The Flea Palace Part 14

On Wednesday May 1st 2002, at 12:20 p.m., a white van in need of a wash and decorated with the picture of a huge rat with needle-sharp teeth on one side, a hairy humongous spider on the other and signs of various sizes all over it stopped in front of Bonbon Palace. The ginger haired, funny-faced, flap-eared driver who did not at all look his age was named Injustice Pureturk. He had been fumigating bugs for thirty-three years and had never hated his job as much as he did today. As he parked close to the sidewalk, he suspiciously eyed the gathering at the entrance of the apartment building. He checked the address his chatterbox of a secretary had handed him in the morning: 'Cabal Street, Number 88 (Bonbon Palace).' The chatterbox secretary had also put down a small note below: 'The apartment building with a rose acacia tree in the garden.' As Injustice Pureturk wiped off the sweat beads covering his forehead, he inspected the tree in the garden with pinkish flowers on some branches and purplish ones on others. This must be, he thought, what they called a rose acacia.

Still, since he did not trust his secretary, whom he planned to replace as soon as possible, he wanted to see personally what was written on the door with his near-sighted eyes. He could easily have asked the people gathered in front of the apartment building but having become so terribly, immovably used to taking care of his own business and as he never trusted others, he left the van askew in the middle of the street and jumped down. As soon as he had taken a step, however, the small girl among the three children standing within the crowd screamed in horror: 'The genie is here! Grandpaaa, grandpa, look, the genie is here!' The older man with the round, greying beard, wide forehead and a skull cap on his head whose trousers the kid tugged, turned and eyed with a displeased look first the van, then the van driver. He must not have liked what he had seen, for his face turned even more sour as he drew all three children toward himself.

Trying not to be offended, Injustice Pureturk plunged into the crowd with determined steps. He shoved the people aside, got near the apartment block and succeeded in reading the sign, relieved to see he had arrived at the right address. After removing a business card squeezed in between the lined up buzzers and putting his own in its stead, he jumped back onto his driver's seat and put his van in reverse. Just then a female head popped in.

'You came with only one van? It won't be enough,' hooted a cross-eyed blond woman with a plastic bib with leopard patterns tied to her neck. 'They had said they were going to send two trucks. Even two trucks could barely pick up all this garbage.'

As Injustice Pureturk tried to decipher what the h.e.l.l this woman was talking about, and manoeuvre his van amongst the trucks plunging into the street from two opposite ends on the other side, he lost his control over the wheel, crushing the garbage pile by the garden wall.

That day, other than the van driven by Injustice Pureturk, two other trucks turned up in front of Bonbon Palace as well as the car of a private television channel. They left Bonbon Palace at the end of the day, the trucks jammed with garbage and the vehicle of the television channel with all the shots it required. Rather than the neighbours who were eager to be interviewed, the anchorman had wanted to interview the woman living in the garbage house, but once her apartment had been emptied out and fumigated she had sealed the door of Flat Number 10, refusing to open it to anyone.

Flat Number 4: The Firenaturedsons.

Zelish Firenaturedsons panted as she closed herself up in her room and hurled her little suitcase onto her bed. As she tried to regain her balance by holding onto the side of the bed, she waited for her heartbeat to return to normal. She had chosen the wrong day to run away from home. As soon as she had stepped out to the street, she had found herself in the middle of an insane mayhem with two bright red trucks approaching from either direction. It was unbearably red out there in the outside world. Amongst all the colours, the streets of Istanbul were closest to red.

'Why am I so disconsolate? I should have known I'll never be able to get out of this house.'

She picked up the mirror. The rash had covered up her entire face. The rash too was red as h.e.l.l. She cried, first noiselessly and then howling increasingly. All of a sudden she heard a chirpy sound. Someone was answering her from inside. Though her head still swam and her sight fading out from seeing too much red, she followed the sound with wobbly steps. The canary in its cage by the window in the living room was merrily chirping.

'Why are you so joyful? You'll never be able to leave this house either.'

Flat Number 7: Me.

