Sultana took her husband’s hand, held it to her lips, and kissed it. “Jealousy issues.”
“Now you know,” said Ilyas, standing. “With your permission, ladies.” He made for the men’s room before Daphne could object.
As soon as the door had closed behind him, Daphne said to her mother, “Why did you name me after Grandma Zeynep?”
“It was an attempt to appease her.”
“Did it work?”
“Are you kidding? Listen”—Sultana lowered her voice—“we’re not talking about normal jealousy. We’re talking about an illness. When we were first married, I brought Zeynep gifts, put cream on her itchy back, painted her nails . . . there wasn’t anything I didn’t do for her. But the things she said every time she got me alone! Once it was, ‘Why is it that you didn’t find a Rum groom? Was it because word got out that you don’t know how to keep house?’ Another time, after I’d cooked all day and prepared a feast for her, she said, ‘It doesn’t matter that you don’t know how to cook, Sultana dear, you’ll learn eventually.’ And another time I walked into her living room and found her crying. When I asked why, she said, ‘For my son. He would have been so much happier if he had married Nur Yılmaz instead of you!’ And when she found out about your name”—Sultana dropped her spoon into the soup—“do you know what that woman said? She said, ‘I wonder if the girl will amount to anything.’ Can you believe that? A grandmother about her own grandchild!”
“Sounds like a real bitch.”
“That’s just the thing. She wasn’t a bitch with anybody else. Only with me.”
“You could’ve moved to another part of the City.”
Sultana snorted. “The other side of the Bosporus wasn’t enough, my love. We needed an ocean.”
“Kosmas’s mother isn’t like that. Or . . . at least she’s not that bad.”
“Don’t kid yourself. All Istanbul mothers-in-law are demons in heels.”
“Why couldn’t we have talked about this before?”
“It’s too painful for your father. Do you think he can bear to hear his mother’s words repeated? Especially what she said about you? We wanted to protect you. From conflict, confusion. A double identity.”
“I have all that anyway.”
“At least we tried.”
Ilyas returned, straightened his blazer, and sat down to eat his soup. Daphne swallowed a few spoonfuls and said, “Baba, there’s something else. His mother fainted when she found out you’re Muslim. That’s how she ended up at the hospital.”
“Oh, a fainter,” said Sultana.
“How are things with him now?” asked Ilyas, his eyes fixed on the fried green plantain chips just delivered by the waiter.
“We talk every day. And although I’m not crazy about his mother, I admire Kosmas’s commitment to her.”
Ilyas dabbed his short mustache with his napkin. “I understand what he’s going through.”
“So do I,” said Sultana. “But whether this guy is Rum, Turk, American, Cuban, or Chinese, if he had any sense in him, he’d find someone to care for his mother and get over here. So erase him from your head, my girl. He’s not for you.”
“Mom, I know this is hard for you, but—”
“Geçti Bor’un Pazarı sür eşeğini Niğde’ye!” said Sultana, raising her voice.
Daphne understood the Turkish words—The Bor Bazaar is over, take your donkey to Niğde—but she had no idea what they meant. “Pardon?” she said.
“She means,” said Ilyas, “that it’s time to move on.”
Sultana nervously pulled her sky-blue cardigan over her shoulders to protect them from the air-conditioning. “This is all Gavriela’s doing,” she said. “My little girl would never have thought of leaving me if Gavriela hadn’t interfered.”
“This has nothing to do with Aunt Gavriela,” said Daphne. “I’m the one who wants to live in Istanbul.”
“Excuse me?”
A boy opened the restaurant door for his six-member family. A burst of hot, damp wind rushed into Versailles. Even if the storm didn’t hit land, they would still have good rain.
“I’ve applied to PhD programs in oral history at Boğaziçi, Bilgi, and Istanbul universities,” said Daphne.
“And you kept this a secret from me?” said Sultana.
“It’s not a secret, Mom. I just didn’t tell you.”
“As if there weren’t any good PhD programs in the States! Do they even know what oral history is over there?”
Daphne took a deep breath, held it for a few seconds, and exhaled. “I’m also applying for Turkish citizenship.”
