fotoğraf: daniyal62
After the lockdown of the Princes’ Islands caused by the epidemic, all the vehicles that otherwise muffled the sounds of nature on Prinkipo* had pulled back into their quarters along with their owners. From the very first weeks of the epidemic, the phones had been discarded, and the ringing of their alarms replaced by the flapping of the wings of migratory storks, the cries of male cats on heat, and the tenuous hum of pollen clouds sent puffing off the trees’ branches. For perhaps the very first time since the 16th century, when the island had provided a safe haven to those fleeing the plague that then ravaged the Ottoman Empire, the island took notice once more of the fact that it was encircled by insuperable waters. News of the rising death toll had not yet sparked any sense of panic or incarceration in us islanders. Quite on the contrary, Prinkipo had now blossomed, as though an exotic flower, waiting, in the Sea of Marmara, to be fertilised.
It was neither spring nor summer yet; rather an undetermined season: now and then, hail fell, lightning stroke, mammatus clouds briefly concealed the city for glimpses of moments until the sun came through and the lodos** obligingly deposited, in lieu of rain, the garbage exuded by the city on the mucilaginous shores of the island. Only then would we remember that beyond those waters, people were still alive, their breaths contained behind masks.
The only natural phenomenon that would not occur that year was rain. While the duration of the daily interruptions that affected the city's water supply network was gradually extending, the rusted lids of the cisterns and wells of old were being opened once more in the island’s ancient houses, producing all sorts of squeaks and screeches. It was as if those underground water reserves, left forsaken in the dark for so many years, had forgotten how to cast back even ‘the’ mere reflections of those people who now looked at them in bewilderment: a low grunt, in response to the stones inquisitively thrown down their shafts were the only reaction they seemed to be able to come up with. Hoses, initially intended to fill pools with seawater, were now sucking up those lethargic reserves, and those who remotely remembered the years when tap water had not reached the island yet were rolling up their sleeves, giving instructions for the youths to store gallons of liquid as a precaution against all possible threats. As to what shape these threats might assume, no one quite knew yet.
As grocers emptied their shelves and closed their shutters one after another, so the wild asparagus, mallow, acorns and wild aniseed that grew under the shades of the red pines replaced our main meals. Against all odds, the cats eventually gave up grieving over the pouches of cat food, and even the chubbiest among them recouped some of their hunting agility. Having produced home-made vodka from the plums he had picked and dried in his garden the previous year, a neighbour traded small bottles of the liquor for fresh nettles, against canned goods recovered from the cellars where they had been stocked. Just as labour did, bartering too assumed a wide variety of forms: milk and eggs were procured from those who raised livestock on the island, in return for which some of us herded their cows on certain days, or yet repaired the roofs of their barns. Before long, money had fallen out of use. The ivies that crawled up the ATMs had even smothered the transaction error warning messages blaring from their screens.
In fact, Prinkipo was so depopulated that there remained perhaps one person for every thirty red pine trees at best. The handful of people that did stay began to gather spontaneously on the island’s main square every day towards the evening hours, while neighbourhood acquaintances soon grasped the futility of individual efforts, and instead began to form groups so as to carry out such operations as irrigation, bartering, and foraging in the woods. Adjustment to this new order was occurring, following its own natural flow, without causing any sort of stir in anybody. It was as though everyone had been waiting for this exact moment for years, and the ancient knowledge inherited from ancestors had sprung open, just like the cisterns’ lids, and suddenly risen to the upper layers of consciousness.
Time, too, as we had come to know it, was gradually losing its grip, ever so slowly. In case it still was irremediably necessary, the latter progressively became tallied according to the cycles of the moon. Thus, the cycles of all menstruating women – whether or not acquainted – on the island became adjusted to one another, in line with this new computation system, sparking a collective ovulation phase, coinciding with the moon’s first quarter, among all fertile women.
Limited supplies, and the dread inspired by the looming prospect of impending death, spurred a substantial libido increase among islanders. Once dazed by the profuseness of options, adolescent-adults, those fearful of loneliness, the frigid, early ejaculators, adepts of open relationships, and those whom mid-life crisis had driven on edge were now constantly on the lookout for someone to click with, within a limited stockpile where choice became scarce. Even though it could not have been expressed in words, a scent of desire mixed with pheromones indubiously pervaded the air.
