Ramadan Ramsey

by Louis Edwards

  Then a prayerful voice began to resound throughout the neighborhood, heralding the approach of darkness, and the few people still hanging out headed indoors. Yonca appeared on the balcony next to Ahmet, and she motioned for the group on the ground to come upstairs. Emir put his arms around the boys, and Ramadan felt him release some tension. He pressed down on their shoulders, using them as walking aids, canes or crutches. Had Mehmet’s words calmed his father into this weighty surrender? Ramadan wondered. Or was it the voice of the singing man? Or weariness from a day’s work? Up on the balcony he saw Yonca smile with satisfaction. Maybe it was that simple; the flap of her hand had made everything better.

  But then Emir patted him on the shoulder as they entered the building and said, “Come, Ramadan, come. We make nice for you.”

  * * *

  “IF . . . TAR,” RAMADAN repeated after Yonca, who was teaching him to say the word for the meal she had prepared and placed on the table before her family and their guest. “Iftar.”

  “Yes!” She applauded. “You say veddy good, Ramadan. You sure you no Muslim?”

  “Well, my father is from Syria. I think he must be Muslim, and that’s why my mama named me Ramadan. I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” Emir asked. He was sitting to Ramadan’s right, and he paused as he was passing him a large bowl of rice. “This is the same father who come to meet you at the Ritz Hotel?”

  Ramadan’s shoulders went slack, and his head drooped. “Mr. Emir . . . ,” he said, wanting to confess.

  Emir palmed his head and moved it from side to side. “Is okay, boy. Is okay.”

  Ramadan sighed his way through a tremor of absolution, Emir having shaken away some of his shame. Instead of passing the bowl, Emir spooned a large helping of rice onto Ramadan’s plate. Being served this way, he felt doubly forgiven, as he stared into the steam rising from the rice. The damp heat met the mistiness welling in his eyes, and the same meteorological quirk that kept rain from falling on a warm, cloud-ridden day occurred, sparing him the humiliation of weeping at his first iftar.

  “This is a good time!” Yonca’s sunny voice broke through his fog. “Eat, Ramadan, eat!”

  His mouth watered as he admired the mound of plump grains—he realized now that he hadn’t eaten all day—and the promise of being satiated lifted him as well. When he looked up, he saw a flurry of the Adem family’s hands and arms passing and scooping, pouring and slicing, sharing the evening’s meal, breaking their fast. On the table, in front of Ahmet, a dish in a white bowl—a stew of okra and peas—reminded him of Mama Joon’s crowder peas and okra.

  “Nohut? Chickpeas?” Ahmet asked, picking up the bowl and pressing it under his nose. The rich, savory smell turned his hunger urgent, and he heard his own soft “Wow . . .”

  Holding the bowl, he could see that the peas and okra were comingled with glistening, beefy-looking slivers.

  “What’s the meat?” he asked.

  “Lamb,” Ahmet said.

  From the far end of the table, seated next to his mother, Mehmet said, “That is also my favorite, Ramadan! You and me, we are the same!”

  Ramadan heard longing in Mehmet’s voice, a plea in his we. They’d spent the whole day becoming friends, getting close, but they were at opposite ends of the table. He felt like a traitor. First, he had said that thing outside. Now here he was fraternizing with Ahmet again, conspiring over a bowl of chickpeas. Poor Mehmet.

  He looked around the table at the Adem family enjoying Yonca’s meal. Emir had led them in prayer before the serving began, and he and Ahmet had eyed their apologies across the table. Watching them now, including Yonca (who had finally taken a seat and was humming as she nibbled the crusty edge of a slice of pizza-like flatbread covered with tomato sauce, black olives, and crumbles of feta cheese), Ramadan smiled and controlled his impulse to make the sign of the cross, just scratching his forehead instead. Then he picked up his fork and scooped up ample bits of rice, chickpeas, okra, and the succulent-looking lamb. When the flavors hit his tongue, they seemed redolent of the emotional complexity of the evening: the soulful neutrality of the rice was as necessary as the truce between Emir and Ahmet; Yonca’s joy at delivering this meal burst out of the buttery center of every pea; the angst-ridden yank of Mehmet’s we triumphed in the moist mélange, everything inextricably binding together, tethering Ramadan to Mehmet’s entire family. In a single bite, he tasted the mood of the entire season. Acceptance, generosity, forgiveness—all of which he had received during his day with the Adems—melted in his mouth and dissolved in his blood.

