“That’s what they all thought,” Amber said.
“Are you trying to tell me something?”
“You asked me earlier if I had ever been in love. It seems the only men I seem to be capable of loving are old men, as you seem to prefer young men. Iskender, Süleyman . . .”
“Who’s Süleyman?”
“Your father.”
“You talk as if you know him.” She looked confused.
“I did. In the late seventies, Sam and I were living in a Greenwich Village apartment. One day a guy showed up at the door, the old-world type like so many of the old guys around who came to the newsstand across the street for egg creams.
“He was holding a clipping in his hand with my picture—I’d been interviewed for an architectural magazine, you see? I’d won an award. He asked if I were related to the İpekçi family who’d been in the silk business and I told him yes. He told me he was an old friend of my grandmother’s and that I reminded him of her. He had also known my father as a boy. I invited him inside.
“It was a July day like this, despite the laboring water fan, the heat was hellish. I offered him some lemonade that I’d freshly squeezed and in order to show his gratitude, he took a small can of Secret out of his vest pocket and sprayed the air. That’s how our friendship began. With Secret.
“He was a strikingly handsome man, although the wrinkles revealed a lot of wear and tear and he had a noticeable limp. He wore his long hair in a ponytail, and his clothes were kind of shabby but the shabbiness that comes with the wearing-out of something finely made—like patina, vintage, or shibui.
“He said his name was Süleyman. His eyes slowly scanned our studio, strips of film that hung from the ceiling, heaped into a garbage can, a table cluttered with reels and mounted handwheels, maquettes for dream communities and blueprints. He checked out the photographs on the walls, Sam’s hard-edged, high-contrast, shockingly stark kodaliths of New York City next to the sepia ghosts of our forgotten ancestors. His eyes stopped on the picture of my grandmother, dressed in a black charshaf and veil.
“ ‘Esma was about your age in that picture. Did you know her?’ he asked.
“I was startled by the matter-of-fact tone in his question. ‘She died the night I was born,’ I told him.
“ ‘I’ve always loved her,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘Even after she betrayed me.’
“Then, he told me of their secret love, his nocturnal visits to the house in Smyrna, the poems through which they spoke, hiding in your wardrobe, the night of the double moons. He had wanted so much to marry her but she would not break the sanctity of her widowhood. Then Uncle Iskender had gotten wind of their liaison and had interfered to protect the family honor.”
Amber paused for a moment and looked at Aida, vigorously cracking pumpkin seeds with her teeth.
“Go on.”
“About that time, the war had broken out and despite his good judgment, Süleyman enlisted. He was captured and tortured like many. He spent a whole year by himself in total darkness, except for the singular ray that leaked when someone brought him bread and water. That’s all he had. Bread and water, once in a while a couple of olives.
“ ‘When I returned to Izmir, I immediately went to visit your grandmother, determined to take a chance even if I’d be punished. I’d already been punished too many times,’ he continued. ‘Just as I was about to knock at the door, I met a man on the street who had some dealings with your uncle Iskender. Loathsome character; looked like a ferret. In fact, they called him Ferret.
“ ‘He told me that he was now happily married to Esma. I did not believe him so I followed him. He stopped at the boza stand and bought a pitcher, went around the obsidian and knocked at the door. I saw a woman open the door and knew he must have been telling me the truth.’
“ ‘But he wasn’t,’ I objected. ‘My grandmother never remarried. I do remember a guy they called Ferret, though, who stank so bad that he was chased out of town.’
“The old man suddenly grew silent. He excused himself and left abruptly. I realized why as he stumbled down the corridor leading to the stairs when I heard him grunt like a tormented lion. The entire block trembled from his rage until the sirens came.
“But he had left his calling card and I knew where he lived. That night I told Sam about the visit. ‘How on earth did he end up in New York City?’ Sam wanted to know. I didn’t know.
“The following week my uncle Aladdin, his wife Sophie, and my two cousins Kitty and Gypsy invited us to their place in Massachusetts for Thanksgiving. I asked Süleyman to come along but did not tell him where. I wanted the whole thing to be a surprise.
