The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak

  "Leave the sauce," said Mustafa upon seeing that Rose was considering buying a spicy Mexican sauce in a cactus-shaped bottle. "Believe me, Rose, you are not going to need that in Istanbul."

  "Really, is the Turkish cuisine spicy?"

  To that, as to many other painfully obvious questions, Mustafa had only tentative answers. After so many years of complete detachment, his familiarity with Turkish culture, like a parchment drawing stripped by the sun and the wind, had been bit by bit rubbed out. Istanbul had imperceptibly become a ghost city for him, one that had no reality except to appear every now and then in dreams. Much as he used to fancy the city's many quarters and characters and culture, ever since he had settled in the United States he had gradually become numb toward Istanbul and almost everything associated with it.

  Yet it was one thing to move away from the city where he was born, and another to be so far removed from his own flesh and blood. Mustafa Kazanci did not so much mind taking refuge in America forever as if he had no native soil to return to, or even living life always forward with no memories to recall, but to turn into a foreigner with no ancestors, a man with no boyhood, troubled him. Throughout the years, there were times when he had been tempted, in his own way, to go back to see his family and face the person he once had been, but Mustafa had discovered that this was not easy and did not become any easier with age. Finding himself more and more distanced from his past, he had eventually cut all ties to it. It was better this way. Both for him and the ones he had once badly hurt. America was his home now. Yet, if truth be told, more than Arizona or any other place, it was the future that he had chosen to settle in and call his home-a home with its backdoor closed to the past.

  Mustafa was visibly contemplative and withdrawn on the plane. As they took off, he sat very still, and barely changed his position even after they had reached cruising altitude. He felt fatigued, exhausted by this mandatory journey that was only just starting.

  Rose, on the contrary, was full of nervous excitement. She sipped cup after cup of bad airplane coffee, munched the meager pretzels they served, skimmed through the complimentary magazine, watched BridgetJones: The Edge of Reason, though she had seen the movie before, engaged in a long prattle with the old lady sitting next to her (she was going to San Francisco to visit her elder daughter and see her newborn grandchild), and when the latter fell asleep, dedicated herself to attempting to answer the history trivia questions on the video screen in front of her.

  Who suffered the most casualties in World War II?

  a. Japan

  b. Great Britain c. France

  d. Soviet Union

  What was the name of the leading character in George Orwell's 1984?

  a. Winston Smith

  b. Akaky Akakievich c. Sir Francis Drake d. Gregor Samsa

  For the first question Rose confidently answered B, but having no idea whatsoever about the second, she simply guessed A. She would soon be surprised to learn she had the first response wrong and the second one right. If Amy were here next to her, she would have answered both correctly, and certainly not by accident. Her heart ached when she thought about her daughter. For all their conflicts and quarrels, for all her personal failures as a mother, Rose was still confident that she had a good relationship with Amy. As confident as believing Great Britain suffered the most casualties in the Second World War.

  Then they landed in San Francisco.

  Once inside the airport, Rose was swept away by another shopping urge: goodies for the road. So miserable had she been with the crumbs served on the first flight that she now took matters into her own hands. Though Mustafa tried hard to explain to her that Turkish Airlines, unlike the domestic flights in America, would serve a whole bunch of delicacies, she wanted to be on the safe side before embarking on the twelve-hour flight.

  Rose purchased a package of Planters peanuts, cheese crackers, chocolate-chip cookies, two packages of BBQ potato chips, a bunch of honey-and-almond granola bars, and sticks of bubblegum. Long gone was the idea of carb watching just for the sheer possibility of being watchful of something, anything. That was back in the days when she was young and determined enough to prove to the Tchakhmakhchian family that this woman they had stamped as odar, and never seen as one of them, was in fact a very nice and even enviable person. Now, twenty years later, she only smiled at the resentful young woman she once had been.