No matter how hard I try not to, I recurrently recall everything we talked about that day. As to what happened afterward, I'd rather entirely erase it from my memory or at least only rarely, vaguely remember. However, Su's curse seems to be working. Even if my body didn't, my memory did turn into a louse. Like a fleshy louse wedged tightly onto my head, my memory has become menacing, procreating every pa.s.sing day. In my mind's eye I see my memory wandering around my head, sometimes on top of it, inside it at other times, making squeaky sounds as it lays its invisibly small, innumerably many, white eggs all around. Out of these eggs thousands of d.a.m.ned and unabashed hungry mouths come out, feeding on me, in spite of me. In tandem with their number, their appet.i.te also escalates. Voraciously they bite through my flesh, numbing my head from pain as if thousands of pins have been stuck on it. I do not mention this to anyone. As I can no longer stand the person I am when with others, I try to stay alone as much as possible and seek out the answers to the same unanswerable questions.

If I had not written that nonsensical writing on the garden wall and had not babbled away, if I had used the intellect which I prided myself on so much and so unreservedly to fathom the consequences of my act, to foresee the damage I was about to cause to another person, would all this still have happened? If I had never moved into Bonbon Palace and had not mixed with these people or learned their secrets, if I had succeeded for once in my life in being someone other than my typical self, would this tale still wind through the same routes toward the same ill-fated end? I can think of two different answers. One belongs to my mentality and the other to my heart. My mind says: 'Don't worry, sooner or later this catastrophe would have occurred anyhow. You are not as significant as you think or as malicious as you fear. What difference does it make whether this tragedy happened because of you or for another reason, as long as the end result is the same? If it makes you feel better, call it "Fortuna". In any case, what else but Fortuna can account for the fact that every secret eventually ends up in the hands of the one who will divulge it?'

I console myself. I need to believe in the righteousness of my mind. 'The issue is neither this incessant failing nor that flawed willpower of yours. Whether you like it or not, you are not the one making the impossible possible.' There is an offensive consolation in what my mind claims. 'The human being is so vulnerable and primordial. It is coincidences rather than the consequences he causes that make an imprint on his life. Given that humankind is so weak, to what extent could you be blamed for what you did?' The more I am degraded, the more I get acquitted.

My heart instantly protests. 'Even if there is a Fortuna, weren't you the one who deemed its whorishness doubtful? Are we to own up to all victories but blame adversities on the vileness of an uncanny feminine power? Wasn't the individual supposed to admit right out that he himself is the maker of his own fate rather than attributing the course of events to hollow superst.i.tions?' There is an honouring indictment in what my heart claims. 'The human being is so complex and capable. What we consider to be chance only marks the results we personally cause. Given that humankind is so capable to what extent could you be absolved for what you did?' The more I am elevated, the more I get besmirched.

I do not drink more than before, but these days, I do sleep more than I used to. As my anguish swells, I seek refuge in sleep to then wake up even more anguished. It does not matter anymore if I leave or stay. However far I move out, never will I be able to step outside the range of the stink emitting from Flat Number 10. At my every awakening, the smell has become even more sour.

No smell in life, even that of garbage could be as venomous as this one.

Occasionally I overhear the neighbours. They are planning to break down her door. I do not want to be here when they break into Flat Number 10.

The Boyar and His Lover.

The boyar and his lover on the wooden ladder leaning against the wall fretfully snuggled closer. The house smelt of death. They no longer dared to breathe. Averting their eyes from one another, they stared at the half-emerald, half-obscure forest extending languorously yonder.

When the door was broken, men with masks fully clad in white dashed inside. They placed the stinking corpse on a stretcher and carried it away. The old widow's corpse was so light, so pet.i.te...the residue of a body that had refused for days to eat-to drink-to take its pills... Madam Auntie had not been half as resistant to thirst and hunger as c.o.c.kroaches.

As soon as the men departed, the flat was fumigated once again. The insecticide spray drizzled on the eggs of the bugs, as well as on the one hundred and eighty-one objects from the past, but fortuitously the boyar and his lover managed to escape at the last minute. They went down the ladder, ploughed into the woods and walked out of the round, glazed, delicate tray of Vishniakov.

