Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [10]
I dropped the bag with the books of my eleven loved ones. As it hit the floor, I removed the gun I had in my pocket next to Safiye’s book, and fired. Blood spurted from three spots on Nigel’s chest. He collapsed to the floor, squirming. The other Nigels were looking on, just as astonished as I was, as the man writhed. As soon as Nigel died, the images became less clear. I was searching for a light switch when a wall light on the upper floor came on and Nigel appeared once again.
“Sometimes, it is impossible to fully grasp the good or evil of your deeds, of what you’ve done to someone. You judge everything according to your own standards. This is the most ridiculous thing about our world. There is a price for a bottle of water. You pay and buy it. Yet to somebody else it may not mean what it means to you. It means the world to somebody about to die in the desert. In a fit of jealousy, you burnt alive a woman who you considered your plaything, but I lost the meaning of my life.”
I fired again. Nigel died again, writhing in pain, again. He showed up again, spoke again of his pain. I fired again.
I loaded the gun and killed Nigel eleven times.
I had only one bullet left. I asked if he burnt Safiye. He smiled. “I sent all your friends and relatives to you. You didn’t receive them? Damn! And I paid so much in bribe money!” I dropped him with my last bullet. There was a thud on the floor this time.
I picked up the bag and took the slippery trail, grasping at the puny trees that lined it. Lightning struck and I saw the blood seeping from my coat pocket. When I reached the streetlamp at the end of Maden, I took out Safiye’s book. That’s when it dawned on me: The pages I thought were Moroccan leather were in fact human skin, and the red ink, the blood of my loved ones. This was the first time I was walking under rain with the book, the first time I was touching the smooth, slippery surface of the wet pages.
I listened to the words of the melancholy Rebetiko song on the dock. The scent of rakı, the voices of those passionately discussing the horse races at the shore coffeehouse, the pale images of those stunningly beautiful mansions lined along the back of Nizam could not reach me. I was getting lost somewhere very, very far away, too distant for anyone to reach.
Thus Nigel managed to burn me twelve more times. Even after death. Now I understood what it meant, “the secret tongue of the flames.” We walk this earth with a seed of fire within us, an infectious fire lit by a simple spark, a fire that never goes out, a fire that spreads and contaminates with a strange geometry, until it rages everywhere. There are twelve books on my shelves, twelve books I’ll never ever again dare to open.
Now they’ve locked me up here because I was trying to feel the pain of the fourteen people I killed by putting out cigarettes on my chest. They are giving me drugs in all the colors of the rainbow; the drugs are supposed to stop my mind from working. I test the power of the fire on my body whenever I can. I smile at those who try to stop me. This is the only thing in the world that they can’t possibly stop: Fire, it’s everywhere. They can’t keep me from touching it. But they don’t know that yet.
I approach one of the visitors. “Could you give me a cigarette? They won’t let me smoke here. Could you light it and give it to me, please?” Then I go to the bathroom. As I touch the concealed parts of my body with fire, I turn the bloody pages of the library in my mind; I read Nigel’s books. As the smell of burnt flesh reaches my nose, I release the flames that rise from my own personal hell.
Gradually, I understand why people once worshiped fire. I hear the screams of the nurses. I worship fire.
HITCHING IN THE LODOS
BY FERYAL TLMAÇ
Bebek
Perhaps all of this still would have happened, even if the city hadn’t been caught up in the tempestuous lodos that night. But the truth is, that frantic wind,