The Undying Grass Page 2

  Old Halil stared at the snow-white fields. ‘How the world’s changed!’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, if we’d had such crops in our youth, we’d have made a hundred kilos a day. Isn’t that so, Jabbar?’

  ‘It’s progress,’ Jabbar declared. ‘Even the Chukurova man is taller now than he was. People here used to be no higher than your finger.’

  ‘I could easily manage twenty kilos now, old as I am,’ Old Halil observed happily.

  ‘Me too,’ Jabbar said.

  It was at Injejik that Old Halil had taken refuge after fleeing from his home village of Yalak. How he had got through the Long Valley that pitch-black night without freezing in the raging blizzard, how he had found his way to Injejik and, what’s more, to the very door of his old friend Jabbar, of this he recalled nothing, nothing at all. All he knew was that he had opened his eyes and there was Jabbar with his smiling face offering him a glass of warm tea.

  ‘How did I get here, Jabbar?’

  ‘That’s what I was going to ask you, Halil …’

  ‘How long have I been here?’

  ‘A full fortnight …’

  Old Halil had risen from his bed at once, and that very day all the villagers had thronged about him to hear his tale.

  ‘Those Yalak villagers,’ he began, ‘they’ve all gone mad. Every one of them from seven to seventy, including Muhtar Sefer and Tashbash. As for that Meryemdje, she’s raving mad. Don’t be surprised if you hear very soon that they’ve flown at each other’s throats and not a single one of them is left alive.’

  And so he had rambled on, regaling the people of Injejik with comic tales about Yalak village. It was enough to mention the name of Yalak and Old Halil would start off. ‘And what’s more, Tashbash’s words will come true,’ he concluded. ‘Serpents, great big serpents will rain upon that village and devour every one of its inhabitants … Meryemdje too. Even Tashbash himself …’

  The people of Injejik were curious. ‘Who knows what those Yalakers had done to this poor old man for him to leave his home in the teeth of winter and almost freeze to death! Who knows …’

  Old Halil had ensconced himself beside Jabbar’s hearth and he never stirred from the house. He started at the slightest sound. ‘They’ll kill me in the end, those vicious Yalakers, those pharaohs,’ he kept saying as he cast anxious glances at the door. He forgot how to sleep and at least once a week he would take his last leave of the Injejik villagers.

  ‘I came here to save my skin, to this land of milk and honey, with its purple crags, its cedars and black junipers, its fine, kind, friendly people. I thought I would be safe in the house of my dear friend Jabbar, who in his youth was just as good a horse-thief as I was. But it’s no use, those Yalak people will kill me yet, you’ll see. If not today, then tomorrow. Let me say farewell to you now, my dear friends. Ah, you don’t know those vicious villagers! And all because I brought them down a little late for the cotton picking last year. It was their fault, for they would not give me a horse, and I ask you, how could I, old as you see me, walk down all the way to the Chukurova? So I didn’t give the signal as I usually do, and when we did get there all the good fields were already being picked. They wanted to kill me, to tear me to pieces, but I ran away back to the village and hid in the grain crib. And then that worthless son of mine, that snivelly Hadji, found me and he went and told the others. So there I was, surrounded by a huge crowd, men, women and children, and in a twinkling they had stripped me naked and were building up a fire right there in the middle of the village, a fire as big as a threshing floor. They meant to throw me into the fire like that, stark naked … Ya Allah! I cried, and I made a dash for it. I ran with the whole of Yalak village at my heels, led by that queen of old whores, Meryemdje. I gave them the slip at last and made straight for my secret cave. Then I came to you. Now hide me, hide me well …’

  And so the winter passed. Against their better judgement the people of Injejik began to share Halil’s fears. Every night they had visions of hundreds of men attacking their village and slaying first Old Halil and then all the rest of them. Summer came and went and still their fears persisted, much as they tried to make light of the whole thing. Thus it was that they left for the Chukurova a week earlier than usual. Yet the whole plain was already white with blooming cotton when they arrived. A white haze spread over it far and wide.

