A tale by Gunnar Holiday
Dedicated to the memory of the Republic of Ararat, which haunts us still
This little cycle of Istanbul vignettes wouldn't be complete without mentioning the obscene yet inadvertent act of terrorism I committed while in Istanbul. Now it is true that I laud those who propose to resist state power in creative ways, ans it is also true that destruction is a form of creation, but please do not make the mistake of thinking that I find my own actions in this affair praiseworthy, for quite apart from their horrific and senseless consequences, serendipitous as they may have been for some, they amounted to little more than a sequence carried out by a biological automaton. You see, one stormy night in March I had a pair of Kurds over to dinner in my little ship's cabin on Lime Hill. Ristem was a sharp-looking fellow whose acute and somewhat diabolical goatee contrasted sharply with his tonsured head and downright cadaverous complexion. I'd met him at the Beyoğlu bookshop with the best selection of English titles, where he worked. It was there, for instance, that I'd bought Marshall Berman's magisterial 'All that is Solid Melts into Air,' not to mention my highly economical Penguin edition of 'Crime and Punishment,' the blank expanse of whose cover had tempted me to inscribe my own name under the title--which act may have been my greatest contribution to letters during the brief time I spent haunting the great city of the Turks, notwithstanding any of the other writing I did there. The bookstore had a bar whose sulfurous stainless drum wine I'd had frequent resort to while thumbing my titles. I also remember the bathroom well for its sink, an oblong, shallow porcelain vessel situated in the middle of a vast well of polished granite, above which the porcelain rose like a baptismal fount. The ample margin between the two was laid out with a bed of time-smoothed gray and slate river stones, the kind perfect for skipping, and whose apparently random arrangement was so harmonious and inviting that it must have been the result of cunning artifice. Who expects to encounter elegance, artistry, even perfection in a public washroom? And yet there it was. A sink to remember.
There were a lot of well-heeled semi-literate pseudoliterati at this bookstore, Ava I think it was called--their beaks mostly bobbing within a few meters of the zinc bartop, as if their orbits were tethered by the pull of whiskey and wine--but I preferred to keep company with my Berman, my Dostoevsky, my Comte de Suedenbourg-Nicolet, and by and by with Ristem, dispenser of the sulfurous Anatolian wine I'd come to associate with the intoxication of the written word. In any case, Ristem had introduced me to his friend Merwan who wore his hair long and whose beard masked the greater part of his face behind an anarchic snarl. Now both were berthed at my house, having called and tied off at the humble cove below. Nice guys both, students with visions vague and vast, with minds wide open to all the disastrous notions of youth. Their company was congenial to me, if somewhat esoteric. It was as if they were able to converse in perfect silence by virtue of having known each other for so long. As to what this silent conversing concerned, I recall several times that evening getting the feeling as the ships stalked the wind-vexed strait below that they were referring to something that was there but not fully so, something just beyond my grasp, some tempting morsel of knowledge for initiates seeming both to confer on them the unapproachable and repugnant dignity of social superiority and to coax me down an unseen path which they had laid out for me, a path along which lay my final acceptance into a circle of friendship that promised to sunder the barrier of language that stood between thinking and being understood. Looking at them, I thought that these would be the kinds of guys I'd like to hang out with if I were about five years younger and Turkish, but their aura of exclusivity might have been too solid to conquer--that is, being "one of them," I could never have become one of them. But there we were, with circumstance having ordained that they should find my company interesting, worthy of pursuit whether because I was older or foreign or seemingly unaffiliated with anything or anyone. In the final reckoning it may be that we had come together in friendship because they found my existence anomalous and had determined to investigate it.
We ordered İskender kebap and lsolacun and three beers from a delivery joint in my neighborhood, along with a wonderful rice pudding dessert called sütlaç. Their jackets dripped rainwater onto the floor as we looked out over the sea lane from my vestibule and waited. Merwan said the ships' lights moving through the darkness made him think of the candle-freighted turtles that had graced and navigated the Sultan's gardens in Ottoman times. When the food arrived I astounded my friends by tipping the delivery guy. Americans may be at the controls of the greatest killing machine in history, but we always leave a tip!
Over dinner the conversation grazed a number of literary and artistic trends, all of them bleak: The lack of good books being published in English or in Turkish; the lack of good translations of good books that had been published in the past; the lack of stature suffered by writing and art generally; the parasitical interface between cultural production and cultural consumption; the want of community tormenting those who would create but lack the social leavening that has been sublimated into the fantasy of inspiration; the generalized and all but consummated deadening of the mind and coarsening of life that had allowed these things to come to pass in both our cultures, and which were hastening us to the brink of a darkness to which there would be no bottom. The three of us gamesomely agreed to diagnose the problem as the worldwide murder-suicide of civilization itself before settling on what must always come to the fore among strong spirits whom the myriad lacks and deficiencies among which we are adrift have failed to annihilate: The political. As Kurds, both were bitterly opposed to the injustice machine of the Turkish state, but Ristem's espousal of nonviolence and civil disobedience was sharply contradicted by Merwan's refractory revolutionary bloodlust. A Stalinist with an unabashed fondness for Sayyid Qutb, the frequency with which he proposed to liquidate people, classes of people, or entire communities and nations of people might have brought on a spell of indigestion in a more squeamish dinner partner, but I went with the flow and humored him. And as a sometime adherent of the 5 Noble Contempts, and in my very capacity as an American, I found it difficult to reject the doctrine of selective liquidation out of hand. His face twitched with rage when the topic of America came up, but Ristem quickly stepped in and navigated us to safer waters.
But the persistent fact that he'd been treated to dinner by a bona fide American must have stuck in Merwan's craw. As we were wrapping up the meal, he began to denigrate what he referred to as my "glamorous lifestyle of writers." But nothing could have been sillier. Where was the glamor, where was the style, I asked him, in a tortuous, solitary pursuit that nobody gives a damn about, least of all those who profess to be enamored of the life of the mind? I made a sweeping gesture to encompass my dingy digs. Glamor? He responded that the writer's lifestyle relied on a false secession from the grim realities that bind the great mass of people, calling the dissociate stance that enables Dichtung ineffectual, soft, pointless, even effeminate. He on the other hand was of sterner stuff, stuff that could absorb and integrate the grimness of reality. He was pure, strong ore cast in the mold of the savvy businessman, the modern man with no illusions and no inhibitions, no hangups or kinks or quirks or obsessions to prevent him from occurring in the world as it was, endowed by life with the ability to ask of it no more than it gave. All this was said while wearing an outfit whose blockish drabness reminded me of a Mao suit. But the real problem with his self-presentation went beyond his dress, beyond the fact that had no business interests, no holdings, no ventures to speak of, no job. It was that he, as Ristem had put it before we'd been introduced, was pretty much the only young Turkish poet of note, at least according to some old Turkish poets who had once been of note. And yet there was an element of play in all of this, as if he were begging me to call his bluff. Not so that he could come off the hobby horse and have a laugh, but so that he could have an excuse to dig in deeper. An artist in occultation, a poetic double agent, a Kurdish Ezra Pound who took pathological pleasure in his cynical refuge in fascism's shallow pool. I did not hesitate to point out these inconsistencies, but Merwan was disdainful. "The pitiable wailings of the wretched, the abandoned, the weak," he said, "do not concern me. Power is our only hope of redemption."