“You’re what?”
“I got most of the papers together, but I need copies of your Turkish and American passports.”
“Studying there is one thing, Daphne, but citizenship . . . They won’t recognize your American citizenship, you know. If you get into trouble—”
“I’ve made my decision, Mom,” said Daphne, trying to sound certain. “Can’t you understand how at home I felt there? I love the afternoon tea, the way total strangers help you out, the sense of adventure, the warmth, the deepness of the friendships. Here everybody’s in such a hurry. Americans meet you for coffee and ditch you forty minutes later, but over there, you sit with your friends for hours. They know how to live.”
“If the government lets them live,” said Sultana.
“It’s a democracy, Mom.”
“The twilight of a democracy,” Sultana corrected.
“Whatever. Home is home.”
“And Miami isn’t home?”
“It is, Mom, but it doesn’t have Istanbul’s history. Our history. The Byzantine and Ottoman salt.”
Sultana sucked in her lips as if she were fighting back tears. Ilyas took her hand.
“I already gave my notice at the school,” said Daphne.
“You’re insane.” Sultana picked up her beer, but she was so agitated that she spilled the foam onto the table. She set it back down and said, “You’re making a sentimental decision without giving any thought to anything, not even the political situation. It’s like moving to Germany in thirty-nine.”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a little, Sultana?” said Ilyas, mopping up the beer puddle with his napkin.
Both Sultana and Daphne stared at him. He rarely took sides in their arguments, and he never called Sultana by her given name. In fact, Daphne couldn’t remember ever hearing her father address her mother as anything but hayatım—my life.
“Daphne,” he said, “you have a good life here. We worked hard to give you that. What’s missing? A man? We’ll find you a better one in Miami.”
“That’s not it, Baba.” Daphne picked up a plantain chip, but it was still burning hot. She dropped it back onto the plate. “It’s the feeling when you wake up in the morning in Istanbul. Every day, you know that anything can happen. I don’t want my life to be a routine of work, gym, and shopping in generic strip malls.”
Ilyas took a long look at Daphne as if he had only just noticed that she had grown up. “It’s your choice. We don’t agree, but I’ll get the passports.” He rubbed Daphne’s back and added, “But your mother’s right about one thing. You have lost weight. Now finish that soup before it gets cold.”
*
On a February Saturday, just before Daphne left to teach an afternoon of private lessons, she opened her mailbox, grabbed the contents, and shuffled through them at the kitchen table. She tossed a dentist advertisement in the trash, set her bank statement and electric bill aside for later, and arrived at an envelope from the Turkish Consulate General in New York. Inside was a letter saying that her application for citizenship had been approved.
On Monday she called the consulate, hoping to arrange to have her passport sent, but a polite female employee informed her that she would have to come to New York in person to complete the process.
“There isn’t any way for me to do it from here?” said Daphne.
“I’m sorry,” said the empl
oyee. “There’s been talk of a consulate opening in Miami, but it probably won’t happen for a year or two.”
Daphne called her father and asked if he knew someone who could pull a few strings. He laughed. “Welcome to Turkey, my girl. If you don’t like bureaucracy, you ought to stay here.”
This only made Daphne more stubborn about her decision. She took two personal days to go to New York. As soon as she stepped into the warm consulate from the cold, dirty, slush-covered street, her anxiety eased: the consulate smelled of lemon cologne, bleach, and naphthalene—the scents of home.
A guard accompanied Daphne to the desk of Arzu Çetinkaya, the officer with whom she had spoken on the phone. Mrs. Çetinkaya took a pile of yellow, plastic-wrapped packages from her desk drawer and flipped through them. “Strange,” she said. “I could have sworn it was here.”
“Is something wrong?” Daphne asked.
Without reply, Mrs. Çetinkaya went to a cabinet on the other side of the room, pulled out a plastic crate, scooped up half of its plastic packs, and gave them to Daphne. Taking the rest for herself, she said, “You do those, I’ll do these.”
Daphne stared down at the pile: they resembled thin packets of Kraft singles. “And I’m looking for . . . ?”
“Your passport, dear!”
