The Few

but she herself was crying, too. She couldn’t stop herself. It was like all the pains had compounded, crashing over her like an avalanche. Her head was lowered, like the sun would never rise again. But actually, the dearly departed was not her daughter. Nor had she even seen the girl, not even once. But, whatever the woman whose shoulders she held felt, it hit her heart just as hard. If nothing else, she felt love. Maybe she wasn’t her child, but she did love her husband, and so she transferred the love. And just think, a girl like that, just twenty-six years old. She killed herself, so far away where she was working in service of the nation. For the nation’s children. She had met the mother of the deceased at a teacher’s association event. It was an evening organized for family members of teachers who were serving so far away. They were fond of one another instantly. It was like they already knew each other. How could they not? Both of their loves were posted at the same school. One a daughter. The other, a husband. One was Yeşim. The other Nezih. One a new teacher. The other the assistant principal. One was a wren and the other the cat that caught her.

Yeşim realized that her life’s search was for death. And in the end, like not a few people, she succeeded in getting her corpse buried. What she wasn’t able to do in a letter, she worked out with a pistol. With her retired colonel of a father’s ancient pistol. She crumpled. The old man who owned the gun now held the marble slab with two hands and kissed it. After her attempted suicide at school, Yeşim was released from her post and she returned to Istanbul. For the first few days she didn’t speak. The next few days she laughed too much. Then the next day she shot herself.

Now she was lying in a brand-new tomb while two meters above her they couldn’t care less about what had happened. If she could have, she would have sprung back to life. Nezih’s wife held out her phone to Yeşim’s mother, and she set it against her ear. “My condolences, my friend,” he said. Nezih’s friendship was artfully orchestrated. He gave his condolences from the other side of the phone.

At just that moment if Yeşim could have, she would have opened her eyes as wide as her eyelids could open. She’d have ripped open her shroud with her fingernails. She would’ve scratched and dug at the earth above her like a beaver until she reached the surface. Then she would have torn the telephone out of her mother’s hand. If she could have done it, she would’ve opened her mouth as wide as she could and screamed, “Fuck you, you son of a bitch!”

But Yeşim couldn’t do any of that. She couldn’t even flutter one single eyelash. It had been twenty-six days since she’d been buried. She probably didn’t even have a single eyelash left. Hasibe didn’t know what else to say, so she said “thank you” and handed the phone back to Nezih’s wife. The woman shut her phone and wrapped her arms around Hasibe. They cried together.

Derda, for his part, was waiting for the moment when they would fall silent. The moment when they would begin to collect themselves. But which one should he stretch his hand out to? The old man, or one of the women? If they give me chocolate instead of money, I’ll throw it back in their faces, he thought to himself. The greatest counterstrike in the arsenal of the cemetery visitors was just that: candy or chocolate. Their hands would dive into their pockets, and getting hold of the three or four candies they’d positioned earlier, they’d take them out and hand them over with a “Here you go, son.”

The first to stop sobbing was Nezih’s wife. Despite the fact that the woman was becoming like family to her mother, Yeşim was a stranger to the woman. Not so the case with her husband, Nezih. So her tears were the first to dry. Derda didn’t miss the chance and stuck out his palm. Looking at the child’s disheveled face, Nezih’s wife opened her handbag and took out her coin purse. No spare change. She was forced to go for paper money. The least valuable, of course. She wanted to pull out just one note, but out came two. She regretted it, but it was too late.

“Just out of the blue, we gave good money to some strange child. Anyway, may it be a blessing on our heads,” she said later when she went home, to her son, a university student five years younger than Yeşim.

Just as fast as Derda snatched the money he ran out of the cemetery and straight into the closet corner shop. He got a sandwich with sautéed meat and ate it then and there. He ate three of them, one right after the other. He practically choked himself. He grabbed a soda from the refrigerator, cracked it open, and downed it all in one swift move. Down the hatch. Then he started to come to. He remembered he had the last pieces of his mother back home to bury. That’s the first thing that came to mind as soon as his stomach was full. The five pieces of his mother, right behind the door. As soon as night falls, he said silently to himself. He paid the grocer and left, but he turned right around and went back inside.

“Give me a pack of cigarettes.”

“Which ones?” the grocer asked.

“The cheapest,” said Derda, “and a box of matches.”

And that’s how he started to smoke, with the last money left in his pocket. He was eleven years old.

Isa caught Derda at the cemetery gates and couldn’t hold himself back a second longer.

“Buried treasure! We have it in my new cemetery.”

He must have been one of the unluckiest kids in the