Young Turk (24 page)

I looked around with greater determination. I was curious about the sap. I have perfect vision – essential for a juggler. That’s what I’m training to be. Juggling ten rings and six clubs, that’s my target.

Several men, holding on to each other, came out of a drinking house.

Babacιk stepped forward to shield us. He’s an old wrestler, Babacιk is. The greatest there’s ever been. Unbeaten in all official competitions. That makes him even better than Hacι Turgut, who won several gold medals in the Olympic Games and now coaches the national team. In fact, Hacι Turgut always defers to Babacιk as ‘master’ though they’re about the same age. That’s because, during the few years when they were on the mat together, Hacι Turgut never defeated Babacιk. Babacιk always won by a
tuş
– by pinning down Hacι Turgut’s shoulders. We heard that from Hacι Turgut himself; Babacιk never boasts.

The drunken men ignored us and staggered towards the ramparts. They tried to piss, but collapsed. As the urine trickled out of their trousers, they wept.

Babacιk looked as if he might weep, too. ‘These are men who can’t find work. That’s their sap, Girl: tears.’

Mama Meryem caressed Babacιk’s face. Allah’s compassionate servants have wives who suffer twice as much as they do.

The reason why Babacιk is not as famous as Hacι Turgut and won’t even be asked to coach our wrestlers is because one dark day he lost his amateur status. Amateur status is very important to sports people. Without it they can’t compete in the Olympic Games. Babacιk turned professional when he signed up with a Hungarian promoter for some exhibition contests in Europe. That was before the war. He was the oldest son in a large family and had to provide for them. Mama Meryem told me those years were a time of humiliation for him; occasionally, to draw in the crowds, he was ordered to lose to lesser wrestlers.

But Babacιk’s woes led to my happiness. When he was able to give up his ‘enslavement’, as he calls it, he joined the circus. And when Mama Meryem discovered me in the refectory tent, nameless, wrapped in bloody rags, a baby abandoned at birth, Babacιk took me instantly to his heart. And in no time at all he convinced the company that rather than hand me over to the police, who would put me in an orphanage, they would adopt me and, when I grew up, train me for an act.

I heard the sound of glass breaking. I turned round and saw a man leaning against some crates of empty bottles. He was grinning and squinting at his hands. A broken bottle lay by his feet. A strapping man, despite his condition. I knew instantly he was the one we had come to find. ‘Over there!’

Babacιk had seen him, too. ‘Yes, Girl.’

When I was a child, I used to be called ‘Emanet’, which means ‘held in trust’. Now that I’m older, they call me ‘Girl’ or ‘My Lamb’ or, when they get angry with me, ‘Kerata’, which is one of those vulgarities that means anything from ‘cuckold’ to ‘little devil’. In my case, it must mean ‘little devil’ because only men can be cuckolded; besides, I’m just sixteen and not married – and don’t intend to be since that means having children and I don’t want children. Anyway, Girl or Kerata are hardly names that light up people’s eyes. As for Emanet – held in trust for whom? For parents who didn’t want me? For one of Mahmut the Simurg’s heroes who just by looking at a girl makes her as beautiful as the moon? I can wait for ever for that, can’t I?

No, one day I will choose a name for myself, myself – a name that will take everybody’s breath away.

Babacιk addressed the man. ‘Good evening.’

The man ignored him. Maybe he hadn’t seen us. He picked up another bottle and threw it in the air. As it dropped he tried to catch it, but failed. The bottle smashed into pieces. The man glared at his hands – which were huge – and laughed bitterly.

Babacιk approached him. ‘What’s funny?’

The man snarled. ‘On your way, old man!’

Mama Meryem moved forward, ready to protect her husband. ‘He ask question: what’s funny?’

I managed to keep a straight face. Dear Mama Meryem – whenever she gets excited, her accent gets thicker and she sounds like our comedian, Kadir, imitating foreign politicians.

The man hesitated. I could see his temper rising, but obviously he was not someone who yelled at women. That earned him a good mark from me. ‘If you must know, Grandma, I can’t catch. Not a thing. Not even death – which is said to be the easiest thing to catch. That’s what’s funny.’

Babacιk nodded sympathetically. ‘Born like that, were you?’

The man snorted. ‘Now that’s even funnier! Actually, I was a catcher. A real-life catcher. The best, I’d like you to know! I could catch the sky if I had to.’

‘What’s changed?’

‘Piss off, you old fart! Get going!’

‘I’m Kudret. I’ll take you home. You’ll be my guest.’

‘What?’

‘My wife, Meryem. My daughter.’

I grimaced. No name. Just ‘daughter’. I must definitely choose a name for myself. Everybody should. That would be a truer way of describing a person. After all, who knows a person better than the person herself? Some mothers say they do, but I don’t believe it. And not because I was abandoned by my mother. I’ve really thought about it. We’re all as different as the knots on olive trees. Only the person herself sees her true self. Only she knows whether she’s a killer or a life-giver or a bit of both or many things in between. But then truth needs courage – which I have. Many don’t. So they keep the names of greatness or goodness chosen by their parents even though such names hang on them like the oversize coats of clowns. (But there are exceptions. Babacιk’s father got his own son’s name right: Kudret means ‘strength’.)

The man started laughing again. ‘Are you crazy?’

