The waiting room in the women's oncology department of the Ankara hospital in Demetevler was deserted, but the lights were all on, awaiting the first patient of the day. Feliz Isik, the duty nurse behind the counter, was assembling and sorting the records of the morning patients, as though arranging cards for solitaire. It was well after seven thirty and the eight o’clock patient would soon be there. For a moment she raised her eyes and looked compassionately at her ‘audience’: a row of empty chairs linked to one another on the other side of the room. “So many years working in this place, and I still get involved with all the private dramas we see every day, hoping to beat this damned disease!” she sighed, and hastily tidied the folders. Then she raised her hands to her head to confirm that the clips holding the blue cap on her head were all in place.
The first small troupe of four women burst noisily into the waiting room. “Here are my first customers, Feridé and the girls!” Feliz thought, smiling and nodding to them in greeting. They were all in their early thirties, each an individual. Three were wearing the typical attire of women of Anatolia: colourful breeches which narrowed to the ankle, the requisite khaki trench coat and hand-woven Muslim headscarves. The fourth was in stark contrast: completely ‘European’ looking in tight jeans, a fitted denim jacket with a red casual sweatshirt and matching red Nike sneakers. Unlike the other three, wearing a dark red beret tilted over her scalp.
“Welcome! Good morning, girls!” cried Feliz encouragingly from the counter. They turned to her in unison and nodded good morning with hearty smiles.
“… so I told him that I had a doctor’s appointment at eight in the morning for my therapy!” continued plump Aylin with a sly glitter in her eyes. “You hear? The wretch wanted me to perform my marital duties the night before my treatment! But I fixed him! There were a lot of cheap floozies cruising around the pavement outside our hotel – so he got aroused, the wretched!” she cried rather angrily, half-joking and half-serious, and all of them broke out in uncontrollable giggling. When they had finally caught their breath, they turned as one to Feliz behind her counter. She grinned at them, her hands still fumbling busily with her hatpins.
“Good morning, Madame Isik!” they chorused as though greeting their teacher in school, and started giggling all over again.
“Spring at last!” exclaimed Feridé and hurried to claim one of the front seats as she pulled off her beret. “Next week it’ll be May. Finally starting to warm up!” She let out a tired sigh. She’d risen from bed only an hour earlier, but was already feeling weary. The signs of exhaustion from her last chemotherapy, which had gone on for eight whole weeks, were evident on her face.
The nurse’s cap was at last secured and she leant back in her chair with relief. Everything was ready and on time.
“Maybe that’s why he was so hot to trot last night! Spring uplifted him!” added Aylin, reverting to the previous topic and they broke out laughing again, this time including the nurse.
“Come on, tell me which of you is first in the queue,” said Feliz. She asked this every time, even though she knew perfectly well the time of every appointment, letting them sort it out among themselves; now and then there had been little misunderstandings. Their squabbling had been known to fill the room, though never for long. Eventually they always found a solution acceptable to all of them.
The four women had first met in that very room confronting a common fate, suffering from the same damned illness. Each was battling her hardest with the same insidious enemy, the only thing they had in common; otherwise they were very different from each other, coming from completely different social classes, families and regions of Turkey. Their ideas and perceptions about life, religion and the family could not be more diverse. Nevertheless, they had become comrades as they shared the same hard and unequal struggle. Though they lived hundreds of miles away from each other, they tried to arrange their appointments at the same time, so they could visit together to exchange news, drawing courage and strength from each other for their long tough battle.
“Me first, my appointment is for eight!” claimed Aylin in her powerful bass, looking out of the corner of her eye at the other three.
“No way! I have the first at eight! Look, I have the confirmation from the hospital that came in the post!” squeaked Birdém from the next chair, hastily scrabbling in her rather unsuccessful imitation Louis Vuitton handbag for the supposed notice. Chubbier than the rest, she occupied not one, but two of the chairs waiting at the other end of the hall.
