topics: |  fiction | turkey

Lyrical tale of the Anatolian hills

Deyirmenoluk village is surrounded by a plain of thistles. There are no fields, no vineyards, no gardens, only thistles. The snow-capped peaks of the Toros Daglari are very close from here, almost within arm's reach.

It is white on the peaks of the mountains. On the craggy inhospitable upper reaches of Ali Dagh it is virgin snow and your footsteps leave a trail everywhere, but if you drag a thick branch of blackthorn brush behind you it disperses the snow and in half an hour the tracks are gone and Sergeant Asim and all the king's men can't even make out that you are here. Blackthorn is the best for covering your tracks.

But if it is Lame Ali that is on your trail then it becomes a different story. Ali is so fond of tracking that he often gets diverted from his objective to follow the fresh spoor of the jackal through the woods. Lame Ali is a genius - show him your quarry and Lame Ali bring you to his door. Once on the trail, he has no sense of right or wrong, of which side he is on - it is like an intoxication leading him inexorably down the trail.

There are brigands in the mountains at the foothills of the Toros. There is blood here, but it does not stain your fingers as you turn the pages. Indeed there is more milk than there is blood. Milk comes from the cows; every family has one but they actually belong to Abdi Agha the big landlord. But the milk that permeates this book springs from a gentle humanism, and human kindness exudes from the very rocks and stones of the story.

Life in the village is controlled by the Agha. He owns the land, the shop,
the livestock, and at harvest time he takes two-thirds of your grain, and
sometimes even more if he is in a foul mood. Villagers are forbidden to go
to town, but once in a while there are some who will defy the Agha and
visit the town. Perhaps it is the stories that Dursun is telling that
affects the young minds. In town they wonder at the richness in the shops -
the glitter of the brass and the smell from the Kabob restaurant where they
treat everyone alike, and they ask - "Who is the Agha here?" Corporal
Hasan, who has even seen Istanbul, takes a while to understand the
question, but then he smiles and says that there is no Agha here. Everyone
is an Agha, everyone is the owner on their land, their shops, their piece
of mother earth.

In the village lives a dark thin boy called Ince Memed, or slim Memed. At
times there is a spark that enters his eyes. He is young, only sixteen,
when he runs off with his girl to go to the town, where with Corporal
Hasan's help, they can surely start a livelihood free from the Agha's
tyranny. But the girl has already caught the eye of Abdi Agha's nephew and
is already his official betrothed, so this is a big insult to the
Agha. Lame Ali is fetched, and despite himself, he follows the trail to
Memed. There is a showdown. Memed himself doesn't know how he gathers the
courage, but he takes his gun and fires into Abdi and into his cousin. And
then he runs away, telling his girl, "You wait for me in the village."

That is the start of Memed's life as a brigand in the hills. Brigandry is
the same everywhere. To begin with, there is a lot of injustice already in
the system. The forbearance of the human mind is legendary, especially if
the rules are specified clearly up front - I am the boss, and your lives
are mere whims to me. But even in the midst of such misery there are the
rebels, the outcasts, the champions of the downtrodden. These are the
brigands, the Robin Hoods of the Dagliari's the world over. The trick is
simple - you are good to most of the people most of the time, and you have
many helpers in the villages. That is why Sergeant Asim has such a hard
time catching Memed, but then of course, Sergeant Asim is really
incompetent, and Memed could have shot him out many times over, and
realizing this, the Sergeant has become quite mellow himself.



memed running through the thistles of the Toros Daglari 
illus. ismail Gülgeç, found at readliterature.com

In its essence, Memed my Turk is little more than an adventure tale, but how
elegantly it is told. You can feel the thistles as they bite into you when
you are running away from the village, from Abdi Agha, from the life that is
worse than death when alive.. And you can see why Memed asks his villagers to
burn the thistles, even though the cityfolk don't understand. And then you
are in the fertile fields of Chukurova, where it looks as if a cloud has sunk
into the black earth, there is so much cotton. And then there is mad Durdu,
who even takes even the underwear from his victims, and you are with him on
his last day when he is rampaging a village, and suddenly everything is lost
in a sea of dust. You are in the middle of the duststorm, and you climb onto
a roof with Horali, and when you come down mad Durdu is no more; he has been
trampled to death by the crowd. On the slopes of Sulemish, far above the
Savrun river, you can smell the deep green myrtles that reminds one of the
julep that makes people drunk, madly drunk. It is an intoxicating mix.

