YAAR KEMAL (b. 1922)

Memed, My Hawk (EXCERPT)

Translated from the Turkish by Edouard Roditi

IRAZ HAD BEEN left a widow when she was only twenty, with a nine-months-old baby in her arms. She had loved her husband dearly.

“After Huseyin,” she had sworn before his dead body, “there can be no other man for me.”

She had kept her word and never remarried.

A few days after her husband’s death she had left their child to the care of a woman relative and gone to work, plowing the land her husband had left her. A month later she had plowed the field and finished the sowing.

When summer came, she then harvested the field all by herself. She was young and strong and the work did not hurt her.

Later she would take the boy in her arms and wander through the village playing with him. “Won’t my baby grow up because his uncles neglect him? Just look how my Riza’s growing!” she would say to spite his uncles, the eldest of whom wanted to marry her. “I’m not marrying,” Iraz would reply to his offers of marriage, “I’m not taking any other man into Huseyin’s bed. If I live till doomsday I’ll never marry again.”

“Iraz,” people would insist, “this is Huseyin’s brother, not just a stranger. He’s the child’s uncle. He’ll look after him like a father.”

But Iraz remained obdurate.

Her brother-in-law bore her a grudge for having rejected his offer and soon obtained possession of the field she had inherited from Huseyin, though he had no right to it. When their father had died the three brothers had divided in equal shares the fields they had inherited. This field had been the share of her husband, Huseyin, but there was nothing Iraz could now do. She was a young woman, ignorant of the ways of the law and of those that lead to the government.

Deprived of her field, Iraz still stood firm. “Will my baby’s uncles’ dirty tricks prevent him from growing up? Won’t my Riza be able to grow up if we no longer own a field?”

In the summer she toiled in the fields of others, in the winter she worked as a servant in the homes of the rich. She managed to scrape through and her child grew to be a fine boy. But on her lips there was always a lament, like a lullaby, a bitter song: “Won’t my orphan grow up?”

He grew, but why were they always in such poverty, without even a field of their own? He grew, hearing the reasons for their poverty every day from his mother and the other villagers. The bitter song was graven deep in his mind, a song born of a mother’s pain, trouble, and courage: “Won’t my little one grow up?”

When Riza was almost twenty-one, he was tall and slender, like a healthy plant. No boy in Sakar village could ride a horse, throw a javelin, hit the mark, dance in a ring as Riza could. But mother and son were both unhappy. In their hearts they nourished incurable woes. To have to work for others, to be mere laborers when you have once owned your own field!

Compared with that of other villages, the land around Sakar is very fertile and plentiful, a vast plain with a huge rock like a sign, called Adaja, right in the middle. When the whole plain had been sown and all the fields were turning green, the rock of Adaja stood out white against the green.

One of the largest fields at the foot of Adaja was the one that had belonged to Riza’s father. For years, now, his uncle had plowed it. Riza dreamed of its rich fertile soil, and hatred grew and hardened in his heart. Wherever he went, wherever he drove the plow, his mind’s eye was set on the foot of the Adaja rock.

Every day his mother would moan: “Ah, my son! The Adaja field…. Your father used to keep us in fine style, thanks to that field. May they be struck blind!”

Riza would lower his head and remain as if in a trance. In his nostrils he could sense the smell of rich, shining earth. His longing for the earth consumed him.

“That infidel uncle of yours,” his mother would say. “May he get his deserts!”

Riza’s hatred grew until there came a time when he could no longer conceal it. He had never been like this before. He would now wake up early in the morning and set out in the direction of Adaja. Reaching the field at the foot of the rock, he would sit on a stone and daydream. The crops were sprouting and the earth swarmed with insects. As the sun rose, the earth would begin to steam. The longing to own such steaming soil is the most violent of all longings. Riza would thrust his hand into the soft warm soil and let the earth slip through his fingers. “This soil is mine,” he would say, a quiver running through his body. “Mine! But another man has sown and harvested it for twenty years.”

He would be tired when he rose at last to return home.

