Ramadan Ramsey

by Louis Edwards

  “Mustafa,” he murmured. “My father is Mustafa . . .”

  Mentally, he jumped up and danced around the room. But still half-asleep, he just sank back into the pillows and pressed his phone to chest. He was dozing off again when the hotel telephone rang on the bedside table.

  Groaning, he rolled over and picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

  “Mr. Ramadan Ramsey, we are here!” It was a wide-awake and cheery Emir.

  Ramadan sat up and stared out the window, thinking, I am here, too.

  “Come, come, come!”

  Judging from Emir’s jolly mood, Ramadan figured he must have had a big breakfast. “I’ll be right down!”

  He got up and rushed into the bathroom, where he looked in the mirror and convinced himself he appeared more rested than rumpled. Besides, he didn’t want to keep Emir waiting, so he just wiped his face with a damp towel and gargled with the hotel mouthwash. His hair, as naturally shaped as a head of hydrangea, warranted only a couple of palm pats. Then he fluffed his T-shirt a little and grabbed his backpack from the bedroom. When he exited room 1010—except for the Popeyes bag and a few creases in the bedding—it looked virtually the same as when he arrived.

  The elevator trip to the lobby felt like a carnival ride, and he started laughing. Though plummeting, he was giddy from the sensation that he was also going up. He was on a roller coaster in the Ritz, or a Ferris wheel operated by Mr. Emir, rising higher than he’d gotten from the joint he’d hit with his cousins the night he was shot. His entire escape, improbable and fantastical, gave him the feeling he was levitating, above peril; that looking back or being afraid, like the ground, was beneath him.

  The “ding” and the elevator doors opening almost brought him back down to earth. But after hustling through the lobby, he had to blink himself out of his lingering dreaminess, for the boy standing next to Emir had a single word emblazoned across his jersey, in sky-blue letters outlined in silver, that confounded Ramadan with its boldness: MAGIC. Centered below this dazzling noun was the number 15. Ramadan slowed his jog to a stilted, mechanical shuffle, and when close enough to the boy—Mehmet, of course—he noticed the tiny red-white-and-blue National Basketball Association logo near the left shoulder of the navy-blue pinstriped jersey. So not only was Mehmet an NBA fan, as Emir had said, but in particular, an admirer of a certain number 15 player for the Orlando franchise, whose nickname invoked enchantment.

  “Ramadan!” Emir’s voice helped steady him. Not since Mama Joon had anyone said his name in such an endearing and possessive tone.

  More possessive still, Emir added, “This is my Mehmet!” and he shoved his lanky son forward. Dark-haired and winsome, Mehmet smirked at his father.

  “Hello, Ramadan. I am my Mehmet, too. May I say I am happy to meet you!”

  “Yes, you may,” Ramadan said. “I’m happy to meet you, too.” He wanted to tell Mehmet that in his front jeans pocket he had a card that was a perfect match for his jersey. They shook hands for so long Emir had to intervene. “Okay, okay, let’s go!”

  They went out to the taxi, Mehmet and Ramadan jumped in the backseat, and Emir drove off.

  “Where’d you get your shirt?” Ramadan asked. “I want one!”

  “Türkoglu!” Mehmet snapped his stretchy shoulder strap and showed Ramadan the name across his back. “You know him?”

  “No.”

  “He is from Istanbul. He wore this one three years ago in the NBA Championships. You don’t remember, Ramadan? He scored twenty-five points in the big Game Four. But I am sure you know the Magic lost in overtime to Los Angeles. Poor Orlando. You have to make the free throws. It is very important. Very important—if you want to be the world champion.”

  Then Mehmet lured Ramadan into his reality with a stream of devotional chatter—a litany of basketball begats and the promise of fairy-tale intrigue . . .

  “The next year the Lakers beat the Boston Celtics. They had to do it because Boston beat them in 2008. Right? Right! And then last year the Dallas Mavericks beat the Miami Heat. Good for Dirk Nowitzki. But very bad for LeBron James. He left Cleveland—his home team, you know—to go to Miami. And this is not like Türkoglu leaving Istanbul to go to America—Türkoglu need to leave to make the money and to be famous and to have me wear his Orlando number fifteen. Of course he must leave. Right? Right! But LeBron James, he did not have to leave his home. And then he leaves . . . but only to lose. Very bad. That is what we think, no? Yes! But surprise! What happens this year? Miami beats Oklahoma! LeBron James, finally he wins the championship! Finally, the King is a king! Oh . . . it is a good story. A very good story. But what does this mean, Ramadan? You leave home because you want to win, but then you still lose? You leave home, you lose, but the next year you win? Maybe. And if you go back home, do you lose again? Or do you win when you go back home? What will happen if LeBron goes back home? What will happen next year? We do not know. This is why we watch. To see the story! To see the story! It is so great!”

