Free Bliss: A Novel by O.Z. Livaneli Page B

PKK entered the same place, the dogs did not even growl. Cemal finally solved the mystery when he heard a Kurdish villager calling out to some dogs one day in a strange, guttural voice that silenced the animals. Even though he knew Kurdish, Cemal could not imitate that sound, and like the rest of his comrades, never learned to communicate with the dogs.
    The villagers also directed their mules with strange cries, like a foreign tongue. In this they were not always successful, perhaps because a mule has a mind of its own.
    Several days earlier, Cemal’s unit had been lying in a streambed. The terrain in front had been mined, and they saw an old man with his mule walking slowly toward the danger zone. If they warned him, they would disclose their position, but an explosion would attract even more attention.
    “Stop,” they shouted, “the area’s mined!”
    The man halted in his tracks, but despite his frantic calls, the mule did not. Desperate to save the animal, he chased after it. The mule had almost passed through the mines when the ground erupted under its feet. The explosion blew off its front legs, and Selahattin put the creature out of its misery with a shot from his rifle. The old man sat in the dirt beside the dead animal. His livelihood gone, he wept inconsolably.
    Cemal imagined Memo as being one of the snipers the guerrillas positioned on the high hills. Memo had always been a good shot, even as a child.
    Cemal no longer felt any warmth when he heard Memo’s voice, and each time someone in his unit was killed or wounded, he blamed his former friend. His anger soon deepened to hate. If he ever came face-to-face with Memo, he vowed he would shoot him without a second thought. He would avenge all those youths, dead, or missing an arm or a leg, and kill Memo or any enemy of his country and nation.
    Their faces reddened by anger as well as the heat of the flames, the villagers turned away from their burning homes. With their bundles on their backs and their mules and children in tow, they trudged slowly down the hillside.
    Near the edge of the village, an old man with a long white beard and sunken eyes was lying on a mattress in front of his house, untouched because of its distance from the other dwellings. Standing beside him was a small boy of nine or ten. These two were the last survivors of a family wiped out by the war.
    Tears staining his cheeks, the old man was pleading with the captain, “Please, commander, let us stay. I’m crippled … we have no place to go.”
    With little other choice, the captain relented, and Cemal saw the boy’s face light up. The boy knew nothing of the world beyond these hills and the routine of taking their few animals out to pasture. Leaving these mountains for some distant place would, for him, have meant losing all that was familiar and dear.
    Trying to avoid the glances of the other soldiers, Cemal quickly took a few coins from his pocket, placing them surreptitiously in the boy’s hand as he patted his head. He was careful to frown as he did so in order not to spoil the child with kindness. The boy looked up, smiling his gratitude.
    Back at the outpost that evening, Cemal again heard Memo conversing with his comrades on the wireless. As usual he cursed the Turkish army, then said, “Ez dicim Nuh Nebi” (“I’m going up to Noah”).
    Cemal understood from this Kurdish sentence that Memo was going toward Mount Ararat, where the remains of Noah’s ark supposedly lay. Memo had once related to him how he wished to climb the mountain one day and discover the ancient ship.
    Cemal at once suspected that the guerrillas, having seen the flames, were withdrawing from the peaks where they had spent days sniping at them and retreating toward Mount Ararat, a mountain where the soldiers knew the trails well. After they had eaten, he turned to the captain saying, “I have something important to tell you, sir,” his face flushed hot with excitement.

WHY DON’T THE COCKS