  His “Mmm!” was louder than intended, an exaggeration of the truth.

  “Is good?” Yonca asked.

  They all paused for his response, and his muffled “Mmm hmm!” competed with his nonstop chewing. Adem laughter rippled throughout the dining room, and Ramadan took a second forkful, humming another “Mmm hmm!”

  The Mmm hmm was an answer to Yonca’s question, but also a tuneful Amen, closure to the little prayer of grace he was chanting to himself. It began, “God is great, God is good,” setting the table, as it were, for the most satisfying rhyme in the English language.

  * * *

  AFTER DINNER, EMIR sat dozing at the table, attempting, every few seconds, to blink himself awake. Ramadan and Mehmet nibbled on baklava, giggling at Emir’s intermittent snoring. Ahmet had gone to his room, and Yonca was in the kitchen putting away the leftovers. Trying to rise from his chair, Emir made a couple groans that turned into a loud, wide yawn. He stretched his arms high and wide and in a weary tone said, “Okay, Ramadan . . . I take you back to hotel.”

  Yonca called something out from the kitchen and Mehmet responded, “Yes! Ramadan, you stay here tonight.”

  Emir, eyes still shut, grunted his approval. “Yes. Is good. Is good. And tomorrow, Ramadan . . . tomorrow I think we go . . . to the American Embassy.”

  “But—”

  “No, no. I take you. I make everything okay.” Emir’s voice was fading into slumber as he added, “I must get you back home . . . safe.”

  Well, how long did he think Emir would let him drift through Istanbul as if such behavior were acceptable? How long could he participate in this business—help facilitate a twelve-year-old’s questionable movements? Enable him, even? Possibly endangering him? Safe, he had said, emphasizing his adult responsibility to protect Ramadan, a boy who had somehow found his way into his care. Just how long was he supposed to tolerate Ramadan’s little Turkish adventure? Apparently until he announced he wanted to go to a war-torn corner of the world with Emir’s irresponsible son. Of course, Emir had concluded he had to consult with the authorities, get better answers than Ramadan’s evasions. For all he knew, there was something truly wicked at the bottom of all of this. Ramadan watched Emir let out one loud snore after another. In repose, he didn’t look like the wisest man, but behind those bushy eyebrows and that weathered forehead was a brain that had surmised the truth: something was very wrong here—someone might even have committed a crime. But what Emir had no way of deducing was a more frightening truth: the place Ramadan had left behind, and to which Emir vowed his return, was no safer for him than Syria.

  * * *

  AT ABOUT ELEVEN thirty, Ramadan woke up with a familiar drive, the compulsion to move—to leap, to run. Mehmet was asleep next to him in the twin bed in this tiny bedroom just off the kitchen, a room so small it might have once been a pantry; Ramadan thought he smelled cinnamon spicing the air. Hung high on the wall at the foot of the bed was a poster of Hedo Türkoglu wearing his number 15 Magic jersey. He was holding a basketball, surrounded by a battalion of brown hands, NBA defenders, and as he drove down the lane, trying to make it to the basket, his face was grimacing with concentration and maybe fear. Like Türkoglu, like anyone determined to score, he had to keep moving. He looked down at the jersey he was still wearing, and he grinned at how Mehmet’s obsession had had its way with him, filling him with the anticipation of what could happen next.

&
nbsp; His eyes drifted to the bedside table, where Ibrahim—glasses askew—was looking at him. Mehmet had left the invitation there after showing it to him before they went to sleep. Ramadan picked the card up and traced the embossed lettering with his finger. Leaving now meant he would miss the bar mitzvah, and there would be no reprise of the feel-the-beautiful dance. He sighed, put the invitation back, and slinked out of bed.

  In its stealth, his body pulsed with its past successes at sneaking out and breaking away, adding an efficiency to his actions. He was fully dressed, backpack on his shoulder, and almost out the pantry-bedroom door before he decided to go back over to the bed. Mehmet, bliss on his face, was smacking his lips. Ramadan reached down and fingered a long, bristly lock behind his friend’s ear. “Goodbye, Mehmet.”

  Mehmet mumbled a snippet of dreamy dialogue. “Take the shot . . . take the shot.”