“I cannot tell you how moving it was when Aladdin and Süleyman encountered each other, that instant recognition of something clicked that had no memory.
“ ‘Columbus did not discover America,’ Süleyman told Aladdin.
“ ‘Already other people were living here,’ Aladdin replied. They embraced while the rest of us stared, dumbfounded.
“After that, Süleyman visited me regularly every Wednesday afternoon; when Sam worked in the stockyards to support us, Süleyman and I sat across from each other on one of the Louis Quinze twin couches, one that had belonged to my grandmother, the other to Uncle Iskender—the only pieces of furniture I took with me to America. We had tea. I told him how Esma had given me the middle name of Süleyman. I told him of the time I visited Iskender in the silk plantation shortly before his death.
“He told me how after assuming Esma was married to the Ferret, he had given in to the snow, rescued by the night watchman, and after filling his blood with a warm brew, sauntered down aimlessly to the waterfront, jumped a freighter that took him to New York. Once there, he decided to stay and got a job as a typesetter, invented a special form of typography that brought him wealth but he had never, never found another love.
“I told him stories of our family, the fire at the plantation, the beauty contest, the Spinsters Apartment, the years of the family the poor guy had missed out on—whatever I could think of. With each story our lives became more deeply entwined. Sam and I began calling him grandpa. Then, one day, we were taking a walk in Central Park. An early spring day, daffodils in bloom. Birds and butterflies everywhere. Suddenly, a nightingale landed on Süleyman’s shoulder, then flew away. Süleyman went running after the bird like a boy. I tried stopping him but he ran infinitely faster than I ever could. By the time I reached him, it was too late. His heart had already stopped. But pink roses were blooming out of his fingertips.
“Uncle Aladdin and I had him cremated. I brought his ashes with me. I thought I might go to Izmir where the old house used to be—I’m sure they must have demolished it long ago but still—and scatter them under the Adonis tree, if it still exists. Let me know if you want to feel them. After all he was your father.”
Aida asked Amber to accompany her to Bursa for the ordeal while she told everyone else, including Camilla, she was going in for a hysterectomy but Camilla, keen as a fox, smelled something fishy.
“Why go all the way to Bursa for a hysterectomy,” she probed, “when we have the best doctors here? Doctor Eliksir has sloshed around in her private parts for half a century, for God’s sake. He surely knows his way in.”
“Doctor Eliksir must be a cadaver by now. I mean, last time I saw him he was quaking like he had Parkinson’s and that was some years ago. Besides, she’s not really going for a hysterectomy; she’s getting her face done. And you’re not going to tell a soul!”
“I’ll be damned. Se faire peau neuve,” Camilla shook her head. “Tsk, tsk, tsk. How can the new hide conceal the real scars?”
“Yeah, but it will lift her spirits. She’s been awfully depressed lately, you know? She needs a perk.”
“I know. Not the same since they scraped out her breast. Poor thing. She no longer goes around saying, ‘I was never born and I’ll never die.’ Go, go with her. She needs someone, Amber. Osman, that criminal son of hers, still in Bakirkoy as
ylum. No use to anyone. She’s got no one else. Go, go hold her hand.”
Amber wanted them to cross to Bursa on the ferry as in her childhood; but Aida said, “Don’t be an imbecile. Those boats now carry only the kurban, the sacrificial lambs. Only the livestock takes the ferry now. You want to lead us to the slaughterhouse?” A bucket full of laughter. Aida’s laughter even more infectious than her face. Lingers on one’s skin.
They took a bus instead—supposed to be air-conditioned but wasn’t—that let them off in downtown Bursa, spewing with confusion and panic. What a rude baptism into Asia! Amber thought as the clouds of pollution darkened her heart. No sign of silk at the Koza Han, the silk market, though it was just about harvesting time, no cocoon baskets. Instead, strings of kebab shops lined the main street, mustached man with menacing scimitars spinning animal carcasses oozing with grease, slicing paper-thin pieces of meat. Swords strung with tomatoes, peppers, slices of onion, piled into perfectly balanced pyramids decorated each window. Smell of freshly baked pita. Songs wafted from loudspeakers out of the open windows in waves. And flies, flies stuck to everything.
