But in the end, Ziya did not wake up as early as he had hoped; by the time he opened his eyes, the sun had already risen over the cliffs, and it had done more than that, it had already risen a spear’s length above them. And that was why Ziya used a teabag instead of brewing a whole pot for his breakfast, so that he could get going without further delay. He’d not got around to slicing any tomatoes or cucumbers, and neither had he boiled an egg. All he ate with that tasteless tea was some cheese and bread. As soon as he’d finished his tea, he got up and cleared the table. He was just leaving the house with his cigarettes and lighter when he saw Besim.
The boy was holding two five-litre plastic bottles of water. He’d stopped a few paces in front of the doorway, and now he was staring shyly at the door.
Ziya felt both happy and upset at the sight of him. He ran over to him at once to take the bottles from his hands and set them on the ground. In a fatherly voice, he said, ‘You shouldn’t have gone to all this trouble. I could have carried my own water, once I’d run out.’
With a faint and timid smile, Besim said, ‘It’s no trouble at all.’
His voice was smooth, and as bright as the hair that fell over his face. And that was why Ziya just stood there staring next to the plastic bottles. Or rather, he stood there because he had no idea how to act, confronted with an innocence so natural. ‘It would be fine if I don’t take that walk today,’ he thought. And then suddenly, he was asking Besim if he’d had any breakfast. Hearing that he had, but wishing the boy to stay on for a while, instead of going straight back to the village, Ziya told a lie. ‘I’m afraid to say I’ve just woken up,’ he said. ‘I still haven’t had breakfast myself.’
Besim looked at him in silence.
‘So let me brew some good strong tea,’ Ziya said. ‘And let’s take the table outside, so that you and I can sit across from each other, and have a good breakfast!’
‘I’ve already eaten,’ Besim said again.
‘So what,’ said Ziya, in a determined voice. ‘You can sit down and have a glass of tea, at least. Look, you’ve just carried out those huge bottles for me. Won’t you let me offer you a tea, at least?’
Besim still looked uncertain.
As Ziya said, ‘Will you accept my offer?’ he gave him a good, long look.
‘No, thank you,’ said Besim. ‘My uncle has gone to see Uncle Cevval, and I need to be at home by the time he gets back.’
His hopes dashed, Ziya had no idea what to say. He made a few more attempts to keep the boy from leaving, but he was unable to persuade him. So instead he just stood there, unblinking, as Besim made his way back down the hill, and there was a moment when he had to swallow hard. And when he did so, it was because he was reliving that moment in the bookshop sixteen years ago, as violently as if it were happening for the first time; once again, the floor of the shopping centre buckled, and sheets of glass went smashing through the air, and suddenly all was darkness. And then Ziya picked up the plastic bottles, and carried them through that darkness. Not knowing where else to put them, he left them on the kitchen counter. He went outside and lit a cigarette, and thought about the walk he’d been planning, before all this happened. And then he set off.
5. The Border
Until he reached the dirt road on the plain, Ziya kept changing his mind about what direction he would take. But when he got there, he did not pause. He let the sheep pens and the poplars fall away to his right as he climbed up into the brown hills, and he kept up his speed even when he reached the high grass. He was walking as fast as if he hoped never to return. Once again, he heard the faint clacking of grouse somewhere near him; he saw the branches shudder with a nameless warmth, and he saw the trail that these shudders left behind them as they rose from those branches to flutter through the air. Then he walked for forty-five or maybe fifty minutes across that plain lined with junipers and all its yellow-headed, pink-headed, purple-headed brambles. By now he was struggling for breath, so he stopped in the shade of a large oak tree to take a short rest. And just then he heard a rustling in the leaves above, and as it rained down, he could feel something settle inside him. And once he’d sat down, he passed his hand over the grass. Then he did it again. And yet again, caressing this grass as gently as if he feared causing it harm. Then he passed his hand over the rocks. He touched the ground, too. He planted his hand on it and left it there, as if to measure the earth’s pulse. After that, he lit a cigarette, and narrowing his eyes he gazed for a long time through the clouds of his own smoke at the hills and plains below. The dirt road had vanished, of course, and all he could see in the depths behind the juniper trees were the ash-coloured tips of the poplars and, here and there, a roof. Beyond these he could see the mountains, so faint and flat that they might have been sketched with a pencil.
And so that’s how it was that day, and as Ziya sat there smoking, letting his eyes wander from field to hill, and roof to mountain, he thought again about what good deed he might have done for Kenan in the army. He went back through his memories, scouring each for clues, but to his consternation he found nothing. Then he stubbed out his cigarette and continued on his way, but still he couldn’t stop wondering what that good deed might have been. As he left the oak forest to wander amongst the red pines that reached up, moaning, to the sky, as he padded over the path carpeted with yellowing pine needles, and climbed the hills, scaled the steep rock faces, and crossed the limpid, bubbling brooks, he kept asking himself: I wonder what good deed I did. What was that good deed I did? I wonder.
And so that’s what he did that day. As he thought about his days in the army, he went deeper and deeper into the forest. And soon he was far, far from the village, and with this forest stretching endlessly in all directions, groaning and moaning, clicking and clucking, and taunting him with visions. He’d see a hill just ahead, for example, or a brook close enough for him to hear its waters burbling, or a clearing surrounded by majestic pines, awaiting him in plain view, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t reach them. But there were other times when he saw a cliff so far away he’d think, no, I could never get that far, but then, at just that moment, he would suddenly find himself rushing forward, at an impossible speed. And when he reached that cliff, he would stop, exalted, to catch his breath, and he’d think about how quickly he’d come this far, and as he looked around him, he’d ask himself: am I really here? And that was when he sensed a playful hand he could not see, reaching out to him from a distance he could not measure. But his faith in himself and the natural world began to falter, and the more it faltered, the more fearfully he looked around him. And then, without warning, he was walking into darkness. A silence descended. A humid silence, pierced with thorns. The great pines had merged into a single mass, and their intertwined branches had blocked out the sun, but now and again, a ray would burst through, and as he watched this dazzling shaft of light travel downwards, he wondered if it was divine. By now the darkness was seeping out from every orifice to wrap itself around the trunks of the pine trees and to tie up their branches. And Ziya was walking blind through this darkness, in which each leaf quivered. And with each new step, he asked himself what this good deed was that he’d done for Kenan.