I was born in Gönen… This town, which I haven’t seen for twenty years, has now become a mirage in my imagination. Many places have been forgotten, like an old, distant dream. I try now to remember the Market Mosque that my father, then a young captain, and I used to pass by all the time, the small and dilapidated fountain across from it, the little river where thousands of logs floated, the deep pool of the hot-water bathhouse where we sometimes went to wash. But a white mist of oblivion piles up before me. It erases the colors, loses the shapes… Just as a man returning to his homeland after very long exiles finds the horizon of his birthplace under a thick fog and feels melancholy because he cannot immediately see from afar the things he loves, I too feel a distress similar to curiosity and impatience. Those dusty and stone-free roads where herds of buffalo and cattle passed every evening, the mossy and black-tiled roofs, the large walls that looked as if they would collapse, the small wooden bridges, the endless fields, the low fences—all dissolve in this mist… I can only bring to mind our house and the school.
A large garden… In the middle, a snow-white house built in the style of a mansion… In the right corner, the room with white curtains where we always sat… In the mornings, my mother would sit me by the window like a baby, make me review my lessons, and give me my milk. From this window, there was a single window without glass or shutters in the large earth-colored building on the other side of the courtyard. This black hole frightened me greatly. I would imagine seeing the bear from the terrible, endless stories that our maid Abil Ana, who cooked our meals, washed our laundry, scrubbed our floors, fed my father’s horse, and looked after the hunting dogs, told every night in this dark window. With this delusion, I would make up bear dreams every morning for my poor mother, who was curious about listening to and interpreting dreams, telling her that a large, black bear had kidnapped me and taken me to the mountain, locked me in its den in the forest, tied my arms, ate my nose and lips, then threw me into the waterwheel of the mill on the Bayramiç road, making her say many times, “God willing, it’s for good…” And as she interpreted, assuring me that I would become a great man, a great gentleman, a great pasha, that no one could harm me, I would forget that I had lied, and how happy I would be!
How did I get there and with whom from the streets? I don’t know… The school was one story and its walls were unpainted. When you entered through the door, there was a covered courtyard. Further ahead was a small, treeless garden… At the end of the garden, a walkway and a very large ablution barrel… Boys and girls sat all mixed together, read together, played together. The one we called “Big Teacher” was a hunched, tall, old, and senile woman with hennaed and sparse hair. Her blue eyes shone very harshly, and with her hooked yellow nose like a beak, she resembled a treacherous and sick hawk with fallen feathers. The Small Teacher was male. And he was Big Teacher’s son. The children weren’t afraid of him at all. He was probably a bit foolish. I sat in the back desks, in a place where Big Teacher couldn’t reach with her longest stick. The girls always called me “White Bey,” perhaps because my hair was light blond. The bigger boys either said my name or called me “Captain’s son.” The “came, went” sign hanging on the unopenable wing of the classroom door looked at us like a flat, lifeless face, and the dull light entering through the narrow windows near the ceiling of the thick walls seemed to become even heavier and muddier with the incessant, sharp screams of the constantly shouting, yelling children…
There was only one type of punishment at school: Beating… Major offenders, even girls, would be put on the falaka. And there was no one who didn’t fear or tremble at the falaka. The punishment for minor offenses was disproportionate and immeasurable. Small Teacher’s heavy slap… Big Teacher’s long stick… which would surely swell any head it hit. I had never been beaten. Perhaps they were showing favoritism. Only once did Big Teacher pull my left ear with her dry, bony hands because I had lied. She pulled so hard that it was still burning the next day. And it was bright red. Yet I wasn’t at fault. I had told the truth. The tap of the ablution barrel in the garden had been broken. Big Teacher was looking for whoever committed this offense. It was a boy in a blue vest, with a red sash, sick and thin. I reported him. He was going to be put on the falaka. He denied it. Then another child came forward. He said he had broken it himself, that it wasn’t the other boy’s fault, and lay on the ground. Screaming, he took the beatings. Then Big Teacher grabbed my ear, saying, “Why are you lying, why are you slandering this poor child?” She scowled and sulked.
