‘Come on, where’s that pimp?’ yelled Cabbar. Angrily swinging his club through the empty air, he shouted, ‘Where’s he got to now?’
Numan was just behind him. Dark-faced. Grinding his teeth. Ready to kill every living soul in the world, and not just Ziya. The other villagers were standing at the ready, waiting for orders. Their anger seemed to be in their clubs, almost, and not themselves, as they swung them up and down through the air, sending tiny shivers through the forest.
‘So where is he?’ growled Cabbar. ‘Who was it that found that pimp? Who was it?’
‘I found him,’ said one of the villagers. ‘Look over here! Look! He’s lying curled up behind that rock!’
Clubs in hands, they raced over to the rock the villager had pointed out to them. When they vanished inside the pit, Ziya turned to look at me, as if to say, they’re not going to find me.
Then he turned his head again, to look outside.
There followed a short silence. The forest had frozen inside its own silence, almost. The branches went stiff, and the leaves, and the colours and the scents. Then two men came out from behind the rock. One was holding Ziya by the arms, and the other by his legs. Slowly they carried him away. The other men looked surprised. As they followed on after him, they lowered their clubs.
Ziya turned back to look at me.
In shock, he cried, ‘They found me!’
Glossary
Agha (Ağa): An Ottoman era title generally associated with large land holdings. Rarely heard nowadays outside Turkey’s Southeast.
Ayran: A water and yoghurt drink similar to buttermilk.
Baba: Literally ‘father’. Also used as a honorific for older men or a term of friendly affection.
Bey: A title given to the leader of a tribe, including the early Ottomans, which later became a military rank and polite way of addressing men, equivalent to the feminine ‘hanım’.
Bismillah!: ‘In the name of God!’ Short for b-ismi-llāhir-rahmāni r-rahimi, ‘in the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful’. It is sometimes used as a battle cry.
Bulgur: A type of thick-grained wheat and the name of a dish made from it.
Dede: Literally ‘grandfather’. Also used as a honorific for older men and as a religious title.
Dervish (derviş): A member of an esoteric (tasavvuf or Sufi) group within Islam who chooses to devote his or her life to following signs of God’s will rather than their own. This often amounts to a vow of poverty.
Divan: A type of long couch that rests on the floor.
Djinn (Cin): Supernatural spirits in Islam sometimes rendered in English as ‘genie’. There are good, bad and mischievous djinn, and they are still very much part of Turkish folk mythology.
Dönüm: An old unit of land, representing the amount that could be ploughed in a day. This varied from region to region according to custom and soil quality.
Gözleme: A type of savoury pastry pancake, often filled with cheese, meat or potato.
Hacı: One who has completed the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca during the Feast of the Sacrifice (Eid al Adha, Turkish: Kurban Bayramı). Used as an honorific, denoting that its bearer is both successful enough to afford the journey and pious enough to go.
Halay: A folk dance popular at weddings, in which the dancers link fingers or arms and dance in a line.
Hanım: A polite title given to women. From an ancient feminisation of the word ‘khan’ as in Genghis (Nişanyan 2007).
Harmandalı: A traditional dance of the Aegean region, in which dancers dance alone with their arms in the air.
Halva: A type of crumbly sweet made from either semolina, flour or sesame seeds. In some parts of Turkey, flour halva is traditionally given out to guests at a funeral wake.
Hoca: Literally ‘teacher’. Used in both religious and secular senses.
Keşkek: A traditional wedding food made from beef and wheat.
Kuruş: The smallest monetary unit in contemporary Turkey. 100 kuruş is equal to 1 lira. Ultimately derived from the Old Latin ‘denarius grossus’, like the English ‘groat’ (Nişanyan 2007).
Lahmacun: A cooked flat circle of dough and minced meat, often heavily spiced.
Lira: The standard unit of currency in contemporary Turkey.
Mashallah! (Maşallah!): An exclamation of thankfulness to God, often used in place of praise due to the superstition that expressions of jealousy attract the bad luck caused by the evil eye.
Mehmet (military): The generic name used for Turkish soldiers, much as Tommy is used for British soldiers or Jerry for Germans.
Meydan: From the Arabic meaning ‘wide space’, this denotes an open area in a city, town or village: usually a focal point of activity.
Meyhane: From the Persian meaning ‘wine house’. A type of tavern specialising in small meze dishes and rakı.
Muhtar: The elected head of a village or neighbourhood.
Rakı: An aniseed-flavoured alcoholic drink similar to ouzo or arak and typically drunk with water and ice.
Saz: A lute-shaped stringed instrument used in both traditional and modern forms of Turkish music.
Selamünaleykum or Selam: An Arabic greeting meaning ‘peace be upon you’ used around the Muslim world.
Shalwar (Şalvar): Loose trousers sometimes called ‘Harem trousers’ in English.
Sucuk: A dry, spicy beef sausage.
Sultan: The ruler of the Ottoman Empire.
Tarhana: A soup made with yoghurt, wheat or flour, vegetables and herbs.
Vizier (vezir): The Prime Minister in the late Ottoman era, often seen as the real power behind the throne.
Yufka: A thin, unleavened bread.
Zeybek: A form of music and dance native to the Aegean region.
A Note on the Author
Hasan Ali Toptaş is one of Turkey’s top writers. His short story collections include The Identity of a Laugh, The Whispers of the Nobodies and Solitudes. His novels have won the Çankaya Literature Prize, the Culture Ministry Prize, the Yunus Nadi Novel Prize, the Cevdet Kudret Literature Prize, the Orhan Kemal Novel Prize and the Turkish Writers’ Union Great Novel Prize. His early masterpiece Shadowless (1995), also translated by Maureen Freely and John Angliss, will be published by Bloomsbury in 2016. He now lives in Ankara. He has been translated into German, French and Finnish. Solitudes has been made into a play and Shadowless was made into a film in 1998.
A Note on the Translators
Maureen Freely has translated or co-translated a number of Turkish memoirs and classics as well as five books by the Turkish novelist and Nobel Laureate, Orhan Pamuk. Her seventh novel, Sailing Through Byzantium, was published in 2013.
John Angliss won the inaugural British Council’s Young Translators’ Prize for prose in 2012. He lives in Ankara and has translated Ahmet Altan and Hakan Günday, among others.