  Just like Mr. Emir—talking in his sleep. Dreaming of basketball, maybe soccer. He shook his head at Mehmet’s boyish ways. Then, as he walked away, Mehmet said more pointedly, “Take the shot, Ramadan.”

  He didn’t turn around to see if his friend was asleep or awake, awake and encouraging him, coaching him. Adjusting his backpack, he stepped into the kitchen, and his hand was still gripping the doorknob when, across the room, he saw a shadowy presence creeping down the hall toward the top of the stairwell.

  “Ahmet?” he whispered.

  He tiptoed quickly through the kitchen, where he was distracted by a glass-covered cake dish on the table, filled with baklava. Yonca dusted her version of the pastry with sugary green pistachio crumbles, and they glowed in the dark, beckoning to him. Unable to resist, he rushed over, lifted the domed lid, and grabbed a fistful of the crusty, honey-drenched treats. Clinking the top back onto the bottom plate, he flinched. Then, after a pause, he rushed out to try to catch up with Ahmet.

  But in the hall, he passed a room whose door was ajar. Hearing Emir’s snores echoing, Ramadan, as with Mehmet, felt compelled to peek in for a goodbye look. When he nudged the door open, its hinges creaked dully, but he assumed if Yonca could sleep through Emir’s honking, a squeaky door wouldn’t disturb her. He balanced himself by gripping the doorknob with his right hand, the hand not holding the cache of baklava. Then, swerving his left shoulder into the room, he clamped his chin against the inside of the door, and he saw the husband and wife, side-by-side, elongated mounds under a white sheet. There was just enough moonlight coming through their window to see Yonca’s long dark hair sprayed against her pillow. Like Emir, she was lying on her back, lips slightly parted; she could have been snoring, too, for all Ramadan knew, but he couldn’t hear anything over her husband’s rhythmic roars. He could just make out the outline of Emir’s head, thrown back with fatigue, digging its density into his pillow. The curve of his mouth vibrating was the only movement in the room, as his lips trembled with every protracted exhalation. Each spouse’s outer arm was flung against the ornately carved wooden headboard. Overcome with the sense that he was invading their privacy, he was about to leave when something moved, just an inch or so, on the headboard. The wood appeared to have throbbed, improbably, like a heart. Squinting at the raised spot, where someone might have carved a daisy or a dove, he saw a bulge that wasn’t decorative at all—it was the intertwined fingers and hands of Yonca and Emir. Her left, his right. Ramadan, who had no real-life examples of marital affection, was so fascinated by the conjoined hands that he inhaled and waited in suspense for the notch of knuckles to twitch again, wanting to glimpse, one more time, romance come to life.

  Gawking at this intimate scene, he was still holding his breath when five thick, fanned-out fingers—only inches from his face—came slicing into view. He would have screamed, but the would-be sound was muffled as the hand smashed into his mouth, covering it and his nose so thoroughly he feared suffocation. The tip of his tongue had darted out for the aborted yelp. Tapping a clammy palm, it met an unwelcome salinity, and recoiled with the swiftness of a lizard’s. Would it be so horrible—Ramadan’s shaken will proposed—to die here in Istanbul, to die now, having just seen true love? Just once? While waiting to see it again? He relaxed a little and tried to suck in some oxygen. His nostrils, flattened against his face, sniffed the air seeping between the splay of fingers pinning him to his captor’s chest.

  “Mr. America is bad.” Ahmet’s breath, whispery and accusatory, insinuated itself into his ear. The words—just contoured air, really—seeped through the pathways of understanding, and their meaning stung him, as did the notion, which he rejected, that they might be true. In violent denial, he attempted to shake his head, his entire body, or what of it he could move, trapped as he was in Ahmet’s grasp. His I was just saying goodbye was an indecipherable mumble.

  In turn, Ahmet’s Shhhhh was a hiss, more gaseous than linguistic. There was something conspiratorial in the way Ahmet was urging him to be quiet—just as when he had called him bad, his tone had been congratulatory and clubby, as to say he was also not good—and pleased to welcome Ramadan into the fraternity of the mischievous. Sensing this collusion, Ramadan, feeling trustful, let his body go slack. When Ahmet caught his weight, he rejoiced, and Ahmet lifted him and carried him into the hallway. He repeated his shushing sound, and then released him. Ramadan teetered but pressed one hand against the wall; his other hand was stretched outward, forming a loose fist. He opened it to the sparkle of pistachio sprinkles. Ahmet’s eyes widened, and he plucked one of the pastries, smashed but still intact, from Ramadan’s hand. He tossed it into his mouth and moaned. Then he started to walk away, gesturing for Ramadan to follow—which he did, as he devoured the last two morsels of dessert.

