The Aziz Bey Incident. Ayfer Tunc

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СКАЧАТЬ from the window of his room slowly descended upon the city, turning it from purple to navy blue. The city metamorphosed, became alive. It became colourful with the lights that filtered through the darkness. But Aziz Bey was not even aware of this. Although he had eaten nothing all day long he did not feel hungry. There was a pain bigger than hunger inside him. As he burnt with the heat, he soaked a white towel turned purple from over-washing and placed it on the nape of his neck, he tossed and turned on the bed. He could not sleep until the morning. He spent the night watching the insects wandering about the creaking floorboards of the hotel room and jumping up with a start at the sound of every footstep. He went out with the first light of the morning passing in front of the young hotel clerk, who leant back asleep in his chair, his mouth open and his face and eyes covered with flies that were landing and taking off. He squatted on the ground and gazed at the road for a long time.

      That day during lunch break Maryam stopped by for five minutes. She was coolish, apparently indifferent. She had no intention of asking after Aziz Bey, nor of talking about the job they would find for him, their fresh hopes and wonderful dreams.

      To Aziz Bey’s ‘Why didn’t you come yesterday?’ she just said, ‘I was busy in the workshop, I couldn’t leave.’ Aziz Bey could not tell her how he worried about her, how he felt like a blind person not knowing the language or his way around this city. He only managed to kiss the edge of her lip, just touch her curly black hair. That was all. When Maryam left, he lay down on his bed, and a stupid smile spread over his face. If only for five minutes Maryam had come, hadn’t she? He was happy.

      But on the next day she did not come.

      That day Aziz Bey had a feeling that there was something funny going on. Something very slender broke inside him. He sat in front of the window, whose shutters he had closed. Hours passed. When one panel of the shutters opened by itself, he saw that the fallen stars of lights from the city had filtered into a sky wrapped in a dark navy blue. He felt as though he had awoken from a long dream. He wiped his tear filled eyes, calmed himself down and walked around the room. A touching expression of acceptance of fate settled on his face. At that moment, he felt completely alone in the world, forlorn and forgotten.

      He longed passionately for his mother’s sagging soft white neck. If he had been in Istanbul now and been able to bury his face in his mother’s warm, white neck, his sorrow could have been somewhat abated.

      While looking at the bright lights of this terribly hot city, he remembered that it was time for the musical show at the tavern in Samatya that he visited every evening. The friendly group of musicians must have already come in, one by one, taken their positions, and drunk their first sips of rakı. He thought that they would start a little later with a violin or lute improvisation and that they would soon be lost in a world of their own by giving their souls up to the music that had permeated their cells. He took the tambur that he had not taken in his hand since the day he arrived out of its cover and began to play.

       Black eyes do not heed my wailsCome oh dimple, come to the rescue…

      He put down the tambur and cried his heart out and then felt better. He went and washed his hands and face with this hot city’s water that didn’t know how to be cool. He sat on the bed and counted the remainder of his money. He then went out, without straying too far from the hotel, went into a shop and ate a tomato salad with hummus and drank a Turkish coffee with cardamom. For a while he wandered around the streets whose sounds and smells had changed with the coming of night, then returned to his room. He was tearful. He was hurt. He felt he had been deceived. He wanted to sleep for a long time and when he woke up find himself in Istanbul as the young Aziz who had not as yet been dealt life’s blow. To see that all he had been through had been a bad dream… But no. That harsh reality was real. He was alone and helpless in a foreign land.

      Aziz Bey would fall into a similar situation once again at the end of his life. Then too he wanted to go to sleep and when he awoke see that that tormenting phase of his life had never happened. Like so many people whose lives were stamped with regrets…

      He lay on his bed. But it was too hot to sleep.

      When Maryam did not come the next day or the day after, he was charitably concerned that maybe something had happened to her. If that were not the case, Maryam would certainly have come. He went to the furrier shop of Maryam’s uncle, Artin, risking getting lost in those muddled streets. He had a bad feeling inside. He thought he would find the shop closed. The shop would surely be in a cheerless, sorrowful state: the shutters rolled down, the lights off, as if everyone had gone off in a hurry…

      But the shop was open and cheerful. It looked as though it were participating with all its inner being in a commercial life full of hustle and bustle. He drew near to the shop, stood in the doorway and looked inside. Maryam was not there. Instead, a thin bony man with a moustache that resembled a toothbrush dipped in black ink, and a fat youth whose drenched handkerchief lay on the nape of his sweaty neck, were talking and looking at a fur coat they had spread on the counter. He listened to them carefully. When he distinguished ‘Artin’ a few times among the Arabic words spoken in a booming voice by the boy, he realised that the man with the toothbrush moustache was her Artin. For a moment he thought about going in and asking about Maryam, but as uncle Artin turned, sensing someone standing in the doorway, he quickly drew away from the door of the shop as if caught red-handed and crouched at the bottom of a wall. It was as though his heart beat in his throat. He went to the corner of the shop window and looked in. Being the summer season there was just a short jacket made of fox fur dyed blue in the window. Aziz Bey could see uncle Artin laughing cheerfully from behind that jacket. There was nothing untoward. But then, there was no Maryam either.

      Although he had tried very hard to remember the way back to his hotel, he got lost in the muddled streets of this city that looked both very like, and not at all like, his own city. His temples throbbed. He felt desperately tired. The deep pain inside him confused his poor mind and slowed his steps as it tried to find the street that led to his hotel. He was so paralysed by the vast variety of words he heard, not a single one of which he understood, that he could not even stop someone and tell him the name of his hotel. He went in and out of many streets. He passed through districts bearing different souls of the city. After finding himself in tiny completely unexpected squares and after drinking water cupping his hand to a street fountain, he finally reached his hotel bathed in sweat, when the redness of the sun had already covered the sky. He paused as he passed the clerk, who was engaged in combing his wispy moustache in a hand-held mirror. He looked hopefully at his face wondering if he would slip him a note, a chit, give him news that would in an instant wipe out all his sorrow. The clerk just smiled. He went up to his room, washed his hands and face and sank down onto his bed. He did not want to believe that Maryam would not come again; he went to sleep.

      He waited at the hotel for Maryam for a whole eleven days, hoping she would come. Twice a day he went to the restaurant he had got to know and had a bite to eat. Every morning he went down to the bench that could be called the reception and paid the clerk the money for the night he had stayed. He sat in a corner looking onto the street in front of the so-called lobby and at night played his tambur in his room. The agony of foreignness that had left deep scars on his life took the place of the agony of love. Finally his money ran out.

      Words full of bitterness and rebellion were growing inside him. He could neither stay nor return. If he wrote a letter to his father or close friends asking for money, by the time it arrived he would have died of hunger. He felt very deeply the pain of having come to this city with great hopes where he knew no one and where he had not a single friend, only to be disappointed. He wandered around the city for a few days, but he didn’t even know the two or three words necessary to be able to get a job. He passed in front of building sites, not being able to explain that he would carry stones if need be, looking with a vacant expression at the workers running about like ants, then returning to his room, hopeless and despondent. Soon he would not be able to pay for the hotel and the clerk who liked СКАЧАТЬ