“Where have you been since dawn?” his mother would ask. He would remain silent, his face dark and scowling.

This went on for two months. The crops were knee-high and had turned from yellowish-green to a deep dark green.

“Mother,” Riza said one day, his mind made up, “this field is ours.”

“It’s ours, child, who else’s would it be?”

“I’m going to apply to the government,” declared Riza.

“How I’ve waited for this day!”

“I’ve asked the elders. While he was still alive my father divided up with my uncles the fields inherited from my grandfather. As a consequence, what was ours remains ours and has come to me from my grandfather.”

“Yes, child,” agreed his mother. “What’s ours is ours.”

As this was a matter of inheritance, the case did not last long. The rich soft earth at the foot of Adaja passed back to Riza. After so many long, crushing years, young Riza welcomed the field as if he were welcoming his bride into his home. It was summer when the field was handed over to him. The earth was not and scorched. The crops had already been harvested and the stubble blazed bright in the sun.

Riza found a pair of oxen to turn over the summer earth. He harnessed a plow behind the oxen and the soil then crumbled beneath the plow as he worked fast to have the field ready to receive the seed and then yield thirtyfold or fortyfold what had been sown.

The summer plowing is always done at two different times, two hours before dawn and again in the afternoon, when the west wind has risen. The plowing that begins before dawn continues until the sun is too hot for the oxen. Then they are left to rest in the shade of a tree. In the late afternoon, when the little clouds like sails rise over the Mediterranean, the oxen are harnessed again and the work continues until nightfall, sometimes even until midnight if the moon is bright.

There was a moon when Riza started plowing his field. He planned to work without a pause until the day grew too warm, then again from the late afternoon till midnight. He would not notice the heat or his own weariness. He could easily forget everything and go on until morning. The soft furrowed earth would seem more beautiful in the moonlight. At night, in the stillness, the crunch of the plow as it cut through the earth would sound sweeter to his ears.

Iraz was proud that she had raised such a fine lad and that they had now taken the field back from those good-for-nothing uncles. She would wander around the village in a turmoil of joy. If she were asked about her son she would answer: “He is plowing his field.”

It was the fourteenth of the month and the moon was full. All the fields, especially the one Riza was plowing, gleamed like silver in the moonlight. A fresh wind was blowing. The hooves of Riza’s oxen sank into the ground as they slowly dragged the plow behind them.

Riza was tired and sleepy. He left the oxen and, pillowing his head on a mound of earth, fell asleep.

The next morning, as on every other day, one of the neighborhood children, fourteen-year-old Durmush, brought Riza his food. The day was already hot and the field was shimmering as the boy looked for Riza at the foot of the trees. Riza would always greet him cheerfully and, without yet taking the food, place his own hands under the boy’s arms and lift him high in the air. The boy was now puzzled. He looked all around at the foot of the trees, but found no sign of Riza. Then he saw the young man lying curled up in the middle of the field and no sign of the oxen. When the boy came near where Riza lay, he was so shocked that the food dropped from his hand. He turned and began to run off, screaming all the way.

The boy entered the village breathless and exhausted. He was screaming, but his voice came out as a faint whistle. He threw himself down on the ground in front of the houses. The women gathered around him and pulled his tongue out, thinking he had been frightened into a fit. They made him drink cold water and poured water on his head. After a while the child recovered his senses: “Riza Agha is lying all covered with blood, in a pool of blood on the ground,” he said. “Blood was trickling from his mouth. When I saw him like that I came running all the way here.”

The women understood what had happened. They bowed their heads and were silent. The news spread instantly through the whole village. Iraz heard it too.

Iraz went ahead of them, tearing her hair and sobbing, with all the villagers behind her. They came to the field. Riza’s head had slipped from the mound where it had rested and was hanging at an angle when they found him.

“My orphan boy, my ill-starred son!” cried Iraz as she threw herself upon the corpse.