  Mehmet spoke as if he had been waiting his whole life for Ramadan or someone like him, to whom he could profess his passion. To Ramadan, sports had only ever been immediate and specific, and just for fun. Basketball was just basketball. But for Mehmet it was mythology, and The Life of LeBron James was an epic. What will happen if LeBron goes back home? As Ramadan, too, had just left home, he turned Mehmet’s questions on himself. Would he win or would he lose? Would he ever go back home? What would happen next?

  “Mr. Mehmet and Mr. Ramadan,” Emir interrupted his passengers. “Where are you going?”

  “Baba!” Mehmet yelled, pointing out the window. “Taksim! We get out here, Ramadan. Istiklal Caddesi.”

  “Isti . . . what?”

  “Istiklal Caddesi . . . Independence Avenue,” Mehmet translated. “We will find the things you need there.”

  Emir swerved to the right and stopped at the curb. “Okay. Is good idea. Ramadan, you stay close with Mehmet.”

  “Yes, sir,” Ramadan said, as they got out of the cab.

  Emir said something Ramadan couldn’t understand. “What’d he say?”

  “We meet him here at four o’clock. So we have all day!”

  They sprinted across Taksim Square to Istiklal, where they walked in the street with the rest of the crowd. Mehmet gestured from one side of the street to the other. “Is great, no?”

  “Yes,” Ramadan said, comfortable on this touristy thoroughfare, which struck him as a combination of Bourbon and Canal streets back home.

  “It is the best way to begin to see the city.” Then Mehmet stopped and grabbed Ramadan’s arm. “Oh! Now I know the plan. One, two, three, four. Four quarters! We will play a whole game today, Ramadan. You will see. Istiklal is the First Quarter. When we are finish, you will need to wash, to eat, and to sleep. Come, come, come!”

  Less than a block up the street, they went into a sportswear shop where everyone knew Mehmet. One especially friendly salesman, a swarthy fellow with a scar above his left eye and a roguish manner, asked Ramadan, “Where are you from? New York? I think New York. They got a lot of chocolates in New York.”

  “Nedim!” Mehmet said, punching the young man on his arm.

  Ramadan smiled at his proposed edibility. “No, New Orleans.”

  “New Orleans! Okay, okay,” Nedim said, wagging his finger and winking at Ramadan. “New York, New Orleans—I can see there is something new about you.”

  Mehmet explained that Ramadan had lost his luggage and needed to buy some clothes, especially a jersey like his.

  “Okay, okay.” Nedim escorted them around the store, and Ramadan picked out a pair of Levi’s, a few plain white T-shirts, and some socks.

  As they went into the sportswear section, Mehmet asked, “Is this shop like the American shops, Ramadan?”

  “Pretty close.”

  “One day I want to see the real thing,” Mehmet said. “Not the pretty close. I want to see America!”

  “I know.”

  “You know? How do y
ou know?”

  “Mr. Emir told me. And he said he believes you will come to America one day.”

  “What? Baba say this thing?”

  “Mm hmm.” Ramadan read doubt or confusion in the tilt of Mehmet’s head.

  They turned to face Nedim, who was holding up a white version of Mehmet’s Orlando Magic jersey. “We don’t have no more blue,” he said. “Is this okay?”

  The boys elbowed each other, and Ramadan said, “I wanna wear it now!”

  “But of course.” Nedim pulled off the price tag and tossed him the jersey. “Go over there. No one will see you.” He was pointing to a spot near a wall of sneakers.