A shadowy forest, half-emerald, half-obscure remained behind on the tray. The forest smelt of neither death nor garbage, but solely of cinnamon and cream.

Flat Number 2: Sidar and Gaba.

Back in his house, Sidar threw himself on the couch, gasping hard. He had been brooding on suicide for so long, but that old widow who in all likelihood had never contemplated it as much, perhaps not even considered it until the last moment, had committed it much faster. When he got up, he wrote on small pieces of paper the nine factors he had deduced that day and stuck them on whatever empty spot could be found on the ceiling: Just like civilizations, suicides too, have an East and a West.

The progressive mentality focused on rendering life meaningful through reason and reason alone, and expecting each day to be more advanced than the preceding one, feels the need to weigh suicide meticulously, reasoning it soundly. Such people, regardless of where they happen to be living, commit suicide in the West.

The suicides of those in their early-to-middle, middle and late-to-middle ages usually fall within this category.

Since the close relatives of those who commit suicide in the West cannot find comfort until they get a satisfactory answer to the question, "Why?" they follow the same line of reasoning to make an a.n.a.lysis of cause and consequence.

There are also those who commit suicide at the least expected moment, the very last minute, without having organized the details. Such people, regardless of where they happen to be living, commit suicide in the realm of the East.

When children and the elderly commit suicide they do it in the East.

There is nothing as mind-boggling as the suicides of the elderly who-were-so-close-to-death-anyhow and children who-were-yet-so-far-away-from-death.

The suicides in the East, unlike the ones in the West, are in essence a mystery, or 'esrar' as the Istanbulites say.

Esrar should not be given an explanation.

Flat Number 7: Me.

At the beginning I used to draw circles around Bonbon Palace, brief walks that did not end up anywhere. Step by step the circles started to widen. Over time I started to veer, sometimes on foot, sometimes by car, into the far-flung neighbourhoods of Istanbul. It was the writings on the walls on the streets I was after.

When Ethel told me she wanted to keep me company on these urban trips, I did not object. While I took notes on the writings, she filmed them one by one with her digital camera. With the honey Cherokee, we snaked the rugged streets of dest.i.tute quarters, steered through the middle-income vicinities flickering with the ambition of opportunities long lost, toured around mansions, derelict gra.s.slands, sanctums and dens. At squares, courtyards, construction sites, squat houses, places of worship: far and wide the writings were everywhere. Most had been written on the walls with paint but there were also some written with chalk, pencil, coal and brick on doors, cardboard and a.s.sorted signs. Just like garbage, the writings about garbage had also been scattered everywhere in the city.

At the places we went, we were immediately noticed. Children followed us curiously. Women suspiciously spied on our every move from behind the lattice tulle of windows. The most inquisitive among the artisans surrounded us each time and showered us with questions. When forced to offer a plausible explanation, we told them it was our school project to gather the 'Garbage Writings' of Istanbul. Despite the absurdity, it made sense to them. It did not at all stick out that both Ethel and I were too old to be students. In their eyes somehow school was deemed untouchable a place where every absurdity was considered permissible.

Finding the people who had written these things proved to be more arduous than finding the writings themselves. We had to accept the fact that nearly all the writings were anonymous, but I did once manage to find out the perpetrator behind the writing on the wall of a dilapidated, soot grey edifice. 'Don't make me swer, I'll say bad things to garbage trowers. He who trows plaster here, come and get it, don't trow agen and make me swer.'

The children of the street knew the man who had written it. Though n.o.body knew his name, they knew his profession. He was a gatekeeper at one of the universities who had resided there with his bedridden wife and mother-in-law until last spring. While the adjacent construction continued, he was so infuriated at the construction workers dumping plaster in front of his house that he had gone out and written that. The man had pa.s.sed away in the fall, the construction had ended right afterwards, but the writing on the wall had stayed all this time.

'Can't you dress more modestly seeing as we create a centre of attention wherever we go anyhow?' I grumbled at Ethel after we left the neighbourhood of the gatekeeper.

