“Thanks, Isa,” said Derda. “I’ll never forget this favor, what you’ve done for me.”
“Fuck that, man, what favor? Just show up every now and then and buy me a beer, that’d be enough.”
Derda returned to the warehouse with the morning ezan. They slipped in side by side. But as soon as he went in, he met eyes with Süleyman. Still drinking. Sitting at his vodka table.
“Israfil came. He asked for you.”
Derda’s bright idea had been to hide his drunkenness by not speaking, but he was forced to break his silence.
“What did he want?”
“He said you shouldn’t be out at night, that you should stay where you’re staying.”
“Why?”
“They’re going to smash this place up. That’s what he said.”
“Who?”
“Who do you think? Some thug, goes by the name Hanif the Trashman.”
Derda couldn’t hold himself back and he laughed.
“I don’t get it, is the guy a trashman or a thug?”
“Yeah, keep laughing,” said Süleyman. “But where are you going to be when these guys are up against the door?”
Derda tried to act serious but he couldn’t quite pull it off. He was still smiling when he said it, but still he managed to ask, “What do they want?”
Süleyman rolled his glass back down his gullet. Derda folded up boxes and set up his bed.
“This,” said Süleyman.
Derda turned around and looked at the man, his eyes as blood-red as the base of a terra-cotta pot.
“This?”
“Yeah, this,” Süleyman said, gesturing to all the books. And to all the machines. “Everything. Boy, there’s a lot of money in this business. And when there’s a lot of money, there’s a lot of problems. Get it?”
Süleyman fell silent. He bent his head down, like he was tracking some thing with his eyes. To be more precise, four things. Four fingers. Four letters. He couldn’t quite see them from where he was sitting, so he asked.
“What’s that?”
Derda raised his right hand and first looked at his tattoos himself. He looked at them like it was the first time he was seeing them. Then he turned his eyes toward Süleyman.
“This? Yeah, these are letters, it’s nothing.”
“Let’s see!” said Süleyman. “Let’s just see what you got written there.”
“It says Oğuz.” Then he raised his left fist and showed it to him. “And this one says Atay.”
Süleyman laughed. “What an ass. What kind of man are you? And Israfil was going to give you a gun! Son, you’d take off all our heads!”
Derda stood facing him, still trying to make his sagging face look stern.
“Come on, lay down, get some sleep. They’ll be here soon.”
During his two hours of sleep, Derda punched everything that tried to get in his way with an OĞUZ and an ATAY. Deep in the dreams of a moment.
“What’s up, you cold?” Israfil asked. He was looking at the black gloves with the fingertips cut off that Derda had on.
“No,” Derda answered. “It’s just that my hands get sweaty and the boxes slip, so I put these on.”
But he’d really put the gloves on because he was being drowned in all the attention and questions about his tattoos. He’d bought them from the street bazaar they set up near the warehouse on Sundays.
“Well, okay,” said Israfil. “Now come with me.”
“But Brother Abdullah will be here soon,” said Derda.
“Don’t worry about him, they’ll be fine, you come with me,” Israfil said, leaving the warehouse.
Derda followed two steps behind him. They got into a twenty-year-old Mercedes and pulled out onto the main road. From there they turned into major traffic, and they moved forward slowly in fits and starts. Israfil was totally silent. And so Derda didn’t say anything either. But as soon as they’d made it onto the highway around the city, Israfil’s grating voice cut into Derda’s ears.
“How old are you?”
“About seventeen.”
“Where’s your mother?”
“She’s dead.”
“Have you seen your father again?”
“No,” Derda answered.
“Now, look, you can count on me like a big brother. So don’t feel uncomfortable or shy. Is there anything you need, any problem you have?”
“No, brother,” said Derda. At the same time he was looking at a face of Istanbul he’d never seen before. He was looking at glass-faced skyscrapers.
“In that case, Derda efendi, seeing as you don’t have anything to ask me for, would it be okay if I asked something of you?”
Derda was sitting up straight in the leather seat, his eyes overflowing with the view from the windshield. It was the first time he’d even seen the Bosphorus. The first time in his life. And to add to that, they were headed straight for the bridge he’d always heard about, but had never crossed.
“Derda!” said Israfil. “I asked if it would be okay if I asked you for something.”
“Of course, of course,” said the kid without even thinking. He was looking into the Bosphorus as if it were a mirror of waves reflecting from deep inside Istanbul.
“There’s a guy,” Israfil continued. “A thug, goes by the name Hanif the Trashman.”
Derda had both hands on the dashboard. His back was straight as a bolt, his lips pulled away from his teeth. His pupils were playing a game of tag with what he was seeing. If he looked to the right, he regretted losing the view of what was on the left. And if he looked to the left, he regretted the loss of the view out the other side. Just then the traffic opened like an accordion’s bellows and the front tires of the Mercedes lunged onto the Bosphorus Bridge. And just then his heart started pounding so loudly that Derda closed his mouth so no one would hear its deafening beat. He saw white islands floating on the water below. White ships. He looked out to the horizon. Everything was so beautiful. The sky looked so beautiful. He looked at Israfil, seated at his side. He wanted him to look at it, too. Just for a moment, and he’d be so happy and then he’d smile until it hurt. And in that moment he could hear
