Ali A. Ünal

 

 

I caught the kid staring at me. He raised his hand timidly and waved, not looking quite sure if I would recognize him. I smiled without showing any teeth and turned back to my dinner. The production crew, of which I was a member, had already been served. The set workers were now getting their food from the caterers. The assistant director, the cameraman, the gaffer and sound guys were eating at the table behind me. I chose to sit and dine alone. They didn’t invite me to join them anyway and why should they?

It was not them but the kid who had welcomed me when I arrived at the set two days ago. Even though he wasn’t even working for our production, he showed me around, took me to the other studios within the complex where two other shows were being filmed, and introduced me to the other set workers. He must have felt the awkward stranger in me on my first day. I was grateful to him for his acceptance and willing to be friends, but I wanted to eat alone. There was an important kitchen scene I had to prepare after the break. I had been dreading it since morning. As a guy who was hired only because I was the close friend of the producer, I thought this was my chance to prove my credentials.

Ten minutes later, though, when the kid came up to my table and asked if he could join me, I nodded and pointed to the chair across me. He wore a filthy painter’s overalls he didn’t bother to change for dinner. I watched him put his food tray on the table, unfold a paper tissue, spread it on his lap and take a large chunk off of his bread.

“Smoke coming out of your brain, Sir Galip,” he said, dipping a piece of bread into his broth. “You thinking a lot.”

The meat balls were floating freely in the broth. He kept the bread in until it was fully soaked. Then he brought it up to his mouth without dripping one single drop. He had a large nose that almost touched the bread.

“Are you from the Black Sea?” I asked.

“True, Sir,” he said, stroking the bridge of his nose. “It always sticks out. Like Pa’s. I got his nose and temper, I did. Mom says the two walks hand in hand up north.”

He grabbed the spoon to scoop as many meat balls as possible in one motion. As I watched him eat, my fork stayed submerged in my spaghetti. I didn’t have it in me to twirl the fork. He ate as if he enjoyed more than food. That was encouraging not for him, but for everyone around him, I thought.

Someone touched my shoulder. The young assistant director from the table behind us had turned sideways in her chair. She handed me the finalized shooting schedule. She said I would have to set up the kitchen scene on my own because the set workers had other jobs to do.

“Don’t be late,” she said, tapping the sheet with her index finger twice. I stared at the exact spot she’d tapped. She was marginally older than my daughter. The kid was trying to catch a glimpse of the schedule. He gave me an anxious smile when our eyes met.

“I got my orders,” I said.

“You did,” he said with a smile. I put the fork down and leaned back. I couldn’t remember the kid’s name. I was sure he’d told me when we met.

“When did you come to İstanbul?” I asked.

“Last year, Sir. Mom and I took the bus from Trabzon.”

“So your parents are here, too?”

“No, Sir. Ma went back home, Allah willing. They can never leave Trabzon… Stubborn as a pair of mules. I’m staying at my uncle’s in Dudullu. Do you know Dudullu? … A shithole of a neighborhood, if you ask me … The power cuts off all the time. Roads are bumpy as hell, too… People say we’ll be better off when the government transfers better houses and roads.”

He never stopped eating as he spoke. His enthusiasm for survival was riveting. A friend of his came and handed the kid his hammer he’d left on the second floor. The kid thanked his friend, propped the hammer against the table, and went back to eating his pasta, twirling the strings majestically.

“Were you a painter back in Trabzon, too?”

“Me? No, Sir. My uncle is a painter himself, so he learned me how to do it… I’m his pupil, you see. May Allah bless him… Or I’d haul cement bags on construction sites for peanuts.”

“You didn’t go to a college, then?”

He smiled an embarrassed smile. There was a hidden joy in his eyes as if he was also proud. “I’ve got lots of friends who been to school, but they ain’t better than me. Some of them doesn’t even have a job.”

If it were another time and if I were the man I had been, I would have embarrassed him in front of everyone for coming to the cafeteria without changing his overalls. I would have called him out as yet another misguided “country man” who came to İstanbul to pursue his dreams, but ended up destroying it. I would have reminded him that İstanbul wasn’t his little town anymore; this was the metropolis he’d decided to migrate to, so he had to follow its rules like everybody else.

I kept my mouth shut. I let him be and eat peacefully. The production crew was now smoking in the special area designated for smokers, throwing glances at me and talking among themselves. I wanted to go there and yell at them that it was okay not to go to college for Allah’s sake; stop being a douchebag for once.