  Although her bitterness toward her first husband and his family had never really subsided, in time Rose had learned to make peace with her flaws and incapacities, including her widened hips and belly. She had been on diets for such a long time, on and off, she didn't even remember when exactly she had stopped dieting once and for all. Whatever the timing, Rose had managed to discard, though not the pounds, at least the need to shed the pounds. The urge had simply ceased. Mustafa liked her the way she was. He never criticized her looks.

  The announcement for boarding came when they were standing in line at Wendy's, waiting for two Big Bacon Classic combos and a sour cream-and-chive baked potato to be ready, just in case the food they served on Turkish Airlines turned out to be inedible. They grabbed their orders just in time and headed to the gate, where they would have to go through an extra security check reserved for those on intercontinental flights, particularly those heading to the Middle East. Rose watched with worried eyes as a polite but sullen officer searched through the presents she had bought in Tucson. The officer plucked a cactus-shaped pencil intoo the air and waved it to and fro as if wagging a finger at some wrong she was about to commit.

  Once aboard the plane, however, Rose swiftly relaxed, enjoying every detail of the experience-the tiny, chic travel kits they distributed, the matching pillows, blankets, and eye blinds, the continuous service of beverages interrupted by complimentary turkey sandwiches. Before long, the dinner service commenced, rice and oven-roasted chicken with a small salad and stir-fried vegetables. THERE ARE NO PORK PRODUCTS IN OUR FOODS, it stated on a piece of paper that came with the tray. Rose couldn't help but feel guilty about the Wendy's combos.

  "You were right about the food. It's good," she said, giving her husband a shy smile and rotating a bowl of dessert in her hand. "And what's this?"

  "Ashore," Mustafa said, his voice oddly constricted as he looked at the golden raisins decorating the small bowl. "It used to be my favorite dessert. I'm sure my mother cooked a big pot of it when she heard I was coming."

  Much as he tried to refrain from remembering such details, Mustafa couldn't erase the sight of dozens of glass bowls of ashore lined on the shelves inside the refrigerator, ready to be distributed to the neighbors. Unlike other desserts, ashore was always cooked as much for others as for one's own family. Accordingly, it had to be cooked abundantly, each bowl an epitome of survival, solidarity, and cornucopia. Mustafa's fascination with the dessert had become apparent when at the age of seven he was caught wolfing down the bowls he had been entrusted to dole out door to door.

  He still remembered waiting there in the stillness of the apartment building next to their konak with the tray in his hand. There were half a dozen bowls on the tray, each for a different neighbor. First he had nibbled the golden raisins sprinkled on each bowl, confident that if he ate just those nobody would notice. But then he went on to the pomegranate seeds and the slivered almonds used for decoration, and before he knew it, he had eaten everything, consuming six bowls at one sitting. He had hidden the empty bowls in the garden. The neighbors often kept the bowls until they would return them with some other food that they had cooked, oftentimes another ashure. Thus, it had taken the Kazanci family some time to discover Mustafa's misdeed. And when they had, though visibly embarrassed by his greediness, his mother had not scolded him, but from then on she had kept extra bowls of ashure in the fridge, ready for him and him alone.

  "What would you like to drink, sir?" asked the stewardess in Turkish, half bent toward him. She had eyes of sapphire blue and wore a vest of exactly the same color, on the back of which were printed pu
ffy, pasty clouds.

  For a split second Mustafa hesitated, not because he didn't know what he would like to drink but because he didn't know which language to reply in. After so many years he felt much more comfortable expressing himself in English than in Turkish. And yet, it seemed equally unnatural, if not arrogant, to speak in English to another Turk. Consequently, Mustafa Kazanci had up till now solved this personal quandary by avoiding communicating with Turks in the United States. His aloofness toward his fellow countrymen and countrywomen became painfully blatant at ordinary encounters like this one, however. He glanced around, as if searching for an exit, and having failed to find one nearby, finally answered, in Turkish: "Tomato juice, please."

  "I don't have tomato juice." The stewardess gave him a sprightly smile, as if finding great humor in this. She was one of those devoted employees who never lost their faith in the institutions they worked for, capable of saying no regularly with the same cheery face. "Would you care for a Bloody Mary mix?"