"On the contrary," said Ristem, noticing my mounting annoyance. "Our hope is coded into prophecy."
"Prophecy?"
Exactly 100 years ago, Ristem maintained, a great Kurdish poet had prophesied that in 100 years, the Kurdish people would enjoy a momentary victory over their tormentors by drowning the city of the Turks neck-deep in shit. He said that the episode would reverberate through the Kurdish nation in an epidemic of unquenchable laughter that would circle the globe before it had spent itself "This poet," said Ristem, "said that as long as they had not been exterminated, all these laughing Kurds would plunge the land of the Turks into paralytic chaos. If there were Kurds on the roads, the roads would be blocked. If there were Kurds in the factories, production would cease. If Kurds were fighting, the laughter would lead to their slaughter, but new waves of fighters would rise up implacably behind the fallen, powerfully inspired by the example of the soldiers who had met their fate with those unforgettable peals of mocking laughter."
"Inspiring, is it not?" said Merwan. "The problem is that this poet may not have existed. There are hundreds of references to his prophecy by other Kurdish poets, and even a number of references to his work, but there is no hard evidence of that work. Not one poem. Is it possible to be a poet on the strength of a single prophecy?"
"Huh," I said between greedy spoonfuls of sütlaç. "That's interesting stuff. Do you guys believe the prophecy?"
Both laughed anxiously at this, looking at each other as if my question were an embarrassment.
"Whether we believe in it or not is beside the point," said Merwan.
"What he means is that we look on all prophecies as an inspiration to act, and not as a divine script for the course of things to follow. Prophets do not believe in God," said Ristem.
"They play Him," said Merwan. "So yes. In that limited sense, we do believe in it."
"The question is whether you believe in it." Ristem had stopped eating and was regarding me very calmly.
"Believe in it? But I don't know anything about it."
"What Ristem means to ask is whether you believe in the justice of the Kurdish cause?"
"Sure, I believe that all people should breathe free."
"I think what Merwan really means to ask is whether you would be willing to, well, assist us in realizing the justice of the Turk--, I mean the Turd--"
"Damn it!"
"--I mean the Kurdish vision."
"Well, whatever I can do guys, I'd be happy too, really, I mean, you know, within reason. My goodness, this sütlaç sure is delicious." I looked up. "What are you talking about exactly?"
"I think what Ristem here means --" Merwan was looking ruefully at his friend, "-- I think what Ristem means is that you sound like you could be a great friend to the Kurdish nation. And I think we might profitably discuss the modalities of your involvement tomorrow. At the bookstore. Would you like some more sütlaç, Gunnar my friend?"
"Why, yes. Yes I would. Damn that's good stuff. But I thought we only ordered the three."
Ristem was smiling broadly. "My friend, a Kurd who does not move around the city with extra sütlaç is not a true Kurd. Please have this, my friend." At this he reached into his bag and withdrew a cylindrical cooler of brushed stainless steel. Air rushed forth when he undid the clamps.
"This is my mother's special recipe, from Diyarbakir. Shall I replenish your bowl?" I handed him the plastic container I'd eaten the restaurant's sütlaç from. He upended the bright cylinder and we watched in silence as a vaporous mass of the tasty pudding oozed forth. He sprinkled it with cinnamon from a shaker that he apparently also kept in readiness in his dinner coat's inside pocket. "Enjoy!" Vapor was rising off the bowl as if the contents were boiling. I put a spoonful in my mouth and tasted it. It was the coldest thing I'd put on my tongue since losing a patch of it to a galvanized Minneapolis fencepost in a distant childhood midwinter. Neither sütlaç nor spoon stuck, luckily. The temperature and consistency reminded me of gelled gasoline.
"Gah. Thith ith abtholutely fucking freething," I said, barely able to dribble the words across my stunned tongue. "What the hell ith thith thit?"
"Not shit, my friend. A family tradition. It represents the original sütlaç enjoyed by the beleaguered Kurds on Mount Ararat over 500 years ago. Turkish cavalry were hounding us, and we been forced to take refuge on the steepest faces of the highest slopes. Night fell, and we couldn't risk lighting a cooking fire for fear of being seen and slaughtered, so we mixed together we had: Milk, sugar and leftover rice, all freezing cold. That was the original Kurdish sütlaç. We serve it crackling cold to this day to commemorate that brave band of warriors."
"Wow," I said. "Ithakyawy pree goo if you wet your mouf go numb. But howeth your mom gedjit thith cold without freething it?"
"That, my friend, is a family secret. There is literally nothing you could do to make me tell you."
"Nothig?"
"Not by invitation, not by threat, not by torture. Islam Karimov himself could not make me tell, nor your General McChrushitall."
"McCrystal."
"Sorry. Not even McCrystal could get me to tell. Nor will I tell my grave when you're through with me. You see, I only know one part of the formula. We have chopped the secret up into 1000 pieces, which we carry like precious gems within our bowels."
I continued to eat the stuff as he spoke, dimly aware that the numb frisson of the first bite had transited my esophagus and was now radiating in insensate waves from the pit of my stomach.
Merwan gave me a hearty clap on the back once I'd finished.
"There we have it," he said. "A nice, healthy American appetite. Rapacious, you might say. Would you like some more?" Something about the cast of his face -- the set of his mouth -- bespoke the greed of zealotry. An odd, vicarious greed I supposed, a sort of mutant hospitality.
"Oh no," I said. "I'd better save room for the beers I'm going to be having later."
Merwan looked alarmed, but Ristem put a steadying hand on his associate's shoulder before he could speak.
"I think what my friend wants to say is that beer has been known to interfere with the digestive process when the subject has eaten this particular kind of sütlaç. It might even be hazardous. Due to the cold reagents."
"Yes," said Merwan with a solemn nod. "The cold reagents."
"The subject?"
"Well. In a manner of speaking." At least they didn't nod their heads in unison and say 'Yes. The subject.'
"Damn it, guys! I was looking forward to having a beer. To having, I don't know, two, three, four, five beers. Why didn't you guys tell me about this before feeding me that Arctic shit?"
"Don't call it shit," said Merwan. "That was Kurdish hospitality. More than that, it was the very currency of Kurdish pride."
"What he's trying to say, Gunnar, is that there is no reason to be sore. We were just trying to germinate the seeds of cross-cultural friendship, in your gut so to say, and with them our deliverance from the Turkish chains that have bound us through these long centuries. Everything we do, we do for a reason. There is no need to get sore."
"All right, I get it. Cross-cultural harmony, birth of a new era, no need to get sore. But I have to say that you guys are treading on some cultural toes here by denying a Swedish-American his beer. I mean, I need a beer."
My two friends looked at each other with a profundity of seriousness and understanding.
"All right, said Ristem. "One beer. Can he have one beer?"
"Oh, I suppose. But only one. And only as long as he doesn't blame us when his stomach swells up. I never heard of one beer causing any serious complications. There's no need to get swollen, but it's his prerogative."
