Copyright © 2011 by Hakan Günday / Kalem Agency
English-language translation copyright © 2018 by Alexander Dawe
First English-language edition
Originally published in Turkey as Az in 2011 by Doğan Kitap
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Names: Gunday, Hakan, 1976- author.
Title: The few : a novel / Hakan Gunday.
Other titles: Az. English
Description: First English-language edition. | New York : Arcade Publishing, 2018.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017046188 (print) | LCCN 2017047754 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628727104 (ebook) | ISBN 9781628727098 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Youth--Turkey--Social conditions--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PL248.G766 (ebook) | LCC PL248.G766 A9313 2018 (print) | DDC 894/.3534--dc23
Jacket design by Erin Seaward-Hiatt
Cover illustration: iStockphoto
Printed in the United States of America
For Nevzat Çelik
We are not many, certainly
We are not on the side of the many
We will never be on the side of the many …
—Nevzat Çelik, İtirazın İki Şartı
(Two Requirements of Protest)
DERDÂ
She was six years old and she was going to die that way. She was shaking but she was too scared to stop looking at the bug. A ceiling as vast as a field of sunflowers but all she saw was the bug. A bug the size of a sunflower seed. Its sharp legs were covered with hair and its antennae were as thin as eyelashes. Its body was so still it could have been a photograph of an insect and in the thick darkness it could have been a jet-black stain on the gray concrete. Black, the color of the girl’s eyes, bleary with fear.
She pulled the blanket up to her chin and held it tight in her sweaty fists. Any second the insect could fall on her face. She was on the top bunk of a ladderless bunk bed. The ceiling was less than half a meter above her. If she fell asleep her mouth would slip open and the insect would drop and slip through her teeth. Or first it would drop onto her blanket and crawl over her face and go up one of her nostrils and nibble away at whatever it could find. She quickly rolled over and peered over the bed trying to guess how far off the ground she was. But it wasn’t long enough to figure it out. She couldn’t make out the floor, so she turned back to the ceiling to watch the bug.
Of course it wasn’t the first time she’d seen an insect. She’d seen them on the walls at home, and on the walls in other people’s homes, too. She’d never set foot in any house without at least one bug on the wall. Her father told her they came up from the stream. She’d seen big insects that came up from the stream too. They crawled up onto the ceiling but they were too heavy and fell onto the stove. There were also little bugs—lice—that made them cut her hair off. She’d seen bugs that scurried away, disappearing into the walls, and others that waited patiently to be killed under the sacks of beets. She’d even seen a rat. And once, a wolf. A wolf a hundred times bigger than the bug with black eyes. But she wasn’t afraid of any of them. She never trembled or cried. But she hadn’t been alone. Although she wasn’t alone now either. There were thirty-five other kids in the dormitory. But they didn’t count. She didn’t know any of their names and it was too late to find out now. They were all asleep. She listened to their sleep. She could hear their breath get blocked in their stuffy noses. Kids wheezing in their sleep as they tossed and turned, kids flipping their pillows over as they tried to find a cool spot, kids scratching one foot with the heel of the other. No one was worried about the bug.
She had to move. She had to get down off the top bunk before the bug fell on her. But how? Why wasn’t there a ladder? The kid sleeping on the bottom bunk had pushed her up but she told her she’d have to do it herself next time. She sounded angry.
She pulled the blanket over her face. But the wool had become scratchy over the years and it scratched her cheek like thorns, and anyway, she knew it was a mistake to cover her head. Now she couldn’t see the bug. But it was still there. Just because you couldn’t see it didn’t mean it wasn’t there. Why hide where you couldn’t watch the enemy? It was much more dangerous. The bug could do anything and nobody would know. There was no surveillance.
Her face was dripping with sweat. The chicken pox rash on her temples started to itch. Her heart was pounding and her breath couldn’t keep up. She had to get away. She had to get away from that bug. She felt so alone. She had to find a way out, a way to get down. There had to be a way. Some way down. And then she decided. She chose the easy way out, the quick fix, the whatever happens happens. She threw off the
