‘Do you really think he would agree to it?’ said Nefise.
Ziya did not know what to make of that.
‘He won’t see anyone but me,’ Kenan said. ‘Why don’t you come with me? I’ll explain along the way.’
They left the courtyard and headed for the other end of the village.
‘Uncle Cevval’s a bit temperamental,’ Kenan began. ‘It’s been six years now since he’s been outside. And the worst thing about it is that he has no wife or children to look after him. My aunt gave herself back to the earth some time ago. They had a flighty daughter with big ideas; she married someone from the town and moved with him to Istanbul. Six years ago he took a dislike to my mother and shut himself inside his house. Why he took a dislike to her, nobody knows but him, of course. If you ask him, he doesn’t answer. He just looks at you shocked, as if it should be obvious. For a while, his friends would come to visit occasionally, in groups of three or four, and they’d try to convince him to come out again. And my uncle would sit there staring at the patterns in the rug, looking very annoyed, and saying nothing. But when they pressed too hard, he stopped listening. He accused them of being frauds. He started shouting at them, saying, “What’s out there for me, anyway, aside from shit?” He even accused them of turning his house into a hotel. “You gather up all the village gossip you can find and you bring it here,” he said. “Stop bugging me. Fuck you all. Now fuck off.” And then he threw all his friends out. The only thing he didn’t do to those poor things was beat them up. So they began to keep their distance, saying what can the man do, he’s sick and tired of life. They stopped visiting, stopped coming to the neighbourhood, even. And so it was that my uncle’s life shrank to forty-five or fifty square metres. As he got older, he became more frail, and if it weren’t for me, it would be very hard, there’s no way he could survive on his own. I take him every meal, without fail. I feed him his food, and I give him his water. And then there’s his laundry, and his bath. It’s all very difficult, and as for that daughter of his, not once has it crossed her mind to ask how her father’s health is, or what he’s up to. So anyway, that’s how it is with my uncle. Maybe he’ll come out to the courtyard in your honour. Do you think?’
‘I hope so,’ Ziya said. Then he said, ‘He sounds very strange, this uncle of yours.’
They passed in front of the Plane Tree Coffeehouse. When he looked inside, Ziya could see Hulki Dede. He was as dishevelled as ever, and sitting apart from the other villagers. He had propped his left elbow on his knee, while he sketched on the ground with his staff. As he did so, his head bobbed happily. Then he straightened up. His eyes seemed fogged with sleep. He stared into the distance and then suddenly he raised his arm. He waved at Ziya. And he did so with such deep affection that it almost seemed to taper his fingers, because Ziya could feel how warm they were. And he could feel them reaching out to touch his heart. So then Ziya slowed down, just a little, to wave back. Then he speeded up again, but as they walked through the village, he saw Hulki Dede’s waving hand a few more times. It seemed almost to be hanging there, just before his eyes. Or echoing through the village. He saw it for the first time on a crumbling courtyard wall. After that he saw it on the side of a horse cart loaded down with hay. And after that he saw it in the meydan in the ears of a donkey whose back was covered in sores.
And outside the Coffeehouse of Mirrors, they ran into Numan. Or to put it more accurately, Numan was inside, playing cards with his friends, and when he caught sight of Ziya and Kenan, he threw his cards down on the table, and stood up, and swaggered outside, like a tough guy looking for a fight, and planted himself at the side of the road. But he said nothing. He just looked at Ziya and Kenan, spinning his yellow prayer beads in furious circles. Kenan had pulled way back, and when he walked past Numan, he fixed his eyes on the grocery store just up the road. Seeing him do this, Ziya pretended not to see Numan either, to avoid a scene, but this unsettled him.
When they reached Uncle Cevval’s door, the white sheepdog was still dozing at the foot of the wall opposite. When it heard their footsteps, it raised its head to gaze at Kenan with glassy eyes, but neither Kenan nor Ziya noticed as they stepped inside. The walls were white and smelled of damp. Leaning across the copper tray he held in his hands, Kenan cried, ‘Uncle, I’m here. I’m here, Uncle!’ Cevval called back from what seemed to be a distance, but it wasn’t clear what he was saying: it was as if the walls themselves had swallowed up his weak little voice. And soon there was nothing left but a cool and half-lit carpet-covered room. Then suddenly this room was jolted from its silence. And there was Uncle Cevval, in his knitted long johns. He was as pale as his walls, almost. But his skin was riddled with blue veins that looked as if they might be empty inside. They moved whenever Uncle Cevval moved, and when they moved, they sometimes disappeared, these veins.
‘Uncle,’ said Kenan. ‘Look. This is my friend from the army. His name is Ziya.’
Uncle Cevval turned to look at Ziya. He looked at him with empty eyes that seemed somehow full. He seemed to want something without quite knowing what it was. But his voice told Ziya that he had turned his back on the world. ‘Welcome, my child,’ he said softly.
Ziya thanked him, and leaned over to kiss his hand.
They set out his food that day on a worn black and white cloth that they spread over the divan, but they weren’t able to get him outside. Uncle Cevval got angry at Kenan just for suggesting it. He stuck out his chin as he protested, glaring as if he was about to hit Kenan with the back of his hand. And so they had to leave him there, alone with his walls.
When they had passed again through the damp hallway and were standing outside the house, Ziya told Kenan about the shadow he’d seen on the mountaintop. He stopped to point at it. ‘I hadn’t noticed it earlier. What is it?’ he asked. Kenan looked for a long time at the place Ziya had pointed out above his right shoulder, but he couldn’t see anything.
‘I don’t see anything different,’ he said. ‘They’re still the same mountains.’
‘But it’s there, can’t you see it? That shadow up there, the one that looks like the edge of a roof or a pile of earth. Can’t you see it?’
Kenan narrowed his eyes to look up at the mountains again.
The sheepdog looked up with him.
‘I really don’t see any sort of shadow up there,’ said Kenan. ‘There’s no new ridge. Maybe what you’re seeing is just in your imagination.’
‘Never mind,’ Ziya mumbled.
They headed for the fountain, picking their way down the narrow stone lane that ran beneath Uncle Cevval’s house, keeping in the shadow of the almond trees as squirrels screamed in the branches above. And as they walked, Ziya’s thoughts went from Nefise to the nameless shadow he had seen on the mountaintop, and then back to Uncle Cevval. After filling up his plastic bottle at the fountain, they headed back to the meydan, and they were just level with a nettle tree when Kâzım the Bellows Man appeared some way down the road.
‘Kenan, my boy,’ he cried. ‘You’re walking around like a dog bit your feet! Make some time so we can sit down and talk!’
‘Fine. Let’s talk,’ said Kenan.
Ziya left them there and carried on down the road with his water bottle passing through the boys rushing towards the grocery store. As he approached the Plane Tree Coffeehouse, Hulki Dede slowly raised his head, almost as if he knew he was there. Then he jumped up and hobbled over with his staff to grab Ziya by the arm. In a gentle voice, he said, ‘Weren’t you and I going to have a chinwag?’