The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  No doubt he should have returned and asked for help from his parents or else, moved forward to help the puppy himself, but he could do none of these things. He nervously thrust his hands into his pockets and simply waited. The sour despondency of his parents was approaching step by step from the back: this was life. In front of him, a puppy speedily slid from pain into oblivion: that was death. As for Sidar, he did not want to join either side; he would stay as far away as possible from both the death that excluded him and the life from which he had excluded himself. If only he could withdraw behind his eyelids the way he had hidden under the coat, gloves, beret and scarf. Lost in his thoughts it took him some time to realize what the soft thing in his left pocket was. It was a floured cookie.

  ‘The girls will stay with me,’ grandma had remarked broodingly that morning. ‘But the male child, he has to be by the side of his father.’

  When Sidar had entered the kitchen, the two women had their backs to him. They were doling out the freshly baked floured cookies into the porcelain plates lined up on the counter. ‘Don’t leave me without news,’ grandma had mumbled. ‘But as soon as your new phone is connected, call a candy store first thing.’

  When a new phone was connected at a new house, whom one called first determined all the rest. That was why, with a new phone, before calling friends and relatives, one had to randomly call a candy store so that all the following calls made from that phone would end sweetly. After having talked to a candy store, one could call a bank, foreign currency bureau or a jeweller to bring in money for future phone calls, a real estate agent to bring in a house, or a car dealer to bring in a car and the like, but possessions and such did not matter that much. What really mattered was for the things to run sweetly. Accordingly, while calling all others depended on one’s own pleasure, calling the candy store was some sort of a duty.

  Sidar had been bored stiff there, as he was every Saturday morning. Fortunately they had not stayed for long this time. While the adults had become wobbly with emotion and the children had still not comprehended how different this Saturday morning was from others, they had all been swept toward the outside door with the current of such incessant farewells that it was uncertain who kissed whom and why. The only thing apparent was that the girls were to stay behind with the grandmother. Sidar had no objection to this. He was so pleased to learn that he would be spending the weekend away from his sisters’ yakking that he had not even objected to his mother’s instruction to put on this beret which was made for a girl. However, just as he was about to leave in that covered, wrapped-up state, his grandmother had pulled him to herself fast, stuck him onto her breasts that touched her belly and keeping hold of him tight like this, she had crammed things into his pocket. ‘You’ll eat them on the way,’ she had snivelled as she sniffed her red nose and pointed with one arm to some place in the sky as if the road she referred to was up there somewhere. In that state she had remained stock-still at the threshold, like a burly statue of a woman turned into stone. With her blocking the door in this way, all family members had lined up next to one another along the narrow corridor like forgotten clothes pinned up on a clothesline and left to freeze outside in the cold of the night.

  Always confused when confronted with excessive expressions of love, Sidar had finally succeeded in escaping the mangle of grandma’s breasts that smelt slightly of sweat, intensely of lemon cologne and a whisk of fresh baked bread. That was the exit. From that moment on they had been wandering the streets, he in the front and his mother and father at the back.

  As soon as the puppy spotted the floured cookie Sidar took out of his pocket, it stopped wailing. They stood eye-to-eye for an awkward moment. Sidar felt a hatred surge in him; he couldn’t help loathing the animal. Here it was on the verge of death and yet the desire to devour a damn floured cookie flickered like a flimsy flame in its already lustreless black eyes.

  A couple of minutes later, his father and mother turned the corner. They approached and saw their son indifferently munching on a cookie in front of a dying puppy. Confronted with such cruel insensitivity, the nerves of both adults, which were thoroughly stretched under the influence of the topic they had been talking about, completely snapped. While his mother yelled at him, his father slapped him on the face.

  At long last his wish had come true. Both his mother and father seemed to have turned back to their normal selves. Still however, that malignant feeling pulling Sidar apart inside had not lessened a bit. As he started to weep, it was neither the slap nor the rebuke that had hurt him so badly. In truth, on that last Saturday morning in Istanbul, his conviction that the life he had become accustomed to would forever continue the way it was, had perished for once and all.

  That same night Sidar travelled on a plane for the first time in his life. He would with time comprehend why his mother and father had become so agitated before going through passport control and why they had left Turkey in such a hurry. At the end of the trip which he spent watching the charming flight attendant smiling the same smile at everyone, when the plane started to descend, he saw under him a city that scattered bright lights without shadows into a calm darkness: Switzerland!

  Two months later, when they had left the school dormitory set aside for those seeking political asylum and settled into the dwelling they were going to share with an Assyrian family similarly in asylum, the first thing his mother had done was to run to the phone. She had talked with her daughters in tears, constantly repeating the same sentences over and over again; not a patisserie, not a candy store, nor a chocolate factory… Perhaps because they had used their new phone to call their family first, and to hold a most doleful conversation, throughout the long years that followed, at every single call they received they feared the worst news from Istanbul. Even when grandma died five years later and the girls also arrived in Switzerland this barely changed. In all the phone calls to ensue, there was some news from Istanbul and if not that, certainly a mention and a steady, thorny anguish.