Riza was curled up with his knees close to his chest. The hollow in the ground in front of him was full of blood that had already clotted with insects and flies all over it. The sun was shining brightly with the sharp smell of blood rising like steam from a boiling cauldron. There was mist in the air and a swarm of bright-green flies on the dead body, glistening as they moved.

“My orphan boy! My ill-starred son!”

Women, boys, and men stood in a circle around the dead body. Most of the women were weeping.

“Who killed my Riza?” Iraz was beating her breast and struggling piteously to contain her emotion. The other women tried to raise her from the corpse but she could not be dragged away. “Me too,” she kept saying. “Bury me alive with my Riza.” She lay on her son’s dead body till nightfall. News of the murder reached the town. The police, the magistrate, and the coroner came. The police dragged the woman, her eyes bloodshot and her face swollen from weeping, away from the body and pulled her to her feet, but she sank to the ground and remained motionless as if dead. For a long while she refused to move or to utter a sound.

Later they took her before the magistrate.

“Woman, who could have killed your son?” he asked. “Whom do you suspect?”

The woman raised her face. With vacant eyes she stared at the magistrate’s face.

“Who killed your son? Whom do you suspect?” repeated the magistrate.

“Those infidels,” she said. “Who else but those infidels would have killed him? His uncles killed the boy, because of the field.”

Having inquired closely into the matter of the field, the magistrate took notes on the spot and the crowd broke up as they left the field.

The dead body with the green flies swarming on it, the empty yoke and the plow waiting for the oxen, the mother with eyes tearless from too much weeping, these remained in the desolate solitude of the plain. The rich earth shone in the middle of it as dark as a piece of embroidery.

They arrested Riza’s cousin Ali as a suspect and took him to the police station. According to Ali’s testimony, however, he had not been in the village that day; with the aid of local witnesses he proved that he had been at a wedding in a neighboring village, four hours from Sakar. But Iraz and all the villagers knew that Ali was the one who had killed Riza, because of the field.

Iraz was astounded and the villagers could not believe their eyes when, two days later, Ali swaggered into the village ostentatiously swinging his arms. Iraz lost all control of herself, seized an axe that she had in her house, and ran toward Ali’s house. she had only one thought: to kill the man who had killed her son. When Ali’s family saw Iraz descending upon them with the axe in her hand, they shut their door and bolted it. Finding the door shut, Iraz began to break in with the axe. But Ali was not there. If he had been inside to protect them, they would not have closed the door. His mother, two girls, and a baby were inside, and the door was on the point of giving. Iraz swung the axe with all her strength to break it down and kill all those who had sought refuge inside. The villagers hastened to see what the row was about and gathered by the house. But they could not approach Iraz, nor did it occur to them to approach her. Let her avenge her son!

Every now and then a man called: “Don’t Mother! Those inside aren’t responsible. Ali isn’t in the house. Forget about it.”

“Ali isn’t here; leave us, Iraz,” called the mother from inside.

Somehow Ali managed to slip through the crowd and to catch hold of Iraz from behind. He seized the axe from her hand; with all his strength he threw the exhausted woman aside and began to trample on her. The villagers rushed to her assistance and dragged her from beneath his feet.

That night Iraz set fire to Ali’s house. While the villagers were trying to put out the fire, Ali jumped onto a horse and set off for the police station. There he filed a complaint about the events of the morning and about her setting fire to their house, declaring that the house was still burning.

It was morning when Ali returned to the village with the police. When they saw this, the villagers gathered around Ali. “Don’t do this, Ali,” they said. “The poor thing is brokenhearted from the loss of her fine lad. Don’t rub salt into her wound. Don’t send her to rot in prison. In any case, the villagers have put out the fire.”

Ali refused to listen to them, and the police arrested Iraz and took her off to prison.

“Yes, I broke down their door,” Iraz told the police, “and if I could have entered the house I would have struck them all down with my axe. But I couldn’t. Is it too much if I kill those who killed my only son? Yes, I set fire to their house in the night so that they would all burn to death inside. But those accursed villagers gave the alarm and put out the fire. Do you think it’s too high a price for my Riza? My orphan boy was worth a whole country. Do you know at what cost I raised him? Do you think it’s too high a price?”

