DAUGHTER OF MAFIA BOSS

Untitled Part 2

Ulaş bowed his head and said, "The first thing we will do is to destroy the cell phones." "Don't worry," Ulaş's father tried to reassure them, "I hope we will get through this too." All the cell phones were smashed with a meat mallet.

                   Just then, the door was knocked. Ulaş's father got up slowly, took a few steps and opened the door. It was the landlord. "Good evening," the man said. "Ooo, good evening, sir," the father of the house replied. "Could you settle in the house?" the land lord, face of whom was tanned by the sun, sweaty, black trousers of whom is dusty and a little tired, asked with a comforting, sincere smile. The rough part is settled, the rest is a matter of time," the other man replied, then added with a smile, "Won't you come in?" " "I don't want to disturb you," said the landlord politely and timidly, the deep wrinkles on his face deepened more. The man was of medium height and aged a bit, muscular from head to toe except for a slight paunch. Just one look at him was enough to make people thought he had worked his whole life or trained to improve his body. On the way home, his father told Ulaş a short story about him. In fact, not for his whole life, but after thirty he had had to work physically and to death every day, he had worked as a porter in city wholesale market hall every day. With the money he had saved by the skin of his teeth, he had bought two houses in the village and rented one of them out. Then, he had become the village headman. Actually, he was not a villager. The youthful mistakes of his youth, which had started in his high school years had continued until his rich parents had passed away and afterwards, he had devoured their fortune. The spoiled child had not finished high school. Despite his parents' all-consuming pressure, his high school years had been wasted in the pursuit of empty whims and fancies, and he had been expelled from school eventually. His father had arranged several desk jobs through his acquaintances, but he had never worked in these. Then the death of his parents... After the sad event, he had mourned for a while and then he had had to start living again. He had dated with women from high society. The women who had been dying softly because of love had never knocked on his door again after the money had run out. He had had nothing, nothing, so he had had to start working as a porter. In the first days, he had thought his bones had been broken, but the era of brattiness and being gentleman had ended, the tulip era had been over. The new era had been the era of working for avoiding from death due to starvation. As they had occured, he had done other porterage jobs and he had saved as much money as he had been able. Then, as known, he had said to himself "A little peace" when he had gotten old and he had settled in the village.

The man looked like his father in appearance a bit. They both had graying backswept hair and a round face. They were also very close in height. He remembered that his father had owned a grocery store when he had been at little age. When he had been young, his grandfather had apprenticed him to another grocer. Then, he had saved up some money, he had provided things people had ned here and there and by taking a little profit, using one room of the house as a storage room to buy necessities here and there, for those who wanted, with a capital of a few penny, he had supplied things and then, he had expanded his business and opened a grocery store. Ulaş vaguely remembered the ten or fifteen items of merchandise in one room of the house. After his father had opened the grocery store, he had run it for many years. Every evening he had come home with his arms full of foodstuff and sometimes he had brought a small or big toy. When he was little, all family members had had a place in his heart, but his older brother had had a special one. He had always tried to be like him by imitating in the way he dressed, gestured, acted and behaved. When he had been in the fifth grade, his older brother had been in the last year of high school. At that time, his brother had had a girlfriend. When the two lovers had gone out, they sometimes had taken him with them and they had opened the doors of a colorful, completely different world for him. He had had so much fun on those days that nothing had been able to dampen the little gentleman even for the next few days. Then that terrible accident... A huge freight train had shattered the lion-like body of his older brother even in front of his girl friend. On the third day of the accident, she had been paralyzed with grief, and after three months of treatment she could barely get out of her wheelchair. Ulaş was heartbroken, but in time and with difficulty, he got used to this pain that kills people hundreds and thousands of times.

"What disturbance sir, come in, don't stay at the door," said the father of the house. Shaking his head from side to side, the other man replied, "No, no, I really don't want to disturb you at this hour, but if you will be free, we will be able to pay a welcome visit to you tomorrow afternoon as family." "Sure, we will be waiting," said Ulaş's father. The man wished everyone a good evening, waved goodbye and left. But after a very short time, he was once again at the door. The father of the house opened the door again. The man said, "I am disturbing you, but I wanted to inform you that the gendarmerie is looking for three fugitives. Right now, they are going into all the houses one by one. They had asked if anyone had come to village lately or left it, I had told them about you. I had shown them the rent contract  we had signed at the notary, they had said you had not been the ones they had looked for. They want to know if the young people with you are your children. The commander of the gendarmerie asked me questions about this." After a brief moment of confusion, Ulaş showed the man to his and Arnisa's fake IDs by indicating the places where the names of mother and father were written. The man looked at the IDs in Ulaş's hand and said, "OK, I will tell the commander about the situation, but if you ask me, be careful, don't go out at these times. The fugitives seem to be very dangerous, once again good evening". After the man had left, the door had been closed and the household waited for a while to see if anyone else was there to come, but no one did. Then, they had heard the noise of which had been being started, engines of gendarmerie vehicles, which had not move for a while and which became more and more distant then. Indeed, Arnisa's father had made a good move, and the gendarmerie had now joined the search at his service. Nothing like this had ever occurred to any of them before. They knew that life was full of surprises, but until the news they had just received through the phone, they all had had only one vision of the end of it all. A colorful picture of Arnisa in a white wedding dress with flowers in her hand and Ulaş in a groom's suit at the wedding table. For Ulaş and Arnisa however, a house where Ulaş's mother and father had going to be able to hide from the eyes of the bad guys in addition, then there had going to be no problem left. Now, however, the visions were a bit more complicated.

The people of the village, who had crowded into their houses upon the orders of the gendarmes, had poured out after their departure. Ulaş understood from their conversations that they knew nothing about these fugitives. The gendarmes hadn't given them much information either, which wasn't surprising. In such cases, the officers didn't say much to civilians anyway. The villagers had talked among themselves for about ten minutes and then, they went back to their homes. After an hour or so, one by one, the lights in the houses went out. During this hour, the question on everyone's mind had been what they had going to do if the gendarmes had going to come again. There was no answer to this question. "Gather around me," the father of the house, knowing that walls had ears had whispered and he sat down on the floor. Everyone gathered around the old man's knees. "We need to decide what to do," the man continued in a whisper. "Do you think we should leave this place? We can go somewhere in the city or in the countryside, where no one will check us. It is not known whether the gendarmerie will come here again," the old man added thoughtfully. "I think the gendarmerie is searching for us on the roads leading to the city. It is more likely that we will be caught on the way there. We can't live in the countryside," Ulaş said with shaking his head from side to side. "Let's hide here for a week or so, then we will be able to go to the city." The vote was in favor of Ulaş's idea. They went to bed and prayed for the gendarmerie would not come again for a while.

**********************************

To love is to place our happiness in the happiness of another. (Gottfried Wilhelm Van Lubreitz)

They wandered around after the landlord's visit nextday, saw the region and the roads, the grocery store, the bazaar, the environmental community, the mukhtar's office, the mosque, the fields, the quilter, the women weaving wheat stalks. The following day, they even had a picnic.