Bliss: A Novel by O.Z. Livaneli Page B

cockpit. The pilot must have recognized him from his television program and seized the chance to have a conversation with him.
    As he entered the cockpit, İrfan was struck by its electronic tranquillity. Listening to garbled messages from the flight control towers, comprehensible only to the pilots, they adjusted direction without interrupting their conversation. İrfan reflected on how handsome a uniform made everyone seem; even long-distance bus drivers looked smart in their tailored suits and dark glasses.
    The professor felt a sudden urge to grab the flight instruments, pull down the lever, and send the plane into a nosedive. He would later recall this moment, trying to understand why the fear of dying led him to desire death. It was a fierce impulse. It was not hard to understand how people who suffered vertigo could choose to commit suicide by jumping from a high place.
    Being a man of thought rather than action, İrfan did not allow his feeling to overcome him. He conversed pleasantly with the pilots, even opening the topic of “how Turkey would never solve its problems.” The professor found an opportunity to cut the conversation short, returned to his seat, and gulped down another drink before landing.
    As the plane lost altitude over Adnan Menderes Airport, İrfan thought about the changes Izmir had undergone during the last thirty years. Like him, it had lost its innocence. The Aegean atmosphere was slowly evaporating, causing the city to fade like an old icon from which time has worn away the gilt. The Kurdish war, or “low-intensity skirmish” as the General Staff called it, which had resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands in Eastern Anatolia, had also caused hundreds of thousands of Kurds to migrate to the west. The inhabitants of three thousand devastated villages had flocked to the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, bringing with them their own culture to mingle with those of Ionia and Mesopotamia.
    At first, İrfan doubted that these villages had really been burned down and depopulated, but later accepted this fact when he saw it mentioned in the supervisory reports of the prime ministry. Unfortunately, the struggle against terrorism was carried out in similar ways all over the world. Although it would have been better had this devastation not taken place, every state had the legitimate right to protect itself against armed rebellion.
    The taxi driver, a skinny youngster with a thin moustache, who was taking him to Karıyaka from the airport, must have come from the east. He thought he recognized İrfan from somewhere and talked to him throughout the entire trip. Had İrfan ridden in his taxi before? Where was the Turkish economy going? Since gasoline was so expensive, he had had LPG fuel installed in his vehicle. Did the professor want a cigarette? Yes, smoking was harmful, but it calmed you down. Perhaps the gentleman would like to listen to music; he had new cassettes and a Pioneer cassette player. They were cool, weren’t they? Suddenly, the small car was transformed into a concert hall, where moaning violins, the percussion of drums and tambourines, as well as the melancholy wail of desert pipes accompanied a popular song of the type known as “arabesque,” played at full volume.
    If the professor had felt any peace previously, it disappeared immediately. This urban kitsch music had no harmony, and İrfan felt as though a screwdriver were being slowly ground into his ear. He was not a musicologist, but he was sure that arabesque symbolized the country’s decadence. The music was not genuine like the blues, the fado, the tango, or the rembetiko, all of which expressed a cry of oppression. Arabesque—the music of migration to the big city—was not the outcry of a wounded man but the whimpering of one pretending to be injured. The most famous singers carried diamond-studded Rolexes, drove Mercedes, and wore silk shirts, half-unbuttoned to expose their hairy chests, yet they sang songs of pain,