The Flea Palace

by Elif Shafak

  So far, she had become disgusted an infinite number of times for all sorts of reasons, but this time she felt a tingling not only on the tips of her toes but also on her temples. The tingling increased in a couple of seconds to cover her entire head; it then ran down her neck, squeezing left and right as if passing through a bridge and as soon as it left the bridge behind, started to descend in splintered, orderly strips. Behind this swiftly mobilized army was none other than Hygiene Tijen’s brain. Predicting well ahead the possible perilous consequences of Hygiene Tijen’s sudden disgust for her husband, her brain had acted on its own.

  For sometimes our brain grasps before us the likely results of the action we are about to take and, if it deems necessary, sets about taking precautions of its own accord. Hygiene Tijen’s brain too had independently decided to take over the way things were going as it could envision that this disgust did not resemble the preceding bouts and that, when she started to be disgusted with the man she had once married, risking a confrontation with her own parents, the issue could transform into an interrogation of an entire life. During the following couple of minutes, Hygiene Tijen experienced a peculiar, terrible cramping in her stomach. For it was exactly at this region that the rebels fighting in the name of ‘Disgust-for-husband’ and the forces of ‘Devotion-to-husband’ confronted each other. It was the latter that emerged triumphant. The brain had successfully put down yet another mutiny. Now relieved from her stomach ache Hygiene Tijen breathed a sigh and headed to the bathroom dragging her feet. She turned on the light. The surrounding area was snow white. She poured a few drops of bleach on a paper towel and thoroughly wiped the toilet seat. As she peed she scrutinized everything around. There was nothing within an eye range that could pierce through the absolute dominance of white, her favourite colour.

  There was an aura of a certain colour surrounding each and every person, according to a brochure she had once seen – the brochure of an organization established in California where the members called each other not with their names but colours, held hands to form colour scales like impressive watercolour sets, but ultimately had to disband when the members started to separate into factions based on their hues. Perhaps the reverse was also true. Perhaps, ‘There is an aura of a certain type of person surrounding every colour’, and if that indeed is the case, the aura of people surrounding the colour white will no doubt be comprised of housewives. White confers pride and dignity to housewives. To Hygiene Tijen it only conferred comfort.

  After flushing the toilet, she dripped a few drops of bleach on a paper towel and wiped the seat. Having thus embarked upon the task, she also cleaned up the toilet cover, under it and around it; then the toilet paper and towel hooks, the sink, the tub, and unable to stop herself, pulled up the washing machine to mop behind it. Just before she got out, she turned around half-weary half-content to take a look at the whole bathroom one last time. She closed the door behind her, but stood still. For the brain does not always go in the front but occasionally comes from the rear like this. Hygiene Tijen’s brain too had decided with a lag of few seconds that it had seen something black, pitch black, wandering somewhere within the whiteness covering the entire bathroom. She reopened the door; she was not mistaken. A black and disgusting antenna was rapidly making way on the white tiles. Her heart in her mouth, Hygiene Tijen drew closer with cautious side-steps and only when really close could she distinguish that the thing she had been looking at in its details, but had failed to see in its entirety, was not a black and disgusting antenna, but a black and disgusting cockroach.

  Before she let out a scream, the black, repulsive owner of the black repulsive antenna had already vanished into a hole on the bathroom wall.

  Flat Number 1: Musa, Meryem and Muhammet

  Because of the squabble inside, Musa woke up earlier than usual this morning. As soon as he entered the living room he spotted Muhammet there, squeezed between an armchair and the wall. Pretending not to notice the plea for help flickering in his son’s eyes, he sat down at the breakfast table. Grudgingly shovelling into his mouth a lump of cheese, he reached for the teapot only to let go of it even more grudgingly. Alas, the tea had gone cold again. Though he pointed the teapot out to his wife, Meryem, too busy pushing the armchair with one leg while stuffing parsley twigs into half a loaf of bread, paid no attention to him. Sullenly bowing to the fact that he had to take care of himself, Musa’s sluggish gaze scanned the surroundings and, passing at a tangent to his son’s despondent stare, inspected one by one the armchairs, coffee tables and chairs weightily lined up. Having thus drawn a complete circle in the living room, he finally focused on his wife once again. Meryem’s belly seemed even bigger this morning.

