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Translated from the Turkish by Ellen Ervin
My goodness, said Şükriye, my daughter's coming. Dear God, I didn't imagine it, now she will not be here until the middle of summer, she can't come again I said, how wonderful, and the short holidays have came and gone too, one by one, I said she certainly can't just leave school and come. So she's coming after all, thank the good Lord, what do they keep on on closing down the schools for like that, how wonderful, thank goodness, oh dear, my daughter's coming.
"My daughter's coming, did you hear, İsmayilefendi? See, she's coming. Look, she writes it right here, read it, here's the letter, your son read it already, ask him if you don't believe it, or better still never mind İsmayilefendi, please hurry up and run over and get a kilo of chopped meat for meatballs, here's the money, is it enough, yes it is, it is, tell them you want it for meat balls, I'll make the kind in lemon sauce, she's so fond of it, oh dear, parsley, don't forget the parsley İsmayilefendi dear, don't forget the dill either, just see what happens when I'm all by myself, I stop buying anything and I just don't care, eating all alone you just don't eat, you know I gave you that macaroni casserole the other day, well, I just couldn't finish it, my household's turned into an empty shell of a house, see, oh yes, and get a kilo of the ripest red tomatoes, yes, and a kilo of eggplant dear İsmayilefendi, and tell that disagreeable vegetable man, just tell him Şükriye hanım is going to make imam bayıldı for her daughter, so that miserable cheat will pull himself together and won't try to pass off those bitter eggplants with all the seeds on the likes of me, saying they're out of season, our money doesn't grow on trees, we don't have a lot to live on, who could live on just my husband's pension, me and my daughter, oh Güler, my Güler, heaven only knows how she's missed my cooking, that's what comes of studying. Fine. Good. Good. But hurry up, run along, İsmayilefendi, go on, let's not be late, she has to eat. My daughter, she should study, so, she... go on, my tongue's all twisted, I can't talk any more, hurry up."
Studying. Good. Fine. And yet, my heart's in my mouth every second, I can't close my eyes in comfort a single second any more, sleep is ruined, run, İsmayil, run as fast as you can, how slowly that man moves, just look at him thumping and bumping along. Lord knows what time it is, evening in no time, don't infuriate me! Dear girl, why couldn't you have mailed this letter a while sooner, or was it held up on the way or something? The mail's in a hopeless mess you have to realize, I get the news she's going to arrive the very same day she comes, then hurry up, get going, tripping over yourself, there's no oil, no flour, no meat, rush around, get it done in time if you can, sitting around all the time like this I've slowed down, I don't function so well any more, being all alone, I can't just pull myself together at a moment's notice and get up and go... If I can just set a good meal before my little girl, so at least my child can feel she's come home. Thank heavens she's safe and sound, God knows what choice do I have, whatever I can get done in time will have to do, I don't care so long as she just comes safe and sound, so long as she just comes through this door, oh my poor legs, stiff as a board, it takes over two hours just to limber up, come on Şükriye, come on and try, get moving, did you ever imagine, your daughter's coming, just like that...
Mothers, said Şükriye's daughter Güler, they always have their heart in their mouth. They're always like that now, sound asleep or wide awake they see our dead bodies stretched out in front of their eyes now. We should be writing poems to mothers, most of all to them, kids, we should be telling about them. We should tell about how they can't bear to go up as far as the school doors, how each night they can't bear to say thank God she came home safe and sound at least one more day, how they can't wait it out every day till evening comes, how they can't begin to be happy each evening at day's end to get the strength to go on tomorrow, mothers, waiting at a distance, for months on end, worried sick, that's who we should be telling about. We should write poems about them, kids, for them. Only our poems can keep mothers, can keep human beings going. We have to begin with the people closest to us, we have to write our best poems to them, about them.
