All Of Monday’s Reasons - 20
20. Mustapha, The Gentle Murderer
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There was a wooden hut next to the bus. A little boy, who Hacim explained was the son of the guardian of the site, offered us tea. We accepted his offer and he ran into the hut.
We sat down at a small table and he emerged with a tray five minutes later. The driver said something to Hacim and drove off.
“That’s Mustapha,” Hacim said.
“Why’s he so quiet?” Asked Jean-Luc.
“He’s just spent the past ten years in jail.”
“What for?”
The boy brought the tea. We thanked him. He sat down next to me and listened to us speaking French.
“Murder.” Hacim sipped his tea. “Killed a guy who attacked his sister. He’s got a wife and little daughter. He’s just doing this to get some money until he can get a better job.”
“But no one will hire him, right?” I said.
“Right, and he’s a really nice guy. He doesn’t talk much because he’s not used to people. That’s why he doesn’t come with us. He likes to be alone a lot and doesn’t like being away from his family, which you can understand.”
We finished the tea and thanked our hosts and walked along the valley for about a mile. We climbed a steep hill up to a ridge where Mustapha was waiting for us with the van. The sun was setting slowly as we reached the top.
He was sitting on the ground with a table-cloth and a content grin spread out before him. On the cloth was a bottle of local red wine, a vase of flowers, and a bag of baked chick peas, the regional snack. He smiled up at us from his lotus position. He picked up the bottle and punched the base hard three times, sending the cork flying without spilling a drop.
We smiled back and joined him, drinking the wine and dunking for chick peas as the sunset became more and more breathtaking before finally disappearing.
In the morning we went with Hacim and Mustapha to some more remote villages. He showed us the ruins of an ancient Koranic school, but I was more interested in a large, cloth clad, middle age lady making tossing wheat germ ten feet high in the air and catching every scrap in a small sieve. After fifteen minutes of Hacim’s explanation of why Ataturk was against Islam, we started to take pictures of her. She stopped sifting after I took a few.
“Address,” she said to me. Jean-Luc and I thought she wanted our addresses.
“Oh no, not this,” said Hacim, who had given up his historical monologue.
“What does she want?” I asked him.
“She wants to give you her address so you can send her copies of the photographs you took of her.”
“Why?”
“It’s a novelty here to have a photograph of yourself.”
Hacim started talking to her in Turkish. She had been preparing bil-bils, wheat germ sifted into grains. Apparently it is much more nourishing than rice or pasta.
Jean-Luc handed her a pen so she could write her address down. She took these and handed them to Hacim. She was illiterate, as were many people in the region. She dictated the address to him and said something else.
“She says three photos,” explained Hacim.
Whether she meant we were to take three each or three total, I didn’t know, but I didn’t ask to find out. Ever since I had arrived in Turkey, I had been wanting to take pictures of the people. Now was my chance. I snapped away mercilessly.
She filled a bag full of bil-bils and gave it to Bertrand, who thanked her.
“Do French women work like this?” Hacim asked us. I kept on forgetting that he had never been out of Turkey.
We all said they did, but when we all confirmed something, Hacim knew not to believe us.
There’s a killer on the road.