I understand. It is not easy to walk without stepping on a stone. Stone. Easy to say, hard for the soul. The dread of bowing one’s head and seeing, of causing earthquakes and massacres, is so terrible. This is why you walk without bowing your head, for if you were to look, you would see a universe upon a single stone. Diminishing, you believe, is dreadful. Yet, every step of yours is in another universe. You walk straight, upright! You look upon your surroundings with dignity, upon other gods like yourself. Yet you are afraid to turn your head to the sky. I understand. Because they do not sin, they lock themselves in dark rooms, alone. Sufis, dervishes, and dogs… Daylight plays with life, bringing a thousand and one tricks before our eyes. Colors, cats, trees, victims… The flesh we touch is often soft, its scent like spring, our teeth sharp. I will say, “Dreaming is half of being polluted.” No, please do not prevent me! I have to say this. Entropy stands like a shrine in the middle. We tie votive rags to scientific facts so they cannot be seen, and are forgotten. Let us show reverence to the Prophet’s beard, touch our eyes with his cloak, find healing from where he stepped, in order to hope that every evil we do turns into absolute good… Innocence has never been polluted to this extent in any age. Since doing and not doing lead to the same place, those who feel our helplessness before the absolute will hide one by one in dark rooms. I understand. Most of all, dogs.
*
A phoniness so convincing that I will almost call that attractive dark girl blonde. She dangles before me like ninety-nine truths told to make me believe a single lie. A mobile phone in one hand, one of her eyes on me. Both of my eyes on her. From her tanned shoulders to the tears in her jeans, from the shape of her hips to her small breasts, everything is before me. And her face. Her small nose, large brown eyes, and the birthmark spreading on her cheek. It causes her to be etched in my mind almost as a Dalmatian. I should not take it as a good sign that I usually hold my tongue in the face of an erotica that does not contain literature. Nor should I take it as a bad sign. Because the blood flow in my body is so orderly that it will not be disturbed by any misgiving. Because she is a Dalmatian; and I am an old pitbull who imprisons himself in his own authentic dark world. My drooping cheeks, sharp teeth, broad chest, sturdy back, my eyes that see nothing beyond death. My sick mind that shouts, “You are being deceived!” in the face of the riot of colors I fall into every time I emerge from the darkness…
I meet her not on a bed, but on a muddy ground whose boundaries are drawn with a tin barrier, in a dilapidated shack amid the betting and shouting of the densely sweating and alcohol-fueled crowd, with only our private parts covered, studded collars on our necks. We are true dogs* who have taken on human skin. She bites off my nipple, and I tear apart her belly button. Even though she has a deep wound opened in her belly, now it’s as if she was never born… she no longer has a belly button. When I move to pass between her legs and throw her off my back, her teeth and nails are on my back. Blood everywhere, mud everywhere. That’s when we are balanced. We are the same in the mud. Two wild beasts sworn to die, whose hair is mud, whose nose is mud, whose heart is mud. My blood flow is disturbed. Even thinking about using my hardness as a weapon is a violation of both this fight, reason, and my partial will. (Sir, neither in these lines nor in the lines that follow will you read that I have entered her; if you wish, leave the text right here and exit the page.) The crack of her neck is heard by the entire shack as she falls off my back. She dies. While she was supposed to exist with her wound, she dies. She dies every day, every day. The world diminishes every day, every day. Even those who placed their bets on me go silent when they hear the shrill cry of their conscience. Total silence. I am standing. No surprises. Someone won.
*
The congregation, gathered to listen to my Friday sermon and writhing on their knees before me, is thinking about how to show their discomfort stemming from my silence. Silence is the reason they feel the numbness in their knees, the itching caused by the mosque’s threadbare carpet, even more. I see Abdi Efendi nudging his son Mithat. When the eight-year-old child stands up, he is shorter than those who expect to hear a few divine sentences while still on their knees. I silence his question that starts with “Hocam (My teacher)” with a “Ssshhhttt” before it reaches the dome. Mithat disappears in fear. As he sulks next to his father, I understand the conflict he is experiencing. I understand. If I speak, they will understand incorrectly, they will tell it incorrectly, they will strew flowers on the road leading to evil. To be the cause is a sin. How will I tell them that I will not come out of the well inside me. Because I do not know how to explain to them that for a thousand years I might have been reading even the Fatiha incorrectly, “I understand.” Knowing that a group of people at the door, who don’t even come to prayers, are collecting money to build a mosque makes me have stomach cramps. I cannot explain that I fear creating hells with the promise of paradise together with the crowd filled in the mosque, but “I understand.”
I understand. I am afraid why the Sufi and the pitbull imprison themselves in the same darkness.
ANARCHISTALES 