Riza called to me through his cigarette. ‘Come in and get dry for a bit. Mete’s taking you for dinner tonight.’
‘Are you?’ I pulled down my hood and went inside. Riza chucked me an orange from a box on a shelf. ‘Good.’ I cupped it in my hands.
‘Yes. Do you want to? My back hurts and I don’t have the energy to stand up any longer. Riza can manage for the rest of the evening. It’s been quiet.’
‘And my uncle and his brother are coming over soon.’ Riza slid down the ladder and sat on the bottom rung. ‘So we’ll close up and take care of everything.’
Mete lifted a sack of rice into the shop and winced.
I rubbed his lower back. ‘Here? Is that better?’
‘Yes, just there. Perfect.’
‘Come on, then. What shall we have?’
‘Hey, have you been crying?’
‘Oh, but it’s all right. I’ll explain when we sit down some?where.’
‘So let’s go and cheer up. Somewhere nice in town, like Çiçek Pasaji? Or would you prefer the pide place round the corner?’
‘The one behind the mosque with the hat man? Yeah, let’s go there.’
The hat man is young and stands outside the pide house every evening selling navy woollen hats. Next to him an old man sits at a small table selling tickets for the Milli Piyango, the national lottery. The Milli Piyango man always has a small crowd of people around him, but the hat man never seems to sell a single hat. Even when it is snowing, he stands there with a hat on his head, another on his right hand, and a pile at his feet.
I took Mete’s hand. As we walked along the main road, stepping around heaps of light brown mud, I looked down at our legs, two pairs of jeans taking steps in perfect time. Mete’s legs were several centimetres longer than mine, slightly fatter. Our march was quiet, rhythmic. I moved my hand up and down his back, slowly making circles and letting my fingers find the flex of his muscles as he walked. Owen was in my head, sliding from one side to the other as I moved. This was my world, here with Mete in Istanbul, but I was slipping out of it. Perhaps I should return to my hometown. Perhaps I should stay here.
The hat man leaned against the wall of the restaurant. He spun a hat on the tips of his fingers. When he saw us, he came forward and offered us two hats for the price of one but we declined. The Milli Piyango man sat at his small wooden table, licking his fingers and arranging lottery tickets. We passed them both and went inside.
The restaurant was long and narrow with eight or ten white-clothed tables. The brick walls were whitewashed and covered with photographs of Istanbul. Behind the counter there was a large photograph of Atatiirk. Our favourite table was at the back, near the kitchen, where it was warmest. Two or three waiters greeted us. One stepped forward to pull back our chairs. ‘Good evening. Welcome.’
‘Evening, my friend.’ Mete beamed at him.
The waiter splashed lemon-scented cologne over our hands. We rubbed our palms together and ordered pide, mine with eggs and cheese, Mete’s with beef, and ayran to drink. When the waiter left us, Mete pulled something from my hair and laughed. ‘Is this why you were upset? Did you fall out of a tree?’
He held out a small yellow leaf.
‘Ah, that belongs to Elif. We must save it for her collection. I don’t know what they’re for but she chooses them very care?fully.’
‘Then I’ll put it here.’ Mete took his wallet from his pocket and slipped the leaf into the plastic pocket where he keeps
photographs of Elif and me. ‘But what’s wrong, Isabel-Misabel? Ne oldu?’ What happened?
‘I went to the Internet café earlier to check my emails.’
‘Was there a message from Bernadette?’ Mete asked. ‘I wonder if she got to Greece safely.’
Bernadette had left late the night before. I’d taken her on the bus to the airport.
‘Nothing yet. She should be flitting around between islands by now. She’ll be taking photographs probably.’
‘Did she like Turkey?’ Mete was anxious that his country had made a good impression on my friend from home. ‘What did she think of Istanbul? Did you take her on the boat trip? I forgot to ask.’
‘I did. And she loved all of it. I think she was sorry to leave. She was nervous of travelling by herself. There was someone with her on the flight, a friend who was visiting Turkey too, but she’s on her own now.’
