Ayhan Abi

“Attention, attention! Calling the professor, calling the nurse! Calling the professor, calling the nurse! Hasan in Elazığ; Ali in Malatya…” I witnessed the performance of Ayhan Abi, our neighborhood’s ‘madman,’ which began with these words, I don’t know how many times. If he was in a good mood and asked politely, he would immediately straighten his posture and begin to perform the act to which he had only made limited additions and subtractions over the years. Each time, I would listen intently and test my memory; on the other hand, I would try to see if he would break the discipline he established with his eyes fixed straight ahead during his performance.

Ayhan Abi was tall. He had a large frame that didn't look out of place in his wide black shalwar, and a neck as thick and layered as I have never seen on any other person. On his right wrist, there was a swelling larger than a child's fist. In moments when he drifted away from the world we perceived, he would suddenly start running as if dragging his left foot behind the other, and at that moment, he would bite his right wrist as hard as he could. That was the cause of the swelling. Then a state would come over him, he would calm down, and either sit somewhere or turn his run into a comfortable walk. During this time, what came out of his mouth was either unintelligible or did not hold a meaningful integrity for us. But after a while, he would turn his attention back to our world.

***

The time of the invasion of Kuwait and the Gulf War. It is clear I hadn't turned 6 yet. We only have TRT on our black-and-white television. That is why, for me, turning on the television and turning on TRT are the same thing. When we were playing with the other children, one of us would shout, “Sesame Street is startiiing,” and run away; I would ask myself, “I wonder if it starts on our TV too?” That is how I know: I had not yet grasped that when people turn on their televisions, they are watching the same broadcast at the same time. If I surrender myself to Benedict Anderson for a moment, I had not yet reached the level of abstraction to enter the radar of an imagined community.

Every day, I see warplanes on the news. I am sure that until that time, I had never heard any name as often as the name Saddam Hussein. I can still see our neighbor Mevlüt Abi describing with a mimicking facial expression how Saddam went to school on horseback. Is it because of this, or because he completed the name, that we call his son, who is a little younger than us, 'Saddam Hussein'? On one hand, we play Rambo, but I feel that the Americans are the bad guys. Back then—I have reached this age and still haven't seen it—the center of my universe, to which I added my complaints, was Adana. I learn from the television that American planes will take off from a place called Incirlik, and that Incirlik is in Adana. Days later, I hear the sounds of those planes, and sometimes I see them. They pass with so much noise that I get worried.

One day, with the money in my pocket, I bought a bag of vegetables from Grocer Nuri Abi: a few tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers. I set my sights on our neighbor's woodshed. I cleaned a corner; organized it, and threw in two cushions. After grabbing a pot, I called my mother to our shelter, using a word I had just learned. My mother came, looked, laughed, patted my head, and took the vegetable bag and the pot and left. She did not share the same worries as me. I lingered for a while and eventually had to return home. While my mother was eating the vegetable stew she made with what I bought for dinner, she was saying, “Since it was bought with my son's money, the stew tastes even better.”

***

After a long period of disappearance and at a moment when he was partially turning toward our world, I asked Ayhan Abi mischievously: “Where did you go, Ayhan Abi? Did you get on a plane from Incirlik and leave?” I knew about the warplanes, but I thought the passenger planes I saw on TV also used Incirlik, which was in the center of my universe, Adana. “What Incirlik, man! Are you making fun of me, son! They board the plane in Adana at Şakirpaşa! Listen here!” I was learning about the civil airport in Adana, which was closed recently, from Ayhan Abi for the first time. Incirlik, on the other hand, was becoming more identified with war and occupation in my mind.

When I started working at our tea house, I began to see Ayhan Abi more often. Every time he passed by, he would take a breather at the tea house, and as soon as he sat down, he would drink the tea offered to him. If my father and the Electrician had nothing to occupy them, Ayhan Abi had few excuses not to perform his well-known act in the face of the increasingly generous offerings: “Attention, attention! Calling the professor, calling the nurse! Calling the professor, calling the nurse! Hasan in Elazığ, Ali in Malatya… Celil in the center of Antep, Öksüz Kadir in Oğuzeli, Hakkı in Kilis… Hacı in Maraş… Tosun Memmed in Türkoğlu…”

Ayhan Abi was naming one person each from Elazığ and Malatya, as well as from the centers and many districts of Kahramanmaraş and Gaziantep. When he entered the provincial borders of Osmaniye on the map in his mind, he would name people at the village level, and in some villages, he would name more than one person; he would add more adjectives to the names he listed: “Damat Şükrü in Kızlaç; Ahmet in Savranlı, then Çolak Reşit;… Fısdık Emmi died in Şekerdere, in his place Pontüllü Sadık, then Fırıncı Mahmut.”

