It was as if the huge forest cried, shrieked, and exploded as it burned on. While the animals that were able to save their own lives came catapulting out of the forest like mad, there were also some who became coals among the flames.

  The President’s men and the islanders who had gone along with their ideas tried desperately to put out the fire, but we could all see that it would be impossible now. Our pine-nut trees crackled as they burst into flames, which spread to the trees on either side of the road that led from the pier, reaching the houses in the blink of an eye. If they had told me that a fire could spread this fast, I wouldn’t have believed it, but sadly, that’s exactly what happened. In no time, all the houses had caught fire, burning like dry kindling because they were made of wood. To escape the poisonous flames and plumes of smoke, we all ran off into the distance toward the seashore. When we turned to look at what we had left behind, we saw the giant trees as they virtually exploded into flames one after the other, like so many matchsticks struck along the fire’s path.

  With fear in their eyes, the islanders looked on, losing their minds to the terror that consumed them as the fire destroyed their houses one by one. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, that could be done.

  THE SEAGULLS were flying above us as though they were mocking us all, watching this burnt, bleak island and its people who no longer had so much as a shred of shelter. Had they attacked at that moment, there would have been nothing we could have done to stop them. But they didn’t attack us. Instead they made do with simply flying above us. With no damage done to their shore, they could go on breeding, hunting, and watching over their eggs with a sense of security just as before. In short, they’d won this war.

  As for us losers, we were sleeping out in the open, and fishing, thanks to the rowboat that had remained intact, as we waited for our rescue. By that I mean the ferry that we fervently hoped was going to take us away from here.

  The day after the fire, we gathered at the edge of the cliff to take in the damage that had been done. Being the highest point over the island, it afforded the best vantage point. It was none other than the spot from which the grocer’s son had released the seagull chicks into their first flight. Standing with our neighbors as tears welled up in their eyes, we saw the full extent of the disaster. Black plumes of smoke were wafting into the sky. The smell of the fire’s destruction permeated the air. Everything had burned down, including the cemetery where we buried our dead.

  Though it didn’t sound at all credible to me, talk of the Writer dying while hiding in the burning forest angered me in the extreme. Not because it meant that the friend I loved so much had died, but because it meant that we no longer had any hope.

  And in any case, those who disagreed that the Writer had died in the forest would point out that he’d been thrown into the sea with a block of iron tied to his feet. I believed neither of these rumors. I really didn’t know what to believe. Some time later, the President and his men showed up, likewise surveying the island. Then the President made a speech in which he informed us that he was about to leave the island on the motorboat, never to set foot here again. He had issued all the necessary instructions, there was no need to fear, and the ferry that would collect us was already on its way.

  I noticed that he didn’t say a word about the disaster he’d caused, and that he showed no sign of guilt. He was talking like a stranger who had nothing to do with any of these matters. In fact, it seemed that he even expected us to thank him for going to the trouble of rescuing us from the island.

  Lara began to speak.

  “Are you leaving now, Mr. President?”

  “Yes, in just a few minutes!”

  “How unfortunate that you should leave defeated.”

  “What do you mean, ‘defeated’?”

  “Yes, Mr. President, I spoke quite clearly: you’ve been defeated.”

  “And just who has defeated me, young lady?” the President asked in an angry tone.

  “The seagulls!” answered Lara. “Just raise your head and take a look around. They’re making fun of you as they fly in the sky and send you packing.”

  And indeed, the seagulls were flying about both overhead and in the abyss of the precipice as the President stood at its edge.

  Upon hearing her words, he began to shout: “You boor! Is it for a young woman to talk to her elder this way? How could the seagulls possibly have defeated me! Everything that’s happened to you has been the result of your ineptitude and siding with anarchists like that embarrassment of a Writer. I’m leaving, to hell with all of you. This island doesn’t concern me anymore.”

  When they heard this, the island community grumbled and scowled at the President for the first time.

  “You can see for yourselves,” I said. “The disaster is before your very eyes. He’s the man responsible for everything. It was this man who destroyed our island.”

  A few people in the crowd groused, “You’re right. Everything was going just fine up until this man got here.”

  “If only you’d never set your damned feet on this island!” the notary shouted. Seeing the situation take a turn for the worse, the President panicked. He tried to turn the argument onto Lara again.

  “You’ve become inhuman, young lady” he said. “Even when people are fighting for their lives, you engage in provocation for the sake of your own political aims. I’ve dealt with subversives like you my entire life. I know your kind inside and out. And the likes of you and your husband deserve to end up in the same place as that traitorous Writer friend of yours. Besides, all the decisions made on this island were carried out democratically. We carried out whatever the majority vote resulted in. As a result, all the decisions bore everyone’s signatures beneath them—and I just dare any one of you to come out and say I’m wrong about that. Come on! I dare you!”

  Something came over me just then. Feeling a wave of heat rising up into my head and my heart beating like a drum, I spoke, in a voice choked with rage: “I say you’re wrong, Mr. Shark! I say you’re wrong! I say you’re wrong, you cruelest of the cruel! Now that you’ve destroyed everything, don’t you dare go trying to tell us any of your half-baked tales of democracy!”