‘Come along ...’

The man lurched forward. ‘Get lost before ...’ Seized by a spasm, he sank to his knees and started throwing up.

Babacιk sighed. ‘That’s his sap, Girl – vomit. Lost soul’s sap.’

The man puked out his innards. Then, trying to straighten up, he passed out.

Babacιk picked him up.

I rushed forward. ‘Let me help.’

Babacιk nodded. ‘Carefully. Let him know we care.’

Mama Meryem laughed. ‘He dead to world!’

Babacιk shook his head. ‘He’ll feel the touch. He’ll know.’

We carried the man as if he were made of ancient glass.

We took Adem to our tent. That’s his name, Adem. He slept all night and most of the next day. He moaned and wept a lot. Alcoholic poisoning, Babacιk declared.

When Hacι Turgut received word that Babacιk had found Adem, he immediately came over. And he brought with him his nephew, Osman, and Osman’s wife, Hatice.

Hacι Turgut didn’t stay long – just the prescribed time to pay his respects and kiss Babacιk’s feet for taking charge of Adem. But Osman and Hatice erected their tent within the circus campsite as if they had joined the troupe. Osman is a trapeze artist – what we call a flyer – and has been looking for a partner, a catcher. Hatice – who is a big woman – watches over him like Mahmut the Simurg’s creature with the hundred eyes; if she could, circus people say, she’d put a ring round Osman’s nose and rule him like a Gypsy’s bear.

All night and most of the next day, we watched over Adem. Or rather Osman watched over him and Hatice and I watched Osman watching him. We could see he was taking Adem into his heart, limb by limb, like an ant carrying a beetle to its nest bit by bit. And all that time, his eyes never strayed from Adem’s hands. I had sensed this would happen. For a flyer the sight of a good pair of hands, old-timers say, is like the vision that sends a dervish into a trance; he’s likely to whirl straight into the presence of the Godhead.

I felt jealous. Adem had captivated me, too. When he woke up, it would be Osman’s face he would see first. I know how it is with some men: one look and they become soul mates. I may be just sixteen and set on remaining unmarried, but that doesn’t mean I’m not interested in men. Otherwise I wouldn’t bother about my appearance. People say I look and smell like orange blossom – not an easy feat in a place like a circus, where even make-up smells of animals.

So I also kept watching Adem until I, too, took him into my heart limb by limb. He was a stocky fellow. Yet his face was so delicate, it could have been embroidered by a lace-maker. And, yes, his hands, as if magnified several sizes by a distorting mirror, kept filling my eyes. I thought they could hold not only the sky but the whole earth as well. No wonder Osman drooled over him. A trapeze partnership must be like walnuts and dried figs, a near-perfect pairing. The best pairings are made in heaven.

Mama Meryem told us what Hacι Turgut had said about Adem.

He was from the Caucasus, an Abkhaz. Not Muslim, but Christian. Many of them are. His father, a beekeeper in Sukhumi, had been so overjoyed to be blessed with a son that he had become a man of the church in thanksgiving. In Stalin’s godless USSR that had been a foolish act; both he and his wife had been executed.

Close relatives had somehow managed to save the child – christened Vladislav. They had smuggled him into Turkey and entrusted him to an Abkhaz family in Rize who owed them a debt of honour. But this family had played false and had worked the boy like a slave on their tea-plantation instead of treating him as one of their own.

The boy had eventually run away. After countless menial jobs, he had reached Istanbul. There he had found employment as a groom in Sirk Karelya, a circus owned by a White Russian refugee, Pyotr Nadolski. At some point, this Nadolski, having noticed the size of Vladislav’s hands – beekeeper’s hands like his father’s – had tried him on the trapeze. The youth had proved to be a natural. Thereafter, Nadolski, changing Vladislav’s name to Adem – a good Turkish name that also conjured strength – had trained him until he became an outstanding catcher.

But since to attain his full potential a catcher needs an equally gifted flyer, Nadolski had started searching for such a prodigy. Adem’s growing reputation had brought many hopefuls to his door, but they had all been either average or past their prime.

Then one day, a Greek youth called Yorgo, from a small Aegean circus, had walked in and asked for an audition. Something about the youth’s blend of shyness and eagerness, doubt and certainty had appealed to Nadolski. He had tried him out. Old-timers who had witnessed that trial swear that when Adem and Yorgo had locked hands, there had been a sound like Allah taking to nature’s breast.

Thereafter the two men, calling themselves Kartallar, ‘The Eagles’, had perfected not only the triple somersault, an act achieved by only a handful of trapezists, but also proceeded to train for the quadruple – a feat believed to be impossible.

Then tragedy had struck.

During one performance, Yorgo had mistimed his take-off and had dropped towards his partner a moment too early. The two had brushed fingers but could not lock hands. Yorgo had plummeted down, crashed on to the side of the safety net, bounced off it, fallen into the ring and broken his neck. He had died instantly.

Though all the witnesses at the inquest had attributed Yorgo’s mistiming to his indulgence in opium the night before, Adem had refused to believe it. Instead he had blamed himself, claiming that having brushed fingers with Yorgo, he should have been able to hold him; he had failed because his hands had failed. And so, immediately after Yorgo’s funeral, he had left Nadolski’s circus and has been drifting ever since.