I read through this epic work by Yashar Kemal at one stretch, from just after
midnight to about seven in the morning. It was a labour richly rewarded. I
still have the taste of soup in my lips as it was served Suleyman's house - a
broth of crushed wheat and milk (what else?), eaten with wooden spoons. I
remember when Big Ahmet the legendary ex-brigand calls over Memed and his
friend from his roadside meal - "Help yourselves, young men," but the boys
are too timid - "Good appetite to you," they say politely, but they stop to
hear his stories, and are mesmerized by his eyes that are blazing like
kindling. This is a story imbued with magic, but it never stretches reality
in any way. It makes me look up the Atlas but there is no Chukurova, but the
marshes of Anavarza were there, and the towns of Adana and Konya and all the
snow-capped Daghs you can wish for...

Towards the end of the book, as the thinning pages betray the impending end,
one senses an uncertainty in Yeshar Kemal as if he is changing his mind from
page to page - should this be a tragedy, after all? Should Memed survive, or
will he really die as the innumerable rumours have it, recounted over tears
at every hamlet through the land? Will the governmental reprieve, the
"bayram", reach them while Memed is still alive? What about Abdi Agha, will
Memed ever exact his revenge? Will he survive the attempt? As the pages begin
to thin down this uncertainty grows, and Kemal seems hesitant. There is a
buildup to a different storyline, but then it is suddenly replanted by a
different tale, as if Kemal undid the plot, but the poetry already wrought
was too good to undo. Or is it all part of the storyteller's art, this
weaving in and out of likely endings, as if someone dragged a blackthorn bush
over it? Or is it the storyteller's kindness coming in the way of his
perception of reality...

But it is sheer pleasure, going with Kemal Agha as he follows the bandits
through the foothills of the Toros Dagladi, where the thistles are in bloom
at summertime, and at sunset they sway in the wind like ripples of the sea,
and Memed is hovering above us, somewhere in the snowhite crags of Ali Dagh,
the benign bandit looking after me. Memed, my hawk.

Setting

The setting of the novel is the Chukurova Çukurova region in eastern
Turkey.   This is a fertile region formed by the delta of several rivers
flowing down from the Taurus mountains (Toros Daglari).  It has been heavily
populated since ancient times, and there are a number of roman sites. 

 

Kemal was born in the small village of Hemite, on the Ceyhan river. 
about 20km W of Osmaniye.   His family originally hailed from the
Ercis, by the saltwater lake Van, about 800km east.  

author bio

     
Like Slim Memed, Kemal was also left to take care of his mother after his
father was killed by Kemal’s adopted brother.  His mother was disappointed
when he refused to kill his adopted brother to avenge for his father’s death.

His involvement with the Turkish Workers’ Party led him to be branded as a
Communist.  Throughout his life, Kemal was often in trouble with the police,
the Turkish government and the people of his country, ending up in prison
briefly and forced to live in France and Sweden before coming back to Turkey
for good.  It seems that Memed, My Hawk is a semi-autobiographical novel
because at times the emotions expressed in the novel seem so real that it’s
difficult to tell where Slim Memed begins and Yaşar Kemal ends.  
		- Tulay Gunes on Yabangee

at the time of yesar's birth, his father sadi kemal was already 50, his
mother nigar was only 17.  her family descended from the kizikan
tribe. 

Nigar's brother Mayro was a famous outlaw, and was killed at the age of 25.
Kemal initially composed poems in the style of the Kurdish songs eulogizing
Mayro. 


yesar kemal

Yasar on his family background

from interview to Alain Bosquet, reported by Ferhad Pirbal
in kurdishglobe

	My home village is called Hemite, 30 kilometers from the shores of
	the Mediterranean. Ceyhan River runs in front of my village. When I
	was born, there were only around 60 families living in this village,
	most of whom were nomad Turks who had been settled there. I was not
	born in where it is called Kurdistan. As you might have known, my
	parents left east Anatolia escaping Russians who came and occupied
	Van City. It took my family one and a half years to get to and settle
	in Ciqourawa village.

