The Dragonfly Sea

by Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor

  Ayaana did not know that word. “Yes,” she said. Whatever.

  “Ayaana is studying navigation,” Koray drawled.

  Mother and son exchanged a look. Nehir’s gaze returned to Ayaana’s face. “My son tells me that you are somewhat precious to the Chinese.” Ayaana sputtered. “Yes? No?” Nehir demanded. “Who is Chinese in your family? Never mind. The Chinese, my dear, are very, very tricky. Possessed of terrible hungers, dear, fa-thom-less hungers,” she emphasized. “But there you are, learning them—so necessary if we are to have a future.”

  Ayaana swallowed hard, suddenly wanting to defend China. They are gracious. Eyes darting. They work hard. Their dreams are bigger than the world. She thought Koray would intervene. Instead, he sat with hands folded across his chest, watching the interaction with a smug look. Nehir leaned toward Ayaana. “What does it mean to be a Chinese heirloom?” Koray gave a warning sound accompanied by a “cut-off” hand gesture. His mother then exclaimed, “Navigation!” as she sought black pepper to add to her soup. “I suppose your generation must experience everything. I suppose you want to have your own boat one day”—she gestured with her hands—“traverse great streams.” She offered Ayaana a slow, sly smile. “Women need dreams…perhaps more than men do. Did Koray tell you we are in shipping? Seven ships and a tanker, four named for me. Emirhan, my spouse, indulges me…Eat, eat…” she said.

  Fragrances of rose and mint in the clear soup. The aroma transported Ayaana to Munira’s unadorned kitchen. An ache for home. She lifted her head to say something about Munira. Nehir exclaimed, “You are an odd beauty, dear child.” She touched Ayaana’s eyes. “I am dee-lighted. One cannot fault Koray’s taste in women.” She paused.

  “I am not—” started Ayaana.

  Nehir interrupted her. “Are you religious?”

  Ayaana’s spoon hovered, suspended between her plate and her mouth. How and what was she supposed to say now?

  Koray offered a non sequitur. “Ayaana is at the top of the calculus class.”

  Nehir stared. “Girl, are you religious?”

  “I…” Ayaana glanced at Koray for direction.

  He crossed his eyes at her.

  Nehir said, “You either are or aren’t. Are you observant?”

  “I am.”

  Nehir nodded, as if a box could now be ticked off. “Yet one must not overdo things—everything in moderation. The past adapts to time. One must remember this. Saves us from excesses. I suppose you’ll be desiring to visit a mosque? Koray, inform Khaldi.” Nehir turned to Ayaana. “Our chauffeur. He is at your disposal, dear.”

  This was not quite how Ayaana had imagined her first real holiday would unfold.

  * * *

  —

  When Ayaana returned to the villa after a daylong encounter with Istanbul, its history, its scent of disquietude, its ruins, its disappointed hope for an unknown future, a nostalgic dereliction that caused even the ugliest modern structures to be covered with the colors of the past, she found that two new pink suitcases had replaced her red rucksack. Five pairs of Italian designer shoes—slingbacks, boots, ballet flats, peep-toes, and espadrille wedges—had replaced her sandals and scuffed sneakers. Another box contained a black silk nightgown. Her clothes had been replaced with Audrey Hepburn–style dresses in four colors—black, white, blue, and red—and an array of accessories, including shawls and handbags in black, white, and beige. Ayaana waited for dinner to begin. “Are my clothes in the laundry?”

  “No, dear.” Nehir spooned minestrone into her mouth.

  Koray broke the bread and buttered it.

  “Where are they…and my bag?”

  “Please, don’t slouch, dear. Isn’t this selection far more suitable? I wanted to surprise you. Is that wrong? I want you to feel comfortable…and…and Koray was so encouraging.” Ayaana almost swallowed her spoon. “Tomorrow,” Nehir added, “I have prepared a treat for us. Chocolate tasting! You will adore it, adore it!” She patted Ayaana’s cheek and tittered, “Heard all about your sweet tooth.”

  Ayaana’s neck ached. Her head pounded. She was struggling for air.

  * * *

  —

  Ayaana cornered Koray just after dinner. He tapped under her chin. “Love the outraged-kitten look on you, canim! Go on. Play along. She does mean well.” Ayaana wondered if Koray were addressing her in hieroglyphics.