“How old are you, Sir?” the kid asked. He was done with the main course. He pulled the dessert bowl in front of him.

“I’m a lot of years, kid.” I gave a beat and added. “Sorry. I’m 40. Married, or about to get unmarried. Whatever. I have a daughter. I’m 5 foot 5. A mechanical engineer from İstanbul, but here I am, being an assistant to the art director for reason I don’t even know.”

“Did you quit being an engineer because the money wasn’t good?” he asked.

“I quit being me,” I said. Because I wasn’t any good. He nodded. I wondered if he really got it. If he did, I could have asked him to explain it to me.

“You’re like my Pa. He is 39, and I’ll turn 18 this summer, Allah willing. Then they’ll start paying me 20 liras a day. Now I make 15.” He shrugged. “Better than nothing, Sir. The job has lots of benefits. Social security, pension plan, catering, shuttle, and all. Thank Allah, ain’t complaining. İstanbul gives, always gives.”

He ate his rice pudding while throwing furtive glances towards the schedule. I was sure he would have done a better job than me. I could simply grab his hammer and hand him the schedule. I could quit being an assistant just as easily. I was cheap, I had turned cheap. Perhaps, we’d both be better off. After all, I was always a better destroyer than I was a builder. Nobody could now say I was the product of rampant nepotism in the TV industry, either. It would be a fair exchange.

“İstanbul takes too,” I said. “There’s going to be an earthquake in İstanbul, the big one. Almost half the buildings will be demolished. We all might die.”

“It ain’t gonna happen in another fifty years. So science people say.”

“They say that, don’t they? Hope we won’t have to wait that long.”

He looked bewildered for a second, then let out a cheerful and loud laughter. A few people glanced at us. I didn’t care. I joined him to laugh as loudly. I wasn’t going to eat my pudding, so I gave him mine. He beamed.

“You’re like me, Sir,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “I help people, too. Allah sees helpers. We’re blood brothers, eh?”

I was not like him, I was not. I was not even like me. I went to college to become a mechanical engineer and had other people paint my houses. I was once happily married. I didn’t migrate to İstanbul, but was born in it. Alas, we were not alike. The kid was just about to start being a man whereas I had to destroy this lump of meat.

When he went quiet, I took the pen, turned the schedule paper over and explained to him what an engineer did even though he hadn’t asked. An engineer designed systems and tolerances so that people like him could drive by bus from Trabzon to İstanbul safely to look for something larger than themselves. Thanks to engineers like me, I told him, he’d stay warm inside his uncle’s apartment in winters, or cool in summers. I demonstrated with arrows and speech bubbles that mechanical engineers built things in a world that was being destroyed constantly by itself. We were walking paradoxes.

He was nodding, but I sensed he was not there yet.

I took the time to explain how our universe moved towards chaos since its conception and there was no way to stop the decay. It was called entropy and found in lakes, craters, marriages. Earthquakes were a part of that, too. TV shows. Breaking hearts, cheatings, many departures. When a wine glass was shattered into pieces, the kid couldn’t have it back; when he cheated his wife and broke her heart one day, and he would because he was becoming a man, there would be no way to mend it; when she kicked him out of her life, and she should, he’d never be able to return to his original life where everything made sense. Even for the engineers, things were irreversible, earthquakes were destructive, film studios were fraudulent. There would be nothing new. The old would be recycled, I told him. It was called entropy, not a mistake, and it was out loud. Fraudulent men was inevitable.

My arrows, words, schematics on the paper looked like a comedy. I folded the filming schedule and put it in my pocket.

“You know Ma digs your dating show,” he said as he finished the second helping of pudding and leaned back with a sigh. “I tell her it’s a ruse, those couples are just actors and all, but she won’t listen to me. She texts votes all the time.” He started picking his teeth. “This work, I’m telling you, Sir, is tough. Real or not, ruse or not, it’s rough, that’s for sure. Cracks even the best man. Be prepared. You work day and night, sometimes two days without seeing your wife and kids and your people. Family goes first.”

Such a graduate of the manhood, such a bright young man. I wanted to shake his hand and welcome him to his bitter world.

The assistant director came back. She was marginally taller than my daughter, but I still couldn’t warm up to her. She said that I should probably head back to the studio and start setting up the kitchen scene, or we’d all fall behind the schedule. Nobody would want that, didn’t they?

“I gotta go back to work,” I said to the kid. “It was great talking to you.”

