The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak

  There was a time when she and Barsam had loved each other. A time when Barsam did not even notice, and certainly did not mind, whatever food she placed on the table, for his gaze would be elsewhere, locked into hers, immersed in love. Rose's cheeks warmed at the recollection of these prurient moments but instantly chilled as she remembered the very next phase. Alas, in next to no time that horrendous family of his had entered onto the stage only to dominate it forever, and ever since then theiY affection for each other had worn thin. If that Tchakhmakhchian gang had not poked their aquiline noses into her marriage, Rose thought, her husband would still be by her side. "Why did you constantly snoop into our marriage?" she asked Shushan, whom she now imagined sitting in her armchair, counting the stitches in her knitting, making yet another baby blanket for her granddaughter. But her mother-in-law did not respond. Frustrated, Rose repeated the question. That, indeed, was the second most common side effect of postmarital chronic resentment: It made you not only talk to yourself, but also made you obstinate with others. Even if you might be dangerously close to the breaking point, you would never bend. "Why didn't you ever leave us alone?" Rose posed the same question one by one to,her husband's three sisters-Auntie Surpun, Auntie Zarouhi, and Auntie Varsenig-while she glared at the jars of baba-ghanoush on the grocery shelves.

  Rose left the ethnic foods section, making a sharp, swift U-turn into the next aisle. Inspired by her anger and melancholy, she moved down the aisle of Canned Food and Dry Beans from one end to the other, almost bumping into a young man standing there. He was eyeing the shelf where different brands of garbanzo beans were lined up. That guy surely wasn't there a second ago! thought Rose. He seemed to have simply materialized, as if zoomed down from the sky. He had fair skin, a slim, well-proportioned body, hazel eyes, and a pointed nose, which made him look attentive and studious. His sable hair was short. Rose suspected that she had seen him before, but where and when she couldn't remember.

  "They are good, aren't they?" Rose asked. "Unfortunately not everyone is sensible enough to appreciate them…."

  Yanked out of his meditation, the young man flinched, turned toward the rosy-faced, plumpish woman who had mushroomed by his side, and still clutching in each hand a can of garbanzo beans, blushed. Having been caught by surprise, he could not easily get his masculine guard back.

  "I am sorry…. " he said, and tilted his head to the right, a nervous tic, which Rose interpreted as a sign of shyness.

  She smiled to show the young man that she pardoned him and then looked at his face without so much as a blink, making him even more nervous. Besides the suave-bunny expression that she now wore, Rose had three other animal-like looks inspired by Mother Nature, which she interchangeably employed for all her dealings with the opposite sex: her staunch-canine expression, one that she chose when she wanted to convey complete dedication; her impish-feline expression, which she used when she wanted to seduce; and her pugnacious-coyote expression, which she wore whenever she was criticized.

  "Oh, I know you!" All of a sudden Rose beamed an ear-to-ear grin, satisfied with her memory. "I was racking my brain wondering where I'd seen you before. Now I know! You're from the U of A, right? I'll bet you like chicken quesadillas!"

  The young man glanced up the aisle, as if he were considering running away at any moment but couldn't figure out toward which direction.

  "I work part-time at the Cactus Grill"-Rose tried her best to help him comprehend-"the big restaurant on the second floor inside the Student Union, remember? I am usually behind the counter where the hot food is served-you know, omelettes and quesadillas. It's a part-time job, of course; it doesn't pay much but what are you gonna do? This is just for the time being. What I really want is to become a primary schoolteacher."

  The young man was now quizzically studying Rose's face as if to memorize every detail for future reference.

  "Anyway, that is where I must have seen you before," Rose concluded. She narrowed her eyes and moistened her bottom lip, switching to her feline expression. "I dropped out when I had a baby last year, but now I'm trying to go back to college…."

  "Oh, really?" the guy said, but then instantly shut his mouth. If Rose had had any previous experience with foreigners she would have detected the foreigner's introduction reflex-the fear of engaging in a conversation and not expressing the right words at the right time or with the correct pronunciation.

