by Elif Shafak
Thanks to her new métier, Zaynab was able to earn money. Not much, but enough to give her hope. Yet hope is a hazardous chemical capable of triggering a chain reaction in the human soul. Tired of people’s intrusive gaze and with no prospects of getting married or finding a job, she had long carried her body like a curse. As soon as she saved enough money, she allowed herself to fantasize about leaving everything behind. She would go to a place where she could create herself anew. Hadn’t every story she’d been told since she was a child carried the same message? You could traverse deserts, climb mountains, sail oceans and beat giants, so long as you had a crumb of hope in your pocket. The heroes in those tales were, without exception, male, and none was her size, but that didn’t matter. If they had dared, so could she.
For weeks after her return home, she talked to her ageing parents, hoping to convince them to allow her to go away, find her own path. Being the dutiful daughter that she had been all her life, there was no way she could travel abroad, or anywhere, without their blessing, and if they’d refused, she would have stayed. Her brothers and sisters were fiercely against this dream of hers, which they saw as pure madness. But Zaynab was adamant. How could they possibly know how she felt deep within when Allah had created them so differently? What did they know about being a little person, clinging with your fingers to the edge of society?
In the end, once again, it was her father who understood her better than anyone.
‘Your mother and I are getting old. I have been asking myself, what will you do on your own when we are gone? Of course, your sisters will take good care of you. But I know how proud you are. I always wanted you to marry someone your size; it didn’t happen.’
She kissed his hand. If only she could explain to him that marriage was not her destiny; that many a night when she put her head on the pillow she saw the Travelling Angels, the Dardail, and could never be sure afterwards whether it was a dream or a vision; that perhaps her home was not where she was born but where she chose to die; that with what remained of her health, her years on earth, she wished to do what no one in the family had done to this day and become one of the journeyers.
Her father breathed deeply and angled his head, as though he had heard everything. He said, ‘If you must leave, then you shall, ya ruhi. Make friends, good ones. Loyal ones. No one can survive alone – except the Almighty God. And remember, in the desert of life, the fool travels alone and the wise by caravan.’
April 1964. The day after a new constitution was promulgated, describing Syria as a ‘Democratic Socialist Republic’, Zaynab arrived in the town of Kessab. Helped through by an Armenian family, she crossed the border into Turkey. She was determined to go to Istanbul, though she was not sure why, save for a distant moment in time, a secret desire, the face of the photographer still at the back of her mind, tugging at her memory, the only man she had ever loved. She hid among cardboard boxes in the back of a lorry, plagued by the scariest thoughts. Every time the driver stepped on the brakes, Zaynab feared something awful would happen, but the journey was surprisingly uneventful.
Finding a job in Istanbul, however, was not easy. No one wanted to hire her. Without knowing the language she could not practise divination. After weeks of searching, she was hired at a hairdresser’s named Split Ends. The work was onerous, the money barely enough, the owner unkind. Unable to stand on her feet for long hours each day, she suffered from excruciating back pain. Still she carried on. Months passed, and then a whole year.
One of the regular customers, a thickset woman who had her hair dyed a different shade of blonde every few weeks, was fond of Zaynab.
‘Why don’t you come and work for me?’ said the woman one day.
‘What kind of a place is it?’ Zaynab enquired.
‘Well, it’s a brothel. And before you protest, or throw something at my head, let me make one thing clear: I run a decent place. Established, legal. We go way back to Ottoman times, just don’t tell that to everyone. Some people don’t want to hear it, apparently. Anyway, if you come work for me, I’ll make sure you are treated properly. You’ll do the same kind of job you are doing here – cleaning up, brewing coffee, washing the cups … Nothing more. But I’ll pay you better.’
And this is how Zaynab122, having journeyed from the high mountains of northern Lebanon to the low hills of Istanbul, came into Tequila Leila’s life.
