The Last Birthday

Ekrem got up very late. First, he rolled over in bed and lay on his right. He pulled his legs into his stomach and clutched the pillow in his arms and buried his face into it. He was not awake. Then he felt the pain and his right hand looked for a better position and the pillow fell down on the floor. Now he was awake.

His eyes searched for something in the window. The sun had already risen and he had not seen it. He could see the leaves on the thin branches of the old maple tree that his grandfather had planted. It was going to die soon. Ekrem knew it was going to die. The old man had already died. Ekrem could see the white clouds and the blue sky behind them. But he could not see the sun as it had already risen. He was still trying to find out the thing that disturbed his sleep.

When he gave up looking for a reason, he remembered the pain. And then he remembered everything. Now he was not thinking about anything particular. His right hand was resting on the bed and he did not look at it. He knew there was a problem. He did not expect this day to be a good one. But he was not thinking about this.

Lay on the bed, he told himself. And don't try to find out why your father did not wake you up. He learned for long not to bother about you. And you'll soon learn not to worry about yourself.

When he found out that he was really beginning to think about something particular, he decided to get up. He sat up on the bed and finally looked at his right hand, which was not in a good condition now.

No good, he muttered. You should be proud of yourself to have made me look funny. Seriously. You are not a good hand. I shouldn't have let you do that. But I better be careful about you. When you hurt, I feel the pain.

He looked at his swollen right hand. Then he put his left hand beside him and compared the two. You're a Goddamn *****, he said. He was not angry at all. He rarely felt good when he cursed. But now he wanted to curse. He was slightly angry for not being so angry.

Now he was still gazing at his hands, comparing them scientifically. The slight anger in him had gone. He was just examining his bad hand, comparing him to the next good one, and thinking about his father, which was not a good thing to do. He must've seen this, he thought. That's why he didn't come to wake me up. He must be a little ashamed.

Ekrem was a little ashamed too and he did not like it. He did not like to see his father that way. He knew that his father was very much like him. And he did not like that, also. He did not like many things. First thing that he did not like was have a bad hand. It shouldn't have been that way, he told himself. You shouldn't have had a bad hand on such a grand day.

Ekrem looked down at his bad hand and talked to him. Twice as big, he said to his hand. I'm not feeling good because you are no good. Would you like me to take care of you, hand? Would you like me to find a cure on such a grand bad day. Now he was ridiculing his own hand. What would you like me to do with you, swollen hand? You look grand. You look like a ripe eggplant. I cannot touch you. But I can feel you. His left hand lifted the right hand to the level of his eyes. Stop throbbing, hand. Be a good boy. Help me put on my shirt and pants. Help me be a good boy. My father doesn't think I am a good boy. I don't think you are a good hand.

Ekrem walked to the kitchen with his aching hand hanging lousily beside him. The breakfast was ready and cold at the table. He made coffee for himself and ate two fried eggs on the plate. He was using only his good hand and that was no good. He felt like a child. Ekrem kept on eating and only looking down at his plate. Then he walked out and stood under the wavy shadow of the maple tree. The tree looked very old. Life was on the bark only, leaving the core dead and dry. Ekrem directed his gaze at the gray stabilized road that run along the rows of houses in the town. First he hesitated to step into the sunlight then he got rid of it quickly.

He walked down the road, turned left, went past the small post office and the big town hall and now the road was hard under his feet and very clean and he walked on. He was feeling good but his right hand was swollen and hot and kept throbbing with pain.

He was now thinking about his hand. Something bad is happening inside of me and my father must be very sorry about this because he had really seen it coming, he thought. I would love him not to be sorry but mainly angry about this. But he's only sorry about this and it's too bad a thing to go through. Why isn't my father angrier than he is sorry?

Ekrem was used to simple questions and hard answers in life. Now he was asking hard questions with simple answers and he did not know what to do. He was too old to be a young boy and too young to be an old man. Maybe he should go to the woods and find some old friends there and talk to them about nonsense things and maybe fight some of them. But he did not want to. Now he really hated the woods. He did not like anything that the woods could give. He wanted to get rid of something heavy in him. Heavy and unbearable.

Yesterday morning he had thought tomorrow would be a great day for him. A special one for him and his father. He had really wanted it to be a big day and that was why he had decided to go to the woods to hunt some mallard or hare for supper. Things had gone badly in such a way that now Ekrem did not want to remember anything from it. But he kept remembering it. This and the pain in his right hand made him very sensitive.

He saw the small shop ahead and stopped. He was unsure of going back home or seeing his father in his shoe repair shop. He even did not know why he came all the way. He had just wanted not be where he was. But he believed it was too late to turn back home or run away into the woods which he did not like at all. Come on, my bad hand, he spoke in a low, funny and stiff voice. Come with me into the shop. Can't you smell the fake leather?

He found his father bending over the sewing machine with his skinny hands tightly holding two pieces of hoarse leather. Ekrem saw his father's hands firstly. He looked at them and kept looking at them and his father had not noticed him yet. He was not sorry now but Ekrem knew he would be sorry when he saw him. He wanted to leave him happy and something very bad in him forced him to cough. Then his father raised his head from the work he was doing and saw Ekrem. Ekrem watched him get sorry quickly. He wanted to run back into a safer place just like a wild animal driven into a corner. He felt helpless. He watched his father's eyes crawl down on his face as though to memorize it and finally rest on his bad right hand.

“So it got infected,” his father said. This was more a declaration than a question.

“Well, it is nothing,” Ekrem said.

“Does it hurt too much?”

“Not that much.” Ekrem tried to look somewhere else.

His father got ashamed suddenly. “You shouldn't have gone there,” he said. “You shouldn't have run after wild rabbits and mallards.”

“They are moving down south.”

“I told you,” his father spoke in a soft unrelenting voice. “The woods ain't good. You might be scratched and infected. The woods ain't good.”

“I - I don't know why...” Ekrem began and stopped.

His father took his eyes off him to his work and did not speak. Ekrem left the shop, walked down the road, then up the hill and finally along the river. The country was dry and dusty and brown. Ekrem found a big, round stone to sit on by the river. He could hear the fish move swiftly in the water. He could not see them because he did not look at them. He had placed his right hand on his laps and now was looking closely at the wound. Then he reached for his back pocket with his good hand. Now he was holding a razor thin scalpel between his thumb and index fingers. He did not think much. He made a small incision in the swollen wound and let the pus trickle down from the tips of his fingers. He did not feel anything. He was neither sorry nor happy. But he knew that this was his last birthday.