Iron Earth, Copper Sky Read online

  ‘Then I’ll run home and hold them up from there, or they’ll butcher us all.’

  He dashed out.

  From the window of his house he was firing at random into the night, but his heart was not in it. It was no use. He had to think of something else, something much more dramatic to turn the villagers away from Tashbash. Suddenly it came to him. He threw his gun down and rushed out. Batty Bekir, getting no response from Sefer, stopped firing too.

  He burst into Tashbash’s house, panting.

  ‘There, brother Memet! See? Whoever it was, I’ve knocked the breath out of them. And in half an hour too! You’ve seen with your own eyes that I’d give my life for my villagers.’ He embraced Tashbash in a rush of sentiment. ‘I’ve found a way of getting you out of this trouble,’ he cried. ‘No one can make a saint of you, if you do as I say.’

  ‘Well, thank you, Sefer,’ Tashbash said. ‘I know how concerned you always are about the villagers, and myself especially.’

  Sefer pretended not to notice the irony in Tashbash’s voice.

  ‘I’m thinking of you only,’ he said. ‘What should a man do to avoid being looked upon as a saint?’ His eyes gleamed with the crafty look of a man about to ensnare his enemy. ‘If a man did something particularly bad, like thieving or rape, or lying with a beast, or murder, would that man be considered as a saint?’

  Tashbash saw what he was driving at. ‘That’s as may be,’ he said coldly.

  Sefer took fire.

  ‘If they catch you copulating with a donkey, if a dozen people in this village see you in that position, will they make a saint of you?’

  ‘One never knows what people will do.’

  ‘Well, anyway, this business with donkeys and dogs is a dirty business, the kind of thing we’d do in our youth. The easiest would be stealing. But you wouldn’t want that. So what’s left? Adultery! Ah, that you can do, and with pleasure.’ He laughed. ‘And just at the right moment we’ll come on you by surprise, the whole Village Council. No danger of there being a trace of saintliness left about you then. So you’ll be saved and with a pleasant night gained. The woman’s all ready too. That beauty among beauties, Batty Bekir’s wife. Bekir knows about her fancies, so he’ll hold no grudge against you. I’ll have a word with him beforehand.’

  Tashbash was white with rage. Suddenly he exploded.

  ‘Have you no shame?’ he cried. ‘No feeling of honour? I knew you weren’t human, but that you could be such a monster … Now look here, Sefer, I’d rather die than have my honour stained in this village. I don’t care about being a saint or a prophet or a Mehdi. And I don’t care if it gets me into trouble either. I can guess the real reason for your panic. It’s always the meek simple fellows they pick on, so they can drive them this way and that, but don’t worry, nobody’s going to make a saint out of me. So don’t ever come to this house again with your dirty suggestions.’

  Sefer saw that Tashbash was past listening to reason. ‘The villagers would never make a saint of you, that’s certain,’ he said, ‘if it weren’t for your spreading all those fairytales to your cronies at night and sending them abroad the next day to repeat all that stuff!’

  ‘It’s a lie!’ Tashbash shouted.

  ‘I know it for a fact,’ Sefer retorted. ‘Well, “he who falls doesn’t cry!” At this rate you’ll never be able to save your neck from the rope.’

  Tashbash longed to grab Sefer by the collar and shake the life out of him. But the man was in his house. He held himself in check.

  ‘It’s my life!’ he hissed out. ‘I’ll do what I like. I can only die once. Have you anything more to say?’

  ‘If you’re so far gone as to brave the hangman’s noose, then I’ve nothing more to say. If you’ve considered what will happen to this village, to your wife and children, how we’ll all be sent into exile, far beyond the vast steppe, how the graves of our fathers, of our dear ones will be left desolate, untended, then I’ve nothing more to say.’

  Tashbash was beside himself now. ‘I’ve considered everything,’ he thundered.

  Sefer recoiled. Suddenly, the man before him was growing in stature, swelling, swelling. Quickly, Sefer threw himself out of the house.

  fn1 Sheikh Sait: a Kurdish religious leader, chief of the Naksibendi dervishes, who in 1925 led the Kurds of the eastern provinces of Turkey in a revolt against the Ataturk Republican régime. The rebellion was crushed and the Sheikh captured and hanged in Diyarbakir with forty-six of his followers in June 1925.

