Memed, My Hawk (Vintage Classics) by Yashar Kemal

Author:Yashar Kemal [Kemal, Yashar]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781784701086
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-11-30T18:30:00+00:00

XIV

“Let’s sleep here for a couple of hours,” suggested Ali.

“We haven’t far to go, Ali,” objected Hasan. “By noon we’ll reach my village. You can then spend the night in our home and be on your way again to-morrow morning.”

Ali was a tall man, with a long pock-marked face, so thin that he looked as if a puff of wind could blow him over.

“It’s midnight,” he said, “and there isn’t a soul in sight. Come, let’s sleep here till morning. It will be dawn in a couple of hours at most.”

“I’m not stopping a minute,” answered Hasan. “It’s four years since I’ve seen my home.”

“I haven’t seen mine either, but …”

“Well?” asked Hasan.

“I’m tired.”

“Listen, there’s running water nearby. Go and wash your face. It’ll make you feel better.”

“Cold water’s just what one needs when one is tired,” agreed Ali.

“The water of our village,” said Hasan. “Is there anything like it? It’s like ice. It bubbles out from under the ground, white as milk. In the old days there used to be a great plane-tree right over the spring. I’ve seen it there myself. One day it rained, the sky was dark with rain …. Suddenly a ball of green light burst in the sky and struck the plane-tree. We went and looked. The tree had disappeared, burned to ashes. I swear, I saw it with my own eyes. Now you can’t even see where the plane-tree stood.”

“For three years, three long years, I’ve sweated and struggled in the Chukurova,” said Ali. “But in the end I’ve earned a tidy sum, Brother.”

Perhaps a hundred times, in the same phrases, the same words, Ali had explained all about the Chukurova, how he had earned the money at the cost of countless pains, and what he would now do with the money. On the road, whenever a lull occurred in their conversation, they would walk in silence for a while before beginning to explain again all that they had already explained. Again and again, Hasan had talked about his village, his boy, the plane-tree burned to ashes, the Chukurova and the man for whom he had worked in the Chukurova.

“First,” continued Ali, “I’ll give two hundred liras to the father so that I can bring the girl home. With the rest I’ll buy a pair of oxen and order a quilted coat lined with cotton for my mother. She feels the cold, poor thing! Then I’ll pull down the roof of the house and build a new one. You should see our house when the rains begin. It leaks like a sieve ….”

“Repair the roof, Brother. It’s bad when a roof leaks. It’s unbearable.”

“It nearly killed me, that life in the Chukurova. It’s so hot you get roasted in that land of infidels. Never again, I swear! The malaria’s in my blood. This winter I’ll get well again.”

“I’ve got malaria too,” said Hasan.

“I bore it all to bring a woman into the house and a pair of oxen and a warm coat for my mother.

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