A Useless Man

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“That’s the morning call to prayer, my son. Wake up or you’ll be late for work.”

Ali had finally found a job. He’d been going to the factory for a week. His mother was happy. She knelt down on her prayer rug and said her prayers. Entering her son’s room with the Supreme Being in her heart, and seeing his dream rippling along his smooth face and long, supple form — a parade of machines, electric batteries, and light bulbs, a purr of oiled metal and diesel motors — she’d been reluctant to rouse him. Ali was as flushed and damp as if he’d just come home from work.

As it rose out of the mist, the chimney of the Halıcıoğlu factory seemed to crane its neck, like a rooster. How proud it looked as it gazed out at the first glimmers of dawn on the shores of Kağıthane. Any moment now, they’d hear the whistle.

At last Ali woke up. He embraced his mother. He pulled his quilt over his head, as he did every morning, leaving his feet unprotected. His mother bent down to tickle them. Her son jumped up, and when she fell back onto the bed with him, giggling like a girl, she could count herself as happy. There weren’t many who could say that. Was it not the very modesty of their existence that lit their souls? What could a mother wish from a child, or a child from a mother, if not happiness? Arm in arm, they went into the dining room. It smelled like toasted bread. How beautifully the samovar was bubbling. It put Ali in mind of a factory where there were no strikes, no accidents, no sorrows. A factory that brought forth only fragrant steam and the joy of morning.

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