The Birds Have Also Gone Read online

  “Shame!” an old woman cried. “These poor little birds, so beautiful, each one no bigger than a thumb, they’ve stuffed them one on top of the other in those cages! Look how the poor things can’t even move!”

  “No, no,” Süleyman said hastily. “It’s not for putting into cages that we’re selling them. As you can see, they couldn’t last two days packed like that in those cages. It’s to set them free, to save them from dying that you’ll buy them.”

  “What? What did you say?” a young lad piped out mockingly. “What is it we’re supposed to do?”

  “To buy them and then …”

  A vigorous pinch in the thigh from Hayri shut Süleyman up.

  “Hah-hah-ha,” someone guffawed. “So we buy a bird and throw it into the air, eh? Hah-ha … Let’s hope they’re not too dear. How much for a bird?”

  “Two and a half liras,” Süleyman replied without thinking.

  “You mean I’m to give you two and a half liras for a bird that I’ll throw away at once, is that it?” a long-faced woman in a tight black headcloth inquired.

  “Well, yes,” Süleyman said.

  “And why should I do that, I’d like to know?”

  “Why? For a good deed! To do a good deed so that …”

  “That’s a good one!” a short yellow-haired youth chimed in. “So you go catching birds and, doing so, you commit a sin, and we save them and do a good deed, eh?”

  More and more people were pressing around them. Catching sight of the crowd in the square, they hurried up, out of houses and shops to find out what was happening.

  “Listen,” Süleyman said, raising his voice, “for just two and a half liras you buy one of these little birds, then you say a prayer over it and cast it up into the sky. It will fly off, free …”

  The onlookers held their breath, waiting for Süleyman to continue. Mahmut and Hayri were bathed in sweat, but Süleyman was made of harder stuff.

  “And where will it fly to, you will ask? Straight to Paradise! So that when you die and pass into the other world, that bird will be there, waiting for you at the gates of Paradise …”

  A shrill woman’s voice cut him short.

  “Ugh! Perish your mother, you lying little brat …”

  A ripple of laughter passed through the crowd.

  “May your two eyes drop in front of you!” the woman in the black headcloth shrieked.

  “They haven’t left a bird in the sky, the godless heathens!” a young girl exclaimed. “Pigs, that’s what they are!”

  “God damn you! Damn you, damn you!” a crystalline voice kept repeating.

  By now the square was filled to overflowing, worse than on a festival day. Each newcomer, after inspecting the cages, joined in the general argument, airing his own views on birds and sin and good deeds.

  “It’s a sin …”

  “A good deed …”

  “But they’re so tiny …”

  “Look how they shine in that cage, like the sun!”

  “They won’t last long in there …”

  “Packed tight!”

  “The devil take that wretched beanpole! Piling in those birds like you would pile cotton or press cheese …”

  “May a fast-moving bullet do away with that longshanks!”

  “Let’s free them!”

  “Yes, yes, since it’s a good deed …”

  “Let’s open those cages right away.”

  “No, no, it’s a pity for those poor blokes.”

  “Yes, who knows how many days they spent catching them.”

  “Maybe it’s true that you go to Paradise if you free a bird.”

  “Oh, go on, you! Paradise, my foot!”

  “They’re all cheats, these fellows.”

  “They may be doing this only to earn their daily bread.”

  “True, look at that long one, just skin and bones, he is.”

  “It’s sinning against these birds got him into that state!”

  “Just let him go on capturing birds, that long one …”

  “Go on, go on, longshanks, and see if God doesn’t cast the crippling spell on you …”

  “Have you no father, no mother?”

  “Have they never told you it’s a sin to catch birds that are so small?”

  “Haven’t they told you that you could roast in Hell for this?”

  “That in this world, too, your life will be nothing but one long misery?”

  “Without respite, ever …”

  Kazliçeşme Square was in an uproar. Some wanted to break the cages and free the birds, others to fling Süleyman to the ground and give him a proper thrashing, while still others were taking up his defence. In the middle of the crowd, Mahmut and Hayri stood unnoticed now, while Long Süleyman was the sole focus of attention. His neck longer than ever, bathed in sweat, his eyes bulging, bewildered, he still held his own against the taunting, spitting crowd. At the same time, he tried to answer the well-meaning questions of those who had taken pity on him.

