Free Bliss: A Novel by O.Z. Livaneli

study?” Hidayet had asked.
    The two of them were sitting in a small waterfront café at the former Customs House in Izmir, drinking cold beer and watching the setting sun paint the waters of the gulf wine red, just as Homer had described.
    “That’s not the life for me,” Hidayet continued. “Predetermined, limited, inactive. I expect more from life than that.”
    “What more do you expect?” asked İrfan.
    “I’ve no idea; and that’s the best part—not to know what life will bring you!”
    A few days later, Hidayet, in his homemade boat with its makeshift sail, had become just a faint outline on the horizon. The wind might have carried him to Crete, perhaps, or to some unknown shore; or, perhaps, he had been lost at sea.
    İrfan began to miss Hidayet with increasing nostalgia.

CEMAL’S SECRET
    Someone unfamiliar with the terrain would probably not have noticed the village in the distance. Only by coming very close could one discern the single-story houses built on the slopes of the mountain, as drab as their barren surroundings. That day not a tree, brook, or even a fountain was visible under the blanket of snow.
    When Cemal’s unit entered the village, there was no sign of life. The low roofs of the houses were heaped with snow. No smoke curled from the chimneys, and the sound of neither man nor animal broke the silence.
    Cemal was used to such sights. Caught between the PKK and the army, the Kurdish villagers retreated into their homes, trying to avoid both of them.
    According to intelligence reports, guerrillas had been in the village the night before. They had already left, but Cemal’s unit was under orders to evacuate the buildings and torch them. The village would no longer offer shelter for the PKK.
    Cemal had heard that thousands of villages, as well as acres of forests that might provide refuge, had been set ablaze. He had personally taken part in burning twenty villages, and it no longer seemed out of the ordinary.
    Forced out of their houses at gunpoint, the villagers were interrogated in the school, which had been transformed into a makeshift command post. As usual, they offered little information. While the women wept, the men who did not cooperate with the authorities were made to strip and stand naked or forced to walk barefoot over jagged stones. Deaf to their pleas, the captain ordered the village emptied in a half hour. The command to surrender their firearms was met by stubborn silence. The soldiers knew that no weapon would be handed over. Villagers never disclosed where their guns lay buried.
    Cemal was convinced that the most important things for these people were their guns, their mules, and their testicles. They guarded their firearms closely, protected their mules, so essential for their livelihood, and whenever beaten, they always begged, “Please don’t hit my balls!” Having learned Kurdish from Memo, Cemal was the only member of the unit who could understand and follow most of the conversations.
    The weeping women were now piling a few sticks of furniture out in the snow, children were carrying hastily tied bundles through the doorways, and the men were still pleading helplessly. The captain told them to go wherever they wished. Many would probably end up in Diyarbakır, though some might journey to Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya, Adana, or Mersin. Their destination was of little importance to the military, whose aim was to clear the area of safe havens for the PKK.
    *   *   *
    Cemal remembered the voice on the wireless. Memo’s voice. Feeling strangely close to him, Cemal wondered if perhaps his friend had spent the previous night in this village. At the same time, he was conscious of the distance between them. The war resembled the plays they had performed on the anniversary of their liberation from the Russians, but the thought of bullets whizzing overhead in battle made Cemal shudder. This was no make-believe.
    At the beginning of his military service, Cemal’s mind had