To the magistrate at the time of her arrest and later during the trial she always gave the same testimony. Though they arrested and imprisoned her, she never changed her story and only repeated: “My boy was worth a whole village, a whole country. Is it too much? Is it too high a price?”

They had put her into the one-room women’s section of the prison. She had never expected this. To avenge the death of her fine tall son she had set fire to a house. It was hard to bear this new wrong after the death of her son. She entered the prison with her head low, groping her way around like a blind person. She could see nothing and did not even notice whether she was alone in this room or with another prisoner. She sat down silently in one corner and remained there like a stone that has been dropped into a well.

Normally Iraz wore her hair tied up in a clean white kerchief. Her large light-brown eyes would shine brightly and her slanting eyebrows would give a strange beauty to her broad, sun-tanned face with its small pointed chin and a lock of black hair curled down over her broad forehead. But she was now in a dreadful condition. Her face was almost black and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot from crying. Her chin seemed withered and her lips were bloodless, their skin dry and cracked from thirst. Only her kerchief was still white and spotless.

“My fine lad!” she kept repeating. “He was worth a whole country. Was it too high a price? If I burn a whole village to ashes, would it be too much?”

Hatche had been pleased to see this woman come here as a companion in this lonely prison. For herself she felt pleased, but she was sorry for her. Who knew what had befallen the poor creature? She could not rejoice at another’s misery. She wanted to ask the woman many questions that were on the tip of her tongue, but somehow she could not bring herself to speak. It is not easy to ask anything of someone who is so exhausted, engaged in such a life-and-death struggle. Hatche just stared at the woman.

In the evening Hatche set her soup on the brazier in the yard outside and began to cook it. When it was ready she brought it in, smelling of onion and rancid butter as it steamed. After the soup had cooled a little, she approached Iraz timidly: “Aunt, you must be hungry by now. I’ve prepared some soup. Come, drink it.”

Iraz’s eyes were quite vacant. She stared blindly at Hatche as if she had not heard her.

“Aunt,” repeated Hatche, “drink a little of this soup. You must be very hungry by now.”

Iraz acted as if she simply were not there, not even blinking. Even in the eyes of the blind there is an anxiety to see, a desire, a struggle. Here there was nothing. In deaf ears, too, there is a straining, a reaching out to hear. Here not even that. But Hatche was not to be discouraged and kept on urging her.

Slowly the woman raised her vacant eyes and fixed them on Hatche. Hatche could not sustain her gaze. She mumbled something confusedly, left the bowl there in front of the woman, and slipped out, holding her breath.

Until the guard came to shut the door of the cell Hatche stayed in the yard. She was afraid to go into the cell and see her companion’s condition. When the door was closed on her she prepared her bed and slipped in immediately, trembling with fear, without casting a glance at Iraz. For a time she lay curled up in her bed. Darkness fell, but she did not light the lamp as was her custom every night. She could not bear to see that face in its life-and-death struggle. Although she was afraid of the dark, it now seemed welcome to her, stretching like a curtain between them.

That night Hatche was unable to sleep. As the first light filtered in between the window-boards she rose from her bed. Iraz was still there like a vague shadow in her corner, motionless as ever. Only her white kerchief stood out like the brightness of a window against the dirty wall.

At midday Iraz was still in the same position. Evening came and she still had not moved. That second night Hatche spent fearfully, like the first, half awake, half asleep.

In the morning when the light appeared again, she opened her inflamed eyes and went over to Iraz. There was something compelling in her manner.

“Aunt!” she said. “I beseech you, don’t stay like that!” She took the woman’s hands in hers. “Don’t, please!”

The woman turned her big, wide-open eyes on her, eyes that were black, lusterless. There was no white left in them; they were all black.

Hatche did not give up. “Tell me your troubles, Aunt,” she said. “I beseech you. Does anyone without troubles ever come here? What business would a person without troubles have here? Isn’t that true?”