  However, ever since she was a teenager Rose harbored a propensity to assume everything around her was either for or about or against her. Accordingly, she interpreted the silence as a sign of her own inability to make a decent introduction. To compensate for the error, she reached out her hand.

  "Oh, I am sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Rose."

  "Mustafa…" The young man swallowed, his Adam's apple moving up and down.

  "Where are you from?" Rose asked.

  "Istanbul," he answered curtly.

  Rose raised her eyebrows and a trace of panic crossed her face. If Mustafa had any previous experience with provincials, he could detect the provincial's information reflex-the fear of not having enough knowledge of geography or world history. Rose was trying to recall where on earth Istanbul was. Was it the capital of Egypt or perhaps somewhere in India…? She frowned in confusion.

  However, ever since he was a teenager Mustafa harbored a fright of losing his grip on time and his appeal for women. So he interpreted the gesture as a sign of having bored Rose by failing to come up with anything interesting to say, and to compensate for the lack, he hastened to cut off the conversation.

  "Nice meeting you, Rose," he said, drawling his vowels with a mellow but obvious accent. "I have to go now…."

  Very quickly he put back both cans of garbanzo beans, stared at his watch, grabbed his basket, and walked off. Before he disappeared, Rose heard him mumble "bye-bye" and then, as if echoing himself, another "bye-bye." Then he was gone.

  Having thus lost this mysterious companion, Rose suddenly realized how much time she had squandered in the supermarket. She grabbed a few cans of garbanzo beans, including the ones Mustafa had left behind, and hurried to the checkout. She passed through the aisle of journals and books, and it was there that she caught sight of something she sorely needed: The Great World Atlas. Underneath the title it said: A World Atlas of Flags, Facts, and Maps/Helping Parents, Students, Teachers, and Travelers Worldwide. She grabbed the book, pinpointed "Istanbul" in the index, and once having found the relevant page, looked at the map to see where it was.

  Outside in the parking lot she found the ultramarine 1984 Jeep Cherokee heating up under the Arizona sun while her baby girl slept inside.

  "Armanoush, wake up sweetheart, Mama's back!"

  The baby moved but did not open her eyes, not even when Rose rained kisses all over her face. Her soft brown hair was tied with a golden ribbon almost as big as her head and she was wearing a fluffy green outfit adorned with salmon stripes and purplish buttons. She looked like a dwarf Christmas tree decorated by someone in a state of frenzy.

  "Are you hungry? Mama is gonna cook you real American food tonight!" Rose exclaimed as she put the plastic bags in the backseat, reserving a package of coconut marshmallows for the road. She checked her hair in the rear view mirror, put on a cassette that was her favorite these days, and grabbed a handful of marshmallows before she started the engine.

  "Did you know that the guy I've just met in the supermarket is from Turkey?!" Rose said, as she winked at her daughter in the rear view mirror. Everything about her baby seemed just about right: her button nose, her round hands, her feet, everything except her name. Her husband's family had wanted to name the baby girl after her grandmother's mother. How deeply Rose lamented not having named her something less outlandish, like Annie or Katie or Cyndie, instead of accepting the name her mother-in-law had come up with. A child was supposed to have a childlike name and "Armanoush" was anything but that. The name sounded so… so mature and cold, appropriate for a grown-up, perhaps. Did R
ose have to wait until her baby girl had reached forty to use her name without it pricking her tongue? Rose rolled her eyes and ate another marshmallow. Then and there she had a revelation: She could call her daughter "Amy" from now on, and as part of the baptism ceremony, she sent the baby a kiss.

  At the next intersection they waited for the light to turn green. Rose drummed on the steering wheel, accompanying Gloria Estefan.

  No modern love for me, it's all a hustle

  What's done is done, now it's my turn to have fun.

