Well of Trapped Words

Sema Kaygusuz

Description

Sema Kaygusuz is one of Turkey's leading literary writers. Her writing is lyrical and carefully stylised; it addresses contemporary themes of cultural identity and feminism, while also incorporating elements of Anatolian myth and mysticism.

Sujets

• Short story

Informations

• Publié par: Comma Press
• Date de parution: 25 septembre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781910974735
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Contents
Zilsan’s Feet
Halfway Down the Middle
Many Years Ago, I was Standing in a Meydan
Cold
Yülerzik
Askâr
The Well of Trapped Words
The Viper’s Son
The Well of Broken Places
The E in Elif
Lost
Sorrow Hunter
Stolen
Women’s Voices
Yellow
Tacettin
Army Story
Nine Sons
Deep Inside
About the Author
About the Translator

First published in Great Britain in 2015 by Comma Press
www.commapress.co.uk

Copyright © remains with the author and translator 2015
This collection copyright © Comma Press 2015
All rights reserved.

‘Cold’ (‘Üsüyen’) first appeared in Ortadan Yarisindan (‘Halfway Down the Middle’), Can Yayinlari, Istanbul 1997. ‘Halfway Down the Middle’ (‘Ortadan Yarisindan’), ‘Tacettin’ (‘Tacettin’), ‘The E in Elif’ (‘Elif’in E’si’), ‘The Viper’s Son’ (‘Engeregin Oglu’), ‘Women’s Voices’ (‘Kadin Sesleri’), ‘Yülerzik’, Askâr and ‘Yellow’ (‘Sari’) first appeared in Sandik Lekesi (‘The Coffin Stain’), Can Yayinlari, Istanbul 2000. ‘The Well of Broken Places’ (‘Çatlak Yerlerin Kuyusu’), ‘Deep Inside’ (‘Dipleri’), and ‘Stolen’ (‘Çalinti Yürekler’) first appeared in Doyma Noktasi (‘Saturation Point’), Can Yayinlari, Istanbul 2002. ‘The Well of Trapped Words’ (Esir Sözler Kuyusu), ‘Sorrow Hunter’ (Üzüntü Avcisi), ‘Lost’ (Kayip), and ‘Zilsan’s Feet’ (Zilsan’in Ayaklari), first appeared in Esir Sözler Kuyusu (‘The Well of Trapped Words’), Dogan Kitap, Istanbul 2004. ‘Many Years Ago, I was Standing in a Meydan’ (‘Yillar Önce Ben Bir Meydandaydim’) first appeared in the anthology Bir Dersim Hikâyesi Murathan Mungan’in Seçtikleriyle, ed. Murathan Mungan, Metis, Istanbul 2012. ‘Nine Sons’ (‘Dokuz Ogul’) first appeared in the anthology Firat’a karisan Öyküler, Arkeoloji ve Sanat Yayinlari, 2000. ‘Army Story’ (‘Ani’) first appeared in the anthology Merhaba Asker, Murathan Mungan’in Seçtikleriyle, Metis, 2014.
Reprinted with permission of the publishers.

The moral rights of the contributors to be identified as the Author of this Work have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988. A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library.


This book has been published with the support of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Turkey within the framework of the TEDA Project.




The publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England.


This book has been selected to receive financial assistance from English PEN’s ‘PEN Translates’ programme, supported by Arts Council England. English PEN exists to promote literature and our understanding of it, to uphold writers’ freedoms around the world, to campaign against the persecution and imprisonment of writers for stating their views, and to promote the friendly co-operation of writers and the free exchange of ideas. www.englishpen.org
Zilsan’s Feet