“What’s that, my girl?” moaned Iraz.

Hatche was so pleased to hear Iraz speak at last and say something that it was as if a big load had been lifted from her back.

“Why do you behave like this?” she asked. “You haven’t opened your mouth since you came. You haven’t even eaten anything!”

“My son was worth a whole country. My son was the pride of the village. Was it too high a price?” she said and fell silent.

“When I saw you I forgot my own troubles,” said Hatche. “Tell me your troubles and unburden yourself.”

“If I burn the house and break down the door of those who killed my son, is it too much? If I kill them one by one, is it too much?”

“Oh, my poor Aunt! May they all be struck blind!”

“He was the pride of the village,” moaned Iraz. “Is it too much if I kill them all?”

Hatche showed her sympathy.

“And now they’ve brought me here and locked me up, while my son’s murderer struts around the village swinging his arms. If this doesn’t kill me, nothing will!”

“My poor Aunt!” said Hatche. “You’re dying of hunger. You haven’t eaten anything since you came here. I’ll go and prepare you some soup.”

Today she decided to make the soup with plenty of butter. A month after her arrival she had begun to launder the clothes of some of the richer prisoners and had now saved a little money. A little girl sometimes brought food and other things for the prisoners from the market. Hatche called the girl and put fifty piastres into her hand. “Go and get me some butter,” she said. She was filled with joy. The woman had spoken at last, and someone who speaks does not die so easily of her grief. But it is a terrible end for anyone who does not speak and remains buried within himself. That was why Hatche was pleased.

All the gay tunes she knew were now singing in her head. She filled the brazier with charcoal and began to fan it. Soon the coals glowed red as Hatche fanned them and puffed over them. She filled the little tinned copper pot with water and put it on the brazier. The soup was soon ready, so soon that even Hatche was surprised.

When Hatche had spoken of soup, Iraz had felt a crushing pain. Her bowels and stomach seemed to have frozen into a solid mass. She had not eaten a single mouthful since the day her son had been killed. From outside, the smell of melted fat and fried onion now reached her nostrils. She heard the sizzling of the boiling fat as it poured into the soup….

Hatche brought in the pot of soup and placed it before Iraz. “Please, Aunt,” she begged, placing a wooden spoon in her hand.

Iraz seemed to have forgotten how to use a spoon. It rested in her hand ready to fall to the ground.

Hatche was afraid she might not drink the soup. “Come on,” she repeated. “Come on, please!”

Iraz slowly dipped the spoon into the soup.

When she had finished drinking it, Hatche spoke again. “Aunt, there’s water in the ewer. Wash your face. It’ll make you feel better.”

Iraz did as Hatche told her and went and washed her face.

“Thank you, my lovely girl. May God grant you all your wishes.”

“If only He would,” Hatche repeated several times. She sat down and told Iraz all her misfortunes. “Yes,” she said, “this is how it happened, Aunt. I don’t want anything in the world if only I can have news of my Memed. I’ve been here a full nine months, but no one has come to see me. Even my mother came only once. The first days I lay hungry in this hole. After that I began to do the prisoners’ laundry. Oh, if only I could have some news! If I could only know if he is dead or alive. Let them hang me if they like. I don’t care. If only I could have some news of my Memed.”

As the days passed Iraz grew less weary and confused. She learned from the other prisoners that she should never have declared before the judge that she had broken the door with an axe with the intent to kill all those inside, or that she had set fire to the house to burn Ali’s relatives. She might have killed ten people, they told her, but if there were no proof, if nobody had witnessed it or knew about it, the authorities could not have held her as a murderess. At first Iraz simply could not understand this injustice. Slowly she began to learn. In all the evidence that she gave later in court, she denied everything.

“Ah!” she would then say, “If I were free I would show the authorities who killed my Riza.”

Hatche tried to console her. “God willing, you will soon be free, Aunt. You’ll get out of here and hand over your son’s murderer to the police. Think of me! At my age I shall be left to rot here. Everybody comes and bears witness against me!”