  “I—”

  Casually, Koray interrupted. “Among the Terzioğlus,” he said, “there are no ‘I’s. We are we.” Koray’s smartphone rang then. He winked at Ayaana and snapped open his phone. She watched him as he spoke in rapid Turkish to someone. He gestured. Ayaana heard the word “Syria” repeated. He ended on a furious note before ending the call. Without turning to her, already moving, he announced, “Something’s come up.” He paused. Returned and stroked her head. “You will look extraordinary in those clothes.” He kissed her head. “We like ‘extraordinary.’ ”

  Ayaana glared at his retreating back.

  She had wanted to ask about going to Konya to visit Mawlana Rumi’s tomb. She wanted to swim in the Bosporus. Chocolate tasting? Ayaana’s sleep, though restless, was dreamless that night.

  * * *

  —

  At dinner, the family would slip into and out of Turkish, English, French, and German. Even as Ayaana struggled to keep up, she was compelled by the performance of power and wealth, the sense of the unspoken predilections of those who knew they had created some of the rules that kept the world in turmoil. “Are you happy?” Koray asked her. The chocolate-tasting expedition that day had been a mystifying sequence of tasting, snapping, melting, and exclaiming, “Educating the taste buds.” It was not an experience she wanted to repeat soon.

  “Yes,” she asserted to Koray.

  Yet everything she had hoped for had been subsumed by whatever “being Terzioğlu” commanded. Koray spoke to her in a labored tone. Undercurrents. He had aged here. He was bigger, taller, harder. Cuff-linked and gray-suited, leathered (shoes, briefcase). Certainly not a “student.” He prowled and simmered. Something of the force to which he belonged radiated as a magnetic, brutal, and seductive aura. Any light in him now seemed artificial or borrowed. This she had not expected: the mutability of human-being-ness. Beguiled, she made the mistake of conflating mercuriality with meaning, and in her fogging mind started to think she could better inhabit the world by this ceaseless reimagining of self. She started by trying to change her posture and the way her body moved in spaces. Smaller, tidy steps; straightened spine; smaller, tidier smiles. It was exhausting.

  [ 70 ]

  Ayaana sipped orange juice and looked through a newspaper after breakfast. Earlier, Koray’s gaze had been stuck on the centerfold. The images: the face of a man in the water; bodies floating on the sea’s surface; men, women, and children being hauled out of the water; white-costumed rescuers; a dead dark-skinned man still clutching a dead infant, a boy. This. She had never before recognized what placelessness looked like. Koray, watching her, said, “They gambled. They lost. No one is obliged to carry the weight of their failure.”

  She almost jumped out of her seat. “Failure?”

  “It behooves them to survive, doesn’t it?”

  “How are they to blame, Koray?”

  “Don’t be so bloody naïve,” Koray snapped before getting up. “And don’t argue with me about things you will never understand.” He seized the paper from her and left the room, slamming the door behind him.

  Ayaana sat still, staring at a spot on the carpet for a long time.

  “The most important things are concealed in the unseen; the most essential truths inhabit the unspoken,” Muhidin had once said. She thought she might go to Rabi’a for reassurance. She had not carried the water-stained green book Muhidin had given her so she turned to Google. Rabi’a al-Adawiyya counseled, “The matter falls to the heart.”

 
* * *

  —

  Koray showed up after four hours, with chocolates and an apology. “Stress,” he said. “Not quite the holiday I wanted for us.” He had also set aside the rest of the day to show Ayaana more of his city. She was wary. They wandered off the tourist track and traps. Ayaana stopped at every antiques shop she saw. She did not buy anything. They went to the mosques, and, to Ayaana’s relief, she found the adornments of her faith, the art and color and beatific expressions. Tears before the sight of the Basmallah calligraphy.

  Three cats followed them. There were cats and kittens even inside shops. On the streets, several young voices cried, “Edeny felos.” “Whose children are these?” Ayaana asked.