Our neighborhood was at the eastern end of the city. The district, and after a while the central district, started from here. Ayhan Abi would give the warning he used when starting his performance one more time when his own turn came: “Attention, attention! Calling the professor, calling the nurse! Calling the professor, calling the nurse! Osmaniye center, Mareşal Fevzi Çakmak Neighborhood, the rose of the neighborhood, Ayhan… Osmaniye center, the master of the madmen, Deli Apo!” Ayhan Abi would thus complete his performance of listing the names of the madmen he knew—whether from his rare hospitalizations or his occasional disappearances for a few months—sometimes within a hierarchy. As far as we confirmed from those who stopped by the tea house from nearby villages and districts, the names he listed were correct. It was also certain that he was the rose of our neighborhood. Clearly, in some way, he saw himself as a member of a community consisting of madmen, those who perceived the world differently than we did. And he repeated the names of the other members of the community every day.

***

I am in high school. One day I left school and came to the tea house. Some of the surrounding shops are closed, some are empty, and some are more crowded than usual. The tea house's clientele isn't bad, but the Electrician, who should have been sitting on the bench on the sidewalk at the end where his own shop is located, as his workload had decreased at those hours, is nowhere to be seen. It catches my attention early because I was going to tease him first. Without needing to ask anyone anything, heated voices reflecting feelings of righteousness in the tone of their words satisfy my curiosity. Our Electrician, who has no party, no community, no sect; who never misses his joy, an extra bite at his table, the photo of his Ata with the kalpak, or the obligatory Friday prayer, takes the Turkish flag in his hand a few hours ago and makes all the tradesmen close their shutters, starting from the first shop on the main road passing through the middle of the city, about five hundred meters to the left of the tea house. As the organizer of the protests in the city that started with the throwing of a cash register at Prime Minister Ecevit, he leads hundreds of people all the way to the Governor's building.

The Electrician is from a village attached to the center. There are a few madmen from that village on Ayhan Abi's list. Following this protest action, my father intervened by counting the Electrician among the madmen. Although he forgot in the first few days, with my father's persistent reminders, Ayhan Abi added our Electrician to his list as the last of the madmen from his village. Perhaps sensing that he had naturally adapted to this list over time, he mentioned his name in every performance.

When my mother came to visit me last, we went to the market together: tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, peppers… When we returned, she treated me like a small child and said to my father with pride, “My son did my market shopping.” The expression on her face while eating the stew at our dinner table, however, was one of dissatisfaction: “The vegetables we used to eat had flavor, look at this eggplant, it's like leather. The tomato paste from our field is also starting to taste strange.”

I wanted to say "Incirlik," but I couldn't! I wanted to say "planes," but I couldn't! I wanted to say "the pot in my shelter"… We surrendered ourselves to the wavy flow of the sound coming from the television: they are working… the leader… if necessary… in our region… earthquake… Istanbul… experts… ceremony… Forces… expulsion… price regulation… astonished those who saw it…

After a while, my father asked, “Do you have any news about the Electrician?” I said, “I haven't had any news for a long time,” but I couldn't say, “He is mostly on my mind.” While looking at my father as if my ears were on him, I tried to remember Ayhan Abi's list. The memory I had tested in the past could not pass today's test. I didn't even remember the Electrician's place on the list. Let it be, I said. Once you know how to start from a place like Ayhan Abi and count men and women, sometimes one by one, sometimes ten by ten, new lists are formed under new conditions, and countless new performances are staged. If he knows and counts, the Electrician will also be connected to the list from somewhere again. I straightened my posture and fixed my eyes: “Attention, attention! Calling the professor, calling the nurse! Calling the professor, calling the nurse! Paşa İzzet from Osmaniye…”