She woke up in a strange bed. She didn’t know the room either. There were four walls and some old things: a closet, a broken mirror, and a mattress. The rug on the floor was dirty. But Nuran didn’t know about dirt or rust. Girls learn such things from their mothers, just like decency and indecency, silence and obedience, and even remembering and forgetting. She hiccupped, which she did learn from her mother: to hiccup anywhere, whether appropriate or not. How lucky are the girls whose mothers are capable of loving and nourishing them, as well as teaching them the manners and behaviors expected by society. Sadly, Nuran’s mother was ill equipped to adequately support her or help her navigate life.
She looked at the dried, smelly yellow marks on the bedcover. These were the marks of nightmares. The nightmares she had every night, before and during sleep. There was an old dirty rug and a stained bedsheet. That’s all she was … She sat on the bed, sobbing. She wanted to smash everything by the mirror: a razor, a well-used hairbrush, and a pair of scissors.
Staring at the woman in the mirror, she took the scissors in her hand. Since becoming a woman, how many children had died inside her? How would Nuran know? She herself had never been a child. Perhaps she had never grown up. Hers was a life spent in purgatory … She grabbed her hair with her free hand. The cold scissors touched her neck before she cut her hair randomly. Snip, snip. The entire village was gathered at the roots of her hair. “Lousy Nuran, the harlot’s daughter Nuran, God damn you, Nuran!” Snip, snip.
She put the scissors down and touched the shiny edge of the razor. She felt a short burst of pain and cried out. A thin red line marked her index finger. Seeing it, she jumped up and down foolishly, as if her finger weren’t cut. “If one bleeds, the dream ends.” That’s what her mother used to say. The village idiot, the cuckoo … Whenever she cut herself, she would laugh. Supposedly, if one bleeds, the dream ends.
A few drops of blood fell. Nuran looked at her feet. She was afraid that the black hairs on the floor would grab her. She stepped back. No, this was not fear. Why would anyone fear their own hair? This thing wedged into her young, anxious chest, crushing her, had no name. Her nothingness was so immense that, at times, it blocked her breathing, almost suffocating her. Whenever her hand went to her heart, a voice from within screamed from the edge of her belly button. A toothless mouth, laughing like a lunatic, screamed, “Cuckoo!”
When Nuran heard that sticky voice, she lay on the bed. Although crazy, the voice was still her mother. A cuckooing, but still her mother. She pulled the bedcover up to her nose and inhaled the familiar smell. A sour smell—a mixture of urine, blood, sweat, and drool. Adding them up, that was all Nuran’s and her mom’s lives amounted to … An eager wind wandered behind the half-open window covered with thin tulle. The tulle’s torn parts were stitched with black thread. The tulle, unable to withstand the wind, tickled her bare feet, and Nuran’s insides filled with a strange sensation. Unfortunate and carefree, half smiling and half crying, she pursed her lips, forming a thin line. When the pillow’s smell found a path through that line and traveled into her nasal passages, everything bothering her inside was anxious to come out. Was outside better than inside? Nuran went to look.
An old woman stood at the well, an old bucket in her hand. One end of a rope was tied to the bucket, the other to a wooden arm hanging from the well’s upper wall. The woman looked down the well, then sent the bucket down. The water at the bottom angrily yelled, “A bucket fell on my head—may stones rain on yours!”
Nuran laughed. The old woman, not looking toward her crazy laugh, whispered, “God’s cuckoo…”
As Nuran wandered barefoot through the chickens’ feeding area, black hairs were stuck to her feet, and the woman at the well became angry. “Go put on your sliders!” she shouted.
But this was Nuran. She heard only if she wanted to. And she didn’t feel like it. She climbed into an abandoned basin in the yard and settled down, fixing her gaze on the old woman. The woman bent into the well and begged, “Call her to come. Save us both!”
First, the well was silent. Then, the water rippled and sloshed and told the bucket everything, before sending it up. The old woman’s tired arms slowly pulled the bucket up. She spilled half of what the water said back into the well. She never knew she had returned the water’s most important words. Among the words that fell was Nuran’s husband’s. Had the old woman known this, she would have jumped into the well to take that word back from the water’s belly at all costs.
Once the bucket reached her hands, she heard the water’s words: “Nuran is mentally deficient. I accept it. She can’t do or say anything. I accept it. Why did you make a wife of the poor orphan? Was it to cover your son’s defect? If I called anyone down here, it would be you, old woman, not Nuran. Don’t torture that wretched girl…”
The old woman refused to hear these words. She poured them back in the well. “I know what to do,” she cackled. She looked at her daughter-in-law sitting in the basin with her half-chopped hair and half brain, watching the sky. She almost felt sorry for the girl, but instead, her mustached mouth opened in disgust. The large mole on her cheek wobbled. “Cuckoo.”
