“İlim, İrfan” , “Science, Irfan”

Translation by Engin Akyurek Universal Fans Club

Lying was like breathing for him.

He was the main character of the analogy that everybody in the school agreed, a man of
contradictions, a humanist defender of mistakes, an expert of rascality who was ignorant and
incurious of science. He is a holdback high school student who could turn lying into his
profession and make his studentship a nest for his boredom with his intelligence.

The age difference between Irfan and I was not directly proportional to my being a 9th grader.
He had started the elementary school late and repeated a couple of grades in middle and high
schools. You could guess his age from his shaving every day, his hair balding on sides, and his
deep voice. We had met at the school cafeteria. He had objected that the price equilibrium
between hot dog and soda was causing financial difficulty and made too much fuss about it. He
had told what I couldn’t tell. We had greeted each other that day and had become friends, in
his words, “buddies”.

As if he had stove pipe inside his mouth, when he shouted, the words coming out of his mouth
created a smoky melody in his voice, which supported his rightfulness. He had the self-
confidence of a person who could do or say the things that others couldn’t dare. But, he had a
bad reputation. He used to get mad when people said “He’s lying again,” when he talked. He
used to curse, punching the walls or the doors of the school with his ugly very large hands. He
used to say “You all are liars!”, then ditch the class and try to calm himself by smoking. The
teachers wouldn’t say anything his smoking and would think that this was his most harmless
one among his other bad habits. You would think that he was a state employee for 35 years
who was about to retire. Whatever he did in the class would become the talk of the next break.
Whether you like it or not, a simple gossip is how the magazine-shows feed themselves. “Have
you heard what Irfan said in the class or what Irfan did to the teacher?” These sentences were
whispered in the halls of the school. If he heard your whispers, you could have easily become
his target like a paparazzi being assaulted. Since you did not have the freedom of the press,
you would be scared shitless.

“Let’s ditch the school, buddy.”

When I spent time with him, I would feel like I was in a fair; both having fun and learning
actual things regarding life. It was as if the “buddy” word covered more than what three-in-one
coffees offered.

When I began to be very close with Irfan, the assistant school manager had called my mother
to the office and told my mom to keep her child away from this devil disguised as child. He had
called me to the office, too, and, raising his voice, told me the same verbiage. When I went
back home, my mom had repeated the same things told by the assistant school manager.

“Why are you hanging out with rascals?”

And I would probably hear the same thing from my father in the evening. Forgetting the
memorized things was a part of our educational system. I had already forgotten what I heard in
the halls in the morning and showed Irfan that I was open to new knowledge.

It was true that Irfan used to talk a lot but his sentences were always mysterious. You couldn’t
find out about his family. His father’s profession would change according to situation. He would
tell his father’s new profession in one of his new long sentences each time. I knew that he
didn’t lie to me. Even if he did, he would gift me with a little ephemeral lie. Sometimes, I used
to see in his eyes that he didn’t want to talk about his family. He would look at me as if he said
“Buddy, don’t open this subject.” If his eyes weren’t enough, he would try to tell me with his
silence. Although he was very mischievous, his parents never came to school. The rational little
devils inside me were telling me to follow him to find out where he lived and who his parents
were but the little conscientious child inside me was silencing those voices by objecting and
stoning the devils. There is an ethic line between wondering about someone who knows you as
a friend, as a buddy and invading that person’s privacy. I don’t know and don’t want to know
who drew these lines or when they were drawn.

I didn’t call him as “a man of contradictions” for nothing. He would write something onto a
paper that looked like a notebook, fold it with his large hands, and place it into his inside
pocket. Although we wondered, we knew what would happen if we attempted to read what he
wrote. He would look around, try to make his body smaller, and begin to write. Our literature
teacher tried to find out what he wrote, but to no avail. We all thought there wasn’t any literary
deepness in his writing but couldn’t help wondering.

If nothing went wrong, Irfan would graduate, retire, in a month. The fake May sun had
softened our winter faces. Students were in the school yard, which was lively and joyous place
like the Spice Bazaar. They were smiling under the afternoon sun. Ankara’s sinister frost which
you never knew when it would happen was waiting for the sunset, like a wolf waiting for its
prey and sensed what would happen.

Irfan was playing forward like the worst scorer of the world and cheating to score because he
was banning the goalies,who didn’t concede any goals, from all sport competitions, threatening
them in the restrooms later on. Irfan had scored his second goal between the legs. The entire
school was chanting his name: “Irfan! Irfan!”