  Mustafa placed the few items he had selected in front of the cashier: Kalamata olives, frozen spinach and feta pizza, a can of mushroom soup, a can of cream of chicken soup, and a can of chicken noodle soup. Until he came to the United States, he had never had to cook in his life. Every time he labored in the small kitchen in his two bedroom student apartment, he felt like a dethroned king living in exile. Long gone were the days when he was served and fed by a devoted grandmother, mother, and four sisters. Now, dish washing, room-cleaning, ironing, and especially shopping were a huge burden for him. It wouldn't be as difficult if he could only rid himself of the feeling that someone else should be doing these things for him. He was no more used to doing chores than he was to being alone.

  Mustafa had a housemate, an undergrad student from Indonesia who spoke very little, worked hard, and listened to odd tapes, such as Sounds of Mountain Streams or Songs of the Whales, in order to go to sleep every night. Mustafa had hoped that if he had a housemate, he would feel less lonely in Arizona, but the result had been quite the opposite. At night, alone in his bed and thousands of miles away from his family, he couldn't fight back the voices inside his head. Voices that questioned and blamed him for who he was. He slept poorly. He spent many nights watching old comedies or surfing on the Internet. It helped. The thoughts stopped at those times. Yet they would return with daylight. Walking from home to the campus, between classes or during lunchtime, Mustafa would catch himself thinking about Istanbul. How he wished he could remove his memory, restart the program, until all of the files were deleted and gone.

  Arizona was to have spared Mustafa the bad omen that fell upon every man in the Kazanci family. But he didn't believe in such things. Drifting away from all those superstitions, evil-eye beads, coffeecup readings, and fortune-telling ceremonies in his family was less a conscious choice than an involuntary reflex. He thought they were all part of a dark and complicated world peculiar to women.

  Women were a mystery anyway. Having grown up with so many women, it was odd that he had felt so estranged from them all of his life.

  Mustafa had grown up as the only boy in a family where the men died too soon and too unexpectedly. He experienced growing sexual desires while surrounded by sisters who were taboo to a fantasy life. Nevertheless, he slipped into unspeakable thoughts about women. At first Mustafa fell for girls who rejected him. Terrified that he would be rejected, ridiculed, and reviled, he turned to yearning for the female body from a distance. This year he had looked angrily at the photos of top models in glossy American magazines, as if to absorb the excruciating fact that no woman this perfect would ever desire him.

  Mustafa would never forget the fierce look on Zeliha's face when she called him "a precious phallus." The embarrassment of that moment still burned through him today. He knew Zeliha could see behind his forced masculinity to the real story of his upbringing. She recognized that he had been pampered and spoon-fed by an oppressed mother, intimidated and beaten by an oppressive father. "In the end you have become both narcissistic and insecure," she had said. Could things have been different between Zeliha and him? Why did he feel so rejected and unloved with so many sisters around and a doting mother by his side?

  Zeliha always mocked Mustafa and his mother always admired him. He wanted to be just an ordinary man, good and fallible at the same time. All he needed was compassion and a chance to be a better person. If only he had a woman who loved him, everything would be different. Mustafa knew he had to make it in America not because he wanted to attain a better future but because he had to dispose of his past.

  "How you doin'?" The young woman at the cash register smiled at him.

  That was one thing Mustafa still had not gotten used to. In America everyone asked everyone how they were doing, even complete strangers. He understood that it was a way of greeting more than a real question. But then he didn't know how to greet back with the same graceless ease.

  "I am fine, thank you," he said. "How are you?"

  The girl smiled. "Where are you from?"

  One day, Mustafa thought, I will speak in such a way that no one will ask this rude question because they will not believe, even for a minute, that they are talking to a foreigner. He picked up his plastic bag and walked outside.

  A Mexican American couple crossed the sidewalk, she pushing a baby in a stroller, he holding the hand of a toddler. They walked unhurriedly while Rose watched them with envy. Now that her marriage was over, every couple she saw seemed blissfully content.