  Nedim and Mehmet went over to the checkout area, while Ramadan stepped into the corner to change. Standing in front of a full-length mirror, he began pulling off his T-shirt, when it caught on the tape securing the bandage to his shoulder. The sensation of his healing wound being uncovered was more surprising than painful. Bringing the shirt back down, he glanced at the counter, where Mehmet was busy joking with Nedim. Ramadan grabbed the bandage through his t-shirt and bunched it into his fist. Then, in a single motion, he ripped the shirt off over his head. Stepping toward the mirror to examine his wound, he saw a slightly swollen scar come into focus. It was only the size of a large marble, purplish brown with flecks of pink, rising from the front slope of his shoulder. He watched with detachment as this other him in the mirror touched the bump. He ceded the horror of his injury—its original bloodiness, the treachery of its infliction—to this virtual Ramadan. All of it, if it had occurred at all, could have happened to someone else. In a way, so he convinced himself, it had.

  And when he slipped the jersey on, the shoulder strap completely covered his scar. He turned and called to Mehmet, “How do I look?”

  “Yes!” Mehmet rushed over and gave him a high five. “Ramadan—now we are on the same team!”

  They left the store a few minutes later, each toting a bag of Ramadan’s purchases. A slow-moving red-and-white tram coasted toward them on rails running along the middle of Istiklal Caddesi, and Ramadan had to shake himself off the streets of New Orleans, where such vehicles roamed like indigenous fauna. “A streetcar!”

  “What?” Mehmet asked. “Street . . . car? But it is not a car. It is a train.”

  “Well, we call it a streetcar.”

  “Sometimes words do not say what they mean, no? How do you say? Makes no sense . . .” Mehmet touched a finger to his temple.

  Ramadan shrugged and said, “Mehmet, sometimes nothing makes any sense.”

  As the tram rolled by, they exchanged a glance, a preternaturally articulate vow to commit mutual mischief. Their eyes darted from the streetcar and back to each other, and without speaking they ran after the tram. It only took five or six steps for Mehmet, who was fleeter than Ramadan, to catch the escaping train, and he jumped onto a semicircular piece of metal protruding from the back. He almost slipped, but he gripped the frame of the rear window and made a quick pivot.

  “Come, Ramadan!”

  With his shopping bag and backpack, Ramadan was huffing with every stride.

  “You can do it!” Mehmet yelled.

  The train was moving farther away, and Ramadan didn’t think he’d make it. But then the tram began to slow down for its next stop, and he completed the same leap Mehmet had performed, landing on the opposite side of the makeshift platform.

  “We did it!” Mehmet shouted.

  “Yes!”

  The tram started to move again, and Ramadan almost lost his footing, until Mehmet showed him the trick of holding on. They stood precariously on board, rejoicing on the back of the tram as Istiklal receded into the distance.

  “Streetcar?” Mehmet returned to the nonsensical term. “It is a crazy name.”

  Ramadan shouted over the tram’s clanging bells, “Let’s call it something else!”

  “But what, Ramadan?”

  Ramadan looked back at the rails stretching all the way to Taksim Square. “The streettrain!” he said.

  Mehmet leaned in and whispered conspiratorially, “It will be our secret. We are riding the Streettrain of Istiklal Caddesi.”

  “Okay,” Ramadan said. “The Streettrain of Independence Avenue.”

  * * *

  THEY RODE THE tram to end of the line and walked along the streets of the Beyoglu section of town. “Okay, my friend,” Mehmet said. “The second quarter. I race you!”

  Mehmet burst into a sprint before Ramadan even knew he was in a competition. They had made several strides when a voice called out, “Mehmet . . . Mehmet!”

  Mehmet and Ramadan slowed to a jog and turned around. A boy in a red T-shirt was waving, and they stopped to wait for him.

  “Ibrahim!” Mehmet yelled to the boy, who came running over. Up close, Ramadan noticed that on the crest of Ibrahim’s mound of his long brown curls, which were looping under the sides of his black-framed, nerdy-looking glasses, was a dark blue yarmulke.

  “Ramadan, this is Ibrahim. We study at the same school.” Mehmet spoke a couple of sentences in Turkish to Ibrahim, before returning to English. “Ramadan is my new American friend.”

  Ibrahim pointed to their matching jerseys. “Is good.”

  “We are shopping.” Mehmet held up one of the bags. “I think I take Ramadan to the Grand Bazaar.”

  “Oof!” Ibrahim said. Then he made dismissive motions with his hands as he launched into what had to be a rant about Mehmet’s plan, though Ramadan couldn’t understand a word. Ibrahim’s thick lenses magnified the outrage in his eyes, and he seemed willing to sacrifice his entire body to expressing his disapproval.

