“I love you.”
In the morning, she coaxed him from his bed and helped him change into a fresh tracksuit. Unsure of what to make of the things he’d mumbled in his sleep the night before, she said nothing of it. He had been agitated and delirious and had slept only intermittently throughout the night.
Selim pushed the metal pole supporting his IV drip as they made their way through the hallway towards the ground-level courtyard. There, she led him to a cool stone bench in the shade, where, earlier that morning, she’d set up her easel and canvas. They sat there listening to water running in the fountain.
“I guess that’s yours?” he asked suspiciously of the easel positioned beside them.
She crossed her legs and leaned back against the bench. “Set it up this morning.”
“What’s it doing out here?”
She shrugged than sank deeper into the seat of the bench.
“You’re not going to paint my portrait.”
She kept her emerald eyes on the fountain ahead but said nothing.
“Hannah, I need to hear that you understand what I’m saying. You’re not going to paint my portrait.”
She stood abruptly and turned to face him. “Selim, that’s exactly what I plan on doing.”
“No.”
“No?”
“I won’t let you.”
“It doesn’t matter if you let me or you don’t let me. I’ve already begun it.”
“The canvas is blank!” His hands shot up wildly as he spoke.
“In my mind. I’ve begun it in my mind.”
“I won’t sit for you.”
“You don’t have to.”
“You’re going to paint it from memory? You think you know my face?”
“I know you.”
“Damn it, Hannah. I didn’t ask for this.”
“No, and I doubt you ever would.”
“I’m telling you from now, I don’t want to see it. All these people,” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “I know what they see.”
“You don’t know what I see.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“I’m sorry, Selim.” She made her way to the canvas. “I’ve made up my mind.”
“Go to hell.”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
“And what if you do?” he asked.
“I said I’m not going anywhere.”
“Promise me, Hannah? Can you promise me that?”
“I don’t need to. I said it and I meant it.”
He shook his head and dropped his chin. “I’m scared.”
“You’re brave.”
“I’m so scared.”
“No one’s ever been brave without first being scared.”
“Do you even know me? Really know me?”
She thought about the words he’d uttered in his sleep the night before. Words he would never recall and she would never understand. She looked up. “I don’t know a thing about you. Is that what you want to hear?”
“That’s not what I asked and you know it.”
She put down her brush and pushed closer towards him. “All right, Selim.”
“All right?”
“Yes, all right. I do know you. I’ve never known anyone like I know you. I can’t explain it and I don’t understand it, but I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. I know you.”
“Hannah?” he said quietly.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice strained by exhaustion.
“I know you, too.” He studied her emerald eyes for a long, lingering moment. “I think I always have.”
*
She began his portrait, at first only sketching the right side, as though she was putting a puzzle together despite a missing piece. He thought to himself. “It’s not my time.” When he lowered his head, she lifted his chin. He sat on that bench before her easel. For three days, she painted.
For the first time since his arrival in New York, he didn’t push Ayda from his mind, but allowed his guilt to speak its piece. It had only taken him an instant to close the door and walk away—an instant to destroy another human being. He knew now it would take a lifetime to make it right. That was something he didn’t have.
And what had become of little Emre? Was he still living in the hotel by the airport? Was it even still operating? He should have been looking out for the boy. Was he back to selling gum and batteries on the side of the highway? Where was he now, at this very moment? If he ever got back to Istanbul, he would take Emre under his wing. He’d make things right. Not too many people get second chances. He needed to survive. Go back and find Emre. Slow down, Selim. Slow down! He could recall Emre shouting in the hall. Emre could have used a big brother. He needed to get back and find him.
And what of Ali’s burial site? Who would be there next month to sweep away the dirt, to say a prayer and place flowers by his grave? No, he was not yet ready to join his brother. He was not ready to join Baba.
He sat before her easel and dozed off into a dream saturated with the smells of Bosphorus blossoms and berry juices, rose water, saffron and cinnamon spice. He dreamt of pistachio cakes and pomegranate trees. Every few moments he awoke with a sudden sense of dread. He’d look up to say, “Don’t leave me.”
For three days she painted his image, mixing colors and carefully selecting the right brushes. At home she’d sketch his image a dozen times over. She drew his image, the left side shattered like broken glass, but that wasn’t right at all. She tried countless sketches, but with each one, she was certain she was a little further from the truth. Like her father, Selim Osman was a man of secrets. Painting a secret was no easy feat.
After three days of illness, followed by three days of recuperation, Selim underwent his second dose of chemotherapy. He clenched his fists as the toxins spread throughout his body. “I can’t do this,” he said between waves of nausea.
Hannah’s eyes locked with his. “You can.”
He endured three days and nights of nausea and vomiting. His insides felt as though they’d caught fire- his mouth and tongue and lips, like hot coals he wished he could eject. At the end of the third day, the nausea subsided—The toxins ceased to ravage his body.
She helped him change into a fresh shirt. They drank tea and played backgammon. He slid the ruby ring from her finger and examined the inscription.
He looked up and for a minute was transfixed by her gaze.
