looked out over the hills, leaving Kenan with no choice but to do the same.