“Can I ask you something?” said Derda. “Why’s it illegal to sell these books?”
“Long story,” said Saruhan. “Fuck it. You want one? I’ll give you one to read.”
“No, that’s Ok. Thanks anyway, though.” He was too embarrassed to say he couldn’t read.
“Take one, man. It’s on me!”
Saruhan was leaning over the tarp spread with books. He picked up a thick book.
“Take this. It never sells anyway. No reason for you to haul it around back and forth, breaking your back. Wish I could choose the books we sold. If I could decide which books they printed, I would have made a fortune a long time ago. Anyway, they go and print the most ridiculous stuff. Ok, some of them sell well. But this? It’d be a fucking miracle if you sold one a month. And it’s as heavy as a block of gold, I mean, shove it. Look at it!”
Derda reluctantly took the book Saruhan was holding out to him. But he didn’t even dare look down at it. Because if Saruhan said something about what was written on it, it would quickly become apparent he couldn’t read. He changed the subject and asked how much it sold for. But Saruhan was rummaging around in his pockets, not paying any attention.
“Wait, I’m going to get a light from the crazy guy,” he said, and walked over to the mad clock seller.
Derda was left alone. He looked at the cover of the book in his hand and froze. He was staring at the two words in the whole world he might possibly have been able to recognize. Because for the last five years he’d been on his knees in front of the marble stone where those two very same words were engraved. Because those were the very two words that were engraved on Derda’s brain. He didn’t know them as letters, but like indentations carved into his memory. And he knew every curve of the images by heart. They had no sound to him. He had no idea how to pronounce them. And up until now he’d never wondered how to either. It didn’t even occur to him to wonder. A man only learns the names of those things people say. And no one said the name on a tombstone out loud. In any event, now those two words were there, staring back at him from the cover of the book. Staring right into Derda’s eyes.
“What happened? You going to take it?”
He couldn’t understand the question because he didn’t even hear it being asked. He raised his head and looked right into Saruhan’s eyes.
“Teach me how to read.”
The next morning, he went to the tomb, book in hand.
“Look,” he said. “I found you. What’s your name, do you know?”
He smiled. He drew his finger across the first word, saying “Oğuz …” Then he touched the second word.
“Atay … Oğuz Atay.”
After work, they’d meet at a coffeehouse near the overpass. After they’d delivered the last box to the depot, Abdullah would drop him off at the nearest bus stop on his way back home. And knowing that all the busses passing there went to the overpass, he jumped on the first one that came by. Of course, Saruhan wasn’t giving him lessons for free. They agreed to what amounted to a fifth of Derda’s salary. So Derda went to bed five nights a month hungry, but he didn’t care. He wasn’t exactly untalented at being hungry, nor was he too bad at Saruhan’s reading lessons.
“First,” Derda had said to Saruhan, “say the name of this book to me.”
“Tutunanmayanlar—The Disconnected.”
Soon, Derda started to dream about Tutunanmayanlar. Who knows what was written on those pages, he said to himself. He held one section of the book tight with his thumb and watched the other hundreds of bent pages flip through like a film strip. Sometimes he’d hold it close to his face and feel the wind from the pages. Closing his eyes and feeling that wind on his face, his dreams were filled with visions of Tutunamayanlar.
When Saruhan said, “Boy, what are you going to do with that beast of a book? You can’t even write your name yet,” Derda smiled. “Forget it,” he said.
They were set up at the coffeehouse’s lowest table, and he was trying to memorize the letters that he had, until that day, perceived as nothing more than meaningless shapes. When he’d been negotiating terms with Saruhan, he’d even had to agree to a predetermined number of teas included in the price. They’d agreed that after five, Saruhan would have to pay for any additional teas out of his own pocket. But he never drank a sixth.
In the mornings, Derda would practice by reading the marble slabs in the cemetery. Once he’d learned their names, he found himself imagining the lives of the dead. Before, he’d considered tombs nothing more than stone and earth. He was also learning his numbers. He surprised himself by connecting the whole of a fifty-year life span by the single narrative thread between life and death. It was as if just at that moment, even if only for a moment, the dead were brought back to life.
In the evenings back at home, he’d read the picture books Saruhan gave him. He was practically burning with passion to start reading Tutunamayanlar, but he’d promised himself and Saruhan that he wouldn’t. Until he could read without making a mistake, he wouldn’t touch it. But Saruhan had one and only one reason to insist on the promise, though, and that was that he wanted to prevent Derda from realizing that, as a teacher, he was useless. If Derda realized Saruhan had no talent for teaching, then maybe he’d stop taking lessons.
But in