  Chapter 19

  Let’s see what the new day has in store for us. A new day, a new hope. Would last night’s shooting have any effect?

  Early in the morning Sefer had dispatched his emissaries into the village. Then he had interpreted a dream of Zaladja’s against Tashbash and had sent her forth to spread it abroad. But Zaladja had not found the heart to tell a soul. What kind of a man was this Sefer anyway, she thought indignantly. She hadn’t dreamed anything like that at all. Just to think of it made her ashamed. On the other hand, Sefer’s men gave full rein to their tongues, spreading the most hair-raising stories about Tashbash. No crime was too extravagant; theft, despoiling of orphans, rape of a twelve-year-old girl … In his youth Tashbash had copulated only with animals, wild and domestic, and he’d have been at it still but for the prayers of the Hodja of Karatopak. Thanks to the Hodja he had given up that dirty business, yes, but only to molest young children, little girls, and boys too! A terror to the whole neighbourhood!

  ‘How can such a creature be connected with a saint? And one like Lokman the Physician too! A creature who’s not worthy of living among human beings, how could it be?’

  As for Spellbound Ahmet’s kissing the ground before his feet, they had an explanation for that too. ‘That day, Spellbound went from house to house, flinging truths at people’s faces, but when he came to Tashbash he only kissed the ground before him. Now, what does that mean? Aha, it means this: everyone has his faults, but you, o Tashbash, you’re so rotten that you’ll go straight to Hell, no questions asked. So, in this world, the only thing one can do for you is to kiss the ground before your feet. Nothing else. You’re a lost soul.’

  Sefer’s men combed the village, talking wildly, but people only listened with half an ear.

  Let’s see what the new day has in store for us. A new day, a new hope. Tashbash’s attitude last night had been a dagger planted in the Muhtar’s heart. This time it was open war. Not just the usual skirmish, but a pitched battle. This time it was a question of whose head would fall. And for the moment it looked as though Tashbash had scored.

  What news would his emissaries bring, his dear friends, his cronies?

  Tiny Musa was the first to come in. He had been an orphan dependent on charity until the Muhtar had taken him in, married him off and got the villagers to build him a home. He was one of Sefer’s warmest partisans.

  ‘What news, Musa?’ Sefer asked. ‘What are they saying in the village about last night’s raid by the bandits?’

  With the body of a child of ten, his yellow skin sticking to his bones, Tiny Musa had the flurried look of a man living on hot coals, as though every minute of his life somebody was after him, bent on doing him a bad turn.

  ‘They’re saying, what kind of a bandit is this who picks on a village everyone knows is up to its neck in debt? What a stupid bandit to look for coals in an empty hearth! And that’s all they have to say about the shooting.’ He sighed. ‘All they can talk about is Tashbash and his family. One of them said, it was Ökkesh Dagkurdu, a man who’s got such holy ancestors can’t be entirely empty himself, and all the others agreed with him and said they were sure there was something special about Tashbash.’

  ‘So that’s what they’re saying now, eh? That’s the worst so far, the first spark to the powder barrel. Because I know my man, that sanctimonious Ökkesh, making his prayers five times a day! It’s Tashbash he serves, the sham, and not Allah at all. Ah, Tashbash has picked the right man to use as the first spark. There
are oceans of cunning in that man. But I won’t let him get away with this. Oh no, I won’t. And tell me, Musa my child, there must be some new stories circulating about Tashbash’s famous forbears. If he wants to keep this up, he’s bound to produce a fresh story every day. Tell me now, what saints have they discovered in his family today? What new exploits have they performed, these ancestors of his? But first, have you been able to find out who is spreading all this?’

  ‘I’ve tried my best,’ Tiny Musa said, ‘but it’s no use. It’s as though these stories spring of themselves, from the earth, the rocks, the trees, as though they stream into the village from that great wide steppe yonder …’

  Far out in the west is a mountain by the sea called Mount Ida. There, on its summit, you will find the shrine of the Golden Maid. In those days there were two holy persons in this world. One was the Golden Maid of Mount Ida and the other dwelt in these very Taurus Mountains – the forefather of our own Tashbash, the great Holy Tashbash! From their separate mountains, these two souls were in constant contact, and each knew all there was to know about the other.

