to the ground. They were getting paid to take the blows but had not bargained for such a beating. But the roll of the drums, the call of the trumpet, and the roar of the cannons had stirred the Turks’ blood. Shouting war cries, they kicked and punched their opponents with all their might, and the performance area started to resemble a real battlefield. Blood flowed from the noses of the Russians, and their faces were cut and swollen.
Meryem heard her cousin Cemal shouting at Memo, “Are you crazy? Stop!”
All the Russians were yelling, but it was useless. Finally, the Russians’ patience broke, and they stood up and fought back. Battered unmercifully, their blood was up by then, and their superior physical strength forced the Turks to flee.
The Russians were victorious that year, and the local authorities, furious, immediately stopped the celebration. The crowd dispersed, and the village settled back into its accustomed torpor.
Meryem remembered the bruised and bloody faces of Cemal and Memo, and she started to giggle. Then she thought of those listening on the other side of the door. Would they not be surprised to hear a dead girl laughing?
LIFE IS A JOKE
“Can a man turn into a totally different person and start a new life?”
İrfan Kurudal was asking himself this question as he sat among a boisterous group of friends in a small fish restaurant on the Bosphorus. The lights of a passing steamer were reflected in the glass of the tightly closed windows. Although spring had arrived, it was still too cool to sit outside, so the heat was on.
Sunday lunch with a few close friends, sitting by the water chatting and sipping rak ı , used to be one of İrfan’s favorite activities. He still laughed at the jokes, but had lost his enthusiasm for this pastime. The same question kept coming up in his mind—could he change his life if he so wished?
Someone was telling a joke. Jokes about the war in the southeast had recently become popular, and İrfan pretended to be amused.
“One day PKK guerrillas set an ambush for a unit of soldiers that they know always passed by the same spot at seven o’clock every evening. Half an hour goes by and nobody arrives at the ambush … an hour and there’s still no one in sight. Then one of the guerrillas says worriedly, ‘I hope nothing has happened to our boys!’”
Everybody laughed, and Metin, a banker, continued with another joke—speaking through his nose to imitate a Kurdish accent.
“PKK guerrillas raid a village and kill everyone except for an old woman and an old man. One of the guerrillas points his gun at the woman and asks, ‘What’s your name?’
“‘Fatima,’ says the hapless woman.
“The guerrilla tells her that his mother’s name is also Fatima so he won’t kill her.
“He turns to the old man and asks, ‘What’s your name?’
“Quivering in fear, the terrified man stutters, ‘My name’s Omar—but everyone calls me Fatima.’”
The group erupted into laughter. İrfan had not heard this joke before, and he found it amusing.
Before joking about war had become popular, jokes about sex had been the norm. Women sometimes told bawdy jokes, but if the stories were too risqué, they might pause coyly and look at their husbands for approval. When a man told such stories, he would lower his voice and use figures of speech to cloak the meaning. Sex, İrfan believed, dominated the subconscious of all social classes in Turkey.
İrfan was not good at telling jokes. He generally failed to emphasize the right word at the right moment, and he did not have a talent for mime. Nevertheless, he decided to share a joke he remembered from his time in the States.
“Do you know which word the great Jewish thinkers used to explain the meaning of the world?
“Moses said, ‘God.’ Jesus said, ‘Love.’ Marx said, ‘Money.’ Freud said, ‘Sex.’ Finally, Einstein stated, ‘Everything is relative.’”
İrfan’s friends laughed politely and went back
Meryem heard her cousin Cemal shouting at Memo, “Are you crazy? Stop!”
All the Russians were yelling, but it was useless. Finally, the Russians’ patience broke, and they stood up and fought back. Battered unmercifully, their blood was up by then, and their superior physical strength forced the Turks to flee.
The Russians were victorious that year, and the local authorities, furious, immediately stopped the celebration. The crowd dispersed, and the village settled back into its accustomed torpor.
Meryem remembered the bruised and bloody faces of Cemal and Memo, and she started to giggle. Then she thought of those listening on the other side of the door. Would they not be surprised to hear a dead girl laughing?
LIFE IS A JOKE
“Can a man turn into a totally different person and start a new life?”
İrfan Kurudal was asking himself this question as he sat among a boisterous group of friends in a small fish restaurant on the Bosphorus. The lights of a passing steamer were reflected in the glass of the tightly closed windows. Although spring had arrived, it was still too cool to sit outside, so the heat was on.
Sunday lunch with a few close friends, sitting by the water chatting and sipping rak ı , used to be one of İrfan’s favorite activities. He still laughed at the jokes, but had lost his enthusiasm for this pastime. The same question kept coming up in his mind—could he change his life if he so wished?
Someone was telling a joke. Jokes about the war in the southeast had recently become popular, and İrfan pretended to be amused.
“One day PKK guerrillas set an ambush for a unit of soldiers that they know always passed by the same spot at seven o’clock every evening. Half an hour goes by and nobody arrives at the ambush … an hour and there’s still no one in sight. Then one of the guerrillas says worriedly, ‘I hope nothing has happened to our boys!’”
Everybody laughed, and Metin, a banker, continued with another joke—speaking through his nose to imitate a Kurdish accent.
“PKK guerrillas raid a village and kill everyone except for an old woman and an old man. One of the guerrillas points his gun at the woman and asks, ‘What’s your name?’
“‘Fatima,’ says the hapless woman.
“The guerrilla tells her that his mother’s name is also Fatima so he won’t kill her.
“He turns to the old man and asks, ‘What’s your name?’
“Quivering in fear, the terrified man stutters, ‘My name’s Omar—but everyone calls me Fatima.’”
The group erupted into laughter. İrfan had not heard this joke before, and he found it amusing.
Before joking about war had become popular, jokes about sex had been the norm. Women sometimes told bawdy jokes, but if the stories were too risqué, they might pause coyly and look at their husbands for approval. When a man told such stories, he would lower his voice and use figures of speech to cloak the meaning. Sex, İrfan believed, dominated the subconscious of all social classes in Turkey.
İrfan was not good at telling jokes. He generally failed to emphasize the right word at the right moment, and he did not have a talent for mime. Nevertheless, he decided to share a joke he remembered from his time in the States.
“Do you know which word the great Jewish thinkers used to explain the meaning of the world?
“Moses said, ‘God.’ Jesus said, ‘Love.’ Marx said, ‘Money.’ Freud said, ‘Sex.’ Finally, Einstein stated, ‘Everything is relative.’”
İrfan’s friends laughed politely and went back
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