  For the first time in maybe a year Old Halil slept a deep untroubled sleep. The east was lighting up when he woke. The sun had not yet risen, but the villagers were already in the fields, their hands working like machines. Without stopping to wash his face, without crouching down at leisure beside the stream, without even easing his bowels, without chewing the faintly-fragrant leaves of the tamarisk, as had always been his custom on the first day of arrival in the Chukurova, Old Halil hurried off to join the cotton pickers. His nimble hands, past masters in the art of stealing horses and breaking fetters, were just as quick at gathering cotton. By noontime his was the tallest mound of all. People stared at him with admiration.

  ‘At his age, such speed!’

  ‘At his age, such energy …’

  ‘Hard as the old earth …’

  For three full days he worked steadily, without ever once easing his bowels, to his heart’s content on the Chukurova earth. In the middle of the night of the third day he rose from his bed and slipped stealthily through the tamarisks to where the gathered cotton was stacked. He went straight to his mound and began to carry his cotton over to his friend Jabbar’s heap. When he had done this he stepped back and gazed at the heap which towered high above all the others now. Then he turned and walked off quickly. He reached the road and plodded on, his bare feet sinking ankle-deep into the cool dust. He felt empty now, alone, deserted. As the sun rose, he felt a lump in his throat and shed a tear or two. Then he smiled. ‘You’re worse than a woman, Old Halil,’ he scolded. ‘A mere woman …’

  He saw a group of cotton pickers in a field close to the road and, judging from their clothes, guessed them to be villagers from the Taurus Mountains. It was very hot and he was bathed in sweat. The labourers were sweating too. He greeted them. They looked up, then bent down again, absorbed in their work.

  Rebuffed, Old Halil appealed to an old man among them. ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘can you tell me something?’

  The old man straightened up: ‘What is it, friend?’

  Old Halil smiled, then his smile faded and his face grew bitter. ‘Have you ever heard of Yalak? That’s my village. Old Halil they call me there. I’m looking for my villagers. Do you know if they’re picking anywhere around here?’

  ‘Are you Old Halil?’ the old man exclaimed with a mixture of surprise and awe. ‘Are you the Old Halil who could pry open the strongest hobbles, break down the stoutest doors, and even make away with the horse of the Shah and the Padishah?’

  To be remembered again like this … Old Halil was overcome. His throat grew tight. ‘That’s me,’ he blurted out, then he turned and fled.

  The old man and the other labourers left their work and stared after him. He never slowed down, not even when he was on the road again. Tears ran down his cheeks. ‘Old Halil, the eagle of these mountains! To come to this … What a cruel, cruel world, one without mercy …’

  A young man was coming up the road, a robust youth who walked at a tearing pace, raising clouds of dust. His shirt hung unbuttoned over his black hairy chest. Old Halil looked enviously at his tall sunburnt body and thought, ‘Eh, Old Halil, to think you were like that once! Now nobody pays any attention to you. You’re not even important enough to kill. But I’m going to set fire to that village and burn it down to ashes. We’ll see if they think I’m unimportant then!’

  ‘Hey, brother,’ he called.

  The young man looked at him. His face was hard, confident, angry, but the lock of hair that fell over his forehead gave it a boyish air.

  Old Halil’s heart was thumping. ‘Thank you for stopping, wayfarer … Thank you …’

  The young man unbent a lit
tle. His breathing came hard and he was sweating.

  ‘I’m Old Halil, you know, from Yalak village. D’you know where my people are picking cotton?’

  The young man scowled. ‘Never heard of Yalak in my life, so how should I know where those people are working!’ He waved his hand as though brushing off a fly.

  ‘Are you telling me you’ve not even heard the name of Old Halil, who could steal the horse of the Shah and the Padishah and of the great outlaw Köroglu himself? Who could break the strongest hobbles and unlock the stoutest doors?’ He looked wistfully into the angry green eyes.

  The young man was astounded. Then he smiled. ‘Never heard of him,’ he said good-humouredly. ‘Never seen a horse-thief. Don’t even know what a hobble is.’ He waved his hand again and strode off. His hands were black with machine grease and this did not escape Old Halil’s eye.

  ‘Look at him!’ he cried. ‘Just look at that big braggart with his dirty greasy hands. Never heard of Yalak village, he says! Nor of Old Halil. Look at that ass who doesn’t even know what hobbles are! Well, my lad, you won’t go far in the world with that head of yours. You’ll just go on bumming along the roads like that, all by yourself, filthy with grease from top to toe. Teh, look at you! Bumming on the Chukurova roads is all you’ll ever do!’