'Don't pick on me. Our subject matter is not my clothing but your guilty conscience,' she snapped as she changed gears. 'This mess we are in is your "PAGHHC", not mine.' She pushed on the gas pedal though the road was getting rougher, narrower ahead. 'We hit the road for the "Project to Acquit the Gentleman's Heedlessly Hardened Conscience"! All your life you saw yourself as different from, if not superior to everyone around you, but the moment you realize you've messed up the whole lot, you need to prove to yourself that, after all, you are like everyone else! Only that conviction can ease your guilt. You seem to hope that the more we go around collecting garbage writing, the more uncontestable your innocence will be. "G.o.d what have I done! On me resides, if not the blood, the curse of an old woman. I am paying heavily for treating people lightly. At long last I saw the devil and with my very own eyes. I indeed saw him but believed in you, my G.o.d. I'm just like everyone else. Look, your other subjects too have written on the walls of Istanbul. Thus what I had done in the past was way too ordinary. Accordingly, I wasn't as extraordinary a man as I thought I was. Thank G.o.d for my ordinariness! If you do love them, you can forgive me as well... You will forgive me G.o.d, won't you?" Pull yourself together sugar-plum! You won't get anywhere with such futile hopes. Don't you see the irony in your efforts to purify yourself via garbage?'

After a while, we began to cla.s.sify the writings into groups. Ethel would transfer the pictures she took to her computer the same day, filing them separately, scrupulously. The most packed category comprised those writings with a slur or smear in them. "He who dumps garbage here is an a.s.s," was undoubtedly the most popular one. In Galata, on a wall at the Old Bank Street rested: "HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE IS SON OF A *****!" The rest of the sentence was scrawled out. In Fatih, just at the corner of Usturumcu Street, both fronts of a house with its plaster falling apart were entirely filled up with garbage writings, as if inscribed by someone punished by the teacher who had to write the same thing over a hundred times: "SHE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE IS A Wh.o.r.e." Again in the same neighbourhood, in the Broken Water Pump Street it read: "HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE IS AN a.s.s WHO IS ALSO THE SON OF AN a.s.s." Though swearwords were widespread, the variety was rather limited. In Dolapdere, on the wooden sign tied onto a mulberry tree with a string was written: "IF THE PERSON WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE IS A WOMAN, SHE IS A Wh.o.r.e, IF A MAN, HE IS A PIMP." A few steps down the street, another bit of writing caught the eye, this time in front of a house: "THOSE WHO THROW GARBAGE HERE DESERVE ALL SORTS OF SWEARWORDS." In ornektepe, on top of a wall that was falling to pieces, there was loads of writing in black and white. Each bit of writing seemed to have been produced on top of an earlier one, augmenting the bedlam. One among them, written in indigo, looked pretty new: "HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE IS A SON OF A b.i.t.c.h: ONE WHO IS A HUMAN BEING WILL UNDERSTAND WHAT I MEAN." The most vulgar in the swearword file was some writing in Dolapdere: "HE WHO THROWS GARBAGE HERE, f.u.c.k HIS MOTHER, WIFE, SISTER, HIS PAST, HIS FUTURE, HIS WHOLE FAMILY."

Second in popularity were the ones based on human-animal distinctions. In Galata, at Display Window Street a sign said: "IF YOU ARE A HUMAN BEING YOU WON'T DUMP GARBAGE, IF YOU ARE A BEAR, YOU SURE WILL." In the Little Ditch Street on the side-wall of a bank was written in coal: "HE WHO IS FAR FROM BEING A HUMAN WILL DUMP GARBAGE HERE". In Dolapdere, at the entrance to an apartment building was written with chalk "HUMANLIKE HUMANS DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE." Similar writings had covered both walls of the ancient a.s.syrian church: "DON'T DUMP GARBAGE, BE A HUMAN", "THE ONE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE IS AS BASE AS GARBAGE ITSELF..."

