“Hey İboş, is that you!”
“Well, Mıstık, is that you?”
“It’s me…”
The two countrymen immediately embraced. They hadn’t seen each other since the day they left Macedonia. Now, to come face to face like this outside this remote little Anatolian town, by this groaning, flowing pebbly stream… was an unexpected joy for them! Their happiness mixed with wonder was very sincere. In their old homeland they had left, they both worked as carriers. They had different trades for each season of the year. In autumn they would cross to Serbia, buy horses, mules, donkeys… when winter came, abandoning their wandering, they would transport grain from Bulgaria. True, they had never been partners. But they knew each other very well. They had boundless trust in each other. Mıstık, squinting his small eyes that sparkled blue, blue like very clean living jewels on his dirty yellow face, asked: “What are you up to?”
“Nothing…”
“What are you doing here?”
“Nothing. Just passing through. How about you?”
“Me too.”
“Where are you going?”
“Not decided yet. You?”
“Mine’s not decided either.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About a month…”
“I’ve been in these parts for about a month too!”
Both were still young. They had no wives or children. Their capital was the ropes on their backs and the sashes at their waists. They didn’t like the cities, towns, or villages of Anatolia. Since they weren’t farmers, they didn’t care about land; since they didn’t have a craft, they didn’t care about the marketplace. What they were looking for was a crowded trading place! A trading place that would yield three hundred percent profit…
İboş said, “God’s own Rumelia… where are those days?”
Mıstık shook his head.
“Where?… The old opportunities are gone. If you have no work here, work like a donkey for ten kuruş a day…”
The edge of the stream was a flat grassy area. The old willow tree was mixing its dappled shadows with its reflection in the water, and the endless surrounding fields, with their desolation, resembled a desert with emerald sands.
“Let’s sit down here, buddy…”
“Let’s sit down…”
They sat cross-legged on the grass. Mıstık, looking at the sadly flowing stream, said, “Ah, where is our Mesta?” Then he began to tell how the Anatolian waters upset his stomach, how he got malaria. The black-browed, black-eyed, stocky İboş, as strong as an ox dressed in human clothes, kept confirming his skinny friend… saying that blood dripped from his cheeks, that ever since coming to Anatolia he couldn’t shake off the illness. After the waters, they talked in turn about the air, the roads, the railways, the mountains, the inns, the gendarmes. İboş pulled a leather pouch from his large red sash. From the pocket of his tight trousers that looked like a worn tear, he took out a nickel lighter. He extended a pouch whose color was indistinguishable from dirt to Mıstık.
“Roll one, a cigarette…”
Mıstık, before even opening the pouch… souring his thin, unshaven, dirty face terribly, said, “Not tobacco, blessed one, dung!”
“Ah, our tobacco!”
“You’d think it was a beauty’s hair…”
“It was pure, pure gold thread…”
They rolled their cigarettes. They began smoking, hurling curses against Anatolian tobacco, against the Régie, against the smugglers. More than anything, they complained about Anatolia’s morals, its trickery, its stinginess.
Mıstık said, “God forbid! God forbid! Especially swearing false oaths…”
“Yes, that’s their worst trait…”
“One day the earth will swallow them, I swear, they’ll all sink…”
“They’ll sink, they’ll sink…”
“They’ll sink!”
They talked about jobs to pursue, the government’s protection, immigrant privileges… Perhaps more than an hour… They had smoked ten cigarettes each, one after another, of the tobacco they didn’t like. As he was getting up, İboş, putting the tobacco pouch in his sash, searched and scoured. He bent down, felt with his hands the grass they had been sitting on. He straightened up. He frowned. He placed his fists on his hips. He narrowed his very lashed eyes. He looked at Mıstık: “…”
“What’s wrong?”
“Give it, I say.”
“What do you want?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I swear…”
“I said give the lighter.”
“Which lighter?”
“Hey, are you denying it?”
