Ömer Asan
I
And so, he set off; or to be more precise, he was put there at the beginning of the road. How? When? Who? Nobody knows.
It was not even paved; the place where he was put was not even a road. There where he sat, it was at the edge of a wild forest, a boundless valley, on the fringes of the high pasture, where dinosaurs came and went and left the imprints of their weighty feet. He was put there with no information in his memory. An empty, a completely empty human being he was at the start. With his head bowed, his hands between his thighs, his legs crossed, he was in a state where he had no idea what to do. When he lifted his head and opened his eyes, with determination mixed with fear, his colourless eyes were dazzled in the daylight. His eyes closed again when he dropped his head, fearful of the loud noise coming from the left hand side of his chest; a loud noise that he had not heard, which anyway it had not been possible for him to hear before. He experienced, for a fraction of a second, an indescribable fear. He started to blink. He was not keeping his eyes closed any more. He plucked up his courage and stared at his own naked body for a while. This was the first time he was seeing himself. He raised his head, looked down, looked up again ……
His eyes became used to the light. He started to examine his surroundings with curiosity. He moved his hand, his arm, his leg. Bending his arm from the elbow, he looked at his palm at eye-level. He bent his other arm in the same way and put his face in the palms of his hands. He put his right index finger in his mouth and played with his tongue. He licked his fingers one by one. He became aware of the sense of taste. He touched his ears and his nose. He closed his eyes with the fingers of his two hands. He quickly withdrew his hands; he was frightened to cut out the light. Again he looked around, but this time he looked into the distance. He could give no meaning to what he had seen. His pupils, looking directly into the light, took on the colours they sensed as they contracted and expanded. The mysterious effect of his bewilderment was to leave thick lines replacing the colours in his eyes.
Without being aware of it, he had glimmerings of thought in his brain. He tried to reason and come to an interpretation of what he had seen but his memory could not cope. No, it was not that it was not coping; he had no memory. What he felt was a deep emptiness. Once more he examined his surroundings and felt something come into his brain without his willing it. His mind that was not yet formed was trying to understand the images he saw, his eyes taking in the images like a sponge and storing them somewhere unknown inside his skull.
Perhaps he might have stayed in that state without moving for hours if he had not been frightened by hearing a sound. With no understanding of why he was frightened, he turned towards the sound. He did not know why he turned. From the undergrowth, a jackal was looking at him, a jackal with pointed ears, blue-grey eyes heavily tinged with yellow and thick yellow-brown fur. The jackal stared at him, he stared at the jackal, without understanding and with anxious eyes. It seemed that the jackal also was seeing someone like him for the first time. Suddenly he put his hand out towards the creature he could see. The jackal did not react. Once more, he looked at the jackal, examining it with his eyes; it came to his attention that it was standing on four feet. He got up onto his knees and put the palms of his hands on the ground to try it himself. He looked again and noticed that the back legs were straight. As he was trying to get into the same shape, the jackal took fright and moved back a few steps. He also took a few steps. He could not manage it and fell on his face. He got up again … first him, then the jackal, then him, then the jackal …… The jackal in its own characteristic voice called to the creature that it did not recognise “…..aum….mu ….mu.” It did not get any response. It tried again but this time in a different way. “A….eei…eei…eei.” As it saw no understanding in the one facing it, it started striding around him and treating him with contempt. At a moment when the creature was lying down and could not see it, extending its bottom right towards his nose, it made a bad smell and went off without looking back.
Thousands of years after it first appeared on earth, the jackal would take its place in Egyptian beliefs as Upuaut, one of the gods responsible for the affairs of the other World. Though he would call the jackals that he came across centuries later ‘thepeka’. Upuaut came across human beings for the first time and examined them to see whether they were dangerous or not.Whereupon, despite being subjugated to human beings and afraid of them, it could not stop itself from mocking.
