They did as Tayyar said and after Derda had taken three steps, he raised the revolver. Six times his fingertip fell on the emptied trigger, then he looked at Tayyar.
“This time was better. But next time, be more careful.”
All of a sudden Derda remembered that morning in the cemetery. He remembered running into that man. And he remembered what the man had said. He had said the same thing then. “Next time, be more careful.” And his jet-black eyes had bored into Derda. And now he was looking at Derda again. Derda didn’t want to believe it. But he had to believe it. Because it was all true. For years, he had lived in fear of the man in the long robe, this man called Tayyar, with every breath he drew. Hundreds of drops of sweat appeared all over his body. The sweat of fear emptied out of his every pore. A cramp in his stomach that felt like it was going to burst spread all over his body. The revolver in his hand trembled.
Tayyar stood up and Derda thought that the man had understood what he’d been thinking. He knew that Derda had recognized him. As Tayyar approached him, Derda scanned the room for a way out. But he couldn’t find an escape route. He didn’t walk nor run nor scream out. He only trembled and waited for fear.
“Come with me.” Tayyar took the revolver in Derda’s hand by the barrel. “Let’s go outside and take some shots. Let your hand get used to the feeling.”
Israfil had locked up the dogs in their kennel in the front garden. He knew all too well the way they went crazy at the sound of a weapon firing. And added to that, Derda was a stranger to them, and they were trained to rip off the hand of any stranger holding a gun. But their knowing how to take off a hand from the wrist down couldn’t be entirely attributed to their training. They’d just kept up with the life their owner led, that’s all. Like dogs trained to be seeing-eye dogs for the blind, these dogs burned with passion to take out someone’s eye. They were just like the hundreds of thousands of child soldiers all over the world. Just like them, the dogs in the front garden had no choice how to lead their lives. They were encouraged to develop their natural, God-given brutality to an even higher level of brutality. The only difference between child soldiers as tall as their rifles and all the attacking dogs in all the gardens of the world was their reward. But if you think about it, the rewards weren’t so different after all. One was given cooked meat, the other raw. Children cannot eat raw meat. If they could, they’d eat the corpses of their enemy child soldiers. And they would that much more affordable to keep.
They went to the back garden so they wouldn’t have to hear the dogs barking. They walked between two old plane trees and stopped at a distance of five steps from a high sand dune. Tayyar took the shells out of his pocket and inserted them into the round in the revolver’s cylinder. Then he handed the weapon to Derda, holding it from the barrel. Israfil was a couple steps away, trying to light the cigarette pressed between his lips despite the wind. Derda looked at the revolver he was gripping from its hilt and heard Tayyar’s voice.
“Ok, now let’s see you hit the sand dune there. Let’s see how you place your hands.”
He watched Tayyar take two steps to Israfil’s side. Both men were now standing behind Derda. Derda turned and looked at the sand dune. There was nothing between him and it.
“Just stay calm,” said Tayyar. “Don’t bend your arm. Just before you pull the trigger, take a breath and hold it, okay?”
Derda didn’t say anything and Tayyar asked again: “Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” said Derda as he slowly raised his arm. He took aim at the sand dune.
“Take one step forward,” said Tayyar. “This is the amount of space you should have between yourself and Hanif.”
Derda did what he was told and took a deep breath and held it in. He was afraid. Tayyar saw his hesitation and yelled, “Don’t be scared. Fire!”
Derda turned around in place and pulled the trigger. He didn’t lower his arm, nor did he bend it. Three bullets in Tayyar’s chest and two between the shoulder blades of Israfil as he tried to run away. The last one plunged into the back wall of the house.
He opened his narrowed eyes as wide as he could and saw the two men sprawled on the ground like two crooked lumps. As soon as he saw them he shut his eyes. He expected some sign of life from Tayyar or Israfil. But the garden of the house was as silent as the vineyard. Even the dogs had stopped barking.
Derda raised his head and released the breath he’d been holding. He looked up at the sky. One raindrop fell onto his left cheek. Then another one onto his forehead. “Just stay calm,” Tayyar had said. He’d done just what he’d been told. After so many years, Derda was breathing easily for the first time. Without the fear burning his throat. Two steps from two corpses. Under a naive rain.
First he stuck the revolver into his waistband. Then he tore off his gloves and threw them to the ground. He raised OĞUZ and ATAY to the sky. So that there would be no one left who had not seen them.
The dogs sensed they’d been left ownerless, and they started to bark and whine. Their eyes filled with blood. Because, just like child soldiers, they had no tears to cry.
The very day Steven’s mission at the consulate was completed and