  14

  “The Sultan of Silence”

  Ahmet and Ramadan crept to the door at the end of the hall. Shoving it open, Ahmet stepped inside and switched on the light. Ramadan stopped at the threshold of the only room in the apartment he hadn’t seen yet. Although Ahmet’s bedroom was three or four times the size of Mehmet’s, it felt just as cramped: a messy desk to the left; jeans, shirts, and sneakers strewn about; and an imposing pair of disorganized floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. Centered between the bookcases was an unmade full-size bed, a tangle of sheets and pillows. Ahmet grabbed Ramadan’s arm and pulled him all the way into the room. Ramadan heard the door close behind him and the sound of Ahmet rustling papers on his desk, but he didn’t turn around. He couldn’t—

  A mesmerizing collage of posters—prints of various sizes and eye-catching colors—was pinned to the wall above the bed. Ramadan propped himself against the footboard and leaned forward for a closer look. His eyes settled on the large poster in the middle, from which all the others spiraled. He was staring at (and being stared back at in return by) a big-eyed, strange-looking man with a block of a chin and an almost girlish head of hair parted on the left side and swooping across his right brow. He might have deemed the face unattractive, but the weird mix of masculine and feminine (pale streaks of eyeliner and a rosy touch of lipstick were also visible) tempered his judgment. This odd fellow of original mien and stylish manner appeared to be straddling a steel structure of some kind and, from the startled looked on his face, was in some way imperiled. His long-sleeved shirt was cuffed tight at the wrists and ballooned out along his arms, a puffiness that suggested flotation, if not flight. He seemed dressed to survive the implied swift motion (with the threat of catastrophe) that this colorized photograph conveyed. And his suspenseful pose gave the impression that, afforded a moment’s animation, he would escape from the poster, come plunging off the wall and tumble onto Ahmet’s bed. Or maybe he was contemplating a scheme of his own. (His eyes said he was.) What if, once he had landed on this messy mattress, he would reset himself in a crouching position? Then, aiming for Ramadan’s chest, willfully pounce!

  It took Ramadan a few seconds to break from the mutual stare and read the words printed below: The General. Then he looked up and saw, above the man’s head, arching in gold letters: Buster Keaton.

  As
he scanned the other posters, he realized each was but a variation on Ahmet’s centerpiece. And something else became clear: what Buster Keaton was straddling, riding like a horse, was actually a train. “Love, Locomotives & Laughs,” one illustration promised. Another boasted: “one of the ten greatest films of all time”—and that’s when Ramadan understood that all these artful placards were promoting a single movie, one unknown to him.

  “You like Booster Keaton?”

  Ahmet’s voice startled him at first, but he relaxed, amused at how Ahmet had rhymed Buster with rooster. “Who is he?”

  “Booster Keaton is my hero.”

  “Is he a . . . a general?”

  “No—he is a genius!”

  “I mean in the movie. Is he a general?”

  “No. The train. That is the name of the train. You see?” He pointed at the illustration in the uppermost right corner of his wall collage. Ramadan saw GENERAL printed in white on the front of the purplish blue engine. In the cartoony artwork, Buster Keaton was holding a girl with big swirls of upswept blond hair and dark makeup around her eyes. Her hands were caressing his chin, and they were looking into each other’s eyes as they rode atop the engine with an improbable nonchalance. So this is the love in “Love, Locomotives & Laughs,” he thought.

  Ahmet said, “You see? The train is the General.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you? Do you, Ramadan? Well, really, the train is life. You jump on, and it takes you on the crazy ride.”

  Ramadan said, “Yeah, I get it.”

  “Hmm. I think maybe you do. You are bad boy, but you are smart boy.”

  They exchanged smiles, and Ahmet said, “I study cinema at university. I will make a great film one day. Then you will really see, Ramadan. The world will see. Baba will see.”

  Ahmet looked back over his shoulder. Then he went to the door and peeked into the hallway before shutting it again—locking it this time. “Sit, Ramadan.”