  Mehmet said, “His father has leather shop at the Grand Bazaar. He don’t like to go. He will have to work if his father sees him. And in that crazy red shirt, who would not see him—I said that, not Ibby.”

  Ibrahim started to say something else, but Mehmet cut him off. “Speak English, Ibrahim! For Ramadan.”

  “I hate it!” Ibrahim said. “The clothes smell like animal. They feel good, but smell bad. Why? I want the good feeling and the good smell. You understand, Ramadan?”

  “Kinda,” Ramadan said. “But we say in America, ‘It’s all good’—even when sometimes it’s not.”

  “Huh?” Ibrahim’s face was flushed.

  Ramadan found his agitation humorous, and he knew he was about to upset Ibrahim even more. “It just means everything is okay. In the end, it’s all good. So just be cool.”

  “I love it,” Mehmet said. “It’s all good! Just like we say on the streettrain.”

  “The street what?” Ibrahim asked.

  “Sometimes words don’t mean what they say,” Mehmet continued. “Maybe it is all good, but we just do not understand.”

  “Exactly!” Ramadan agreed.

  “You boys crazy!” Ibrahim said. “Change your shirts from Magic and Magic to Crazy and Crazy. It is not all good! I am the one who have to work in the shop. You no understand. And just right now, I leave the synagogue. Why? I have bar mitzvah Saturday. I do not want the bar mitzvah. Well—I want the party. But, Ramadan, you no understand Turkish. Right?”

  “No—well, ‘Istiklal’ . . . and ‘okay.’”

  Ibrahim gave him a double take and said, “And I no understand the old talk. I want to tell the rabbi like you tell me, Mehmet—oh, he will be mad—‘Speak English! Then maybe I understand you!’ I do not want to talk the old talk. I want to talk the new! Like you, Ramadan. Like Jay-Z. Like Eminem. Like Drake. You know Drake?”

  “Yeah. His music, I mean.”

  “Tamam—‘okay’ to the boy who knows two words in Turkish. My friends, Drake, he is Jewish, but he no rap in Hebrew!”

  “Ibby!” Mehmet said. “I forget you have the bar mitzvah. I have the invitation. Is very funny picture of you!”

  Mehmet laughed, and Ibrahim shoved him in the chest. “Tebrikler, Ibrahim! You are a man!”

  “But I am no man. Leave me be a boy. Do you feel like a man, Mehmet?”

  “
Mmm . . . no.”

  “Okay. Then why I need to be a man and . . . follow the law?” Ibrahim removed his glasses and whirled them around. “I take this off, and I cannot see the law! I cannot see nothing! How do a boy or a man follow the law if he cannot see the law?” He was blinking, as if he were blind. “Is crazy!”

  They laughed as Ibrahim put his glasses back on. He aimed his restored vision directly at Ramadan. “And you? Do you feel like a man?”

  Ramadan tilted his head skyward. “Well . . . a little bit.”

  “Little bit? What is this, ‘little bit’? Tell me—yes or no?”

  Though recent events had pressed him for an answer to this question, he hadn’t articulated a response until now. “Yes,” he said, surprising himself.

  Ibrahim frowned, and Mehmet rubbed his shoulder. “You are just afraid, but it’s all good.”

  Ramadan said, “Think about it. Drake is a man. When you become a man, Ibrahim, you can speak whatever language you want.”

  Ibrahim stared at Ramadan, his eyes widening behind the glint of his lenses. “Hmm, yes. Yes. I have to become a man.” He pulled the G on Ramadan’s jersey and released it back into his chest with a polyester snap.

  “Ramadan. The Magic Man. You, Mehmet—you the Magic Boy. Grow up!”

  Then he hooked Mehmet’s neck into the crook of his elbow, putting him in a fake chokehold. They all started punching one another, as if testing their mettle—probing for weakness or any verifiable virility. They tussled like this for a while, like kids, bouncing on and off the sidewalk and the street, straddling both the curb and the hurdles that lay between who they were today and soon would be.

  Mehmet, sloughing off one last yank of his earlobe from Ibrahim, said, “Okay, we go now. Please come, Ibby!”

  “No. No Grand Bazaar.”

  “We can go to a different place,” Mehmet offered.

  “Where?”

  Mehmet stretched his arms high and leaped like a kid in a schoolyard. “Everywhere! We will go everywhere!”