From: yamen@cae.wisc.edu (Soner Yamen)
Subject: turkish literature
Organization: U of Wisconsin-Madison College of Engineering
Date: 28 Sep 92 08:29:06 CDT


A short story by Necip Fazil.

HANDS

     I read human character from hands rather than faces.
The face can lie, but the hands can't.  Oh face, you are so
hypocritical!  And you, hands... so sincere!
       Think about the hands of farmers, kings, workers,
beggars, murderers, gamblers, speakers...  Amazing!
     I realized this amazing fact recently.  To me, hands
looked like engravers of the deepest meanings, but this was
an overlooked observation.  Later, I came to understand that
there was much more to it than what I thought.
     It all started when I visited a friend of mine who was a
doctor in a mental hospital.  This was the hospital to which
I went for a study on art and insane people.  We walked
through the whole hospital. Patients,quiet and violent, all
were simple and classical examples of what one would see in a
mental hospital.  Two cases were particularly tragic,
pathetic, and afflicting.
     Passing the violent female patients' ward in the fenced
courtyard, we saw a woman who was almost as naked as the day
she was born.  I asked, "What is this, doctor?"
     "This woman refuses to wear clothes," said the doctor.
"There is no way to keep her dressed.  She rips off her
clothes and stays naked."
     "What is her illness?"
     "Syphilis insanity--paralysis generalis..."
     We were by the fence.  The naked woman came to the fence
and grabbed it with her hands.  With broken, polished
fingernails, her hands looked as addle as the face of a
prostitute with a cakey-streaky make- up.
     The woman gazed at me with a disgusted look.  I had to
say something.  Stupidly, I asked, "What is your name?"
     Frightened, the naked woman shouted, "I don't have a
name!  My name is 'Hooker'!" She had reached the state of
unity with her profession and virtue, and had lost her
individuality.
     The second example was in the "internal medicine"
section of the mental hospital.  It was for patients who also
had internal illnesses. A man, focusing his darkness-filled
eyes on the ceiling, was lying in one of the beds.  He
appeared to be a skeleton, shiny with leather polish, and
hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes painted on it.
     All the doctors stared at the patient.  One of them
said, "He can't make it until morning; now you can take him
to the special place!" My doctor friend responded, "Tomorrow
we do the autopsy.  I wonder how his brain looks."
     I looked at the patient.  He looked like he had not
heard or understood anything.  But suddenly, I was shocked by
what I saw. Resting on the blanket, his right hand had
understood everything!  His index finger trembled as if he
wanted to raise it in order to make a "one" representing the
unity of God, accompanied with the words declaring that there
is no deity but God, and that Muhammed is His servant and
messenger.  This was the declaration of faith which was
desired to be the last words of a person who was passing
away.
     I said to the doctors, "How can you talk about autopsy
in front of a patient who is still alive?
      What if he understands?"
     "You are so sensitive," they said.  "He can't hear.
Even if he could, he couldn't understand."
     It is true!  You can't be sensitive in a mental
hospital; otherwise, the white doctor's shirt with which you
can roam freely in the hospital can be taken from your back,
and you can be given a patient's shirt instead.
     "Don't you see his hand?" I asked.  "It is trembling
very meaningfully!" They found a reason for that, too:
"Reflex!"
     My doctor friend asked, "Do you have this fixed idea of
hand, too? Here in a private room is a patient who has lost
his balance because of this fixed idea.  Would you like to
see him?"
     We found the next most tragic case, after the two
previous cases I have mentioned.  Of course, it was tragic to
me, but not to the doctors...
     A young painter... He was melancholic...  Recently, he
had been painting pictures of hands only.  Crying, begging,
suffering, contracting hands...  He had a reason...  His two-
month-old child got sick suddenly.  With the excitement of
becoming a father for the first time, he didn't know what to
do.  They said, "The child needs blood, and you can give it!"
He gave blood.  In the meantime, he noticed the baby's little
hands...  The sick baby was moving his hands as if he was
creating a great symphony of movements!...  The father,
waiting by the baby and looking at his hands, grew weaker and
weaker as the days passed.
     "Shame on you, daddy!  You have wasted your life.  You
haven't fulfilled the assignment that God has given you.
Shame!  Shame!" These were the words this two-month-old child
was saying clearly with his hands. "I am dying, daddy!  I
came to this world as a small reminder for you, and now I am
leaving.  You keep living, but try to grow mature!..."
     Finally, his little hands were motionless!...  The baby
passed away.  Could there be a more lively expression of
death than hands falling down as if they were cut from the
shoulder and becoming motionless?
     And...
     I was told this story in the hallway while we were going
to the seriously melancholic young painter's room.  The
doctors tried to make the patient speak, but he would not
open his mouth.  Yet, his eyes were vivid.
     "Why don't you talk?  Look, we have brought you a
writer.  Don't you want to answer his questions?"
     The patient looked at meand asked, "With what do you
hold the pen?..."
     "With my hand..."
     "Just like I hold my brush...  Have you ever thought
about 'hands'?"
     "No!"
     "What a shame!  You, too, are from those people who
think that everything is in the tongue... Nay!  Everything is
in the 'hands'!..."
     Amazing...  I looked at the doctor.  "His balance and
judgement is completely normal," said the doctor.  "His is
such an illness."
     The patient interrupted the doctor.  "To them, I have a
balance and a judgement which has destroyed my balance and
judgement!"
     I murmured,  "You were talking about 'hands'
     ..."
     "Hands... Caressing, strangling, massaging, stabbing,
scratching mange, counting money, stroking in the dark,
shuffling cards in the light, cleaning dirt, throwing dirt,
and then turning the palms to heaven and rising for the
prayer, crying, begging, suffering hands..."
     "Only hands, right?"
     "Only hands.  It is sufficient for the judge to look at
the hands of the suspect to determine the murderer... Look!
Do you see the index finger that the doctor is pointing at
me?... It says 'this much is crazy.'  It doesn't know that
one has to be crazy to understand it. What a pity, doctor!
Your hand has no understanding but just a claim of it!..."
     I looked at the doctor.  He put his hand into his
pocket.  Its explanation is simple: Reflex!...

     January 1971 (translated March 1987)
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