‘May it soon be over, sir soldier,’ said the stationmaster.
‘Thank you,’ said Ziya. ‘And goodbye.’
He climbed into the carriage just in front of him and found himself a seat on the right-hand side. The stationmaster stared up at him enviously, as if to say, ‘You’ve escaped now, but we’ll be stuck here for God only knows how long, and without any hope of a discharge.’
And then the Toros Express began to move, and before long, they’d left the station behind with those nine mud-brick houses. Because he could still see the minefield when he looked out the window, and the barbed-wire fence, and the dirt track, and the prefabricated guardhouses perched on their little hills, Ziya could still not believe he’d been discharged. He was still expecting the train to stop at any moment, so they could recall him, and that was why he leaned back in his seat and kept his anxious eyes on his fellow passengers. As the train moved on, and people started getting up to go to the toilet or visit other carriages, he began to feel less tense, and with time he began to relax, just a little.
Later on, while he was dozing in his seat, Ziya had a curious dream. In this dream he was still on the Toros Express, and sitting in the same seat, but awake. He knew it was a dream, too, but when he looked out the window he could see the Harran Plain passing by. But then, little by little, things began to change. And before long, where there had been only barbed-wire fences and minefields and observation towers and guardhouses perched on little hills, there were now bright-green trees, spurting from the ground, almost — rising higher and higher still, to touch the sky. And before long, he could see cliffs in the distance, and hills sparkling with flowers, and rushing between those hills there were streams and brooks that looked like watery shadows, and floating above all this were white clouds that looked nothing like the clouds of the Harran Plain. And that was when the Toros Express blew its whistle for the first time, and when he heard it Ziya jumped. And then, thinking this must be the whistle ending his military service, he smiled.
In the middle of a forest, the train slowed down for some reason and, just as Ziya was asking himself why, it stopped. And there they stayed for some time, sinking into nature and a hush that rustled with the leaves. The other passengers hardly seemed to notice; they carried on as if the train was still clacking down the tracks. They looked out of the window or watched the children playing in the aisles or chain-smoked.
Then suddenly two conductors and the train engineer burst into the carriage and made a beeline for Ziya. He was wearing a cap, this engineer, and the hair beneath it was white, and his ears were as large as soup ladles. His face was covered with lines, each one deeper than the last. And just then he looked as if he had been alive for thousands of years, with only his uniform to prove his existence.
‘So go ahead,’ this engineer said to him. ‘We stopped here in the middle of nowhere so that you could get off.’
And Ziya showed no surprise. He rose from his seat. The engineer followed him to the door and there he stayed, bending down to fix him with his green-flecked eyes.
He stayed there, watching, as Ziya moved away from the tracks to go deep into the forest. After the dry air and empty spaces of the Harran Plain, it opened his heart to be walking through such a forest. Each step he took was lighter than the last. The path flew like feathers beneath his feet. He could climb the slopes in a single breath, and soon he was deep inside a great green realm in which the air itself sang. And now he had crossed over a few more hills, and reached the red pines. As he walked the sun would peep through the branches only to vanish yet again. He walked on into a night, a garish night that rippled with so much moisture that it sometimes felt as wide as a lake. And if all its lights flashed at once, it could blind you.
And then suddenly he was in an oak forest, where the greys curled into the browns, and the browns into the yellows, while the greens bled red. Passing through the oak forest, he entered a pasture ringed by juniper bushes, and that was when he saw the dirt road below, and the sheep pens, and the poplars marking their edges, and, just beyond them, the little barn.
6. The Debt
When Numan came inside, Cabbar was sitting beneath the almond tree in the courtyard, smoking a cigarette.
‘Come in,’ he said, from within the billowing smoke. ‘Come in, so we can see you.’
Numan came quietly across the courtyard and sat down next to his elder brother, and at once he lit up. Then he just sat there, glowering at his cigarette. Hating the world and everyone in it. The anger and resentment that defined his every movement had also seeped into his eyes, erasing the world, replacing it with a dark and silent emptiness that grew steadily harsher.
‘What’s come over you?’ asked Cabbar. ‘What’s put you in such a state?’
Breathing through his nose, he said, ‘I had that dream again.’
‘So?’
‘It’s a warning. I’ve had it twice. There’s something in it, something terrible.’
Cabbar stubbed out his cigarette and lit another.
The voice floating out of the smoke said, ‘So it’s the same dream, is it? Exactly the same dream as the one before?’
‘Last time I saw them in Nefise’s room, as you know,’ said Numan. ‘They weren’t there this time. There were making love under the mulberry tree in the courtyard. Passionately. Savagely. Breathing so heavily that the whole courtyard was quaking.’
Cabbar looked blankly into Numan’s face, as if he could not see him.
‘But at the end of the day,’ Cabbar said finally, ‘it’s just a dream. So don’t get it into your head that you can go around telling everyone you meet. Some things get worse when you spread the word, as you know. If a rumour gets started about a brother and a sister having relations, it could end very badly. Once it got going, there’d be no stopping it. What’s more — it’s not what I would expect from either Kenan or Nefise. Do you hear me?’
Numan stared cowering into the distance.
‘You just can’t get over this girl, can you? How many years has this been going on now?’ asked Cabbar. ‘It’s always Nefise, Nefise. God protect us! If you keep this up, you’re going to drive yourself mad. We did everything we could. Think how many times we sent over the matchmaker. Think of all the men of consequence we sent after her, to promise jewels and dowries and property and God knows what else, but we couldn’t make it happen, and we never shall. Above all, the girl doesn’t want it.’
‘Because she has relations with her brother,’ said Numan. ‘I’ve had two warnings.’
Again Cabbar reprimanded him. ‘Don’t you ever say that again. Secret relations give way to true love, as you know. If there was a fire, we’d see the smoke pouring out the door as well as the chimney.’
‘But where exactly would that smoke come from?’ said Numan. ‘Have you forgotten that Kenan is sterile?’
Cabbar said nothing. He just turned his head to look into the distance. Then he jumped to his feet, as if he intended to race out of the courtyard then and there. Instead he began to pace up and down, with a cigarette between his lips. Now and again he muttered something in a hoarse voice that got lost in the smoke. Numan picked a piece of string off the ground and, without quite knowing what he was doing, began to unravel it from both sides. His fingers were still tingling with the warmth of his dream. And that was why they had only to graze against one of his eyelids for Nefise to strip off her clothes again, wild with desire: now she was stretching out on that mattress beneath the mulberry tree. Now she had raised those ivory-white legs of hers, and now she was drawing such lovely little circles in the air that he could almost see the bicycle pedals beneath those perfect feet. And all the while, she was sighing and moaning and beckoning and misting up the whole courtyard. Then Kenan appeared, moaning softly as he pushed himself between her parted legs, and thrust himself into Nefise’s hidden depths. In and out he went, in and out, while every hair on her head fizzled and sparked. As if, at any moment, she might burst into flame. Gaping in ecstasy, Kenan’s face had lost shape. Still moaning, he kept riding her hard. And as he did, he shook those hips that were pinned beneath him, of course — and those breasts, those shoulders, those sighs.