  The Golden Maid was the Lady of the Birds and our Holy Tashbash was the Lord of the Deer. When the Golden Maid moved from one part of her mountain to another, the sky above her became a flashing, teeming riot of birds of every kind and colour. And thus, escorted by her birds, the Golden Maid wandered about her mountain, her golden hair flowing like sparkling water down her shoulders. She had large, bright blue eyes and her lips were the colour of the pomegranate flower. The Golden Maid was a pure virgin in her sixteenth spring.

  Our Tashbash was young too, and handsome! Tall and broad-shouldered with a light brown wavy beard that flowed over his breast. On the back of a horned stag he would ride from peak to peak, and sometimes, with a flock of deer, he would descend right down into the Chukurova plain. He would sleep with his deer in their shelters and eat and drink with them. What did he eat? Just a little deer’s milk, wild honey, a handful of corn, a drop or two of water …

  One day a bird alighted on a rock just in front of the Lord of the Deer, so beautiful, with colours so bright you’d have thought it came straight out of Paradise. The Holy Tashbash put out his hand to caress it and what should he see? A tiny gold box concealed under the bird’s wing! In the box, on a tuft of pure white cotton, was one single golden thread of hair. The Holy Tashbash knew at once where the bird had come from. He twined the yellow hair about an olive sprig and hung it over his breast. Then stretching out his hand into the invisible where the everlasting fire of the Forty Holy Men burns, the fire that will never go out till the Day of Doom, he took a live coal and laid it over the cotton. He put the box back under the bird’s wing and sent it forth. Such was the magic of the coal from the holy fire that it did not burn the Golden Maid’s cotton. And by this, the Lord of the Deer meant to say, your message to me is that you are as soft as cotton, and mine is that I burn for you with the everlasting fire of the Holy Forties’ hearth, but my fire will never singe your cotton-soft love.

  When the bird came back to the Golden Maid, she opened the box and was struck with admiration. Ah, she thought, his love for me is even greater than mine. He is the saintlier of the two of us. I must go and prostrate myself before him.

  And straight away, in his heart’s eye, the Lord of the Deer had a vision of the Golden Maid, the sky and earth about her swarming with birds, a whirling cloud of many colours streaming towards him. Swiftly, he sprang on to his stag and set off to forestall her, the stag bounding from peak to peak like a shooting star. Then he cast a glance behind him and he saw thousands of deer and hundreds and thousands of stars, all tumbling over each other to keep up with him! After a while he looked again and what should he see this time? The huge mountain of the Taurus itself, with its earth and stones, its trees and rocks and running waters, its every living creature, rolling along behind him, a whole wide world coming to greet the Golden Maid! This won’t do, he told himself. What will the Golden Maid think of me! She’ll think I’m doing this on purpose to show what a great saint I am. So he turned and spoke to the Taurus, saying, stop here, o holy mountain, I forbid you to come with me. So the mountain came no farther, which is why the western foothills of the Taurus stretch right out into the country of Izmir, end and there. And he spoke to the host of stars in his wake, saying, lovely stars, you too stop where you are. And they were arrested in their course, which is why the heavens over the Chukurova are always so thickly studded with stars.

  At last the holy lovers met at the Burning Stone of Chimaera, near Antalya, the stone whose eternal flames are a testimonial until the end of time to the place where the two saints became man and wife. After that, they travelled first to Mount Ida and then to the Taurus, and everywhere they went the birds and deer came teeming after them.

  The Lord of the Deer said to the Golden Maid: ‘When we die our shrines will be apart, yours on the peak of Mount Ida and mine on the Taurus, you among your birds and I among my deer.’

  And the Golden Maid said: ‘Since the children I will bear will remain here in the south with you, allow me to bestow a gift on your domain.’ And she took a handful of earth from Mount Ida and strewed it over the flanks of the Taurus, saying: ‘Let this soil yield crops all the year round. Let it be so fertile that its very stones shall sprout and bloom.’

  And indeed the soil of the Chukurova plain has ever been the most bountiful on earth.