  Be that as it may, Sidar was the only one of the family to return to Istanbul, after eleven and a half years and one day…

  Flat Number 4: The Firenaturedsons

  Shut in her room, sitting cross-legged on the carpet next to the cockroach she had squished, Zelish Firenaturedsons had for the last half hour been staring at the mirror she solemnly and dolefully held, as if some grave injustice had been inflicted upon her by the face she saw there. Until some time ago her face had been as pallid as if she had run into a ghost at night and as round as a pastry tray. Yet, for about five months now, it had been spotted with tiny, ruby blisters as if she had had a heat rash without knowing. The dermatologist with bleary eyes and hearty laughter they visited, diagnosed them as being neither adolescent acne nor an allergy but instead psychosomatic. Under extreme anxiety, he had maintained, the skin could transform itself into a red polka-dotted tablecloth. Chuckling at his own joke, the physician had given Zelish a whopping slap on the back and thundered in his bass voice: ‘For goodness sake, if you get so anxious at this age, you’ll end up racking your husband’s nerves when married. Relax, my daughter, relax!’

  If there is one thing in this life that starts to multiply out of spite and proliferate all the more the moment it is intended to be reduced, it must be anxiety. Even fear has an ending, a saturation point. When that particular point is reached, even if one were up to the neck in fear, one would and could not be frightened any longer. Excessive fear anaesthetizes itself. As for anxiety, that is the venomous water of a bottomless well. It has neither an overdose nor an antidote. Just as much as the source of fear is concrete and evident, the source of anxiety is vague and abstract. As such, even though one would have no trouble determining the reason behind fear, there is no way to detect the cause for constant anxiety. Given that, warning an anxiety-ridden person who is already worn out from battling not some corporal enemy but a chemical one, about the menacing things that might happen if she did not appease her anxiety, would solely serve to create just
the opposite effect, rendering her all the more anxious.

  Not only did Zelish Firenaturedsons not know how to relax, she did not think she could ever learn either. Finding out that the cause for all these blisters was not a particular allergy but an ambiguous anxiety had simply heaped more angst upon her pile of angst. There was no soap, cream or lotion on earth that could heal her. Anxiety had no cosmetic solution. The blisters hitherto confined to her forehead and chin had since then increased twofold, spreading all over her face.

  All of a sudden she overheard some music seeping through from the flat downstairs. Getting down on her knees, her face turned to the dead cockroach, she glued her ear to the floor. By now she had formed the habit of eavesdropping on the flat below at various times of the day. Her room was right above the living room of the wiry guy residing in the basement flat. At times she heard this strange ‘tap’ and ‘rap’ as if he had been walking on the ceiling or was taken hostage downstairs and was trying to climb up…or perhaps he was sending her a coded message… Once she had even heard moans jumbled-in with dog barks. That day she had patiently waited by the living room window to see what this female guest looked like. She had seen her. A petite girl with short, spiked, coppery hair and loose, baggy pants that looked like they would fall off at any moment. As soon as she had left Bonbon Palace, the girl had lit a cigarette there in the middle of the street. She didn’t seem to have any blisters and thereby no anxieties.

  ‘Every human being spends life searching for her own image,’ wise men said, ‘To become one with her and to find herself in her.’ But even if that were the case, just as the Tuba tree in heaven had turned upside down with its roots up in the air and branches under the soil, so did certain mirrors turn what was sought upside down. In the girl who had left Sidar’s house, Zelish Firenaturedsons had seen the opposite of her image. If only she could, she would entirely do away with herself and be converted into her.

  ‘What the hell are you doing on the floor?’

  Zelish Firenaturedsons bolted to her feet and frowned at her brother who had dashed into her room without bothering to knock on the door first. Zekeriya had come to dinner that night with his wife and child. In slow, heavy steps Zelish left the room in silence. She found everyone seated around the table in the living room having their soup while watching the news. At one end of the table stood three pieces of the coffee cake the old widow at number ten had sent them.

  As Zelish perched on the chair at the corner, the TV screen caught her eyes. A sixteen year old mother who had left her three-days-old baby in the dumpster of a supermarket was trying to hide her face from the cameras. The luckless baby had slept in the barrel among the litter quietly all day long and only when it started to wail at night had it been noticed and saved by passers-by. The policemen who took her to the station and fed her had named the baby-from-the-garbage ‘Kader’.

  All of a sudden Kader appeared on the screen, her tiny face flushing crimson. She kept crying and crying, turning a deeper and deeper colour with each cry. Zelish Firenaturedsons broke out in a sweat. The baby was so red. Though she tried to release her glance from the pressure of that nasty colour, it was too late. As baby Kader was being passed around from the lap of one policeman to another, all darkened – and the darkness was a vivid red.

  Zelish Firenaturedsons had fainted.