In the third category, were those writings we gathered which tried to promote consciousness of citizenship. In Kustepe, for instance, it was written: "HE WITH A HABIT OF POLLUTING THE ENVIRONMENT HAS A HEAD BUT NOT A BRAIN." Again in the same neighbourhood, on a tin sign hammered on an intersection, was the sentence: "LET US NOT LEAVE GARBAGE HERE LET US NOT DISRESPECT THE ENVIRONMENT." Unlike most of the other garbage writings, this one was neatly written. In Balat, around the old well in the middle of the bazaar, one read: "THE ONE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HAS NO HONOUR. THIS PLACE BELONGS TO ALL OF US"; in ornektepe, on the wall of a house that looked ready to collapse at the slightest earthquake, was written: "THE ONE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE WOULD HAVE DONE INJUSTICE TO HIS NEIGHBOURS." The visitors of the Greek Patriarchate in Fener were welcomed from afar by the sign: "HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE WILL GROW TO BE A MOST DESPICABLE PERSON."

Quite a number of these writings were left incomplete. Some looked worn out over time, others as if incomplete from the start. "THE ONE WHO DUMPS..." was written at all kinds of corners in Istanbul, with the rest of the sentence not following. In Harbiye at Papa Roncalli Street, across the walls of the elementary school, letters had dropped off the writing: "THE ONE WH DMPS GARBAGE HRE WILL BECOM AN AS."

Then there were also many bits of writing that gave outright threats. Among them, the one most often repeated was: "HE WHO DUMPS GARBAGE HERE WILL GET INTO BIG TROUBLE." In Fatih, the historic fountain next to the Three Heads Mosque, was filled with garbage writings loaded with threats: "DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE HERE/OR ELSE YOU WILL BE DUMPED WITH TROUBLE." Yet the worst among those containing threats and curses was the one written on a piece of cardboard with a felt-tip pen hanging on the wall of a busy street in the same neighbourhood: "MAY THE CHILD OF HE WHO THROWS GARBAGE HERE BREATHE HIS LAST."

In addition to the insulting, there were also many that were way too polite: "WILL YOU PLEASE DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE," or "IT IS KINDLY REQUESTED THAT YOU DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE AT THIS SPOT." In the entrance of the Kaptanpasa, an elementary school, there were two signs back to back, one written for the students inside and the other addressing the pa.s.sers-by outside: "PLEASE DO NOT THROW GARBAGE INTO OUR SCHOOL GARDEN FROM THE OUTSIDE." There was a similar sign on the wooden boards surrounding the construction at the entrance to Asmalmescit, this time half-Turkish, half-English: "DUMPING GARBAGE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED, PLEASE!" Once again, at Good Fortune Street: "WHOEVER LOVES G.o.d SHOULD NOT DUMP GARBAGE HERE IT IS KINDLY REQUESTED."

Among the garbage writings, 'prohibited' was the most frequent word. On the walls surrounding the Wallachian Palace, engraved with big letters, was: "IT IS VERY PROHIBITED TO THROW GARBAGE." Likewise, on the side wall of a famous tailor in Harbiye, the writing was short and to the point: "GARBAGE HERE FORBIDDEN." The word 'absolutely' was just as widespread. On the humongous wall of the SSK Okmeydan Education Hospital Polyclinics, highly visible from down the street was: "DUMPING GARBAGE IS ABSOLUTELY PROHIBITED!" and a few steps away from it: "TO DUMP GARBAGE DEBRIS FORBIDDEN UNCONDITIONALLY."

There was almost never a name given under any of the writing. They remained absolutely anonymous. Still, now and then we b.u.mped into some exceptions. In those situations where the need to invest the writings with some sort of authority was crystal clear, the name of the head of the neighbourhood was encountered the most. On the Mesnevihane Street it was written: "IT IS REQUESTED THAT NO GARBAGE BE DUMPED, OTHERWISE A FINE WILL BE APPLIED!/THE NEIGHBOURHOOD HEAD." Munic.i.p.alities also got involved in the business: "THE MUNIc.i.p.aLITY WILL UNDERTAKE PENALTY PROCEDURES CONCERNING THOSE DUMPING GARBAGE HERE." Sometimes the inhabitants of the neighbourhood owned up to the writing, as seen in Zeyrek: "MAY G.o.d BRING MISFORTUNE ON THOSE WHO PARK OR DUMP THEIR GARBAGE HERE/NEIGHBOURHOOD RESIDENTS."