“Come on, girls, we’re not going to quarrel over the time!” protested Feridé, concealing a slight concern behind her smile. She knew that even a small disagreement about the appointment time could flare up into a Homeric conflict, even if only briefly.
“Okay, okay,” grumbled Aylin crossly, who already knew very well that she didn’t have the first appointment. It just bothered her not to be the first to see the doctor. To make up for it, she began teasing Birdém.
“Doesn’t your bald head get hot in that woolly scarf?” she demanded gleefully, meaning to hurt.
“Mmmm... talk about the pot calling the kettle black!” Flushed with triumph, Birdém filling the room with the high notes of her voice, waving the hospital letter she had excavated from the bottom of her bag. This precious document proved beyond any doubt the true time of her appointment. And then her manner changed. “I wish I could get rid of it once and for all! And all these heavy uncomfortable clothes that wear me out just carrying them on me. I wish I could throw them all out and dress like a modern European. Like Mme Feridé here!” She pointed to Feridé with a deep and wistful sigh, and then burst into an unexpected feminist explosion. “Yes! Like this! And you shut up! Right now!” With a violent gesture, she tore off her scarf to reveal the comical sight of her perfectly round bald head.
“Right, come over all brave and take it off in here,” continued Birdém to provoke Aylin. “Here we’re all women. Would you dare take it off in front of your husband or your father? Or on the bus in front of all the strange men?”
Feridé looked on, unable to hold back her amusement. “If one of those spy planes saw us from above, we’d look like a clutch of eggs in a nest!” she spluttered.
“I’d hate to see what would hatch out from that!” cried Aylin, pointing at Birdém’s gleaming skull.
“A bird of Paradise, idiot!” said Birdém, preening.
They all broke into laughter as Aylin replied, “Or a tyrannosaurus!” Some other patients who had entered and were waiting patiently for their appointments had turned to watch this contest, a few trying to suppress giggles and the rest openly laughing. Just then the other nurse popped into the waiting room and the noisy hilarity abruptly stopped.
“Mme Altin, you may come in now,” she said to Birdém. “The treatment machine is ready.
As Birdém rose obediently, Aylin, with a sudden grandstand movement, jerked off her scarf revealing her own round and hairless head. “I’ve had it, too!” She gave a sigh of relief and started fanning herself with a magazine she’d picked up from the table.
“Hey, you always copy whatever I do!” Birdém threw back over her shoulder with a glance at the audience to see their reactions. Then she turned back to the nurse and followed her to the door of the radiotherapy department, carrying her bare head proudly, stoic as a character from an ancient Greek tragedy. The audience, now augmented by new arrivals of women of various social classes, watched with bated breath. The dropping of a pin would have sounded loud.
“So I can’t take mine off too? We’re all women here, aren’t we?” Zeynep, the fourth and shyest member of the little group, yanked off her headscarf and revealed her own bald head, gleaming with sweat. The heads of the audience, swathed in their own headscarves, watched them in turn as though watching a tennis match. They didn’t know quite what to make of it: were the bald women quarrelling, or what? Their uncertainty filled the silence.
“Girls, whether you know it or not, you’ve taken huge steps
towards the empowerment of women in Turkey!” exclaimed Feridé. She was the first to recover from the shock of the successive revelations of bald heads, and began applauding cheerfully as she broke into laughter. The rest of the audience followed immediately clapping and laughing, shattering the deathly silence that had preceded it.
The atmosphere was suddenly charged with positive energy. The worries and concerns of everyone in the waiting room that morning dissolved somewhere in laughter and joking. Everyone was chattering about everything and nothing. Even the usual complaints about husbands were coming out as jokes, as they forgot they were sitting there waiting for the news – good or bad – about their next dose of treatment. Any patient entering the waiting room that morning was temporarily distracted from the problems and pains of illness by the unusual spirit of fun pervading the normally sombre area. Scarves were whipped off heads, exposing bare scalps. Aylin bounced up and announced loudly that she’d invented a new dance step she called ‘the bald potato’, and everyone in the room cracked up. Two or three women jumped up to join her.
