Lady Life by Ahmet Altan

Author:Ahmet Altan [Altan, Ahmet]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2023-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

8

I came out of my room after hearing noises. Two men were holding Gülsüm by the arms and dragging her. There was blood all over her face, her clothes were torn, her hair was a mess, there was a long run in her dark stockings, and her makeup was smudged around her eyes. “I didn’t do anything to them,” she said, sobbing. “I didn’t do anything to them.” She kept repeating that sentence.

All the doors on our floor opened, as everyone came out to the corridor.

“What happened?” asked Poet.

“The men with clubs gave her a beating,” someone said.

Poet went to Gülsüm’s side.

“What happened, Gülsüm?”

“I didn’t do anything to them.”

“I know. What happened?”

“They attacked me out of the blue. The other girls got away. The men caught up with me by the mosque. They beat me so bad, bro…They beat me so bad.”

Apparently, she was caught because she wouldn’t go into the mosque.

“Should we take you to a hospital?”

“No, don’t even think about it…They’ll beat me there too.”

“Why would anyone beat you at the hospital?”

“Bro, you don’t get it, they beat us everywhere. They beat us everywhere.”

They took Gülsüm to her room and made her sit on her bed. Someone fetched a wet towel, then wiped her face with it, and another guy brought some cologne from his room and dressed her wound. There were many people in the room. I stood by the door, looking in. The clean scent of soap—betraying an extremely fastidious occupant, and floating above the acrid body odor of the single males standing around—reached my nostrils. I couldn’t see the inside of the room all that well since there were so many people, but I could make out a small rug, in purple plush, at the foot of the bed, and under the dresser, a row of high-heeled patent leather shoes in yellow, green, pink, fuchsia, and red, all in size eleven. (They looked like scary birds that had bolted out of dark stormy skies. It was such an unusual image that even today the first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Gülsüm is her shoes.) She kept saying “I didn’t do anything to them” and sobbing incessantly, as though on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I didn’t do anything to them.

At that moment, Mogambo came in the room. Wherever he was returning from at that late hour of the night, he had his daily load of counterfeit handbags on his back. He asked in his African accent: “What happened here?”

“The men with clubs beat Gülsüm.”

Mogambo split the crowd with his hefty body, walked over to Gülsüm, and looked at her. Gülsüm was pulling on the collar of her blouse and saying “I didn’t do anything to them,” clearly unaware that she was repeating the same sentence over and over. Mogambo put down the bags, gave everyone the once-over, and said: “You guys get out of here now, I’ll talk to Gülsüm…”

Everyone else quietly left the room. I saw Mogambo sit beside Gülsüm before we closed the door.

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