	In that village, no one spoke Kurdish except for the members of my
	family. As far as I remember, we were the only family that spoke
	Kurdish. When I was born, my father was already 50, but my mother was
	quite young; she was 17. One of my father's brothers also lived with
	us. His wife had one hand and lost the other in a bomb explosion back
	in Wan. My family enjoyed quite a big family tree. Gulikhan Bag, the
	last chief of the Kurdish Luvan tribe, was our ancestor; he was the
	uncle of my father. There are conflicting ideas about where exactly
	our family is from since we have been chased on different instances
	and in different directions. 

	As far as the family of my mother is concerned, they were from the
	outlaws descending from the Kizikan tribe who lived in scattered
	villages across the borderline area shared between Turkey and
	Iran. Mayro, the most-known outlaw in the eastern Anatolia, Iran, and
	Caucus areas, was my mother's brother. Mayro was killed when he was
	only 25. I have heard many lullabies and a lot of national poetry
	that depict the bravery and heroism of Mayro. Mayro's adventurous
	life was quite an inspiration to me when I was a child, and his
	footprints can clearly be seen in most of my novels.  

	When I was 8, we were the poorest family in our village. I was
	walking around barefoot, although I did have several pairs of shoes
	but never thought I needed them. When I started writing poetry, I was
	only 8. I was writing in the style of popular poets of that time. My
	mother hated this, a feeling that was contradictory because we were
	taking pride in having the honor to have been visited by the most
	well-known Kurdish poet, Abdal Zeyniki, who several times read poetry
	under the ceiling of our house. 'This is the house where Zeyniki
	bowed and read poetry' was what we heard people say all the time. 

	We mainly spoke Kurdish in our house. My parents had in one way or
	another learned to speak Turkish. The children, however, did not
	speak Kurdish that much. My parents spoke to us in Kurdish and we
	would answer in Turkish, something that was not appealing to
	them. Now I understand anything spoken in Kurdish and I speak Kurdish
	quite well except for situations where the conversation is rather
	complicated. If I am asked to narrate a story in Kurdish, I cannot do
	so; neither can I write in Kurdish. Also, I have difficulty
	understanding Kurdish text. I do not exactly remember when I learned
	Turkish or when I started to understand and speak Kurdish language. 




---wiki:

Kemal was born in a Kurdish family in Hemite (now Gökçedam), a hamlet in
the province of Osmaniye in southern Turkey. His parents were from Van, who
came into Çukurova during the First World War. Kemal had a difficult
childhood because he lost his right eye due to a knife accident, when his
father was slaughtering a sheep on Eid al-Adha, and had to witness as his
father was stabbed to death by his adoptive son Yusuf while praying in a
mosque when he was five years old. This traumatic experience left Kemal
with a speech impediment, which lasted until he was twelve years old.

Kemal was a locally noted bard before he started school, but was
unappreciated by his widowed mother until he composed an elegy on the death
of one of her eight brothers, all bandits. [Bosquet, Alain (1999). Yaşar Kemal
on his life and art. Syracuse University Press. ISBN 9780815605515.]

In 1941 and again in 1950 he was arrested for his political activism, and
both times acquitted. He served short prison terms in 1966 and 1971 for his
political positions, including his connections to Marxist publications and
membership in the Kurdish Workers' Party. In 1995 he was again charged with
authoring "separatist propaganda", but amid international criticism
spearheaded by the human rights group International PEN, his twenty-month
prison sentence was suspended. 

Enduring Convictions: Prison sentence for supporting the Kurdish cause

			P.E.N. essay, based on Yalman Onaran interview

In 1995 the author Yasar Kemal was placed on trial by the Turkish government
for publishing an article that condemned its mistreatment of the country’s
Kurdish minority and indicated his support for the Kurdish Worker’s Party
(PKK). Kemal received a 20-month prison sentence that was later
suspended. Nearly 20 years later the Committee to Protect Journalists named
Turkey the world’s worst jailer of journalists. The CPJ estimates that a
majority of the 49 journalists imprisoned as of December 1, 2012 were charged
with supporting terrorism simply because of their decision to report on the
activities of the PKK. 

