'A Marble'Article written By Engin Akyurek for Kafasina Gore Magazine-
[Translated by Engin Akyurek Universal Fans Club]My summer holiday had started three months after I learned how to read. I didn't have my red ribbon (1) that I proudly carried on the left side of my chest. My black school uniform which wrapped my body was wide open and, flying like a cloak, had visually completed my report card which was full of good grades. I had my report card on one hand and my holiday book on the other. I guess I don't have to tell you that my book bag carried on my back looked like a camel hump. Although it was the last day of the school, I couldn't fit my holiday book into my book bag because it was full of beans and colored reading papers. My bag was like a legumes warehouse.
Of course, this had nothing to do with our brains turning into a kneading trough as we grew older. (2) By the way, don't look down on this holiday book, because this book which was sold by using very tactical sales techniques was the rescuer of our entire holiday and the assurance of our future. No more than a coloring book, it was an insult to human intelligence, let alone a colorful activity for hot summer days ahead. It was impossible to love the kid on the cover of the book even if he was your child. It was that bad. He was looking at us as if he was saying "you are an idiot." Yes, we hadn't solved Egyptian hieroglyphics and all we could do was to write "Ali look at the horse." But, we were human after all, not a horse. Years later, we would understand that too much was expected from a generation who was entrusted to a holiday book. I hadn't liked the book at all; it was a total disappointment for me.
After I showed my report card to my family, I had hidden the holiday book that I concealed under my shirt into one of the secret corners of our china cabinet. I had built a set in front of it with our whiskey bottles filled with tea. It wasn't the right thing to do to throw it out into the garbage because our teacher would check our homework when school started. I have to tell you that I had already added a mustache and a beard on the kid's picture on the cover. I had planned to solve all the questions in the book two days before school started. It was a nice plan.
Summer holiday was readily spent like the money you got out of nowhere. 15 days had already passed before the marbles season started. German-Turks (3) and their families hadn't come yet. When they came, it was fun to beat them in a marbles game and pick their marbles. Since our neighborhood sits on a higher hill, it was a little bit difficult to play on the ridge. Children of lower neighborhoods were a little bit afraid of playing as a visitor. Big and contentious matches could continue until dinner time or until we heard the voice of someone's mother. If you ever played marbles, you would know that every game had its own ground. Therefore, the feasibility of each neighborhood's ground was done by the older boys of that neighborhood. Our little hands could take every kind of geometric shape like a protractor. If you wanted play the pit, the tilt, or the head game, your thumb, your wrists, or your eyes had to be strong, respectively.
I wanted to make a very strong entrance into the marbles season which I had started with a very little capital. We knew that there wouldn't be huge fluctuations in marbles exchange before the children of German-Turks arrived and we would yield to domestic market conditions. I was on watch both for marbles and the Kapikule border gate (4).
I was checking my holiday book now and then. If my mother ever found the book, I wouldn't be able to lift my head from the book until my military service, let alone play marbles. The beard and mustache that I drew on the kid with a pencil was the proof of how my mother would sort me out. Whether it is a visitor game at the lower neighborhood or a hosting game in our neighborhood, my hands had started getting cracked and flaking off like a Somali map. Especially in a pit game, we pressed our hands on the ground so tight that it would take the color of the ground. It is true that I soaked my hands in soft soap not to show my flaking hands to my father at the dinner table. My tanned face, my sunburnt neck, and my hands like a cracked chicken leg were the summary of my three months after I learned how to read. My small capital had begun to grow and my marbles that I hid in the shoe cabinet had begun to spread towards my winter shoes. I was very proud of myself because I was doing great things with my small capital. I wished the kid on the cover of the holiday book could have seen my success.
It was very difficult to hide my marbles every night. If my father had found them, I could have been banned to play marbles by the local court (means his family) before German-Turks arrived. God forbid.
It was the middle of my summer holiday. I could make waves on my hair with my comb. My face on the mirror had shown that I grew up a little more. Well, it was almost four months since I learned how to read.
