Abstract
Sometimes a stroll is far more than it seems. In this new short story, A Walk in the Park, by award-winning Turkish novelist
CREDIT: saemilee/iStock
For him paradise meant fireworks on streets, radicals lounging and discussing philosophy at cafes, and film crews experimenting with cinema in public squares and inside schools and ministries. Paradise meant women and men living in communes, their children not subject to laws of property or propriety, their hours spent not in offices but in nature. Paradise was long walks in the woods and a book waiting to be conquered at home.
But now he was an old man. He was bespectacled and he had a slight hunchback. He thought more about death and decay than paradise these days. His desire was to pass quickly and without much suffering to jannah, the final abode of Muslim believers.
He didn’t believe in an earthly paradise any longer. In his forties he annoyed his friends when his politics shifted from Marxist to Islamist. As he walked on the pathway of Paradise Park he was suddenly reminded of those days of conversion. If it was not for the name of the park he would perhaps be pondering other things: his back pains or the cat he was planning to get for his grandson. Tarik had another hour in practice, and he liked wandering the neighbourhood while waiting for the young athlete to emerge from the doors of the tennis club.
This was not the sort of wandering he did in his Reed-reading days. Back then he used to walk in poor neighbourhoods and avoid those streets inhabited by Turkish toffs. He spent his youthful days marching under banners and shoulder to shoulder with the working class. He shouted slogans about the ownership of the means of production. But this afternoon he only walked to kill time.
That morning, in the cab, the name of Riza, his old comrade, came up on the radio. He learned that poor Riza had died of a heart attack after supper last night. That was an unexpected end for a man he anticipated dying in a Turkish torture chamber when they were young. Turkey’s paternalistic state severely punished pursuers of paradises. Still they both survived those perilous days. Riza, in his forties, became a professor of sociology and he lectured on utopias and Marxism at the city’s premier university of social sciences. He was considered a leading defender of lost causes. From the tone of the radio broadcast it seemed as if his funeral the next morning would be well-attended.
People admired Riza because he insisted on what he believed in. He never changed ideological tracks. He appeared certain that death equalled nothingness and it was nothing to worry about. His life had been a struggle to reach that place Marx describes in The German Ideology: “there one hunts in the morning, fishes in the afternoon, rears cattle in the evening, criticises after dinner without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.” Riza was a versatile man. He excited and inspired people around him. Women talked about living in the paradise of his company.
He did not, of course, cry when news of his death landed so unexpectedly inside the cab. But his face must have revealed some sign of devastation. Tarik had suddenly asked him about Riza and their friendship. All he could come up with was a mumbling he was a good man and a faltering he must have gone to paradise.
*
The guard’s uniform was also black, the colour of death. For a moment he considered asking the guard’s name and age. He could even inquire about his family. He had sustained a lifelong curiosity about the lives of strangers. “Help from God,” he mumbled: in Hebrew the name of Azrael, the angel of death, translated to “Help from God”. He wondered what Riza would have asked the guard if his heart hadn’t stopped beating. What had Azrael told Riza himself last night?
Over the 1970s, they had been fascistic in their pursuit of a communist state. They passionately fought superstitions and religious dogma. They believed in giving up earthly pleasures to reach a Marxist paradise. Riza was cheerful about this tactic. As they wandered the college gardens a few months before the military coup in 1980, he instructed him to enjoy the hard labour of bringing about paradise on earth. That task, he said, demanded dedication, devotion and discipline.
The silent swans started moving on the matt lake and he thought of Tarik who would no doubt have enjoyed watching them. For the fatherless child, the appearances become a consolation.
After his father’s death last year, Tarik had become much attached to animals. But in January, after visiting a zoo, he had googled the history of the institution. He learned about the Animal Liberation Front. During breakfast the following morning, he announced his intention to liberate their pet cat. She was given permission to roam the garden. But as dusk fell that evening the cat disappeared. She was never seen again. Tarik cried when he heard the news. There was a highway nearby and cars rarely slowed down at night. To console him he told his grandson there was no paradise on this earth. He instructed him to never believe again anyone who told him otherwise. Nature was violent, cities were unpredictable, and this was the best of all possible worlds. He should have kept the cat inside.