  Had I not been so irate, had my cheeks and ears not been burning so furiously, the look of shock on the President’s face may well have made me laugh. Meanwhile, complete silence had fallen over the neighbors as they looked on in astonishment, for the first time in their lives witnessing their friends show anger, raise their voices, and express their opposition. I was overcome with a rush of rebellion, ready even to risk death. My head was swimming. What had gotten into me?

  “That’s enough!” the President said, raising his hand. “You will stop talking this very instant, or I’ll make you regret the day your mother bore you!”

  We knew him well by now. We were familiar with the threat conveyed in his voice, as it would grow high-pitched whenever he got angry.

  Lara stepped in front of me. “What more harm could you possibly do?” she said. “What more harm could you possibly do?” I repeated, stepping in front of her this time. At that moment, however, it occurred to me what terrible things the President could do to Lara. It was a thought that didn’t merely scare me—it terrified me. There was nothing I wanted now but for Lara to be quiet and to be free of this senselessness. It wouldn’t have mattered one bit what happened to me, but if they were to lay so much as a finger on Lara, I could have gone berserk. That boldness I’d felt had now left me, in its place a fear so intense I shivered.

  Then he turned and issued an order to his men. “Place these two traitors under arrest for insulting the President and starting an insurrection. They’re coming with us.”

  The men with the dark glasses approached us, taking Lara by the arm before seizing me in their grip. I looked at my neighbors in desperation. Were they going to allow them to take us away like this after all those rumors of the Writer being thrown in the sea with a block of iron tied to his feet? Were our friends of all these years going to abandon us? They might have been able to save us if they’d only put up a little objection. Yet I was unable to meet any of their eyes. They’d all looked away.

  But at that very moment, something happened: it was both the most mournful and most courageous deed I’ve witnessed in my entire life.

  With a scream that frightened even the seagulls, and the first we were hearing his voice, the grocer’s hunchbacked son ran at full speed toward the President and hit him, the force of the collision sending them both tumbling off the face of the cliff. We saw the two bodies flailing as they fell through the void and struck the ground, where they smashed to pieces. Being the heavier of the two, the President had struck the ground slightly before the grocer’s son.

  Petrified, we looked down from the top of the cliff.

  The grocer’s mute son had attacked just like the suicide-bombing seagulls, but with far greater results. As I remembered the way we had released the fledglings from the edge of this cliff not all that long ago, tears burst from my eyes. I could still see those wobbly chicks, learning to fly as they skipped from one rock mass to another.

  This was the first time we were hearing the voice of this disabled boy whom no one had noticed, nor treated like a human being, yet I doubt that those who had heard his scream would ever be able to forget it. It was a scream full of anger and protest; an astounding scream let out against all the injustice and evil in the world.

  And then the heartrending screams of the grocer and his wife rang out, shaking the earth and sky.

  The President’s camp took off in a flash, jumping on the motorboat as they sped away. We were left on the island a small crowd, wounded, hurt, grief-stricken, and enraged. Up until the next day, when the military units came and collected us all and transferred us to the famous prison in the capitol.

  The military ship sat like a castle on the surface of the sea as its assault boats convoyed us from the pier. Clad in starched khaki uniforms, bearing stony expressions hewn across their faces with all the delicacy of a battle-ax, the soldiers locked us up in chains once we boarded the ship.

  The President’s body parts were gathered up from the rock masses onto which they’d fallen and brought aboard with a ceremony. The soldiers and officers were looking at us with such mortal hatred that we were doing everything in our means not to meet eyes with them. Because they were separating the men from the women, I couldn’t see Lara. My right hand had been handcuffed to Number 1. We didn’t talk to each other, but his sunken shoulders and the look in his eyes, like that of a beaten dog, revealed a deep sense of remorse. Having ignored the warnings they had been given at every turn, the neighbors who had once embraced the President were now locked up no differently than we were.

  Yet, what dreams they had harbored for the island. We would become rich, we would live in affluence and ease, and we would live in freedom on the island. In the end, everyone had lost: the President, those who had followed him, and those who had challenged him. There was no winner. Perhaps, as Lara had said, all except for the seagulls, who would be left in peace from now on. We had been defeated for having submitted, and for not having seen how much worse the evil we’d been dragged into could get. We should have started speaking out and rebelling back when the trees were pared away and the grocer’s innocent son was beaten. We had accepted the President’s every step with the utmost naivete. The seagulls had won because they had taken a stand and fought instead of compromising. That being the case, wouldn’t we be wise to ask who was the more intelligent—the people who submitted, or the seagulls who rebelled?

  So then, we’re here in the cells for now. They’ve been badgering us with questions in attempts to find out who planned this operation.

  I’ve been writing these lines from inside my dank and murky cell, my hands aching.

  I don’t hear from Lara, and have no way of knowing what may have happened to her. Nor do I know whether the Writer is in the same prison. I know nothing, absolutely nothing.

