Then suddenly the sergeant stopped laughing. With the back of his hand, and with a certain agitation, he wiped the tears from his eyes. When the other sergeants had left the room, he walked to the window, plunged his hands into his pockets, and for a time he stared out at the sandy field and the water tanker.
And then, without so much as turning to face him, he said, ‘That’s all for now, my ram. I’m giving you the rest of the day off. Go outside, and spend a little time with your friends.’
‘All right,’ said Ziya, and he left the room.
Still in confusion, he went to find Kenan. The two sat down in the shade of those ovens they called buildings. And there they sat, for three long hours, talking anxiously about what had just happened, and smoking one cigarette after another. The field on which the camp stood had no trees, so by now everyone else was sitting in the shade of the buildings; it was one long line of heads and knees and stretched-out legs, hiding from the sun while wreaths of smoke swirled over them. And with so many people crowded there together, time simply forgot how to move. And when it did, it seemed almost to become a second source of heat. It was almost as if time itself was beating down on them. Just then, an order came for them to line up outside the mess hall, and they all stood up, rushing like bent little shadows to the front of the building. A sergeant had planted himself at the mess-hall door. And while he waited for the men to arrive, he kept turning his head to catch what the corporal behind him was saying.
And now they were all standing in front of the officers. They hadn’t bothered to line up.
‘My friends,’ said the sergeant, walking towards them. ‘I have put up the lists on that window over there. Each of you should look and see what platoon you’ve been assigned to. You are to report to Ceylanpınar by nightfall.’
There was some rustling in the crowd.
‘Quiet!’ barked the sergeant. ‘I haven’t finished speaking. Now listen to me carefully. When you get to Ceylanpınar, you are to go straight to the mobile gendarmerie unit. The first and second platoons are stationed there. The third platoon should wait there to be picked up. In the meantime, don’t think you can slip off home just because there’s no officer there watching over you. The police will pick you up before you’re halfway there, and then you’ll have failed your military service, and all for nothing. But if there’s still an idiot out there who wants to slip off home, don’t hold them back! Let them go! So now find out where you’re going. Hurry up!’
There followed a lot of pushing and shoving, as they cast their large eyes over the lists. But when they did find their names, they didn’t move, they just stood there staring, as if by doing so they might release the miracle that would save them from the border. Finally Kenan and Ziya moved forward. Standing on tiptoes, side by side at the back of the crowd, they scanned the lists.
‘Oh, no. Oh, no,’ said Ziya when he found his name. ‘Look what I’ve done. Just a few words that came out wrong, and now I’m doomed!’
‘Don’t take it too hard,’ said Kenan, trying to console him. ‘All this means is that you were never fated to stay at headquarters.’
‘Maybe you’re right,’ Ziya murmured.
Then they put the field and the battalion behind them; boarding one of the minibuses they found waiting for them in Viranşehir meydan, they headed for Ceylanpınar. For an hour they passed through a dry and copper-coloured wasteland, accompanied all the way by a low moan that seemed not to come from the road so much as the depths of the bus itself; and all around them was a yellow glow pushing against a sky that seemed to grow before their eyes; now and again they caught sight of a bird in the far distance, or a bush they could barely see, or a shape that was almost certainly a tree. On entering Ceylanpınar, they were met by a procession of earthen-roofed shacks, most of which looked as if they’d been built in a day. And with them came their courtyards, of course, and the trees in those courtyards, and the laundry hanging out to dry, and the dusty clouds of children, and a garish spattering of distant and disconnected noises that, as they died away, seemed more like silence. Lurching across the potholes in the asphalt road, they arrived at a sharp bend and, hitting the brakes, the driver called out: ‘So, boys, the gendarmerie is on our right, and the mobile unit on our left, so are you getting out, or what?’ No one moved, except to look at the little single-storey guardhouse on their right and the grey two-storey building on their left. No one got out. And this was how they all came to alight at the village marketplace instead; here they filed into a long, narrow restaurant whose walls were lined with pictures of the Kaaba Stone; after filling their stomachs to a Ferdi Tayfur song, they made their weary way back to the buildings on the sharp bend.
‘What’s this writing all about?’ asked Kenan.
Ziya turned his head to look: painted in red letters on the wall he saw the words: Belik is a murderer.
‘I have no idea,’ he said. ‘When we were passing through Diyarbakır, I saw Freedom for the Kurds on some walls and the name Mehdi Zana, too, and these I understood, but this one — I have no idea.’
Kenan turned back to give the wall a second look.
They saw the same slogan on a few other walls on their way to the sharp bend, and each time Kenan and Ziya could not stop themselves from looking.
On walking inside that big and menacing grey building, they were all thinking of the stories those convicts had told them, and when they looked around them, it was with the same distracted air they had seen in those convicts. A hump-backed sergeant came rushing down in some agitation when he saw them standing there; he pulled out the men who’d been assigned to the second platoon and lined them up, after which he strolled back and forth in front of them, hands on hips. Then he stopped. In a hoarse nasal voice, he asked, ‘Do any of you know how to type?’
‘I do,’ said Ziya.
The sergeant’s eyes lit up when he heard that. He asked Ziya where he was from.
‘I’m from Aydın,’ Ziya replied.
‘It’s your lucky day,’ said the sergeant. ‘The company commander is from Aydın, too.’
They all turned to look at Ziya, as if seeing him for the first time.
Then this sergeant said, ‘Follow me,’ and led them down a gloomy, high-ceilinged corridor to the company commander’s office. One by one they stepped into his office, walked up to his steel table, and saluted. The commander had not yet raised his head; he was gazing icily at the yellow onion-skin documents he was still busy signing. Grimacing strangely, he held his pen in the air with one hand, while with the other he was scratching his crotch. And whenever he did that, it almost seemed as if he wanted to look down there, too, but he never did; instead he’d venture to look all the more solemn as he carried on signing. When he’d signed the last document, he’d put it face down on top of all the others, and finally raise his head to take a good look at the soldier standing before him. In a stern voice he’d say, ‘Well, then. Identify yourself.’ And then, without missing a beat, the soldier would identify himself. When it came to Ziya’s turn, he took one step forward and said, ‘Ziya Kül, son of Mehmet, born in 1958, in Aydın, at your service, sir!’