Hardly able to believe that a consulate employee was engaging her help in sorting through other people’s passports, Daphne mechanically flipped through the packets. But she didn’t find her own. Neither did Mrs. Çetinkaya. Could a previous new citizen have been ordered to look for his passport in this mess and taken hers by mistake?
“It has to be here somewhere,” said Mrs. Çetinkaya, but her pinched mouth betrayed her worry. She swept the passports back into the crate, replaced them in the cabinet, took another crate, and again divided the packets between herself and Daphne. The anxiety that Daphne had experienced on the early-morning flight returned. She didn’t have any more personal days to spend on this passport business.
“Here it is!” said Mrs. Çetinkaya, holding up the passport as if it were a Cracker Jack prize.
Daphne took a deep breath and released. “Allah’a şükür.” Thank God.
She peeled back the plastic, revealing a burgundy Turkish passport with its gold crescent moon and single star. As an American, Daphne had a birthright to fifty stars, but she suddenly felt that the only one that truly mattered was now beneath her fingers. She opened the passport, stuck her nose into it, and breathed in its aroma of fresh ink. It smelled just like new money, like promise. Memories of oriel windows and Bosporus views flashed through her mind.
“Ahem!” Mrs. Çetinkaya cleared her voice, folded her hands on top of Daphne’s file, and said, “For the identity card, you’ll find an application in the corridor. Kindly fill it out and take it to the Citizen Services Hall.”
“Thank you,” said Daphne.
The lady smiled and scrunched her eyes. Daphne proceeded into the hallway and called her father: “Already did my passport, Baba. Couldn’t have been easier. In a few minutes I’ll be done with everything.”
Ilyas chuckled.
“Fine,” said Daphne. “I’ll call back in ten minutes and laugh at you.”
She took the identity-card application from a wall file and took a seat on one of the plastic student chairs in the Citizen Services Hall. Leaning over the uncomfortably small tablet arm, she filled in and ticked away, her sense of victory increasing with each completed section. And then she came to the religion choice. On an identity card? It seemed so backward, so 1940s. She couldn’t remember ever officially disclosing her religion in the US. She completed the rest of the form, signed, and waited another thirty minutes for her number to be called. Were they really going to mark her, officially, on her ID, as one thing or the other? But hopefully she wouldn’t have to choose. Hopefully she could just leave it blank without taking sides.
When her number appeared in red on the display, Daphne proceeded to her assigned window. A fit, middle-aged clerk with a military-style buzz-cut stood flagpole straight behind it.
“Good day, sir,” she said. “Kolay gelsin.” May it come easily. She hoped this standard Turkish wish for a good workday might soften the clerk from the start.
“At your service,” he said.
“If I may make a request”—another courtesy formula—“might I leave this box blank?”
The clerk took off his glasses and wiped them with a microfiber cloth. “You used to be able to. But not anymore.”
“Please. I don’t want to choose.”
He put his glasses back on and made a jumpy move. It seemed to Daphne that he might actually have heel-clicked. “I’m afraid the current government considers it obligatory.”
Daphne set the form on the mahogany counter. Which was more important: interest or identity? An easier life or a man who might not be willing to displease his mother in order to be with her? If she wrote Muslim, she’d be accepted as a full Turk rather than an infidel foreigner. But if there was any hope that things would work with Kosmas, she had to write Christian. Daphne hastily scrawled the second and slid the form beneath the glass partition. The clerk read her choice and sighed. He took her file from the stack on his counter, shuffled through, and said, “This is a mistake. Your father is Muslim. That makes you Muslim, too.”
“My mother and I are Christian.”
“But it’s the father who counts.”
“Forgive me, sir. I am the one who counts.”
“Why do you want to do this to yourself?”
“Do what?”
“Things will be better for you as a Muslim. Don’t you want to be really Turkish, not just a Turkish citizen?”
“Of course I do.”
“Then go to church if you want, but write Muslim.”
At that moment, Daphne realized that her choice wasn’t only for Kosmas. It was also for herself. She pulled out her gold baptismal cross from beneath her shirt and said, “I am really Turkish. And I’m Christian.”