The facemaker’s house was in an area called Grasshopper near the thermal baths. “Looked like the kind of place one would go to for an illegal abortion in Cleveland,” Amber told Camilla later. A concrete and stone building with Astroturf flooring, partially boarded up to make it seem uninhabited. An air of illicitness stifled the entryway and the rancid smell of meat. Amber had strong misgivings from the beginning. She wondered if the knives were clean, if they knew how to apply anesthesia properly. If they had medical training. Emergency procedures. Insurance.
“So this is where you’ll spend the next couple of weeks?”
“I know what you are thinking but it’s all a front to avoid the sinister taxes. They say it’s pretty nice inside. When I’m finished,” Aida smiled coquettishly, “you’ll be jealous because I’ll look like I’m your sister.”
“You don’t have to try that hard. You already do.”
A woman wearing a white babushka parted the door. Aida gave her name.
“What about her?” the woman asked, meaning Amber.
“She’s my niece. Just accompanied me here.”
“You’re sure you don’t want me to stay for the operation?” Amber asked. “I’d gladly, you know.”
“I’m sure.”
“Call if you need anything on my cell phone, then. If you want me to come and get you at any time, I will. I’ll miss you madly. Good luck, OK?”
Aida lifted her sweater, flashed her evil-eye charms. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’m well protected, as you can see.”
Amber put her arms around her aunt, feeling the abundance of flesh around the love handles, the flat absence of a breast. I’ve got to get the prosthesis back from the customs she thought, even if it means yielding to their corruption. The door closed behind her with an eerie hollowness.
Since her bus was not leaving until late that night, Amber wanted to escape the madness of human chaos downtown. Yes, there was the Emerald Mosque and the Emerald Mausoleum but a glimpse at the snowy peaks of Mount Olympus, the peach orchards, and the scent of wild hyacinth infinitely more enticing.
She told the taxi driver to take her to the İpekçi plantation. He looked at her a bit puzzled but didn’t say a thing. He drove on the paved road like a kamikaze and smoked like a fiend. Turkish rap blasted out of the speakers—a barking chorus of canines. Amber tried putting on the seat belt. There was none.
“Where are you from?” he asked.
“America.”
“Dallas (pronouncing it dull-us)?”
“No, I’m from California.”
“Too bad for you. Dallas very beautiful.”
“You’ve been there?”
“Every Friday at eight. Every Friday night,” he said. “I never miss.”
“How long will it take to get up there?”
“Fifteen, twenty minutes.”
“Used to take five hours on a buggy up Mount Olympus.”
“You’ve been before?”
“Yes, I have.”
She was thirsty. They stopped at a café shaded by an ancient plane tree. Amber ordered some Gaseuse.
“Big sister, Gaseuse disappeared way before I was even conceived,” the waiter told her impatiently. “But we have good Pepsi and Seven-up. We have Diet Coke. Even Snapple.”
A stork stirred on the roof of an old school. In the vast panorama stretching before them, the tip of a minaret encrusted with emerald tiles rose out of a cloud of smog. A small bird-of-prey swept down the mountain and landed on a cypress tree nearby. It was a merlin.
Cadri’s voice came to Amber, slowly enunciating his catechisms as if he were sitting across from her. “Do you know what it’s called?”
“The Emerald Minaret.”
“And next to it?”
“I can’t see.”
“The Emerald Mouseleum. And the city below?”
The city below cluttered and rambling and gray, an opaque, brownish smoke rising out of the silk factories; the city, warped by earthquakes and the sadistic rule of its sultans, was still called the emerald city, but nothing was green, except the tip of the minaret. The mosque and the mausoleum, no longer visible from the mountain, blocked by an accordion of apartment houses.
The driver, jazzed up after consuming a large bottle of warm Coke, took fast turns, sweeping between trucks, brimmed with crates of peaches, goats, and chickens, whizzing from both directions, more ruthless, rude, and dangerously competitive than in Istanbul. An ancient tractor transporting a family with many children had stalled the flow of traffic. Amber shrank, squeezed between wagons on both sides, the tires almost rubbing against each other, the awful smell of burning rubber. A truck passed out of turn, sideswiping the taxi.