  “Beggars. Refugees,” Koray spat. “Shall we go to the Hagia Sophia now, or would you prefer the Grand Bazaar?” An irritated sound. Then, “Ayaana, please do not encourage them. Put your purse away. You will start a riot.” Koray seized her hand, hurling invectives at the children swarming around them. Whatever he said scared them, because they all ran away. “Look to the margins—you will see their parents.” He pointed in three directions. “Disgusting racket.”

  * * *

  —

  Circling birds, a spring sun, the bluest of skies, and the songs of muezzins. The world moved in and out of Ayaana’s gaze. The assorted music of the land, the scents and food, and Gülbirlik rose oil, which was the most intense she had experienced. She chose several for her mother. When she went to pay for them, she found that Koray had already done so. She whirled around to face him. “You are our guest,” Koray told her. “Indulge us.” He paused. “Mother…She always wanted a daughter to spoil.” Koray laughed.

  Ayaana stood uneasy. Was she being ungrateful? “Where are your brothers?”

  A shadow passed across Koray’s face. “They…moved. Decided Canada and Chile are better homes. They’ll never belong.” Koray took their wrapped-up purchases from the counter. “They’ll have to come home,” he muttered. They crossed to Istiklal Street. Koray led Ayaana into a patisserie as he said, “Mother is pleased that you are here. She has always…”

  “…wanted a daughter to spoil,” Ayaana finished the sentence for him.

  She regretted it when Koray added, “Miss Ayaana, we are in sync.” Ayaana paused to watch the elegant street scenes, so different from her island world. Koray observed her. “Istiklal Street.”

  He said, “I bestow it on you.”

  A rush of color and privileged noise; a bazaar for the finest everythings through which the varieties of humans from the world passed. Koray kissed her on the forehead. “Your eyes are so wide right now…We have a few more hours, but we must return home soon. My father is…to our surprise…coming back today.” Koray glanced down at her with a grim smile. “He will approve of you,” Koray said.

  “Must he?” asked Ayaana, envying a woman in tight jeans and a white peasant blouse, the careless freedom of her gesturing hands, which she moved as she spoke.

  Koray’s voice was tight when he answered, “Yes.”

  Ayaana looked at him. She turned back to the crowds. Unease. A sense that she was being herded into something unseen, as if the crowds were in on the plan. Human traffic around them. She peered down the street. At its extreme end, where the cobblestones ended, fluttering on a pole was a red flag with the white crescent and star—the Turkish flag. Her mouth moved faster than her thoughts. “Koray, I do not know who my biological father is. I chose Muhidin.” An almost smirk. “Mlingoti Baadawi.”

  Koray was silent for a long time as they walked. Then he said, “Chose? Muhidin?”

  She offered, “My real father might even be the wind.”

  Hooded gaze, tightened lips—Ayaana was sure Koray would erupt. “It is…vital to know what you are dealing with.” Ayaana was mocking Nehir.

  Koray ignored her sarcasm. Ayaana looked about her, watching a street vendor cross the road. Koray then grunted, a decision reached. “We can stand forever like this, or cross the road and buy one of every halwa on offer, which we can then eat on the Tünel.”

  “Halwa?” she sighed

  “Halwa!” he answered, laconic.

  Ayaana was straining for the unserious freedom of their immediate past. She skipped away and tried to shrug off the firm tap of foreboding on her shoulders.

  * * *

  —

  Emirhan was a fat, formidable, and forbidding presence with searching eyes that communicated a voracious appetite for things and people. When he stood, he supported himself with a specially crafted black cane that introduced a tap-tap-tap into the rhythms of the house. He walked with a limp constrained by a rigorous discipline that limited his expression of pain. He smelled expensive: of cigar smoke and bespoke cologne, of murky and dangerous wealth. His very dark hair was sprinkled with strands of white that looked as if they had been carefully placed. The effusive greeting with which he met Ayaana did not quite jibe with the aura of ugly remoteness he exuded. He held on to her shoulders, his grip too strong, too intense, too adhering. They stood around in a smaller, brown-and-black-leather library where classical music played out of speakers discreetly embedded within the cozy room. The effect was of being sealed off from the world in a leather-perfumed song capsule.

  “What is your feeling for our land?” Emirhan breathed over Ayaana.

  She scrambled for words, confused by the sheer presence of this man. “It is…everything.”

