I feel ashamed of myself and I slowly take Poyraz down off my shoulders …

Not so long ago staff sergeant Mehmet Ciftçi was killed when a military vehicle hit a roadside mine during transport in Hakkari. His body was never found and his family announced that they wanted to be personally involved in the search. The mother of the lost soldier, Döndü Ciftçi, who was on dialysis for the last 30 years, said the following:

“Take me to my boy. I’ll find him, I can sniff him out. Put me on a plane and I’ll go. I beg you. I will look in all the cracks along the road, I can track down the scent of my lamb.”

*

Sometimes I call mom out of the blue. Pressing the receiver to her ear, she says:

“Ercan, my lamb.”

“Oh mom, how did you know it was me? Maybe someone else was calling, and that would be rude,” I say. Mom:

“How could that be, my son. How could I not know? Your smell comes down the telephone line. The smell of Ercan …”

Mothers are such fascinating people? So strange. Unlike anyone else. But I’m sure they can recognize each other and they must have a common language we don’t know and which they alone can speak and understand. Maybe they meet in secret and give each other news. Who knows?

Now what to say? And to whom?

Cruel monsters, fearsome merchants, proud statues, people with no conscience, oppressors!

Leave way for the lambs. Let them pass to the other side of the river.

Their mothers can smell them out. Oh yes they can.

Let these mothers embrace them …

19

The Soul of a Word

In her book Leyla Neyzi mentions a story by N. Kazancakis: Passing through a village two travelers pick a strange flower off a fence. A very beautiful flower. The village children gather round. The two travelers ask them:

“What’s the name of this flower?” The children:

“We don’t know but Aunt Lenio does.”

“Run and call her over.”

A child races off to the village center. Patiently the travelers wait and a little later a child returns.

“Aunt Lenio has died.”

The travelers’ hearts contract. They are not only thinking of the death of Aunt Lenio but also of the death of a word.

The soul of a word.

Words are not only a meaning that comes when certain letters are put together in a particular order. For example, the word “flower” is not just a physical flower. Or the word “letter.” Is a letter nothing more than a piece of paper stuffed inside an envelope?

Why do we shiver when someone says the word “photograph”? Because it’s more than just a picture.

*

For example, when you say the words compos mentis what comes to my mind is a little prayer book hanging around the neck of a frail, thin-faced child sitting silently between two gendarmerie on a worn-out bench that was gifted from the municipality in a long, narrow corridor of the health clinic. He left a neighboring town where he was working as an apprentice and came here. He took a rifle and right in the middle of the coffeehouse he killed his father who had been raping his little sister for some time. Now you have to examine the boy and write the report. Is he compos mentis?