The consequence of a most entrenched habit, Derda called out “I’m here!” without thinking. The sound of his own voice scared him and he paused the film. He felt like that frame of the film had been filmed for no other reason than to provoke him. He looked at the frozen frame with tears in his eyes. The hairless girl’s cry was just the same as the call to action that had led him in pursuit of Oğuz Atay so long ago. He’d forgotten that cry until the beating of his heart against his rib cage reminded him. He felt its pulse in his fingertips. And one of those fingers, without ever taking his eyes off the eyes of the girl, set the image in motion again.
There were countless more men, and Derda cried with the girl and listened to her pleas. She couldn’t bear it any longer. Then men fell over the girl one by one like a filthy rain, and Derda looked on, hopelessly. He paused the image and went back.
He watched the girl yell, “I’m here, where are you?” countless more times and every time he answered her. “I’m here!”
“I’m here!”
Not one more, he never watched any other film.
He just listened to that girl.
That crying girl.
That girl who beat the men on top of her with her listless fists.
He listened to the sound of the girl’s high voice as she screamed.
He didn’t want to, but he counted.
Fifty-two men who went in and out between her legs.
He closed his eyes, and pressed the cry to his ear like a seashell.
He knew all the contractions in her voice by heart.
He engraved the letters formed by the girl’s lips onto the walls of his mind.
Sometimes he watched with his eyes filled with tears right up to his pupils, sometimes he spoke as he watched.
He spoke to the girl like he was speaking to Oğuz Atay’s tombstone.
Whatever he knew, he told her.
Whatever he was afraid of, he listed them one by one.
Whatever he imagined, he whispered it to her.
Whatever he had forgotten, he remembered.
Whatever he dreamed of, he told her.
Then he asked the wardens for something.
To teach him how to write.
Because now he had something to write.
He worked for months to learn how to write.
And months to perfect his penmanship.
And in the end, each letter that fell from his pen onto the page was a painting.
And each of those paintings was a pledge.
That’s why he wanted to learn how to write.
Because he thought that if he wrote his pledge it could never be erased.
Not from his life nor from his future.
When he was forty years old and there were forty days left until his release from prison,
As many years as from the last time he cleaned Oğuz Atay’s tomb,
After five whole years spent looking at the girl without hair and crying, “I’m here!”
Derda wrote a letter.
With all the love he had.
DERDA’S LETTER
You asked, Where are you? Well, I’m here.
My name is Derda. When I was sixteen years old, I committed three murders and left two people permanently disabled. Some of them were for Oğuz Atay, and some of them were for me. Or maybe because I’m crazy. Later, I realized it didn’t make much difference. Now I’m forty years old and I’ve lived for twenty-four years in a prison cell.
You don’t know me. You couldn’t even have known that such a person existed. But I saw you. I saw how you were beaten. I also saw how you begged them. I’ve been looking at you for the last five years. Every day for five years.
There are forty days left until I’m out. I don’t know where you are. I don’t even know if you’re alive. But in forty days, this letter and I are setting out on a journey. This letter and me, we’re going to go all over the world so we can find you and give you this letter ourselves. This journey will start without you, but will end with us together. If need be, it will be a journey to the death.
I thought about your name a lot. None of the names I knew seemed right for you. I’ll hear it from you the day I find you. So I stopped trying to guess. For now, I just call you “my dear.” I hope that doesn’t make you mad.
I’ve made a pledge to you. No matter where you are, I’ll find you. If you’re dead, I’ll be running right after you. If there’s no life after death, I’ll create it so I can find you.
Because I am in love with you.
Derda
JOURNEY
After his last night sleeping in prison, he woke up and opened his eyes. He looked at the ceiling. All he needed to do to start the day he’d been dreaming of for years was to sit up in bed and press his feet against the cold concrete floor. But he didn’t do it. He waited. He eyes were watering but he never blinked. When his cheekbones got wet, Derda saw his dear’s face in a mist on the ceiling. He raised his OĞUZ hand up toward her. Like he could touch her face. Like his fingers were being tossed by ocean waves like coral, like he was caressing a ghost. When his tears reached his chin from both sides Derda whispered “I’m coming” and like a dead man coming to life, he slowly sat up on his bed.
He stood up and wedged his hand into the split in the spring mattress and pulled out his telephone.
“When you’re leaving they won’t search you,” the courier wardens had told him. “We’ll just say someone else was on duty. So don’t worry about anything.”
Derda slipped on the pants and shirt that had waited a week to be worn. He put on the jacket and dropped the telephone into the inner pocket. He
