The Bastard of Istanbul

by Elif Shafak

  "Soon the flood came. Allah commanded: `O sky! Now is the time! Let your water pour down. Do not hold yourself back anymore. Send them your water and wrath!' He then commanded the earth: `O earth, holdd your water, do not absorb it. The water, rose so quickly no one outside the arc could survive."'

  Now the translator's voice rose, for this happened to be Asya's favorite part. She liked to visualize the flood in her mind's eye, washing away villages and civilizations, as well as all the unwanted memories of the past.

  "For days on end they sailed and sailed, it was all water everywhere. Soon food became scarce. There wasn't food enough to make a meal. So Noah ordered: `Bring whatever you have.' And they did, animals and humans, insects and birds, people of different faiths, they brought whatever little they had left. They cooked all the ingredients together and thus concocted a huge pot of ashure." Auntie Banu proudly smiled at the pot on the stove as if it were the same as the one in the legend. "That is the story of this dessert."

  According to Auntie Banu every significant event in world history had taken place on the day of ashure. It was on this day that Allah had accepted Adam's repentance. So was Yunus released by the dolphin that had swallowed him, Rumi encountered by Shams, Jesus taken to the heavens, and Moses given the Ten Commandments.

  "Ask Armanoush to tell us the most important date for the Armenians," Auntie Banu remarked, thinking there was a good chance it could be this very same day.

  As soon as the question was translated, Armanoush replied, "The genocide."

  "I don't think that suits your pattern." Asya smiled at her aunt, skipping the translation.

  It was then that Auntie Zeliha appeared in the kitchen armed with her purse. "All right airport passengers, it's time to go!"

  "I'm coming with you." Asya dropped the scoop on the counter.

  "We've talked about this," Auntie Zeliha responded indifferently. It didn't quite sound like her. A husky, scary tinge infiltrated her tone, as if someone else were speaking but using her mouth. "You stay at home, miss," decreed the stranger.

  What upset Asya most was the fact that she couldn't read Auntie Zeliha's expression. She must have done something wrong to upset her mother, but she had no idea what it could be, unless, of course, it was her very existence.

  "What have I done to her this time?" Asya lifted her hands in despair when Auntie Zeliha and Armanoush had gone.

  "Nothing, my dear; she loves you so," Auntie Banu muttered. "You stay with me and the djinn. We'll all finish decorating the ashure and then go shopping."

  But Asya didn't feel like going shopping. With a sigh she grabbed a handful of pomegranate seeds to sprinkle on the stillundecorated bowls to the side. She scattered the seeds evenly, as if leaving behind a trail of marks to guide some star-crossed fable child homeward. It occurred to her that pomegranate seeds could have been tiny, precious rubies in another life.

  "Auntie." She turned to her eldest aunt. "What happened to that golden brooch that you had? The pomegranate brooch, remember? Where is it?"

  Auntie Banu paled as Mr. Bitter on her left shoulder whispered into her ear: "When do we remember the things we remember? Why do we ask the things we ask?"

  Noah's flood, terrifying though it was, started gently, inaudibly, with a few drops of rain. Sporadic drops, heralding the catastrophe to come, a message noticed by no one. There were dark, gloomy clouds clustered in the sky, so gray and heavy, as if loaded with molten lead full of evil eyes. Each hole in each cloud was an unblinking celestial eye that shed a tear for each sin committed on earth.

  But the day Auntie Zeliha was raped was not a rainy day. As a matter of fact, there was not even a single cloud in the bright blue sky. She remembered the sky on that ill-omened day for years and years to come, not because she had turned her eyes up toward the heavens to pray or beg Allah for help, but because during the struggle there came a time when her head was hanging over the bed, and while unable to budge under his weight, unable to fight him back anymore, her gaze had inadvertently locked on to the sky, only to catch sight of a commercial balloon slowly floating by. The balloon was orange and black, and on it was stenciled in huge letters:

  KODAK.