As the days passed Iraz and Hatche became like mother and daughter. They shared everything, including their troubles. Hatche knew Riza’s height, his black eyes, his slim fingers, his dancing, his childhood, what he had done as a child, with what trouble Iraz had brought him up, the whole story of the field and the final tragedy, down to the last detail, as if she had lived through and seen it all herself. It was the same with Iraz. She, too, knew everything about Memed, from the day he and Hatche had first played together as children.

All day and all evening, until midnight, Iraz and Hatche knitted stockings till they were almost blind with weariness. The stockings they knitted became famous in the town. “The stockings of the girl who killed her fiancé and of the woman whose boy was killed.” The saddest of designs went into the stockings. Hatche and Iraz did not copy any known designs, but created pattern after pattern of their own, in colors more bitter than poison. The town had never seen such striking and beautiful stockings.

Anyone going to prison for the first time is confused on entering so different a world. One feels lost in an endless forest, far away, as if all ties with the earth, with home and family, friends and loved ones, with everything, have been broken. It is also like sinking into a deep and desolate emptiness. Then there is another feeling experienced by a new prisoner: everything becomes like an enemy, the stones, the walls, the little bit of sky that can be seen, the windows with their iron bars. Above all, if a prisoner has no money he is lost.

So it was not for nothing that Hatche and Iraz blinded themselves day and night knitting stockings. They did not touch the money they earned, and for many months their food consisted only of what the prison gave them. Sooner or later Memed would come, they thought. Maybe tomorrow, maybe in a month. Surely one day he would be caught and brought here too. Then he would need money. It was for this that they now toiled.

“My girl,” Iraz would say, “Memed won’t have as much trouble here as we. We are here to look after him.”

“Yes, we are here, Auntie,” Hatche would reply proudly.

“Our Memed has money here. We’ll earn more before he comes and then we’ll put all the money in his hands and he won’t find himself destitute like the other prisoners. He won’t have to turn to strangers for help.”

At night they would retire to bed exhausted, with aching eyes, and still talk and share their troubles for hours on end, discussing everything that might possibly happen to Memed, and all the most impossible things too. What did they not invent? Finally Hatche would become angry with her mother. “That mother of mine,” she would begin. “What sort of mother is she? I didn’t ask much. Only for news of my Memed. She went off and never came back.”

“Who knows,” Iraz would reply, “what’s happened to your poor mother?” Iraz would always defend Hatche’s mother.

One night, as on every other night, they had gone to bed at midnight. Their bedding was wet from the damp air. The night insects were humming.

“Aunt Iraz,” said Hatche.

“Yes?”

That’s how they began every night.

“It’s damp here.”

“What can we do, my girl?” answered Iraz.

“That mother of mine….”

“Who knows what troubles have come upon her?”

Without wasting further thought on her mother, Hatche skipped to another subject. “We’ll have a tiny little house in the Çukurova on the soil of Yuregir,” she said. “Memed will work for someone else to begin with, then we’ll have a little field of our own. That’s what Memed used to tell me.”

“You’re young. It’ll all come to you,” Iraz comforted her.

“He wanted to take me to the little restaurant in the town.”

“He’ll still take you there.”

And so their conversation would continue, till at last Hatche would be lost in thought. She forgot that she was in prison and that Memed was an outlaw. Iraz forgot her troubles too.

“Yuregir earth,” Hatche continued to muse, “Yuregir earth is warm. It’s sunny there and the crops rise so thick that a tiger couldn’t crash through them. Our field is thirty acres….”

“Yes, my girl, thirty acres.”

“We’ve sown half with wheat and half with barley.”

“And half an acre of onions in the middle of the wheat,” went on Iraz.

“I’ve plastered the inside of the house with green earth.”

“Green earth and red earth too.”

“We own a cow, a red cow with big eyes, and a suckling calf.”

At this Iraz was quiet and uttered no reply. But Hatche continued: “Our house is yours. Memed is your son and I am your daughter.”