  He went on railing until he saw a cart coming his way. The driver was a youth who looked no more than sixteen. He was holding a bunch of grapes and popping them into his mouth, one by one.

  He drew the cart up beside Old Halil. ‘Hop in, uncle,’ he said. ‘Come, let me give you a lift.’

  Old Halil got in with the nimbleness of a youth. One of the horses is a chestnut, the other a grey, he thought. That means luck. Then he chided himself: Now where did you go and fetch that one from, Halil? … Yet, who knows, it might be a lucky pairing of colour after all. There’s so little we know about this world. Who can say what brings luck and what doesn’t? …

  The young man offered him a bunch of grapes and went on eating in a leisurely way. Old Halil glanced at him and set about eating his grapes in the same fashion.

  ‘Where are you coming from, uncle,’ the youth asked. ‘And where are you going?’

  Somehow Old Halil could not bring himself to say, ‘I’m Old Halil. I’m looking for my fellow villagers.’ He did not feel like spoiling things for he had taken to this youth with his bright, candid eyes, his warm friendly face, his sun-bleached hair hanging out from under his dusty cap. Anger stormed through him again. If there had been but one youth like this in his village …

  ‘I’m on the run,’ Halil said. ‘They want to kill me, friend. They want to drink my blood, to flay me. My enemies are cruel …’ He embarked on his story, how they had stripped him naked and were going to throw him into the fire, how he had escaped by the skin of his teeth and taken refuge in the village of Injejik. Then he described the Injejik villagers. ‘I woke up. It was black midnight. Five men, five giants were looking for me. Oh my God, five dreadful shadows prowling in the night. “Let him be,” one of them said, “he’s only a poor old man who’s taken refuge in our village.” “We can’t,” another said, “we’ve promised the Yalak villagers. He must be killed.” Without waiting another second, I slipped into a clump of bushes nearby. They came and looked at the place where I had been lying. I rolled on from bush to bush, from rock to rock, and towards morning I reached the road. I’ve been walking like this till you came along and let me ride in your cart. Ah, you won’t be the worse for it, my child. The prophet Hizir is always ready to hold out his hand to good people. He’s going to help you, I can tell you that. How do I know? Because it happens that one of your pair is a chestnut and the other a grey and that spells luck.’

  ‘Where will you go now, uncle?’ the young man asked.

  Old Halil hesitated. Then he laughed. ‘I’m looking for a place where death doesn’t exist, a place death cannot reach.’ His face changed and his lips trembled.

  ‘A place death cannot reach?’ The youth was puzzled. ‘Where can that be?’

  Old Halil laughed again. ‘Ah, if I knew that, I’d go there straightaway.’

  They finished their grapes in silence.

  Old Halil was still fretting, unable to make up his mind whether to ask the youth about the Yalak villagers or not when he saw a group of cotton pickers in the distance. He jumped out of the cart. ‘I’m going to those people over there,’ he said. ‘Maybe death doesn’t come to them.’

  The youth picked a large bunch of grapes from a basket and handed it to him. ‘Take this,’ he said. ‘You’re very thin. At this rate death will soon catch up with you.’

  ‘Go in peace my child,’ Old Halil said as he took the grapes. ‘May you never encounter a stone on your path. You’re a good boy.’

  He walked off at a rapid pace in the direction of the cotton field.

  3

  How the village of Yalak went down to the Chukurova plain for the cotton picking

  The thistles had come again, swept in from the steppe by the autumnal winds. They swirled, flame-red, through Yalak village, while the villagers bustled about in the usual feverish hurry of imminent departure. Everyone from seven to seventy was astir. Each year the same pandemonium reigned when the time came for the long trek down to the cotton plain.

  In all this turmoil only one person remained aloof, a silent spectator drifting aimlessly through the buzzing village like a sleep-walker. No one paid any attention to him. People were too busy to see even the ends of their noses. The first to notice the strange behaviour of the man was the devout Okkesh Dagkurdu.

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Long Ali?’ he asked. ‘The village is setting out tomorrow before dawn and you’re not even making a move to pack. Aren’t you going this year? What about your debts? Adil Effendi will flay you alive if you don’t pay him back. He’ll come and seize every stick in your house.’