The taxi driver stopped the car dead. Gave the arm. “Ayi,” he screamed at the truck driver. “Retarded bear.” “Bear” was the worst possible insult.
“Son of a whore,” the truck driver shouted back.
“Donkey’s son donkey.”
“Animal.”
“Fuck your mom.”
The sounds of angry horns. Drivers creeping out of their vehicles. Taking sides.
“Please, let’s go,” Amber pleaded.
They continued farther up the mountain. The traffic thinned. The taxi turned off a dirt road and came to a halt. “Here we are, abla,” the driver said, pointing at a cinderblock shack. “The İpekçi plantation.”
“Where’s the rest?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is the old İpekçi plantation. Isn’t that where you wanted me to take you?”
No trace of the white oleander hedges, no pavilions with colossal arches and columns shaded by cedars of Lebanon, surrounded by reflection ponds and fountains. Not even traces of charcoal from the fire, hidden underneath thistle and wild hyacinth. Only a modest cinderblock dwelling remained, unkempt, smothered with weeds. An overgrown, untended vegetable garden. Giant eggplants and squash. Neglected mulberry trees scattered here and there, their leaves all but gone; they bore fruit now—long white berries. The silkworms, too, gone.
The fire had razed the plantation right after their visit. Cadri and Camilla had lied to Amber but she had sensed it, all that running about, all those whispers. She had sensed something unspeakable. Then, Cadri’s sudden return to the plantation. She kept asking about Iskender. Cadri said he was fine, just a bit ailing. He’s a very old man after all.
She had discovered Iskender’s obituary in a newspaper, a stack used for toilet paper at a public bathroom. She had recognized his picture and used her rudimentary knowledge of reading to decipher what it said. Even that had not convinced her entirely. Iskender was bigger than life. He was mythical, immortal.
But afterward she had gone into a flurry of a painting spell and painted all the walls in her room and the curtains and the furniture in red. Every night she lay in bed, her eyes open, imagining t
he curtain parting and Iskender coming in through a cloud of fireflies.
But now standing along the ravine, looking at this empty wilderness that surrounded them, it struck her with disturbing certainty that Iskender, the silkworks, the plantation had only existed to paint her childhood, to introduce the colors of love and pain, short-lived but held long. The dreams of a seven-year-old are so vast they could encompass her whole future and determine her journey through life. Iskender’s words came to her. Who would’ve really known?
Shards of clay where she stood, broken pieces of old glass sparkled iridescently. Rotting old rags, rusty pieces of metal, a hole in the ground. Follow the white rabbit. A caterpillar smoking a hookah. Do caterpillars have dreams? The most amazing kind. She stirred the junk with her feet, made a semicircle. It seemed like the lid of a brown bottle at first but so perfectly shaped that she picked it up and brushed off the dirt. She spat on it to make it clearer. The amber egg! Inside, the silkworm trying to escape. Bombyx mori. The night of the fireflies it was lost. She clutched the egg and held it close to her heart. She was not going to let anyone take it away from her now.
Aida returned to the Essence of Honey Street two weeks later, confining herself to her apartment, refusing to see or speak to anyone. When Amber came to bring the prosthesis that she had finally been able to clear from the customs, acquiesced to the bribe, no answer.
The TV was blabbing inside the apartment. Amber rang the bell again. Still no response. She banged on the door. She yelled out. No response.
“Let me in or I’ll call the fire department and climb up to your balcony. I mean it. If I break my neck, it will be all your fault and I’ll sue you for all your billions! Come on, be a sport. Please!”
Mickey Mouse shades, her hair wrapped in a gold turban, dressed in a yellow terry robe, looking as if she had stepped out of a bad Hollywood movie, Aida parted the door. She didn’t say a word but led Amber into the living room. Pursing her lips like the elephant man, she talked in a babyish voice—all that was available to her now. “I know you’re dying to see it,” she said, “so that you can tell me you were right. You’d warned me so.”
Seven Houses Page 21