  I only know that there’s a strange rumor going around. In the cafeteria, in the laundry room, or on the way to being interrogated, there are whispers to the effect that the Writer is still on the loose. Apparently, some have seen him, as he was on his way back to the island. They say he’s going to start living there again these days. That he’s going to plant new trees. Build new homes. And that some of his old friends are going to go help him. The island’s going to come back to life, they say. We’re going to live on the island again. We’re going to reestablish our paradise on earth.

  I try not to think of that last wounded look Lara shot me when they separated us on our way off the boat. I may go mad if I do. I may go insane, smashing my head to bits as I bang it on my cell walls. So, I’ve blocked out my thoughts. I’ve made myself numb.

  They said that the President’s funeral was carried out with a big state ceremony that aired live on TV, and that after wrapping the ebony coffin containing the President’s broken body in a flag, they loaded it onto a gun carriage. Moreover, they said, speeches were made that praised the President’s heroism and the sacrifices he had so courageously made on behalf of his country; condemned the terrorists committed to bringing the country down; and even condemned the head terrorist himself, the grocer’s son. After which the President was buried in the cemetery of heroes, amid the tears of his family and the nation.

  Here’s where the memories end. And now there’s nothing left to distract me from the questions that riddle my mind, day in and day out: “My love, where are you? Where are you? Where?”

  My dear friend; noting the advice that the Istanbul gardener gave to Candide in that book by Voltaire: “Grow your garden,” you once had said to me. “Tell your story!” Do you remember? “Just tell your story!”

  And that is what I’ve done.

  The sea was choppy that day, and we clung to the old fishing boat’s railing, which shook like a nut in its shell. We were tired from the hours of waves and strong winds, the odor of fish permeating the wood, the overly loud engine noise, but all this was nothing compared to our heart-pounding excitement. As we drew closer, we strained to see the island, shielding our eyes from the hot sun. The island, our island, that ruined paradise. We pictured it from indelible memories of eleven years ago. In our prison cells, during our long persecution, we tried most of all to recapture that happiness, reliving the scent of jasmine on our skin.

  Lara had been in a women’s prison, so I was unable to see her for years, but within prison life there is a secret web of human relationships that defy the rules, whether out of self-interest, solidarity, or pity. Thanks to that network, I learned that Lara was in good health. I will never know what her existence looked like then, but she was probably waiting in a facility with the same harsh conditions as ours.

  What were we waiting for? I have to say: nothing. The country’s harsh laws and harsher judges, who scrutinize defendants with hatred throughout their trials, had condemned us to life imprisonment. Only our corpses would leave these thick, damned walls. Knowing this makes you despair, and prevents any dreams or plans. The press no longer talked about us. As vigilante terrorists, we were forgotten in dank, dark cells. I drew a seagull on the damp wall of mine with the handle of a spoon. A huge seagull, free and fearless, with its wings spread wide. I spent my days looking at it and thinking about what it means to rebel, to not bow down to oppression, to resist. People who don’t resist oppression lose their dignity and self-respect. The sly, dirty expression of a collaborator settles on their faces. We had seen it with our own eyes in our neighbors.

  Lara was sitting at the front of the boat, as if that would bring her to the island a few meters sooner. I was with her, one hand holding on to her slender shoulder. The foamy white waves that rocked the boat sprinkled saltwater on our faces, sometimes soaking us from head to toe. Well, after being in the dark like nocturnal insects for all these years, it was as though rediscovering the exhilaration of nature and the vast sea was washing our souls, too.

  Lara suddenly cried out, “Look, look!” She pointed at a seagull circling in the air. Ah, those seagulls, our seagulls, our rebellious friends who don’t bow down to oppression. Seeing that seagull filled us with the joy of life, and we knew we were nearly there. Soon we would glimpse that injured island, that wonder again. Whether it burns or collapses, it’s our island, our home.

  It shouldn’t be hard to imagine what it was like that day, when the guard opened the iron door with a bang and told us we were free, while we had been waiting, hopeless, for death to come after an age in that blind darkness. Disbelief, doubt, sudden sweat, dizziness, knees buckling. But eventually it all passed, and that day we learned that states shift over time according to the gangs who lead them. As we were languishing there, a coup had taken place: the government, the sharks, were captured by the President’s opponents, and they issued a general amnesty. I think they put supporters of the old regime in our cells instead, but we didn’t care about that. We understood the rules of the game now: one was coming, the other going, but nothing changed. The game has always been the same.

  The seagulls started to multiply, circling above our heads, gliding gracefully across the sky with their white wings. Our seagulls must have died; maybe these were hatchlings from the eggs we tried to protect, and maybe their offspring, too.

  Then our island appeared indistinctly on the horizon. Lara and I hugged each other. Our hearts beat in our ears. As we approached, the island grew and grew and grew; we could make out burned trees. For years we had dreamed hopelessly to just see our island again. Here it was before us. The color of the water began to change, taking on a dazzling shade between pale blue and turquoise. The waves subsided, and silverback fish were visible in the aquarium-like sea. We felt as though we had been cast out of heaven but come back again. Lara was crying tears of happiness. As we got closer, we discovered something else. The trees were black, but the ground was green with all kinds of wild plants. Nature, which humans had harmed so much, was regathering itself, preparing to sing again with its trees, plants, birds, and bugs.