The fisherman and his so.., p.12
The Fisherman and His Son,
p.12
His friends tried to calm him down. “Fine, Mustafa, what’s the matter with you, are you losing your marbles again? We won’t say anything.”
“I want you to swear,” insisted Mustafa, “I want to swear on your children’s lives, on the graves of your departed. I want you to put your hand on the Koran.”
When Çiroz saw that Mustafa was trembling, that his expression was alternating between gloom and joy, he gestured discreetly for the others to leave him alone. They left.
Çiroz tried to calm him. “Come, sit down and have some tea, you’re covered in sweat. You’re starting to scare me, Mustafa.”
“No, you don’t understand, I’m not the person I was, I have a duty, I have a duty. If you were to inform on me …”
“Shut up! Cut it out, are you aware that you’re insulting your best friends? Am I a rat, do you think you’re the only one who has any honor? Pull yourself together or I’m going to mess you up.”
Mustafa shut up. Çiroz was a skinny man, there was no way he could beat Mustafa up, but when he was truly angry he didn’t care about anything.
Then Mustafa said, “Fine, I’m sorry, but the situation is really serious. I’m not the person I was, some things have changed.”
“What changed? Don’t keep repeating the same thing. Man up and tell me what’s going on.”
“Mesude is back. She’s back home, and the baby is coming.”
“The baby?” Çiroz sounded surprised. He didn’t understand, but he was curious. “What baby? The migrant baby you brought back from the sea?”
“Of course! Our baby! Our new Deniz. Zilha said that under her present circumstances she couldn’t take proper care of the baby. She couldn’t provide him with any kind of future.”
Çiroz, looking somewhat impatient, asked, “Who’s Zilha? Who did she tell this to?”
“She’s the mother, the baby’s mother. She told the authorities. She said that if they accepted, she wanted to give custody of him to the family who rescued him, who fed him and cared for him and then gave him back to her. That’s what she said. The officials came and informed Mesude.”
He felt the need to be in motion; he wanted to run. Since the subject had come up, he wanted to tell his friend about his feelings in more detail. He wanted to tell him about how, when he was speaking to Mesude the previous evening, she’d held the folder to her chest so carefully it was as if the baby was in it. He felt he was unable to adequately express his feelings to Çiroz. But still, he could see that his friend was pleased. “In order to be allowed to take custody of him I have to have a clean record,” he continued, “I was lucky to be acquitted last time, but if this fish farm business comes out they won’t give me the baby. Mesude would never forgive me, and my life would be over. I would be ruined.”
Çiroz slapped him on the shoulder, “OK, brother, now tell me the whole story, are we your enemies? I’m really happy about how things turned out. You stay out of trouble now, behave yourself. Are you going out fishing?”
“I can’t, I have paperwork to take care of, I have to get a paper from the prosecutor, a bunch of other things. It’s not easy.”
Two days later Mesude and Mustafa went to Ula, to the old prison, which now served as a Repatriation Center. This was where migrants who were rescued or captured were held until they were sent back to their original countries.
There was smoke in the air from the nearby coal-fired power plant. As they entered the white, two-story building, it struck Mesude that they lived their lives unaware of so much that was going on around them—of the lives, the suffering, of people just next to them. The young lawyer was waiting for them inside. He looked very serious in his suit and carefully knotted tie. Mustafa greeted him with gratitude in his eyes. Even in that important, tense, and exciting moment, when Mesude looked at the handsome lawyer, her feminine intuition told her he would be a good match for Kübra. Would it be possible to introduce them?
An official brought them to a small, well-lit, air-conditioned room. The desk was covered in pink folders, and there was a picture of Atatürk behind it. There was no one at the desk. The lawyer said, Every migrant who’s rescued is brought here.
“Inside there are security guards, the police guard the outside. The migrants sleep in large rooms. Ten or twenty to a room. They’re served three meals a day in the dining hall. They can’t leave until they’re repatriated.”
“Are all of them definitely sent back?” asked Mesude.
“Apart from the Syrians, all of them are sent back. The government allows the Syrians to do business and to work. The other migrants don’t get that chance. I wish they did.”
“Is that lady going to be sent back?” asked Mustafa.
“Yes, that’s the rule.”
“What if she can’t afford the trip?”
“Then the government pays.”
Mustafa and Mesude’s eyes met. So it meant the woman was doing this in order not to bring the baby back to Afghanistan. They were both saddened to realize that another person’s disaster had brought them happiness.
Then the lawyer told them about some distressing things they would rather not have heard, but that they had to know.
He read from the file, summarizing it from time to time.