"Complications?"
"Yes," Merwan said. "Complications. You know, an upset tummy."
Ristem cracked an Efes and handed it to me. Each of my friends also took a brew from the bag. We drank our beers in gloomy silence. Mine seemed to have the initial effect of reversing the numbness that had gathered in the pit of my stomach, but the reversal of this spreading nullity revealed a discomfort, a swelling, a chill, a pain -- as if the kenomatic effect of the gelid sütlaç contained within it another, paradoxically pleromatic effect. I soon set my beer down and doubled over with the sudden fullness. I heard my friends whisper among themselves in Kurdish. I began to quaver, to moan; the pain spread to my head and guttered there like a cold electric fire before swelling and shooting from skull to spleen and back again within the space of a split second. The site of it was impossible to fix. Soon everything was in pain, each part of my body communicating with every other with the monomaniac message of PAIN. It was as if my head were hurting inside my stomach, or as if my stomach had a headache, which to soothe I rubbed the temples of my belly, or groaned and pawed at the top of my dome with a palliative circular motion, taken aback by its hardness, can't think with this petrified convex six-pack dammit, which reminded me to curse my Kurdish friends roundly, but for whom I'd surely be on my way to the enjoyment of a six-pack and then some, with the outraged and excruciating regret serving me for a prism through which I could see, clearly, that by tomorrow I would be laughing and drinking with my friends the Kurds, that all of the Kurds would be laughing and drinking and congratulating me on a job well done. But what job?
Looking back, I think I can specify quite clearly that this was the hallucinatory vacuum in which I acceded to terrorism. Impassioned salvos of Kurdish erupted in the background. I thought I could understand that they would remain by my side until they could be sure all the stores had closed and that I could buy no more beer, because one drop more would put the kibosh on everything, their years of planning, a century of waiting, all the bloodsoaked generations of the yearning marching back clear to the mystic Ararat icemists in which that first frozen progenitor sütlaç had taken form, frozen to symbolize the tenacity of their national dream in the face of history's glacial passage, yes by God, they'd stay with me, and I felt that they were good friends as my stomach gave a convulsive rumble announcing my unwilling passage into the vacuous purgatory of unconsciousness, where dreams fail to form even to the point of miscarriage. No, no dreams in this noiseless nocturne, no visions, scenes or revelations -- only the inchoate conviction that my destiny was now bound up with that of the Kurds, and theirs with mine, and that I'd better bind myself by them if I would be well.
I felt a crinkle when I woke up. It was a note whose text my cheek had printed onto my pillow as I'd slept. "Come see us at the bookstore at four o'clock. Do not be late. Do not drink beer, and whatever you do, do not attempt to pass a stool. In faith, Ristem and Merwan."
I followed their instructions to a T. Let no one say that I am not capable of following instructions in time of need. My abstention from beer did involve a bit of grumbling, as it was my custom to enjoy a beer with breakfast in those days, a la Polonaise if you like, but the injunction to boycott the stooly stool was achieved with perfect equanimity. Although I was no longer in pain, my stomach was so swollen that I expected any appointment with the porcelain pedestal would be disastrous, and that it really would be better to, ahem, send forth, away from the house. I left at two, allowing plenty of cushion to reach the center from my relatively distant outskirt.
Truly, my stomach had grown very large overnight. The fellow I studied in the mirror had a potbellied, even a pregnant look. Not particularly fetching, but that was me now. I will level with you and admit that no amount of leaning or bobbing or neck-craning could bring me into visual contact with the penis I knew still dwelt beneath this new protuberance. I hope that my forthrightness does not stun you. But let's not be squeamish: After all, we have come here to talk about terrorism.
The bus driver had to suppress a chortle a when he saw me step aboard his creaking sootbox and thumbed my Akbil magnet into the validator. I suppose the contrast between my slight frame and my abdominal massif was funny, but it put me on notice that I now cut a ridiculous figure--and now I was hounded by the thought that everyone whose eye grazed me was experiencing a paroxysm of surreptitious hilarity. The guard with the bomb wand on the way into the Metro also snickered at the sight of me. He let the paddle graze and prod my belly with a diligence that, though exemplary, failed to establish that anything was amiss. And that something was amiss is precisely what I shall endeavor to demonstrate. Having slipped the State's tattered dragnet, I bored inexorably toward the center of the city and my appointment with prophecy.
Ristem was there to greet me as I staggered into the bookstore's glass door, hobbled not so much by the weight as by the sheer girth of the bloat. "My friend. You have come." He smiled like a sun and seated me with the spontaneous gallantry inspired by pregnancy wherever it goes. Unable to sit straight in the chair, I had to extend my legs to give my belly more swellroom. It had gotten even bigger--and still I was in no pain at all. Herbert Walker Fucking Christ, I thought. There would be stretch marks. Stretch marks--the humiliation!
Ristem bent over me and surveyed the groundcover stretched over my abdominal landscape with some alarm. "You will be wanting to, ahem, relieve yourself, no? I mean, you waited until now, yes?"
"Yes, for God's sake. Look at me! Do I look relieved? Does it look like I relieved myself? Does this look like relief to you?"
"Well, very good then. I'll get you a glass of something that should help you feel better."
"No Ristem. I asked you a question. Does this look like relief to you?" I pulled my shirt up to reveal the vast bedrock beneath the groundcover. Lord! There they were. The stretch marks, along with great blooming bruises where my vasculature had been stretched to rupture. It was a wonder I felt no pain.
"Shit," he said. "No! Please, put it away. They'll take you to a hospital, man. All will be for naught."
I pounded my fist onto the table. "Dammit Ristem! I want to know what this looks like to you. Does it look like relief? Because it sure as shit doesn't look that way to me."
"All right. No. No!" he hissed. "It doesn't look like relief. Thank you for holding it. Now please cover yourself. You don't realize what kind of danger you'd be in if they took you to a hospital. All of us would, but you especially. They wouldn't be able to help you there, Gunnar. Only we have what it'll take for you to be able to relieve yourself."
I complied by stretching my shirt down over the obscene formation.
"Good. Now Gunnar. Let me get you something to drink. It's what you need. Just sit there and try to look normal."
Ristem sailed away and came breezing back on a cushion of air. He had trimmed his goatee and waxed it so that it tapered into a perfect geometrical point set off by the extreme pallor of his face. He had black eyes like gleaming coals; these and the goatee seemed to be floating in a pale cloud. He placed a glass of red liquid on the table. It was a shade of deep, dull burgundy. I scowled at it. "Is this going to freeze me down like that shit last night?"
"No, no chance of that. And please don't call it shit, Gunnar. Go on, drink it. Şerefe."
I put it to my lips and drew a small sip off the top. It tasted like a slurry of charcoal and sugar and salt. There was no alcohol.
"This shit better be on the house," I said. Ristem stood over me with his arms crossed, saying nothing. I sighed and put the potion back to my lips. I caught a glimpse of Merwan looking at us from the other side of the street as I turned the glass up and threw my head back to drain it.
"Tebrikler!" said Ristem. "Now let me show you the way to a first-rate toilet facility."