  Gobbling half the cheese on the plate, three slices of bread and all the olives left in the bowl as fast as he could, Musa left the house without a word. At this hour of the day, as the only place he could think of going was the grocery store opposite, that is where he headed. The grocer – who was notorious for sitting hunched-up on the same stool and in the same spot, all the time spying on the passers-by – hadn’t arrived yet. Like many a grocery store in Istanbul, in this case too, what made the store different from others was less the qualities of the groceries sold than the traits of the grocer. So profoundly had this identification of shop-with-owner been internalized by the hunched-up grocer himself that for a long time he found it impossible to accept the simple fact that his store could open in his absence. Nevertheless, ultimately facing the risk of losing customers if he kept on closing the shutters every time he went to the mosque to pray, he had been forced to entrust the store to his freckled apprentice.

  The apprentice happened to be his brother’s son, but since the hunchbacked grocer was a firm believer in the need to keep kinship and trade apart just like water and oil, he treated the youngster not like his nephew but as an apprentice ought to be treated. As for the boy, on no account could he work out how on earth this uncle of his, who bombarded him with callous orders and icy scoldings six days a week could then on the seventh day, on a Sunday family visit, turn into an utterly different person, bringing him chocolates he would not even let him get near to in the store. On such Sundays, whenever his uncle asked – as if they had just run into each other for the first time in weeks, as if it wasn’t him who had sworn at the boy only that morning in the store in front of everyone – ‘Tell me, my nephew, what do you do in your spare time after school?’, at those thwarting moments how desperately the boy wished to vanish from the face of the earth. The acrimony of the past Feast of Sacrifice was still seared fresh in his memory. On that day, all their relatives gathered together, sacrificed a bulky ram early in the morning, then spent the entire day gulping down tea, almond paste, roasted meat, yogurt soup, wheat boiled with meat, yogurt drink, rice and meat sausage, apricot compote, meat pilaf, tea again, baklava with pistachios, semolina dessert for the spirits of the dead, grapes, watermelon, again baklava with pistachios and coffee; only to end up suffering from severe indigestion at night. The next morning, when the boy had arrived at the grocery store later than usual and still drained of colour, his uncle had yelled at him, crowning his reprimand with a sermon on an apprentice’s responsibility to go to bed early and rise early. Unable to match in his mind’s eye the jittery grocer at the store and the fatherly uncle he ran into on family occasions, the freckled apprentice had in the fullness of time started to perceive them as two distinct persons. This apparent solution, however, caused a few problems of its own: each time his parents asked him to deliver a message to his uncle at the store something inside the boy seemed to short-circuit, for he always forgot to do so.

  When Musa approached the store, the freckled apprentice had placed the Book of Qu’ranic Verses on the counter, and with one eye on the door and one hand in the peanuts case, kept wolfing nuts while memorizing sections of the Qur’an.

  Not at all used to getting up this early, and apparently disappointed to see the apprentice instead of the grocer, Musa thought, why not d
istribute the bread of the apartment building himself this morning? The moment he took a step toward the glass cupboard where the breads were lined-up, however, he stopped, highly perplexed. In a daze and almost frozen to the spot, what he looked at from that angle was the garden wall of Bonbon Palace, which he soon pointed out to the freckled apprentice. The two of them stood side by side, studying the pistachio green writing there.

  ‘I hope Meryem won’t ever see this,’ Musa exclaimed. Then, as if sharing a joke with himself, he chuckled, displaying his rotten teeth.

  ‘Why so?’ the freckled apprentice grimaced, having just missed the nut he had flung in the air.

