by Elif Shafak
Over the ensuing hours the children built castles from mud; trapped flies using matchboxes smeared with jam; ate apricots (and crushed the kernels) and watermelon (and dried the seeds); made wreaths from pine needles; and chased a tawny cat that was either overweight or heavily pregnant. Then they ran out of things to do but so far only a third of the carpets had been thoroughly cleaned. One by one Peri’s friends went home, to return later in the day. This being her garden, her house, she stayed.
A beautiful day it was, bright and warm. Spilling, splashing – the wind was saturated with the sounds of water. The women gossiped, chuckled and sang. Someone made lewd jokes, which Peri could not work out but guessed must have been naughty by the scowl on her mother’s face.
In the afternoon the carpet-cleaners took a break to have lunch. They carried out the food that had been prepared beforehand – stuffed cabbage leaves, börek with feta, pickled cucumbers, cracked bulgur salad, grilled meatballs, apple cookie rolls … A large round tray was brought out on which each dish was placed amidst stacks of flat bread and glasses of ayran,* white and foamy like dollops of cloud from the hands of a generous god.
Feeling ravenous, Peri snatched a börek from the plate. She had barely bitten into it when a desperate shriek pierced the air. Her mother, in her haste and distraction, had bumped into the boiling cauldron, remarkably managing not to knock it over on to herself. But her left arm was burned from elbow to fingertips. Dropping whatever they were doing, the other women rushed to Selma’s help.
‘Pour cold water on her arm,’ said someone.
‘Toothpaste! Smear it all over the burn.’
‘Vinegar, that’s how we healed my aunt’s burns. Hers were worse,’ said someone else.
With everyone scampering inside to attend to Selma in the best way they knew how, Peri was left alone in the garden. A strip of sunlight fell across her face; an insect hummed its drowsy way nearby. Under a fig tree on the opposite side of the road she spotted the tawny cat, its jade eyes narrowed to mere slits. It occurred to her to feed the animal. Grabbing a meatball, she climbed over the fence. In a flash, she was outside.
‘What’s your name, little girl?’
Peri turned to find a young man in a red-and-white-check shirt and blue denims that appeared never to have been washed. The beret he wore seemed about to slide off his head. She didn’t respond at first, for she knew better than to talk to strangers. But she didn’t walk away either. The beret intrigued her, reminding her of the poster in Umut’s room. Maybe this stranger was a revolutionary. Maybe he had heard about her brother – and his fate. She decided if she didn’t tell him the truth, it wouldn’t quite be giving him information. So she said, ‘I’m Rosa.’
‘Oh, I never met a Rosa before,’ he said, his face tilted towards the sun. ‘And a very pretty one too. You’ll break hearts when you grow up.’
Peri said nothing, though something stirred inside her, a tiny swell of sensuality, a force not yet awake, half thrilled, half repelled by the compliment.
‘You like cats, I can see,’ he said.
His voice was small, brittle. Later on, though not at that moment, Peri would liken it to the bean she kept inside moist cotton wool by the window ledge. Just like that bean, the stranger’s voice was hiding, changing, germinating.
‘I saw a furball around the corner,’ he said. ‘She has given birth to five kittens, apparently. They are so cute and teeny, like mice. They have pink eyes.’
Feigning indifference, Peri offered the cat the last piece of meatball.
The man came a step closer: he smelled of tobacco, of sweat, of damp soil. He crouched down and smiled at her. They were now at the same eye level. ‘It’s a pity their mother will drown them.’
Peri held her breath. Down in the field, where stray dogs roamed and a few goats grazed, there was a reservoir no one used because whenever it rained more than three inches it became contaminated with sewage. She glanced in that direction, half expecting to see feline bodies floating on the water.
‘Cats do that,’ the man said with a sigh.
Peri couldn’t help asking, ‘But why?’
‘They don’t like pink eyes,’ he replied. His own were light brown with hollowed skin underneath, and closely set on his angular face. ‘They fear they have given birth to strange creatures, like fox cubs. So they kill them.’