Feliz, though smiling sympathetically, decided it was growing a little too rowdy. She called out, “Ladies! Calm down!” which had no effect until she said loudly, “Girls! Bayan Yilmaz will be along any minute!” That did it. The laughter faded away, headscarves were hastily restored. Order was re-established, almost. A few irrepressible giggles could still be heard. Madame Yilmaz was one of those high-nosed chief nurses who disapproved of almost everything: cancer, life, men and especially flighty young women. Even her name was enough to subdue the girls.
“Madame Ökem, the doctor will see you now, it’s your turn,” called Feliz through the murmur of conversation. Feridé hastily got up, clutching her handbag, her expression suddenly sobered, her eyes clouded with concern.
The nurse, seeing her reaction, gave her a big smile: good news! But she must not release any information to the patient – of course, that was the sole responsibility of the oncologist – and she bent over the stack of papers on the desk. But – could that be a wink? Feridé felt her heart fluttering almost out of her chest with anticipation, and proceeded with resolute steps towards the doctor’s office door.
“Come in, sit down.” The doctor welcomed her with a wide smile. Feridé’s heart pounded furiously. What she wouldn’t give just now for a cigarette! She knew very well that this was a crazy thought. Unrealistic. Strictly forbidden since she was diagnosed sixteen months ago. But she knew that despite strict and explicit orders she had failed to keep her promises, particularly lately since she’d felt somewhat better after all the treatments. But despite the doctors’ efforts, the cancer had not shown any signs of retreat. She had decided that she just didn’t have the power or the will to fight off her addiction to cigarettes. When she managed to be alone for a few moments, she’d take one out of a pack concealed in each corner of her house and office and light it impatiently. “Damn it, if I have to go, I can at least go satisfied and not deprived!” she tried vainly to console herself whenever she lit up, every time feeling bombarded by terrible remorse as she sucked in the first restricted but so sweet puff. “The fact that I am lighting a cigarette means I’m alive!” Every time, she felt as guilty as a naughty teenager, relishing the illegality, trying to justify the tremendous pleasure of this illegal little game of hidden smokes.
“Well, doctor?” Feridé felt her breath catch on those two words. The doctor looked at her smiling.
“We have very encouraging results for the first time!” he replied jubilantly. “The tumour in the liver seems to have shrunk considerably. It’s almost inexplicable, like a little miracle! And all the other examination results are in line with this reduction. We are on our way, Madame Ökem. If we continue like this your next exam may be completely clear!” The oncologist watched the young woman opposite him, who had shown absolutely no reaction on hearing this delightful news.
Feridé looked at him speechless for some time. Then slow tears welled from her eyes, sliding down her cheeks in clear streams which plopped onto the red sweatshirt, where they made clumsy dark blots. It took her some time to be able to produce words.
****
By the time she had found the suburban train station a quarter of an hour later, where she would start her journey into the new Time After Cancer era, she had already made a heap of decisions. The first was to rush immediately to accept the post in Brussels offered her a few months before by the Turkish Ministry of European Affairs. After two intensive interviews, they had her to be they thought her the ideal candidate for this post, thanks to her knowledge of agriculture and agricultural products and that if she wished, the post was hers. She had hesitated, even though she had longed for a change in her life and this post in Brussels would represent a vertical rise in her career and her life. But the ever-present vision of death that had hung so heavily upon her had smothered any such decisions.
