From: yamen@cae.wisc.edu (Soner Yamen)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: turkish literature
Date: 30 Sep 92 19:44:33 GMT
Article-I.D.: doug.1992Sep30.144434.361
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering

a short story by Necip Fazil...

      "I WANNA DIE!"

     Epsilon was the main city of the Western Civilization.  A ninety-
nine-storey university building with a 2,500 square-meter dome stood in
the middle of the city.  In the basement of this building was a 5,000-
seat conference room.  Professor Alpha was at the podium which resembled
a pyramid driven upside-down into the ground.  Resting his elbows on the
podium, he "skimmed" the audience while his eyes shook the images of
5,000 people through the "funnels" of his thick glasses.  He spoke
slowly and clearly:  "I am very pleased for the opportunity to explain
our claim to the most distinguished, elite class of Epsilon."
     Suddenly, the conference room was filled with a buzzing sound
generated by thousands of machines as large as pocket watches.
Everybody in the audience had one machine in his hand. When its button
was pressed, it growled like hell.
     Professor Alpha continued: "Consisted of many doctors, professors,
discoverers, scholars, scientists, artists, thinkers, businessmen and
politicians, thousands of elite personalities, your distinguished
class,' especially today with an example before you, will evaluate and
appreciate the glory of science and technology, the absolute master of
nature."
     Buzzing like hell...  As everything else, the pleasure of clapping
hands was, too, tied to a machine in Epsilon.
     Having mastered the sound of each and every word, Professor Alpha
dropped his speech into the microphone word by word:  "The science of
medicine is definitely going to solve the problem of immortality in the
near future.  What is going to happen then?  While humans would remain
on earth, would they continue coming to this world?... Would it be
necessary to stop coming and going well, actually coming and to make
life a monopoly of a certain generation?... Or, would it be right to
give the privilege of eternal life to a group of human species with
special qualifications and leave the rest to die, therefore, opening a
way to a new selected mankind?...  All these problems are outside of the
scope of medicine and left to the thinkers who guide society...  Yet, we
have created the human species living with A's heart, B's lungs, C's
kidneys, D's liver, E's stomach, and F's reproduction organs.  On this
issue, objections from the religious front and fanatics have been
nullified by our great experiments."
     The buzz from the clapping machines went on for one and a half
hours.  Professor Alpha continued:  "As a great example of this claim, a
man whose heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, stomach, and reproduction organs
were changed is waiting in my room on the 99th floor.  Soon, we are
going to bring him before you and demonstrate that this man has the
power to walk 99 storeys and manage a 99-woman harem.  His other organs
are, too, accordingly...  In fact, this 44-year old man was about to die
because of heart failure, and he had been impotent since his early
youth."
     While the applause machines filled the room with a "soul-rending"
noise, professor Alpha turned to the head attendant, who was waiting by
the podium with a large ring on a chain hanging from his neck to his
belly, and said:  "Bring Gamma here!"
     Professor Alpha leaned towards the microphone: "The religious
perspective which finds the center of the conscious in the heart and
spirit, as if attached to the heart, is a simple, worthless tale today
as compared to other tales;  it is a simple, worthless one before the
modern experimental science which has proven that the heart is nothing
but a pump!  It does not matter whether the center of conscience and
feeling is in the brain or in the heel; we do not have time to indulge
in this kind of metaphysical delusion, nor is our methodology suitable
for such!  We, the followers of the doctrine of materials and physics,
do not believe in anything other than what we see with our eyes and what
we touch with our hands.  We are not assigned to show where the spirit
is, but to prove that it is not where it is claimed to be.  Then it is,
as understood by itself, nowhere!  All right?  Is our methodology
understood?"
     A man from the audience stood up: "May I say something?"  Professor
Alpha responded: "Yes, please."
     "For a moment, let's assume that the spirit is attached to the
heart.  Since the transplanted organ is the physical heart, would a new
spirit be coming with the new heart, or would the old spirit leave the
old heart and attache itself to the new heart?"
     Professor Alpha laughed: "Such a question is like attempting to
investigate a fairy tale!"
     "Not at all, as a matter of fact!..  Are there any changes in the
spiritual life of the person whose heart has been changed?  That is the
whole issue.  If there is a change, would it mean that the pro-spirit
thesis wins with the help of material science?"
     Professor Alpha asked:  "Who are you?"
     "A psychiatrist."
     "Oh, from the school of the spiritual methodology..."
     "Yes..."
     "For such a comparison, we must know the spiritual life of the
patient before hand and observe him for a long time.  And, it is very
difficult."
     "It is not necessary, sir.  If you leave your patient to my
psychoanalytical examination, I can tell whether he has any spiritual