High school girls with their plaid skirts, had lined against the wall, were gossiping through
soccer. When three beefy young boys from another neighborhood, shouted out the girls, Irfan
took the issue in hand. He grabbed the ball without waiting finishing whistle and walked
towards them for confrontation.
“Is there a problem?”

These big young boys couldn’t answer that unexpected question. There was a sweet silence in
the schoolyard. This silence was a sign of things to come; like lynching and fist fighting. The
entire school could turn these shabby boys into cheerleaders with the help of Irfan. He asked
the same question again:

“Is there a problem?”

He started hitting the face of the biggest one with the ball slowly. The boy’s dark face was
turnning red, bringing color to his ugliness.

“I won’t ask again. Is there a problem?”

The boys of the school narrowed their distance to their prey in a half-moon shape. We were
waiting for Irfan’s signal. Irfan didn’t need to say anything; a small tilt of his thick eyebrows
that covered almost half of his forehead could give us orders.

Irfan began to hit the boy’s face wiith the ball faster this time. He could grab the ball that got
lost in his large hands anyway he wanted and showed us that he had been beating people with
a ball for years. The feeble one among those beefy boys started breathing deeply. That drew
Irfan’s attention.

“Do you want to asnwer that?”

It was obvious that Irfan was doing this a lot and had a talent for that. His timing and calmness
resembled Don Carleone’s charisma. The feeblest one took one step towards Irfan; his
breathing had turned to normal. Sounding as ugly as his face, he said:

“Let’s talk outside of the school.”

He was marking his own grave with his spitting mouth. We had gotten closer with the
excitement of sharing the prey. Irfan threw the ball to the ground and approached the boy. He
looked at his dirty face full of scars without flinching. The others stopped breathing and were
getting high with carbonmonoxide building up in their lungs. Irfan showed his fist, indicating
that he wouldn’t ask any more questions. There was a heavy silence in the schooldyard, even
birds had stopped chirping. The frost was watching us behind the sun. Irfan took another step,
showing his sharp fist. The ugly beefy boy, beaten by his fear, stabbed Irfan with a knife which
we were unaware of and then ran away. The crowd had scattered with a panic and the screams
of the girls made the other boys run away as well. Iffan was lying on the ground, holding his
belly. When we saw the blood coming out of his belly, the schoolyard would fall silent one more
time.

“Shut up, shut up, don’t scream right beside my ear, ... you, shut up!”
Everybody was already silent. The birds had flown away, the forst had escaped from the sun’s
shadow. “Shut up! Shut up!”

Irfan was shouting so loud that his own voice was hurting him more than his wound. His painful
screams were giving a voice to our silence as well. We weren’t even breathing, his profuse
bleeding had stopped our breathing. “Shut up! ... you!”

The school board got together urgently after this event and expelled him from the school. As
the stiches on his belly not enough, he had stripped of his education. As soon as he was
discharged from the hospital, he came to the school and sweared at all the teachers, the school
manager, and the assistant school manager by shouting their names. That was the last time I
saw him. There are places and times that connect all stories to each other. We never know
when we will enter a time tunnel.

I was on a desolate road in Sile. I drove into a gas station which looked like temporarily there
with all the dust and dirt around it. And after 20 years, I saw Irfan behind the cash register in
that gas station. He went bald and lost his all glamor. We came eye to eye. The redness on his
pupils began to get bigger. He recognized me as well. I expected him to say hello first. I don’t
know why. I thought he wouldn’t want to meet me like that. While entering password for my
credit card, I could see that he was looking at me with his rotten eyes as if he would say
“buddy” in a minute. He gave back my credit card with his ugly large hands which were the
only thing that did not change. I got in to my car and drove away. I wouldn’t enter that road or
that gas station ever again.

I was alone with my shame which I had already forgotten. I had secretly read the notes that
Irfan wrote in the schoolyard. I had a lump in my throat because of this shame that I avoided
to tell even myself. I was murmuring his sentences while I was driving.

“I am Irfan Yilmaz. I am orphan an who doesn’t know where he was born. I don’t know my
birthpace or my parents. The only thing that I know is where I am going to die; in an unknown
place, by myself, as Irfan.”

Irfan is the most honest man that I’ve known in my life.