  Koray added, “Ayaana is most charmed by our resident vagrants.”

  Emirhan beamed at Ayaana. “Life and its vagaries…” He fluttered his hands, suggesting evaporation. “I gather you are some sort of Chinese artifact? Good, good. Africa? August 2011,” he said, “I was with our prime minister on his visit to Somalia. Turkey is Africa’s brother. ‘Virtuous power,’ dignity and happiness for all. Equal partners, that sort of thing.” Emirhan grinned as a hyena faced with a thin goat might—insincerely. “What is our business? Do you know?”

  “Shipping?” she answered.

  He laughed. “Yes, you may call it that, too. We do sustain the old sea-trade routes. Yes, Korayğim? Ah!” He pointed at a map on the wall. “Isn’t that smudge in green your little island? In the womb of the seas. Good. Good.” An arm over Ayaana’s shoulder, he directed her to a seat. He sat down heavily and huffed as he chose one of four glossy black rectangular devices. A tap, and suddenly the music changed. “Zbigniew Preisner,” Emirhan breathed. “Ahhhh! Do listen.”

  * * *

  —

  The “Lacrimosa” from Requiem for My Friend. Emirhan sank into a black leather chaise longue, his menacing cane next to him, squeezing Ayaana’s neck: “Come, kuzucuğum. Close to me.” And Koray stood as still as a statue.

  His father turned to contemplate him.

  “I reflect on last things…as you should.” Koray watched a vein pulse on the side of his head. “Our nation is now the Styx. It will get worse.”

  Koray made a scoffing sound, turned it into a sneeze.

  “Indeed, Korayğim,”—he glowered meaningfully at his son—“I have every reason to contemplate death. As you shall. Now listen to Preisner.” A command.

  Ayaana almost leapt out of her seat. Koray plunked down on another, glowering at his father. They listened to Preisner’s “Lacrimosa” in silence, again and again.

  * * *

  —

  Later, buffeted by sizzling emotions that were oozing out of the invisible fissures of that day, Ayaana sought the lyrics of the song to study as a clue. Dinner and drinks had been a forcibly cheerful affair, dotted with place-names and an inquiry into the well-being of many people. Yet, though every turn of phrase was a riptide, the Terzioğlus seemed to be experts at avoiding the catastrophic tug. Ayaana watched them. She looked from Koray to his father as they engaged in a terse exchange in French. They returned to English, suddenly genial. Ayaana saw Nehir drift from flirta
tiousness to sarcasm, seemingly baiting Emirhan.

  Nehir: “How are the commodities doing, darling?”

  Emirhan: “Paying your bills, darling.”

  Nehir: “Anything nasty out there that will hurt us?”

  Emirhan: “Nothing that you will not benefit from; do make the usual arrangements. And we must speak about the restaurant in Askaray. We need it…darling.”

  Nehir sighed dramatically, her dancer eyes exaggerating her exasperation. “Again? Just redecorated it. It will cost you, darling.”

  “Doesn’t it always?” Emirhan turned to Koray. “How are your brothers?”

  “Well.”

  “What does ‘well’ mean? Will they return or not?”

  Koray started, “If they choose to…”

  “Choose!” Emirhan erupted.

  Nehir intervened with a laugh. “We have a guest, gentlemen.”

  “A most delightful addition to our home.” Emirhan’s smile was radiant. “I shall enjoy getting to know you very, very well, little one.” He reached over to stroke Ayaana’s hand. “Such a fresh look.”

  Ayaana would have removed her hand and self, as every hair on her body sprang on edge. True fear.

  Nehir snapped, “When do you return to the boats?”

  “I shall complete all new undertakings from the sublime comfort of my home…darling.”

  Koray and Nehir both winced. Nehir gulped down the remains of her Grappa di Vinaccia and performed a yawn behind an embroidered white handkerchief. Then, half rising, she leaned over to kiss her husband’s cheek and murmured, “Good night, Emir.” She put out her right hand in the direction of Ayaana. “Come, girl, let’s give the boys room to do what boys must do.”

  Koray cast Ayaana a quick panicked look, which he then disguised by reaching for the wine bottle.

  “Ayaana,” said Nehir, her tone unyielding.