CHAPTER 77
I am Philothei (12)
When Ibrahim was young he was very funny. My little brother Mehmetçik and his friend Karatavuk could perfectly imitate robins and blackbirds on their birdwhistles, and this was very admirable, and this was how they called to each other, but my beloved could imitate all the different bleats of goats. I think it was because he was a goatherd, and he came to recognise all of these bleats as he became more experienced. Once he very nearly got into trouble for bleating when Abdulhamid Hodja was speaking, and fortunately Abdulhamid forgave him just in time to prevent a beating.
I have forgotten the names of some of these bleats, but they were things like the bleat of a goat who is looking for its kid, the bleat of a goat that has accidentally bitten on a stone, and the bleat of a goat that is unable to fart. He used to do these bleats for the entertainment of his parents’ visitors, and for anyone else who asked. He wasn’t shy about doing them.
As time went by he started to do bleats which were more and more absurd. The bleat of a goat that is thinking of becoming a Christian. The bleat of a goat that wishes to go to Telmessos and buy a waterpipe for its grandmother. The bleat of a goat that is too stupid to know how stupid it is. The bleat of a goat that had a good idea the day before and can’t remember what it was.
The best bleat of all was the bleat of a goat with nothing to say. I can’t describe it, but it’s a bleat that anyone would recognise straight away, because it’s the kind of bleat that goats do when they’re all together munching away among the rocks, and there really is nothing to say, but they bleat anyway. Ibrahim used to say that what the bleat probably meant was “It’s me.”
Ibrahim could do this bleat and just exaggerate it enough to make it very ridiculous, and he could do it in all sorts of versions and variants, and people never tired of hearing him do it, and it always made them laugh.
I used to go out and harvest wild plants at about the same time every day, and Ibrahim knew this, and he would leave the goats in the charge of his dog Kopek, and he would scramble over the rocks, and I would know that he was coming because he had a version of the bleat that was just for me, and his game was that he would try to get as close as he could before I could spot him, and then he would pop up from behind a rock or a thorny oak and do the bleat very loudly, and the expression on his face when he did it was really just like a goat’s.
It’s a miracle that we were never caught in all those years. The disgrace would have been unbearable, and I lived in a state of great nervousness. Quite often I went out to gather greens with Drosoula, and we trusted her not to tell anyone.
What I loved about Ibrahim was that he always could make me laugh, and because of this it didn’t matter that he was only a goatherd. I also loved it when I heard him playing the kaval.
These years of war have been utterly wearisome, and I can’t wait for the time when my beloved returns, and I hear the kaval again, and he pops up from behind a rock and bleats the bleat of a goat with nothing to say.