ROSETTA_MAGAZINE_201303

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on your trousers, you should not.” Finally
I had found a good expression. Depending
on where I was, I stretched this expression
to relate to my grandfather and told how
much this expression meant to the men in
our family, explaining about the ritual-like
coming of age ceremony day, this was told
to me as I embellished it with tears and
became ever-more enthused. Now that you
are dead (there are those who believe the
opposite but I know the truth) I can sugarcoat
the only advice left from you to me.
Don’t fret, trust me… Here I am standing at
attention and promising you: Father, your
advice will be echoing in my ears until I die,
I will behave the way you wanted me to. I
will be careful with each step as I walk this
long path of life and even if I walk through
rough roads I will make sure not to get
mud on my trousers because, my dear
father, I haven’t even bent over to clean the
mud on my trousers and I will not, either.
It’s not like we don’t have common
grounds. Now that I think about it, there
are perhaps more common grounds
than necessary. The strangest of all
these common grounds is that I saw
the same things as you when I started
primary school forty years after you did. A
photograph of our Atatürk hanging right
above the blackboard… If you ever caused
any mischief in class he knit his eyebrows
and got very angry. He got so angry that I
got scared to the point of almost wetting
myself. However, if we did our homework
well, didn’t misbehave as the teacher
spoke and we didn’t upset our parents he
smiled so beautifully I felt like going near
the photograph and kissing it. How could
a photograph enliven so many feelings
at the same time? Just like your child’s
mind forty years ago didn’t comprehend it
my befuddled mind didn’t comprehend it
either.
To either side of our Atatürk’s photograph
there are two badly drawn and coloured
paintings hanging askew on the wall in
ugly frames. On the right (could have also
been on the left, I confused my right and
left in those years) Alp Arslan is on the
back of his white horse in Malazgirt and
pointing ahead with his index finger. There
are men in chainmail coats behind him
with moustaches each weighing a couple
of pounds. I want to think of them as his
friends but everyone has such a bad look
on their faces that I am not sure. They
have flags, spears, swords in their hands
and they are walking in the direction that
Alp Arslan’s finger is indicating. They
are so determined that they do not see
their horses are treading people under
foot. There is a blond, freckled boy in the
classroom and he says, “They are not
people, bro’, they are infidels and Alp
Arslan is shitting in their mouths.”
I shudder; I hadn’t heard that swear word
ever before. I still don’t understand what
kind of profanity it is, why someone would
shit in someone else’s mouth…
Hasan of Uluabat is holding a Turkish
flag in his hand and is to the left of the
photograph of our Atatürk. The teacher
tells us the story behind these two pictures
in the first lesson. I am only slightly scared
of Alp Arslan but I actually really fear
Hasan. His entire body is covered with
arrows stuck in him, in his chest, shoulder,
arms and there is even an arrow lodged
in his kneecap. My kneecaps felt stingy, I
am six years old and already empathising
deeply. I delve into the expression of pain
on his handlebar moustached face and
cannot take in the lesson on curved and
straight lines. I couldn’t learn reading
and writing on time because of Hasan of
Uluabat as I didn’t understand why he
carried a Turkish flag and now, as I recall
the first day you brought me to class, I
looked above the blackboard and said
“I cannot believe this, these were here
when I was going to school, too.” I feel like
breaking down in tears. I wish I could have
asked you before you died whether you
were also perplexed by the photograph of
Atatürk which distinguished between the
naughty and well-behaved children and if
you were also scared of Hasan’s scream?
We buried so many things into our own
history before having the chance to talk
about them father, didn’t we?
What we should call an invasion and what
we should call a conquest was a subject
that tickled my mind while preparing for
composition homework during secondary
school. I remember we talked at length
as you smoked your extra-long Maltepe
cigarettes, sitting at either end of the
folding table on the balcony. I recall how
patiently you explained, righteous wars,
unfair wars, short-term existences,
arrivals that seemed to last a hundred
centuries, constructions, plundering,
conceding, maintaining control of an
enemy and cultural developments... Our
conversation had followed this route into a
long chat.
I recently understood what a standpoint
means but I still have a big question mark
lurking in my head, my dear father: What
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should we call an invasion and what should
we call a conquest?
If I remember correctly there are a few
lines of your handwriting in blunt-pointed
red pencil on one of the drafts of that
composition homework. I wish your
handwriting was with me right now.
My dear father, I could tell you more about
the funeral but I do not want to make false
pretences permanent. The ceremony came
to an end the way you’d imagine. Just as
Oğuz Atay said in the most beautiful letter
ever written to a father; “After the coffin
was placed in the grave large concrete
blocks were placed on top of them. I do not
like this technical tradition, my dear father;
I am against insurmountable barriers.”
Now I am think and wondering if our
love for each other was also a technical
tradition. I do not know. Now I just look,
father. I am looking at the world trying to
understand what you saw. I look without
searching for a realm of peace with predrawn
borders, without being scared of
being plebeian and animalistic; I only shove
it into the pages of notebooks, collect, copy
and imprison them. I look at the world but
it must be because of the difference in our
perspectives that I cannot see this rotten
world the way you did.
My dear father, after the concrete blocks
were placed – I hope you don’t take any
offence- but there was quite a bit of trouble.
The workers wanted to cover the blocks
with plastic in order to prevent slumping but
your engineer nephew who didn’t even come
to visit you once during your sickness told
them the placing of plastic would quicken
the slumping. As they argued, your cousin
from-which-side-of-the-family-I-have-no-