And when Güler arrives early one evening at her mother's home, she's thinking that her most recent poem is her best one: my schoolmates all approved too, even our hard-headed Zehra listened attentively when I read my poem in the dorm and she had to blink back tears the whole time. I could tell anyway, how could she hide it, when she said, "Thanks, Güler" in that husky voice. Mothers, it's mothers we should be writing our poems about, and reading them to as well. And we should try and let them know we're thinking about them, too. We should try and let them know're thinking of them whatever we do, and try and let others know this too, only our poems must be good ones, the best of all, that's what I've been trying to do. A box of chocolates, a bottle of cologne, a dress length of cloth. No, but I have a poem of mine. A poem that's been specially carefully crafted. I'm going to embellish the home with it. My mother...
Now she's in the tiny little kitchen, watching her distraught mother fix the lemon sauce for the meatballs and set the dish of imam bayıldı in a pan of water to chill quickly. Güler listens to her explanation—her defenses. "Of course I'm behind, dear, you can't just put food piping hot into the refrigerator. It will break down before we've had a chance to use it. We got all involved in buying this before we could afford to have a winter coat made for you, what a shame it would be for it to break down."
Şükriye is chopping up the parsley and dill for the salad, mincing it very fine, with extraordinary patience and infinite care, complaining all the while... Just look, I was going to get every single thing ready ahead of time before you came, I couldn't manage, how can you with a tortoise like İsmayilefendi anyhow, that's what would happen. My own hands, have they slowed down? Maybe I've forgotten how after not doing it all this time? Güler, dear child, just pass me that bottle of olive oil." Or maybe it's the excitement, I'm tripping all over myself, oh look I was just about to knock over the oil, for God's sake Şükriye, you're hopeless, why don't you pull yourself together, here's your daughter now for a whole week, right at your knee. "You did say a week, didn't you Güler, at the close of your school? Should we buy another kilo of eggplant? Should we wash the windows?"
Knowing nothing about the eggplant and the windows, Güler smiles happily at the way her mother has turned the five days into a week just like that: I'll make up the difference with the poem. The poem will make her forget I'm staying only five days, not the full week. The poem cheer her up.
"Mother, don't be so meticulous. It's done, that's enough. Come on, let's sit down together, I've..."
"Oh dear, of course, you're hungry!" says Şükriye in alarm. Güler, my little girl, skin and bones again, cheeks all caved in, that's the way it is in student housing, sure, in the homes of relatives who's going to look after her, just no one, who's going to lift a finger for her, she doesn't even look after herself, how could she with the money I'm able to send her, that's obvious, the money I have, it's obvious, how can a person get along in the great big city, or possibly feed herself? "Here, take a piece of hot cheese pie, come on, we'll sit down to table in a minute, did we put out the bread?"
"Mother, you've been on the run ever since I arrived, I put out the bread," says Güler. My voice came out filled with resentment. She attributes it to my hunger, my stomach. I'd planned to read her her poem first thing, as soon as I came through that door, my mother. She said let's have tea, and headed for the kitchen. She said come on, how about lemonade, and headed for the kitchen again, she told me about the dripping faucet. She says she can't do it herself, and plumbers are sky-high, and what if the refrigerator breaks down, what do I do then. For a refrigerator that hasn't broken yet she keeps up her complaints for a good ten minutes. "What will become of you if I die," she says then. Are there such things as turns to die anymore, as if we knew any more who would be next? I'm waiting for things to calm down so I can read my poem to her. Seeing the way things are, let it alone for the time being. After dinner. I'll read it then.
"Sit down mother, I'm going to read you a poem."