After the jackal had gone, he stayed motionless for a while. But he felt that remaining like that gave him no pleasure. He discovered the first step to happiness. Inside him there were gathering feelings to which he could assign no meaning, movements were chasing each other around his brain and putting pressure on him. In the few moments since he had opened his eyes, his world was becoming incredibly enriched. The way he had made steps imitating the jackal stayed in his subconscious, giving rise to yet more feelings. He could not resist the energy that his feet gave him and he got up with all his fears. He turned his eyes to his body and looked at his hands, his feet, his sexual organs. When he took his first step, his eyes were shining and all the colours of nature, in particular blue, black, yellow and red, were dancing in his pupils, whirling incessantly.
II
From then, five, maybe ten million years went by. It was just at this point that he thought about how far he had come. On his long journey he had travelled most of the time without knowing where he was going. Ten thousand yearsearlier, his life had been transformed from a nomadic to a settled one, living with people like himself that he met on the journey, who shared his same fate. When the time came, he learned to be aware of making a journey and to choose its direction. He knew where he was going. He started to make conversation with his companions. They showed each other their sexual organs and named them. They looked at each other’s eyes and said “mat, goz”. They held hands. In the beginning it was fun to name things. Later, they forbade the use of some of the languages. They invented the word ‘forbid’ and held on to it religiously.
Year followed year. He became more intelligent through hunting, he became more intelligent through loving, he became more intelligent through eating but when his desires were obstructed, when obstacles were placed in his path, when walls and mountains rose up in front of him, his intelligence was of no help and he faced failure. Failure taught him how to deal with difficulties and overcome them.
Three thousand years ago he invented writing. His intellect was always prompting him to journey. He had faith that through these journeys, in the end he would reach absolute truth. But he learnt that faith is a weakness of intellect. On these journeys, he came across people like him, at first thousands, then afterwards, millions, billions. He died. He came to life again. He was born, he gave birth. Although he came across natural obstacles, until today no power could have stopped him from making the journies, no power except that of his own kind.
III
Now he was the citizen of a country. His eyes, having tried out so many colours, made a decision and clothed themselves in green. Since the day when he managed to stand on two feet and start to use his hands and arms, he had mastered nature through his accomplishments and through force. He was not naked any more; although sometimes he yearned for the old days, he was no longer interested in knowing about his or other people’s faculties in the same way that he did on that first day. Unlike any other living creature, he used his sexual organ not just to procreate but also for pleasure. He learned that, in order to recreate himself, he needed to embrace this as something most sacred.
From that day to this, the question that stayed in his mind was ‘who put me there at the beginning?’ Since there is an answer to everything, he should find the answer to this question. He forgot how many times he went back to the beginning and sat in the same position. In the hope of meeting the one who put him there, he waited for days, some days with his eyes closed – thinking maybe he would not want to be seen – sometimes all eyes and ears. Nothing, nothing, ….. he saw many jackals after that, but he did not come across the one who caused him to stand erect. The ones he saw would not even go near him, they were scared of their own shadows and ran away. On top of that, his own kind declared that jackal to be God. In fact, he did not suppose that even the jackal knew who put him there. Still it would be possible to journey in his imagination to a past that he was on the point of forgetting. He knew that people like him had found some answers. They believed an invisible power had put them there at the beginning and they did not want to question it or see it. They were so happy with that, that he tried to be like them. Sometimes he thought only of the future instead of investigating the beginning, and journeyed happily between birth and death. But now he was tired of believing what he heard and he wanted to see who put him there at the beginning. Just like the first time he opened his eyes, it was like stark eternity striking his mind. Not possible. That damned question that he could not answer, to which he could not find an answer for thousands of years, was still there, making him intensely anxious as he entered a new millennium.
IV
Remembering the first time that he opened his eyes on the world, he was gripped by a strange melancholy. The colourful flowers that he saw after his eyes had adjusted to the light, the trees covered in every shade of green, the majestic mountains rising up like gods, the antelopes, rabbits, squirrels, the monkeys he sometimes played with and shared food with, the snakes, such a variety of living creatures that he could not name now, his friends, his companions, all these were no longer there. The world around was full of countless people, people like him, come from goodness knows where. During the course of many years, he learnt first to think, and then to talk. Eating and drinking and fulfilling other human needs became second nature. Sometimes he thought he wished he had stayed at his starting point, in those years when he had first opened his eyes. He longed for that solitude. Sometimes, too, he would say that it was good that he had started on that journey; he experienced feelings of loving and sharing when he was with others like himself.