  Zeliha shivered at the thought of a colossal camera taking pictures of everything happening down here on earth at that moment in time. A Polaroid camera taking a snapshot of a rape inside a room in a konak in Istanbul.

  She had been alone in her room since late morning, enjoying the solitude, which was a rare occasion in their household. When her father had been alive, he wouldn't permit anyone to close the doors of their rooms. Privacy meant suspicious activity; everything had to be visible, in the open. The only place where you could lock the door was the bathroom, and even there someone would knock on the door if you lingered inside for too long. It was only after her father's death that Zeliha was able to close her door and retreat into herself. Neither her sisters nor her mother recognized her need to shut off from the world. From time to time Zeliha fantasized how fabulous it would be to move out and have a place of her own.

  Early this morning the Kazanci women had left home to visit the grave of Levent Kazancl, but Zeliha had excused herself. She didn't want to go to the cemetery with the whole family. She'd rather go there alone, sit on the dusty ground, and ask her father several questions he had left unanswered in his lifetime. Why did he always have to be so harsh and unloving toward his own flesh and blood? Zeliha wanted to know. She also wanted to ask him if he had any idea how much his ghost still haunted them-to this day they couldn't help but lower their voice sometimes during the day, afraid of disturbing Daddy with their presence. Levent Kazanci didn't like noise, especially children's clamor. As toddlers, they had to talk in whispers. Being a Kazanci child first and foremost meant learning the meaning of dad, not as in "Daddy" but as in "DAD": Deliberate Ache Deferment. The principle of DAD was applied to every moment of their lives. If a child happened to trip and cut herself in a room next to his, for instance, she would hold in her wail, press her hand tightly on the wound, tiptoe downstairs into the kitchen or into the garden, make sure she was far enough away not to be heard, and only then, only there, let loose a painful cry. Underlying it all was an alluring but never-realized expectationthat if you behaved correctly, Father wouldn't get angry.

  Every evening when their father returned from work, the children would assemble in front of the table before dinner, waiting to be inspected. He never asked them directly if they had behaved well during the day. Instead he lined them up like a small regiment, and stared at each of their faces for varying amounts of time: Banu (more worried for her siblings than for herself, always the protective elder sister), Cevriye (biting her lips so as not to cry), Feride (eyes rolling nervously), Mustafa, the only son (hoping to make his way out of this miserable group, still assuming he was his father's favorite), and the youngest, Zeliha (a subtle sourness welling up in her heart). They waited until Father finished his soup, and then gradually asked one or two or three… or sometimes, if they were lucky, all of them at the same time to join thetable.

  Zeliha did not mind her father's repeated scoldings or even his regular spankings as much as she did these predinner inspections. It pained her to wait there by the table to be looked over, as if whatever wrong she might have committed during the day was written on her forehead with ink so invisible only Father could read it. "Why can't you ever get anything right?" Levent Kazanci asked each time he read a misdemeanor on one of the children's foreheads and decided to punish them all for it.

  It was almost impossible to correlate this Levent Kazanci with the man he developed into once he stepped outside the house. Anyone who ran into him outside the konak would have taken him for an icon of reliability, considerateness, togetherness, and, righteousness, the kind of man each one of his daughters' closest friends dreamed of marrying one day. Inside the house, however, his kindness was reserved for strangers alone. Just like he took his shoes off as soon as he entered the house and put on his slippers, just
as naturally he transformed from a gentle bureaucrat to an authoritarian father. Petite-Ma once said the reason why he was so strict with his children was because he had suffered as a child, having been abandoned by his own mother.

  Sometimes Zeliha couldn't help but think it had been fortunate that her father died so early, like all other males in their ancestry. A man as dominant as Levent Kazanci would have probably not enjoyed his old age, becoming weak and ill and in need of his children's mercy.

  If she went to her father's grave, Zeliha knew she would want to talk to him, and if she talked to him, she might cry, cracking like a tea glass under an evil eye. But even the thought of crying in front of others was enough to repel her. Recently she had promised herself she would never become one of those weepy women and that whenever she needed to shed tears, she would do it alone. Hence, on that rainless day twenty years ago, Zeliha had chosen to stay at home.

