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CHAPTER 7 – ERGENEKON 
216 
something, looks at my face, at my clothes in amazement and with a bit 
of melancholy, and with the agility of a wild squirrel suddenly leaps and 
disappears behind the skeleton of a wall. What was the purpose of this 
child’s approaching me? Why did he leave without saying something? 
(…) Certainly this is the father of the baby crying inside. How old is he? 
What work does he do? Why did he start a family? What is his purpose 
in life? All these questions dwell in me and an endless weariness sinks in 
me on his account. Weariness!...Yes, these places give us discomfort. 
The stones, the earth, the people, everyone here always looks tired, sad, 
purposeless and aimless. I am in the land of the defeated in every sense 
of the word. (…) Here they have long since been surrendered to 
misfortune and they have completely given up any struggle. Here
 
common basic things like getting dressed, eating and drinking, let alone 
having women adorning themselves and men shaving, have become a 
tiresome duty. (…) I said that each of Istanbul’s remote neighbourhoods 
is a sob which has not yet emerged. I do not know if this sentence can 
explain my feelings clearly. However, if the meaning of these 
neighbourhoods consisted only of this, it wouldn’t be worth going and 
wandering there. There is a distinct significance and a distinct virtue 
there. A human being finding himself among all these ruins and all this 
wretchedness, --I will not call it extreme poverty; because the thing 
called poverty is as if it has taken here a sweet, beautiful and friendly 
aspect—is given a lesson on self-sacrifice and humility. Those addictions 
to pomp and grandiosity? What are these cravings for a lot of 
embellishment and beautification? Where is the clamour of the epoch? 
Are those thousand kinds of fantasies found in the thing we call 
civilisation necessary duties to be performed? Here there is no trace of 
these troubles and sorrows; here poverty and sorrow express the meaning 
of a natural condition. Undoubtedly, the families who live in these 
neighbourhoods, the young men who have just grown up and the newly 
united husbands and wives are much more carefree than the families of 
Şişli, Boğaziçi and Kadıköy because they all live in the same poverty and 
things like jealousy, envy and greed cannot find any way to flog the 
heart. 
 
Some of the detail recurs in 
Yaban. 
For example the villagers wonder in 
astonishment why Ahmet Celal shaves and brushes his teeth every day
32
; Emeti 
32
Karaosmanoğlu 2006, 21

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