by Elif Shafak
Their house in Van was so large that even whispers echoed throughout. Shadows danced on the walls as if across cavernous space. A long, winding wooden staircase led from the living room to the first-floor landing. The entrance was adorned with tiles that featured a dizzying array of scenes: peacocks strutting their plumage; wheels of cheese and loaves of plaited bread next to goblets of wine; platters of open pomegranates with their ruby smiles; and sunflowers in fields, tilting their necks longingly towards a shifting sun, like lovers who knew they would never be loved the way they wished. Leila was fascinated by these images. Some of the tiles were cracked and chipped; others were partly covered in coarse plaster, though their patterns were still visible, bright with colour. The child suspected that together they told a story, an ancient one, but, hard as she tried, she could not fathom what it was.
Along the hallways, oil lamps, tallow candles, ceramic bowls and other decorative ephemera sat in gilded alcoves. Tasselled carpets ran the length of the floorboards – Afghan, Persian, Kurdish and Turkish carpets of every possible shade and pattern. Leila would wander idly from room to room, holding the objects close to her chest, feeling their surfaces – some prickly, some smooth – like a blind person reliant on touch. Parts of the house were excessively cluttered, but strangely even there she could sense an absence. A tall grandfather clock chimed in the main parlour, its brass pendulum swinging back and forth, its booming gong too loud, too cheerful. Often, Leila noticed a tickle in her throat and worried that she might have inhaled dust from long ago – even though she knew every item was cleaned, waxed and polished religiously. The housekeeper came each day, and once a week there was a ‘big clean’. At the start and end of the seasons, there would be an even bigger clean. And if anything was overlooked, Auntie Binnaz was sure to spot it and scrub it with baking soda, fastidious as she was about what she called ‘whiter than white’.
Mother had explained that the house used to belong to an Armenian doctor and his wife. They had six daughters, all of whom loved to sing, their voices ranging from low to very high. The doctor was a popular man who allowed his patients to come and stay with the family from time to time. Adamant in his belief that music could heal even the direst of wounds to the human soul, he had made each of his patients play an instrument, regardless of talent. While they played – and some did so pitifully – the daughters sang in unison and the house swayed like a raft in high seas. All of this was before the outbreak of the First World War. Not long after, they had disappeared, just like that, leaving everything behind. For some time Leila could not understand where they had gone and why they hadn’t returned since. What had happened to them – the doctor and his family, and all those instruments that had once been trees, mighty and tall?
Haroun’s grandfather Mahmoud, an influential Kurdish agha, had then moved in his own kin. The house was a reward from the Ottoman government for the role he had played in the deportation of Armenians in the area. Resolute, committed, he had followed the orders from Istanbul without a moment’s hesitation. If the authorities decided that certain people were traitors and they had to be sent packing to the Desert of Der-Zor, where only a few could hope to survive, so they would be – even if they were good neighbours, old friends. Having thus proven his loyalty to the state, Mahmoud had become an important man; the locals admired the perfect symmetry of his moustache, the shine of his black leather boots, the grandiosity of his voice. They respected him the way cruel and powerful people have been respected since the dawn of time – with abundant fear, and not a speck of love.
Mahmoud had decreed that everything in the house be preserved, and so it was for a while. But rumour had it that, just before they left town, the Armenians, unable to carry their valuables with them, had hidden pots of coins and chests of rubies somewhere within reach. Soon Mahmoud and his relatives were digging – in the garden, the courtyard, the cellars … not an inch of ground was left unturned. Unable to find anything, they started to break through the walls, not once considering that, even if they hit on a treasure, it did not belong to them. By the time they gave up, the house had turned into a pile of rubble and had to be rebuilt from the inside out. Leila knew that her father, who as a boy had witnessed the frenzy, still believed there was a casket of gold somewhere, untold riches just a breath away. Some nights, as she closed her eyes and drifted off to sleep, she would dream of jewels, glowing in the distance like fireflies over a summer meadow.
