‘Not at all,’ said Ziya.
‘Oh please,’ said Osman of Selçuk. ‘I implore you. Don’t take offence.’
And then, hopping off towards the guardhouse, he stopped in front of the graves. And in a voice so loud you’d think his throat might burst open, he bellowed, ‘Fuck off, you fucking village! Fuck off, before I fuck you more!’ Sparks flew from his eyes as he stared out into the distance, teeth clenched. And it was as if he could actually see that village he wanted to fuck over.
He was still staring out there when the sergeant came out of the guardhouse, holding his blue register. In an agitated voice, he said, ‘That’s enough fooling around, my friends. Get over here, all of you, and sign your names.’
They went over and signed the register.
‘You’ve signed up to the third station to the east of the D-3 outpost,’ the sergeant told Ziya. ‘I’m sending you out with some people who know the drill.’
‘That’s fine,’ Ziya murmured.
Then they all got ready together; they filled their canteens with water, and lined up their rifles in a row, and attached the chargers to their rifles, took out the bolt handles and loaded the bullets and then more bullets and, leaving behind them only the cook and the night watchman and those two unclaimed soldiers in their graves, they followed in the sergeant’s footsteps as he slowly led them out to the border. So here we are, Ziya whispered to himself, here we are, inside that story the convicts at battalion headquarters told us. As he whispered these words, he cast a tense gaze at the lands of Syria stretching out before them and breathed in sharply. They went down a hill that was covered with dry grass, and after they had patrolled the dirt track that went along the barbed wire from one end to the other, the sergeant put them in charge of the border and when night fell they moved with their rifles into their trenches. That was when Hayati of Acıpayam did as the sergeant must have asked, and gave them a bit of instruction.
‘You see that railroad over there,’ he said, turning his head in the direction of the barbed wire. ‘Well that’s the actual border. And between that asphalt road and this barbed wire, it’s a minefield. If you see a shadow trying to cross the railroad, you must shoot without hesitation. Understood? According to the rulebook, we’re supposed to tell them to stop three times and only open fire if they fire first, but don’t you pay any attention to that. The book counts for nothing out here! And anyway. If we played it by the book, those smugglers would hunt us all down like grouse. And then, God forbid, we’d all be going home early, in coffins. In the meantime, don’t forget that smugglers go between these countries in both directions. That means you have to keep a watch on both sides of this border. You have to do this even when there’s a skirmish. Because the ones trying to cross over into Syria meet with fire from Syria while the ones trying to cross over into Turkey meet with fire from this side, and in a skirmish like that we end up getting fire from both sides. Understood?’
‘Understood,’ said Ziya.
And so began their ordeal at the border.
At sunset every evening, they went out to the barbed wire and until dawn, they guarded the border, together with the lice crawling over their bodies. There was more to it than just lying in their trench, training their eyes on the border. They were forever getting up and slinging their rifles over their shoulders, and going off to patrol the part of the border for which they were responsible. They did this to keep a close eye on the places that were beyond their field of vision and also, as time went on, to stay awake. They would walk down the dirt track that ran alongside the barbed wire, looking both to their left and their right, and while they walked they would whisper to each other in half sentences, careful to make as little noise as they could. And when they did so, their voices seemed to bring a little light to the dry grass, and the barbed wire, and the dirt track, and the minefield, and the night itself. But it was not enough to go out on these patrols all night. Every ten, fifteen minutes, they cupped their hands or leaned forward and hollered into the darkness: ‘Whoooooop!’ And then the same call would come back to them from the next station along: ‘Whooooop!’ And then the next station along would answer this cry, and on it would go, from station to station, echoing in the night, all along the border. It would start at the station on the shores of the Mediterranean, carrying with it the blue scent of salt, and travel the full length of the barbed-wire fence, through Hatay, and then Gaziantep, and then Suruç, and Akçakale and Viranşehir. Moving on to Kızıltepe, it would echo for a time in Mardin, and from there it would travel the length of the Iraqi border, and the Iranian border, and the border with the USSR, station by station, until at last it reached the Black Sea.
It wasn’t a military regulation, whooping like that. Quite the opposite. It was entirely irregular. But it was better known than any regulation in the book. And no irregularity was more strictly observed than this one. To draw out those o’s — to whoop and listen to it pierce the night — it was a way of nudging the people in the next station, and keeping them awake; it was to say, fear not, my friends, I’m just over here next to you, and as you’ve just heard, I’m awake. And at the same time, should a smuggler or some such be approaching the border, whooping was a way of saying, listen, brother, don’t risk your life and mine by coming any closer. It might be masquerading as a challenge, but underneath the show of force was a softness, and a silent plea. And sometimes it was a way of letting out a long and mournful sigh of frustration, or a rough, gruff curse against the conditions in which they were living, and the fate that had brought them to this place. But most important, whooping was a way for the caller to cast a veil over the fear he had buried inside him, so that no one else could see it. When it was Osman of Selçuk’s turn to call out, he was never satisfied with just one whoop, of course. Shaking his fist at the night, he would cry out, ‘Fuck off, you fucking village! Fuck off!’
As these calls went up along the border, there was sometimes — every four or five days — a faint call from across it. According to some, these came from old soldiers who had no longer been able to bear the conditions and escaped across the border, there to marry and settle down. But others said, nonsense, those aren’t old soldiers, they’re those trickster smugglers, heading towards the border, and after calling out like that they would turn back, no doubt; having seen that it was impossible to cross over at this point, they would vanish into the night. While others said that it was nothing more than their own calls echoing in the depths of Syria. The terrain was so flat around here that it would, no doubt, take four or five days for a call to bounce back, and that was also why it sounded so exhausted, so much like a low moan. Whereas Veysel Hoca, who had worked as an imam in a village called Cıkınağılköy out in the sticks near Şereflikoçhisar, saw no merit in any of these theories; in his view, the souls of the soldiers who’d fallen in skirmishes over the years were still here, and when they heard the voices of those still in life, they couldn’t restrain themselves, and that was why, from time to time, they whooped from the next world. But no one, not even Veysel Hoca, could know if there was any truth in any of these theories, of course, so whenever a faint little call came floating out to them from the depths of Syria, they would peer back into those dark depths with suspicion.