SNOW-WHITE
Uzunyayla Neighborhood is one of the villages of the Yakutiye district of Erzurum, where farmers and small tradesmen live and follow their religion. When the noon call to prayer was read that day, Cemil, a tall and slightly lean farmer, walked along with everyone else towards the mosque to pray. At the end of the prayer, he walked slowly towards his car with his head slightly bent forward and thoughtfully. The restlessness within Cemil stemmed from the problems between him and his pregnant wife, Zeynep. The disagreement was primarily about the name they would give to their unborn children. His prayer in the mosque calmed him down a bit. Cemil sat in his car for a while, took a deep breath, and started to watch the people coming out of the mosque. The smiles and sincerity he saw on people’s faces had begun to seem foreign to him lately. Reluctantly and slowly, he grabbed the steering wheel, started his car, and then drove home.
When he arrived home, Zeynep opened the door, but he didn’t even look at her face. The two of them silently stepped inside. As soon as Zeynep closed the door, she went to the kitchen and started to prepare the lunch. The silence inside the house was making the already tense atmosphere even more. Cemil made his way to the living room and settled in the armchair and took a newspaper, but he was only looking at the pictures. The only thing that broke the silence in the living room was the faint sound of newspaper pages turning.
Cemil’s mother Nazar, who was also in the living room, was aware of the tension between her son and daughter-in-law. She sighed deeply.
“Prayer has brought some calmness to your face, my son. May Allah accept it,” said
Nazar.
“God bless you, Mom,” Cemil replied briefly.
“The lady in the kitchen didn’t even say it,” Cemil sighed and murmured indicating Zeynep.
These words expressed Cemil’s disappointment and anger, and criticized Zeynep’s attitude against himself.
“You married lovingly; you both are good-hearted people. Don’t worry yourself, these days will pass,” Nazar said.
Cemil didn’t say anything, but his mother had already made a plan to end the tension between this couple.
“She is craving wild mushrooms today. After the meal, go and pick some up and please her. You will have a child together. Make your wife happy so that you can be happy, my child,” she added.
Cemil was getting tired of the tension. He lowered the newspaper under his eyes and gave an implying look to her mother that he may accept this suggestion.
“I’ll go and check the mountain. Don’t tell her anything,” he said and accepted this well-intentioned offer from his mother.
The three sat at the table to eat, but the tension remained. No sound could be heard throughout the meal except for the clattering of forks hitting plates. The chicken Zeynep cut with a knife and ate, although it crunched in her mouth like a hard rock, the slowing down and straining while swallowing made it clear that the tension was still there. Cemil, on the other hand, was eating slowly, breathing wheezily as he swallowed each bite.
After finishing the meal, Cemil quietly got up and went out. He was really tired of the tense atmosphere at home, and it was time to take a step to ensure peace for their unborn child. Although he blamed Zeynep for this unease, Cemil trusted his mother’s advice and decided to make things right with his wife.
As Cemil stepped out of the door, the cold air hit his face. The weather was cloudy and there was a fresh smell of snow. He sat in his car and thought to himself for a moment:
“Why did we become like this when everything was going well?”
“Recently, she started to behave resentfully towards me, and I started to treat her the same way,” Cemil answered himself.
“She is also insistent on naming the child after her late father. No way! The name will be after my father!” he said harshly, pulling the seat belt.
Cemil silenced his inner voice and took a deep breath. After starting the car, he set off. The snow was starting to drizzle and the wind was increasing, but he realized it too late because of the storm in his mind.
Cemil saw that he had reached the foothill of Demir Mountain. He watched the snowflakes fall on the windshield for a while. The snowfall was occasionally heavy, occasionally steadier, but this wouldn’t pose a threat to picking mushrooms. He tucked the bag he took from the glove box into his pocket. In Demir Mountain, wild mushrooms were generally found in high altitudes. Cemil turned off the car’s radio without wasting any time and walked towards the foothill of the mountain putting his hands under his armpits.
He set off towards the higher parts of the mountain, by carefully looking around. He knew that animals around the area usually eat or shred mushrooms in the lower parts of the mountain. So he started climbing the mountain with fast steps. At the same time, the intensity of the snow was increasing, and climbing was getting more and more difficult with each passing moment. While climbing the mountain, he spoke to himself in a breathless voice:
“It’s enough if I find a few.”
The closer he got to the top of the Mountain, the faster the snowflakes began to hit his face. He began to feel the sharp sound of the wind and the coldness of the wind in his ears. Since the snow turned into a small blizzard, Cemil had a hard time seeing ahead. Could he find mushrooms in this white hell? It was difficult to see the mushrooms on the snow- covered ground. He found a few mushrooms by probing where the snow had formed a convex shape, the rest overflowing. He put the mushrooms he had collected into the bag he took from her pocket.