Writings concerning religion and faith came next. Around the remains of the palace rebuilt by the Moldavian Prince Dmitri Cantemir during 16881710, it was written: "FOR ALLAH'S SAKE DO NOT THROW GARBAGE HERE." Like the Private Fener Greek High School, the surroundings of various mosques too were filled with similar writings. At Kagithane Smoky Street was a computer print-out: "THOSE WHO HAVE RELIGION AND FAITH WILL KNOW BETTER THAN THROWING GARBAGE HERE," and a hundred metres down: "MAY THOSE WHO DUMP GARBAGE BE ETERNALLY PARALYZED." On one of the side streets opening up to the Kadikoy Square was: "G.o.d WILL POUR CALAMITY ON THOSE WHO DUMP THEIR GARBAGE HERE." In Fatih, at a garden wall swathed with political campaign posters it said: "PLEASE DO REFRAIN FROM THROWING GARBAGE HERE. THEY CURSE YOU." In the same borough, an old cemetery squeezed between two apartment buildings had also had its share of garbage writings. The front of an apartment building facing the cemetery was painted from one end to the other in capital letters: "FOR ALLAH'S SAKE DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE." Then in Cihangir, on a historic, dry fountain we chanced upon some writing, looking awesomely familiar: "THERE LIES A SACRED SAINT AT THIS SPOT. DO NOT DUMP GARBAGE."

The smell of Istanbul reached the writings everywhere: at an unexpected arc, on a secluded hill where genies congregated, in an ancient cistern, on the long lost remnants of a mansion; in dead end streets, flea markets and bazaars; on the facades of stylish apartment buildings, dingy headquarters or hospitals with an appearance so awful it made you sick; in cold looking schools and at shrines the names of which were not even included in G.o.d's maps...in each and every spot where the aged and the recent intertwined there was garbage writing scattered all around...

It did not take Ethel long to get bored. Before I knew it, she drifted away from both the garbage project and me. In her warehouse of lovers wherein each lover remained as just another unfinished project, I too became an unfinished project.

Flats Number 7 and 8: The Blue Mistress and I.

'What are you going to do with so many photographs?' frowned the Blue Mistress, discontentedly scanning my flat, which increasingly resembled a depot more than a house. 'What purpose will they serve?'

'I do not acc.u.mulate them to serve a purpose.'

'Why on earth are you doing this?' she insisted.

I do not have the impression of doing anything. I guess in the last a.n.a.lysis, all my actions are determined more by not doing than by my doing; lack of action rather than action. I cannot help searching: when I search, I find, what I find I collect, what I collect I acc.u.mulate and what I acc.u.mulate I cannot bear to throw away.

'What is going to happen next?' asked the Blue Mistress adamantly.

Next....

'WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT?' asked my cellmate adamantly.

'There is no next. The guy just acc.u.mulates garbage writings that will never be of any use to him.'

'Nonsense!' said my cellmate. I wasn't offended. After all, that is the coa.r.s.est way ever invented of saying 'You have a fanciful mind!' and he might be right. Whenever I get anxious and mess up what I have to say, am scared of people's stares and pretend not to be so, introduce myself to strangers and feign ignorance about how estranged I am from myself, feel hurt by the past and find it hard to admit the future won't be any better or fail to come to terms with either where or who I am; at any one of these all too frequently recurring moments, I know I don't make much sense, but nonsense is just as far removed from deception as truth. Deception turns truth inside out. As for nonsense, it solders deception and truth to each other so much so as to make them indistinguishable. Though this might seem complicated, it's actually very simple. So simple that it can be expressed by a single line.