“You’re my daughter,” repeated Iraz.

“In front of our house is a willow tree with its branches reaching down to the ground.”

“We’ll put a fence all around our garden and we’ll have lots of flowers.”

Hatche came to herself, as if roused from a deep sleep. “When will they arrest Memed and bring him here, I wonder?” she asked Iraz. “What do you think, my Aunt?”

“If not tomorrow, then in a month or so….”

“Well, we’re ready, aren’t we, my Aunt?” insisted Hatche.

“Yes, we’re ready,” Iraz replied proudly. “We have enough money for him.”

After that they would fall asleep.

Friday was market day in the town. On Fridays Hatche would stare out of the window, watching the roads. If her mother were to come, it would be on a Friday. This particular Friday Hatche woke up very early, before sunrise. “If only she’d come today,” she said; but she said this every Friday.

Toward midday a tall woman with a double saddlebag over her shoulder came timidly toward the prison.

“Aunt Iraz,” Hatche called in a shrill and excited voice.

“What is it, girl?” answered Iraz from inside, hurrying toward her.

“My mother!”

Iraz looked out along the road. They stood there side by side, staring at the tired, barefooted woman who was limping toward them, the ends of her black scarf between her teeth as she hung her head and at last stopped at the gate of the prison. Small, thin, and nervous, the guard called out: “What do you want, woman?”

“My daughter’s inside. I’ve come to see her.”

“Mother!” called Hatche.

The woman slowly raised her head and looked at the guard. “Brother Effendi, that’s my daughter,” she said.

“You may go and talk to her.”

She put down her bag at the foot of the wall, then squatted there, with her back against the wall. “Oh, my bones are aching!” she moaned.

Hatche stood there quite still, staring at her mother. The woman’s feet were covered with cuts that were caked with dust from the road. Her hair was white with dust and a muddy sweat ran down her neck. Her eyebrows and lashes were concealed by the dust. A torn and dirty skirt hung around her legs. Seeing her in such a state, Hatche’s anger against her suddenly passed. She was filled with pity, and there were tears in her eyes. She could feel a lump in her throat but simply could not go closer to her mother.

Hatche’s mother saw her daughter standing there, staring at her with her eyes full of tears. She, too, could feel a lump in her throat. “Come, my ill-starred child,” she suddenly burst out. “Come to your mother.”

Unable to restrain herself, she began to weep quietly. Hatche approached, kissed her hand, and sat down beside her, followed by Iraz.

“Welcome, Sister,” said Iraz.

Hatche introduced Iraz to her mother. “This is my Aunt Iraz,” she said. “We sleep in the same cell.”

“What are your troubles, Sister?” asked the mother in surprise.

“They killed her son Riza,” said Hatche.

“Oh!” exclaimed the mother. “May they be struck blind, Sister!”

For a while the three women were silent. Then the mother raised her head and began to talk. “My daughter, my dark-eyed girl, forgive your mother. What hasn’t that infidel Abdi done to me because I took that petition to the government! Only I know what I have suffered at his hands. He’s forbidden me to come to town again, my rose girl. If not, would I have left my rose girl alone here in the town, locked up between four walls? I’d have come right away to my beautiful girl.”

For some reason suddenly she stopped talking. For the first time since she had come, her face lit up. Drawing close to the other two women, she began to speak in a low voice: “Wait a moment, my beautiful girl, I was almost forgetting. I’ve news for you. Memed has become a brigand, an outlaw!”

At the sound of Memed’s name Hatche’s face became pale. Her heart began to beat as if it would burst.

“Memed went and joined Durdu’s band after shooting Abdi and Veli. And now these brigands have been up to all sorts of tricks. They don’t let anyone go on the roads and have stopped all traffic, killing anyone who resists them. They strip men naked, even of their underpants….”

“Memed wouldn’t do things like that! Memed would never kill a man,” objected Hatche in anger.

