Ziya already knew it from his father’s letters, but the commander had yet to tell him that they came from the same town; when Ziya stepped into his office, the commander would give him a warm look, as if he could see Ebecik and Hacı Veli, standing there before him, but then he would pull himself together, so fast you might think he feared being caught in the commission of a crime, as his gaze turned to his uniform. Or perhaps, when Ziya stepped into his office, Ebecik and Hacı Veli stuck their heads in with him, and began to harangue him in whispers. Maybe that was why, if there were many documents to sign, he’d say, ‘Go and wait outside,’ in a very cold voice. When his work was done, he would hop into his open-topped jeep and speed off to Telhamut, eyes glued to the road, and no one would see him until noon the next day.
If there were no more documents to prepare, and no more messages from the exchange for him to transmit to the company by phone, Ziya would usually go out to the garden after the commander left. Because it was forbidden to go into the market, he would spend hours walking up and down that dry garden, with its stone walls and its arbour in the far corner. And while he was walking up and down, he could hear the horse carriages and the minibuses passing down the road on the other side, and sometimes he could hear women and children talking. And later, the aroma of that bread they cooked on their stovetops would float over with their voices, and doors opening and shutting, and curtains fluttering, and the red echoes of peppers hanging in strings from the frames of distant windows. And late in the afternoon, a little old man with his long hair growing into his beard would appear at the foot of the garden, a gaggle of children in his wake. Taking no offence as the giggling children pelted him with bottle caps, he would jump over the wall, this old man, and shuffle in his plastic slippers to the rubbish bins next to the kitchen door. Taking out the plastic bag in his pocket, he would fill it with leftovers. After seeing this ragged old man a few times, Ziya grew curious, and asked the cooks who he was.
‘His name is Yabu,’ one of the cooks told him. ‘He’s the only person in Ceylanpınar who is able to go in and out of this place without first seeking permission. Yade used to come too, but now he’s dead.’
‘Hmmm,’ said Ziya, as he shook his head.
‘If you want to know about Yabu, you should ask Seyfettin in the exchange,’ said the cook, lowering his voice as if to pass on a big secret. ‘He’s the one who knows him best. And the things he’ll tell you. They boggle the mind.’
Ziya went straight upstairs, and down to the end of the corridor next to his office, and here he found Seyfettin, lost in thought and smoking a cigarette at the front of the telephone exchange. He asked him about Yabu.
‘He’s one of life’s sad stories,’ said Seyfettin, taking a long drag from his cigarette. ‘He comes here every day for leftovers, and that’s all he has to eat. This is nothing new; it’s been going on for a long time. Many years ago, on a hot summer’s day, his wife was here, too, and she died right next to those rubbish bins. No one ever asks Yabu what he’s doing there, or why he’s going through the army’s rubbish — we all close our eyes to it. Even the commander. Well, if he came in past the guards, waving his arms around, then maybe they’d have to ask, but he prefers to come over the wall, every time. He must have developed a taste for it.’
Seyfettin fell silent.
‘Is that all?’ Ziya asked.
‘There’s more,’ said Seyfettin. ‘But I’m not sure how to tell you right now. . Yabu’s not the kind of person you can describe just like that. Because he’s a story. A story like you’ve never heard.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean, he’s a story. Yabu is a story, through and through.’
Ziya gave Seyfettin a blank look.
This seemed to make Seyfettin uneasy, and so he turned to look out the window, in the direction of Syria and the town of Ras al-Ayn; they could hear its donkeys braying and its horses neighing, and for a while they listened to those sounds floating over the border.
‘It’s a story I myself read many years ago, in a book,’ he said.
‘What story is that?’ Ziya asked.
‘Didn’t I just tell you, that Yabu was a story? Have you already forgotten?’
Ziya stood up angrily and was about to leave the telephone exchange when he turned around suddenly at the door. ‘Is this some sort of joke?’ he asked reproachfully.
For a moment Seyfettin just looked at him, saying nothing.
Then he said, ‘I swear to you, what I’m saying is true. And in the story I read, Yabu even had a daughter named Gazel, and she set out one night on horseback, to be married in that Syrian town we can see just out the window there — Ras al-Ayn. If you don’t believe me, you can ask Yabu yourself.’
‘What was the name of this book you read?’
‘That’s what I can’t remember.’
‘Who wrote it?’
‘Sadly I don’t remember the author’s name either.’ Opening his arms, Seyfettin added: ‘His name didn’t seem much like an author’s name. Which goes to say that — as far as I remember — he wasn’t well-known, this author.’
‘All right, then,’ said Ziya, and he left.
Late the next afternoon, Ziya left his typewriter and went down to the garden, hoping to see Yabu. And soon he saw him, walking between the lane’s mud-brick walls, and trailed by the usual gaggle of children. And then, as those children pelted him with bottle caps that seemed not to offend him, he clutched the wall and straddled it and hurled himself into the garden like a dirty, hairy sack. And that was when Ziya walked towards him, very slowly, and gently.
‘Baba,’ he said, and his voice was as gentle as the look on his face. ‘May I ask you something?’
Yabu looked at him in silence, his eyes caught.
‘Ask me.’
‘Do you have a daughter named Gazel?’ Ziya asked.
Yabu slowly bowed his head, and swallowed.
In a stern voice, he said, ‘This is not a question anyone should ever ask, my child.’
And then, without another look at Ziya, he went shuffling in his plastic slippers towards the rubbish bins next to the kitchen door.
Ziya felt so bad about asking the question that he died a thousand deaths, of course. He felt so bad he even stayed away from the garden for a few days; instead, when he had finished his work, he would stand next to the typewriter, gazing through the window at the town of Ras al-Ayn, smoking one cigarette after another. And they had at long last completed the new company headquarters, whereupon he left Ceylanpınar for good, anyway, in the truck carrying the contents of his office, which passed in front of Mezartepe, Seyrantepe, Ege and Boztepe stations on its way to Telhamut. And so it was that he left Yabu behind him, along with the aroma of hot bread floating from those earthen-roofed houses, ringing with the voices of women and children, and fluttering curtains, and strings of red peppers, and the creaking, clacking horse carts. And what took their place, of course, was the bare and yellow sun-baked earth, stretching mournfully as far as the eye could see.