Peri wondered if fox cubs had pink eyes and, if so, what their mothers thought about that. In her family she was the only one with green eyes and felt lucky that no one had seen this as a problem, so far.
The man, observing her bewilderment, stroked the cat’s head before he stood up. ‘I better go and check on the kittens. They need looking after. Would you like to join me?’
‘Who? Me?’ she said – only because she didn’t know what else to say.
He pursed his lips, taking his time to reply, as though it were she who had suggested coming with him. ‘You can, if you want. But they are very small. Do you promise to be careful not to hurt them?’
‘Promise,’ she said airily.
A window opened somewhere; a woman yelled into the wind, threatening her son if he did not come home for lunch this very minute she would break both his legs. The man, suddenly nervous, looked left and right. His face narrowed as he said, ‘We mustn’t be seen together. I’ll walk ahead, you keep behind me.’
‘The kittens. Where are they?’
‘They’re not far, but it’s better if we drive. My car is just around the corner.’ He gestured vaguely before quickening his footsteps.
Peri started to follow the man, who had a distinct limp. Though a part of her had qualms about what she was doing, this was the first decision she had made without her parents, and the closest she had come to a sense of freedom.
Soon, with an evasive glance over his shoulder, he reached his car and got into the driver’s seat, waiting for her.
Peri stopped, alerted by something less intuitive than physical. She shuddered as though an icy wind had touched her bare skin. But what startled her the most was the mist that had descended from nowhere. A curtain of fog – layers upon layers of grey, like rolls of cloth unfurled in a draper’s store. The fog confused her, momentarily, as to where she was going and why. She could detect the milky silhouette of a tree nearby, but the world beyond that was not visible any more – including the man, only a few feet away.
Inside the cloud of grey, Peri beheld the strangest sight: a baby – his face round, open, trusting. A purple stain extended from one cheek down to his jaw. He had some liquid dribbling from the corner of his mouth, as if he had just thrown up a little.
‘Peri, where are you?’ Her mother’s voice, laden with panic, wafted from the sour-cherry-coloured house.
She couldn’t answer. Her heart pulsed in the hollow of her throat as she blinked in bewilderment at the baby in the mist. It must be a spirit, a jinni, she thought. She had heard of them – creatures made of smokeless fire. They were here long before Adam and Eve were sent tumbling down from the Garden of Eden; so, historically speaking, the earth belonged to them. Humans were the latecomers, the invaders. The jinn lived in remote areas – snowy mountains, dark caves, arid waste lands – but they often found their way into the city to inhabit stinking toilets, grimy cellars, fusty vaults. Since they wandered freely, one had to tread with care; stepping on one of them by mistake was sure to end badly, probably in paralysis. Perhaps that was what had happened to her too. She could barely move.
‘Peri! Answer me!’ Selma shouted.
The baby in the mist recoiled as if he had recognized the voice. The greyness began to dissolve. So did the baby himself, bit by bit, like a morning haze under rays of the rising sun.
‘Here, Mother!’ Peri turned and ran back as fast as she could towards their garden.
She would ask around, afterwards, if anyone in the neighbourhood knew about any kittens with pink eyes. No one did.
Later, much later in life, Peri understood she had missed by a hair’s breadth
becoming another item in a newspaper. Nameless, save for her printed initials, N. N.; her photo with a black band over her eyes. She could have been there, next to the reports about a deadly attack on a mafia leader in Istanbul; the clash between the Turkish Army and the Kurdish separatists in a town along the south-east border and the court decision to ban Henry Miller’s Tropic of Capricorn. The whole nation would read the details of her abduction, knocking on wood, shaking their heads, clucking their tongues, thanking God that it was someone else’s child and not theirs.
She called her saviour ‘the baby in the mist’ and left it at that, neither able nor willing to grasp from where it had sprung. But the vision kept returning, at unexpected intervals throughout her life. It appeared not only when she was in danger but during ordinary moments as well. Indoors or outdoors, morning or night, the fog could descend at any time and anywhere, hedging her in on every side as if it wanted her to acknowledge, once and for all, how lonely she really was.