We must be done now. It's turn is now. We've cleaned every nook and cranny of the entire house. I've washed all the windows and doors mother can't reach. Wiped up the dust under the beds where she can't crawl. The faucets are rubbed up. Food cooked once more. Rotten vegetables thrown out. New ones carried up in their place. The stove heated up for the bath on the third day. We've had our baths. It's six o'clock in the evening. I've made her tea. We're late. She's picked up her knitting. Now at last she's more or less at peace with herself. The whole house shines like a newly polished brass pot, the water jars are full. The bottles of gas are full. There's not another thing for her to think about. And I've gritted my teeth, gritted them tight. I've waited patiently for this hour. When I came through the door three days ago, she did glance at my hand once, didn't she, wondering whether I'd brought along a half kilo of lokum candy. She'll realize now I didn't come empty-handed, without a gift. Perhaps I've been actually preparing for days for this very moment. I've worked for my mother of this moment. I've knitted and embroidered her poem all through these nights, like fine embroidery, like a beautiful sweater for her, like mincing up parsley and dill. I've said all along with all my heart that the poems are to mothers, most of all to their sleepless worried nights, their dear, lacerated hearts. Could time possibly refuse me the opportunity to lift my lonely mother out of her worries that she shoulders all alone? For them, for them... We have to place a bunch of flowers in those old copper bowls of theirs, so brightly polished and shined.
It was that time. My third day. I took her poem —my poem— out of my bag. I was just about to begin. Sit down, mother, now I'm going to read you a poem. To myself, silently, I was going over my poem once more. A good thing after all that I hadn't hurried it, that first night or yesterday morning, while she was getting me to run around changing the bottle of gas —I undid the faucet with a wrench and changed the washer and the dripping stopped— a good thing I didn't read it then, while the water was dripping, a good thing I waited for this time. Really. It's a beautiful poem. I knew it when I changed the washer, beautiful. A poem that doesn't skip over a single stone or self-sacrifice through the history of mankind, or omit any of their resistance, as they slowly thread their winding days on tiny needles It's well knit and there is a row of pepper flowers embroidered on all four borders. The time has come. I'm going to read it Here's mother, sitting down, knitting in hand, relaxed. And I'm walking over to her, my hand in my pocket, touching a folded sheet of paper. I'm going to open out the folded sheet of paper...
"Do you think it would be a good idea to give İsmayilefendi the imam bayıldı in the refrigerator?"
I stopped still in my tracks. My hand in my pocket, on the folded sheet of paper, a few millimeters away from the paper now. The poem is escaping me. Quickly I grasped the paper and took it out of my pocket. Here the poem is, in my hand. I think she'll forget about the imam bayıldı as soon as she sees it.
"Let's give him the imam bayıldı along with the rest of the leftovers. You didn't eat it. They might as well eat it. It's been sitting in the refrigerator for three days. It's taking up space for nothing."
The leftovers, and İsmail and his family, and the imam bayıldı taking up space in the refrigerator are going to keep on occupying her mind. She won't be able to listen to the poem carefully. The poem won't be a real poem. Better take care of this too.
"If you really want me to, I'll take it to them. İsmail efendi is hanging around in front of the door."
"It would be nice, but you'll tire yourself out. Call him and let him come up don't tire yourself."
I am tired, it's true. But she's exhausted, too. Wearing ourselves out the whole time. The poem? Not yet. The tea is steeping. I took down the imam bayıldı along with the food mother had set out on a tray. I gave it to İsmail efendi and came back. I go upstairs to my mother. I seem to have lost interest in her poem. In my poem. No. Don't give up. When she hears that poem she'll understand, she'll be pleased. Especially when she learns that it has been written for her.
"Shall I pour the tea?"
"Yes do. Let's sit down and drink it. Let's relax a little."
I've been with her for three days, waiting for this moment the whole time.
That's what I said, but I don't think she heard me.
"The tea seems just the fight strength." she said, as I handed her the glass of tea. "Aren't you having any?"
"Yes, I am. I'll get it right now."
I got my tea and sat down facing her. My poem, the one I shoved back into my pocket again a little while ago, because of the imam bayıldı, her poem, yeah, the poem, it's right there still, all crumpled up. I'm going to take it out and smooth it out with a crackling sound. I'm going to read it at last. The early twilight of a beautiful evening is filtering down on us from the window. Ready to form the wall, the support of the poem.
