The Few

the phone. Then one day, he took it in his hand and started pushing random buttons. He knew nothing about the technology before him and he had no idea what he was doing. So when he heard the sound of a film starting up on the screen he was scared. He panicked until he figured out how to shut the thing up. He practically smashed it to pieces and threw it down the latrine. He went about it all wrong, but eventually he hit upon the place to press and the sound went off. Only then could he take a look at the screen with a little more attention and care. A film was playing, some ordinary film. He smiled. After spending twenty-two years on the inside, he could watch the world on the outside from palm of his hand. He got so excited he even started laughing and chuckling. Then he covered his mouth with his hand to silence himself.

Hanif the Trashman hadn’t sent Derda a package for three years. It had been three years since he’d been killed. And at the most unexpected moment, too. He’d been shot during an argument in traffic. Now it was his son who prepared the packages. He had listened to his father tell Derda’s story like he was a fairytale hero from another time. Time and time again. Now he was carrying on his father’s legacy. Hanif had never actually told him, “After I’m gone, you will send him the packages.” It wasn’t like he had planned to die or something like that. But in any event, the son considered it his very own mission and kept sending the packages to the fairytale hero.

But he had no idea what would make a thirty-five-year-old man who’d been in prison for nineteen years happy, so he tried to put himself in the other man’s place. In the end, he decided that the only thing that could soften the explosive boredom of being stuck between four walls would be a phone with a hard drive loaded with countless films and songs. He chose the films and songs himself. It was the only electronic mechanism Derda had ever had in prison. And he couldn’t actually use the phone as a phone, but nevertheless, Derda was pleased. And so, in the end, the son had decided on the right gift.

Once Derda had figured out how to use the machine, and once he understood that there were hundreds of films stored in the telephone’s memory, Derda dove into the fantasy world contained in a screen the size of his palm. He stayed there for hours on end. When they were called out into the courtyard so that his one-person cell could be aired, he came back burning with desire to bury himself in the films again.

Derda couldn’t believe how much the world outside and people had changed. He just couldn’t believe his eyes. And for the first time in nineteen years, the thought of the day he’d be released scared him. There had been no decision on it as of yet, but Derda was convinced he’d be released on parole. Anyway, his record since entering prison was spotless. He hadn’t killed anyone, he hadn’t fought with anyone, he hadn’t even cursed the wardens. The other prisoners considered Derda some sort of madman, and by what they’d been told about him, they decided he really was part of a very, but very, secret organization so no one bothered him. No one would touch him. No one dared fight with OĞUZ or ATAY. With such stellar behavior, he was sure to leave prison after twenty-four years. But if the world he went into after he left his cell looked like it did in those films, it would probably take him another twenty-four years to get used to it.

One morning he came back from breakfast and started the next film in the line of the hundreds he had watched. A young woman appeared on the screen. And then a man beside her. Derda knew what sort of film this was because they were both naked. But the truth was that Derda had never watched a porno, nor had he ever touched a woman. The last naked woman he’d seen was his mother’s chopped-up corpse. Süreyya didn’t count because when she jumped up from the floor mattress in the cemetery house, Derda had turned away, turned around completely and stared at the door. For whatever reason, he’d stared into the keyhole.

Derda paused the film and went back to the menu. He touched the place to start the next film in the lineup. Two women caressing and kissing each appeared on screen. Derda skipped that one, too, and went on to the next film.

First he saw a girl with no hair, then he saw a man. A blond man. Then he saw other men. Derda turned away. He didn’t want to watch. He wanted to skip ahead to the next film, but his eyes had left his fingers blind and he didn’t know where his fingertips were touching. They slipped over the screen and touched the image of the girl. And he was looking straight into the eyes of the hairless girl.

The sound was down to a whisper’s volume. At one point, the girl was obscured from vision and only the back of the man on top of her was visible. Just then Derda heard a sound. The cameraman must have heard it, too, because just then he jerked the camera to the direction the sound came from. The screaming, crying girl was in the center of the frame. Derda couldn’t believe it. He went back and rewatched the same sequence. He heard it again:

“Gel buraya! Gel!”

The girl was speaking Turkish. Like she was calling out to Derda to come to her. Then another man took up position between her legs. But the girl kept staring straight at Derda. She was shouting.

First she was just cursing, but then she said this: “Why are