Not that Leila had any interest in money at that tender age. She much preferred to have in her pocket a bar of hazelnut chocolate, or a piece of Zambo chewing gum, whose wrapper had the picture of a black woman with huge round earrings. Her father would order these delicacies to be sent to her all the way from Istanbul. Everything new and interesting was in Istanbul, the child felt with a twinge of envy – a city of wonders and curiosities. One day she would go there, she told herself – a self-made promise she kept hidden from everyone, the way an oyster conceals the pearl at its heart.
Leila delighted in serving tea to her dolls, watching the trout swimming in cold-water streams, and staring at the patterns in the rugs until the shapes came to life; but, most of all, she loved dancing. She longed to become a famous belly dancer one day. It was a fantasy that would have appalled her father, had he known how thoroughly she had envisaged the details: the sparkling sequins, the coin skirts, the clicking and clacking of finger cymbals; shimmying and rotating her hips to the rat-a-tat of the goblet drum – the darbuka; charming the audience into a steadily rising synchronized clap; turning and spinning to a thrilling finale. Even the thought of it made her heart beat faster. But Baba always said that dancing was one of Sheitan’s myriad, time-honoured tactics to lead humans astray. With heady perfumes and shiny trinkets, the Devil seduced women first, weak and emotional as they were, and then, through the women, he lured the men into his trap.
As a much sought-after tailor, Baba made fashionable alla franga garments for ladies – swing dresses, sheath dresses, circle skirts, Peter Pan-collar blouses, halter-neck tops, Capri trousers. The wives of army officers, civil servants, border inspectors, railway engineers and spice merchants were among his regular customers. He also sold a large collection of hats, gloves and berets – stylish, silky creations that he would never allow his own family members to wear.
Because her father was opposed to dancing, so was her mother – although Leila noticed that she seemed to waver in her convictions when there was no one else around. Mother became a different person altogether when it was just the two of them. She allowed Leila to unbraid, comb and braid her henna-red hair, to slather vanishing cream on her wrinkled face, and to apply petroleum jelly mixed with coal dust to her eyelashes to darken them. She lavished her daughter with hugs and praise, made garish pom-poms in a rainbow of colours, threaded conkers on to pieces of string and played cards – none of these things would she do in the presence of others. She was especially reserved when Auntie Binnaz was around.
‘If your aunt sees us enjoying ourselves, she might feel bad,’ Mother said. ‘You shouldn’t kiss me in front of her.’
‘But why?’
‘Well, she never had children. We don’t want to break her heart, do we?’
‘It’s okay, Mummy. I can kiss you both.’
Mother drew on her cigarette. ‘Don’t forget, my soul. Your aunt is sick in the head – just like her mother, so I have heard. It is in their blood. Hereditary madness. Apparently they have it in every generation. We must be careful not to upset her.’
When Auntie got upset she had a tendency to hurt herself. She pulled out clumps of her hair, scratched her face, and picked at her skin so hard that it bled. Mother said that the day she had given birth to Leila, Auntie, waiting by the door, either out of envy or some other perverse motive, had punched herself in the face. When questioned why she would do such a thing, she had claimed that an apricot seller outside the street had been throwing snowballs at her through the open window. Apricots, in January! None of it had made
any sense. They had all feared for her sanity. This story, and many others, which were told repeatedly, the child listened to with a petrified fascination.
Yet the damage Auntie inflicted upon herself did not always seem intentional. For one thing, she was as clumsy as a toddler taking her first steps. She burned her fingers on red-hot skillets, banged her knees on furniture, fell out of bed in her sleep, gashed her hands on broken glass. She had sad-looking bruises and inflamed, angry scars all over her body.
Auntie’s emotions swung back and forth, like the pendulum of the grandfather clock. Some days, full of energy, she was indefatigable, scurrying from one task to another. She swept the carpets with a vengeance, ran a dust cloth over every surface, boiled the linens she had laundered only the night before, scrubbed the floors for hours on end and sprayed an ill-smelling disinfectant all over the house. Her hands were raw and cracked and did not get any softer, even though she regularly rubbed them with mutton fat. They would always be rough, washing them as she did dozens of times a day, convinced still that they were not clean enough. Nothing was, really. At other times, she seemed so worn out she could hardly move. Even breathing became an effort.