"Don't drink it without anything, Güler, have something to eat with it, child, look, there's the Spanish sponge cake(*) over there," she says. Spain rushes into my mind. Postcards, the walls of tourism agencies. Spain. Then my mother hits the side of the couch with a plastic fly swatter.
"Where did this one come from? I'm so careful. I try not to let flies into the house, and even at this hour they don't go away and leave, just look!"
Ah, Spain. You have to go there. Sunsets that last a long time—People shouldn't be left alone so long like this. We run away from them as if on purpose, then we come back with poems in our hands, that's why her fussiness has gotten worse; otherwise, when I said mother I'm going to read you a poem she wouldn't have talked about the imam bayıldı for the people downstairs, or gone after a single black fly—Maybe mother didn't understand what I said. That must be why she has both her eyes and the plastic fly swatter entirely fixed on that fly.
"Come on, just stretch your legs out there. And light up a cigarette. Okay mother, now I'm going to read you a poem I created for you, right now."
And another thing. She mustn't think the poem I'm going to read is just anybody's, that it's just any old poem written for just anybody. This one is our poem.
There's a faded pink flush on her face. The setting sun scatters grains of Judas-tree purple on the ash-grey evening.
"For me, really?"
She's pleased. A pink flush. My hands are trembling. And now I'm presenting it to her, before breaking up and smashing the shade on the kerosene lantern.
"This table doesn't go well there. Why don't we move it over by the wall tomorrow. The room will look bigger, too."
She's right. The room is very small. Letting Spain recede, I take a bite of the sponge cake. Maybe it will keep things down inside me, push down inside me the bullet fragment digging into me, this damn bone in my-throat.
"Do you want me to push it over there now?"
"No, no. Turn off the fire under the food, we'll push it over tomorrow. Turn off the stove, we don't want the stew all burned on the bottom, this precious meat, you ought to enjoy the taste..."
I turned off the stove. She had finished her tea. I wanted to bring her another glass.
"You were going to read a poem, there's no rush for the tea," she says.
The poem has fallen on the floor, and some of the pepper flowers are faded, and my reading is going to be very bad, I know. Anyway; I sit down again opposite her, just as if my greatest longing, my wish, hadn't been fragmented into many pieces, as if the sun hadn't set leaving only a dark ash color in the room—she mustn't become aware of my Spain. I carry over the poem from the floor to my lap. My back, or some other part of me, aches, but I begin. In my mother's hand is the plastic fly swatter. Her eye is on one of the cushions. I wait. Because she has aimed the fly swatter at the fly on the cushion. Stay off my daughter!
I wait. Then the plastic thing hits the cushion with a loud slap.
"Damn," she said.
She missed the fly again.
So then we waited for a while. Kids, we waited a long, long time.
İsmayil efendi, oh İsmayil efendi, says Şükriye hanım, she just got up and left, rushed off, she said a week, in three days she left, suddenly her school opened up again, couldn't it have stayed closed a while longer, after all, İsmayil efendi, you wait and wait once more, while she was sleeping here for three days and nights whenever I woke up I felt at ease, I hope nothing has gone wrong, suddenly I looked and there she was, İsmayil efendi, there was my little girl right next to me, now count the minutes all over again, count them, with morning never coming, you saw didn't you, she's thin as a rail, I wanted her to get back on her feet a bit, thank goodness I was able to give her a lot to eat, nonetheless we really have to find some way of dealing with these black flies İsmayil efendi, they really are bothersome, and half the tomatoes you brought me turned out to be rotten, believe me, tell that dirty vegetable man, and we have to deal with his black flies right under our nose, it's unbearable, İsmayil efendi, unbearable Oh, look! Haven't we forgotten something?
That's how I feel.
NOTE: İsmail Efendi is a kapıcı, a kind of combination "super", concierge, and errand runner for the building. It is usual for a kapıcı to do the day's grocery shopping for each apartment in his building. This story dates from the period of all-out terrorist activities in the late 1970's, when university and even high-school students were in danger.
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