You all are familiar with the story of Nazim Hikmet, Turkey’s national poet. Author of Human Landscapes from My Country, widely considered one of the seminal works of the Twentieth Century. The decades spent in and out of prison for his controversial views; the sad last years spent in exile in Russia.

This story takes place sometime in late 1951, sometime after his release from Bursa Prison, one of Turkey’s justly famous jails. He’d been released, along with many others, in a kind of general amnesty.

###

“So you’re out? Where are you?” I asked. The phone call came as a surprise. Nazim and I were friends at university, but that was a lifetime ago. Afterwards, I’d gone on to do my military service, and Nazim had embarked on his great career. I only knew what most other people knew – that he’d been arrested for alleged links to the Communist Party, etc, and last I’d read he’d been sentenced to life.

“Yes, my Boswell! I’m free as a bird! For now anyway. One never knows of course. Right now, I’m at some café in Taksim – bakkar musunuz? What’s the name of this place? (He was asking a passing waiter). Back on the phone, Nazim told me the name of the place, which I knew, just off Istiklal Street.

“Come on down, Boswell, old boy! We’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

I hung up, thinking Nazim still had his characteristic high spirits. The slammer had not gotten him down. And I was struck by how his voice over the phone bore a striking resemblance to the lyrical style of his famous poems. Boswell? Oh, that was just a name he had chosen for me, from college days. If you know our Nazim, he’s like that, always christening friend and foe with an apt moniker.

I was living Beşiktaş then, working as a civil servant at the local municipal offices. Excited at the prospect of seeing the famous poet (and my old college acquaintance) again, I put on my coat and headed out to the get the bus.

It was just a short bus ride up the hill to Taksim Square. Istiklal Caddesi, then as now, was crowded with tourists and locals alike, browsing the shops, strolling past the elegant foreign embassies. Stepping through a passage, where people were having lunch, I squeezed past waiters and local fish sellers, until presently I arrived at the café.

I spotted Nazim. He looked the same as I remembered, with his flashing, keen Salonica blue eyes, and the great rush of blonde-red hair shooting up almost electrically from his fine forehead. We embraced with enthusiasm.

“You’re looking well,” I said.

“And you too, my Boswell,” Nazim exclaimed. “How long has it been? Twenty years? Thirty? When one has been away so long as I have, after a while the years tend to … But come, let us sit. Black coffee, right?”

He had a good memory. Nazim flagged down the waiter and ordered two cups of Turkish coffee. While he was doing that, I admired him. His unflagging energy, his spirits. The way he spoke exactly like one of his poems. And that easygoing feeling of brotherhood. He even addressed the waiter as “My master!” (“Two cups of black coffee, my master!”)

When the coffee came, we smoked (I offered him one of my Lucky Strikes, but he demurred, preferring to puff on a pipe he produced from the pocket of his light trousers). He had many questions, demanding I give a full account of myself and my activities from the day we parted ways at university all the way to the present. But he was always that way, our Nazim.

There wasn’t that much to tell, I said. Feeling modest (and yet warmed by the astute look of attention in those crystalline-blue eyes), I told of my work in the municipal office. Mostly my job consisted of the usual desultory bureaucratic attention to documents, permits, rubber stamps. I was keenly aware of the lack of glamour, originality, or of anything vaguely interesting in anything I said. Compared to my legendary friend, it seemed I’d wasted the past two – no, three – decades of my life, content with the narrow, frugal road of security.

“At least I can say I’ll have a pension,” was all I could say at the end.

Nazim was regarding me with the same intense interest, puffing away on that pipe of his. At the same time, though, he didn’t appear to be listening at all. His eyes would flutter up to the balconies, where house maids were hanging laundry out to dry in the hot, late summer air, or to well-dressed tourists passing in the narrow backstreets. A beggar approached us, offering pens for sale. Nazim politely gave the beggar a 10-koruş coin, and took one of the pens with a broad, humble smile. He even called the beggar, “My Good Sir.”

“But it can’t have been as bad as all that, my Boswell,” Nazim said presently, returning his attention to me. “After all, you are married, aren’t you? What was her name – No, don’t remind me. I will call her Çelik. My Strawberry. For the way you described her, I imagine her to have the same refreshing, tonic nature of that delicious fruit!”