“Well, what does it mean?” she asked.
A sudden déjà vu flashed through him. A fleeting vision, green and fresh and smelling of the sea. Frustrated, he leaned forward and examined her closely, trying to recall the slightest clue to that lost memory.
A hiding tree of lush green leaves. A girl. A vanishing. Like a bolt of lightning, it slipped away before he could grasp it.
It was then that a strange thought crept through him. Slowly and steadily, it made its way into his consciousness and rooted its seed firmly in his mind. There it was. He was sure of it now.
The Sultan’s Curse.
Had it been looming over him all this time? As he recalled, there was only one way the curse could ever be broken. A green eyed girl. A ruby ring. A cryptic inscription carved from old Ottoman times.
“So what does it mean?” Hannah pressed him.
He dropped his face into his palms and began to laugh.
“Selim?”
But he could not answer. He just laughed until he was gasping for air.
“What’s so funny?”
“Nothing.”
“Why are you laughing?”
He wiped the tears from his eyes and tried to catch his breath. “Because I’m happy.”
He leaned in once more and slid the ring back over her finger, then kissed her with every ounce of strength he had left.
36
Several more weeks passed with intermittent periods of illness followed by periods of recuperation. It was during these times of recuperation that they checked out new music and downloaded old mo
vies. When it was warm, they sat out in the garden and she worked on his portrait. There were times they quipped and joked. There were times when they were silent too.
He moved from his place in the shade to a bench in the sunshine. He wanted to feel the burn of the sun on his chest and neck. He sat for a few hours while Hannah recreated his nose and brow and chin, his insipid pallor and somber expression. Only, she did not paint the left side. She was not ready for that.
The light began to fade and the temperature dropped. It was then that Selim admitted to Hannah, what he’d never had the courage to admit to anyone before.
His eyes were fixed on some obscure point in the distance as he spoke. Measured, dry of affectation or emotion, but mostly, they were tired words. Words aware of all that had come before them. Words aware of the quiet nothing that would soon follow. They were words for endings.
“It was I who was driving the motorbike,” was all he managed for a time.
The cool air licked his ears and stroked his hair, just as it had in the memory of that tragic day. “It was me.” He nodded matter-of-factly, then dropped his chin and eyes to the ground. “Ali was begging me to slow down but I didn’t listen.”
Hannah studied him for a moment, then picked up her brush. “Go on.”
He sighed then rubbed his eyes.
“Don’t stop now.”
He looked up at her.
She was still, with her arm raised and her brush hanging in the air.
“So I confess while you paint? That’s how it works?”
She looked away and began mixing colors. “That’s how it works.” She dabbed the paints together carefully, then rinsed her brush clean.
So he spoke, and as he spoke, she painted his image. It hadn’t been easy, but she’d finally done it. She’d finally discovered the color of a secret.
There was a stroke for each word. A hue for every shade of shame. The panic in his voice was matched only by the urgency of her brushstrokes.
*
Istanbul- 15 years earlier
Ali sat perched on the backseat of his motorbike, his frail arms linked tightly around Selim’s thick torso. Selim had just turned seventeen, old enough to apply for a motorbike license, and Ali, just fourteen. Baba had warned Selim not to take Ali on the motorbike until he learned how to handle the thing, but flushed with the excitement and brashness that teenage boys possess, Selim ignored his father’s advice.
They cruised through the narrow, crooked streets of Nisantase, marveling innocently at the beauty of Izmirian blonds, who sipped on cappuccinos and pecked meagerly at their smoked salmon tartines under the bright umbrage of red and orange canopies that stretched outward from low slung stucco rooftops of springtime outdoor cafes.
The slick air licked their ears and stroked their hair as the rusty engine sounded through the streets and shredded the quiet decency of Friday calm.
“Slow down, Brother!” Ali shouted over the wind. “Slow down!”
“What?” Selim pretended not to hear, a rush of excitement coming over him.
“Slow down!”
Selim, intoxicated by the engine’s power and the wind’s inability to keep up with his bike, pressed the gas pedal further. He swerved the handlebars from left to right, a cruel joke intended to frighten his little brother. A few whippets of course hair cracked their wiry edges against Selim’s cheeks and lids, so that he squinted to shield his watery gaze from the glaring light and ash of the wind. As the bike swerved, he pressed the pedal yet further, laughing caustically as drivers from oncoming vehicles sounded their horns angrily, some shaking their heads and others cursing out the window.
“Slow down, Brother!” Ali’s frantic voice rose above the roaring engine as his grip tightened around Selim’s waist.
Empowered by recklessness, Selim teased, “What’s that? Can’t hear you, little brother!” He snaked along the winding roads at speeds that frightened the curbside grocers and sent veiled women running in the opposite direction.
The sweet-charred scent of roasting shawarma made Selim turn his head. He caught a glimpse of three girls sitting at a sidewalk café. They seemed to be looking deep into the bottoms of their cups, at the dark swirling patterns produced by the gooey residue of Turkish coffee. Many believed those patterns held the secrets of the future. They smiled and laughed as a young lady with a bright green headscarf tried to predict what was yet to come. She did not foresee what the next few seconds had in store.