	“You are not convicting me; I am convicting you! I’m convicting your
	state!”  screams the 72-year-old author to the panel of judges who
	have just sentenced him to 20 months in prison for writing ideas the
	state doesn’t like.

Holding up his right hand in a clenched fist, his fury at the injustice
radiates through his thick glasses and through the cracked open door out to
the corridor where a select audience is waiting during the closed session. 

Turkey’s best-known writers, journalists, artists, foreign reporters and
embassy officials are among the crowd eager to know the court’s
decision. Although nobody can hear what the judges say in their hushed,
fearful and cautious voices, the solid voice of Yasar Kemal fills the void
and informs everyone what has happened. 

But nobody attending the March 7 trial can believe that Turkey’s best-known
novelist, a perennial candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature, has just
been convicted of “inciting hatred” in an article where he criticized the
Turkish government’s handling of its Kurdish problem. 

Kemal’s fury doesn’t end: “There is no democracy in this country, no rule of
law!” he vents at the judges, who sit and listen to him with blank
expressions.  “Even Hitler did not impose a food embargo on countries he
invaded, didn’t burn down forests. But look at what the Turkish government
has done: left the whole of eastern Turkey to starve so it could cut off the
Kurdish guerrillas’ lifeline.”

Turkey is under constant criticism for its gross violations of human rights,
especially related to the Kurdish conflict. In many areas of southeastern
Turkey where the majority of the 12 million or so Kurds live, food stuffs can
only be bought with written permission from military authorities stating the
exact amounts allowed. The reason? The guerrillas come down from the
mountains to demand food from the villagers, who cannot refuse under the
shadow of guns.

Hundreds of acres of forests have been burnt down by the military to
eliminate areas where the rebels, fighting for autonomy since 1984, can
hide. Some 2,500 villages have been evacuated and more than 2 million Kurds
forced to migrate to western cities where they suffer poverty, homelessness
and joblessness. More than 21,000 Kurds and Turks have died in the conflict.

Everybody here knows all this, and government officials have accepted the
above figures. But writing these in a critical manner is still considered a
crime. I am fearful of this piece reaching the hands of Turkish officials. As
a foreign Summer 1996 correspondent based in Ankara, I am not immune from
numerous draconian laws with vague definitions which can be stretched to
cover any criticism.

These laws are used systematically against writers and journalists. More than
100 are in prison serving sentences for things they have written.

Why has he entered the debate on the Kurdish problem? Why didn’t he stick to
writing fiction and ignore the issue as many writers do, are forced to do?
Before answering these questions, Kemal lights a cigarette, takes a deep puff
and ponders for some time.

“Yasar, I wish you wouldn’t smoke so much,” interjects his wife, Tilda. “He
never smoked until only seven years ago. He says he needs it to cope with all
the problems of this country that worry him.”

The well-built author, whose presence coupled with his deep bass voice must
have scared the judges in court, doesn’t dispute his wife’s comment. As he
looks at me straight in the face, I can’t help but focus on his right eye,
blinded by a bizarre accident at the age of four. Kemal was watching his
uncle de-skin a sheep out in their garden when the sharp knife slipped out of
his uncle’s hand hitting Kemal in the eye. I try to avert my gaze but keep
coming back to the eye – for even though it doesn’t see, it is still capable
of reflecting the meaning inside the author’s head.

Kemal’s deep voice ends the silence.

“I couldn’t sleep at nights for a year, disturbed by pangs of
conscience. ‘You are a writer. You have to speak up,’ I kept thinking to
myself. So I decided to break my silence.”

Kemal wrote several pieces critical of the government’s attitude toward the
Kurdish issue in the last few years, and has been tried on several occasions
but was acquitted of all charges until this one.

Kemal, who is of Kurdish origin, says without hesitation: “I’m a Turkish
writer.” He has never promoted his Kurdish identity, and cannot stand Kurdish
nationalism any more than Turkish nationalism. But, he says, the basic rights
Kurds lack and the brutal war fought against them forces him to speak up.
Speaking and publishing in Kurdish were banned until recently. Education and
broadcasting are still not allowed.

“I don’t want Turkey to be divided,” says the revered author. “A recent
survey showed 80 percent of Kurds also don’t want a separate state. All I
want, all that the Kurds want, is their universal human rights – the right to
preserve their language, culture, identity.”

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