  ‘Why so? Why do you think? Simply because she’d accept it as true!’

  Flat Number 10: Madam Auntie

  Having emptied every single one of the bags she had brought in, Madam Auntie opened the double doors and stepped onto the balcony. The roofs of the apartment buildings across were dotted with hordes of seagulls, all staring in the same direction, all similarly sullen, as if compressed under the weight of the same cryptic contemplation. Her eyes fixated on them, Madam Auntie distractedly caressed the pendants on her two necklaces, one of which she never took off. On the long chain there hung a key, and on the short one, the austere face of Saint Seraphim.

  Istanbul, she thought, resembled a woman heavy with child – a woman who during the last months of pregnancy had put on far more weight than she could carry. With every step, the swish of water rose in waves from that belly of hers, long swollen with grandeur. Though she constantly devoured whatever she could get hold of, she was no longer able to tell how much of what she ate benefited her or the crowds of teensy, touchy and voracious beings growing within her body day by day. How desperately she would like to, if only she could, get rid of this excruciating burden. Instead all she could do was to simply swell up throughout the centuries. The comestibles which she consumed in one gulp were transported to her by ships and boats, cars and trailers, shaky-legged porters and caravans, their tails long lost on the way. Had she, with this insatiable appetite of hers, not been able to spurt anything out, Istanbul would have long before blown up, taking the life of both herself and those dwelling in her. Auspiciously she could always spew things out. She purified her worn-out body, just like a person would use expectorants to oust putrid gases, bodily fluids and vomit in order to live and keep living. Istanbul poured the pus oozing from her festering wounds into hills of garbage. That she could still persevere, she owed to the garbage mounting in piles upon piles even when buried deep in holes, emerging from its ashes even if burned shovel by shovel, never to wane even when carried far away. It was thanks to the glorious garbage that Istanbul could still carry on.

  As such the garbage dump was not an end. Life did not terminate there but merely changed form and essence. The items thrown in the trash, as if churned out from the invisible walls surrounding the city, were then dissolved into their components, sorted out, burned up, pressed, buried – yet they never wholly perished. Like a fugitive on the run, the garbage ultimately sneaked back to Istanbul – through the soil, water or at times air. With the help of the garbage-gatherers, the lodos or the seagulls.

  The seagulls seemed to be of the same opinion as Madame Auntie. These theoretically carnivorous, originally directionless birds had in time become so accustomed to feeding on Istanbul’s trash that they had fully integrated into this everlasting gastral circle incessantly begetting waste from life and life from waste.

  Every night and every morning, Madam Auntie sat on her balcony looking far and down on the russet hill where the shanty houses with cursorily painted facades had been heaped to the brim while she listened, as attentive as a silence-worshipping seagull, to the hum of the city flocked together by the gale only to be scattered by it once again. In this final stage of her life, if she were offered a chance to be born again wherever she pleased and as a different species, Madam Auntie would no doubt choose to be born here in Istanbul, only this time, disguised as a seagull.

  Flat Number 7: Me

  It was almost noon when I woke up. Thrusting into my briefcase today’s lecture notes, as well as yet another Kierkegaard for Ece, who apparently preferred to borrow them from me rather than purchase her own, I rushed out. While I was leaving my flat, the neighbour at Number 8 was going into hers. In a hurry, as always. She seemed to have done something to her hair. It was better before but she still looked fetching, indeed very fetching. She greeted me warily with a nod, averting her eyes. Yet I caught that glance in her eyes. She is not as timid as she seems to be. Neither is she that indifferent to the world around her. Down on the ground floor, the door of Flat Number 4 was ajar. That nasty woman was standing at the threshold, asking Meryem to do her chores. Upon seeing me, her lips twisted into a galling smile.

  ‘Professor, did you hear what happened to our apartment building?’ she blurted out. ‘It turns out there was a holy saint in our garden!’

  I had completely forgotten about it.