"Yes," I said, suddenly feeling quite euphoric. "You really do have first-rate facilities here. Especially that remarkable sink."
"Ah. Yes, you're right, Gunnar." Ristem was leading me by the hand. We were headed for the door. "They are very nice. But I'm taking you to a different toilet now, one designed to withstand even the largest, shall we say, disturbances. I am sure you will find it entirely to your liking." Ristem undid his waiter's smock with one hand as we wove up İstiklal through the crowd. Once off, he bunched it up and flung it into the gutter in mockery of whatever tips or receipts may have been inside. I became aware of an urgency lacing my euphoria. I would have to drop this thing off soon, or else lose it in the street.
"Are we there yet?" I barely managed to get the words out.
"Yes, Gunnar. Here we are." We came to a stop in front of a very slender building that rose a full six stories off the street. Merwan produced a card key from his wallet and let us in. I hadn't been aware that he was with us until then. The inside of this building consisted of a narrow foyer with a checkerboard floor that led straight to a slim, closed door with a stairwell that coiled up and down off to the right.
"Ugh. Thank God," I moaned. "Where's the shitter?"
Ristem leveled a frank gaze at me. "It's on the top floor. Think you'll make it?"
"Gyegh."
As if on cue, my two friends stripped my lower half bare. Before I could say a word, one of them had stoppered me with a buttplug. I don't know who did the honors, but the honors were done. I guess they kept just about everything handy. The proud Kurdish nationalists then bent down and took hold of my legs beneath the knees, bearing me up like some obese chieftain. Hardly pausing for breath, they hustled me up the stairs, all six flights, and with a coordinate strength I could not help but find noteworthy, other circumstances notwithstanding. A really fine young pair of Kurds in spite of everything. Each story the same as the first: Floors of black and white tile, a narrow foyer flowing to the same narrow door, stairs leading up and stairs leading down. Soon we were there. They set me on my feet. Merwan indicated the door directly in front of me. "You'll find everything you need in there. Take your time, don't be afraid, and good luck. We'll be waiting in the street."
"But what if it's the drizzling shits and I..."
"Long live the Kurdish nation!" Ristem intoned. At this my two friends turned on their heels and sprinted down the stairs. There was nothing left for me to do but wobble gingerly toward the door. It opened inward to reveal a toilet. The bowl rose about as high off the floor as normal toilets do, but it was a great deal wider; the size perhaps, of an old village well, the seat astride which resembled a gigantic slab with an ass-sized cavity taken out of the middle forward part of it. I approached, reaching around for the stopper. Looking inside, I saw that the bottom of the bowl sank a good foot below the level of the floor, and that the siphon tube that received the waste was as long around as the neck of a bull. The flushing mechanism was controlled by a slender cord directly aft of the toilet. Another feature was a handlebar that rose from the floor before the toilet, which I was immediately glad for. Some shits ride Cadillac-smooth and call for suede and Scotch; others buck like Broncos and call for something to hold on to. Panting, I turned around, eased the plug out, and sat down. There was a grayish material sticking to the plug. I sniffed it, but it did not smell like shit. More like a slightly adulterated version of that frigid Ararat sütlaç. I threw it against the door in disgust. Something rumbled inside me; I seized the handlebar and leaned into my task. Such a mundane activity--and yet I knew it was steeped in higher meaning. It started coming out. And how it came! By the yard I paid it out, almost of its own accord really. Imagine: All that swelling, and yet there was nothing particularly laborious about getting it out. If you must know, I hardly had to squeeze at all. In consistency, in assfeel--a qualitative metric that is to stool appraisal as mouthfeel is to beer appraisal--it was rather like Jell-O, only firmer, like something halfway between Jell-O and silicone and uniform throughout, never bulging or tapering, never gloopy or runny or bumpy or peppered by gas. I held on and the stuff kept coming. I could both see and feel my stomach deflating as I paid it out. In the space of a minute, it went from a bursting gibbosity to a sad sack, spent and bruised. And then it was over. The last of it exited with a reluctant sucking noise, as if it had been trying to pull my entrails along with it, and then the whole narrow chamber smelled like sütlaç that had gone off; I could feel my asshole gaping and puckering in shameful solidarity with a certain widely disseminated genre of film. Weak in the knees, I dragged myself up to look at what I had wrought. I was surprised to see that practically none of it had accumulated in the bowl. Instead, it appeared to have snaked its way out the back, over the hump in the siphon tube, and God knew how many yards down the plumbing. It was dim looking down at it through the seat aperture, but on the tail end of it, bobbing just above the water line, I thought I could see some of what had to be blood. I suppose this was only natural given the somatic expansion I had just been through. But was it natural, I wondered, that it should appear to be not so much flecking the matter as webbing it, networking it? Also -- and again I couldn't be sure -- I had the disquieting impression that the stuff was expanding against the exit pipe even as I watched.
Shuttering in revulsion, I reached for the cord and pulled. At first there was a rumble from somewhere far below; then came the rushing, the whooshing--a hurtling, roaring, sucking sound that culminated in such an access of water howling through the toilet that I thought the pipes must surely explode and inundate the whole building. But they held, and by and by the tremendous flush gave way to the vacuous tranquility left in the wake of a violent storm. I lurched forward and across the threshold, leaving the buttplug where it was as I closed the door.
Depleted and spent as I was, I had a time of it getting down the stairs. But down them I got, and Ristem and Merwan were in the street waiting for me when I emerged. Both had their arms crossed, above which they were smiling taut, grim smiles.
"And so it is done," said Ristem.
"Now all we must do is wait."
I leaned on them for support and watched people pass as we waited. People passed: Beggars, bakers, tourists, peons, cops, shoemakers, pipe fitters, hustlers of every stripe. There were shouts, sales pitches, oohs, aahs, oaths, insults, come-ons, shoot-downs, everything. Then it happened. Somewhere in the middle distance, there was a sound between a pop and a boom. Then came another, this one closer. Then a manhole cover no more than 50 feet from where we stood burst its casing, born on a tide of burbling excrement. Pop! Pop! Boom! The entire sewer system gave out as we leaned against the building and looked on easily.
But then the shit coalesced and began to move things. Slowly at first, gently. Just moving nutshells and assorted scraps. But then with increased speed and augmented flow, the throughout of cubic meters of shit per second mounting and swelling until İstiklal began to resemble a swift, rain-swollen river, roaring now, sweeping away all the nut vendors and lotto salesmen and tourists and touts and cops indiscriminately, bowling them over, submerging them, knocking them senseless, drowning them, killing them as we looked on, no longer easily, but holding on for dear life in the relative refuge of a building portico fitted with stout railings on either side. I could hear howls and screams through the churn and roar of this unholy cloacal river. Over these, in either ear, I could hear my Kurdish friends' maniacal laughter. "We did it!" Ristem yelled. "You have unleashed the waters of Ararat!"
"What he means to say," said Merwan, "is that you are now a hero of the Kurdish people, and no longer just a degenerate writer!"
I cast my gaze up the torrent that the city's main pedestrian thoroughfare had become. I inclined my head and heard ghostly licks of uproarious upstream laughter carrying on the current like fish schooling to sea.
