From: yamen@cae.wisc.edu (Soner Yamen)
Subject: turkish literature
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Date: 2 Oct 92 15:29:30 CDT

   a short story by Necip Fazil

     SHADOWS

     In the big city, fixed ideas had bitten me.  Like a herd
of monsters, they would jump over me and bite me one by one.
I couldn't save my spirit's flesh from their sharp teeth.  I
would try to do my work in my office, yet I couldn't make any
progress.  A fixed idea would appear at the end of every
sentence I wrote and below every line I drew.

     For a while, the fixed idea of time was driving me
crazy.  Every time I listened to a melody, I could hear all
the notes as individual pulses unrelated to each other, but I
couldn't perceive the integrity of the harmony.  In the time
frame of past, future and present, my spirit had turned into
a kitten trying to find its balance on a rubber ball. Time
was like a tape stretched to infinity from both ends.  The
past was disappearing; the future was coming to existence
every moment.  And, the present was only one moment.  My
spirit was just like that kitten trying to find its balance
on a rolling ball every moment, while everybody else was very
comfortable and balanced on that rubber ball of time.

     I couldn't talk to anybody because I was afraid they
would call me crazy, so I tried to behave like a normal human
being.  Every time I went outside, I would see people in
moments of actions like the frames of a movie.  For instance,
I had to follow numerous little movements for every step.
There were big parts of the past and future in the smallest
amount of time, which I thought was a moment.  There was no
equipment to measure such a short amount of time.  Then all
humans, their life being only one moment, would imagine to be
living in the imaginary connection of moments.  They would
have the delusion of life far from the limited single moment;
in fact, they wouldn't be living at all.

     Corpses... Moving, going, coming, laughing, playing,
talking, communicating corpses...  With the delusion of
living...
     This last fixed idea had posessed me so strongly that I
would see my colleagues, my supervisors, and everybody else
as corpses dressed in suits or mini skirts instead of
shrouds.

     The most awesome corpse was our office doctor.  When I
mentioned my spiritual problems to him, he explained:
     "You have been working too much.  It is fatigue; I'll
give you a 20-day leave.  Go to a quiet village and rest."

     I went to the village, and there I found a friend who
had similar problems.  He was a man nicknamed "Hafiz."  He
had a poor appearance, but extraordinarily bright face and
deep eyes.  His parents had made him memorize the whole
Qur'an when he was seven.  They piled up ten years of
knowledge on his spirit in a short time which resulted in his
loss of balance.  He would search for rain water door to
door, so he could wash himself to offer his prayers.  He
wouldn't consider any other water clean enough, so he would
be very happy when it rained.  He would sit in the cemetery
all day, sometimes all night.  The people of the village
considered him insane and took care of him, but he didn't
like the villagers.  I don't know why he liked me.

     "Leave these corpses alone," he would say.  "Let's go to
the cemetery and sit among the living people."
     Was he a saint who had been sent to see the scorpion in
my spirit? Sometimes he would say things that no educated men
could say.
     Once, at the cemetery, we sat for a long time without
saying a word.  Hafiz looked at me; his eyes looked like
crystal water under the sun which would make the moss in the
bottom visible.
     "Don't worry about the ideas scratching your brain," he
said. "They are temporary shadows.  Everything is a shadow."
     "Did you say shadows?" I curiously asked.
     Hafiz turned his head to the flat land next to the
cemetery and asked:
     "Do you see the shadows over this field?"
     "No."
     "I see them.  They are the shadows of the tombstones.
There is no place they cannot reach."
     I had gone to that village to solve my problems.  I
could return to my city with a bigger problem as a crazy
man to be treated in a mental hospital.
     I stood up.  Hafiz understood my worries.  He said:
     "Fear not!  The so-called time is a shadow, too.  It is
a shadow that looks like a worm getting longer and shorter.
You are a shadow, too.  Everything you see, everything you
hear, everything you feel is a shadow.  Then, where is the
Owner of these shadows?  Is it possible that the shadows
exist and their Owner doesn't?"
     "Hafiz, stop it!  You'll make me lose my mind!"
     "Leave the shadows alone!  Turn to their Owner!  Yours
is not an illness, but a sign from Him!  He is calling you;
go to Him!  It doesn't matter if you are in the village or in
the city, at home or on the street.  Turn to Him!"
     I ran away from the village.
     Hafiz had saved me.  I couldn't turn to Him, but I had
seen the path leading to Him.