‘If she was fine in Istanbul she should be fine anywhere. This is such a difficult city. I mean, I love it but, hey, it’s Istanbul.’
‘Did I tell you she used to be an opera singer?’
‘Bernadette told me. I heard her singing in the morning when you went out to get the bread.’
‘That’s a good sign. I never once heard her sing when I was living with her. She refused to admit she could sing at all. She was in a pretty bad way. In those days she could never have travelled abroad. It was hard for her to get to the end of the street and back.’
‘She was singing very quietly but she didn’t seem to mind that I’d heard her.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘But one and a half days in Istanbul isn’t enough. We’ll have to persuade her to come back again for longer. I hardly had a chance to talk to her. Sey, Isabel, it’s good for you to have friends from home here. Why don’t you have more visitors from London?’
‘It’s a long way for people to come. And I’m not in touch with many people now. I suppose I could invite Maggie to visit us soon. She’d like to spend time with Elif.’
‘Yes, that’s a good idea. You should call her “aunt”. It’s more respectful.’
I laughed. ‘I can’t, not to her face. She’d hate it.’
‘I don’t know if I could live outside Turkey. I think I would die if I was away from home for long. If I didn’t die, my parents would die.’
‘Why would they die?’
‘I just know they would. They have to see me often and talk to me every day. It’s the way we are in Turkey.’
Mete’s parents live far away in Izmir. He doesn’t see them often but he calls at least once every day. We have to stop at telephone kiosks when we are out so that he can stop to say hello and tell them he loves them.
‘But, Mete, I was going to tell you something else. I had some bad news in an email from Maggie. Someone has died.’
Mete stared at me. I had frightened both of us.
‘Who?’
‘It’s all right.’ I put my hand over his. ‘I mean, it’s not all right but it wasn’t someone very close to me. A friend from years ago. I was at school with him. It was a car accident, apparently. I want to go to the funeral.’
‘Yes, yes, of course. You must. And I’ll come with you.’
‘Oh, Mete. You don’t need to.’
‘It’s all right. I don’t mind.’
Mete could not come with me. Mete wasn’t a part of my earlier life and I loved him for this. ‘We can’t afford it, can we?’ I said, and it was true. ‘Not for Elif to come too.’
‘It would be expensive. I don’t know how we would find the money.’
We locked our feet together under the table and I watched the waiters come and go through the kitchen door as Mete turned his eyes to the street. Our food arrived and we didn’t speak for a while. I picked up the long strips of warm bread with melted cheese and chewed them slowly. I liked the feeling of Mete’s feet around mine and I squeezed them tighter.
‘Mete, I think I should go to the funeral, even if I go alone.’
‘Do you really want to? You said he wasn’t a close friend.’
‘I only need to stay one night. Just a day to say goodbye to my friend, and then a night to get used to it all.’
‘Are you sure this isn’t because of Bernadette?’
‘What do you mean?’
Mete watched the hat man for a few seconds, then flicked his eyes back to me. ‘You’ve seen Bernadette and you’re homesick. You want to visit your town, maybe live there again. I understand it, if it’s true. You don
’t have to make up a story about someone dying. We just have to talk about it.’
‘Mete, I’m not lying.’ I must have shouted this for other diners looked across. Mete blushed. ‘It has nothing to do with Bernadette and I wouldn’t make up something like that. For God’s sake.’
I was astonished that Mete had invented such a sophisticated scenario, so quickly, and yet it was so far from the truth.
‘All right. All right. I’m sorry. Don’t get angry. How’s your food?’
‘It’s fine.’ The bread was hardening around the edges. I could never eat it fast enough. I frowned and drank a mouthful of salty ayran.
He has never been here, to the moors. Though we have had holidays in London together, he has never been north, hardly met anyone from my life before I knew him, just Maggie and a few London friends. He doesn’t know much about me and he doesn’t seem to mind, though he doesn’t know how little he knows.
On the way home, he apologized.