The guard appeared thoughtful as he lit a cigarette. His head seemed crushed beneath invisible concerns. He was the kind of man they dreamed of saving in their youth. But he was also the kind of man who resisted their promises of an earthly paradise. Men like him listened to what they had to say, and then talked about şkretmek, a state of gratitude to Allah. They believed in a future filled with better things to come. That future was designed by the All-Powerful and All-Knowing Ruler of the Universe.
Of course Riza would tell them about the illusionary nature of şkretmek and the irrational source of belief in gods. He described those as symptoms of what Marx called false consciousness. But Turks preferred şkretmek and jannah to Marx’s falsches Bewußtsein, and they insisted on waiting for Allah’s gardens of paradise rather than perishing inside Turkey’s jails of hell.
In his forties, he would tell that story to his son to explain his conversion to Islam. It was what the Turkish working class wanted, he told his son. He tried to explain his logic for exchanging a Marxist paradise with an Islamic one. “I wanted to participate in their dreams and beliefs. I wanted to better understand their destitution.”
He couldn’t survive the loss of his son, who joined an armed group and died in a street fight in a foreign city across the Syrian border, if he didn’t believe he was going to a better place.
He noticed that the guard’s upper lip was twitching. He assumed it was about poverty. It could as well have been adultery. He didn’t have the means to know. He got up and walked away, disappearing behind the shrubs to allow the man his privacy.
Still he wanted to hear the guard’s inner voice. He wondered if he was talking to Allah at the moment. Who would save the poor man from his misery, if not for Allah? People were all desperate. There was no glimmer of hope for the fallen. A cloud covered the sun. Darkness entered the Paradise Park.
He walked past a rose tree. He wondered if Riza would walk to the guard to ask about his worries. Perhaps he would attempt to see if something could be done to relieve his pains. He, on the other hand, chose to leave all that to Allah. His son, he believed, was looked after in jannah. He had to believe in that. Belief is the only saviour.
*
This was what many working class houses used to feel like when he visited them with Riza during their college years. They called those “missionary visits”. They would receive the addresses of worker apartments from unions. At the entrance they would always be greeted by a headscarved woman. She would tell them “As-salāmu ‘alaykum.” They would reply: “Hello,
comrade, thanks for allowing us inside.”
The houses often smelt of cabbage. He would be unsettled by the way workers had learned to live in poverty and ugliness. Still they believed in a better world to come. It was, perhaps, the idea of the unattainability of that better world to come that led him to change his direction. But he was a bit worried. There was much power in şkretmek, but it was also a weakness if it made him blind to the suffering of the world around him. He shouldn’t have let him go to Syria.
He heard a voice from outside. “Sir, this hut is closed to the public.”
It was the guard. Perhaps he came there to smoke in private. He should have guessed that it was his refuge: the guard’s own little paradise.
“It used to be called the Paradise Hut,” the voice said. “Some believe they used to get in touch with ghosts of loved ones here.”
“Who did?”
“Those who came here fifty years ago,” the guard said. “How about cats?” he said.
“What about them?”
“I want to get one for my grandson.”
There was a pause. A moment passed in silent consideration. The guard said there was an orange-coloured cat a few meters near the Paradise Hut. She was born two months ago. She had good manners. She had a funny purr.
“If you get the cat it will be sawāb [a spiritual reward] for me,” the guard said. “Mohammad, peace be upon him, would rather cut out his robe than to wake a cat, as you well know Sir.”
He checked his watch and noticed it was past six o’clock.
The guard was now outside the hut. He imagined the silent flow of swans who watched the calm of the park. They waited for its new guests, those destined to consider life and those who prepared to die. He thought of his son. The doctors said he was shot in the heart.
He noticed he was already late for Tarik. It would take him fifteen minutes to reach the gates. Once at the gates he would tell his grandson about the orange-coloured cat. That would cheer him up. He would tell him about Riza and the 1970s. He was a good man. He must have gone to paradise. He would ask for forgiveness from his son, and from Riza. He would beg for forgiveness from all those whose earthly paradises he failed to notice.