Of course, our Nazim is justly famous for his love poems – here in Turkey, much more so even than for his political stances, or for his great Human Landscapes. So it didn’t surprise me that he spoke like that, in these bursts of lyrical cadences. Out of respect for this gesture, I didn’t wish to inform Nazim that my wife really didn’t care for strawberries all that much. (It hardly mattered; later, when I passed on his regards, my wife was understandably thrilled, and told all of our friends about how Nazim had referred to her as “Çelik.” In fact, as I recall, she even purchased some strawberries upon her very next visit to the market, and even occasionally after that).

“Well, enough about me,” I said. “I mean, you! You –“ I didn’t know what else to say. You know how it is when you come across a college friend you haven’t seen for decades, and that friend just happens to be not only a famous poet, but has also just got out of jail. You don’t know where to start.

“How was – prison? How does it feel to be out? Are you writing anything new?” I ventured to ask, my face burning at the stale obviousnesses of such inquiries.

Nazim didn’t respond. The sunlight brought out the color of his ruddy cheeks. He seemed to prefer to let the busy sounds of the café, the streets, answer the questions.

The waiter came by again and asked if we wanted more coffee. Nazim suggested we order beer this time. That sounded fine, so the waiter brought two glasses of Efes, and poured them until the frothy top foamed just a little over the sides.

We raised a toast to the old days – and to new ones – and drank together. It was cold, and tasted perfect. Hot weather is beer weather, after all.

The beer seemed to put my old friend in a contemplative mood, for he became quiet. He smoked his pipe and hummed a tune to himself, even snapping his fingers now and then, as if he were listening to a piece of music. My own ears strained to catch the tune, wondering if perhaps it was a saz player nearby. There are always lots of street musicians in Taksim, and lots of other noises besides, so it could have been coming from anywhere.

Presently, Nazim apologized for his abstractions.

“I was just thinking,” he said, “about this wild dream I had early this morning. It was sometime near dawn,when you are neither asleep nor awake, half-dreaming. And in this state I had this vision of my country in some distant time and there was this big man, the leader, shouting all over the radio, on something called TV sets and some other weird connection – Internet? Something like this. And this Man was Everywhere, or at least his voice was everywhere. And all the other people were like me – in jail. Only in the dream, I was not in the jail with them. I was somewhere outside, looking in on my country. I wanted to do something, to help, but no solution came to my head. I could not hear myself think over this Big Man’s Voice. So I just stood there, watching from the outside, my hands gripping the bars … “

Nazim didn’t finish the sentence, but instead took a drink of beer and puffed on his pipe. He finished the rest of the beer in a long, satisfied gulp.

“That’s some dream,” I said. Perhaps it was a prison flashback, I wanted to add.

“Would you like another beer?” I asked, looking around for the waiter.

“If you have time, Boswell. Don’t you have to work? I wouldn’t want my Strawberry to think her husband was drinking on the job!”

“It’s alright,” I said. “Just one more.”

So we ordered another round, and talked about various topics – old acquaintances – what so-and-so was up to, how Taksim had changed – even then, Taksim was always changing.

Afterward, we paid the bill (Nazim insisted we split it). We walked back toward Istiklal, Nazim with his hands in his pockets, his ever-restless eyes scanning the crowds, the shops. To be honest, I was still a little confused, befuddled, as to why he had invited me, of all people, in the first place. After all, he had so many people who undoubtedly wished to see him, now that he was out.

But I didn’t ask him – how does one ask such a question?

Perhaps reading my thoughts, Nazim slapped me on the back as we reached the main square. I was going to catch the bus back to work, while Nazim said he wanted to take a stroll through Gezi Park.

“Boswell, my boy,” he said. “When I was at the prison, there was a lot of time. Time was all you had really. Too much time. Time to think. To sleep. To dream. You have to find ways to keep yourself from doing these things too much, or it can drive you crazy. Anyway, I sometimes used to think of you, and the others, back in our college days. I wondered what had ever come of you. I always knew you’d turn out OK. Most people do – in the end. Most people.”

“It’s good to know that,” I said. “Let’s hope your dream was just a dream.”

Nazim just patted me on the back once more. That great uprush of hair was blowing in the breeze, the pipe sticking out the side of his mouth, the blue eyes restless and keen as always. He tipped his head and waved as he turned and headed across the square over to the park.

It was good to see Nazim that afternoon, and I hoped to see him again. But only a few weeks later, I read in the papers that he’d left for Moscow. As it turned out, he would never to see his beloved Turkey again.

###

James Tressler, a former Lost Coast resident, is a writer and teacher living in Istanbul.