‘I feel bad, Isabel, because you’ve met everyone in my family. You’ve done so much to help us, looking after the shop with me when you could be doing something more exciting. I wish I could know your family, see where you were born.’
‘We can go for a week or two later in the year, maybe even at Christmas.’
I said this knowing that, even by Christmas, it was unlikely that I could stand to take Mete back there.
‘What about your parents? Why don’t you even know where they are?’
‘I lost them.’
‘What does that mean? You always say it but I don’t under?stand. Did they die?’
‘No, I’m sure they’re alive. They moved somewhere and didn’t tell me where.’
‘But why not? That’s terrible.’
‘We’ve been through it before, Mete. I get tired of talking about it. They just forgot and that’s all there is to it.’
‘I’d like to meet them and tell them what I think. Anyway, you’re right. We don’t have the money right now. I’ll miss you, though, when you’re there. Even one night.’
‘Just one night. We’ll sleep through it.’
‘I won’t.’
Mete sometimes says things like that, as if to tell me that he is determined to love me more than I love him, or that he doesn’t believe that I can love him quite as much as he loves me. He commented once that I didn’t carry photographs of him around in my wallet. I put a picture in to please him and then he complained that I had only one while he had several of me. There was Isabel on the beach, Isabel smiling in front of the Blue Mosque, Isabel holding a baby, a cat, a bag of apples, an ice-cream. Isabel and Mete dancing together at a party. I understand why Mete likes them but I have never bothered much with photographs. I know what Mete looks like but I have never found a picture that shows the face I love and keep safe in my mind.
‘Was he a good friend once?’
I tried to think of Owen as a good friend, as I try now. It wasn’t right. It was the word ‘friend’ that rang out of tune. Owen was more an estranged brother to me.
‘I hadn’t seen him since about 1985 but we were quite close before then.’
‘I’m sorry.’
I put my hand on Mete’s face, his cheek, and then his chin. I pressed it hard and kissed him. A passing car tooted its horn and young men’s voices called out. The words were lost in the wind.
‘Fuck off them,’ Mete mumbled, into my mouth.
‘Yeah. Fuck off them all.’
I’m still not sure how he will react when I tell him everything. He is a generous person, open-minded and warm. At the same time, he can be quick to judge and is worried by anything that might not be respectable. He reads the newspaper aloud, speak?ing harshly of all criminals. Once he told me to keep away from a certain customer who, Mete claimed, had been held in a military prison. We did not know what the man’s crime was – even that there had been a crime – but the mere fact that he might once have been in prison made him too dangerous for me to speak to.
And now my visit is not only for one night, after all. I wonder what he thought when my message appeared. He knows that there is no danger of my staying here, but he will be confused. It occurs to me that perhaps Bernadette is not there at all and he has mentioned her simply to make me feel insecure too. I remind myself that he said Leila and not Bernadette. Leila does not exist so either he is wrong or he is making the whole thing up. Mete has heard me say Leila’s name in the past when I tried to explain my life at Maggie’s house and the strange, imaginary friend I had acquired. He may have thought she was real. If he is lonely and wants to make me miss him more, I can forgive him that.
So we agreed that he would stay in Istanbul. We left the main road and walked through the park. The dark had lost its sharpness and now seemed blurred. We held each other tight as we passed under vague shapes of trees and along a stretch of grass we could not see but where stray cats prowled and sometimes screeched. We hardly breathed until we stepped out onto the pavement at the other side. Apartment blocks, cars, road signs slipped into place, clear and solid.
We went to Emine and Ahmet’s place to collect Elif. They live in a small apartment on the edge of Yesilköy. It’s a narrow street where cars seldom go and children play late into the evenings. There are usually a few, boys and girls together, kicking a ball around. The apartment is on the fifth floor and that evening the lift was broken. We climbed the stairs in silence, apart from our breathing, which grew louder with each flight. The light in the stairwell didn’t work properly. It would stay on for a couple of seconds but not long enough to reach the switch on the next floor so we were in and out of darkness all the way up to the top.
