On his way from school, a boy visits the library. He is a
dutiful reader and library-user as returns his book on time:
“I’m always on time, and I never
hand things in late. That’s the way my mother taught me. Shepherds are the
same. If they don’t stick to their schedule, the sheep go completely bananas.”
He wants to find out how taxes were collected in the Ottomon
empire and because such a thought strikes his mind, he wants to find out more
as his mother has taught him. On asking about this, he is directed to a special
section of the library.
He meets a strange old man who assists him by bringing him
three thick tomes on the subject-The
Ottoman Tax System, The Diary of an Ottoman Tax Collector, and Tax Revolts and Their Suppression in the
Ottoman Turkish Empire- and lets him read them on the condition that he
should sit in the library and read them.
He tells the old man that his mother will get upset if he doesn’t
return home on time just like the time when he was bitten by a big black dog.
The old man is furious that the boy wants to go home in spite of the assistance
that he has provided:
“When I was your age I felt
fortunate just to have the chance to read. And here you are, whining about the
time and being late for dinner. What nerve!”
The buy promises to sit and read for thirty minutes and he
is taken to a “Reading Room”, an enormous labyrinth in the basement of the
library.
He meets a sheep man
who makes good doughnuts and obeys all the orders of the Old man. He discovers that
the Old man wants to eat his brains and when he asks the reason for that the
sheep man replies : “Because brains packed with knowledge are yummy, that’s
why. And sort of grainy at the same time”.
A girl comes in bringing him a sumptuous meal and he is
struck by her beauty. She can only speak with her hands and she tells him that
her vocal cords were destroyed when she was a child. He finds that the library has
turned out be a prison and he is not able to get out.He finds that the sheep man and the beautiful girl belong to
two different worlds; that the boy concludes : “Our worlds are all jumbled
together- your world, my world, the sheep man’s world. Sometimes they overlap
and sometimes they don’t. That’s what you mean, right?”
He worries about his mother and his pet magpie. As if to make
his fears true he is held a prisoner and his pet magpie is eaten by a dog
before his very eyes. What happens to
the boy?
A little Kafkaesque and absurd, the novel captures an atmosphere similar to The Trial and brings in a sense of terror to the act of visiting a
library. In spite of the way in which it portrays the strangeness of life, this illustrated novella can make you feel hungry too!