Nine Minutes
In the ninth minute, Leila’s memory simultaneously slowed down and spun out of control as fragments of her past whirled inside her head in an ecstatic dance, like passing bees. She now remembered D/Ali, and the thought of him brought along the taste of chocolate bonbons with surprise fillings inside – caramel, cherry paste, hazelnut praline …
July 1968. It had been a long, sweltering summer; the sun baked the asphalt and the air felt clammy. Not so much as a whiff of breeze, a quick shower of rain, not a single cloud in the sky. Seagulls stood still on the rooftops, their eyes fixed on the horizon, as if waiting for the ghosts of enemy armadas to return; magpies perched on the magnolia trees, surveying their surroundings for shiny trinkets, but they stole little in the end, too lazy to move in the heat. A week ago a pipe had burst and dirty water had run along the streets as far south as Tophane, forming puddles here and there on which children floated paper boats. Uncollected rubbish released a rancid odour. The prostitutes had been complaining about the stench and the flies. Not that they expected anyone to listen. No one thought the pipe would be fixed any time soon. They would have to wait, just like they waited for many other things in life. Yet to everyone’s immense surprise, one morning they woke up to the sound of workmen drilling the road and mending the faulty pipe. Not only that, but the loose stones in the pavement had been repaired and the gate at the entrance to the street of brothels had been painted. It was now a dark, dull green, the colour of leftover lentils – a colour only a government official hurrying to get work done would ever choose.
It turned out the prostitutes were right to suspect that the authorities were behind this frenzy of activity. The reason soon became clear: Americans were coming. The Sixth Fleet was on its way to Istanbul. An aircraft carrier that weighed 27,000 tons was going to drop anchor in the Bosphorus to take part in NATO operations.
The news caused ripples of excitement throughout the street of brothels. Hundreds of sailors were soon to disembark with crisp dollars in their pockets, and many would no doubt be in need of a woman’s touch after weeks away from home. Bitter Ma was beside herself with joy. She put a CLOSED sign on the front door and ordered everyone to roll up their sleeves. Leila and the other women grabbed mops, brooms, dust cloths, sponges … whatever cleaning object they could possibly find. They polished the door handles, scrubbed the walls, swept the floors, washed the windows, and repainted the door frames in an eggshell white. Bitter Ma wanted the whole building to be redone, but, reluctant to hire a professional painter, she had to settle for an amateur finish.
Meanwhile, there was another flurry of activity across the city. The municipality of Istanbul, determined to give the American visitors a proper taste of Turkish hospitality, festooned the streets with flowers. Thousands of flags were unfurled, and left hanging helter-skelter from car windows, balconies and front gardens. NATO IS SAFETY, NATO IS PEACE read a banner hung on the wall outside a luxurious hotel. When all the street lights, now repaired and renewed, were turned on, a golden glow reflected off the freshly swept asphalt.
On the day the Sixth Fleet arrived, a twenty-one-gun salute was fired. At about the same time, just to make double sure there would be no trouble, the police raided the campus of Istanbul University. Their aim was to round up leftist student leaders and keep them in custody until the fleet had left the city. Waving their batons, emboldened by their pistols, they descended on the canteens and the dorms, the sound of their boots regular as the chatter of cicadas. But the students did something quite unexpected: they resisted. The ensuing stand-off became violent and bloody – thirty students were arrested, fifty badly beate
n, and one murdered.
That night Istanbul looked glamorous and beautiful, although deeply nervous – like a woman who had dressed up for a party she no longer wished to attend. There was a tension in the air that only increased as the hours went by. Many across the city slept in fits and starts, anxiously waiting for daylight, fearing the worst.
The next morning, dew still glistening on the flowers that had been planted for the Americans, thousands of protesters were on the streets. A surge of people began marching towards Taksim Square singing revolutionary anthems. In front of the Dolmabahçe Palace – home to six noted Ottoman sultans and nameless concubines – the procession came to an abrupt stop. For a fleeting moment, there was an awkward quiet, that interstice in a demonstration when the crowd holds its breath, waiting without knowing for what. Then, a student leader, grabbing a megaphone, shouted at the top of his voice in English, ‘Yankee, Go Home!’