  He took the thick, scarlet mixture and leaned back, his forehead broodingly creased, his hazel eyes blurred. Only then did he notice Rose staring at him, scrutinizing his moves carefully, apprehensively. Her expression darkened when she asked, "What is it, honey? You look nervous. Is it because we're going to see your family?"

  Having already discussed this trip exhaustively, there wasn't much to say now. Rose knew Mustafa had no desire to go to Istanbul and was simply yielding to her adamant request to go there together. Though she appreciated that, it is hard to say she felt grateful.

  A wife of nineteen years has the right to ask her husband for an act of kindness once in a blue moon, she thought to herself, as she held Mustafa's

  hand and squeezed it tenderly.

  This gesture caught Mustafa off guard. An immense melancholy surged over him as he inched closer to his wife. From her he had learned two fundamental things about love: first, that unlike what the romantics so pompously argued, love was more a gradual course than a sudden blossoming at first sight, and second, that he was capable of loving.

  Over the years he had grown used to loving her and had found in her a measure of tranquillity. Rose, though highly demanding and difficult at times, was always true to her essence, decipherable and predictable; she was a straightforward chart of energies, every possible reaction of which he was familiar with. She never challenged him, just as she never truly confronted life, and she had a natural talent for adapting to her surroundings. Rose was an amalgam of clashing forces that effortlessly operated on their own, purely out of time, and thereby, out of family genealogies. After meeting her, the family torments that festered inside him had been transformed into a plodding but easygoing love, which was perhaps the closest he could get to real love. Rose might not have been a perfect wife in her first marriage, where she had failed to adapt to an extended Armenian family, but for exactly the same reason she was the ideal haven for a man like him, a man trying to flee his extended Turkish family.

  "Are you OK?" Rose repeated with a slight edge to her tone this time.

  And in this same moment, a wave of anxiety washed over Mustafa Kazanci. He paled as if he couldn't get enough air. He shouldn't be on this plane. He shouldn't go to Istanbul. Rose should go there alone and pick up her daughter and return home… home. How he longed to be back in Arizona now, where everything was canopied by the smooth flow of familiarity.

  "I think I should walk a little," Mustafa said, handing his drink to Rose and standing up to control what was quickly turning into a panic attack. "It's no good sitting still for hours on end."

  As he walked toward the back of the plane down the narrow aisle, he glanced at the passengers in each row, some Turkish, some American, some of other nationalities. Businessmen, journalists, photographers, diplomats, travel writers, students, mothers with newborn babies, complete strangers with whom you shared the same space and could even share the same fate. Some of them were reading books or newspapers, some watching King Arthur slay his enemies on an in-flight video game, while others were immersed in crossword puzzles. A woman ten rows back, a tanned brunette in her midthirties, looked at him intently. Mustafa averted his eyes. He was still a good-looking man, not so much for his tall, burly body, sharp features, and raven hair as for his genteel manners and style of chic dressing. Even though he had attracted the attention of numerous women throughout his life, he had never cheated on his wife. The irony was that the more he steered clear of other women, the more they had been attracted to him.

  While passing the brunette's row, Mustafa noticed uneasily that the woman wore a brashly short skirt and had crossed her legs in such a way that you could easily be fooled into thinking that you might catch a glimpse of her underwear. He didn't like the disconcerting feeling the miniskirt brought on him; heavy, thorny memories he wished he could jettison once and for all; the sight of his younger sister, Zeliha, who had always been fond of such skirts, scurrying on the cobblestones of Istanbul in painfully hurried steps as if to escape her own shadow. As he lurched ahead, Mustafa's eyeballs darted to the other side so as to avoid looking where he shouldn't. Now that he had reached middle age, he sometimes wondered if he had ever liked women at all. Other than Rose, of course. But then again, Rose was not a woman. Rose was Rose.

  Overall he had been a good stepfather to Rose's daughter. Though he truly loved Armanoush, he himself had not wanted to have any children. No kids for him. Nobody knew that deep inside his heart he believed he didn't deserve to have them. He wasn't sure he'd make a good father. Whom was he kidding? He would make a terrible father. Even worse than his own father.