Truth is a horizontal line. Be it a hotel corridor, hospital ward, rehabilitation centre or train compartment; all are horizontal. In such places, all your neighbours are lined up next to you on a horizontal plane, for a fleeting moment. You cannot grow roots at these places. Horizontality is the haven of evanescence. I too have been living on a horizontal line for sixty-six days in the seventh of the ten cells lined up next to each other here.

Lies are a vertical line. An apartment building, for instance, erected with flats on top of one another with two layers of cemeteries underneath and seven planes of skies above. Here you can spread roots and grow branches as you please. Verticality is the shelter of permanence, a tribute to immortality.

Bonbon Palace is an apartment building constructed on an area of cemeteries. A vertical line that ascends floor by floor. It is my lie. For I am narrating these stories not from a flat there, but from the prison.

When on the 1st of May a group of revolutionaries impatiently decided to break through the police barricade, I was among them. When we were all detained and thrust in a police bus, I chanced to sit beside a ginger-haired, flap-eared, funny-faced man who did not at all show his age. I am grateful to him as that day on that bus, seeing the fear in his widely opened eyes enabled me to forget my own. While we were taken to the police headquarters, he kept whining, whimpering and wailing that he had no interest in politics, that all he did in life was to fumigate bugs. That man was telling the truth. He was indeed a bug fumigator and had probably never hated his job as much as he had done then. His name was not Injustice; that I made up myself. The name is not entirely bogus, however, for he looked like someone who had seen plenty of injustice in life; besides, his surname is true. He was released the same day anyhow. They released him, but arrested me.

Ever since I came here, I have not spent a single day without thinking of Injustice Pureturk. It's all because of these bugs. I happen to be a radical with a deep fear of insects. Unfortunately there are too many of them here, especially c.o.c.kroaches. I hear them in the toilets, air vents and even the dents and crevices in the walls. They keep scurrying around and encouraged by darkness, incessantly multiply...but I can a.s.sure you that the louse is the very worst...

No doubt, in order to observe all of these creatures better, you should come visit me and spend some time here. If you have no time, however, you ought to be content with my version of the story. Yet I too, ultimately speak only in my own voice. Not that I'll foist my own views onto what transpires but I might, here and there, solder the horizontal line of truth to the vertical line of deception in order to escape the wearisome humdrum reality of where I am anch.o.r.ed right now. After all, I am bored stiff here. If someone brought me the good news that my life would be less dreary tomorrow, I might feel less bored today. Yet I know only too well that tomorrow will be just the same and so will the succeeding days. Nevertheless, I should not give you the impression with my fondness of circles that it is only my life that persistently repeats itself. In the final instance, the vertical is just as faithful to its recurrence as the horizontal. Contrary to what many presume, that which is called 'Eternal Recurrence' is germane less to circles than to lines and linear arrangements.

I cooked up this story basically to overcome my bug phobia. Dreaming of a surrept.i.tiously garbage-collecting old widow in some vertical world helped me to survive better the horizontal line here of cells next to one another. Still, I cannot be regarded as having entirely lied. If anything, I can be accused of merging the truth with lies. Of returning to the beginning rather than reaching a decisive end.

As for me, I will not be staying in this prison too long. The sentence they deemed fit for me is one year and two months. Sixty-six days of that sentence are already over. Of these sixty-six days, I pa.s.sed the first week by getting used to my place and fearing the bugs, and pa.s.sed the rest trying to forget my fear by way of making up the story you read. Now that the circle of the greyish tin lid of garbage has stopped turning, I frankly do not know how I am going to spend the remaining three hundred and sixty days here.

However, as soon as I am released, the very first thing I want to do is pay a visit to Injustice Pureturk. The first bug fumigator in Turkey taken into custody for being a revolutionary. Life is absurd, at its core lies nonsense, and if you ask me, Fortuna must be long fed up with tackling the possible answers to the impossible question: 'What will happen to whom when?'

Glossary.

Ashure A turkish dessert made of fruits, nuts and rice.

Azrael The angel of death Baqiya hawas A common stone inscription meaning, 'G.o.d is strength, all else is folly.'