I cried. I cried. Because I wasn’t lying. Yes, I had seen him with my own eyes breaking the tap. In the evening, I caught the boy who had been beaten. “Why did you make me out to be a liar?” I said, “you hadn’t broken the tap…”
“I had broken it.”
“No, you hadn’t broken it. I saw with my own eyes that the other child broke it.”
He couldn’t insist. He looked at my face. He stood like that for a moment. And if I swore not to tell the teacher, he wouldn’t hide it. He would tell. I swore immediately. I was curious.
“Ali had broken the tap,” he said, “and I knew it too. But he’s very weak and also sick. You see, he can’t withstand the falaka. He might die, he just got out of bed.”
“But why did you take a beating in his place?”
“Why? Because we’ve made an oath with him. He’s sick today, I’m well and strong. I saved him, that’s all.”
I didn’t understand very well. I asked again:
“What’s an oath?”
“Don’t you know?”
“I don’t!”
Then he laughed. Moving away from me, he answered: “We drink each other’s blood. This is called making an oath. Those who make an oath become blood brothers. They help each other until death, they rush to each other’s aid.”
Then I noticed that many children in the school had made oaths with each other. They were blood brothers. Even some girls had made oaths among themselves. One day I also saw how this newly learned custom was performed. It was again in the back desks. Small Teacher had gone outside to perform ablutions. Big Teacher had turned her back to us, slowly, as slow as a snail, performing her prayers. Two children drew on their arms with a knife with a wooden handle. They spread the large red drop that came out on the line on their arms, mixed their blood. Then they sucked each other’s arms. Making an oath and becoming blood brothers… This started to make me think. If I also had a blood brother, the teacher wouldn’t have pulled my ear, and probably when I was going to be put on the falaka, he would save me. I imagined myself completely alone in the big school, friendless and without a protector, and I told my mother my idea, that I wanted to make an oath with someone like every child. And I described the oath. She didn’t agree. And she warned me, “I don’t want such improprieties. Don’t you dare do it…”
But I didn’t listen. I had set my mind on making an oath. But with whom? A coincidence, an unexpected accident, won me my blood brother. On Fridays, all the neighbor children would gather in our house’s garden. We would play together until evening. The owners of the houses behind us, Hacı Budak’s family, had a child my age whose name I especially liked: Mıstık… When I said this word, I would feel as if I were delighting in it and would always repeat it. It was so harmonious and melodious. When they saw Mıstık in the garden or on the street, the girls would recite in unison the rhymes made up for this beautiful name, still in my memory:
Mustafa Mıstık, We squeezed him in a cart, We lit three candles, We watched the sight!
they would shout, making their hands into fists and standing against him. Mıstık never got angry. He would laugh. Sometimes we would also shout these verses and have fun.
These two tiny verses had even affected my imagination. In my dreams, I would see many impudent girls squeezing him into a large immigrant cart and watching him with three candles lit around him. Why would Mıstık stand so still? Why didn’t he suddenly jump up and slap these girls a few times and escape from the tar-smelling cart he was squeezed into… He was stronger than all of us. As if like his name, everything about him was round; his head, his arms, his legs, his body… even his hands… He would beat all the children in wrestling. And every Friday morning in summer, he would bring a large bundle of willow branches. We would make horses for ourselves from these branches, play javelin, race. He would pass all of us in the race too. None of us could catch him. So on another Friday like this, Mıstık came with willow branches. I set aside the longest one for myself. I distributed the others to the children. With a knife, we would cut the ends of these branches, make two ears and a nose from their bark, make them look just like a horse’s head. And I did this most beautifully.