  Then she took a walnut sapling from Mount Ida and planted it on the flanks of the Taurus. ‘Let this tree be a help to those in need, a light in their darkness,’ she said, and the tree grew, and at night it turned into a tree of light. People still come with their wishes and their troubles to visit the Holy Walnut. And so it will be till the end of time.

  Well, this Lord of the Deer, the husband of the Golden Maid, is the Holy Tashbash, the ancestor of our Memet Tashbash! And ever since then it’s been a sin to kill a deer in the villages of the Taurus. If you ask why, it’s because the Lord of the Deer is one of us.

  Let’s see what the new day has in store for us, the Muhtar had said. A new day, a new hope. But it had not turned out well. Things were going from bad to worse with every passing hour. By the time darkness fell, a great fear had seized the Muhtar. Tashbash would never forgive him after all this. He would take the first opportunity to kill him.

  He signalled to Tiny Musa and those who were sitting about the room that he wanted to be left alone. Silent and gloomy, they filed out as though from a house of mourning.

  ‘You stay, Ömer my child,’ he said. ‘I’ve something to say to you.’

  Ömer turned back and sat by the fire, his eyes on the ground. He was not given to talking. Pale Ismail’s daughter came in with the evening meal. They ate in silence.

  ‘Ömer, my child,’ Sefer began when they had finished, ‘we’ve got to take this matter into our own hands. They want to lay low the great and noble house of my father, the Headman Hidir, a house that has been a haven for the poor many years, a house so often graced by Osmanli Pashas … Tashbasn is the enemy who is working for our downfall. For seven years he has been trying, but this time he has hit on an idea, incredible, unheard-of, and he’s getting it across to the villagers. He’s convincing them that he’s a saint! For days now I’ve been watching him with the eyes of an eagle as he weaves his monstrous plan. Look, Ömer, you’re a clever lad, almost one of the Hidir family, tell me, what will this man do, once he’s got them all under his thumb? Will he spare us? Will he hesitate to wipe out the house of Hidir? Tell me!’

  ‘He won’t,’ Ömer said bluntly.

  ‘That’s why, before he does away with us …’

  ‘We kill him!’

  ‘That’s it. But how?’

  ‘I’ll go and kill him,’ Ömer said. ‘It’s enough that you should accept me as one of the noble house of Hidir …’

  ‘I have! Indeed, you’re its noblest member,’ the Muhtar cried. ‘Only you must be very careful in this matter of Tashbash. Your right hand sh
ouldn’t know what your left is doing.’

  ‘That’s my concern. I’ll do whatever you say.’

  ‘You see, Ömer my child, I don’t like the idea of taking a life. The human being is Allah’s most perfect work. How can I destroy it? But what can I do? You heard what Spellbound Ahmet said, that my death would be at the hands of Tashbash. You heard it with your own ears and so did the whole wide world. But I won’t let it come to that. Never!’ He was stirred. The veins in his neck swelled. ‘He must be got rid of before he is crowned a saint. Tonight! Listen, my child, I have a plan, and with you by my side it’ll be smooth running. All this sainthood business will make it easier too. Can you mimic Long Ali’s voice?’

  Ömer had one great gift. He could use his voice at will and there was not a person in the village he could not impersonate, man or woman, from Shirtless to Old Meryemdje.

  ‘Of course I can!’

  ‘Good. We’ll smear our faces with soot and wrap ourselves in long white sheets and at midnight we’ll go to Tashbash’s house. You’ll knock at the door and call out to him in Long Ali’s voice. As soon as he opens, we’ll pull this sack down over his head and carry him down into the valley. There we’ll strangle him and throw his body into the Dry Well. In the village, we’ll spread the rumour that the Forty Holy Men have taken him away. How’s that?’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Ömer said. ‘But what about his wife? Somebody must hold her, while we take Tashbash away, and stuff a rag into her mouth so she won’t rouse the whole village.’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ Sefer admitted. ‘We can’t trust this job to an oustider. It must be one of us.’

  ‘There’s no one else,’ Ömer said, with a touch of swagger.

  ‘What has this family come to?’ Sefer groaned. ‘To think there isn’t a single man to hold one woman.’

  ‘And if it weren’t for me …’ Ömer bragged.

  ‘You’re right, my child,’ the Muhtar sighed. ‘But for you, I’d be alone, and Tashbash would wipe out our race.’