When they reached Telhamut, with those clouds of dust pursuing them, Kenan came running up to greet him. Once the commander was out of sight they embraced each other. Then and there, they brought each other up to date. Together they unloaded the metal cabinets and tables and dossiers and carried them over to the new building, which was all on one level, with an entrance flanked by columns. Across from this building was a prefabricated guardhouse that looked just like Seyrantepe, and twenty-five paces beyond, on the other side of a barbed-wire fence, was a white flagpole and a rusty water pump. Just a bit below all this, on the other side of the train tracks, was a little station, and a hamlet made up of nine whitewashed houses, each one lower than the last. This was why there had to be a gap in the minefield behind the new building, before it continued on to Akçakale in parallel with the train tracks. Whichever direction it was coming from the Toros Express always slowed down when pulling into this station. It crept down the tracks like a tired old reptile, almost, hissing faintly, but never sounding its whistle. There was no stopping it, either, unless the commander had ordered it to do so; it would creep on quietly down the tracks, watched only by the handful of children playing in front of the mud-brick houses and the stationmaster standing guard, towards Ceylanpınar, or Akçakale. And before long, it would be lost inside the yellow earth’s humming.
Living in the village’s nine mud-brick houses were the railroad’s employees and their families, and their lives were as dry and impossible as the soldiers’. Like the soldiers, they had to live without streets and avenues, shops and markets, parks and gardens. They didn’t have a school, either, or a clinic. If they wanted to meet with friends and family on holidays or weekends, they wanted to go to Akçakale or Gaziantep or Ceylanpınar, they had to get permission from the commander. This was because the commander could at any time call out every last one of them, old and young, and line them up next to the well at the back, and do a roll-call. If anyone was missing, or if anyone had for any reason rubbed him up the wrong way, he had no qualms about giving them hell. Because the electricity ran from the State Battery Farm to the company headquarters, and from there to those mud-brick houses, he would, for example, cut off their electricity until they screwed their heads back on. And then the village itself would shudder, almost as if it was crying. A little shiver would pass across its earthen rooftops, and the grass around their walls would go yellow, sending faint reflections to swirl through the empty spaces around the well at the back, and while all this was going on, the village itself would move twenty-five or maybe even thirty paces closer to Syria. And then, amongst those faint reflections, you would just begin to see faces, some very pale faces, and as they took on substance, you would begin to see the windows these women were standing in, and the doorways. And then, clutching their children, or holding them in their arms, they would cross over to the company headquarters and stand in front of the commander’s office and, for hours on end, beg for mercy.
Once, when the commander had gone on a rampage and cut off their electricity, the women brought a hollow-cheeked man with them to company headquarters. He was furious, this man; his Adam’s apple kept bobbing, and he kept grinding his teeth, until there were sparks flying from his eyes, almost. Later on, when he went up to the commander’s door, he could hold himself back no longer. In a trumpeting voice that shocked everyone, he said, ‘The milk we keep in our refrigerators will go off, you know! Can’t you take pity on the children? Why don’t you just admit it — what you’ve done is unjust!’
That’s what this man bellowed. The commander was furious, of course, to be addressed in this tone of voice, and every vein in his neck bulged. Then he turned to the women waiting outside the door and waved them away like so many mosquitoes, saying, ‘Go away now. Go away.’ And off they went, looking over their shoulders as they crossed over to their houses to wait next to the well at the back. And that was when the commander fell upon this man, hollering, ‘I spit on your fate, you dog and son of a dog!’ and punching him smack in the face. Shocked by this turn of events, the little man just stood there, red-faced and staring blankly. On the commander’s orders, the cook from the guard station and one of the drivers then tied this man to the flagpole, stripping him from the waist up. Then the commander picked up his cartridge belt and went up to him, and laid into him, pelting him with a string of unspeakable curses as he beat him to a pulp. The man’s eyes opened wide each time the cartridge belt landed; they swayed and they clouded, they churned and they shook, until tears were shooting out of them into two straight lines, but the commander kept on going. Every time he hit the man, the women at the well would shake, too, moaning uyyy, uyyy, tiny little moans that called to mind a saz playing in the wind. At last the commander hollered, ‘Untie this dog,’ and threw his cartridge belt on the ground. He hurried off to his jeep and off he went in a cloud of dust back to Ceylanpınar.
Having watched all this from his office window, Ziya now stood up and went down to the canteen that had opened the previous month. It had less to offer than a village grocery shop, this canteen: cologne, envelopes, paper, ballpoint pens, razors, shaving cream, a few brands of cigarettes and biscuits, and that was it. When Ziya walked in, he found the manager, Resul of Lüleburgaz, standing at the window, watching them pick up the man they had untied from the flagpole and carry him over to the mud-brick houses.
‘Those poor people,’ he said, when he saw Ziya coming in. ‘And what a shame that there’s nowhere to go, to put in a complaint about this commander!’
‘Such a shame,’ said Ziya, and he took a deep breath.
Lowering himself into the chair behind the table, Resul fixed his eyes on the train tracks, while he let his thoughts wander.
‘I was just thinking,’ he said then. ‘If one of those people got on the train to go and make a complaint against this commander, they’d never be able to show their face here again. They’d have to take their whole family with them, even. If they didn’t. . I swear there’d be hell to pay from that commander, he’d kill them all and toss their bodies into the minefield. And then he’d say they’d been shot while crossing over the border, and get away with it!’
Ziya sat down across from him.
‘Would he really do that?’ he asked softly.
‘He would, I swear,’ said Resul, nodding. ‘When the engineers at the State Battery Farm drink rakı, he hands them weapons, this man, and sends them off to be ambushed. And off they go to dig in, on their little drunken pattering feet. If they end up getting shot in a skirmish, then all this commander has to do to make them look like smugglers is pick them up and throw them into the minefield. He’s not about to say he gave these civilians weapons and set them up to be ambushed. Is he?’
‘I just don’t know,’ Ziya mumbled.
Then he turned his head to look out at the mud-brick houses. One of the women at the well was tending to the man, who still seemed to be unconscious. She was cleaning his eyes and face with water. Another woman in a white headscarf was standing next to the well, with her hand on the crank. As the sun beat down on her, she remained perfectly still.
‘Can I offer you anything? Would you like something to drink?’ Resul asked suddenly.