  How, by what means did they make good their escape? Was it by some move of Mahmut’s or had a friend of his come to their rescue? Perhaps a policeman had intervened and blown his whistle. Even Mahmut never quite realised how they found themselves on the platform of the railway station, free from the mob. They got into a train. Oh, the relief of it! Even from there, the clamour of voices from the square still reached their ears.

  They got off at the Sirkeci terminal and, pressing through the throng, put their cages down in front of the Valide Mosque. Straightaway, Süleyman ran up the steps that led to the mosque and began to shout.

  “Fly little bird, free as the air, and meet me at the gates of Paradise!”

  Here, too, people gathered around the cages, but they only gave the birds a glance and turned away almost at once. Another group formed, then another …

  Suddenly, a miracle happened. A young man of about twenty-five stopped in front of the cages, staring at the birds. He was wearing rubber shoes and long embroidered woollen stockings drawn up to the knees over his trousers. His glossy black hair fell over his brow and he had black eyebrows that met above his nose. For a while he stood there, arms akimbo, and his eyes went from the birds to the sky above, as though searching for something, then to the pigeons pecking away at seeds on the paving stones. Sadly, his gaze fell back on the cages and, very slowly, he drew from his pocket a country pouch embroidered in blue.

  “How much are these birds?” he asked in a deep strong voice that carried authority.

  “Two and a half liras,” Süleyman replied quickly.

  The man bent down and inspected the cage.

  “This one,” he said to Süleyman, pointing at a bird. “And this one too. And that one.”

  Joyfully, Süleyman plunged his hand into the cage and fished out three birds.

  The man took them one by one. At the third, he frowned.

  “This isn’t the one I wanted. You’ve given me the wrong one. Look, that one.” And he pointed to a bird with its wing protruding out of the cage. “That’s it, that’s it,” he cried.

  From the meshes of the cage Süleyman extricated a largish bird with a bright red breast. The man had the money ready. He handed over the three banknotes and walked away, breathing a prayer over the birds. Stopping under the arcade of the mosque, he caressed one of the birds, then cast it swiftly into the air. The bird shot up and disappeared above the dome of the mosque. Again, as though throwing a stone, he flung the second bird up, then the third. After that, his head bent, he went past the toy stalls in the archway and, dodging through the traffic, crossed over to the pavement in front of the Iş Bank. There he stopped, thrust his hands into his pockets and began scrutinising the sky over Valide Mosque.

  For a while there was a trickle of buyers. One little boy, after hesitating half an hour, at last made his choice and, holding the bird close to his breast, ran off, slipping through the cars and on to the Galata Bridge.

  But soon the number of buyers dwindled to nothing. Stil
l they waited, hope rising with every passer-by who paused to look at the cages, then falling again when the person moved on without buying a single bird.

  Süleyman was hoarse with shouting.

  “Fly little bird, free as the air, and meet me at the gates of Paradise.”

  Meet me there, damn it, damn it, meet me at the gates of Paradise …

  His voice was lost among the honking of cars and the shrill cries of hawkers who had displayed their wares in front of the mosque, razor blades, combs, plastic flowers, knives, screws, black-market cigarettes, brooms, old books and magazines, sunflower seeds …

  After this, Riza, a friend of Mahmut’s who drove a taxi, took them first to the Süleymaniye Mosque, then to the Eyup Mosque, without charging them anything. In front of Süleymaniye Mosque, things almost took a drastic turn. But for Mahmut, one of those round-bearded, bereted zealots, a huge man, would have smashed the cages, killed the birds and tom the boys piecemeal. He was coming out of the mosque telling the beads of his tesbihfn1 when he spotted the boys with their birds and charged at them like an angry bull. But Mahmut moved more swiftly. He flung himself between the zealot and the boys, who grabbed the cages and made a dash for Riza’s taxi, running for their lives. Mahmut soon joined them and they quickly drove off.