There were also days when Auntie appeared to be without a care in the world. Relaxed and radiant, she spent hours playing with Leila in the garden. Together they dangled strips of fabric from apple boughs laden with blossom, calling them ballerinas, took their sweet time to weave little baskets out of willow or crowns out of daisies; tied ribbons around the horns of the ram waiting to be sacrificed next Eid. Once they secretly cut the rope that kept the animal fastened to the shed. But the ram did not break loose as they had planned. After meandering here and there in search of fresh grass, it returned to the same spot, finding the familiarity of captivity more reassuring than the strange call of freedom.
Auntie and Leila loved to fashion tablecloths into gowns and stare at the women in magazines, imitating their erect postures and confident smiles. Of all the models and actresses they studied closely, there was one they admired the most: Rita Hayworth. Her eyelashes were like arrows, her eyebrows like bows; her waist was thinner than a tea glass, her skin as smooth as spun silk. She might have been the answer to every Ottoman poet’s quest, but for one tiny mistake: she was born at the wrong time, far away in America.
Curious as they were about Rita Hayworth’s life, looking at her photos was all they could do since neither of them knew how to read. Leila had yet to start school; as for her aunt, she had never been to one. There was no school in the village where Auntie Binnaz had grown up, and her father had not allowed her to walk the rutted road to town and back every day, with her brothers. They didn’t have enough pairs of shoes, and she had to take care of her younger siblings anyway.
Unlike Auntie, Mother was literate and proud of it. She could read recipes out of a cookbook, flip through the page-a-day wall calendar, and even follow articles in the newspapers. It was she who relayed the news of the world to them: in Egypt, a group of military officers declared the state a republic; in America, they executed a couple accused of being spies; in East Germany, thousands of people marched to protest the government’s policies and were crushed by the Soviet occupiers; and in Turkey, far away in Istanbul, which sometimes felt like a different country altogether, a beauty contest was being held, young women posing on the catwalk in one-piece bathing suits. Religious groups were out on the streets denouncing the show as immoral, but the organizers were determined to go ahead. Nations became civilized in three fundamental ways, they said: science, education and beauty contests.
Whenever Suzan read such news aloud, Binnaz quickly averted her gaze. A vein pulsated in her left temple, a silent but steady signal of distress. Leila sympathized with her aunt, finding something recognizable, almost comforting, in the woman’s vulnerability. But she also sensed that, on this matter, she could not be on Auntie’s side for long. She was looking forward to starting school soon.
About three months earlier, behind a cedarwood cabinet at the top of the stairs, Leila had found a rickety door that opened on to the roof. Someone must have left it ajar, inviting in a cool, crisp breeze that carried the smell of the wild garlic growing down the road. Since then she had visited the roof almost every day.
Whenever she looked out upon the sprawling town and pricked her ears to catch the cry of a booted eagle soaring over the great glittering lake in the distance, or the honking of flamingos searching the shallows for food, or the chirping of swallows as they darted between the alders, she felt certain that, if only she tried, she, too, could fly. What would it take to grow wings and glide through the skies, carefree and light? The area was inhabited by herons, egrets, white-headed ducks, black-winged stilts, crimson-winged finches, reed warblers, white-throated kingfishers, and swamphens, which the locals called ‘the sultanas’. A pair of storks had taken possession of the chimney and built an impressive nest, one tiny twig at a time. Now they were gone, but she knew they would come back one day. Her aunt said that storks – unlike humans – were loyal to their memories. Once they had made a place ‘home’, even if they found themselves miles away from it, they always returned.
After each visit to the roof, the child would tiptoe downstairs, careful not to be seen. She had no doubt that if her mother caught her she would be in big trouble.
