From: yamen@cae.wisc.edu (Soner Yamen)
Subject: turkish literature
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Date: 7 Oct 92 18:22:13 CDT

     VOICE

     a short story by Necip Fazil Kisakurek

     A man with a crooked clay face as if shaped by an
eccentric sculptor...  Its lines have no meaning other than
the fear of death!  The owner of this face has "squeezed and
squashed" his brain on the "matter of death" such that "the
holes" in his spirit have manifested themselves on his face.

     It is not clear what century this man belonged to and
what corner of this worn-out world he came from.  His time
could be ten thousand years behind as well as ahead of any
given year.
     The fear  of death never "dag up an abyss" as deep as
the one in his spirit.
     "How can it be?  How can a thinking being come to
nonexistence?  How can the value of conscious be obtained and
then erased? How can 'nothingness' overcome such a great 
fear?  Say, the substance, the flesh, the bones,... may be
wiped out, but how could the thought, the sublime thing that
no knife can cut, go away?  How could it become something it
never came to be and happened despite the fact that it had
come to be and had happened?"

     He wanted to hold his head and his face, smash it
against the wall like a snowball, and scream:
     "How can it be!?  How can it be!?"
     One night he felt like his brain was about to explode.
With such a distress, he got up and screamed:  "It can't be!
On this earth, there must be a place which doesn't know what
death is!  I must find this place!"
     And, he hit the road.

     He traveled on foot, rode an ox-cart, cruised in a car,
and flew in a rocket.  Every city he reached had a cemetery
at its entrance.  Everywhere he went, he asked:  "Do you know
a country without a cemetery?"
     Everybody laughed at him.  But, he didn't lose his
determination. If there were more after death, he should find
a place which realized the mystery of after-death.  And, he
kept searching.  He left no place unsearched from the world
of "slanting-eyes" to the world of "black-skins."

     In one place, he was pointed a cave and told:  "There is
a saint in there.  Ask him!"
     The saint showed him an unknown direction and said:
"Take this road.  You'll arrive in a village.  You'll learn
from the villagers."
     He found the village on top of a tall mountain with
castles made of rocks.   He asked:  "Where is this village's
cemetery?"
     Villagers curiously turned to him and responded:  "What
is it?"
     He asked again:  "Isn't there a cemetery here?"
     They replied:  "We don't know such a thing!"
     He asked again:  "Isn't there death here?"
     Villagers asked him:  "What does it mean?  What is it?"
     He asked again:  "Don't you know what death is?"
     "We don't know such a thing!"
     Opening his eyes quite wide, he shouted:  "Do the people
of this village live forever, reproduce, increase in number,
and continue living here?"
     They replied:  "No!  Nobody stays here forever! There is
nobody in this village above fifty."
     He was amazed and asked:  "Then, what happens?"
     The villagers showed him a hill with a rainbow
glittering above its top and said:  "From there a voice, an
irresistible voice comes.  It calls one of us by his or her
name.  The person who is called leaves, disappears behind the
hill, and never comes back."
     He couldn't believe what he heard.  He repeated:
"Nobody above fifty is in this village, huh?"
     At that moment, a voice like a thunder underneath the
rainbow was heard.  The villagers screamed:  "Here is the
voice!  Now it is going to call one of us!"
     The voice called a name nobody in the village knew.
While the villagers were in a state of confusion, they
noticed that the man, whose face had no signs except the fear
of death, was walking up the hill.

Xref: sparky soc.culture.turkish:10550 alt.activism.d:3722 soc.rights.human:3829