He was full of contradictions; he was both free and not free, both full of love and also of hate; sometimes full of regret, sometimes full of joy. In general, he could not decide who was a good person and who was bad. His species was described as human but it could not be described easily in the same way as a rabbit could. Every century he was born at least four times and died four times. Sometimes when he was reborn, he did not find the world as he left it; he would find strange and confusing differences. For that reason his notions of beauty and ugliness were confused. It was as if everything was dependent on another authority and he himself came and went in the world like a guest. Sometimes something happened that he could not understand and he suffered the same bewilderment that he had experienced on that day when he first opened his eyes.
Since he started making his way in the world, he had witnessed some animals killing and eating animals of other species, very rarely killing them just for the sake of it. At that time, he was starting to learn to think and he had no knowledge to underpin it. He could not make sense of the behaviour of animals. His experience in past years had taught him that this was a law of nature; in this way he developed a sense of fear and self-protection and obeyed the law without question. But he did not understand one human being killing another human being; particularly since they did not eat each other. Whereas he had never witnessed a lion killing another lion, or a pig killing another pig or a donkey killing another donkey. If it happened, it must be something to do with human beings. He decided that there must be an unwritten convention about this between living beings.
He was the last creature to be created on earth; that was stated in the few books that he possessed. During his lifetime, he experienced millions of events, he met billions of people, he felt happiness, joy and optimism, and to the same extent, maybe more so, he felt sadness, unhappiness and despair. Now towards the end of this period, although he had the same physical features and the same feelings as other people in the world, he continually felt that he was different. In reality he was made to feel this. This was most evident with respect to the language he used and the culture that was his own and that he had developed.
He spoke a different language from his fellow citizens in the area, a language that he had been speaking for thousands of years and that at one time was the one most favoured for communication. Ever since people started to draw boundaries within which they could live according to their own rules, interesting but strange developments had occurred, both natural and also contrary to nature, and spoken languages had been considerably transformed. But until now people had never asked each other, nor him, why he spoke this language. What is more, never mind questioning it, they were very keen to learn this language from him. This is precisely what he found very odd; his language and culture that had lasted for thousands of years, that he had developed and defended with pride, were under threat of being wiped out. Supposedly in the name of a new human lifestyle and in the name of an idea called globalisation.
In those days, towards the end of the century, his spoken language was only known by a minority of people. They chose to speak it only amongst themselves and were reluctant to be heard by others. Because in the country where he was now living, they saw those people who spoke this language as dangerous creatures, who could not be understood, just as they were seen in the eyes of the mysterious jackal that had disappeared without trace. Whereas since he had first opened his eyes, he had been speaking the same language, singing in this language, writing, producing countless works of literature, working unimaginably hard for the benefit of human beings. He had inherited the culture of the nation that had opened up for human beings the fields of medicine, philosophy, physics, music, literature, theatre, history, architecture and navigation. Moreover until recently he was highly valued and there were books which described the people to which he belonged as creators of miracles. He was the channel for an amazing culture. And now he was not able to grasp how they could see him as disloyal. He cursed this ungratefulness and he was not able to understand who had betrayed who.
He was going to speak out. He was going to write what he said and thought. And in the language that he had inherited from his ancestors. In his own language. In the language they claimed did not exist and which they assumed they had killed off.
V
When he put on his pyjamas to go to bed, he was deeply engrossed in these questions that had been asked down the centuries; and also in questions that he put to himself. They were like partners alienated from each other but sharing the same bed. It must have been for this reason that for a long time he had been having nightmares, waking up with a start in the morning, in fear and confusion. Again he could not go to sleep when he put his head on his pillow. He tried to think of nice things so as to ward off the nightmares he would probably have. When he fell asleep he continued them as he always did, from the point at which he had left off.