But that afternoon in June 1953, Mother was too busy to pay any attention to her. The house was full of guests – all of them women. This happened without fail twice a month: on the day of Qur’an reading, and on the day of leg waxing. When it was the former, an elderly imam would come to deliver a sermon and read a passage from the holy book. The women of the neighbourhood would sit silently and respectfully, their knees pressed together, their heads covered, rapt in thought. If any of the children wandering around made so much as a peep, they were hushed immediately.
When it was waxing day, things were quite the opposite. With no men around, the women would wear the skimpiest of clothes. They would slouch on the sofa with their legs apart, their arms bare, their eyes glittering with repressed mischief. Chattering incessantly, they would pepper their remarks with curses that made the youngest among them blush like a damask rose. Leila couldn’t believe that these wild creatures were the same people as the imam’s riveted listeners.
Today it was waxing time again. Perched on the carpets, footstools and chairs, women covered every inch of space in the living room, plates of pastries and glasses of tea in their hands. A cloying smell wafted from the kitchen, where the wax bubbled on the stove. Lemon, sugar and water. When the mixture was ready they would all set to work, fast and serious, wincing as they pulled the sticky strips off their skin. But for now, the pain could wait; they were gossiping and feasting to their hearts’ content.
Watching the women from the hallway, Leila was momentarily transfixed, searching in their movements and interactions for clues as to her own future. She was convinced, back then, that when she grew up she would be like them. A toddler hanging on her leg, a baby in her arms, a husband to obey, a house to keep shipshape – this would be her life. Mother had told her that when she was born, the midwife had thrown her umbilical cord on the school roof so that she would become a teacher, but Baba was not keen for that to happen. Not any more. A while ago, he had met a sheikh who had explained to him that it was better for women to stay at home and to cover themselves on the rare occasions they needed to go out. Nobody wanted to buy tomatoes that had been touched, squeezed and sullied by other customers. Better if all the tomatoes in the market were carefully packaged and preserved. Same with women, the sheikh said. The hijab was their package, the armour that protected them from suggestive looks and unwanted touches.
Mother and Auntie had therefore started to cover their heads – unlike most of the women in the neighbourhood, who closely followed the fashion in the West, their hair combed into bob-shaped bouffants, permed into tight curls or pulled back into elegant buns, like Audrey Hepburn’s. While Mother had settled on a black chador w
hen she went out, Auntie had chosen bright chiffon scarves, firmly tied under her chin. Both took the utmost care not to show even a strand of hair. Leila was confident that someday soon she would follow in their footsteps. Mother had told her that when that day arrived they would go to the bazaar together and buy the prettiest headscarf and a matching long coat for her.
‘Can I still wear my belly-dancing costume underneath?’
‘You silly girl,’ Mother had said, smiling.
Lost in her thoughts, Leila now tiptoed past the living room and headed to the kitchen. Mother had been toiling away there since early morning – baking börek, brewing tea and preparing the wax. Leila could not understand, for the life of her, why anyone would slather this sugary delicacy on to their hairy legs rather than eat it, as she happily did.
On entering the kitchen, she was surprised to find someone else there. Auntie Binnaz was standing alone by the worktop, her hand closed around a long, serrated knife that caught the light of the afternoon sun. Leila was worried she might hurt herself. Auntie had to be careful these days as she had just announced that she was expecting – again. No one talked about it, fearing nazar – the evil eye. Based on previous experiences, Leila reckoned that in the coming months, as Auntie’s pregnancy became apparent, the adults around her would behave as if her growing bump was due to a hearty appetite or chronic bloating. That’s what had happened each time so far: the bigger Auntie had got, the more invisible she had become to others. She might just as well be fading before their very eyes, like a photograph left on asphalt under an unforgiving sun.
Gingerly, Leila took a step forward and stood watching.
Her aunt, slightly stooping over what appeared to be a heap of salad, did not seem to have noticed her. She was staring at the newspaper laid across the worktop, her gimlet eyes burning against the paleness of her skin. With a sigh, she grabbed a handful of lettuce and started cutting the leaves rhythmically on a chopping board, the knife soon moving so rapidly it became a blur.