And though he was already nine or ten paces away, Kenan looked back over his shoulder, as he had heard these words. Then he sped up again. Huffing and puffing, he left the village, racing towards the sheep pens, turning off the dirt road to stride up the slope, and from there, wet with sweat, through the vineyards, until at last he reached the barn.
He found Ziya sitting on the wooden bench outside the house, smoking a cigarette. He looked calm and at peace, as if he had just escaped from beneath a heavy burden.
‘Have you finished your business?’ he asked, when he saw Kenan approaching.
‘I have,’ Kenan replied.
Sitting down, he, too, lit a cigarette; puckering his lips, he sent little puffs of smoke sailing into the greenery of the forest opposite.
When he had emptied his mouth of smoke, he said, ‘If you like, I can take you into the village today. What would you say to that?’
‘Let’s do that later on,’ Ziya replied. ‘Why don’t we take a walk in the forest now, if you have the time.’
‘Shame on you,’ said Kenan. ‘Of course I have time!’
And so they stood up and set out through the vineyard, wending their way amid the furrows of earth, and walking down the hill, leaving behind the poplars and the sheep pens on the right to cross the dirt road, and walk on slowly, side by side, towards the forest. Just ahead, beyond the scrub, they heard the sudden echo of a clacking grouse. Ziya stopped in his tracks when he heard that, as fast as if another step might send him crashing into that clacking, and as if, the moment he crashed into it, he might die. Soundlessly, eyes shut, he stood there waiting in the grass. Kenan had stopped, too. Mystified, he turned his head, gazing in awe at his friend. Ziya opened his eyes and together they moved on. Pink and purple and yellow thorns attacked their ankles as they strode through knee-high grass, over big stones and small stones, across little fields thick with juniper bushes and fragrant with thyme, until at last they reached the oak trees. They’d been walking for forty-five or fifty minutes by then, and so, to catch their breath, they found a patch of shade to rest in; by now, they could no longer see the dirt road below. They couldn’t see the sheep pens on the side of the road, either. All they could see were a few rooftops in the village and, here and there, the uppermost branches of a poplar, pulsing sunlight. And even these seemed to sink into the depths beyond the juniper bushes, as indistinct as distant memories.
‘Honestly,’ said Ziya, as he took out a cigarette. ‘It’s everything you said it was, when we were in the army. It’s truly enchanted. Even the sky seems closer. Close enough to touch!’
Kenan raised his face to the sky. For a moment he stared into its depths, smiling faintly.
‘Do you know what?’ he said, lighting a cigarette and inhaling deeply. ‘I noticed right away, when we met last night, but the truth is, I couldn’t find the courage to ask you, not in the state you were in. And all morning, I’ve been wondering if I should ask or not.’
‘Are you worried about the scars on my face?’
‘Yes. How did you get them?’
Ziya swallowed hard, looking up to gaze over the gently swaying juniper bushes, and far, far into the distance.
‘You’re right,’ he said, still looking. ‘If I were you, I’d be wondering, too.’
Then he fell silent, and for a time, neither of them spoke.
