But that is not how things turned out on the day. The ones who had, despite never once going beyond the barbed wire in all their time there, managed to have their uniforms altered for them on their second day, the ones who had spurted more money than a fountain does water, and managed to get through without a single sergeant kicking them; the ones the loudspeakers were forever calling to headquarters, if not to collect a doctor’s report, then to speak to their families on the phone, and who spent weeks lolling about the dormitory, watching the training ground through the window — somehow they all made it to the lottery, and somehow they all ended up with papers that said Gökçeada, Bergama, Istanbul, Akçakoca, Denizli or Izmir. Ziya’s paper said Urfa. Kenan went next. He put his hand into the black bag the sergeant was holding, pulled out a paper, and as soon as he had read it, he turned to Ziya. ‘Look,’ he said, in a strange but happy voice. ‘I got Urfa too.’
For three months they had lived on the outskirts of Silvan, and never once had they seen the town. And the very next day, a big bus pulled up outside the guardhouse, to take thirty-five men off to Urfa, with the sergeant in tow.
As the bus pulled away, Ziya murmured, ‘Did you see that? We didn’t say goodbye to Şehmuz.’
‘And who’s Şehmuz?’ asked Kenan.
‘The boy from Silvan. The boy at the barbed wire,’ Ziya said softly. He took a deep breath. ‘You know, the boy we bought our boiled eggs and green onions from.’
Remembering him now, Kenan nodded gently.
‘We didn’t say goodbye,’ said Ziya once again. ‘After eating so much of his food. Shame on us.’
With that he turned back to the window and for a long time, as the rocky land slipped past, he thought only about Şehmuz. He thought about him for so long that he could almost see him standing there on the other side of the barbed wire, shimmering in the wind and stretching out his little arms, his little black eyes receding into love.
It was sunset by the time they reached the 123rd Mobile Gendarmerie Unit in Urfa. There was no time to get a sense of where they were. They spent a tense night in a large, grey-curtained dormitory that stank of sour sweat and strangers.
In the morning a tiny slip of a sergeant took them down to the mess hall on the ground floor, and then, walking faster than the wind, he led them over to the main building. He did not tell them to line up when they got there. Instead he stared at them, as if he had some very bad news that he could not bring himself to put into words. Then he pulled himself together, as if in response to a secret sign, passed a hand over his face, and in a thin little voice, he said, ‘My friends, you are going to spend the next few days here putting up a building.’ With that he led them off to the construction site next door. The site was swarming with soldiers. Some were digging inside a huge pit several dönüms in area. Some were carrying metal rods that were five or six metres long. Some were tying metal rods together with wire, and others were carrying stones from behind the hill in single file. But the ones carrying the stones were different from the others; most of them had hair growing down to their beards, and they seemed old enough to be addressed as big brothers or uncles. Their uniforms were in poor condition. Some were ripped at the knees and elbows, some were missing buttons, some were so short you could see their calves. And on top of all that, the soldiers looked bewildered, as if they didn’t know where they were.
‘Our friends over there are convicts,’ the sergeant said, lowering his voice.
With that, he turned to face his men. He stared at them as if they weren’t standing right next to them, but very far away.
‘And now you are going to go and carry stones with them,’ he said. ‘Off you go. Get started!’
They lined up like the convicts and followed them behind the hill. Here there was a red pit, where a group of muscle-bound convicts was holding pickaxes, hacking up rocks, while another group of convicts crushed these rocks with a huge sledgehammer, and there was so much sweat running down their faces that you’d think that an invisible hand was looming over them, pouring water from a pitcher. During their few trips between this quarry and the pit that was to serve as the new building’s foundation, they kept themselves separate from the convicts, but soon they began to mingle. Once they had begun to mingle, the convicts began to talk now and again. And that was when they heard how these men had come to be in prison, and what horrors they had seen while serving on the border. And at the end of each story, they thanked God for still being alive, and said how good it was to be in prison. And so they listened to these tales of dark nights made darker by explosions and the hiss of gunfire, and whinnying horses, and bloodcurdling cries, and herds of sheep, and bloodied tea crates lying next to people and animals who had been blown to bits, and the more they heard, the more frightened these Silvan boys became, of course. They became so frightened, in fact, that they said nothing all day long. They just looked at each other strangely, from the corners of their eyes.
The next day a big-boned, white-haired convict who called himself Dede took it upon himself to give them some advice. Gathering them together during a meal break, he sat down, put his hands on his knees and let his fingers droop. Assuming a fatherly tone, he said, ‘So tell me. Did they beat you a lot during training?’ They all answered at once. They’d all had enough beatings to fill a truck, they said. To which this man who called himself Dede said, ‘Well from now on, it won’t be the commanders who’ll be giving you your worst beatings. It will be the conditions. This is one thing you should never forget.’ And he smiled bitterly as he shook his head.
For a time he was silent. He looked down at the ground and swallowed.
And then he said, ‘Now listen carefully to what I have to say. Most likely they’ll be dispatching you to your companies tomorrow. What I mean is, some of you will be going to Akçakale, and some to Viranşehir. Wherever they send you, you are fated to end up in the middle of hell, by which I mean one of those outposts along the border. So my advice to you while all this is going on is to do whatever you can to stay in the place where they’re sending you. For example, every once in a while they ask you questions. Are any of you tailors? Is anyone here a barber? And who here has worked in construction? So if you happen to have any talent whatsoever, or if you happen to be good at something, even just a little, for God’s sake, don’t be shy. Step right out with a confident look on your face and say, “Yes, I can do that.” Or say, “Yes, that was the work I did when I was a civilian.” To make a long story short, my advice to you is this: whatever you can do to stay with your company or your battalion, do it.’
‘And what if we don’t manage to stay with our company or battalion?’ asked Kenan.
Dede looked at Kenan sharply through his dusty eyelashes and then bowed his head.
‘You’re already in the shit,’ he said. ‘Once you go out there, you’ve really had it.’