The Few

would be history. The dirt roads had been covered in paving stones; the widest ones had been paved with asphalt. The times were changing. The children were going to be left outside, on the other side of the walls rising around the cemetery. There was no bread to be won from the dead anymore. Soon there’d be no children left there. Within a month at most. So the pursuit of gainful employment had come to each and every one. Isa had gone to the marble engraver as an apprentice, Fevzi had disappeared into the city, and Remzi, through connections from relatives, had found work in a depot that printed pirated books.

When he’d told him about it—“book work”—Derda shouted at him, “Man, are you making fun of me? You know I can’t read.” But Remzi had told him, “Man, you’re not going to be reading the books, you going to be hauling them around.”

They were eating a breakfast of the simit Remzi ran out and bought and tea, all laid out on top of a box spread with the uncut pages of one of the day’s bestselling novels. They ate in silence.

Then the iron door swung open and a monster of a man came in. Süleyman picked up the pages loaded with sesame seeds from the simits by their corners and crumpled them in his fist. He looked up.

“Look, Israfil’s here.”

When Israfil took off his coat, the butt of his pistol flashed at his waist. Remzi stood up and Derda followed his lead.

“Brother Israfil, this is Derda. The friend I told you about. To do the loading work …”

Israfil looked over Derda and his guilty eyes and asked, “What’s your father do?”

“He’s in prison,” said Derda.

“Fine.”

It was the first time Derda had seen someone register absolutely no surprise at his answer. Israfil nodded like being in prison was a totally ordinary existence, but Derda waited for him to ask more. But he didn’t. Because for Israfil, prison was a just another reality. He drank the tea Remzi brought him in one gulp and spoke.

“The van comes around nine. They’ll tell you what to load. Then you’ll go with the van and deliver the goods to the sales points. Depending on the situation, you’ll do the rounds three or four times. In the evening, you’ll pick up the stuff from the sales points and bring it all back here. That’s the job. And you’ll work fast. There’ll be no lingering around in front of the sales points, understand?”

“Ok,” said Derda.

Israfil lit a cigarette and gave his empty glass to Remzi, adding, “Look, you are here because your friend here vouched for you. Work hard and earn your keep.”

“I understand, brother,” said Derda.

Then Israfil stared at Derda with a crushing glare and took three long, deep breaths. There was no need for him to speak. Because the threat came out of Israfil’s body like a cloud and fell over everything in the depot. When Israfil felt that Derda had been sufficiently impressed by the cold damp of the cloud, he turned around and was lost in the labyrinth of books.

Half an hour later, Derda was carrying two boxes loaded with forty books each. He passed through the iron door, climbed up the twelve steps, and loaded the boxes into the back of a windowless van pulled up to the top of the stairs. It took him seven trips to learn that it took fourteen boxes to fill the van. He turned the jug next to the refrigerator upside down, filled up his glass, and drank the water in great gulps. He wiped off his sweat, yelled “Coming!” then ran up the stairs and jumped into the passenger’s seat where he was greeted with a cigarette thrust right up under his nose.

“Light this.”

He took the cigarette and lit it with a lighter on the dashboard. Then he and Abdullah, a man he’d met an hour before, pulled out of the side street and onto the main road. As soon as they were on the main road, it became all too apparent that Abdullah was a closet blabbermouth. Like all secret talkaholics, it was only when there was just one person stuck by his side that he really started up. He’d sit in deep silence at a crowded table in the coffeehouse, but when everyone else had left, he’d bore a hole in the ear of the only man left. He’d tell any story that happened to cross his mind. Or he’d talk about whatever he’d held bottled up inside until that moment. He’d gossip about the people who’d just gotten up and left, he’d even answer questions that people who weren’t even there anymore had asked earlier. All this was only more evidence about why no one wanted to be stuck alone with Abdullah. But Derda didn’t have the benefit of choice. Every day in the van, for hours on end, he was alone with Abdullah. Starting from his very first “light this” he was doomed to listen to Abdullah’s unending jabber all day long.

One of their first stops was a sales point set up on a pedestrian overpass near a university. This was when Derda understood why Remzi said the work was a bit tough, and he hated that sales point with every single step of the sixty-four steps he had to climb to get to the top of the overpass. He didn’t know what he was getting himself into when he tripled up the boxes. When he dropped off the last box clutched between his fingers, his legs smarted with pain. A young man with a beard named Saruhan was standing in front of the sales point. He was a student at the university you could see from the overpass. According to what he said, he was studying math. It took Derda two weeks, and countless trips up and down sixty-four steps, to find out that much.

Their deliveries brought them to spots in all boroughs of the city, in all the shopping