  Flat Number 7: Me

  Awakened with the squeal of the alarm clock at 5:45 a.m., the idea I had relished so much last night now seemed pure nonsense. I would have hit the pillow and gone back to sleep if only I could. Instead I got up and looked out the window. It was still dark outside. That was when I felt like trying my plan out. At least it would provide me with something to laugh about with Ethel the Cunt. Taking the bag I had prepared at night, I slipped ghost-like down the stairs. The apartment building was dead silent. As soon as I opened the building door, the cool morning breeze hit my face – and then the subtle garbage smell. It had started already. Who knows, maybe my plan will have some use. If I succeeded in convincing even one person not to dump their garbage here, I would have considered myself as having served not only the residents of Bonbon Palace but the entire city.

  In all its forlornness, for the first time since I had moved here the street I lived on looked gorgeous to me. Two sturdy street dogs sprung from the corner. They advanced zigzagging from one sidewalk to the other, got in front of each other; slowed down upon reaching the garden wall, sniffed at the garbage reluctantly and failing to come across anything worthy, trudged away. As I looked after them, for a fleeting moment I felt someone’s eyes on me. Yet when I turned around Bonbon Palace was in utter darkness with the exception of Flat Number 9. A shadow rapidly passed by the living room windows of the top floor. The lights of all the rooms in the direction the shadow moved were lit and then for whatever reason were turned off in the same order. I felt awkward. As I cased my surroundings, the silliness of what I was about to do upset me. Still, something in me refused to give up. My plan is pure nonsense but perhaps it is better that it be so. At times the only way of stopping ongoing nonsense is not to fight it back with rational rules or despotic prohibitions but to launch back some thing just as nonsensical.

  As I got on the sidewalk and faced the garden wall, a grim pair of eyes accosted me. I had seen this cat before. It stares at humans with such pure hatred. Disturbed by my presence, it got up and walked to the end of wall with klutzy steps from where it continued to watch me. Taking the paint can out of the bag, I opened the lid with difficulty. When buying the paint the day before, I had asked the salesclerk for ‘Muslim green’ to match the occasion but what emerged from under the lid now was downright pistachio green – certainly not an apt colour for otherworldliness. What’s more, another nuisance struck me once I faced the wall with the brush in my hand. I sure knew what sort of a message I wanted to write but hadn’t given much consideration to how to phrase it most effectively. A bread van passed behind me noisily, continuing on its route after leaving a crateful of bread in front of the grocer opposite. Realizing what little time I had left before the whole city woke up, I hurried to write the simplest expression that came to my mind, going over every letter twice. As I worked conscientiously, the bastard cat watched my every move, swinging the tar black tail it had dangled off the wall.

  When finished, I stepped back and examined my handiwork. It was not bad. Though the pistachio green was far too vivid and I had apparently failed to centre the writing, it still was all right. Large and legible enough to be perceived from even the middle of the street. I winked at the cat, collected the paint and the brush and returned to Bonbon Palace.

  Just as I was about to enter, someone was getting ready to go out.

  The aged lady at Number 10 was the last person I expected to see at this godforsaken hour of the morning, but it was as if she too felt at least as uneasy about this encounter as I did. While I tried to hide the contents of the bag in my hand, the ones in hers caught my eye. She was carrying four large bags that seemed empty. Her bags as light as a feather, she as light as a feather… I held the door open for her. Crowning that quizzical smile of hers with a polite, ‘Thank you’, she embraced her tiny frame and slithered away.

  As soon as I entered the house, I went out on the balcony. Though I had intended to perch there to see with my own eyes the effect of my writing, the sleep I had left incomplete came and captured me like a clingy creditor.

  Flat Number 9: Hygiene Tijen and the Cockroach

  After checking one by one the kitchen, living room, corridor and the back room, Hygiene Tijen finally turned off the lights and lay down on the bed exhausted. In the dead-calm of the darkness, sliced by the gradually dawning day, she turned and gazed with curiosity at the body next to her as if she saw it for the first time. She indeed gazed, but what she saw there was less a body than numerous infinitesimal bits and pieces. Her infatuation for cleaning, having long progressed to a chronic level had after a certain phase affected her eyesight like some insidious disease. He
r eyes now subtly sliced-up everything she regarded, dividing the whole into pieces, the pieces into details and the details into bits. When she looked at the rug in the living room for instance, she perceived not the rug but its designs and the stains sheltered in those designs and the specks of dirt hanging onto those stains. While her eyes had become sharp enough to see indistinguishable details and hunt down the parasites invisible to the eye, she conversely had lost the ability to grasp anything in its totality. As such when she turned around in the bed and stared at the body next to her, she did not see her husband but the two drops of dried saliva by the corner of his mouth, the sand that had accumulated in his eyes, the food sediments on his teeth, the nicotine yellowing on his fingertips and the dandruff at the roots of his hair. In a flash she turned her face away so as not to have to see this any more but was too late. The disgust had already set in.

  Disgust is no ordinary feeling, distributed lavishly to all living creatures on earth. To begin with, it is exceedingly particular to humans. Women are disgusted more often than men, and among women, some more so than others. Whenever Hygiene Tijen was disgusted, the sides of her mouth turned down, her legs got stuck stock-still and her whole body first got a subtle tickling sensation and was then covered with an intensifying itch. She curled into the foetal position, scratching herself non-stop while the feeling of disgust prickled her toes, spreading from there to the upper parts of her body in wave after wave.