A little later they brought in Zilha Sherif. Samir was in her arms. There was a pacifier in his mouth, and he was calm. Zilha was wearing a dark-blue dress with horizontal white stripes. The center must have given it to her. Mesude and Zilha looked each other in the eye. A young man they said was an interpreter came in after her. When they all sat down, a middle-aged woman brought tea in on a tray. For a while nothing was heard but the clinking of spoons and cups. Everyone except the lawyer and the interpreter was staring at their tea. The lawyer wasn’t stirring his tea; he didn’t take sugar. “We all know why we’re here. A native of Afghanistan …”
Just then an official came in. A portly, balding man with a moustache. He was wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and a burgundy tie. When he’d taken a seat, he instructed the lawyer to continue.
The lawyer explained the situation clearly and precisely. Zilha Sherif wanted to leave her son Samir Sherif in foster care with the Sılacı family, should they accept this responsibility. An official application had been made.
The official said, “Yes, the application is being processed. Of course we have to adhere to legal statutes. Even if both sides agree, it’s not easy.”
Then he turned to Mustafa. “As far as I understand, you want to be this baby’s foster parents, is that so?”
Mustafa and Mesude said yes in unison.
“In fact the application was supposed to be made by you rather than by the child’s mother, but…We sent you some forms, have you filled them out and had them verified?”
“Yes, prosecutor,” said Mustafa.
The man smiled and said, “I’m not a prosecutor.” Then he continued, “The law allows you to temporarily take in an irregular migrant child as a foster family in emergency situations.”
“Temporarily?” Mustafa sounded anxious.
“For now that’s the easiest way; the lawyer will explain. Let’s do this first, and then you can apply for permanent custody.”
He took the folder Mustafa handed to him, glanced at the forms, and checked the signatures and official stamps. Meanwhile Mesude was looking at Zilha, who didn’t look up and didn’t take her eyes off the baby in her arms. As she watched the baby looking at the woman and the woman looking at the baby, Mesude felt a strange feeling she couldn’t quite describe. The baby was here, next to her. If she reached out she could touch him, but she couldn’t touch him, at this moment he was not yet Deniz, he was still Samir. His mother was looking at him and he was looking at his mother. He was looking for her breast: he’d taken out his pacifier, and he seemed slightly irritated. The woman whispered something to the interpreter. The interpreter said the baby was hungry, could she step outside for a moment to feed him?
The woman left, walked down the corridor, and entered a room. Mesude followed her. There were other women in the room; some of them were black and some were white. They all had a look of hopelessness in their eyes. Zilha sat on a bunk and gave the baby her breast. He began sucking eagerly. At that moment Mesude’s nipples began to ache. She sat next to the woman. They looked at each other. They had no language in common; they couldn’t talk to each other. Mesude put her hand on the woman’s thin, bony shoulder, as if to give her strength. The woman turned to her, and they looked into each other’s eyes for a time as the baby suckled. Zilha took Mesude’s hand and placed it on the baby’s head. Mesude was now doing what she’d wanted to do but hadn’t been able to. She touched the baby’s beautiful head lovingly. She looked at the woman in gratitude. There was deep pain in her eyes, but on her lips there was a faint, doleful, broken smile.
When Mesude looked into her eyes she remembered what the lawyer had said. In Kunduz the Taliban had killed her parents, her husband, and her two brothers. She’d escaped the massacre because she’d brought her newborn baby to the clinic. She felt ashamed. She immediately withdrew her hand from the baby’s head. She wanted to flee—she could have gone out the door and ran all the way to the village. She was ashamed, deeply ashamed.
The woman looked at her. They looked into each other’s eyes. The women understood each other, felt each other, sensed each other. Zilha took Mesude’s hand, squeezed it slightly, nodded, and then once again put her hand on the baby’s head. The other women watched this silent ceremony. The smell of coal smoke from outside mixed with the smell of dirty laundry in the room. The two women had talked about everything without uttering a single word. A deep bond had been established between the two mothers, between the entrusting and the entrusted. Promises had been made and sworn to. Mesude tried not to think about what the lawyer had told her, but she didn’t succeed. “There’s a strong possibility they’ll kill her when she returns,” he’d said. “That’s why the child …”
The midafternoon call to prayer sounded. The mosque must have been close, because the muezzin’s voice echoed off the walls. Zilha stood, and they walked back to the office together. The corridor smelled of coal, sour sweat, and whitewash, with a faint whiff of coffee coming from somewhere.
ZÜLFÜ LIVANELI is Turkey’s best-selling author and a political activist. Widely considered one of the most important Turkish cultural figures of our time, he is known for his novels that interweave diverse social and historical backgrounds, figures, and incidents, including the critically acclaimed Bliss (winner of the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award), Serenade for Nadia (Other Press, 2020), Disquiet (Other Press, 2021), The Last Island (Other Press, 2022), Leyla’s House, and My Brother’s Story, which have been translated into thirty-seven languages, won numerous international literary prizes, and been turned into movies, stage plays, and operas.
BRENDAN FREELY was born in Princeton in 1959 and studied psychology at Yale University. His translations include 2 Girls by Perihan Mağden, The Gaze by Elif Şafak, and Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan.
Zülfü Livaneli, The Fisherman and His Son