Dedicated to the memory of the Republic of Ararat, which haunts us still
This little cycle of Istanbul vignettes wouldn't be complete without mentioning the obscene yet inadvertent act of terrorism I committed while in Istanbul. Now it is true that I laud those who propose to resist state power in creative ways, ans it is also true that destruction is a form of creation, but please do not make the mistake of thinking that I find my own actions in this affair praiseworthy, for quite apart from their horrific and senseless consequences, serendipitous as they may have been for some, they amounted to little more than a sequence carried out by a biological automaton. You see, one stormy night in March I had a pair of Kurds over to dinner in my little ship's cabin on Lime Hill. Ristem was a sharp-looking fellow whose acute and somewhat diabolical goatee contrasted sharply with his tonsured head and downright cadaverous complexion. I'd met him at the Beyoğlu bookshop with the best selection of English titles, where he worked. It was there, for instance, that I'd bought Marshall Berman's magisterial 'All that is Solid Melts into Air,' not to mention my highly economical Penguin edition of 'Crime and Punishment,' the blank expanse of whose cover had tempted me to inscribe my own name under the title--which act may have been my greatest contribution to letters during the brief time I spent haunting the great city of the Turks, notwithstanding any of the other writing I did there. The bookstore had a bar whose sulfurous stainless drum wine I'd had frequent resort to while thumbing my titles. I also remember the bathroom well for its sink, an oblong, shallow porcelain vessel situated in the middle of a vast well of polished granite, above which the porcelain rose like a baptismal fount. The ample margin between the two was laid out with a bed of time-smoothed gray and slate river stones, the kind perfect for skipping, and whose apparently random arrangement was so harmonious and inviting that it must have been the result of cunning artifice. Who expects to encounter elegance, artistry, even perfection in a public washroom? And yet there it was. A sink to remember.
There were a lot of well-heeled semi-literate pseudoliterati at this bookstore, Ava I think it was called--their beaks mostly bobbing within a few meters of the zinc bartop, as if their orbits were tethered by the pull of whiskey and wine--but I preferred to keep company with my Berman, my Dostoevsky, my Comte de Suedenbourg-Nicolet, and by and by with Ristem, dispenser of the sulfurous Anatolian wine I'd come to associate with the intoxication of the written word. In any case, Ristem had introduced me to his friend Merwan who wore his hair long and whose beard masked the greater part of his face behind an anarchic snarl. Now both were berthed at my house, having called and tied off at the humble cove below. Nice guys both, students with visions vague and vast, with minds wide open to all the disastrous notions of youth. Their company was congenial to me, if somewhat esoteric. It was as if they were able to converse in perfect silence by virtue of having known each other for so long. As to what this silent conversing concerned, I recall several times that evening getting the feeling as the ships stalked the wind-vexed strait below that they were referring to something that was there but not fully so, something just beyond my grasp, some tempting morsel of knowledge for initiates seeming both to confer on them the unapproachable and repugnant dignity of social superiority and to coax me down an unseen path which they had laid out for me, a path along which lay my final acceptance into a circle of friendship that promised to sunder the barrier of language that stood between thinking and being understood. Looking at them, I thought that these would be the kinds of guys I'd like to hang out with if I were about five years younger and Turkish, but their aura of exclusivity might have been too solid to conquer--that is, being "one of them," I could never have become one of them. But there we were, with circumstance having ordained that they should find my company interesting, worthy of pursuit whether because I was older or foreign or seemingly unaffiliated with anything or anyone. In the final reckoning it may be that we had come together in friendship because they found my existence anomalous and had determined to investigate it.
We ordered İskender kebap and lsolacun and three beers from a delivery joint in my neighborhood, along with a wonderful rice pudding dessert called sütlaç. Their jackets dripped rainwater onto the floor as we looked out over the sea lane from my vestibule and waited. Merwan said the ships' lights moving through the darkness made him think of the candle-freighted turtles that had graced and navigated the Sultan's gardens in Ottoman times. When the food arrived I astounded my friends by tipping the delivery guy. Americans may be at the controls of the greatest killing machine in history, but we always leave a tip!
Over dinner the conversation grazed a number of literary and artistic trends, all of them bleak: The lack of good books being published in English or in Turkish; the lack of good translations of good books that had been published in the past; the lack of stature suffered by writing and art generally; the parasitical interface between cultural production and cultural consumption; the want of community tormenting those who would create but lack the social leavening that has been sublimated into the fantasy of inspiration; the generalized and all but consummated deadening of the mind and coarsening of life that had allowed these things to come to pass in both our cultures, and which were hastening us to the brink of a darkness to which there would be no bottom. The three of us gamesomely agreed to diagnose the problem as the worldwide murder-suicide of civilization itself before settling on what must always come to the fore among strong spirits whom the myriad lacks and deficiencies among which we are adrift have failed to annihilate: The political. As Kurds, both were bitterly opposed to the injustice machine of the Turkish state, but Ristem's espousal of nonviolence and civil disobedience was sharply contradicted by Merwan's refractory revolutionary bloodlust. A Stalinist with an unabashed fondness for Sayyid Qutb, the frequency with which he proposed to liquidate people, classes of people, or entire communities and nations of people might have brought on a spell of indigestion in a more squeamish dinner partner, but I went with the flow and humored him. And as a sometime adherent of the 5 Noble Contempts, and in my very capacity as an American, I found it difficult to reject the doctrine of selective liquidation out of hand. His face twitched with rage when the topic of America came up, but Ristem quickly stepped in and navigated us to safer waters.
But the persistent fact that he'd been treated to dinner by a bona fide American must have stuck in Merwan's craw. As we were wrapping up the meal, he began to denigrate what he referred to as my "glamorous lifestyle of writers." But nothing could have been sillier. Where was the glamor, where was the style, I asked him, in a tortuous, solitary pursuit that nobody gives a damn about, least of all those who profess to be enamored of the life of the mind? I made a sweeping gesture to encompass my dingy digs. Glamor? He responded that the writer's lifestyle relied on a false secession from the grim realities that bind the great mass of people, calling the dissociate stance that enables Dichtung ineffectual, soft, pointless, even effeminate. He on the other hand was of sterner stuff, stuff that could absorb and integrate the grimness of reality. He was pure, strong ore cast in the mold of the savvy businessman, the modern man with no illusions and no inhibitions, no hangups or kinks or quirks or obsessions to prevent him from occurring in the world as it was, endowed by life with the ability to ask of it no more than it gave. All this was said while wearing an outfit whose blockish drabness reminded me of a Mao suit. But the real problem with his self-presentation went beyond his dress, beyond the fact that had no business interests, no holdings, no ventures to speak of, no job. It was that he, as Ristem had put it before we'd been introduced, was pretty much the only young Turkish poet of note, at least according to some old Turkish poets who had once been of note. And yet there was an element of play in all of this, as if he were begging me to call his bluff. Not so that he could come off the hobby horse and have a laugh, but so that he could have an excuse to dig in deeper. An artist in occultation, a poetic double agent, a Kurdish Ezra Pound who took pathological pleasure in his cynical refuge in fascism's shallow pool. I did not hesitate to point out these inconsistencies, but Merwan was disdainful. "The pitiable wailings of the wretched, the abandoned, the weak," he said, "do not concern me. Power is our only hope of redemption."