I was making my own horse. Mıstık and the other children were waiting their turn. I don’t know how it happened, I didn’t notice, the bark of the willow suddenly split. The knife that slipped cut the index finger of my left hand. A watery, red blood began to flow. At that moment, something came to my mind: Making an oath… I forgot the pain in my finger, I said to Mıstık, “Come on, since my hand is already cut. Let’s become blood brothers. You cut too…”
He hesitated. Looking down at the ground with his black eyes, he shook his big, round head: “How can that be… For an oath, you have to cut the arm…”
“Come on, what’s the harm?” I insisted, “Isn’t it blood? It’s all the same. Whether from the arm or the finger… Come on, come on!…”
He agreed. With the knife he took from my hand, he cut his arm, even rather deeply. His blood was so thick that it wasn’t flowing, it was swelling and growing as a drop. We mixed it with my finger’s blood. First I sucked. It was a salty and warm thing. Then he also sucked my finger.
I don’t know how much time passed. Maybe six months… maybe a year… I had almost forgotten that Mıstık and I were blood brothers. We were still playing together, returning home from school together. One day the weather was very hot. Big Teacher released us at half-day. Just like on Thursday… Mıstık and I were walking slowly in the dust of the street. I had put my handkerchief under my fez… My face was soaking wet because I didn’t wipe my sweat. We were passing through a large, wide road. There were foundations of a collapsed wall on the side. Suddenly, a large, black dog appeared from across. It was running toward us. Behind it, several men were chasing it with thick sticks. They shouted at us: “Run, run, it’ll bite…” We got scared. We were confused. We just stood there. First I gathered myself a bit and said, “oh no, let’s run…” but the dog whose eyes were shining like fire had caught up with us. Then Mıstık shouted, “you hide behind me…” and got in front of me. The dog attacked him. First they quickly crashed into each other. Then just like wrestling, they came chest to chest. The dog had also stood up.
After fighting like this for a while, they both rolled to the ground. Mıstık’s small fez and blue scarf fell off. This battle seemed very long to me. I was trembling. The uncles with sticks arrived. They brought down their logs on the dog with all their strength a few times. Mıstık was saved. The poor thing was bleeding from his arms and nose. The dog, having tucked its tail between its legs, its mouth on the ground, fled at full gallop. Mıstık was saying, “It’s nothing… It doesn’t hurt… Just scratched a bit…” They took him to his house. I also immediately ran to our house. I told my mother what had happened to us. Abil Ana laid me on the ground. She pressed long and hard on my groin, my fear veins. And she blew on my face while reading such a prayer that I sneezed from the garlic smell.
The next day Mıstık hadn’t come to school. The day after that, he still didn’t come… I told my mother we should go to Hacı Budak’s and see Mıstık. “He’s sick, my dear,” she said, “God willing, when he gets better you’ll play again, it’s rude to disturb him now.” After that, every morning I went to school with the hope of finding Mıstık recovered.
But alas… He never came… The dog was rabid. They took Mıstık to Bandırma for treatment. From there they would send him to Istanbul.
And finally one day we heard that Mıstık had died…
The clear and cloudless mornings when I wake up early remind me, like everyone else, of my childhood. I want to bring before my eyes the place of my birth, which remains in my memory like an eternal and purple land of dawn. And always, without realizing it, I look at the index finger of my left hand. This small scar that still stands above the first joint in the shape of a white line is very sacred to me. I feel again on my fingertip the warm lips of my heroic blood brother who died for the oath, who destroyed his life, and I see the vision of that lion and hero wrestling with that large, rabid, big and black shepherd dog bigger than himself to save me.
And as we move away from our nationality, from our intuitive Turkishness, the dark abyss into which we roll ever deeper, at the bottom of this hell of immorality and corruption, disloyalty and selfishness, baseness and lethargy, while writhing desperate and hardened, the pure and radiant past opens before me like a mirage far from reality of a lost paradise… It consoles and makes me happy. For hours I take pleasure in Mıstık’s memory, in the sweet and melancholy pain of this honored and noble mourning whose value increases as it ages and is forgotten…
