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Back Fairy Chimney Soda Save as PDF
Chapters (38)
  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. 1 Kurban:
  8. 2 I Am an Orphan, Press Me to Your Chest
  9. 3 What Has That Got to Do with It, Dad!
  10. 4 I Am Grown Up, Dad
  11. 5 The Weight of Your Coat
  12. 6 “We’ll Ask Someone for Our Name, and She’ll Tell Us”
  13. 7 The Seal
  14. 8 Whose Blood Is That on the Photo?
  15. 9 The Smell of Bread or Blood?
  16. 10 What’s Left for Us
  17. 11 A Drop of Water
  18. 12 Just Let Go
  19. 13 Turkey at the End of Its Rope
  20. 14 Hearts in the Palms of Our Hands
  21. 15 The Burnt Smell Inside Us
  22. 16 The Quilt
  23. 17 Where Are Our Dead?
  24. 18 Mothers Sniff Out Their Lambs
  25. 19 The Soul of a Word
  26. 20 Three Kinds of Truth and Us
  27. 21 The Country Doctor
  28. 22 The File Under My Arm
  29. 23 The Country of the Forgotten Dead
  30. 24 The Coming of the Fiancée
  31. 25 The Lie
  32. 26 Why These Scars?
  33. 27 The Municipality Man Who Drew a Gun
  34. 28 Tell All Your Friends, I learned How to Die
  35. 29 God Willing, He Is Dead
  36. 30 Come Along, Let’s Start off by Saving Ourselves
  37. 31 A Whistle Out of Chestnut
  38. Glossary

In a funk, I go back to the Health Center.

A 12-year-old. The son of someone I know who works in the post office. Playing with his dad’s gun, a registered firearm, the boy shoots himself in the stomach. He was on the brink of adolescence. A little fuzz on his upper lip. Now he lies there in silence. It is clear where the bullet went in but there is no exit wound. The pit is in him and I need to find it. It’s important that the prosecutor match it to the gun. Drenched in sweat, I search for the pit. Nothing. I pull out the boy’s organs. I can’t find it. Now there’s nothing left but his intestines. I ask for a bucket. Scrape out everything left inside. And then a ting echoes in the bucket. At last.

Carefully I put everything back, stitch him up and then clean up. The boy’s father has arrived with a police officer. At front of the door, I say:

“I found the bullet right away. A case of internal bleeding, the boy died instantly. He didn’t suffer at all.”

He puts his arm around my shoulder. Together we smoke a cigarette.

*

One summer day I was in Bergama. I remember being there for a Psychotherapy conference. I saw his picture that the morning in the hotel. There was a notice beside it. “Honoring today our friend at his grave.” Selim Martin. Selim. Before the 1980s. I am in Med school. Transferred out of the Politics department. Staying in a dorm. Something’s happened. I go to his room, I want to talk to him. When I go in he’s playing a saz. He puts the instrument aside and we have a talk over tea. I look at his clothes: He’s wearing a brand new fancy suit, and I think to myself, how did he manage to find the time to iron that thing in all this mayhem.

He knows that I am from Ankara. We talk about how someone wrote “Revolution is the Only Way” on the roof of the Political Science building. It was the kind of thing that got you in real trouble. That extreme. After the coup in September 12, they killed Selim in his home in Bayraklı without even interrogating him. The news deeply saddened me. So now so many years later I would go to visit his grave in a seaside town. While we still had our lives ahead of us. What could we do but live? I went to his grave in Bergama, but I made it back in time for the last morning panel.

“Brother, your eyes are bloodshot, is something wrong?”

“Oh, I have allergic conjunctivitis. Sunlight triggers the allergy in my eyes. That’s all.”

26 Why These Scars?

26

Why These Scars?