“Let Kemal go!” said my brother.
“No, let Osman go,” I said.
“Why don’t you go, my boy,” my father said to me. “And don’t tell your mother what you’re up to…”
On my way out of the house I saw Füsun.
“Come out to the store with me, why don’t you.”
She was a skinny twelve-year-old girl with matchstick legs, the daughter of a distant relation, that was all. Apart from her immaculate clothes and the sparkling white butterfly-shaped bows of ribbon holding her shiny black braids, there was nothing particularly striking about her. All those years later, Füsun reminded me of the uninspired questions I’d asked that young girl in the lift: “What grade are you in?” (The first year of middle school.) “What school do you go to?” (Nişantaşı Girls’ Lycée.) “What do you want to be when you grow up?” (Silence!)
We had just left the building and taken a few steps into the cold when I saw that a crowd had gathered around the little linden tree next to a muddy empty lot and they were about to sacrifice a lamb. If my level of understanding had been what it is today, I would have asked myself whether a girl that age might find it upsetting to watch a lamb’s throat being slit, and I wouldn’t have brought Füsun any closer.
But I was curious, and insensitive, and so we walked on. It was our cook, Bekri Efendi, and our janitor, Saim Efendi, who had rolled up their sleeves and were holding down a lamb whose legs were bound together and whose coat of wool was red with henna. Next to the lamb was a man in an apron, wielding a large butcher’s knife, but the lamb was thrashing so violently that he couldn’t do the job. After a struggle, the cook and the janitor succeeded in stilling the lamb, leaving behind them a trail of frozen breath. Taking the lamb by its mouth and its sweet nose, the butcher pushed its head roughly to one side and held the knife against the throat. There followed a short silence. “Allah Akbar, Allah Akbar,” said the butcher. Swiftly he slid the knife back and forth across the lamb’s throat. When the butcher pulled the knife away dark red blood gushed out. The lamb was shuddering and you could see its life ebbing away. Everything was still. Suddenly a gust of wind shook the bare branches of the linden tree. The butcher dragged the lamb by its head across the ground to drain the blood into a hole that had been dug in advance.
In the crowd I saw grimacing children, and our chauffeur, Çetin Efendi, along with an old man who was praying. Füsun had silently taken hold of the sleeve of my jacket. Every now and again, the lamb shuddered, but these were its last throes. The butcher who was now wiping the knife on his apron was Kazım, whose shop was next to the police station-I’d not recognized him at first. Coming eye to eye with Bekri the cook, I realized that it was our lamb; in those days, we bought sacrificial lambs, and this was the one that had been tied up on a rope in the back garden for a week.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said to Füsun.
Without speaking, we walked up the street. Was I troubled by my indifference to a little girl’s witnessing such a thing? I felt guilty, but I wasn’t quite sure why.
Neither my mother nor my father was religious. I never saw either of them pray or keep a fast. Like so many married couples who had grown up during the early years of the Republic, they were not disrespectful of religion; they were just indifferent to it, and like so many of their friends and acquaintances they explained their lack of interest by their love for Atatürk and their faith in the secular republic. Even so, our family, like most other secularist bourgeois families living in Nişantaşı, would sacrifice a lamb for the Feast of the Sacrifice and distribute the meat and the skin to the poor according to custom. But my father would have nothing to do with the sacrifice itself, and neither would anyone else in the family: We left it to the cook and the janitor to distribute the alms. Like my relatives, I had always kept my distance from the annual ritual sacrifice in the empty lot next door.
As Füsun and I, still silent, walked up to Alaaddin’s shop a cool wind hit us passing Teşvikiye Mosque and I felt almost as if it was my disquiet that made me shiver.
“Did that frighten you back there?” I asked. “We shouldn’t have looked…”
“The poor lamb,” she said.
“You know why they sacrifice the lamb, don’t you?”
“One day, when we go to heaven, that lamb will take us over the Sırat bridge, which is thin as a hair and sharp as a sword…”
This was the version for children and people with no education.
“There’s more to the story,” I said, with a teacherly air. “Do you know how it begins?”
“No.”
“The prophet Abraham was childless. He prayed to God, saying, ‘O Lord, if you give me a child, I’ll do anything you ask.’ In the end his prayers were answered, and one day his son Ismail was born. The prophet Abraham was filled with joy. He adored his son; kissing and caressing him all day long, the prophet was exultant and every day he thanked God. One day God came to him in his dream and God said, ‘Now slit your son’s throat and sacrifice him.’”
“Why did he say that?”
“Listen now… The prophet Abraham did as God instructed. He took out his knife, and just as he was about to slit his son’s throat… at that very moment, a lamb appeared.”
“Why?”
“God showed mercy to Abraham: He sent him the lamb so that he could sacrifice it in his son’s place. God saw that Abraham had been obedient.”
“If God hadn’t sent the lamb, would the prophet Abraham really have slit his son’s throat?” asked Füsun.
“He really would have,” I said uneasily. “It was because He was sure that Abraham would slit his son’s throat that God loved him so much and sent the lamb to spare him terrible grief.”
I could see that I had not told the story in such a way as to make it clear to a twelve-year-old girl why a doting father would try to kill his son. My unease was now turning into annoyance at my failure to explain the sacrifice.
“Oh no, Alaaddin’s shop is closed!” I said. “Let’s go check the shop on the square.”
We walked as far as Nişantaşı Square. Reaching the crossroads, we saw that Nurettin’s Place, which sold newspapers and cigarettes, was also closed. We turned back, and as we walked silently through the streets, I thought up an interpretation of the story of the prophet Abraham that Füsun might like.
“At the beginning, of course, the prophet Abraham has no idea that a lamb will take the place of his son,” I said. “But he believes in God so much, loves Him so much that in the end he trusts no harm can come from Him… If we love someone very much, we know that even if we give him the most valuable thing we have, we know not to expect harm from him. This is what a sacrifice is. Who do you love most in the world?”
“My mother, my father…”
We met Çetin the chauffeur on the sidewalk.
“Çetin Efendi, my father wants some liqueur,” I said. “All the shops in Nişantaşı are closed, so could you take us to Taksim? And after that maybe we could go for a ride.”
“I’m coming too, aren’t I?” Füsun asked.
Füsun and I sat in the back of my father’s ’56 Chevrolet, which was a deep cherry red. Çetin Efendi drove us up and down the hilly, bumpy cobblestone streets as Füsun looked out the window. Passing Maçka, we continued down the hill to Dolmabahçe. Apart from a few people in their holiday best, the streets were empty. But as we passed Dolmabahçe Stadium, we saw another group performing a sacrifice.
“Oh, please, Çetin Efendi, could you tell the child why we make sacrifices? I wasn’t able to explain it to her properly.”
“Oh Kemal Bey, I’m sure you explained it beautifully,” said the chauffeur. But he still seemed pleased to be acknowledged as more expert in matters of religion. “We make the sacrifice to show we’re as loyal to God as the prophet Abraham was… By this sacrifice we say that we are willing to lose even the thing that is most precious to us. We love God so much, little lady, that for Him we give up even the thing we love most. And we do that without expecting anything in return.”