Baby Born in the Field
By ORHAN KEMAL

In the cotton field which stretched as far as the eye could see, farm hands, fifteen or twenty in a row, worked steadily at the weeds around the seedlings. The temperature soared to a hundred and forty-nine in the sun. No bird flew in the shimmering, dust-gray sky. The sun seemed to sway. The peasants, soaked with sweat, pushed and pulled their hoes in a steady rhythm. The sharp edges of the hoes chopped the parched soil with a “thrush, thrush, thrush” sound. The song the farm hands sang in unison to the measured beat of their hoes was swallowed up in the sun’s scorching heat:

Into what is left back they sow millet
They sow it they reap it and they wrap it
My darling sent me pear and pomegranate

Ferho Uzeyir wiped the sweat off his swollen hands on his baggy black trousers and turned his bloodshot eyes on his wife swinging her hoe beside him. He spoke in Kurdish, “Wha? Whatsa matter?” Gulizar was a broad-shouldered husky woman. Her dried-up face, glittering with sweat, was contorted with deep lines and grimaces of intense pain. She did not answer. Angered, Ferho Uzeyir jabbed hi elbow into her side: “What’s up with you, woman?” Gulizar gave her husband a weary glance. Her eyes had sunk with fright into their sockets. Her hoe suddenly slipped from her hands to the ground. Pressing her huge belly with her hands, bent over, then fell to her knees on the red earth everywhere cracked by the blistering sun. The foreman, who stood under his big black umbrella, called out: “Gulizar! Is that it? Quit workin’! G’on, quit!” She was writhing with pain. She stuck her shrivelled yet strong fingers deep into a crack of the soil, squeezing them tensely. With an almost superhuman effort, she struggled to control herself. Pitch black blotches fluttered before her eyes. Suddenly she groaned, “Uggghhh!” It was a shame–a disgrace–for a woman in labor to be heard by strange men. Ferho Uzeyir cursed and swung a mighty kick into his wife’s side. The woman crouched meekly on the ground. She knew her husband would never forgive her for this. As she struggled to rise on hands pressed against the hot earth, the foreman repeated: “Gulizar! Quit, sister, quit! G’on now, quit!” Her pains suddenly stopped, but she felt they would come back–this time more sharply. She headed for the ditch, the farm’s boundary, about a thousand feet away. Ferzo Uzeyir growled after his wife , then called to his nine-year-old daughter standing barefoot beside the foreman: “Take y’ mom’s place!” The girl knew this was coming. She picked up the hoe that was as tall as she and whose handle was still covered with the sweat of her mother’s hands, and fell into line. All this was a common affair. The hoeing continued to the beat of the song sung in unison. The sun fell full on the ditch with its slabs of dung. Green lizards glided over the red earth. Gulizar stood erect in the ditch, looked all around her, listening intently through the scorching heat. There was no one in sight. The radiant void, echoing a shrike’s shrieks, stretched endlessly. She emptied the pockets of her baggy black pants, put a few items she had gathered when she knew her time was due: a rusty razor blade, several pieces of cloth in different colors, rags, salt and dried-up lemon. She had found these in the farm’s garbage can. She would squeeze the lemon into the baby’s eyes and rub the baby with salt. She stripped down below the waist, and folded the baggy pants under a big piece of rock, spread the rags on the ground, unravelled the thread and cut the lemon in two. About to kneel, she heard something move behind her. She covered herself below the waist, turned around. It was a huge dog! She picked up a stone and flung it. Frightened, the dog fled, but did not disappear. It waited, sniffing air with its wet nose. Gulizar was worried. What if she delivered the baby right now and fainted–dog might tear her child to pieces! She remembered Ferice, the Kurdish girl. Ferice too had given birth in a ditch like this and, after placing the baby beside her, had fainted. When she came to, she had looked around–the baby was gone. She had searched high and low. . . At last, far away beneath a shrub, she had found her baby being torn to pieces by a huge dog! Gulizar took another look at the dog, studying it closely. The dog stared back at her–it had a strange look. . . “Saffron,” she said. “That look of yours ain’t no good, Saffron.” She wondered how she might call her daughter who was a thousand feet away. “G’on beat it. You goddamn dirty dog!” Reluctantly, the dog backed away about thirty feet, stopped, sat on its haunches and, with a blue gleam in its eyes, waited. At that moment Gulizar felt another pang, the sharpest yet. Groaning, she fell to her naked knees, resting her body on her hands gripping the ground. The vein in her neck, thick as a finger, throbbed. Now came pain after pain, each sharper than the one before. Suddenly a gush of warm blood. . . Her face took on a terrified expression. The whole world collapsed before her eyes. “Ferho, man,” the foreman said. “Go take a look at that dame. . . She may die or somethin’.” Ferho Uzeyir glanced in the direction of the ditch where his wife was in labor, shook his head, cursed and went in working. Anger at his wife swelled inside. Cold sweat poured from his forehead, trickling through his thick bushy eyebrows. “Look here, son,” the foreman repeated. “Go see what’s what with that dame.” You never can tell!” Ferho Uzeyit threw his hoe aside and walked over. He would give her a kick and another kick. . . he just couldn’t get over the way that good-for-nothing woman had made a monkey of him. He stopped by the ditch, stared down. Gulizar had fallen on the ground sideways. In the midst of blood-stained rags, the baby–purple all over–was twitching and a huge dog was pulling at it. He jumped into the ditch. The dog leaped away, licking his blood-covered mouth. Ferho Uzeyir brushed away the green-winged flies gathered in his baby’s face. The infant, its eyes closed, kept making motions. Ferho opened the pieces of cloth. The baby was a boy! A boy! Ferho changed instantly. He lifted his head to the sky. A smile filled his harsh face. He picked the baby and the bloody rags from the ground. “My son!” he shouted. He was nearly insane with joy. After four girls–a boy! Gulizar, sensing the presence of her man beside her, opened her eyes and, in spite of her condition, tried to get up. “Good for you!” Ferho Uzeyir said. “Good for you, woman!” He dashed out the ditch with his boy in his arms. The foreman saw him coming across the cracked red soil. “There, there. . .” he said. “That’s Ferho comin’ this way!” Hoeing stopped. The farm hands, leaning on their hoes, stared. Ferho came up panting, out of breath, shouting: “My son! I got me a son!” He pressed his baby, still purple all over inside the blood-drenched rags, to his bosom. “Hey, careful, man,” the foreman said. “Take care, man! Quit pressin’ like that–you gonna choke ‘im. . . Now get down to the farm-house. Tell the cook I sent you. Tell ‘im he oughta give you some oil and molasses. Let’s make her drink some. G’on!” Ferho Uzeyir no longer felt tired, the heat no longer bothered him. Now he was as young as a twnty-year-old boy, as light as bird. He headed for the farm’s mud-baked huts whose thatched roofs loomed ahead.

(Translated by Talat S. Halman)