  She had spent most of the day lying in bed, browsing through magazines and daydreaming. Next to the bed stood a razor blade she shaved her legs with and a bottle of rosewater lotion she had applied afterward to soothe her skin. If her mother had seen this, she would have been extremely upset. Mother believed women should wax all their bodily hair but never shave. Shaving was for men only. Waxing was a womanly collective ritual. Twice a month the Kazanci women gathered in the living room to wax their legs. First they melted a clump of wax on the stove, which gave off a sweet smell like candy. Then they all sat on the carpet and applied the hot, sticky substance to their legs, chatting all the while. When the wax stiffened they peeled it off. Sometimes they all went to the local hamam and waxed their legs there on the huge marble slab under the steam. Zeliha hated the hamam, that all-women space, just as she hated the ritual of waxing. She preferred to shave with a razor; it was quick, simple, and private.

  Zeliha dangled her legs over the bed and checked herself in the mirror across the way. She put some more lotion in her palm and as she slowly smeared the lotion on her skin, she studied her body carefully, admiringly. She was cognizant of her beauty and did not try to conceal it. Mother said beautiful women had to be twice as modest and careful with men. Zeliha thought that was sheer claptrap from a woman who had never been beautiful herself.

  Languidly, Zeliha walked across the room and put a cassette into the tape player. It was an alla turca album by one of her favorite singers, a transsexual with a divine voice. The singer had started her career as a man, playing the hero in melodramatic movies; eventually he had undergone surgery to become a woman. She always wore flamboyant costumes topped with glittery accessories and lots of jewels, and so would Zeliha, if she had that much money. Zeliha adored her and had all of her albums. It was time the singer made a new album but she had recently been banned by the military, which was still controlling the country although it had been three years since the coup d'etat. As to why the generals didn't like the idea of a transsexual singer on stage, Zeliha had a theory.

  "It's because they feel threatened by her presence." She winked at Pasha the Third, who was curled on the bed like a heavy cushion of pure white fur, watching her with two narrow slits of brilliant green eyes. "Her voice is so celestial and her costumes so ostentatious, I am sure they are worried that when she appears on TV, nobody will listen to the generals with their husky voices and frog green uniforms. Can you imagine? What could be worse than a military takeover? A military takeover that goes unnoticed!"

  It was then that there was a knock on the door.

  "Are you talking to yourself, silly?" Mustafa exclaimed, poking his head inside. "Turn that awful music down!"

  His hazel eyes glittering with the fervor of youth, his dark hair overly brilliantined and combed back, he could be called handsome if it weren't for the tic he had developed Allah knows when. He had the habit of tilting his head to the right when speaking, a brusque, mechanical movement that intensified when he was especially nervous or around strangers. Sometimes others mistook this tic for shyness, but Zeliha thought it was nothing but a sign of sheer insecurity.

  Propping herself up on one elbow, she shrugged. "I can listen to whatever I want, the way I want."

  But instead of quarreling with her or slamming the door shut behind him, as he had done numerous times before, he paused, as if distracted by a thought. "Why do you wear these short skirts?"

  The question was so unexpected Zeliha looked at him stunned, only now detecting the hazy veil in his stare. This year more than ever, she thought, he has been working himself into a jerk. She uttered the last word aloud: "Jerk!"

  Pretending not to hear that, Mustafa scanned the room. "Is that my razor blade over there?"

  "Yes," Zeliha confessed. "I was going to put it back."

  "What did you do with my razor blade?"

  "That's none of your business," she said, although with some

  hesitation.

  "None of my business?" his brow deepened further. "You sneak into my room, steal my razor, shave your legs so that you can show them to all the men in the neighborhood, and then tell me it's none of my business. Well, I'll tell you what. You are damn wrong, miss! It is my business to make sure that you behave."

  Zeliha's eyes brightened a little. "Why don't you go and busy yourself with something else? Go and masturbate!" she snapped.

  Mustafa blushed. He looked at his sister with venom in his eyes.