Years later, it was this secret she would carry in her suitcase when, at the age of nineteen, she travelled to Oxford University for the first time. You were not allowed to bring meat or dairy products into England from outside European countries, but no one said you couldn’t bring along your childhood fears and traumas.
The Hodja
Istanbul, 1980s
A week later Peri mustered the courage to reveal her secret to her father.
‘You are seeing things, did you say?’ Mensur asked, with a newspaper crossword folded on his lap.
‘Not things, Baba. Just one thing,’ Peri said. ‘An infant.’
‘Where is this infant exactly?’
Peri blushed. ‘In the air, sort of floating.’
For a moment, his expression gave nothing away. ‘You are my clever daughter,’ he said finally. ‘Do you want to turn into your mother? If so, go ahead, fill your head with foolishness. I’d have expected better of you.’
Her heart sank. Determined never to disappoint him, she yielded. It wasn’t that hard. After all, she had not touched the apparition, and, even though she had seen it, and later on she would also hear it, she could not trust her senses, given the oddness of the experience. By her father’s rule of thumb, the baby in the mist did not exist. It was all inside her head, she concluded, but as to why it was inside her head, she could think of no plausible explanation.
‘The civilized world, Pericim, was not built on unfounded beliefs. It was built on science, reason and technology. You and I belong in that world.’
‘I know, Baba.’
‘Good. Drop this subject. And do not, ever, mention it to your mother.’
It was inevitable, though. If her father’s physics had its universal rules, so did human psychology. The moment one was told not to enter the fortieth door or not to peek into a chest, that door was bound to be unlatched, that chest had to be prised open. To be fair, for as long as she could, Peri kept her promise, but the next time the baby in the mist appeared, she went running to her mother for help.
‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ Selma said, her forehead creased with concern.
Peri swallowed hard. ‘I told Dad.’
‘Your father? What does he know?’ Selma said. ‘Listen, this sounds like the doing of a jinni. Some are well behaved, others pure evil. The Quran warns us against the danger. They’d do anything to possess a human being – especially a girl. Women are especially vulnerable to their attacks; we must be careful.’
Selma leaned forward and moved a lock of her daughter’s hair behind her ear. The gesture, simple and affectionate, set off a rush of tenderness inside Peri. She asked, ‘What should I do?’
‘Two things. First of all, always tell me the truth. Allah sees through every lie. And parents are the eyes of Allah on earth. Secondly, we must find an exorcist.’
The next morning the two of them went to see a hodja famous for his powers to cleanse one of demonic possession. A portly man with a tiny, dark moustache and a wheezy voice. In his hand he held an onyx rosary, which he thumbed slowly. His wide head was out of proportion to the rest of his body – as if it had been planted in haste, an afterthought; and his shirt had been buttoned all the way up, so tightly that it had swallowed his neck.
Gazing at Peri searchingly, he asked questions about her eating, playing, studying, sleeping and toilet habits. Under his scrutiny, an uneasiness came over the child, but she stayed put in her chair, doing her best to reply in earnest. He asked her if she had recently killed a spider or a caterpillar or a lizard or a cockroach or a grasshopper or a ladybird or a wasp or an ant. This last one made Peri hesitate; who knew, maybe she had stepped on an ant – or, worse yet, an anthill. The hodja confirmed that the jinn, elusive as they were, could take the form of insects, and if one crushed them without uttering the name of Allah, one would be possessed there and then.
Thus saying, the hodja turned to Selma. ‘Had the child learned not to go out without reciting the Fatiha,* this wouldn’t have happened. I’ve got five kids, none of them were ever bothered by jinn. Why? Simple, because they know how to protect themselves. Did you not teach her anything, sister?’
Selma’s gaze darted from the man to her daughter and back. ‘I try, but she doesn’t listen. Her father is a bad influence.’