Mete called through the letterbox and Emine came to greet us. Lights were on in every room and the place seemed cheerful. We slipped off our shoes in the hall and stepped from the mat into the thick carpet. Mete kissed Emine’s hand, pressed it to his forehead, then I did the same.
‘How is Ahmet?’ I asked.
‘He’s sleeping now. He’s not in pain today. Tomorrow the doctor will come and tell us if he needs to go back to hospital.’
We followed her into the living room. Elif was on the floor, building a tower with red blocks. Emine offered us tea and sweets, but we both saw how tired she was, the watery pinkness of her eyes and the loose wrinkled skin around them. We exchanged glances, never sure whether it was better to stay and keep her company or leave her to rest. Elif hurtled at me like a rolling ball, shrieking about an aaba she had seen in the street. An aaba was a car, her pronunciation of the Turkish araba. I picked her up to cuddle her.
Emine laughed and explained that a car had got trapped in the street by a lorry that couldn’t turn round. They had watched from the window, then Elif decided she wanted to go down to see so they had sat on the step of the apartment building until the problem was solved. Emine chuckled to herself, but I knew that Elif had worn her out and we should leave. Mete and I exchanged a glance. I sat Elif on my hip. Mete leaned in heavily to kiss her and the three of us stumbled and bumped against the wall. Elif laughed and Mete did a clown fall, backwards onto the sofa. I squeezed his toe and joked about his clumsiness. Behind us somewhere, Emine fussed around, making sure we had all Elif’s bits and pieces, the stuffed blue horse she will not sleep without.
‘Iyi geceler,’ we said to Emine as she kissed us. Goodnight.
‘Iyi geceler. Güle güle.’ Go with a smile.
I climbed naked into bed. The white sheets were cold and I shivered. Mete took off his shirt, then leaned over, pushed back my hair and gently removed my earrings with his index finger and thumb. He stroked my neck at each side as he did so, kissed the skin beneath my ears. My head tilted into his hand. He ran his fingers through my hair to straighten it, placed the earrings together on the bedside table. Beads of pink quartz glinted in the weak street light. I unbuckled his belt and undid his jeans. He slipped them down and stepped out of them.
‘Tell me about this boy who died. Was he your boyfriend?’
I sat behind him, began to massage his spine. I placed my fingertips on the sore part of his back, so light that he could hardly feel my touch. I thought of Owen and how he was not my boyfriend. I didn’t have boyfriends then. The intensity of my friendship with Owen might have made it impossible. I don’t remember caring much about boys, unless they were in films or magazines, certainly not the ones I knew. Until at least the age of fifteen I had thought that real boys were dirty and should not come too close. Perhaps at the back of my mind I had a sense of what Julia might have suffered but I cannot be sure of this.
I pressed my chin into Mete’s shoulder, wrapped my legs around his. He scratched his leg then rested his hand on my thigh. ‘No. No. Just a boy in my class. We stayed friends after school because a lot of other people left the town. We were bored for a while and used to hang around together. We both thought we would get away one day, see the world, whatever we thought the world was. We just weren’t quite ready at the time. I thought we had lots in common but we didn’t really, hardly anything.’
I gave his shoulders gentle squeezes, moved my fingers and thumbs down towards his elbows pinching skin and muscle all the way. Tiny pimples turned pink, then brown.
‘But you must have been close. You’re going to his funeral.’
‘It’s not him so much, Mete, as the time he comes from. I want to say goodbye to him but to all of that as well. I just want to touch it again, then let go. Is that better?’
‘Much. Thank you. Shall I do you now?’
‘No. Lie beside me.’
‘Mm.’ Mete pulled the sheet up under his arms and wriggled to get comfortable. ‘He was lucky to have you as a friend. I didn’t know any girls as nice as you when I was at school.’
I laughed. ‘I don’t know that I was very nice.’
‘I think you were. What was your friend’s name again?’
The Missing Person's Guide to Love Page 10