But now! Here was the chance for a new beginning! The new life that she had longed for suddenly seemed to be spread lavishly before her. She was free for the first time since the fear had taken root deep inside her over the past months. Her feet weren’t touching the ground, she was flying. It was not just the continuation of a life that had suddenly stopped for a while and could now proceed unimpeded, but a complete new life, twice as precious. It would take a while to digest this wonderful news. But she knew very well that opportunity must be seized with both hands, with tooth and nail. She had passed through the valley of the shadows, had lived under the threat of annihilation for sixteen endless months and this fantastic, joyous chance was confirmation of the amazing renewal of her very life. The whole station seemed to be twinkling at her, full of promise.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Third Stop: Gribaumont – Kasja
With bowed head and her body almost folded in two, Kasja Ofianefska nervously fumbled in her handbag in the dawn light. When she finally found the precious document, it took all her strength to haul it out from the deep mysteries of the feminine handbag where it was buried at the bottom of a stack of crumpled papers, a half-packet of paper handkerchiefs, a battered lipstick, two different sets of keys, a cracked powder compact, a fat notebook stuffed with manuscripts and notes of addresses and phone numbers, some battered pencils and pens and a miniature Polish Bible.
With a sigh of relief, she checked it over and then clasped it tightly to her breast with the respect and reverence due a holy artifact. Closing her eyes, she whispered a tremulous prayer and begged God that everything would be all right. She was sure that her whole future hung on the next ten minutes. And she was not wrong. After a tedious, endless journey, on the hard uncomfortable seat of the bus rattling through the darkness of a long, frozen night, she had at last reached her destination, the Guben outpost on the eastern border of Germany with Poland.
The rusty Polish tour bus had just passed the first hurdle without many formalities. Now it stopped a few yards past the official gateway into German territory with a loud gasp of air brakes, as if it had caught pneumonia from the sharp cold of the night. Huge wheels squealed eerily in the slime of the slush-soaked asphalt. The first light of dawn began to reveal to bleary eyes the raw geometric shadows of buildings. Between them, under a bright light, a tall white pole bore a German flag which stirred feebly, and beside it, another bore the dark blue flag of the European Union with its twelve yellow stars, which barely twitched. A large white metal notice with rusted edges proclaimed ‘Deutschland’ in a halo of the same stars picked out in black paint.
Kasja peered out of the window of the coach at the dark shape of the border station, barely visible through the white veil of dense morning fog that covered the landscape. Her face glued to the spotted pane, Kasja desperately tried to distinguish as much detail as she could. She was suddenly struck by a vivid recollection of peering through the similarly clouded window on the doomed train from Krakow. She shuddered, pulling back hastily. A year and a half had passed since that terrible night; months of struggle to get back o
n her feet with the help of doctors and the invaluable support of her sister. Somehow she had recovered completely. As soon as the medicines, the physiotherapies and continual visits to doctors and hospitals were over, her first thought was to escape to the west in search of her beloved American. And now she was so close, so close to the final fulfilment of her purpose.
In a few minutes the infamously tough German border guards would be upon her. Her apprehension was growing by the minute, by the second. Her heartbeat was crashing furiously through the canals of her ears… It was the first time in her life that she had tried to cross the border and get out of the country. The Polish frontiers had only officially ‘opened’ a few years earlier with the fall of the communist regime, and so much had changed. Her country was already a candidate for EU membership, together with others of the former Eastern Bloc. Like millions of her fellow countrymen she had seen and imagined the coveted West only through the idealised images of films, television and books. The realisation that she was already at the farthest edge of her country and the whole former communist Bloc, and was about to enter the unknown, forbidden Other Side filled her with timorous uncertainty, feverish excitement, and tremulous joyful anticipation.
The front door of the coach opened abruptly with a loud bang, allowing two towering robocop border guards to barge into the coach with two huge strides and fill it with their presence.
“Have your passports ready. Passports, please!” boomed the taller one in a voice of thunder, but toneless as a machine. The stony unsmiling face of the blond guard standing right over Kasja panicked her completely. The last drop of courage and self-confidence drained right out of her. She stretched out her hand with a mighty effort to conceal her nervous trembling and offered the passport, concentrating all her forces to behave naturally and appear sober and calm. The guard took it, opened it slowly. Grim and silent he scrutinised her photograph and then her face, carefully comparing the photo on the passport with this unknown woman.
The Next Stop Page 11