  The courtyard of Eyup Mosque was quite deserted. There were the usual pigeons and a lone stork pacing up and down and also, crouching in a corner, a young boy wearing a skullcap and reading the Koran. And not another soul in sight …

  As a last kindness, Riza drove them all the way up to Taksim. There he left them and went back to Menekşe.

  Taksim Square was teeming with crowds of people. Six pigeons had perched on the Monument of the Republic. The Continental Hotel loomed high above the square, like a large four-cornered minaret.

  They dragged their cages to the steps that led into the park. The place where they had stopped smelled strongly of urine. Hayri looked around to see whether there was a stable or something nearby. Then he realised that the stink came from the wall beside the steps.

  Traffic lights kept blinking, green, red, yellow. Cars and people surged through the place, all in a tangle, and the blast of automobile horns mingled with the voices of the crowds in a deafening roar. Meatball vendors, newsboys, gypsy flower-sellers with their baskets lined along the pavement, shoeblacks in a long row, their boxes gleaming like gold, taxi station barkers shouting at the tops of their voices, men and women pressing and pushing, scuttling this way and that to escape being run down by the cars, a barefooted villager rubbing shoulders with a fur-clad woman, elegant florist shops, dirty pavements littered with paper and vomit, petrol fumes mingling with the stink of urine … All in a rolling snarl …

  Hayri had crouched down in a corner of the steps, his head drawn between his shoulders.

  “What a lot of people!” he said.

  Mahmut smiled at him.

  “Yes,” he said. “And not one laughing face …”

  It was with new eyes that he was gazing at the crowds.

  Süleyman stood by, his eyes bulging, his neck longer than ever. He was so shaken by the noise and confusion that his mind had gone blank. Forgotten were the birds, Hayri, Mahmut, even his own self. It was a dreamworld of teeming humanity he was floating in, of huge apartment blocks and rushing traffic. The odour of greasy smoke drifting from the meatball barbecue carts made him come to himself. It was an odour that could drive a man crazy with hunger. His eyes focused on the meatball vendors. The nearest cart was set on small wheels. It was painted blue, with a design of tiny pink flowers and pale green leaves. A glass-paned showcase was set on the cart, and, beside it, a brazier piled with glowing embers. It was a beautiful copper brazier, and from it rose a tall stovepipe, maybe two metres high. In the showcase were meatballs, ready to be grilled, a mound of minced meat in reserve, bright red tomatoes, parsley and onions. And right in the middle was a large rose, a pink full-blown Ottoman rose. The meatball merchant had a drooping light brown moustache. His knee breeches were bound at the waist with a wide black sash. He was counting some money. Süleyman stared. What long fingers he had! Instinctively, he glanced at his own hands, then his eyes returned to the man, examining him from top to toe, and came to rest on the long, blunt face which had the sad resentful expression of someone struggling to overcome his lack of faith in himself and in life.

  Mahmut was gazing at the birds, agonising in their cages, at the boys, the pressing crowds, the traffic. He was remembering …

  He had spent exactly three and a half years of his life polishing shoes in Taksim Square. His place had been right there, the sixth in the row of shoeshiners. His box, inlaid with nacre in the shape of fish, trees, clouds and even a mermaid, had been famous, not only among his fellow shoeshiners, but in the whole of Istanbul too. It was the last box that Mestan, the master craftsman at Bakirköy, had made before his death. And what’s more, Master Mestan, who never learned to read or write, who in all his life had never put his signature on a piece of paper, but always marked documents with his thumb, well, on this shoeshine box, he had engraved his sign on a blue inlay of nacre. It looked like a character from a cuneiform or Chinese script, a hieroglyph, a bird in flight, but more than anything it looked like Master Mestan himself. Mahmut could swear that Mestan’s signature on the box was the very likeness of the master, as though it had been taken at the studio of Foto-Sabah! How could an inscription, and such an elaborate one at that, ever resemble a human face? Mahmut could not explain this, but so it was. Besides, there were those words Master Mestan had spoken when he’d given him the box. “Here,” he had said, “take your box, Mahmut, my son, I’ve fashioned many shoeshine boxes in my life, but in never a single one have I put Mestan … Take it and may it bring you luck.”