I first saw him at the water's edge, where a dried-up streamlet meets the sea. He had tied a bundle of lead weights to the tip of his fishing rod in an attempt to open up a slit, so he could plunge his hook into the sea, whose surface was obstructed by mucilage. After casting a quick glance at me from the corner of his eye, he resumed his operations. We were both fully aware that, under the conditions we were in, there remained not the slightest distinction between making eye contact and becoming introduced. There was no need to rush; it was probably just a matter of seconds before we started talking anyway.
The week that followed, we smiled at each other when ending up next to each other in the same seed planting group. There were talks that the water interruptions would soon become permanent. In order to keep sweating to a minimum, we no longer ventured outside when the sun was high, and all committee work was being carried out between dawn and noon, or after 5 p.m. when the sun withdrew behind Heybeliada. Some of the well water was portioned out among households in place of drinking water, and the remainder was used to irrigate the seeds we had sown on public plots across the island.
On the evening of the day when we both learnt each other’s names, emboldened by the general state of dereliction the island was in, we met in the forest. On top of the rock of Euphrosyne, rumoured to have eventually turned into stone on the slope of Prinkipo overlooking the city out of her yearning to return to Hagia Sophia through the years of her exile at the Women’s Monastery, we made out for a long time. Notwithstanding the drought, I was surprised by how desire made our eyes humid, and our mouths wet. That humidity soon spread to his shorts, on the fabric of which an island of moistness was now taking shape. Just like plants blooming in unison despite belonging to different species, his wetness immediately passed on to me. Both our sweat and genital fluids synchronously abode by gravity, trickling down from the rock of Euphrosyne until combining with the dry, gravelly soil beneath. I remember thinking that the first cemre*** had fallen to the earth. There was actually little difference between us and water-filled jerry cans, I thought. When I mentioned the possibility that, once we had shared our water with the earth, it might evaporate and rain back down on us one day, this thought aroused him as well. He was ready to make love once more.
We made love countless times in the following days. Then again, despite our reluctance to admit it to each other, none of them aroused us as much as the first intercourse had. One morning, while moseying down the slope from the monastery of Saint Georges, he suddenly grabbed my hand when he saw a footpath parting from beside a tree whose branches were weighed down by strips of what appeared to be plastic water bottle labels. We followed the trail with great curiosity as it led us to what remained of what was once Aliye and Karl Berger's house. In the area that, judging from the wall tiles, had once been a kitchen, he sat me on the countertop and proceeded to kiss my lips. We both came at the same moment, fantasizing that our wetness had brought life into these ruins of plumbing, which not a single drop of water had touched for months.
I cannot remember when it became a habit for us to have sex out in the open. It was as though we had taken up a mission, upon discovering that we carried, inside of us, the potentials for an array of existences, including those that would be born in the future as well as those that had once existed. We were ready to release our water, which contained the possibilities of life, of bacteria, fungi and many more organisms we do not have names for. Perhaps we were resisting death, and this was what excited us.
One night, as the thunder rumbled in the early hours of the morning, we both opened our eyes at the very same moment. There in the darkness, smiling at each other, we remained in bed and listened up for some time. When the rain started to fall, we put on some clothes and went out into the street. All the island’s dwellers were there, their hands up to the sky, hopping, trying to grasp whatever water they could catch with their fingertips as quickly as humanly possible. It all looked like a dance that would have been either invented on the spot or not performed for a long period of time. Centuries ago, this might have been how our ancestors rejoiced at the first sight of rain after a long drought. We joined the others in their dance. Then we felt that every single cemre that had ever fallen on the island, every living creature, human being, fish, cat, plant, and every mineral that had treaded its ground down centuries penetrated our bodies along with each raindrop. We were convinced at that point that nothing in nature was ever lost, and felt grateful for it.
Today, whenever ferry services to and from Prinkipo are disrupted due to a lodos storm, I am reminded of those days, in the midst of a very distant, albeit very recent past. Thankfully enough, lodos now unfailingly brings rain on the very next day.
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