"On the contrary," said Ristem, noticing my mounting annoyance. "Our hope is coded into prophecy."
"Prophecy?"
Exactly 100 years ago, Ristem maintained, a great Kurdish poet had prophesied that in 100 years, the Kurdish people would enjoy a momentary victory over their tormentors by drowning the city of the Turks neck-deep in shit. He said that the episode would reverberate through the Kurdish nation in an epidemic of unquenchable laughter that would circle the globe before it had spent itself "This poet," said Ristem, "said that as long as they had not been exterminated, all these laughing Kurds would plunge the land of the Turks into paralytic chaos. If there were Kurds on the roads, the roads would be blocked. If there were Kurds in the factories, production would cease. If Kurds were fighting, the laughter would lead to their slaughter, but new waves of fighters would rise up implacably behind the fallen, powerfully inspired by the example of the soldiers who had met their fate with those unforgettable peals of mocking laughter."
"Inspiring, is it not?" said Merwan. "The problem is that this poet may not have existed. There are hundreds of references to his prophecy by other Kurdish poets, and even a number of references to his work, but there is no hard evidence of that work. Not one poem. Is it possible to be a poet on the strength of a single prophecy?"
"Huh," I said between greedy spoonfuls of sütlaç. "That's interesting stuff. Do you guys believe the prophecy?"
Both laughed anxiously at this, looking at each other as if my question were an embarrassment.
"Whether we believe in it or not is beside the point," said Merwan.
"What he means is that we look on all prophecies as an inspiration to act, and not as a divine script for the course of things to follow. Prophets do not believe in God," said Ristem.
"They play Him," said Merwan. "So yes. In that limited sense, we do believe in it."
"The question is whether you believe in it." Ristem had stopped eating and was regarding me very calmly.
"Believe in it? But I don't know anything about it."
"What Ristem means to ask is whether you believe in the justice of the Kurdish cause?"
"Sure, I believe that all people should breathe free."
"I think what Merwan really means to ask is whether you would be willing to, well, assist us in realizing the justice of the Turk--, I mean the Turd--"
"Damn it!"
"--I mean the Kurdish vision."
"Well, whatever I can do guys, I'd be happy too, really, I mean, you know, within reason. My goodness, this sütlaç sure is delicious." I looked up. "What are you talking about exactly?"
"I think what Ristem here means --" Merwan was looking ruefully at his friend, "-- I think what Ristem means is that you sound like you could be a great friend to the Kurdish nation. And I think we might profitably discuss the modalities of your involvement tomorrow. At the bookstore. Would you like some more sütlaç, Gunnar my friend?"
"Why, yes. Yes I would. Damn that's good stuff. But I thought we only ordered the three."
Ristem was smiling broadly. "My friend, a Kurd who does not move around the city with extra sütlaç is not a true Kurd. Please have this, my friend." At this he reached into his bag and withdrew a cylindrical cooler of brushed stainless steel. Air rushed forth when he undid the clamps.
"This is my mother's special recipe, from Diyarbakir. Shall I replenish your bowl?" I handed him the plastic container I'd eaten the restaurant's sütlaç from. He upended the bright cylinder and we watched in silence as a vaporous mass of the tasty pudding oozed forth. He sprinkled it with cinnamon from a shaker that he apparently also kept in readiness in his dinner coat's inside pocket. "Enjoy!" Vapor was rising off the bowl as if the contents were boiling. I put a spoonful in my mouth and tasted it. It was the coldest thing I'd put on my tongue since losing a patch of it to a galvanized Minneapolis fencepost in a distant childhood midwinter. Neither sütlaç nor spoon stuck, luckily. The temperature and consistency reminded me of gelled gasoline.
"Gah. Thith ith abtholutely fucking freething," I said, barely able to dribble the words across my stunned tongue. "What the hell ith thith thit?"
"Not shit, my friend. A family tradition. It represents the original sütlaç enjoyed by the beleaguered Kurds on Mount Ararat over 500 years ago. Turkish cavalry were hounding us, and we been forced to take refuge on the steepest faces of the highest slopes. Night fell, and we couldn't risk lighting a cooking fire for fear of being seen and slaughtered, so we mixed together we had: Milk, sugar and leftover rice, all freezing cold. That was the original Kurdish sütlaç. We serve it crackling cold to this day to commemorate that brave band of warriors."
"Wow," I said. "Ithakyawy pree goo if you wet your mouf go numb. But howeth your mom gedjit thith cold without freething it?"
"That, my friend, is a family secret. There is literally nothing you could do to make me tell you."
"Nothig?"
"Not by invitation, not by threat, not by torture. Islam Karimov himself could not make me tell, nor your General McChrushitall."
"McCrystal."
"Sorry. Not even McCrystal could get me to tell. Nor will I tell my grave when you're through with me. You see, I only know one part of the formula. We have chopped the secret up into 1000 pieces, which we carry like precious gems within our bowels."
I continued to eat the stuff as he spoke, dimly aware that the numb frisson of the first bite had transited my esophagus and was now radiating in insensate waves from the pit of my stomach.
Merwan gave me a hearty clap on the back once I'd finished.
"There we have it," he said. "A nice, healthy American appetite. Rapacious, you might say. Would you like some more?" Something about the cast of his face -- the set of his mouth -- bespoke the greed of zealotry. An odd, vicarious greed I supposed, a sort of mutant hospitality.
"Oh no," I said. "I'd better save room for the beers I'm going to be having later."
Merwan looked alarmed, but Ristem put a steadying hand on his associate's shoulder before he could speak.
"I think what my friend wants to say is that beer has been known to interfere with the digestive process when the subject has eaten this particular kind of sütlaç. It might even be hazardous. Due to the cold reagents."
"Yes," said Merwan with a solemn nod. "The cold reagents."
"The subject?"
"Well. In a manner of speaking." At least they didn't nod their heads in unison and say 'Yes. The subject.'
"Damn it, guys! I was looking forward to having a beer. To having, I don't know, two, three, four, five beers. Why didn't you guys tell me about this before feeding me that Arctic shit?"
"Don't call it shit," said Merwan. "That was Kurdish hospitality. More than that, it was the very currency of Kurdish pride."
"What he's trying to say, Gunnar, is that there is no reason to be sore. We were just trying to germinate the seeds of cross-cultural friendship, in your gut so to say, and with them our deliverance from the Turkish chains that have bound us through these long centuries. Everything we do, we do for a reason. There is no need to get sore."
"All right, I get it. Cross-cultural harmony, birth of a new era, no need to get sore. But I have to say that you guys are treading on some cultural toes here by denying a Swedish-American his beer. I mean, I need a beer."
My two friends looked at each other with a profundity of seriousness and understanding.
"All right, said Ristem. "One beer. Can he have one beer?"
"Oh, I suppose. But only one. And only as long as he doesn't blame us when his stomach swells up. I never heard of one beer causing any serious complications. There's no need to get swollen, but it's his prerogative."