Nuran heard the old woman and repeated “cuckoo,” like her mother. The village idiot. Her harlot mother.
The old woman thought, Her mother’s half brain must have passed to her through her belly button. What if she also passed along her impropriety? I must keep her tied in the house until my son returns. I shouldn’t let her out. Otherwise, God forbid, what if, like her mother, whoever she runs into… God forbid! She rounded up the chickens.
Nuran, with her half-chopped hair and half brain, remembered a broken face. Sometimes it came to her. The owner of that voice, from her belly button. The woman whose uterus she’d torn open, her crazy mother. Nuran suddenly got smaller. She smiled. As she played with the black hairs stuck to her feet and the chicken droppings, the woman in her head said, “Why don’t you run away? They can’t make you a wife. They say I’m crazy; let them. They say I’m a harlot; let them. But did I ever hit you? However scarce or bad the food was, did I ever leave you hungry? You can’t possibly be a wife. Why do you go to that defective man’s bed? Run away, girl, run away…”
When the broom the old woman threw at Nuran’s head hit the exact spot where her mother was talking, where her half brain was, her mother disappeared. But she left behind much pain, lots of people, poverty, hunger, fear, distress, and a noise: “Cuckoo.”
Night was falling. The old woman shuffled into the house. The soup in the pot was boiling unenthusiastically, as if it didn’t want to cook. The woman put two spoons on a tray. Then she took one away, whispering, “The crazy one will not eat.” While cleaning the floor, she yelled at the playful night outside, “Send my son back. I don’t know where you are hiding him. I told him not to go. What business does a defective man have searching for gold? ‘Don’t disturb the soil,’ I said. ‘If you wake up the ones sleeping in its bosom, they will strike you.’ He didn’t listen. ‘Don’t dig the dead’s soil or it will pull you in,’ I said. Did he stop? No … Send my son back. Don’t leave me alone with this half-brained…”
The night behind the window turned completely dark. It gathered everything from the ground and pulled it toward the sky. It heard the old woman, but pretended it didn’t. Besides, if it was going to bring her son back, would it ask her? If the son was going to come back, would he lie lifelessly near that rock behind two mountains? The old woman turned off the heat under the pot. The reluctantly cooked soup grabbed a piece of bread, and together they became the old woman’s supper. While the stomach of her kneeling old body was fed, no one asked if the crazy one was hungry or not.
Nuran, still sitting outside in the basin, bent over toward the dish with the chicken’s feed and ate the wet bread in it. A few chickens tried to come near her, but the coop’s wire fence prevented them. Nuran threw a piece of wet bread into the coop and was happy to see the chickens flock around it. She saw a chicken head to the water and remembered her own thirst. She got up and went to the well.
Lowering the bucket, she heard a noise: “What I have to tell you is very important; I can’t tell the bucket. Bend over a little.” Nuran loved the water’s voice. If it asked her to bend, of course she would. She bent and bent… almost half of her body was dangling in the well. The water said: “Your man…”
Nuran protested: “He is not my man. If he was, would he beat me?”
The water continued, “Keep quiet and listen. Your man is gone; he’s missing behind two mountains. If he doesn’t come back, the old woman will kill you. You must be quick. Escape and go to your grandmother.” That’s all the water said. It gave advice to her, but the advice was lost. How would Nuran know where her grandmother lived? Nuran waited. Without hearing more, she didn’t know what to do, what running away meant, who her grandmother was, who the man was, or why the one inside would kill her. She didn’t know anything. From where she was leaning on the well, just above her belly button, she heard a voice say, “Cuckoo.” She remembered her mother, but she didn’t remember that her mother was the only one she could remember.
The well’s silence bored Nuran. She was about to straighten up, but it was as if the black hairs stuck to her feet were pulled away, tickling her. Unfortunate and carefree, half smiling and half crying, her lips pursed, forming a thin line. As she tried to straighten up, a heavy hand that she recognized stroked her waist. That hand had touched her many times, but not with the intention of loving her—never! Now, as her bare feet left the ground and she went into a free fall, she could only hear the water from the endless depths of the well asking, “Didn’t I tell you to run away?” Nuran would have answered, if her mouth had not been so full of water.
In the yard was a dead fig tree. Its leafless branches held a black-feathered owl. The owl opened one wing, “Cuc,” then the other, “koo.” Under the tree was a well. An old woman leaned into the well. As she pulled up the bucket with her aged arms, the worn-out nylon rope cut her finger. Her crimson blood dripped into the dark belly of the water. Alas, the dream that was supposed to end if one bleeds didn’t end. The woman turned her bloody finger to the tree’s dry branches and yelled, “Get out of here, you damned bird!”
It was an owl. It would not leave just because the old woman asked. Instead, it pulled black stones from under its black wings and threw them at the woman. It continued throwing, raining black stones down on her. Just then, wild laughter was heard from the bottom of the well: “Cuckoo.”