  The news spread through the village. Long Ali not going down to the Chukurova! What could have possessed him? What ruse, what design had he in mind? He must have hit upon something more lucrative than cotton picking, and in the village itself too! What could that be? People racked their brains, but could find nothing that even by a long shot might be taken as a bread-earning occupation in Yalak village. Then somebody voiced what seemed to most a very likely reason. Long Ali and Tashbash had always been the best of friends. Obviously Long Ali had decided to wait for the saint who could only appear to him when the village was empty and no one was about.

  ‘Our Lord Tashbash will come to Long Ali and bring him good fortune.’

  ‘That’s what Ali’s waiting for! And who wouldn’t when he has a powerful saint like that for a blood-brother? Our Lord Tashbash would forget his own wife and children, but not his blood-brother Long Ali.’

  ‘Saints never let their friends down.’

  ‘Long Ali’s right to stay here and wait for him. What’s more, when Tashbash comes he’ll bring fat and plenty to the whole village. Let him come …’

  After this people did not give the matter another thought and nobody bothered to ask Ali anything.

  Long before daybreak the noise and shouting began in the village. The din was such that it drew echoes from the steppe and shook the very earth. After some time it stopped as suddenly as it had started and only the desultory clink-clank of pots and pans from the departing caravan came echoing faintly from the valley below.

  Ali listened until the last muffled sound had died away. A lonely breathless silence settled over the village. He rose from his bed and went out. The night was bright with the moon. Clusters of crystal-red thistles growing between the houses stirred gently in the winds of dawn. He looked at the road that glinted down the valley like a thin pale stream and saw a cloud of dust slowly settling where the caravan had passed. Then he sank down upon a stone and remained quite still with his head in his hands.

  Elif had not moved from her bed, but she was awake, listening to old Meryemdje’s groaning and moaning. At daybreak she went out and
found her husband sitting on the stone. ‘Ali, Ali,’ she whispered, shaking his arm. ‘Get up!’

  He lifted his head and stared at her. ‘What is it, Elif?’ he asked. His voice sounded bleak in the morning stillness.

  ‘Your mother,’ Elif said. ‘She’s been muttering and moaning all night. I heard her. Poor lad, she kept saying, because of me he couldn’t pay his debts and was disgraced in the eyes of the world. And now this year too, he won’t be able to pick cotton. His children will go naked and hungry, all because of me. I must kill myself … That’s what she kept saying. What do you think, Ali? She’s a proud woman. If she says she’ll do something, then she’ll do it …’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘If we stay up here I’m sure your mother will kill herself.’

  Just then Meryemdje emerged from the house. They stopped talking and stared at her amazed. Her face was bright and gay, almost young; it was her face of twenty years ago. She held herself erect and even the staff in her hand looked out of place, obsolete. She planted herself before Ali.

  ‘Look, look at me, my Ali,’ she said. ‘See how well I am! Isn’t your mother as nimble as a young gazelle?’

  ‘Yes, like a gazelle!’ Ali said quickly. ‘How did you do it, Mother? Have you drunk of the water of life? Like Köroglu’s immortal white horse …’

  ‘Ah, Ali my child, you don’t know your mother!’ Meryemdje said as she executed a few skips. ‘See? I can walk like this all the way down to the Chukurova plain and right up to the lake of Mediterranea itself. There’s no need to remain here because of me. Don’t worry. I’ll not be a burden again. You won’t have to carry me this time. Forget about last year. You must go. How can you stay here when the whole village has gone? Who ever heard of such a thing? Look! Look at me …’ She flung her stick down and began to run. ‘Say mashallah. Mashallah! Strong as steel I am, my children … Look, just look!’ She was gasping now, but still unwilling to give up. ‘You see … You saw! Like a jereed horse, that’s how I’ll go down to the Chukurova. Last year I was a burden to you, I know, my good Ali, my brave child. But it wasn’t because I was old or weak. It was because I was angry with that monster Old Halil. But now we’re well rid of him! It’ll be different this year …’ She swayed. Her breast heaved like a bellows. ‘Never … a burden to you … Look … look … like a jereed horse … start off …’