“Me too, Sir Galip,” he said. “I’ll be upstairs after midnight. I already talked to Yakup. The albino kid, remember? You won’t miss him. Red eyes, snow white, like a vampire. I carry garlic in my pocket, haha. Anyway, find him if you need anything. He’ll fix it for you.” I thanked him. “Of course, Sir. Don’t even mention it. And just don’t fret on things too much. You’ll beat it.”

He went out to the smoking area, walked up to the handrails, and lighted up a cigarette. He propped himself on his elbows and smoked there, all alone. He’d again forgotten his hammer.

Our studio was empty when I got back. I sat at the kitchen table and went over the schedule. Seven couples had already been eliminated on our date show, leaving the final two couples to fight for the ultimate prize of marrying for 500,000 liras. This would be the episode where the vote count would determine the winning couple. The assistant director had written “the kitchen and the dinner have to look impeccable.”

All the windows in our studio were covered by thick black tarps to prevent the outside light from seeping in. The fake windows around the kitchen table had cardboards of the Bosporus Bridge behind them. They showed a bright İstanbul and the morning traffic. I made a mental note to change them to the evening Bosporus traffic for dinner.

The studio was not only empty, but eerily quiet. Even the boom mics dangling from the ceiling like puppets couldn’t record this silence. That was fine. I always liked those unruly mics. They always did their work well and behind the curtain. A bit like engineers. But sometimes, especially with wide lenses, they could get in the shot and ruin the fiction. A director worth his salt would never stop the camera roll, though, because post-production editors could get rid of those mics later by a technique called drawing an eyebrow — one black strip along the upper edge and one black strip along the lower edge, and puff… Mics would become invisible in the frame.

Apart from ours, two other TV shows were being filmed on this side of the complex — one was a historical series on the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the other was a True Blood rip-off. Through the open door, I caught the sight of the cast and crew members of those shows, running back and forth; 17^th century janissaries and post-modern vampires, sometimes joking with each other, sometimes furious or confused, ready to rule or bite. I also saw the kid several times as he walked past in his messy overalls, always carrying a ladder on his shoulder like a memory he couldn’t shake off.

I hadn’t told him that “transferring houses and roads” probably meant urban transformation, which would ultimately destroy his uncle’s apartment and all the others in that dingy, poor Dudullu. It would be done ostensibly as part of the preparation for the big İstanbul earthquake. The aim was actually to force the poor migrant families to go back to their hometowns or at least push them out to the fringes of İstanbul so that luxury apartments could be built for the rich. The kid didn’t need to hear that. He was so kind, cheerful as he ate the second helping of the pudding. Besides, he was going to turn 18 soon. He was going to be a man. He didn’t need to be destroyed just yet.

Fewer and fewer vampires ran the corridor. There was also less war. I hadn’t seen the kid in a while now. The evening shift must have started. Our crew was still nowhere to be seen. There were three cameras set up around the dinner table for parallel shooting and reaction close-ups. The main camera was facing me.

The whole floor was devoid of any sound or movement. Not even time would pass, it seemed. I checked the Bosporus Bridge and yes, it was still morning, and yes, the cars still weren’t moving. I should start arranging the plates, forks and spoons according to my impeccable entropy sketch. I should start building the chaotic kitchen scene. I should change the Bosporus Bridge cardboard soon and made the cars move. I should start building something.

The hammer was sitting on the table. It was a beautiful piece of tool with a nice heft to it and a red handle where the kid had chiseled his name: Hasan. I turned it in my hand — the tool of chaos. I felt home. I was part of it. I was it. I was Hasan, the youthful agent of entropy.

I walked to the door and checked the corridor. All empty. I closed the door and locked it. When I turned to my back, I saw an old man from İstanbul, sitting at the kitchen table, his back hunched over a piece of paper. I was sorry for him. I pitied him. The cars were moving on the cardboard, the Bosporus Bridge was bringing the city’s two sides together, the main camera was rolling, and the mics were recording. The fraud was on.

I tightened my grab around the hammer’s handle and started towards the old man. He would not hear coming. I would surely get in the shot, but didn’t mind. The editors would know what to do. I hoped Hasan’s mother would appreciate the scene and vote for me.

 

 

 

 

ALI A. ÜNAL is a writer from Turkey. He received his MFA in creative writing from University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has several publications in his native language. His first publication in English, “Everybody Needs Some Saving,” has appeared in the Quarterly West. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in English at University of Louisiana at Lafayette.