  ‘I am not at all surprised,’ I said, not losing my cool. ‘It is a well-known fact that there are countless graves left from the Ottomans, as well as the Byzantines, at various corners of Istanbul,’ I added without taking my eyes off my watch. ‘Are we to claim that all the dead in this city lie within the existing cemeteries? Of course not!’ There must be still thousands of undiscovered graves. What could be more natural than the fact that some of these graves belong to people regarded by the populace as holy saints?

  Zeren Firenaturedsons inspected me from top to toe, trying to grasp whether I was making fun of her or not. When she pouts, the creases on her forehead make her look even more edgy. ‘Academics!’ she heaved a sigh, and as if with this single word the whole conversation had turned to her advantage, she crossed her arms on her chest, remaining silent. So did I.

  Zeren Firenaturedsons’ thorny stare stirred toward Meryem, standing next to us, listening to our conversation with a look of anguish and tightly closed lips as if worried she might let slip a word she’d rather not. For a fleeting moment it seemed to me that upon hearing my response a gleeful glint glimmered in the depth of her eyes, but the very next second, hurrying to get rid of us both, she grabbed her list of chores and scurried out ahead of me.

  Flat Number 5: Hadji Hadji and Son, Daughter-in-Law and Grandchildren

  ‘But grandpa, what if I step on them by mistake?’ exclaimed the five and a half year old.

  ‘If you step on them, the genies will get into you. They will twist you out of shape,’ roared the seven and a half year old.

  ‘Like you’ve got a giant head!’

  Hadji Hadji intervened: ‘Don’t talk like that with your older brother. Neither the genies nor Allah will like those who don’t respect their elders.’

  The five and a half year old tilted her head, tugging her pinky-ginger pleated skirt. Utterly immobile for a while, from the corner of her eye she then looked at her older brother only to see the other pouting at her. Without a sound she slid closer to her grandfather.

  ‘The genies have a sultan. They call him Beelzebub. Never do they dare to disobey his orders, but there are times when they get involved in all sorts of intrigues without his knowledge. The genie gang comes in all types. The genies are like humans, some are good, some wicked. Some are devout, some infidels. There are three types of genies: firstly, there are some in the form of snakes or bugs, secondly are those in the shape of wind or water and last but not least, there are those who take the form of humans. It is this last group that is the most menacing of all! You can never tell if they are really humans or genies. They throw weddings that last until dawn, eating, drinking and dancing to the rhythm of drums and zurnas. If you ever happen upon a genie wedding late at night, you should instantly turn your head. Don’t ever try to sneak a look! When you get up to go to the bathroom at night, don’t ever take even one step without uttering Allah’s name aloud! Particular attention needs to be paid to thresholds because that’s where the genies like to linger. Th
e only way to eschew the genies is to not do anything without uttering Allah’s name. If you forget to do so, the genies will surely reach you and meddle with your life!’ repined Hadji Hadji, leaning his aching back on one of the pillows piled up on the couch to build an Osman afterward. The little girl next to him cowered and moved in tandem, as if glued to the old man.

  ‘The most horrible one is the “Crimson Broad”. When she haunts a woman who has just given birth, she’ll never let go of her prey. All night long, she mounts the new mother’s chest as if riding a horse. Only at dawn does she leave the poor thing drenched in sweat and fear, but the next night, she’s back there again, this time attacking the cradle, throwing the baby up in the air like a soccer ball.’

  ‘Oh I remember her,’ the seven and a half year old blurted out, eyeing his siblings, ‘She came to their birth!’

  ‘Of course, she would! If, instead of having the birth her way, your mother had called for your deceased grandmother, there would be no quandaries. Your grandma, peace be upon her, would certainly have managed to get rid of the “Crimson Broad”, but the poor soul passed away without seeing her grandchildren.’

  Deeply vexed by their grandfather’s response, the five and a half year old and the six and a half year old grovelled at once. While the little girl’s lower lip drooped down, the boy had started to suck his thumb which was already thinned out from constant sucking.