  How he had laughed then, showing his toothless gums … It warmed Mahmut’s heart to think of the old craftsman, here, beside the two children with their cages of half-dead birds, in the midst of the doomsday confusion of the square. His mind went back to the day Master Mestan had given him the shoeshine box. How he had flown at once to Taksim Square … He remembered his first client. The man had been struck dumb by Mahmut’s joy which communicated itself to every living thing, to the whole world, to the very earth and stones and passing cars. He must have felt it in the marrow of his bones, for instead of paying Mahmut when he had finished, he just stood there, the money passing from one hand to the other, and then, suddenly, he had turned away, his legs dancing, flying, and had vanished in the crowd. Here, today, if the boys could manage to sell some birds, with what joy would they go back to Menekşe, their feet hardly touching the ground, just like Mahmut on that day long ago … Süleyman was still gaping, entranced at the meatball merchant. Let him look on, Mahmut thought, better let him be until …

  Make it twenty, Süleyman heard a man say. The meatball seller kept wiping his hands on the blue apron he wore. He was short and thin, young too, twenty-five maybe. On his right cheek was a deep scar, the result of an Aleppo boil. His eyes were large and of the clearest blue, and even at that distance Süleyman could see how they shone.

  Mahmut, and Hayri too from where he was crouching, were watching the meatball man as with deft hands he quickly disposed the meatballs on the greasy blackened grill over the embers. When they were done, he sliced open a half-loaf of bread and with a small pair of tongs picked up the meatballs one by one, very carefully so as not to damage them, and inserted them into the loaf. He added a sprinkling of parsley, a little chopped onion and a couple of tomato slices. Then, wrapping the bread in a pink sheet of paper, he handed it over to his customer. Smoke was still swirling from the stovepipe, spreading that aroma, maddening for empty stomachs.

  The customer, darting anxious glances to right and left, hastily bit into the bread. Such a large mouthful it was that his cheeks swelled. With another quick look around, he hurried away, still munching very fast, and disappeared into the crowd. The meatball man followed him with smiling eyes.

  Mahm
ut, too, was smiling, maybe at the boys, maybe at something else … He was trying to decipher some words that had been scrawled in a clumsy hand on the side of the cart. And when he did, it made him so happy that for a moment he forgot the heavy pain weighing deep down inside him at the plight of these boys and of the birds dying in their cages. Stumbling over the syllables, he read it out aloud: Look not for fire in Hell, each man brings his own fire … Yes, Mahmut murmured, from this earth each takes his fire …

  There were inscriptions like this one on every barbecue cart that was spitting greasy fumes about the crowded square. One said: Never say die, Erzurum town, bring thou solace to my soul … Another: Bread and sweat, toil and trouble, so goes this bastard world … And still another: Roads, days, life, all things must end, but Istanbul town never will end … This one had been traced on a blue background with tiny flowers painted between the letters.

  Suddenly, a loud tumult broke out and people began shouting and rushing about. Meatball vendors hastily gathered up their tongs and knives and pushed off at a running pace, scattering bread and tomatoes on the pavement. The shoeblacks clapped their boxes onto their backs and bolted. All the itinerant vendors were running for their lives. A taxi driver emerged from his car and started hurling oaths at all and sundry, cursing his own luck too in ringing tones that rose above the hubbub. The crowds of pedestrians had stopped to watch. Hayri was on his feet, aghast, ready to take flight, while Süleyman, his eyes wide with fear, bulging more than ever, stood craning his neck as though about to dive from the steps into the square.

  Mahmut too was seized with alarm.

  “Come,” he cried. “Hurry! Take the cages, quick …”

  Without waiting, he grabbed a couple of cages and made a dash for Taksim Park. Süleyman and Hayri sprinted after him carrying the other cages in which the flurried birds were twittering shrilly. They put the cages down behind the pedestal of the Inönü Monument. Just then, men in green uniforms erupted into the now almost deserted square and charged angrily at whatever came their way. Then, after a while, their rage spent, they reassembled and, all in a group, took themselves off.