“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.”
“Isn’t there any heaven at the end of it?” I asked slyly.
“As God has so written… That will become clear on Judgment Day. We don’t make the sacrifice to get into heaven. We make the sacrifice because we love God, and without expecting anything in return.”
“You know a lot about religion, Çetin Efendi.”
“Kemal Bey, you’re embarrassing me. You’re so educated, you know so much more. Anyway, you don’t need religion or a mosque to know such things. If there is something we value greatly, something we have lavished with care, and we give it to someone truly out of love, it is without expecting anything in return.”
“But wouldn’t the person for whom we have performed this selfless act then feel upset?” I said. “They’d worry that we want something from them.”
“God is great,” said Çetin Efendi. “He sees everything and understands everything… And He understands that we expect nothing in return for our love. No one can fool God.”
“There’s a shop open over there,” I said. “Çetin Efendi, could you stop here? I know they sell liqueurs.”
In a minute Füsun and I had bought two bottles of the government monopoly’s famous liqueurs, one peppermint and one strawberry, and climbed back into the car.
“Çetin Efendi, we still have time, can you take us on a little drive?”
So many years later Füsun was able to remind me of most of the things we talked about during our long drive around the city. In my own memory only one image remained of that cold, gray holiday morning: Istanbul resembled a slaughterhouse. It was not just in the poor areas, or the empty lots in dark and narrow backstreets, or among the ruins and burned-out lots-even on the big avenues and in the richest neighborhoods, people had been slaughtering lambs, tens of thousands of them since the early hours of the morning. In some places the sidewalk and the cobblestones were covered in blood. As our car rolled down hills and across bridges and wound its way through the backstreets, we saw lambs that had just been slaughtered, lambs being chopped into pieces, lambs being skinned. We took the Galata Bridge across the Golden Horn. Despite the holiday and the flags and the crowds in their finery, the city looked tired and sad. Beyond the Aqueduct of Valens we turned toward Fatih. There we saw hennaed lambs for sale in an empty lot.
“Are these going to be slaughtered, too?” asked Füsun.
“Maybe not all of them, little lady,” said Çetin Efendi. “It’s almost noon, and these still haven’t been sold… Maybe, if they’re not bought by the end of the holiday, these poor animals will be saved. But eventually, the drovers will sell them to butchers, little lady.”
“We’ll get there before the butchers and buy them, and save them,” said Füsun. She wore an elegant red coat and as she smiled, she gave me a courageous wink. “We can rescue the sheep from this man who wants to slaughter his children, can’t we?”