Kenan was lying on his back in a room that smelled of dried thyme and sweat and looked out over the courtyard. He was surrounded by villagers. They had wrapped him in a brown-and-white-striped blanket, leaving his head and shoulders open. The villagers were conversing in whispers, while Kenan stared up at the wooden beams on the ceiling. When Ziya came to sit at his side, he almost smiled, and some brightness came into his face, but not for long. Soon it was lost beneath the thick blanket of whispers.
‘May it pass soon,’ said Ziya, putting a light hand on his friend’s shoulder. ‘Where is your wound?’
‘In his leg,’ said one of the villagers, before Kenan had a chance to reply. ‘His right leg.’
Ziya fell silent. He didn’t know what to say.
Turning back to Kenan, he asked, ‘Where exactly?’
‘Above his knee,’ said another villager, shifting his weight. ‘Right here, see? Close to his hip.’
Ziya felt obliged to turn around, so that the villager could point out the place on his own leg. He traced a line, to show how long the wound was. The two burly villagers sitting in front of him leaned away so as not to obstruct the view.
‘I’m fine,’ mumbled Kenan. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘We need to get you into town,’ said Ziya. ‘We can’t leave it like this. We need to get you to a doctor.’
‘What good would a doctor be?’ said Kenan. ‘It’s not serious enough for that.’
Ziya looked deep into his eyes. A moment arrived when he couldn’t bear it any more. He tried to look at the wound, but he soon gave up on the idea, after the villagers who had not seen the wound came crowding around the divan. With bated breath they craned their necks and waited, with hungry eyes.
So Ziya said, ‘No, let’s not open it up. It could start bleeding again, after all.’
Disappointed, the villagers drew back. Reaching out from underneath the blanket, Kenan stroked Ziya’s knee a few times, as if to thank him. And Ziya could almost see him smile through the darkness. He could almost see a little light blinking on and off at the corners of his mouth. It looked very far away.
‘Just look at this,’ Kenan whispered. ‘You spend twenty months on the Syrian border, surrounded by murderers, while thousands of bullets fly overhead, and you come out without a scratch. . and now look at this. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Don’t upset yourself,’ said Ziya.
‘What did Kenan say just now?’ asked an old, gap-toothed villager. ‘What did he just whisper to you?’
‘I couldn’t make it out,’ Ziya replied sternly. ‘He’s probably delirious.’
His answer rubbed the villager up the wrong way. He looked around him, as if to say, ‘Tell me. Was I wrong to ask?’ So Ziya sat on the divan saying nothing, waiting for the villagers to leave. As curious as he was to find out what had happened, he asked nothing. At nightfall they got up at last. ‘May it pass soon,’ they said, as they filed out of the room. ‘May God preserve him from worse.’
When they had all gone home, Ziya turned back to Kenan and, in a reproachful voice, he said, ‘And you told me Kâzım the Bellows Man was a very good person. Endlessly helpful. And merciful. And honest. You had all sorts of good things to say about him. I remember! You even said he loved you very much, that he’d move heaven and earth for you. You said all that, didn’t you?’
In a shaky voice, Kenan said, ‘He’s all those things.’
He was staring at the wooden beam in the corner. His eyes didn’t move. There was not a trace of anger in his face. Only pain.
‘So then tell me,’ Ziya said. ‘Why did this honest and merciful man knife you?’
‘We had an argument,’ said Kenan. ‘A pointless argument. Just this once. There’s no need to dwell on it. I am not opening a case against Kâzım the Bellows Man.’
‘Fine,’ said Ziya. ‘But what was the cause of it?’
Cevriye Hanım came into the room, smoothing her white headscarf. She sat down at Kenan’s side.
‘Come on now. Answer your friend. Why were you arguing with that lout?’
Propping his elbows, Kenan rolled over on his side. He placed his free hand as close to his wound as he could manage.
‘Please, Mother, let’s just leave it. It just happened. That’s all. Don’t go and say a thing about this to Kâzım the Bellows Man. Don’t ask him why and don’t ask him how. We’re putting an end to it, here and now.’
Cevriye Hanım raised her eyes to look at her son.
‘In all the commotion we forgot about Uncle Cevval’s supper. The poor man is waiting there hungry.’
‘I can take him something,’ said Ziya. ‘Don’t worry.’
And so it was that Besim and Ziya took the copper tray over to Uncle Cevval that evening. They sat him down on the divan and fed this man who seemed no more than a white shadow. After taking a few slow bites, he suddenly asked why Kenan hadn’t come.
‘He’s feeling poorly,’ Besim said each time.
When they were leaving the house, Besim noticed the sheepdog lying at the foot of the wall opposite, and suddenly he went stiff. Walking towards him a few steps with his arm upraised, he shouted, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ But the dog did not budge. Its eyes glowed in the darkness as it blinked. Ziya pulled him by the arm. ‘Never mind, my boy,’ he said in a fatherly voice. ‘Best not to disturb the poor thing. Come on now, let’s go.’
Besim relaxed a little. Putting the copper tray under his arm, he set off down the lane with Ziya. It had been washed clean by the rain, and as they went, Ziya cast a few sidelong glances at the boy he had addressed for the first time as his son. It felt as if it were his own son at his side, almost.
Kenan couldn’t seem to get back on his feet, and so from then on it was always Ziya and Besim who took Uncle Cevval his meals. This meant that Ziya was now going to Kenan’s house several times a day, and each time he approached the door, he would imagine the moment when he’d set eyes on Nefise and Besim, and his heart would skip a beat. Leaving his shoes at the entrance he would always go first into Kenan’s room, of course. And at first Kenan would sit up in bed, looking paler every day — as pale as his uncle — and try to greet Ziya with a smile. But with time that smile faded. He would just lie there, lost in thought. Because he couldn’t walk. He couldn’t do more than hobble a few steps across his room. He would run out of energy, and go staggering across the room to fall back into bed.
And that was why, every once in a while, Ziya would take him by the arm and lead him out to the courtyard for a bit of fresh air. They’d sit there side by side in those white plastic chairs for hours on end. If it began to rain, or snow, they just threw a few blankets over their shoulders. In fair weather Kenan would sometimes get a rush of energy and try to walk. He would hobble to the mulberry tree and back again, his grimace changing shape as he went. Once, when he was hobbling along like that, he stopped and placed his hand on his bad leg, and turned his head to look up at the mountains.
‘I saw it!’ he cried. ‘I actually saw it!’
Ziya jumped, just a little.
‘For God’s sake!’ he said. ‘You saw what?’
‘That shadow you said you saw, on the mountaintop!’
When he heard his uncle shouting, Besim came running out of the house. He, too, looked up at the mountain.
‘Can you see it too?’ Ziya asked him.
‘No,’ said Besim. ‘I don’t see anything different. They’re still the same mountains.’
‘Maybe they’re building an observation tower,’ Kenan murmured.
Slowly he limped over to a chair next to the wall, holding his right leg as he went. He spent the rest of the day there, and each time he looked up at the mountain, it was as if he was doing so for the first time, or had forgotten where he was looking — as if his soul had flown far away and he was waiting now for its return. He would stare at it for many long minutes, unmoving, and unblinking.