“Denying what?”
İboş gritted his teeth. His opened fists began to tremble. This was practically treating him like a donkey! He asked with calm sweetness: “While we were sitting here, did anyone come near us?”
“No.”
“Did I take out a lighter with the tobacco pouch?”
“You did.”
“Didn’t we light our cigarettes with that lighter?”
“We did.”
“Did we get up and go anywhere from here?”
“No.”
“Then where is the lighter?”
“How should I know?”
“You took it…”
“God forbid…”
İboş carefully, repeatedly searched his clothes, the ground, among the grass. He no longer had any doubt that Mıstık had stolen the lighter. He said this wasn’t fitting for fellow countrymen. He pleaded, he implored. Mıstık kept uttering oaths one after another, “God forbid… I swear I don’t accept…” and was about to start a fight. İboş had a strange reputation in his old country. They called him “The one who burns the quilt for a flea.” He wouldn’t let anyone keep even his smallest right. In fact, once, a public prosecutor whose belongings he was transporting had paid two kuruş less of the carrier’s fee because he didn’t have change. In his stubbornness not to let go of those two kuruş, İboş had sent complaint telegrams costing exactly five hundred kuruş to the Inspector General, to the Ministry of Interior, to the Province of that time. This incident was famous throughout all of Rumelia.
“You know me, Mıstık,” he said. “I don’t let anyone keep anything of mine. Give that lighter.”
“I swear I didn’t take it…”
“Hey, you didn’t take it, I didn’t take it, did the jinns come and take it?”
“I don’t know.”
“I will get this lighter from you.”
“I didn’t take it, so what will you get…”
İboş said he would sue by going to court. Angrily, he headed for the road going to the town. However, Mıstık had stolen the lighter. He said to himself, “I took it without being seen. There’s no witness. There’s no basket. Isn’t it just an oath? I’ll do it.” Outwardly—to the friend he had been chatting so sweetly with just a minute ago—he shouted bitterly:
“Come on, let’s go together, I’ll sue you for defamation too.”
“Come on…”
They began walking side by side on the dusty road surrounded by deep ditches. But like two cross-eyed eyes, one was looking right, one was looking left.
…Half an hour later…
They were in the small courtroom in the government building. From below, they could hear the fierce gendarme horses neighing and stamping… through the open windows came swallows that seemed to be chasing each other to kill, settling in their nests resembling mud holes in the cracks of the old black-boarded ceiling.
The white-bearded judge, taking his snuff, listened carefully to these two strangers’ case.
He asked İboş: “Do you have a witness that this man stole your lighter?”
“No.”
He turned to Mıstık: “And you say you didn’t steal it.”
“Yes. And I’m suing for defamation. He wants to call me a thief. I don’t accept this.”
“That’s another matter… Now you will swear that you didn’t steal it. Will you?”
“I will.”
“Then first, the case you requested will be seen. That is, it will be revealed that you’re not a thief. Your honor will be cleared.”
“Very well!”
Mıstık, approaching the podium covered with very pale, stained green cloth, pressed his hand with all his strength on a book wrapped in a green bundle, and uttered oaths that he had not taken the lighter. At that moment, İboş lost the case that Mıstık had won!
…Just as they were leaving, the judge said to the rejoicing Mıstık, “Son, you’ll pay ten kuruş!”
Mıstık opened his mouth and eyes wide:
“Why! Didn’t I win the case?”
“You won.”
“Wasn’t it revealed that I didn’t take the lighter?”
“It was.”
“Then what money are you asking for?”
“Court fees…”
Mıstık stopped as if shot. He looked ahead. He thought, wrinkling his mouth and face. Then he turned to İboş. Slowly he put his hand in his bosom.
“…”
“?”
“I can’t pay ten kuruş for a sixty-para thing! Take your damned thing…” he said, and threw at his friend’s face the lighter that had just been absolutely established that he hadn’t stolen!
