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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

Making your way through the golden wheat swaying in the morning breeze, you go over to the poor young boy. You are no longer the same person. For the rest of your life every breeze that blows over the steppes will remind you of this boy. Blood has stained your bread. Yes, from now on nothing will be the same.

*

Years have passed since then. Now you are at that age when you tell yourself that you don’t surprise easily. From the middle of Anatolia you have come to the middle of Istanbul, besieged by Anatolia on all sides. In essence your life hasn’t changed all that much. You are in a neighborhood made up of people from Sivas, Erzincan and Giresun. The same patients. The same problems.

You visit a village society group and hear the story of a family from eastern Turkey. The family marries off their 16- or 17-year-old daughter to a much older man. The girl has no hope but to marry him. Soon she finds the situation unbearable and she runs away. Her father, however, will not accept this and he takes her back to her husband. The girl runs away again. Since returning to her natal home is no longer an option she goes to stay with relatives who live in another city. They promptly inform her family and they come and collect her. Some time later she leaves for an entirely different city. Now she’s going to look after herself. To the mind of her family, she is now living a wayward life. So her older brothers track her down and bring her back to Istanbul. Three brothers pack her into her a car and together they take a drive around the city. They don’t know how to do it. Finally they come to the base of a viaduct along the highway. They tell the girl she has to jump. By now she has come to understand everything she has been through and what will become of her. She asks of her brothers only one thing:

“Brother, it’s really high. I’m scared. Please just put something over my eyes. For the love of God blindfold me before I do it.”

And do you know what happens next? Life becomes an uphill journey. That viaduct you pass every time you go to work in the morning looks like that hair-narrow bridge As-Sırat. Your eyes search for the silhouette of that poor girl on the edge, whose only wish was for her brothers to let her cover her eyes before they made her jump. Every time you pass that viaduct you get the same helpless, lonely feeling you get every time you pass by a cemetery.

You break out in a sweat. But for some reason you still believe in something. A breeze still blows over this world and it dries the sweat off your brow. It does every time …

27 The Municipality Man Who Drew a Gun

27