Selim’s motorbike swerved towards the oncoming traffic and collided with a tall utility pole. When Selim opened his eyes, the woman with the green headscarf was leaning over him, her face contorted, mouth agape and eyes narrowed to slivers. It looked as though she was screaming, but Selim heard nothing. There was only silence.
Ali landed thirty feet away and was found beneath the tire of a truck that had been transporting crates of fruits and vegetables. There was silence while people stopped and stared, unsure of what to do. Watermelon bits, strewn about the street in wet fleshy clumps, rolled down the slanted alleys when all else seemed to stand still.
*
“He is gone,” Baba whispered.
Selim looked out of his window. Below, the workmen moved about the property, business as usual. With their long poles and big nets, the pool men skimmed the water’s surface for leaves and insects. The tennis court was being swept clear of Ali’s footprints. He’d been the last one to play. Gardeners tended the bushes, as though they still believed it was possible for life to grow. The Armenian guards stood at the gates, under the mistaken impression that there was anything left on this earth still worth protecting.
As Selim thought back to the events leading up to the crash, a chill ran through him. “I don’t accept.” He would say when one of the kitchen staff would attempt to serve him his dinner. For days following the accident, he was unable to hold down food.
“I don’t accept,” he would hiss, his eyes cold and distant when his friends from school came by to pay their respects. He waved them away with the same contemptuous scorn he used to dismiss his meals at dinnertime.
“I do not accept,” he pleaded with Allah, kneeling on his carpet during the sunrise prayer .
“I do not accept!” he threatened menacingly, in his prayer at sundown.
“I do not accept,” his spirit howled through every pore in his flesh.
“I do not accept,” he cried out from those hazy dreams, beneath the mist of a weeping pomegranate tree, planted in the garden of secret loss and desire.
“Come back…” he pleaded. In his heart, he held the secret that no one else could touch. He could convince others, his parents, the doctors, and the authorities—They were all so sympathetic—He could convince everyone and anyone. No one doubted what he presented as fact. Only, no matter how many times he lied to himself, he could not convince himself of anything but the truth. It was he who had been driving the motorbike.
He had killed his brother.
*
Hannah examined the empty half of his face, the blank space on the canvas that until now, she’d been unable to imagine. Exhausted, Selim sat limp. She rinsed her brushes then wiped her forehead with her sleeve. “Go inside.” She placed her hand on his shoulder.
He stood slowly and made his way to the automatic doors.
For hours she worked, standing before her easel, paralyzed by the revelations that commanded her brush’s obedience. She stayed at her easel and began painting the left. At the end of four hours, she was utterly exhausted but thoroughly inspired. Her work slowed. The brush, still and perched at a very precise spot on the canvas, moved with such imperceptible diligence, that it appeared for whole moments, not to move at all. At dusk, the portrait was complete.
37
The news was not good. The latest round of treatments had been unsuccessful. CT scans indicated that the cancer had come back despite the surgery, chemotherapy and radiation. The tumor had metastasized. Dr. Rosen did not need to explain to Selim what that mea
nt. He suggested a more aggressive treatment plan, to extend whatever “good months of health” Selim had left. Hannah was shocked. “So that’s it? We just give up?” Though his body was failing him and there was no hope left, he was able to smile. Somewhere in those painful months, I had become We.
He felt an awakening within, like a slow, steady sun rising through him. It started in his core and spread throughout the dark shell of his body. It coated the lining of his insides and seeped into each and every cancer-ridden cell he possessed. He felt a tingling and was able to sense the warm trace of his skeleton glowing within him.
They sat beside one another for some time. Words could not suffice to say the things that became clear in the eloquence of silent understanding. Soon, it was Selim who had to console Hannah and assure her that she’d be all right and please not to cry because “it breaks my heart,” and wasn’t that “the only good part left of me?” Beyond the shivering curtains, the night was thick and brooding, drenched in ebony and saturated with stars whose brightness was as stunningly violent as only Van Gogh himself could have dreamed.
It was a month since Hannah had met with Mr. Rumie in his downtown gallery. She’d selected over two dozen of her favorite portraits to be shown in an exhibition he’d arranged to showcase emerging young artists. In less than twenty-four hours, Hannah’s work was to be exhibited.
“It’s almost five,” Selim said once the doctor had left the room. “Go home and unwind. You’ll have a big day ahead of you tomorrow.” He collapsed back against his pillow.
“Forget it. It’s not important.” She leaned forward, a thief, a criminal stealing a kiss that should have been shared between them, but that she hoarded to herself since he had lost all sensation on his left side. She moved her lips very carefully across his swollen cheek. Her lips moved with intent, like a blind man draping his fingers across the braille that unlocks secrets imprisoned by the dark.
Selim felt. He closed his eyes and felt her kisses pass through him like puffs of air in the lungs of a drowning man. He thought to himself, how odd is life, that my greatest joy, should also be my greatest sorrow. “I can’t lose you. Not when I’ve just found you,” he said quietly.
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