The crowd, as though energized by a jolt of lightning, chanted in unison, ‘Yankee, Go Home! Yankee, Go Home!’
By now the American sailors, having disembarked from the ships early in the day, were milling around, ready to check out the historic city, take a few pictures, get some souvenirs. When they first heard the sounds in the distance they did not think much of it – until they rounded a corner and ran straight into the angry demonstrators.
Sandwiched between the protest march and the waters of the Bosphorus, the sailors opted for the latter, diving straight into the sea. Some swam away and were rescued by fishermen; others stayed close to the shore, and were pulled out by passers-by when the march had come to an end. Before the day was over, the commander of the Sixth Fleet, not finding it safe to linger, decided to leave Istanbul earlier than planned.
Meanwhile, in the brothel, Bitter Ma, who had bought bikini tops and grass skirts for all the women and prepared a sign in her pidgin English that read WELCOME JONS, was incandescent. She had always disliked lefties, and now she hated them all the more. Who the hell did they think they were, cutting off her business like that? All that painting, cleaning and waxing had been for nothing. As far as she was concerned, that’s what communism amounted to: a monumental waste of decent, well-meaning people’s hard work! She hadn’t slogged away all her life so that a handful of misguided radicals could come and tell her she must now distribute her hard-earned money to gaggles of idlers and loafers and paupers. No sir, she would never do that. Resolving to donate money to every anti-communist cause in the city, however tenuous, she unleashed a curse under her breath and turned the sign on the door to OPEN.
Now that it was clear the American sailors would not be visiting the street of brothels, the prostitutes had slacked off. Upstairs in her room, Leila sat on her bed cross-legged, a ream of paper balanced on her lap, tapping the pen against her cheek. She was hoping to have some quiet time for herself. She wrote:
Dear Nalan,
I have been thinking about what you told me the other day regarding the intelligence of farm animals. You said that we kill them, we eat them, and we think we are smarter than them, but we never really understand them.
You said cows recognize people who have hurt them in the past. Sheep can identify faces as well. But I ask myself, what good does it do them to remember so much when they can’t change a thing?
You said goats are different. Although they get upset easily, they also forgive quickly. Are we humans, just like sheep and goats, composed of two kinds: those who can never forget and those who can forgive …
Startled from her thoughts by a loud, piercing sound, Leila paused. Bitter Ma was shouting at someone. The madam, already outraged, sounded steamed up.
‘What do you want, son?’ Bitter Ma was saying. ‘Just tell me what it is you’re after!’
Leila left the room and went downstairs to check.
There was a young man at the door. His face was flushed, his long, dark hair dishevelled. He was panting slightly, like someone who had been running for dear life. One look at him and Leila sensed he might be one of the leftist protesters on the streets, probably a university student. When the police barricaded the roads, arresting people left, right and centre, he must have broken off from the procession and dashed into an alley, only to find himself in front of the street of brothels.
‘I’m asking you one last time, don’t try my patience.’ Bitter Ma frowned. ‘What the hell do you want? And if you don’t want anything, fine, get out! You can’t just stand there like a scarecrow. Speak up!’
The young man glanced around, his arms folded tight across his chest, as if hugging himself for comfort. It was that gesture that touched Leila’s heart.
‘Sweet Ma, I think he’s here to see me,’ said Leila from above the stairs.
Taken by surprise, he looked up and saw her. The softest smile upturned the corners of his mouth.
At the same time, Bitter Ma was observing the stranger from beneath her drooped lids, waiting to hear what he would say to that.
‘Uhm, yes … that’s right … I’m here to talk to the lady, actually. Thank you.’
Bitter Ma shook with laughter. ‘Talk to the lady – actually? Thank you? Right, son. What planet did you say you came from?’
The young man blinked, suddenly shy. He passed a palm across his temple, as though needing time to find the answer.
Bitter Ma was serious now, all business. ‘So do you want her or not? You got money, my pasha? Because she’s expensive. One of my best.’
The door opened just then and a client walked in. In the changing light pouring in from the street, Leila couldn’t read the young man’s expression for a moment. And then she saw: he was nodding his head, a look of calm spreading over his anxious face.
