The Aziz Bey Incident. Ayfer Tunc
state brought about by being in a strange country with no knowledge of the language or place. Furthermore, in place of the strong, protective, decisive young man she knew as Aziz Bey, rough even in his love, here was a poor creature, bewildered and lost like a puppy thrown out of home.
As for Aziz Bey; he was unaware of his distraught and timid demeanour. He had, however, kept his self confident, dignified bearing until the vessel docked; he had held his head high with frequent thoughts of Maryam. During the journey he had such a persuasive manner convincing those around him that he had a strong personality, that he had even impressed the sailors who had turned to stone from being all alone on the open sea. These steely-eyed, sharp-featured and callous sailors, who looked on the verge of cutting one another’s throats, could not refrain from swallowing before they ordered him to task.
But this proud manner that had permeated Aziz Bey’s body, his looks, and his bearing vanished in a trice in front of the fatal feeling of foreignness he experienced as soon as he put foot on land. His shoulders drooped and an inexplicable timidity settled in his eyes. He was rendered totally wretched by a deep regret when faced with the police who pushed and shoved him, speaking with strange, misty words and loud voices and looking at great length first at his passport and then his face. When he left Customs and held out the paper with the address to find Maryam to the taxi driver, he was really frightened of the days that awaited him. That was the reason Maryam was confronted not by an Aziz Bey whose look defied at the world, but by a crestfallen Aziz Bey ready to bow to any game fate would play with him.
Thank goodness this cool, subdued and strange moment of reencounter did not last very long.
Would it have been better for Aziz Bey if it had lasted? If it had happened in a different way: if Maryam had given Aziz Bey the cold shoulder, if she had said, ‘Just because I said come, it didn’t have to be at once,’ would Aziz Bey have gone straight back? Who knows? And then, what kind of Aziz Bey would have lived in the streets of Istanbul, it is not possible to predict.
And that’s not how it happened. After a few pointless questions, asked through her confusion, she realised that she had a lover passionate enough to leave his country for her, and the soft and happy expression given to her face by this treasure lasted a whole three days.
Luckily at that time they were alone in the shop. Maryam’s father, uncle and cousins were all in the workshop. And it was lunch time to boot. As the childish surprise on Aziz Bey’s face began to fade, Maryam looked around her. It was as though the city had melted under the heat, people had fled to shady corners like insects. Maryam, seeing no one about, embraced her passionate and faithful lover and kissed him on lips that were dried and cracked by the sun.
And it was this that destroyed Aziz Bey.
That passionate kiss they enjoyed the first day in the lunch break in the dim shop subsequently came as a big shock to Aziz Bey. He was not able to explain to himself how the girl who kissed him so passionately and who went around drunk with love for three days could change so much in one day. It was quite simple, however. For Maryam the only important thing was the existence of such a lover. It was not important whether it was Aziz Bey or someone else. So because Aziz Bey would never be willing to accept this explanation, he never even considered its validity. He looked for other reasons and he could not find any.
After looking long and deeply into Maryam’s black eyes that he had missed so much, after caressing her slim white neck, they left the shop, Maryam in front and Aziz Bey behind. Although it was well after midday the sun was too hot to bear; Aziz Bey thought he would go blind from so much light. The paradise he dreamed of was much hotter than he expected and very alien too. Maryam led him round a whole lot of streets: some narrow, some wide, some shady, and some strong smelling, their colours intermingled and cloudy, then decomposing again; hoarse voices, whispers, calls, bursts of laughter, blended with interjections; where huge moustached men slept snoring in the shade. When she finished the journey, they were in front of a small, mean hotel. Speaking in the broken words of a misty language, she took the key to Aziz Bey’s room and with confident steps took him upstairs, as though she knew the way. The room was so hot that Aziz Bey thought the walls would melt and run. Maryam closed the shutters of this small, dirty room, and the sweet gloom that enveloped the inside stopped the pain in Aziz Bey’s eyes.
Maryam came to the hotel every lunch break over those unfor -gettable three days that remained engraved in Aziz Bey’s mind. The image of the passion they enjoyed in the space of time so much longer than a long lunch break still seemed very short to Aziz Bey as the details were seared into his mind. His whole life was spent striving to tear, eradicate, scrape that image from his brain; he did not succeed. He was never able to remove this error from his being. For this reason, he lived an unhappy and irritable life; mostly angry, but sometimes as aggrieved as a motherless child.
Aziz Bey always believed he had been deceived by Maryam. Yet, if one discounted the sincere appeals in Maryam’s letters, one could hardly describe what he experienced as deception. In truth, Aziz Bey had fallen into the mistake of believing he was loved. This was all.
He spent the Maryam-less hours of these three days scarcely able to contain himself, waiting for her to come. On the fourth day, Maryam did not come. Aziz Bey was frantic. He wandered along the corridors of the hotel, he sat in the lobby, he went outside the front door. Lunch break ended, the sun bowed down; as much of the evening he could see from the window of his room slowly descended upon the city, turning it from purple to navy blue. The city metamorphosed, became alive. It became colourful with the lights that filtered through the darkness. But Aziz Bey was not even aware of this. Although he had eaten nothing all day long he did not feel hungry. There was a pain bigger than hunger inside him. As he burnt with the heat, he soaked a white towel turned purple from over-washing and placed it on the nape of his neck, he tossed and turned on the bed. He could not sleep until the morning. He spent the night watching the insects wandering about the creaking floorboards of the hotel room and jumping up with a start at the sound of every footstep. He went out with the first light of the morning passing in front of the young hotel clerk, who leant back asleep in his chair, his mouth open and his face and eyes covered with flies that were landing and taking off. He squatted on the ground and gazed at the road for a long time.
That day during lunch break Maryam stopped by for five minutes. She was coolish, apparently indifferent. She had no intention of asking after Aziz Bey, nor of talking about the job they would find for him, their fresh hopes and wonderful dreams.
To Aziz Bey’s ‘Why didn’t you come yesterday?’ she just said, ‘I was busy in the workshop, I couldn’t leave.’ Aziz Bey could not tell her how he worried about her, how he felt like a blind person not knowing the language or his way around this city. He only managed to kiss the edge of her lip, just touch her curly black hair. That was all. When Maryam left, he lay down on his bed, and a stupid smile spread over his face. If only for five minutes Maryam had come, hadn’t she? He was happy.
But on the next day she did not come.
That day Aziz Bey had a feeling that there was something funny going on. Something very slender broke inside him. He sat in front of the window, whose shutters he had closed. Hours passed. When one panel of the shutters opened by itself, he saw that the fallen stars of lights from the city had filtered into a sky wrapped in a dark navy blue. He felt as though he had awoken from a long dream. He wiped his tear filled eyes, calmed himself down and walked around the room. A touching expression of acceptance of fate settled on his face. At that moment, he felt completely alone in the world, forlorn and forgotten.
He longed passionately for his mother’s sagging soft white neck. If he had been in Istanbul now and been able to bury his face in his mother’s warm, white neck, his sorrow could have been somewhat abated.
While looking at the bright lights of this terribly hot city, he remembered that it was time for the musical show at the tavern in Samatya that he visited every evening. The friendly group of musicians must have already come in, one by one, taken their positions, and drunk their first sips of rakı. He thought that they would start a little later with a violin or lute improvisation and that they would soon be lost in a world of their own by giving their souls up to the music that had permeated their cells. He took the tambur that he had not taken in his