My mother made me read the newspaper at every breakfast. That was my entire education. All books were boring. All the characters in those books were either too idiotic or lotus eaters who enjoyed their vacation here and there. It was easy to talk under an umbrella during the summer, but I was spending my holiday by playing marbles on a dirt field. Life would shortly teach me to be interested in the things that I hadn't experienced before.
When the children of German-Turks arrived, our neighborhood became livelier. German cars were as if they were swearing at our Tofa (5) brand cars. I had never wanted to witness an Eagle (6) being belittled like this. German cars with their strong muscles were taking up as much space as their owners' belly. If they had invented smartphones, we would have taken a selfie but only German-Turks had cameras back then. A German-Turk, leaning his belly fat against the wall and lining us up like glassware, had said "Guys, let me take a picture of you in front of the car." Back in those days, we used to take a picture in front of new white appliances, too (7). We had lined up in front of the German-Turk's car like penguins and smiled like humans. He had said "I will send this picture to all of you." But, we hadn't gotten a single greeting from him, let alone a picture. That picture of me which he had taken with my marbles in my pockets had been lost forever along with the Deutschmark bills hidden under the German-Turk's belly fat. We had smiled so beautifully in that picture.
I was winning in the marbles games and collecting the German-Turk children's marbles. Then, I was selling them from a daily rounded exchange rate. I was very happy. The entire neighborhood was expecting German-Turks to come back home; how could they leave such a beautiful country?
By the end of my summer holiday, I had bags of marbles. I had understood how the banking business started because it was very difficult to hide that many marbles. I was sneakily hiding them at the out-of-sight corners of the house.
My mother had found my holiday book just one week before school started. My marbles had also been exposed as if the kid on the cover told everything. My father had announced the completion of my collapse: "Take these marbles out and never bring them back. The school will start next week. Look at your hands! One can't tell if you are a beggar or a student." The marbles at home were just one tenth of what I had and the ones that I hid under trees or over roofs were my real treasure. The children of German-Turks had lost all their fortune.
It was one week before the school started. My long and wavy hair was cut in crew-cut (it was very ugly hair style that unmans a human) and I was out of spirits. I had to go home in the evening and solve the questions in my holiday book. I had lost all my spiritual and material connection with my marbles. My father was right; the school was starting and I had no business with marbles. I had decided to make an announcement for the children of our neighborhood; I would climb the highest hill and distribute my marbles among them without allowing any sense of looting.
I was there at the exact hour as I promised. My child eyes were seeing a massive crowd before me. There were children from other neighborhoods as well. The children of German-Turks were also there, hoping that they could get back what they had lost. In their eyes, I was like a lunatic distributing his wealth.
The marbles that I put into two big black bags were not visible. The older boys of our neighborhood had told me that they would shoot me instead of marbles if I was joking. I knew that they meant it. Rising on my toes, I had started throwing my marbles away. It was a mad scramble to get marbles. Throwing marbles away, I was trying to push the mad crowd away from me. My arms could become a bird and fly away and my elbows could head for the sky like an arrow. I was scared and sad but also enjoying this situation. Throwing the marbles that I honestly earned was causing egocentric ripples on my younger self. I was throwing the marbles so away that you almost needed to pass at least two neighborhoods to catch them.
When I came home in the evening, I saw my father nailing something with a nail between his lips and a hammer in his hand. The nail at the corner of his mouth showed that he was angry.
"Dad, what happened?"
"Our window was broken. A blackguard has thrown a marble from the hill."
Footnotes:
(1) When first grade students learn how to read, they are given red ribbon to show that they can read.
(2) He means empty like a kneading trough.
(3) Turks who settled in Germany as a worker
(4) Turkish entry point from Europe for German Turks road-traveling
(5) Turkish automaker and one of the three global production centers of Fiat Auto.
(6) The series produced by Tofas during 1980s.
(7) During those years, white appliances or foreign brand cars were not easy to get because Turkey's economic policy was mostly in state control until the very radical economic package announced on January 24, 1980 which shifted Turkey from mixed capitalism to a free market economy.
Edited by SaraFatma - 8 years ago
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