When he came upstairs to her room, he gazed around with interest, inspecting every detail – the cracks in the sink, the cupboard that did not shut properly, the curtains riddled with cigarette holes. Finally, he turned back and saw that Leila was slowly undressing.
‘Oh, no, no. Stop!’ He took a quick step back, his head at a tilt, his face in a scowl, chiselled by the reflected glare from the mirror. Embarrassed by his outburst he composed himself. ‘I mean … please, keep your clothes on. I really am not here for that.’
‘Then what do you want?’
He shrugged. ‘How about we just sit and chat?’
‘You want to chat?’
‘Yes, I’d love to get to know you. Gosh, I don’t even know your name. Mine is D/Ali – not my legal name, but who wants to keep that, right?’
Leila stared at him. In the furniture workshop across the yard, someone began singing – a song she couldn’t recognize.
D/Ali fell back on to the bed and pulled his legs up, sliding easily into a cross-legged position, his cheek resting in the palm of his hand. ‘And don’t worry if you’re not in the mood to talk, honestly. I could just as well roll a cigarette for us. We can smoke it in silence.’
D/Ali. His raven hair falling in waves down to his collar; his eyes a restless emerald that turned a brighter shade when he was thoughtful or confused. The son of immigrants, a child of forced displacements and diasporas. Turkey, Germany, Austria, back to Germany, and once again Turkey – traces of his past showed here and there, like a cardigan that had snagged on rogue nails along the way. Until she met him, Leila had never known anyone who had set up house in so many places and yet did not feel quite at home anywhere.
His real name, the one in his German passport, was Ali.
At school, year after year, he had been subjected to the sneers and, every now and then, to the slurs and fists of racist students. Then one of them had learned about his passion for art. That gave them even more reason to make fun of him each morning when he walked into the classroom. Here comes a boy named Ali … what an idiot, he thinks he is Dali! It had cut him to the core of his being, the endless jeering, the barbs. But one day, when a new teacher asked everyone in the class to introduce themselves, he leaped to his feet first, and said with a steady, confident smile: ‘Hi, my name is
Ali, but I like it better when people call me D/Ali.’ From then on the snide comments had stopped, but he, headstrong and independent, had started using, and even enjoying, what was once a hurtful nickname.
His parents, both from a village by the Aegean Sea, had moved to Germany from Turkey in the early 1960s as Gastarbeiter, ‘guest workers’ – invited to come and work, and when no longer needed, expected to pack their bags and leave. His father had moved there first, in 1961, sharing a hostel room with ten other workers, half of whom could neither read nor write. At night, by the dim light of a lamp, those who were literate would write letters for those who were not. Within a month of living in such a cramped space, everyone had learned everything about each other, from family secrets to blocked bowels.
A year later, the father was joined by his wife, with D/Ali and their twin daughters in tow. At first, things did not work out quite as they had hoped. After a failed attempt to relocate themselves in Austria, the family returned to Germany. The Ford factory in Cologne needed workers, and they settled in a neighbourhood where the streets smelled of asphalt when it rained, the houses all looked the same, and the old lady downstairs called the police at the slightest noise from their flat. Mother bought fluffy slippers for everyone and they got used to speaking in hushed tones. They watched TV with the volume down and did not play music or flush the toilet in the evenings: these were not tolerated either. D/Ali’s younger brother was born here, and this was where they all grew up, lulled to sleep by the murmuring waters of the Rhine.
D/Ali’s father, whose dark hair and square jaw he had inherited, often talked about moving back to Turkey. When they had saved enough money, and were done with this cold, arrogant country, they would up and leave. He was having a house built back in his village. A large house with a pool and an orchard at the rear. At night they would listen to the hum of the valley and the occasional whistle of a pigeon and they would not have to wear fluffy slippers or speak quietly any more. The more years that went by, the more fastidiously he planned their return. No one else in the family took him seriously. Germany was home. Germany was the fatherland – even if the father of the family could not accept this fact.