He was looking down at the world from the sky. Everything was in bits and pieces; everybody had formed their own symphony orchestra, expecting others to listen to them with respect; socialists, communists, fascists, idealists, Jews, Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, romanticists, realists, they were all trying to raise their voices and suppress the other voices. Were they practising for Doomsday or what ….? He thought that in this disorder melody was disappearing or rather was being killed off. At that moment, he saw a saxophone being pointed in his direction from one of the orchestras, reaching out right into his ear. The saxophonist puffed out his cheeks as if, with his scarlet face, he was preparing to give a final, lethal, blow.
He jumped out of bed to the sound of a horn from a lorry passing in the street. His grey hair was standing on end because of his nightmare. Because he did not use a nightlight, his room was in pitch dark. The moment he was living now did not resemble anything in the past. He was seized by a terrible fear. This was the first feeling he had experienced hundreds of years ago and which took hold of him with the same power centuries later, but this time in the dark.
His eyes were open wide but he was not able to see anything. Alarmed, leaving his bed he rushed to the window. Hoping to see something, he leaned his head against the glass. His panting breaths steamed up the window and slightly obscured his view. He wiped off the steam with the sleeve of his pyjamas. He persisted in his desire to see something. He opened the window as wide as possible. He looked at the street which was dimly lit by the street lamps. Nobody could be seen. He gazed at the windows of the houses. Everybody was sleeping. He asked himself ‘am I going mad, or what?’
His head down, cupping his chin in his hands, he started to pace the room. He was trying to rid his mind of the question that he had been asking earlier. He felt panicky. ‘But no … if a man like me goes mad, what the hell will happen to all the others?’ he consoled himself, trying to turn his attention to other things. Because he was an intellectual; through his intelligence, he was backed by a strong culture that he had inherited from his ancestors. The people around him saw him like that. He perceived life differently from ordinary people and his comments perplexed the people around him when they were discussing the most ordinary everyday issues. Sometimes he enjoyed that very much. ‘Why are they not going mad when I am?’ he thought again, returning to his first question.
In the moments before the dawn, he tried to calm himself by thinking what he was going to do. He opened the window and looked out into space. Taking deep breaths, he was puzzled that his heart was beating so fast that it was out of control. He felt that his few remaining black hairs had turned white through his experience of panic.
By the window, sitting on his chair, he was calm now as if he was recovering from a hard fight. His head remained in his hands as he wondered what had happened to him. He put a name to his state of mind: anxiety. Anxiety was the reason for this affliction, which was not unfamiliar as he had had it many times during his journeys through the centuries. ‘My struggle with nature has not worn me out or troubled me as much as my struggle with people’ he thought.
It seemed that he was at the start of a new road. There was one hour to the first light of the New Year 2000. He tried to visualise the road that he had travelled step by step; it seemed neither very long nor very short; the images were either mixed up or clouded. Besides, he realised that many moments were not recorded. He wondered if he could go on for thousands of years more on his own. He knew he would not untangle this web that easily. He took off his clothes. His hand reached down to his belly-button as it always did when he was thinking. He picked out the fluff, rolled it between his fingers and dropped it. ‘If I collected all the fluff from my belly-button from the day I was born who knows how many beds could be made of it,’ he murmured. With an ironic smile on his face, he sat on the hand-woven carpet. He was naked. With his eyes closed, his head bowed, his hands between his thighs, he waited for the dawn. On the left hand side of his chest, the rhythm of his heartbeat was slowing down. He recognised a familiar voice …..
‘Auu …uu ..uu’
He listened carefully. He could have been mistaken.
‘A eei eei eei …’
Was it him? No; it was a human being imitating him … Once more, from afar, but this time it was giving him news about another journey…..now he was going to die once time, he was going to be born once more. When he came back into the world, he would continue his search to find out who put him at the start. He would be carrying the culture he had developed over the years and once more he would have his say in human history.
He closed his eyes and bowed his head. His neighbour, who as always had got up early, turned on the radio, enjoying his morning. A few seconds before his ears lost their ability to hear, he heard through the open window a voice like leaves rustling in the wind. It was the last lines of a song from an Argentinean singer.
This was his favourite song.
Gracias a la vida.
This is the life.