The clerk sighed. “Have a seat.”
While waiting, Daphne recalled Kosmas’s mini-meltdown in Madame Kyveli’s restaurant. She imagined Rea staring at a return label with a tiny photo of a rescued dog and a name that brought back memories of hiding in woodsheds and fear of rape and pillage. Maybe Rea wasn’t so awful after all. Maybe she was just afraid. Daphne shifted her weight in the hard plastic seat. She thought of her own mother sitting in Versailles restaurant and saying that they were neither here nor there.
“Ms. Badem!” called the clerk. “Take this to Station Three, please, down that way.”
Daphne looked at the form still lying in the deal box. Right in the middle was the red approval stamp of the Turkish Republic: a moon and star underlined with the year “1923.” Officially, Daphne had become an Orthodox Christian thirty-one years before, when she was baptized at Saint Sophia’s Cathedral in Miami. But it was only now, after completing a Turkish bureaucratic procedure, that she felt she had truly earned the word Christian.
22
Discovery
On a wednesday morning in January, Fanis awoke to a city dressed in white. He went to the kitchen to make his coffee and omelet, but he was so excited by the flakes falling past his window that he forgot all about breakfast, called Selin, and said, “Look out the window. Faik Paşa is sprinkled with powdered sugar like a tray of mille-feuille.”
As they gazed at the winter wonderland from opposite windows, Fanis remembered he was to receive his retirement stipend from the Greek Consulate that day. He and Selin had planned to go together and then have a coffee in the Grand Avenue before she took a bus up to Lütfi Kırdar. Seeing the snow, however, Fanis had second thoughts about their plan. “The streets will be dangerously slippery,” he said to Selin. “I don’t think you ought to go to work. And I guess I can wait and collect a double stipend next month.”
“I have no choice,” she said. “Today’s the final rehearsal for the Tchaikovsky concerto.”
“Right.”
Fanis pulled his plaid robe more tightly around his shoulders. “We’ll walk over to the consulate together and take a taxi up to the concert hall. I’ll stay until you’ve finished.”
“You’ll be bored.”
“Bored at the Borusan? Are you out of your mind? Besides, there’s no question of you coming home by yourself. The weather could get worse, and the doctor said you have to be careful of colds.”
Three-quarters of an hour later, they met in the street. A thick layer of snow had already settled over everything. “See?” said Fanis. “You couldn’t get a taxi to come to your door even if you phoned.”
They plodded up to the sky-blue, neoclassical consulate and entered the unusually short queue on the opposite side of the street. While waiting, Fanis noticed Selin shivering. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.
A second later, wearing a homemade pompom beanie, Aliki came hobbling out of the consulate. “Fanis? Selin?”
Fanis tried to let his arm slide slowly and discreetly down Selin’s back, but it was too late. Aliki’s eyes darted back and forth between them. Her head twitched as if she had a tic. She licked her lips repeatedly. Had Fanis not known her better, he would have thought that she was suffering from mental illness.
“But,” Aliki stammered, “I thought it was only because of Julien . . . and since he never said anything, never made a move . . . and when you and I went for soup, I thought that maybe . . . ”
Fanis realized his mistake. Two weeks before he had helped Aliki sell the antiques that had lain in boxes since the summer. He had obtained such a good price that she had insisted on treating him to tripe soup and saffron pudding, and they had passed a pleasant afternoon reminiscing and telling jokes. Aliki had obviously mistaken his mirth—whose source was his friendship with Selin—as interest in her.
Aliki continued mumbling incoherently and glaring at Selin as if she had sprouted two heads: “Are you two really. . . . How long?”
Fanis spotted a taxi slowly approaching through the lane cleared by the plow. He raised his hand to the driver, took Aliki’s arm, and said, “How lucky you are, dear. Hardly any taxis out now. You’d better take it.” As soon as the vehicle had come to a stop, he helped Aliki inside. Just before shutting the door, he winked and said, “We’ll talk this afternoon, at Neighbor’s House.” Aliki continued staring through the foggy window as the taxi pulled off through the slush. Poor thing.
A Recipe for Daphne Page 24