‘It’s nothing to do with him …’ protested Peri. Then, quietly, ‘What happens now?’
In lieu of an answer, the exorcist held the child by the shoulders, leaned in close to her face for what felt like eternity and hissed, ‘Whatever your name, I’ll find it out. Then you’ll be my slave. I know you are one of the unholy. You spiteful, wicked thing. Abandon this innocent girl. I warn you!’
Peri squeezed her eyes shut. The man’s fingers loosened around her shoulders. He sprinkled rosewater on her head, reciting prayers to ward off the evil. He asked her to swallow tiny papers with Arabic letters on them, the ink dyeing her tongue a blue so bright that it would last for days. Nothing happened. That night, upon the hodja’s instructions and her mother’s insistence, Peri spent an hour alone in the garden, flinching at every little sound, a silhouette of fear in the faint light of a street lamp. The next morning they sent her to chase a pack of stray dogs. The dogs chased her instead.
‘Oh, jinni, I give you one last chance,’ said the exorcist when they went to see him a second time. In his hand he held a long stick made from a dead willow branch. ‘Either you come out willingly, or I’ll give you a severe beating.’
Before Peri could grasp what she had heard, the man hit her on her back. The child screamed.
Selma paled. ‘Is this necessary, efendim?’
‘This is the only cure. The jinni needs to be scared. The longer it stays in her body, the more powerful it gets.’
‘Yes, but … I can’t allow this,’ said Selma, her lips drawn into a thin line. ‘We must leave.’
‘Your choice,’ said the hodja flatly. ‘Let me warn you, sister. This child is prone to darkness. Even if you get rid of this jinni now, she can be taken captive by another, easy as breathing. Keep an eye on her.’
Mother and daughter, more scared by the exorcist than by any conceivable jinni, exited the house in a hurry – though not before Selma made a hefty payment.
‘Don’t worry, I’m going to be fine,’ said Peri, when they reached the bus stop. She held her mother’s hand, feeling guilty. ‘Mother, what did he mean when he said I was prone to darkness?’
Selma looked unsettled, not so much by her daughter’s question as by her own inability to provide an answer. ‘Some people just are, by birth. That explains, I guess, the things you did when you were little –’ She stopped herself, her eyes tearing up.
Not knowing what her mother meant, Peri feared that she must have done something very, very wrong. ‘I’ll be good, I promise.’
Yet another promise she would do her utmost to keep from that day forth. Obediently, she would adhere to what was expected of her, tracing her steps back to where she had veered away from the routine, ever so caref
ul not to cause surprises, no shocking incidents. She would be as unremarkable and unthreatening as she possibly could be.
Selma planted a kiss on her forehead. ‘Canim,* let’s hope this thing is over, but beware! It might return. And if it does, you must tell me. The jinn are vengeful.’
It did return, but, having learned her lesson the hard way, Peri mentioned it to no one. Her mother was too superstitious and her father too rational for either of them to be of any help to her in so surreal a matter. Anything remotely uncanny, even if only slightly out of the ordinary, Selma would attribute to a religious cause; and Mensur, to downright insanity. Peri, for her part, preferred to commit to neither.
The more Peri considered her options, the more she was convinced that she had to keep her visions to herself. Deeply unsettling though they were, she accepted them as a peculiarity of life, like an eye floater, something that didn’t go away and only bothered her when she was aware of it, leaving her no choice but to learn to live with it. Thus the baby in the mist – whether a jinni or something else altogether – was stowed away in the recesses of her mind, a riddle unresolved.
Years later, not long before she left for Oxford, she would write down in her God-diary: Is there really no other way, no other space for things that fall under neither belief nor disbelief – neither pure religion nor pure reason? A third path for people such as me? For those of us who find dualities too rigid and don’t wish to conform to them? Because there must be others who feel as I do. It is as if I’m searching for a new language. An elusive language spoken by no one but me …
The Fish Tank
Istanbul, 2016