  "You know what? I wish your grandma-the-witch could have seen me flirting with that Turk. Can you imagine her horror? I cannot think of a worse nightmare for the proud Tchakhmakhchian family! Proud and puffed up… proud and.." Rose didn't finish her sentence because she was distracted by a most puckish thought. The light turned green, the cars that were lined up in front of her lurched forward, and the van behind her honked. But Rose remained motionless. The fantasy was so delicious she could not move. Her mind wallowed in many images, while her eyes beamed a ray of pure rage at an oblique angle. That, indeed, was the third most common side effect of postmarital chronic resentment: It not only made you talk to yourself and be obstinate with others, but it also made you quite irrational. Once a woman felt justifiable resentment, the world turned upside down, and unreason appeared perfectly reasonable.

  Oh sweet vengeance. Recovery was a long-term plan, an investment that paid off over time. But retaliation was quick to act. Rose's first instinct was to do something, anything, to exasperate her ex-mother-in-law. And there existed on the surface of the earth only one thing that could annoy the women of the Tchakhmakhchian family even more than an odar: a Turk!

  How interesting it would be to flirt with her ex-husband's archenemy. But where would you find a Turkish man in the midst of the Arizona desert? They didn't grow on cacti, did they? Rose chuckled as her facial expression changed from recognition to one of intense gratitude. What a lovely coincidence that fortune had just introduced her to a Turk. Or was it not a coincidence?

  Singing along with the song, Rose moved forward. But instead of going straight on her route she veered to the left, made a full U-turn, and once in the other lane, sped in the opposite direction.

  Primitive love, I want what it used to be. In next to no time the ultramarine 1984 Jeep Cherokee had reached Fry's Supermarket's parking lot. I don't have to think, right now you've got me at the brink. This is good-bye for all the times I cried…

  The car moved in a semicircle, then maneuvered crosswise, thus reaching the main exit of the supermarket. Just when Rose was about to lose any hope of finding the young man, she spotted him patiently waiting at the bus stop with a flimsy plastic bag next to him."Hey, Mostapha!" Rose yelled, cocking her head from the half-open window. "Wanna ride?"

  "Sure, thanks." Mustafa nodded and made a frail attempt to correct her pronunciation: "It's Mus-ta-fa ".

  Inside the car, Rose smiled.."Mustapha, meet my daughter, Armanoush…. But I call her Amy! Amy this is Mustapha, Mustapha this is Amy…."

  While the young man beamed at the sleepy baby, Rose studied his face for signs of recognition but couldn't find any. So, she decided to give him another hint, this time a more revealing one: "My daughter's full name is Amy Tchakhmakhchian."

  If the words had inspired any negative recognition, Mustafa's face didn't show it. So Rose felt the need to repeat, just in case it hadn't been understood the first time: "Armanoush Tchakh-makhchi-an! "

  It was o
nly then that the young man's hazel eyes flickered, though not exactly in the way Rose had anticipated.

  "Chak-mak-chi-an… yak-mak-q…! Hey, that sounds like Turkish!" he exclaimed happily.

  "Well, as a matter of fact, it's Armenian," Rose said. Suddenly she felt insecure. "Her father-I mean, my ex-husband-" She swallowed hard as if trying to get rid of some sour taste. "He was, I mean, he is, Armenian."

  "Oh yeah?" he said nonchalantly.

  He didn't get it, did he? Rose wondered to herself as she chewed the inside of her mouth. Then, as if breathing out a suppressed hiccup long welling up in her throat, she let out a whoop of laughter. But he is cute… very cute…. He will be my sweet vengeance! she thought.

  "Listen," Rose said. "I don't know if you like Mexican art but there is a group exhibition opening tomorrow night. If you don't have other plans we could go to it and grab a bite afterward.""Mexican art…?" Mustafa paused.

  "People who have seen it elsewhere say it's really good," Rose said. "So what do you say…. Would you like to come with me?"

  "Mexican art…!" Mustafa echoed with confidence. "Sure, why not?"

  "Awesome." Rose cheered up. "It's so nice to meet you, Mostapha," she said, distorting his name again. But this time Mustafa felt no need to correct her.

  THREE

  Sugar