  It had become clear recently that he had trouble relating to women. Even though he had grown up among women of all age groups and was used to being the center of their attention, his experience with the opposite sex still lagged dramatically behind his male peers. Though twenty by now, Mustafa felt like he was still stuck in that dangerous threshold between boyhood and manhood. He could neither return to the former nor leap into the latter. All he knew about the threshold was that it unnerved him and all he knew about being unnerved was that he didn't like it. He abhorred the carnal cravings of his body, and yet at the same time he was lured to them. In the past he had succeeded in holding his impulses back, unlike the other boys in his class, who would masturbate continually. Between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, he had managed to suppress what he named "it," managed not to masturbate. But last year, after failing his college entrance exam, years of selfcastigation and self-loathing had provoked a backlash in him and the urge had come back even stronger, in the form of IT.

  IT came upon him everywhere, any time of the day. In the bathroom, in the basement, in the toilet, under the bedsheet, in the living room, and once in a while, when he sneaked into his youngest sister's room when there was no one around, in her bed, on her chair, by her desk…. Like a capricious patriarch, IT demanded absolute obedience. No matter how much he obeyed, Mustafa would never use his right hand. The right hand was reserved for clean things, clean and consecrated. It was with his right hand that he'd touch the Qur'an, hold a rosary, and open closed doors. It was with his right hand that he would take the old people's hands to kiss. As blessed as the right hand was, the left hand was reserved for the abominable. He could masturbate with his left hand only.

  Once he had a dream where he masturbated in front of his father. There was no expression on his father's face; he just watched from his place at the dinner table.

  The last time Mustafa had seen his father stare at him like that he was eight and being circumcised. He remembered that miserable boy, lying in a huge, showy satin bed with presents all around, waiting to have it cut, surrounded by relatives and neighbors, some chatting, some eating, some dancing, while others were busy teasing him; seventy people there to celebrate his initiation from boyhood to manhood. It was on that day, right after the circumcision, right when he had let out an awful cry, that Father approached him, kissed him on the cheek, and whispered in his ear: "Did you ever see me cry, my son?" Mustafa shook his head. No, nobody had ever seen Father cry. "Did you ever see your mom cry, my son?" Mustafa nodded heartily. Mom cried all the time. "Good." Levent Kazanci smiled gently at his son. "Now that you are a man, behave like a ma
n."

  Whenever he masturbated he would never dare pull his pants down fully, not only out of fear of getting caught by someone in the house, but because he was irritated by the ghost of his father still whispering in his ears that same sentence over and over again. Suddenly in the past year his body had prevailed over not only his will but also his father's inspecting gaze. Like some contagious diseasefor he was sure this had to be some sort of a disease-he started masturbating at all hours of the day and night. Stop it. Can't stop it. Stop it. Can't stop it. In dreams he would see himself caught by his parents while in the act. They would ram against the door, break it open, and bust him red-handed. Amid screams and wails, Mom would kiss and pat him on the back, while Father would spit on him and spank him hard. Where Father would leave bruises, Mom would rub in a_speck of ashure, as if the dessert was some sort of an ointment. He woke up disgusted and shivering each time, sweat beaded on his forehead, and to calm down he would masturbate.

  Zeliha knew none of this when she scoffed at him.

  "You have no shame," Mustafa said. "You don't know how to talk to your elders. You don't care when men whistle at you on the streets. You dress like a whore and then expect respect?"

  Zeliha broke into a scornful smile. "What's the matter? Or are you scared of whores?"

  Mustafa just looked at her.

  A month ago he had discovered the most infamous street in Istanbul. He could have gone to other places, where he could have found less inexpensive, less shoddy, and less disgraceful sex, but he deliberately went there-the cruder and the uglier the better. Dingy houses lined side by side, the smells and the stains and the lewd jokes men cracked less because they were humorous than because they needed a laugh; prostitutes in each room on every floor, prostitutes who perhaps never refused your money but all the same would disparage your performance. He had returned from there feeling filthy and weak.