  He recalled the day he and Rose met, not a very romantic encounter perhaps, in a supermarket aisle as he stood with a can of garbanzo beans in each hand. Over the years, they had talked about that day so many times, making fun of every detail they could recollect.. Still they had quite different memories of it: Rose always evoked his shyness and nervousness, while he recalled her glowing blond hair and intrepidness, which initially had intimidated him. Never again had he felt intimidated by Rose. On the contrary, to be with Rose was like abandoning himself to a serene stream, knowing that it would never pull him down, an imperturbable flow with no surprises along the way. It hadn't taken him a long time to start loving her.

  In the mornings Mustafa would watch Rose toil in the kitchen. They both loved the kitchen, although for completely different reasons. Rose loved it because she loved cooking, and it made her feel at home. As for Mustafa, he simply liked to watch her amid the multiple ordinary details, the paper towels that matched the tiles, the mugs sufficient for a garrison, the puddle of chocolate fudge sauce hardening on the counter. He particularly liked to observe her hands as they sliced, stirred, minced, and chopped. Watching her make pancakes was one of the most soothing sights life had ever bestowed upon him.

  At first, his mother and elder sisters kept writing to him, asking him how he was doing, when he was coming to visit them. They asked questions he busily ran away from and kept sending letters and gifts, his mother more than anyone else. Throughout these twenty years he met his mother again only once, not in Istanbul but in Germany. While on a visit to Frankfurt for a conference of geologists and gemologists, he had asked her to fly there to join him. So they met in Germany, mother and son, just as political refugees who couldn't go back to Turkey had been doing for many years.

  By that time his mother had been so desperate to see him that she hadn't even questioned why he didn't come to Istanbul. It was astounding how quickly people managed to get used to such abnormal circumstances.

  When he reached the rear of the plane, Mustafa Kazanci stopped in front of the toilets, right behind two men in line. He heaved a sigh as he thought about the evening before. Rose didn't know that on the way home from work, he had stopped by a corner in Tucson he had secretly been visiting every now and then for the last ten years. The shrine of El Tiradito.

  It was a modest, out-of-the-way place in downtown Tucson, the only shrine in Amer
ica dedicated to the soul of a sinner, reported the historical plaque there. The soul of an excommunicate, a tiradito, an outcast. Today nobody knew much about the details of the story, which went back to the mid-nineteenth century; who exactly the sinner was, what exactly his sin was, and more significantly, how he had ended up with a shrine dedicated to his immoral name. Mexican immigrants knew more about him than others, but then again, they were inclined to share less with outsiders. But Mustafa Kazanci wasn't interested in investigating historical details. Suffice it to know that El Tiradito was a good man, at least no worse than the rest of us, and yet he had committed awful deeds in the past, mistakes base enough to turn him into a sinner. Yet he had been spared and given what many a mortal lacked, a shrine.

  So last night Mustafa had visited the shrine again, tormented by thoughts. Though small, Tucson was large when it came to holy places and he could have gone to a mosque if he desired. The truth is, he wasn't a religious man, and never had been. He needed no temples or holy books. He did not go to the El Tiradito to worship. He went there because that was the one holy place that didn't compel him to change into someone else in order to welcome him. He went there because he liked the feeling of the place, unpretentious and yet imposing and gothic at the same time. The mixture of Mexican spirits with American mores, the dozens of candles and milagros placed by different people, perhaps sinners themselves, the folded papers in the walls where visitors confessed and hid their sins-all appealed to him in his present mood.

  "Are you all right, sir?" It was the stewardess with the sapphire eyes.

  He gave a curt nod and answered, this time in English. "Yes, thank you. I'm OK. Just a bit airsick…."

  Under the velvety light of a streetlamp penetrating the curtains, Auntie Zeliha lay slumped with the cell phone still in her hand, the vodka bottle leaning against her chin, and the cigarette still lit in her other hand.