“I don’t know, my girl,” answered her mother. “That’s what they all say. Memed’s name comes right after Durdu’s. His fame has spread all over the country. What do I know, my girl? I only tell you what I’ve heard. When that infidel Abdi heard about Memed becoming a brigand, for a whole month he placed four or five guards around his house every night, but he was still afraid and never slept a wink all night, wandering about the house till morning. Then Sergeant Asim went to his house and said he had been after Memed. He declared he had never seen a brigand like Memed in the mountains. If it hadn’t been for him, he said, he would have put Durdu’s band to rout. At this Abdi Agha took to his heels and left the village. Some say he is staying in the town, others that he has gone to a village in the Çukurovac. Some even say that he’s gone and taken refuge with the great government in Ankara. So, with Abdi Agha no longer in the village, I said to myself, let me go and see my rose girl, and that’s how it is.”

While she was explaining all this, her face was calm and smiling. Suddenly it turned pale, as if she were choking.

Iraz and Hatche were pleased that Memed had become a brigand. They exchanged eloquent glances, but when they saw Hatche’s mother turn pale they were frightened. “Mother, Mother, what is it?” whispered Hatche.

“Don’t ask, my girl, but I have bad news for you. Let’s hope it’s false. I heard it as I was coming. My tongue won’t bring it out, my girl. I heard yesterday morning that Durdu and Memed had quarreled because of a nomad Agha. Durdu had shot at Memed and his two companions. That’s what I heard, my girl. Memed had protected the nomad Agha, so Durdu shot at him. A horseman passed through our village, a mounted nomad loaded with arms, on his way to help the nomad Agha, he said. His horse was covered with foam and he said that Memed had been wounded.”

At first Hatche remained motionless. Then she threw herself into Iraz’s arms. “Did this have to happen to me as well, Auntie?” she sobbed. Suddenly she was quiet.

“I’m going,” said her mother. “God be with you, my girl. I’ll let you know the truth as soon as I can. There’s some butter in the bag I brought you, and eggs and bread. I’ll come again next Friday if that infidel hasn’t come back to the village. Don’t lose the bag. Good health!” she called, as she set forth.

“I shouldn’t have told her that. I shouldn’t,” she said to herself as she walked down the road.

Hatche had begun to sob again. “How could that infidel Durdu have killed my Memed? Does a man do that to his companion? How could he?”

Iraz tried to console her. “Every day they bring news of the death of a brigand, but don’t believe it. You’ll get used to it.”

But Hatche was not listening. “I can’t live,” she sobbed. “I can’t live without my Memed.”

Iraz lost her temper. “How do you know the lad is dead, child? One doesn’t mourn a man who is still alive. In my youth I heard of Big Ahmet’s death at least twenty times. But Big Ahmet’s still alive today.”

“Aunt Iraz, this is different,” said Hatche. “He’s still such a young brigand! I can’t live any more. I’ll die.”

“Don’t you know, you stupid girl,” continued Iraz, “that sometimes the brigands themselves spread false rumors about their own deaths? Listen! When that goat-beard heard that Memed had become a brigand, he fled from the village. Perhaps Memed’s spread this news to fool him. When old goat-beard returns to the village, Memed will go and kill him. Perhaps it’s all a trick.”

“Memed doesn’t do things like that, Aunt Iraz. I can’t live after this; I’ll die!”

She began to tremble, as if shaken with malaria. Iraz took her in her arms, carried her to the bed, and laid her down.

“Wait a while, you stupid girl. How many things can happen before a day is done? Don’t believe everything like that.”

Two days later Hatche rose from her bed, pale as a corpse. She had bound a black kerchief around her head. Her face was waxen and still. Every day her condition deteriorated and she became increasingly pale and weak. Unable to sleep, she sat all night, resting her head on her knees and clasping her arms around her legs.

Nor could Iraz sleep. They no longer chattered at night. Only every once in a while would Iraz say: “You’ll see, my crazy girl, you’ll see. Good news of Memed will soon reach us.”

But Hatche paid no attention to her.