I

They know Zilsan from her handbag. That’s how it is with some girls: people know them from their handbags.
It’s red. A holiday gift from the house where they go to clean – if anything so old and out of fashion can be called a gift, that is. The leather is beginning to scale off. The straps are too long for Zilsan, so she has to knot them. And naturally they bite into her shoulder, which now has a groove in it, deep and purple. She has knots all over her. On skirts that are too long, and bras that are one or two sizes too big, and coats with shredded linings. This is a girl whose life is fading at the creases. Its multi-coloured fabric is fast unravelling.
She gets cold. Every season of the year, she gets cold. A pair of normal pants, over which she puts a pair of woollen pants, over which she puts a nylon petticoat, over which she puts a skirt two sizes too big. Everything she owns, she wears – layer over layer. Because her skin can’t breathe, it perspires. Her back is always drenched. On her skin she carries the map of an imaginary country. Its sores never heal. Its sores carry the anguish of a city famous for its hills.
On the days she bleeds, her temper is short. She longs, without hope, to be delivered from this staleness, to be light enough to fly with the wind. Even water tastes harsh to her. Any dish containing ground meat revolts her. Everything she touches seems to stick to her skin. But most of all, it’s her own blood that shames her. Terrified that a single drop might seep through her skirt, she piles on the layers. And if she jumps at the slightest hint of cool air, it’s fear of blood that’s worrying her: fear that one drop of blood on her skirt might strip her naked for all to see.
Undressing takes as long as a funeral. When she takes off her stockings, she gets covered in dust. As each garment is cast off, another layer of dust rises into the air. By the time she’s undressed, she’s drowning in a sea of dust. These are the words that dry the muddy suburbs. She scratches between her never-aired legs. All night long, she scratches until she breaks the skin. Here and there, her pimples get infected. Small aggravations turn into great furies. Only her feet are beautiful. Her toes are small, and lily white, with pearly nails. The rounded bones of her delicate ankles are as smooth as glass; the skin from her heels to her arches blushed with pink. Anyone who only saw her bare feet wouldn’t dream they belonged to Zilsan.
There’s a skyscraper nearby. A gigantic mall. Reflected in Zilsan’s eyes, it shimmers. In this rough-hewn neighbourhood, there could be no image more useless. It’s a fearful giant, making the shantytown still clinging to the side of the hill so much smaller, so much uglier. It blocks out the sun, and then the people move on. It’s so big that if it collapsed, Zilsan would be caught under the rubble, even this far away. It’s so far away that Zilsan would have to run through the mud for half an hour to get there. And when she does, she can’t bring herself to go inside. She is sure that if she did, every last object in every last shop window would turn into a monster. She’d freeze in fright.
On the billboards advertising the mall, there’s a huge painted hand, sparkling with a single diamond. This is what she stares at all day long, while waiting for Murat. The skyscraper is a giant prism that sparkles with the night’s blue lights, a monster that swallows up the young people of the suburbs and holds them inside. It boasts beautiful faces, and beautiful hands, but in stormy weather it roars with each breath. Has Murat thought about Zilsan even once since the mall opened? As he strolls up and down the skyscraper’s clean and slippery corridors, day and night, does he ever tire of the sights? Every morning Zilsan steals a cigarette from her father’s pocket and stands in front of the skyscraper, waiting for Murat to appear. As the day wears on, she bows under the weight of her heavy clothes. She’s so ugly, so very ugly, and as ground down by poverty as a girl can be.
One day she can’t bear it anymore and goes straight up to the entrance. The automatic doors slide open. The air rushing out is warm, and sweet as sugar. Startled, Zilsan steps back. The glass panels close. She moves a few steps forward, and they open up again. Then again they close. One step forward – open sesame! One step back – close sesame! A nervous giggle. Then suddenly there’s a man standing in front of her. He has rings under his eyes and a detector rod in his hands and he’s dressed in navy blue. He says nothing, but he cuts her to shreds with his eyes:
‘How do you think you’re going to get in when you don’t have the faintest idea how to pass through a door (do you really think you do it by waving your arms around like that?), but first, you’ll have to give an account of yourself, you’ll have to tell us what you’re doing here, and, if you have evil intentions, well then let’s hear them, and that way we can protect the people who need to be protected from you, we can turn off the lights and hide, or close down the entrances to this place where the walls inside are made of metal and there are bubbles filled with human breath and monsters speaking languages you don’t know, or you can come on in and see what goes on in a skyscraper, but show one drop of blood and you’re dead, one drop of filth, you hear, but come on in, see couples arm-in-arm, sharing heartbreak, come inside and join the rat race, come and see how the moving staircase cries, each and every time it comes full circle, and see the lift that sobs every time it goes up, because it’s afraid of heights, yes, there’s a wild carnival going on inside here, a festival the likes of which you’ve never seen, where there’s fair skin for sale, and noble complexions, and acres of good luck charms, and pearls and rubies and perfect geometries, all accounted for, come in and see for yourself but did you think any of them could be eaten like sugarplums and sweets?’
The man in navy blue touches everyone else just once with his detector rod, with a squawk, but he touches Zilsan all over. From her scaling leather bag he removes sheets of gilded paper, a stale stick of neon pink lipstick, a clutch of ballpoint pens, and a compact mirror with a cracked cover – all the accessories, in short, that a girl who is hopeless at playing house might think she’ll need. As she goes up the escalator, she looks around in awe. The spotlights make all the things in the windows sparkle and hop. But they drain the colour out of people. She hears noises from the top floor. Chewing, and slurping, and the smell of kebabs. Reluctantly she gulps it in, prey to a hunger that seems to come down to her from her grandfather. She can recognise the shantytown boys at a glance. Square-faced boys with bushy black hair, sitting around aluminium tables with their one glass of Coca-Cola, all eyes on the girls striding past in their shiny high-heeled shoes. With a curiosity that bulges their pleated trousers, into which they’ve stuffed their shirts, they watch every woman who walks past,