‘These scars,’ he finally said. ‘These scars come from a terrible incident that turned my life upside down sixteen years ago. There was, in one of the city’s busiest avenues, a bookshop that my wife Kader and I loved very much. We visited it once a month, without fail. It was at the entrance of a bustling multi-storey shopping centre, this bookshop, and it was huge, and so well organised, and we could always find whatever book or journal we were after. It had a mezzanine that served as a cafeteria, this bookshop. It had wicker chairs with red cushions, and customers could relax there with a tea or a coffee and a little music. We loved all that, but we also loved Cemalettin Bey, the owner. You know the kind of person I mean: they don’t even need to speak for you to breathe more easily, and open your mind a little — well, Cemalettin Bey was someone like that. Also, this man had this amazing sense of space, and that was why, the moment you walked in, you felt right at home. He knew if you needed him, he could tell just from the way you moved, or didn’t move. And then, bam, he’d be right next to you. . If you were not quite sure what you wanted, it was right under your nose — even if he was many kilometres away, he knew. . So anyway, this is where my wife and I were headed sixteen years ago, on that hot summer’s day, to look at a few new books, but also just to pass the time. And we had just joined the crowd pushing its way up the stairs when suddenly my watchstrap snapped. Thinking it made sense to buy a new one, seeing as I had my watch with me, I left Kader at the bookshop and made my way to the watchmaker at the other end of the same floor. You know how cramped those little shops are, with only room for one: there’s always someone sitting behind a glass counter, and when you walk in, he raises his head and looks you over, almost like you were a watch. Unless, of course, he is holding a watch he has just opened up, in which case he is too concerned with its innards to look up at all, and as you stand there on your side of the counter, waiting, it’s almost like being caught between several different time currents, each flowing in its own direction. And all around you there are clocks ticking away, each in its own fashion, and as you stand there, that’s what surrounds you, the pandemonium of clocks. And so that’s how it was that day when I went into that shop. I had to wait, because the man sitting behind the counter had put on his glasses to repair a shoddy-looking watch with an instrument as fine as a horse’s hair. He was totally indifferent to my presence — as if the watch he was repairing would determine the moment he’d look up at me. And just in case he had reached the most difficult moment of the job, I kept quiet, of course; but I also leaned over slightly, to see if I could find a watchstrap I liked in the display beneath the glass counter. Actually this was something of a lost cause because I didn’t know anything about leather and in the end I was just going to decide on one of the expensive ones, hoping it was good. And who knows, maybe I was, without even knowing it, pretending to be busy so as not to distract the watchmaker. . Acting like I needed to look at these watchstraps anyway, so fine with me if he carried on working. . There is, as you know, a dark little room at the back of our minds in which we learn things by rote, and when the right conditions present themselves, we say or perform the things we learn in that room without even knowing. . What I’m trying to say is that this is what prompted me to behave in this way. But anyway, after I’d been standing there waiting for quite some time, this sallow-faced man behind the counter slowly raised his head to look at me, and while he was doing that, a huge explosion ripped through the building. All I saw before we were plunged into darkness were flying, smashing, terrifying shards of glass. When I opened my eyes, I was in hospital, in a room painted almond green with a ceiling covered with water stains. There were bandages on my arms and legs and around my head. Voices floated in to me from the corridors and the other rooms and the far corners of the building, and every once in a while I could hear people running. All this from the bed I was lying in. It would have been better if I’d heard nothing, though, because there was no one with me, and the sound of those voices made my own empty room seem emptier. The longer I lay there, the emptier I felt inside, and I kept thinking about Kader and wondering where she was, wondering why she wasn’t with me, looking into my eyes, and holding my hand. I found out the next day, of course. It seems that the centre of the explosion was in that bookshop we liked so much — that was where the terrorists had planted their plastic explosives. In due course the morgue returned what was left of my wife’s body, and I failed to find the courage to look at it, not even once. In all honesty, I did want to look at it. I wanted to see her face, and touch her, one last time, but in the end I didn’t. No, I didn’t, I am sad to say. Even though I wanted to. . Was I scared of seeing body parts that had been salvaged, piece by piece, from the wreckage? At the time, I just couldn’t say. There were arms and legs lying all over the place, so maybe I was frightened that they’d matched them with the wrong bodies. Because something like that did occur to me that day. When you had ignorant, thick-skinned officials running roughshod over evidence and all too often destroying it with their own hands, this sort of thing could happen quite easily. But even if they exercised the greatest caution, it could still happen, simply because of the magnitude of the damage, and the chaos it had caused. It’s terrifying just to imagine it. Just think: your loved one’s arm in one cemetery, and her leg in another. . In the end there were fifteen people wounded that day, and five killed. Or to be more accurate, that’s what the records said — three women and two men, five people in all. When really it was six people who died. Because Kader was five months pregnant, so I did not just lose my wife that day. I also lost my child. Without ever having held it in my arms. Without ever having kissed its forehead. .’