His hands were trembling from the cold. He knew that going down in the escalating snowstorm would have deadly consequences. So Cemil took refuge in a small, sheltered, and relatively warm cave that caught his eye. The only sign of life inside the dark cave was Cemil’s rapid heartbeat. In this cave, which promised him life, Cemil crouched on a stone, pulling his knees towards his stomach to preserve his body temperature.
“Look at the situation! I want to do something romantic just one time in my whole life, but nature doesn’t allow it,” he complained playfully.
Cemil was waiting for the blizzard to subside in the cave, but it was constantly increasing, covering the sky like a white curtain. His cell phone was not picking up signals. The snow would have blocked the roads. He made a sudden decision and quickly left the cave. He couldn’t see anything outside, however. Snowflakes stuck in his eyes. He hurried back to the cave to wait until the blizzard subsided. Cemil tried to go out again when the blizzard slowed down, but now the snow on the ground was almost reaching his knees.
Clinging to rocks and trees with his limited vision, he began to walk slowly. When the blizzard regained strength, he could no longer go forward or backward.
“My God, please help, please help me!” he repeated to himself more than once.
Cemil couldn’t see it, but he understood that he was in the middle part of the mountain. While dragging his feet through the snow, his right foot came into a gap and fell into a puddle. He sprained his foot and got wet.
In agony, he began to writhe and said, “Oh, fuck! My foot, my back…”
Cemil had to hop around for a while. He felt a large boulder with his hand and sheltered from the blizzard behind it so he could sit for a while. He tore off the lower part of his wet trousers’ right leg with his hand and wrapped his coat around it. He also took off his wet socks and wore the shoes barefoot. He decided to wait for a while, hoping the blizzard might slow down. Meanwhile, Cemil began to feel desperate and emotional.
“God, please don’t let anything happen to me here. Think of my child, please!”
He took a deep breath, the cold air filling his lungs so much that he had a brief coughing fit. Cemil’s eyes were starting to close, he seemed to fall asleep several times. Then he woke up suddenly.
He stood up abruptly, saying, “I must not sleep, for my unborn child, for my wife.”
Cemil started to walk with difficulty, dragging his right foot and holding his waist with one hand. At the same time, the feeling of sleep began to increase gradually. While he was feeling the rocks with his hands, his eye caught the termite nest he had come across while climbing the mountain. Without thinking, he rolled up his sleeve and plunged his hand into the termite nest. Since Cemil knew that termites would not harm human health, he allowed them to bite his arm. So he could stay awake thanks to the pain of termite bites.
Slowly, he continued his steps to leave the middle of the mountain and descend towards the foothills. However, he soon began to have trouble standing. Cemil never thought of giving up; he kept holding on to the rocks.
Cemil’s mother, Nazar, was beginning to worry about her son. When she could not contact her son on the cell phone, she immediately told her daughter-in-law Zeynep about this situation. Later in the evening, when the weather got dark, Zeynep called the gendarmerie and asked for help:
“Hello?”
A female officer on the other end of the phone replied, “This is Gendarmerie Station.
How can I help you, Madam?”
“My husband went to Demir Mountain at noon but still hasn’t returned. I cannot reach him, I’m pregnant, and I’m really worried about him. Please do something, please!”
“Ma’am, please calm down. You may rest assured that we will definitely help you.
Now, I’ll inform the nearest station around Demir Mountain about the situation. By the way, how many months pregnant are you?”
“For six months,” Zeynep replied tearfully.
Neither side said anything else for like ten seconds. Realizing that Zeynep was crying, the officer’s eyes filled with tears. The officer asked:
“What is your name?” “Zeynep,” she said.
“Zeynep, don’t worry. I’m sure that we’ll find your husband. I have to turn off the phone to avoid keeping the line busy, but I’ll call you on my cell phone now. Don’t worry; I’m with you.”
The female officer wanted to stay in constant communication with Zeynep to be able to intervene immediately if Zeynep had a problem due to her pregnancy. They talked about various subjects to distract Zeynep until some news came from the other station. While the
two were talking on the phone, a gendarmerie car came to the house and took them to the hospital.
Zeynep was walking quickly through the hospital rooms looking for Cemil, while her mother-in-law was walking slowly by keeping the arm of a nurse. As soon as Zeynep saw Cemil, she ran towards him.
“Cemil!”
Cemil was lying on a stretcher, exhausted. Hearing his wife’s voice, he opened his eyes and looked at his wife. Zeynep started kissing Cemil’s hands, crying.
“My love, I was so scared. We were so scared,” she said putting Cemil’s hands to her
belly.
Cemil didn’t say anything and forced himself to a sitting position. He reached into the coat next to him. He took the mushroom bag and put it in Zeynep’s palm.
“I was dying for you; I would die again,” he said with teary eyes and a hoarse voice.
Meanwhile, Cemil’s mother, Nazar, sat on a couch and cried happily by looking at the
couple.
