That black night: Engagement by Çiler İlhan

Her hair was like her name. Dark as the night. Cloaking her to the waist. Bilal had been smitten by this hair while still a boy. This he told to Leyla many years later. When she reached the age of twenty, and continued to reject all her matches—including the son of an uncle a few weeks previously—her father Cemal had decided to give her in marriage to Tahsin, a relative from town, so she would not end up ‘stuck-at-home.’ The second he heard, Bilal jumped into his Renault and gulped down seventy kilometres of road quick as a pill. In this village, men know to stay away when the man of the house is gone.

Engagement by Çiler İlhan has all the qualities of a folktale. Set in a small Kurdish village in southeastern Turkey, known simply as “Our Village,” it unfolds over the course of sixteen hours. For one family it’s an auspicious day. The engagement of eldest daughter of Fatma and Cemal is to be celebrated that evening and the entire village is invited to join the festivities. But in the nearby “Other Village,” villainous plans are being made to upset the proceedings. And that’s putting it mildly.

These two villages—caught in a complicated nest of intermarriage, property disputes, and blood feuds—are at once timeless and yet very much part of the twenty-first century. Located in an area neglected by the state, life in these isolated, impoverished communities is simple. Traditional technologies and customs dominate the lives of most of the families, but there is also wealth in terms of land, mineral rights, and agricultural goods to be fought over and defended. Consequently, most of the men are required to participate in regular scheduled guard duty, a task for which they are heavily armed.

The playful, fable-like narrative, delivered by a mysterious omniscient narrator, carries an ominous tone. Reference is repeatedly made to the “incident” that lies just ahead. Complications are hinted at, assertions and accusations that will be made in its aftermath are alluded to, long before any description event itself. You know that something horrific and deadly is coming and that awareness fuels the growing tension. Meanwhile, at the home of Leyla, the bride-to-be, the women go about their preparations with excitement and dedication. Yet, there is a missing ingredient. Leyla’s younger sister Maral has forgotten to purchase the eau de cologne traditionally splashed on the hands of each guest as they arrive for the feast. Since she has other tasks to attend to that day, it falls to her cousin Halil  to secure the required scent.

On his way out to purchase the perfume, the young man is kicked when Chunky the cow is unexpectedly spooked. He hits the ground hard, causing a headache that will trouble him throughout the long hot day.

It is true that Halil’s mother saw him as clumsy fool, but he must have had a capable side too, for how else would he have been one of only three people to give the shroud the slip on that black night? The rest would be buried in the village graveyard he was nearing on his journey that day.

We learn that Halil had had a close call with death when he contracted meningitis as a child and, that he is now a distractable daydreamer with his teenage heart set on Maral. When he finds that he is unable to secure the necessary ten bottles of cologne locally, he is forced to walk all the way to Other Village. When he finally reaches the rival village, home of the evil, violent Osman and his band of brothers, Halil is surprised to find two dolls, representing a bride and a groom, hanging from the branches of the old sycamore in the town square. When he asks those he finds sitting there about the dolls he is treated as if he is seeing things, as if he is crazy. It is not the first time he will doubt his senses.

Throughout the day, a strange, unsettling atmosphere haunts Our Village—omens are witnessed and sudden dust storms blow up, but there is no consensus about any of these reported happenings. Both Maral and her mother Fatma feel anxious, their stomachs in knots. But the community is, of course, already a curious place, peopled by eccentric characters and home to “more than its fair share of crazies and cripples.” This is the inevitable result of the long standard practice of cousins marrying cousins. Residents are tightly connected by blood, but that is not sufficient to assuage long simmering conflicts between family groups. In fact, it may only make it worse. It certainly makes the events that will stain this dark night ever more tragic.

With this spare, haunting novella, Çiler İlhan has crafted a lyrical little tale that packs a devastating punch. No matter how many times the wily narrator refers to the coming “incident,” it is impossible to be prepared for the evil that descends on the engagement party. But the true depth of the horror portrayed in this folktale lies in the author’s Afterword where she puts her story into context.

Engagement by Çiler İlhan is translated from the Turkish by Kenneth Dakan and published by Istros Books.

Author: roughghosts

Literary blog of Joseph Schreiber. Writer. Reader. Editor. Photographer. View all posts by roughghosts