"Complications?"
"Yes," Merwan said. "Complications. You know, an upset tummy."
Ristem cracked an Efes and handed it to me. Each of my friends also took a brew from the bag. We drank our beers in gloomy silence. Mine seemed to have the initial effect of reversing the numbness that had gathered in the pit of my stomach, but the reversal of this spreading nullity revealed a discomfort, a swelling, a chill, a pain -- as if the kenomatic effect of the gelid sütlaç contained within it another, paradoxically pleromatic effect. I soon set my beer down and doubled over with the sudden fullness. I heard my friends whisper among themselves in Kurdish. I began to quaver, to moan; the pain spread to my head and guttered there like a cold electric fire before swelling and shooting from skull to spleen and back again within the space of a split second. The site of it was impossible to fix. Soon everything was in pain, each part of my body communicating with every other with the monomaniac message of PAIN. It was as if my head were hurting inside my stomach, or as if my stomach had a headache, which to soothe I rubbed the temples of my belly, or groaned and pawed at the top of my dome with a palliative circular motion, taken aback by its hardness, can't think with this petrified convex six-pack dammit, which reminded me to curse my Kurdish friends roundly, but for whom I'd surely be on my way to the enjoyment of a six-pack and then some, with the outraged and excruciating regret serving me for a prism through which I could see, clearly, that by tomorrow I would be laughing and drinking with my friends the Kurds, that all of the Kurds would be laughing and drinking and congratulating me on a job well done. But what job?
Looking back, I think I can specify quite clearly that this was the hallucinatory vacuum in which I acceded to terrorism. Impassioned salvos of Kurdish erupted in the background. I thought I could understand that they would remain by my side until they could be sure all the stores had closed and that I could buy no more beer, because one drop more would put the kibosh on everything, their years of planning, a century of waiting, all the bloodsoaked generations of the yearning marching back clear to the mystic Ararat icemists in which that first frozen progenitor sütlaç had taken form, frozen to symbolize the tenacity of their national dream in the face of history's glacial passage, yes by God, they'd stay with me, and I felt that they were good friends as my stomach gave a convulsive rumble announcing my unwilling passage into the vacuous purgatory of unconsciousness, where dreams fail to form even to the point of miscarriage. No, no dreams in this noiseless nocturne, no visions, scenes or revelations -- only the inchoate conviction that my destiny was now bound up with that of the Kurds, and theirs with mine, and that I'd better bind myself by them if I would be well.
I felt a crinkle when I woke up. It was a note whose text my cheek had printed onto my pillow as I'd slept. "Come see us at the bookstore at four o'clock. Do not be late. Do not drink beer, and whatever you do, do not attempt to pass a stool. In faith, Ristem and Merwan."
I followed their instructions to a T. Let no one say that I am not capable of following instructions in time of need. My abstention from beer did involve a bit of grumbling, as it was my custom to enjoy a beer with breakfast in those days, a la Polonaise if you like, but the injunction to boycott the stooly stool was achieved with perfect equanimity. Although I was no longer in pain, my stomach was so swollen that I expected any appointment with the porcelain pedestal would be disastrous, and that it really would be better to, ahem, send forth, away from the house. I left at two, allowing plenty of cushion to reach the center from my relatively distant outskirt.
Truly, my stomach had grown very large overnight. The fellow I studied in the mirror had a potbellied, even a pregnant look. Not particularly fetching, but that was me now. I will level with you and admit that no amount of leaning or bobbing or neck-craning could bring me into visual contact with the penis I knew still dwelt beneath this new protuberance. I hope that my forthrightness does not stun you. But let's not be squeamish: After all, we have come here to talk about terrorism.
The bus driver had to suppress a chortle a when he saw me step aboard his creaking sootbox and thumbed my Akbil magnet into the validator. I suppose the contrast between my slight frame and my abdominal massif was funny, but it put me on notice that I now cut a ridiculous figure--and now I was hounded by the thought that everyone whose eye grazed me was experiencing a paroxysm of surreptitious hilarity. The guard with the bomb wand on the way into the Metro also snickered at the sight of me. He let the paddle graze and prod my belly with a diligence that, though exemplary, failed to establish that anything was amiss. And that something was amiss is precisely what I shall endeavor to demonstrate. Having slipped the State's tattered dragnet, I bored inexorably toward the center of the city and my appointment with prophecy.
Ristem was there to greet me as I staggered into the bookstore's glass door, hobbled not so much by the weight as by the sheer girth of the bloat. "My friend. You have come." He smiled like a sun and seated me with the spontaneous gallantry inspired by pregnancy wherever it goes. Unable to sit straight in the chair, I had to extend my legs to give my belly more swellroom. It had gotten even bigger--and still I was in no pain at all. Herbert Walker Fucking Christ, I thought. There would be stretch marks. Stretch marks--the humiliation!
Ristem bent over me and surveyed the groundcover stretched over my abdominal landscape with some alarm. "You will be wanting to, ahem, relieve yourself, no? I mean, you waited until now, yes?"
"Yes, for God's sake. Look at me! Do I look relieved? Does it look like I relieved myself? Does this look like relief to you?"
"Well, very good then. I'll get you a glass of something that should help you feel better."
"No Ristem. I asked you a question. Does this look like relief to you?" I pulled my shirt up to reveal the vast bedrock beneath the groundcover. Lord! There they were. The stretch marks, along with great blooming bruises where my vasculature had been stretched to rupture. It was a wonder I felt no pain.
"Shit," he said. "No! Please, put it away. They'll take you to a hospital, man. All will be for naught."
I pounded my fist onto the table. "Dammit Ristem! I want to know what this looks like to you. Does it look like relief? Because it sure as shit doesn't look that way to me."
"All right. No. No!" he hissed. "It doesn't look like relief. Thank you for holding it. Now please cover yourself. You don't realize what kind of danger you'd be in if they took you to a hospital. All of us would, but you especially. They wouldn't be able to help you there, Gunnar. Only we have what it'll take for you to be able to relieve yourself."
I complied by stretching my shirt down over the obscene formation.
"Good. Now Gunnar. Let me get you something to drink. It's what you need. Just sit there and try to look normal."
Ristem sailed away and came breezing back on a cushion of air. He had trimmed his goatee and waxed it so that it tapered into a perfect geometrical point set off by the extreme pallor of his face. He had black eyes like gleaming coals; these and the goatee seemed to be floating in a pale cloud. He placed a glass of red liquid on the table. It was a shade of deep, dull burgundy. I scowled at it. "Is this going to freeze me down like that shit last night?"
"No, no chance of that. And please don't call it shit, Gunnar. Go on, drink it. Şerefe."
I put it to my lips and drew a small sip off the top. It tasted like a slurry of charcoal and sugar and salt. There was no alcohol.
"This shit better be on the house," I said. Ristem stood over me with his arms crossed, saying nothing. I sighed and put the potion back to my lips. I caught a glimpse of Merwan looking at us from the other side of the street as I turned the glass up and threw my head back to drain it.
"Tebrikler!" said Ristem. "Now let me show you the way to a first-rate toilet facility."
