Prologue to Rezan’s Tale
Too busy. Too many clubs.
Rezan put her routines on the chopping block–
chemistry labs, volleyball workouts, dance classes.
She wanted to dominate her audience.
Writing her talk in the library,
she still found time to flirt.
Back in Izmir,
she worked on her tan
among the palm trees,
worked on her moves
in the nightclubs.
She pursued sports,
pursued men,
a kind of sport in itself.
She knew she had the look–
sharp-faced, penetrating gaze,
svelte figure.
Now stuck in snowy Erzurum,
she stalks Ömer.
Rezan met him photographing ruins,
ones she was sketching in charcoal.
He will never know what hit him.
Rezan’s Tale
I prefer to speak “zealously”
since I’ve been told
jealousy
makes me a scold.
I’ll tell myself a story
to which you’ll be the judge.
My rage flared up– no glory.
I grappled with a grudge.
There once were two childhood sweethearts
raised in Trabzon on Karadeniz,
the ancient Black Sea.
Yilmaz painted portraits.
Beyza, his white-as-snow sweet,
gathered Rize tea,
black walnut hulls,
blackberries and onion skins,
ground and mixed them into his paints.
They had an understanding.
One day into Trabzon sailed
a professor tracking birds.
For his ornithology,
he needed someone to illustrate,
in ideal poses, his discoveries.
Yilmaz signed on
with pastel drawings in the field,
in paints Beyza mixed at home.
Then another researcher landed,
a cloud on their sunny lives.
Short, dark haired, olive-complected.
a creature of the Izmir sun,
Afet was gathering field notes
for her architectural book.
On her list loomed Sümela Monastery .
How did it cling to the cliffs all these centuries?
She asked Yilmaz if he was free and if he could draw buildings.
The day he accepted her employment offer,
Beyza grew cold.
She couldn’t eat or sleep.
Her thoughts played and replayed intertwining intimacies
between Afet and her Yilmaz,
her lifelong love flung off.
Her sanity in question,
she decided to consult one of the Dews,
giants who war against Peris,
the beautiful, female spirits found in nature,
working their way back to heaven.
The Dew told Beyza to knock on Yilmaz,
He turned into a bird and flew away.
She planned to call him back to be transformed,
but for now, Beyza would not budge.
.
Next morning, Afet was ready to depart for the monastery.
Yilmaz had vanished.
“That’s odd.
He seemed reliable.
Well- balanced.
Professional.”
On her return from Sümela,
she narrated a curious incident.
While sketching the monastery walls,
three hundred meters above the valley,
a little green bird landed next to her.
She wondered if it wanted some crumbs.
She shooed it away.
Stubbornly, it came back and landed on her shoulder.
It began to squawk.
She became a little alarmed and stood up quickly.
The bird began to sing. Chi-wu-wi
Back at the hotel, the Professor perked up at her description of its song.
“Could you have seen a green warbler?”
the Professor asked Afet.
“It is rare in Turkey.
Let’s go view it.
I can add it to my life list.
This…. cannot be!
It has flown back all the way here.
It seems it wants you, Afet.”
The bird perched on her shoulder once more,
this time in front of Beyza and the Professor.
“It seems quite tame,”
said the Professor as he reached out toward it.
He touched it lightly
and now the bird vanished!
From the next room Yilmaz walked in, a bit sleepy,
with a green blanket draped over his shoulders.
“I’m sorry I’m late.
I have been having the most curious dream.
I was flying
very high then landed on your shoulder, Afet.
Let me sit down.
I feel very tired
as if I have been struggling to say something but could not.
…Professor, I would still like to accompany you
and document the birds of this region.
I have another request, however.”
“Yes?”
“I would like to take Beyza with me.
She mixes my paints
and guides me in my choice of palettes.”
Beyza began to tear up.
He knows.
He forgives.
I have been so mistrusting.
For nothing.
“Afet, my sketching trip with you
will have to wait.
It seems I have a previous engagement.”
The Professor, however, invited Afet to join them
as they catalogued the birds of Lake Van.
She could explore the 10th -century Armenian church on Akdamar Island.
as they sought out the green warbler, and the Armenian gull.
But the Dew had not been paid.
It materialized and demanded a prisoner.
Human flesh. As befitting an Ogre.
When the Dew selected Yilmaz for his imprisonment,
Beyza objected and, to atone, offered to take his place.
“No tinge of jealousy may contaminate my prize,”
growled the Dew as it instead whisked Afet
out of her hotel.
Afet found herself in an iron cage
in the company of a beautiful female Peri.
Now Yilmaz had to counterattack.
Beyza suggested calling up another Peri
to defend one of her own.
When the second Peri appeared to do the bidding of Yilmaz,
she put forth the terms of the exchange.
“What exchange?”
“When Afet is freed, you must marry the caged Peri.”
Your love for her life. “
Afet opened the door of her cage.
Yilmaz trembled next to her.
He knew any feelings he had for Afet would be forever crushed.
The freed Peri flew him to her home in the mountains.
And so they married.
He concealed her wings
so they could meet in public
and assume what passed for a normal marriage.
Impatient and mistrustful of his Peri-wife,
Yilmaz withheld his love.
In secret he sheltered the little flame of his love for Afet.
In the face of such constancy,
His sad Peri-wife unfolded her wings
and left her mortal husband, Yilmaz.
The Peri gained entrance to heaven after giving an angel
the gift most dear to God:
a precious sigh of pure, self-sacrificing love,
stolen from Yilmaz.
My tale has no moral spokesman,
like tales from Shiraz.
Who was the nobler human?
Beyza or Yilmaz?
