The Aziz Bey Incident. Ayfer Tunc
cover and began to play.
Black eyes do not heed my wailsCome oh dimple, come to the rescue…
He put down the tambur and cried his heart out and then felt better. He went and washed his hands and face with this hot city’s water that didn’t know how to be cool. He sat on the bed and counted the remainder of his money. He then went out, without straying too far from the hotel, went into a shop and ate a tomato salad with hummus and drank a Turkish coffee with cardamom. For a while he wandered around the streets whose sounds and smells had changed with the coming of night, then returned to his room. He was tearful. He was hurt. He felt he had been deceived. He wanted to sleep for a long time and when he woke up find himself in Istanbul as the young Aziz who had not as yet been dealt life’s blow. To see that all he had been through had been a bad dream… But no. That harsh reality was real. He was alone and helpless in a foreign land.
Aziz Bey would fall into a similar situation once again at the end of his life. Then too he wanted to go to sleep and when he awoke see that that tormenting phase of his life had never happened. Like so many people whose lives were stamped with regrets…
He lay on his bed. But it was too hot to sleep.
When Maryam did not come the next day or the day after, he was charitably concerned that maybe something had happened to her. If that were not the case, Maryam would certainly have come. He went to the furrier shop of Maryam’s uncle, Artin, risking getting lost in those muddled streets. He had a bad feeling inside. He thought he would find the shop closed. The shop would surely be in a cheerless, sorrowful state: the shutters rolled down, the lights off, as if everyone had gone off in a hurry…
But the shop was open and cheerful. It looked as though it were participating with all its inner being in a commercial life full of hustle and bustle. He drew near to the shop, stood in the doorway and looked inside. Maryam was not there. Instead, a thin bony man with a moustache that resembled a toothbrush dipped in black ink, and a fat youth whose drenched handkerchief lay on the nape of his sweaty neck, were talking and looking at a fur coat they had spread on the counter. He listened to them carefully. When he distinguished ‘Artin’ a few times among the Arabic words spoken in a booming voice by the boy, he realised that the man with the toothbrush moustache was her Artin. For a moment he thought about going in and asking about Maryam, but as uncle Artin turned, sensing someone standing in the doorway, he quickly drew away from the door of the shop as if caught red-handed and crouched at the bottom of a wall. It was as though his heart beat in his throat. He went to the corner of the shop window and looked in. Being the summer season there was just a short jacket made of fox fur dyed blue in the window. Aziz Bey could see uncle Artin laughing cheerfully from behind that jacket. There was nothing untoward. But then, there was no Maryam either.
Although he had tried very hard to remember the way back to his hotel, he got lost in the muddled streets of this city that looked both very like, and not at all like, his own city. His temples throbbed. He felt desperately tired. The deep pain inside him confused his poor mind and slowed his steps as it tried to find the street that led to his hotel. He was so paralysed by the vast variety of words he heard, not a single one of which he understood, that he could not even stop someone and tell him the name of his hotel. He went in and out of many streets. He passed through districts bearing different souls of the city. After finding himself in tiny completely unexpected squares and after drinking water cupping his hand to a street fountain, he finally reached his hotel bathed in sweat, when the redness of the sun had already covered the sky. He paused as he passed the clerk, who was engaged in combing his wispy moustache in a hand-held mirror. He looked hopefully at his face wondering if he would slip him a note, a chit, give him news that would in an instant wipe out all his sorrow. The clerk just smiled. He went up to his room, washed his hands and face and sank down onto his bed. He did not want to believe that Maryam would not come again; he went to sleep.
He waited at the hotel for Maryam for a whole eleven days, hoping she would come. Twice a day he went to the restaurant he had got to know and had a bite to eat. Every morning he went down to the bench that could be called the reception and paid the clerk the money for the night he had stayed. He sat in a corner looking onto the street in front of the so-called lobby and at night played his tambur in his room. The agony of foreignness that had left deep scars on his life took the place of the agony of love. Finally his money ran out.
Words full of bitterness and rebellion were growing inside him. He could neither stay nor return. If he wrote a letter to his father or close friends asking for money, by the time it arrived he would have died of hunger. He felt very deeply the pain of having come to this city with great hopes where he knew no one and where he had not a single friend, only to be disappointed. He wandered around the city for a few days, but he didn’t even know the two or three words necessary to be able to get a job. He passed in front of building sites, not being able to explain that he would carry stones if need be, looking with a vacant expression at the workers running about like ants, then returning to his room, hopeless and despondent. Soon he would not be able to pay for the hotel and the clerk who liked to accompany the cheerful songs on the radio would seize him by the collar and sling him out.
That day he wandered around the city yet again and returned to the hotel with his hands empty. It was getting towards evening. Again that beautiful redness had settled on the city. There was no one in the hotel where only vagrants and lonely people stayed for a few days and then left, whose corridors were always empty, where occasionally a cry or a strange shout rose and died away. Despite the fact that Aziz Bey had opened the windows and the door wide, not even the slightest breeze could be felt. He took his tambur and sat on his bed. His woeful voice wandered round the corridors of the empty hotel, reaching even the ear of the young clerk, who was sitting, leaning back in his chair as usual.
My heart, the day has ended again with separation; the sun has set.Shame, hope has deceived you yet another day, my heart…
The clerk was drawn towards this music, whose words he did not understand but which quietly penetrated his heart. To be able to hear better, he went upstairs and put his head round the door of Aziz Bey’s room. There was reverence and wonder on his face, but Aziz Bey who was lost in the melodies of his own music did not even notice it. The song ended and when Aziz Bey lifted his head he saw the clerk in front of him, looking at him with a broken smile. Knowing full well that the clerk did not understand, he said, ‘That’s how it is mister clerk. Look, hope has deceived me yet another day.’
All he ate that night was bread.
The next day he felt weak and spent the whole day in bed, turning first one way then the other. Towards the evening he got up and, looking at his growth of beard in the mirror whose silvering had flaked off, he thought how he must first find someone who understood his language. Wasn’t there a consulate or something in this city? At that point the clerk came. He was speaking continuously in the city’s complicated and misty language, but in a really noisy and excited way, as if trying to tell Aziz Bey something. He pointed to the tambur lying on the bed. Aziz Bey smiled, he thought the clerk wanted a song, took the tambur and sat on the bed. However, the clerk took Aziz Bey by the arm, showed him his clothes and succeeded in explaining to him with weird movements that he wanted him to follow him.
Aziz Bey got dressed in a state of bewilderment, took his tambur and followed the clerk. Dusk had fallen. It was as though the people of the city who could not go out during the day because of the heat had now flowed onto the streets and they were full of lights, alive. There was a delicately sweet fragrance in the still hot air. It was as if a sharp scent of jasmine pervaded the air from somewhere and in a funny way also gave Aziz Bey the will to live. This time he felt pleasant things filling him and his feet fairly flying along the city streets, which he had hitherto wandered in a mood of hopelessness and angst.
The clerk walked very fast, greeting everyone and making rude remarks to strange men with bohemian faces, while looking behind him from time to time to see if Aziz Bey was coming. They were progressing towards the city’s nightlife. The clerk stopped in front of a highly decorative, low door with Arabic writing in shiny letters. He pushed the door open and signalled to Aziz Bey. They went down some steep steps and came to a large area divided into sections by columns covered with mirrors. A few feeble lights lit this