"Yes," I said, suddenly feeling quite euphoric. "You really do have first-rate facilities here. Especially that remarkable sink."
"Ah. Yes, you're right, Gunnar." Ristem was leading me by the hand. We were headed for the door. "They are very nice. But I'm taking you to a different toilet now, one designed to withstand even the largest, shall we say, disturbances. I am sure you will find it entirely to your liking." Ristem undid his waiter's smock with one hand as we wove up İstiklal through the crowd. Once off, he bunched it up and flung it into the gutter in mockery of whatever tips or receipts may have been inside. I became aware of an urgency lacing my euphoria. I would have to drop this thing off soon, or else lose it in the street.
"Are we there yet?" I barely managed to get the words out.
"Yes, Gunnar. Here we are." We came to a stop in front of a very slender building that rose a full six stories off the street. Merwan produced a card key from his wallet and let us in. I hadn't been aware that he was with us until then. The inside of this building consisted of a narrow foyer with a checkerboard floor that led straight to a slim, closed door with a stairwell that coiled up and down off to the right.
"Ugh. Thank God," I moaned. "Where's the shitter?"
Ristem leveled a frank gaze at me. "It's on the top floor. Think you'll make it?"
"Gyegh."
As if on cue, my two friends stripped my lower half bare. Before I could say a word, one of them had stoppered me with a buttplug. I don't know who did the honors, but the honors were done. I guess they kept just about everything handy. The proud Kurdish nationalists then bent down and took hold of my legs beneath the knees, bearing me up like some obese chieftain. Hardly pausing for breath, they hustled me up the stairs, all six flights, and with a coordinate strength I could not help but find noteworthy, other circumstances notwithstanding. A really fine young pair of Kurds in spite of everything. Each story the same as the first: Floors of black and white tile, a narrow foyer flowing to the same narrow door, stairs leading up and stairs leading down. Soon we were there. They set me on my feet. Merwan indicated the door directly in front of me. "You'll find everything you need in there. Take your time, don't be afraid, and good luck. We'll be waiting in the street."
"But what if it's the drizzling shits and I..."
"Long live the Kurdish nation!" Ristem intoned. At this my two friends turned on their heels and sprinted down the stairs. There was nothing left for me to do but wobble gingerly toward the door. It opened inward to reveal a toilet. The bowl rose about as high off the floor as normal toilets do, but it was a great deal wider; the size perhaps, of an old village well, the seat astride which resembled a gigantic slab with an ass-sized cavity taken out of the middle forward part of it. I approached, reaching around for the stopper. Looking inside, I saw that the bottom of the bowl sank a good foot below the level of the floor, and that the siphon tube that received the waste was as long around as the neck of a bull. The flushing mechanism was controlled by a slender cord directly aft of the toilet. Another feature was a handlebar that rose from the floor before the toilet, which I was immediately glad for. Some shits ride Cadillac-smooth and call for suede and Scotch; others buck like Broncos and call for something to hold on to. Panting, I turned around, eased the plug out, and sat down. There was a grayish material sticking to the plug. I sniffed it, but it did not smell like shit. More like a slightly adulterated version of that frigid Ararat sütlaç. I threw it against the door in disgust. Something rumbled inside me; I seized the handlebar and leaned into my task. Such a mundane activity--and yet I knew it was steeped in higher meaning. It started coming out. And how it came! By the yard I paid it out, almost of its own accord really. Imagine: All that swelling, and yet there was nothing particularly laborious about getting it out. If you must know, I hardly had to squeeze at all. In consistency, in assfeel--a qualitative metric that is to stool appraisal as mouthfeel is to beer appraisal--it was rather like Jell-O, only firmer, like something halfway between Jell-O and silicone and uniform throughout, never bulging or tapering, never gloopy or runny or bumpy or peppered by gas. I held on and the stuff kept coming. I could both see and feel my stomach deflating as I paid it out. In the space of a minute, it went from a bursting gibbosity to a sad sack, spent and bruised. And then it was over. The last of it exited with a reluctant sucking noise, as if it had been trying to pull my entrails along with it, and then the whole narrow chamber smelled like sütlaç that had gone off; I could feel my asshole gaping and puckering in shameful solidarity with a certain widely disseminated genre of film. Weak in the knees, I dragged myself up to look at what I had wrought. I was surprised to see that practically none of it had accumulated in the bowl. Instead, it appeared to have snaked its way out the back, over the hump in the siphon tube, and God knew how many yards down the plumbing. It was dim looking down at it through the seat aperture, but on the tail end of it, bobbing just above the water line, I thought I could see some of what had to be blood. I suppose this was only natural given the somatic expansion I had just been through. But was it natural, I wondered, that it should appear to be not so much flecking the matter as webbing it, networking it? Also -- and again I couldn't be sure -- I had the disquieting impression that the stuff was expanding against the exit pipe even as I watched.
Shuttering in revulsion, I reached for the cord and pulled. At first there was a rumble from somewhere far below; then came the rushing, the whooshing--a hurtling, roaring, sucking sound that culminated in such an access of water howling through the toilet that I thought the pipes must surely explode and inundate the whole building. But they held, and by and by the tremendous flush gave way to the vacuous tranquility left in the wake of a violent storm. I lurched forward and across the threshold, leaving the buttplug where it was as I closed the door.
Depleted and spent as I was, I had a time of it getting down the stairs. But down them I got, and Ristem and Merwan were in the street waiting for me when I emerged. Both had their arms crossed, above which they were smiling taut, grim smiles.
"And so it is done," said Ristem.
"Now all we must do is wait."
I leaned on them for support and watched people pass as we waited. People passed: Beggars, bakers, tourists, peons, cops, shoemakers, pipe fitters, hustlers of every stripe. There were shouts, sales pitches, oohs, aahs, oaths, insults, come-ons, shoot-downs, everything. Then it happened. Somewhere in the middle distance, there was a sound between a pop and a boom. Then came another, this one closer. Then a manhole cover no more than 50 feet from where we stood burst its casing, born on a tide of burbling excrement. Pop! Pop! Boom! The entire sewer system gave out as we leaned against the building and looked on easily.
But then the shit coalesced and began to move things. Slowly at first, gently. Just moving nutshells and assorted scraps. But then with increased speed and augmented flow, the throughout of cubic meters of shit per second mounting and swelling until İstiklal began to resemble a swift, rain-swollen river, roaring now, sweeping away all the nut vendors and lotto salesmen and tourists and touts and cops indiscriminately, bowling them over, submerging them, knocking them senseless, drowning them, killing them as we looked on, no longer easily, but holding on for dear life in the relative refuge of a building portico fitted with stout railings on either side. I could hear howls and screams through the churn and roar of this unholy cloacal river. Over these, in either ear, I could hear my Kurdish friends' maniacal laughter. "We did it!" Ristem yelled. "You have unleashed the waters of Ararat!"
"What he means to say," said Merwan, "is that you are now a hero of the Kurdish people, and no longer just a degenerate writer!"
I cast my gaze up the torrent that the city's main pedestrian thoroughfare had become. I inclined my head and heard ghostly licks of uproarious upstream laughter carrying on the current like fish schooling to sea.
