Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [67]
“Son, I’m telling you, I’m sick, I’m alone, I don’t have anybody. Don’t you have a conscience?”
“And who do I have? Who did my mother have? Huh? Tell me! I have every bit as much a conscience as you do, no more, no less …”
“Don’t you have any fear of Allah?”
“Yeah, right. You picked the wrong guy to ask that question to.”
“I’m sick, I …” He was babbling.
“Wait,” I said, “I got just what you need. This’ll heal you up for sure.” I took out the knife. “Or how about I just carve your prescription into your skin here, how’s that sound? That’d make a snazzy tattoo, huh?”
He fell silent. Then he started moaning and praying, murmuring the Kelime-i ahadet. I was sure there must be a prayer book in a bag somewhere, and some holy Zamzam water in the fridge.
I grabbed his face with my left hand, then I took his left, which was strapped to the chair, with my right. Almost like I was going to kiss it and put it to my forehead. Right.
“What did you do to my mother? Tell me, blow by blow.”
“Who fed you such nonsense, son? There is no such thing! I swear—”
I squeezed his hand. His bones gently cracked in my hand. Like pretzels.
“Look,” I said, “no bullshit. Why did you take her in?”
He pulled himself together. Then, with some defiance, he said: “She was muckraking at her school. We heard about it.” My mother had been a member of the teachers’ union. She was a first-rate union organizer.
“What else? Is that all?”
“And a retired colonel from your building came to see me.”
“No kidding? So?”
“They were trying to put together a petition to kick a whore out of that building. But your mother, she said, ‘Everybody has the right to a private life, we have no business butting in,’ and sent the petitioners away.”
“How many times I’ve heard that story. It must’ve been sooo fuckin’ hard to swallow for you macho assholes, huh? So what else?”
“She had to be cut down to size. That’s just the way things were back then.”
“Back when?”
“Before 1980 … Times of anarchy … chaos …”
“But it’s still like that now, isn’t it? How was it back then? Tell me, how?”
“She was a divorced woman, she had to be reined in.”
“Is that so? ‘She was a divorced woman.’ Why don’t you come straight out and say it: She was a bitch. A cunt. You never had the guts, though, and you still don’t, do you?”
“God forbid! I could never say such a thing! No! Never!”
“Well then?”
“I sent my guys for her, and we took her in.”
“And?”
“We were just going to give her a good tongue-lashing and let her go.” Then he let it slip: “But she was one of those … those women. Long on hair …”
I knew the saying: “And short on reason? Watch your mouth, asshole!”
“Sorry, I mean, your mother, she started mouthing off about rights, justice, constitution, schmonstitution …”
“Ha! You and your schmonstitution. You assholes turned it into a schmonstitution, right? But go on. What then?”
“Then … it was a police station, son, every place has its rules.”
“Cut the crap! What happened next?”
“The one not helped by berating deserves—”
I knew that saying too: “A beating?”
“Yes. We roughed her up a bit.”
“Did you put her on falaka?”
“No, I swear to God, we didn’t have any such thing at our station.”
“Well, where were all those people wrung through falaka then?”
“They’d be picked up and taken away, we sent them away …”
“To where?”
“How should I know? I was only a civil servant of the state. How should we know what the state was up to?”
Ah yes, how could they know? So many of my friends were wrecked on falaka, endured suspension, were electrocuted through their genitals, even eyeballs. I’m sure some were sodomized with truncheons or Coke bottles. I was never arrested, never tortured. I was more into mischief and thuggery than all that education, reading, writing, and oration. I never finished high school. I got my college education in coffeehouses and movie theaters. My hangout was a body shop in Dolapdere. I didn’t mean shit to the state and its crews. Yet I always heard things from my friends at the coffeehouse in the neighborhood.