transformation or not."
     "We are transplanting hearts from human beings to human beings, not
spirits!  Without being concerned with the spiritual life, we are trying
to make the patient live, but since you wish, please feel free to do the
experiment."
     The side door of the stage opened;  the head attendant and Gamma
accompanied by two assistant attendants entered.
     All the eyes were on Gamma...
     Professor Alpha brought his patient, Gamma, to the stage and
invited him to the podium:  "Come to the microphone and talk to the
audience!"
     Gamma, a middle-aged man with a bald head, a tired face and "empty"
eyes, took the order like a robot.
     Professor Alpha turned to the psychiatrist:  "Sir!  Please come to
the stage and freely do your experiment."
     The psychiatrist, face to face with Gamma, asked:  "Your name?"
     "Gamma..."
     "Where are you from?"
     "From here..."
     "Do you know that you live with somebody else's heart?"
     "They told me."
     "What and how do you feel?"
     "A strange feeling..."
     "Like what?"
     " A feeling of not belonging to myself..."
     "What is it like?"
     "Impossible to get over...  Very heavy."
     "What was your occupation?"
     "I was an actor, a theater artist..."
     "Which role did you like best?"
     "HamletI Prince Hamlet..."
     "Do you remember your lines?"
     "No!  I am trying hard, but I can't remember!"
     "Don't you remember your past, either?"
     "Vaguely..."
     "Do you feel like struggling with feelings which you did not have
before?"
     "Not struggling, but inclining to them..."
     "Can you give an example?"
     "I can't!..."
     "I would request that you took this microphone and talked to the
audience."
     "What am I going to say?"
     "Tell them about yourself!"
     "You asked, I answered, and they heard.  Why is there a need for an
additional talk?"
     Professor Alpha suddenly took the microphone and turned to the
audience:  "As you can see, his conscious is complete, and he is
challenging the psychiatrist's logic.  According to his experience, the
patient talks like an artist.  I find it inappropriate to search for a
spiritual revolution in the patient."
     The microphone was in the psychiatrist's hand:  "To me, ladies and
gentlemen, it seems that we have just stepped into the threshold of our
psychoanalysis experiment.  In our case, I see a great tendency of going
under dictation.  Now, I'll give the microphone to him and order him to
disclose the thoughts he has locked inside himself. You'll see that
he'll disclose his subconscious like a patient under hypnosis."
     The psychiatrist gave the microphone to Gamma before professor
Alpha's hard and confused looks:  "Speak Gamma!  Dump out everything
from inside of yourself!"
     Gamma, microphone in his hand, his face full of terrifying
expressions, stated in a dramatic manner:  "I am an artist, ladies and
gentlemen, and I love acting.  Now I'll play the last minutes of a man
who has been sentenced to be hanged."
     Gamma changed his facial expressions as if somebody else had made
the introduction.  Obviously, he was adjusting his tone of voice.  With
a rending voice he screamed:  "Mr. Prosecutor!  I will be killed, but
I'm innocent.  The murderer is not I, but you!  Watch my last moments
carefully!  Watch how the executioner will put the rope around my neck,
how the chair under my feet will be pulled away, how I'll be hanging in
the air, how I will turn, how I will flutter, how my tongue will stick
out, how my eyes will stay wide open and fixed on you!  On the Day of
Judgement, with this white shirt on my back, I'll stand before you and
ask for justice!"
     With a totally different mood and voice, Gamma said:  "This is the
prosecutor's line." He shouted, "Here,  Don't let him speak, hang
him!"
     There was excitement and reaction from the audience.  Somewhere in
the middle, a man stood up and started shouting:  "What kind of comedy
is this?  I am the prosecutor of Epsilon.  It happened exactly like
that.  How does this person know this event?  The strange thing is that
the judicial error in that death sentence is about to be confirmed."
     The psychiatrist pulled professor Alpha to the microphone:
"Respected professor, the heart transplanted into Gamma's chest was from
a man who had been sentenced to die, am I right?"
     Horror... Everybody is shocked...
     Professor Alpha, as though paralyzed by an evil spirit, affirmed:
     "Yes, before it got cold.  When we took the body to the lab for
medical examination, we performed the operation and hid the incident
from the press and everybody else."
     "Now this man is living the life of the actor and the person he is
personifying!  What can you say about that?"
     "This kind of revelation cannot negate our thesis;  we are
concerned only with helping  the human being live in the material world.
The rest is not our concern."
     A scream... A tearing, breaking and rending scream:  "I wanna die!
I wanna die as myself!  Give me myself!  Return me to myself!  Could
anything you give me be mine after you took me from myself?  This is not
living but dying without resurrection...  I want to die!  I want to die
myself!"
     To die...
     Gamma, his hand on the left side of his chest as if trying to pull
his heart out, was bellowing:  "I want to die; I want to leave this
world being myself just like the way I came to this world.  I wanna
die!"

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-sy-
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish