Middle East

Click to read the article in Turkish / Kurdish

Burnt nylon. Smeared tar. Rusty nails on punks. Corpse of a dog tangled in the seaweed in the middle of the waves. Half of its face is only bone and teeth. A male voice, ringing out from afar, saying a prayer you don't understand.

Slogans, profanities on a wrecked, piss-smelling wall. A bloody handprint. On its right, another bloody print. Is it the same hand? Don't ask questions! You are a child. Go into the shade! You'll get a nosebleed under the sun. You are a dark boy on the beach. You are in the east of the Mediterranean. You are in the middle of the east. You are in the Middle East.

Days of northeast wind are dull. You cannot go swimming because of the waves, and the sea is not its usual transparent blue-green but a turbid, blurry yellow.

What are you doing by the sea, didn't your father send you to the butcher?

"I would like to buy a kilo of minced meat. Lean - please", I tell the village butcher. This is the son of the butcher. The real butcher is his father, he is a more cheerful, easygoing man. His son is a loafer. He always looks like he just woke up. He seems to be hating everyone. His hands are dirty.

I barely added that "please" because I'm worried he will think I am a "tanju". I had seen this guy and his friends make fun of a long-haired, slender tourist, who was walking as if gliding, they had called after him in a feminine way saying "tanjuuu". Other than being a male name, I don't know exactly what tanju is yet, but I can sense it. It must be a dangerous thing since it gives these hyena-like men the right to snicker and mock people.

"Please" is too much for these men. I wish I could be the sort of person who speaks like "Hey, just get me a kilo of mince. Make sure it's lean!". Then, I could be one of them, but words always come out of my mouth like an apology, I can't help it. The guy with his shirt buttons undone down to his belly and who couldn't care less about "please"s throws fatty pieces of meat into the grinder.

His chest is hairless. Oddly bulging out like a chameleon. My father will get angry. When he sent me to the butcher, he cautioned me saying, "Tell him you are the son of sergeant major Emin, give him my regards, tell him that I want lean mince". The man is blatantly stuffing the fat into the grinder.

My problem is this: I want to buy LEAN mince not because I am the son of my father but because I am me and in my hand I am clutching the money for exactly a kilo of lean mince.

I didn't give my father's regards. Why can't anything be bought without someone's regards? Isn't having the money enough? I remain silent. The mince is being packed.

I pass him the money. "Have a nice day", I mumble like a whisper and walk away.

As I walk, I am trying to puff up and walk like a tough man, so that he won't take me for a "tanju".

We have guests coming over tonight and my father will make çiğ köfte [steak tartare]. My father is from Urfa. He found two people from his hometown in this coastal village on the Aegean, so they and their families often visit us or we visit them. He grimaces when he opens the package of meat. "This crabby guy, it is fatty again. Didn't you tell him you are the son of sergeant major Emin?"

"I did".

He knows I didn't.

"But you can't make çikifte with this."

My father has been living in İzmir since he was 20, so he has dropped his Urfa accent, speaks like a native of İzmir. Still, there are a few words he can't help but pronounce like they do in Urfa, "çiğ köfte" is one of them, he calls it "çikifte".

"Take this back", he bristles, "take it back, tell him my father didn't like this, said it's too fatty, tell him to give you lean mince. Are we beggars, we are paying for this".

Who knows what sort of a look I am giving him but he understands that I won't be able to accomplish this new mission. He looks over the kitchen counter at my mother who is cleaning scallions and parsley enough to feed an army.

Realizing that our children will never become the humans that we want them to be is the harshest truth to be accepted in the world.

Truth is not favored in the Middle East. It is very hard to voice the truth in the middle of the East. It is always hidden with mud, blood, dust and fear. It has been like this since the beginning of time.

"Walk", my father says with the package in his hand and I set out after him. "Buy one more lettuce", my mother calls out to us. We are walking towards the bazaar. My father is walking in front of me, he is not speaking to me. Now he will teach me how not to get stiffed. He will lecture me on how to fix a mistake, how to exert your authority, how to live without being trampled on in this country, how to be a man. As for me, I just wanted to curl up and die, and forever forget about the mince and the butcher and anything and everything related to this horrible afternoon.

Then it happens, the incident that ingrains that afternoon in my memory forever. We hear a woman's screams first. When we turn the corner, we see a man beating up a very old villager woman in the middle of the street. The old woman who barely got herself outside is screaming like a wounded animal, "Save me, he is going to kill me". "Don't hit, son, don't hit", she is begging.

Her mouth and nose are covered in blood. "Mom, why do you behave like this mom?", shouts her hooligan-looking grown-up boy as if he is worried about the neighbors running to their windows or the passersby. "Who is beating you mom? Why are you doing this to me mom?" Then he packs a punch. As the old woman collapses on the ground and falls silent, my father who was dumbfounded until that moment leaves me and runs toward them. A couple of neighbors also rush out of their gardens and charge against the bully with sticks in their hands. The man runs away swearing. The woman's white-hennaed hair seen from under her fallen headscarf. Her bloody face coated with dust. She is groaning on the ground with a thin voice like a child's. My father helps carry the woman inside and sends word to the community clinic, the rest is in the hands of the neighbors. Meanwhile, the package has dropped and the mince is scattered all over the ground, but no one cares about that now. A couple of cats jump on the raw mince, unable to believe their eyes. Soon, my father will swear and pick up the soiled mince and put it in a corner: An expensive feast for street dogs and cats. 

While buying mince from the butcher again, the story of the beaten woman will be the main topic. "Her son is a good-for-nothing, heartless junkie after all", the father butcher will say. His own son has cleared out, the father is alone in the shop now. "He drinks and drinks, and steals his poor mother's money, he is involved in gambling too, may god chasten him..."

"And, this is my son, recognize him well so that next time he asks for lean mince, give him lean mince", my father will throw in by way of conversation. The butcher will shake his head sorrowfully: "I wasn't in the shop sergeant, pardon me, my son doesn't know, he must have ground the mince. Believe me, this shop will be abandoned if I leave, all the scolding I gave him nor the beating worked, we couldn't make a man of him, I don't know whom he takes after..."

I will always listen and watch like a stranger, like I am not there. I will never learn to speak like them. I am a child. I am in the east of the Mediterranean. I am in the middle of the East. I am in the Middle East. (ÜÜ/ŞA/APA/TK/IG)

* Images: Kemal Gökhan Gürses

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