by Alan Drew
Then they’d stop to come up for air and the blackness of the sea stared back at her and the stars shined down like a billion eyes and she remembered her father sitting alone in the tent, his foot propped up on an empty apple box. Then she wanted Dylan to kiss her again, because when he kissed her she forgot her family and the camp and the earthquake and that she should not be here doing what she was doing.
“Oh, God,” Dylan said. “Your lips are incredible.” He shook his head, his hair whipping around his face, as though he were trying to get control of himself. “For someone who’s never done this before, you’ve got serious skills.”
She laughed an embarrassed laugh.
“What?” he said.
She laughed again, wanting to tell him the secret she remembered because she had never told anyone before and she was sick of keeping secrets to make herself seem innocent.
“You’re laughing at me,” he said.
“No, no.”
“You are. What’d I do?” he said, acting genuinely upset now.
“No,” she said. “I’m not laughing at you. It’s just…”
“What?”
“I’ve done it before.”
“Kissing?” he said. “Like in the shower, on the tiles?”
“No,” she laughed again, this time at him because she briefly imagined him alone, kissing wet shower tiles with his thick, wandering lips. “No. Me and my best friend practiced.”
“What?” he said, laughing.
“Just to see what it was like,” she said, hitting him on the knee. “What are we supposed to do? Husbands want us to be good at it, but we can’t get near any boys. A lot of the girls do it.”
“It’s freaky,” he said, “but kind of cool.”
“It didn’t mean anything,” she said. “I thought of Tarkan when I did it.”
“Tarkan’s gay.”
“No, he’s not.”
“Have you watched him dance in his videos?” He laughed and while still sitting, rolled his body in an awkward belly-dancing move. “You’re the only person in Turkey who doesn’t know that. But I guess thinking about a gay, male pop star—I know, I know, you didn’t know he’s gay—while kissing your best girlfriend makes it all right.”
“It makes it all right for you,” she said.
“That’s for sure.”
Then they were kissing again, the self-consciousness and the guilt receding along with the dark hole of the sea. The spinning stars turned pinwheels in her vision before she closed her eyes and against that black canvas of her mind there was only the feeling and only the feeling mattered.
SHE DIDN’T KNOW WHAT time it was when she left him, but the dipper had moved from the fringe of the horizon to just off center in the sky. They had a routine: she scrambled down the hill toward the beach and he took the goat trail down to the edge of town where he waited behind the fence to the camp until he saw her climb into her tent.
Now she was stepping delicately from rock to rock down a dirt path, the sea on her left and the dull lights of the camp on her right. The white crescent strip of beach lay far below, resting against the sea tide like a huge rib bone. This part of the walk scared her because at night she thought one misstep would send her flying into the air to a landing, her neck broken, on the pebbles below. During the day, she knew this wasn’t so. She would simply roll into the weeds—a few thorns poking her skin through her clothes—get up, and continue down.
An old tanker clunked its way up the coast. The call to prayer rang from the new mosque, the sound of the muezzin echoing off the hillside to the beach and coming back again in louder reverberations, and she knew it was near eleven and much too late to be out.
Because the cacophony of sound was so loud and because she was watching the beach and not the rocks beneath her feet, she tripped and, for a moment, she thought she was tumbling toward the beach. But a hand suddenly grasped her arm, crushing her muscle in its grip, as it steadied her against falling.
“Dylan,” she said.
“No,” a voice said, its arm pulling her toward it. “It’s not your boyfriend.”
It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim light, but she recognized the man. She had seen him many times in her father’s store buying cartons of lightbulbs. She smelled onions on his breath and the damp stench of cigarette smoke.
“Thank you,” she said.
“It’s no problem,” he said. His fingers gripped the skin near her armpit too tightly.
“I’m fine now,” she said.
“Your father know where you are?”
She didn’t say anything.
“Of course not,” he said. She caught his teeth, shining gray through his black mouth, in the light from the camp. “What would a father do if he knew his daughter was out kissing a boy? Especially a father like yours?”
He still hadn’t let go of her arm and now he was moving closer, his other hand floating toward her in the dark.
“He knows about it all,” she said.
“Of course he doesn’t. But don’t worry, I won’t say anything.”
He pulled her toward him and then he was kissing her, his tongue slashing away inside her mouth like a sharpened knife. She tried to pull away, tried to grab the shard of glass in her pocket, but his arms locked around her. She tried to kick him in the groin, but he was too close. His tongue grazed her teeth, and, without thinking, she bit down as hard as she could. He groaned and his arms went weak.
Then she was running down the hill, jumping from rock to rock as though she had the placement of each one memorized.
OUT OF BREATH, SHE stumbled into the tent and accidentally kicked her father’s leg.
“Sorry, Baba,” she said. She braced herself for his attack, sure it would be vicious this time, and she knew she deserved it. She wanted him to attack her so she could admit to everything, so she could lie in his arms and be protected, but he simply moved his leg and curled up inside his sleeping bag.
She let her eyes adjust to the light, the taste of blood still in her mouth, and found her sleeping bag next to her mother. She slipped inside and wiped the blood from her tongue, cleaning her fingers on the inside fabric of the bag. Her mother raised herself up on her elbow and looked away from her toward her father. Nilüfer sat there for a minute, like a dark cloud hovering above her, and rem thought she saw her start to shake. She lay back down and rem felt an emptiness crowd her body, as though a stale air pressed everything good out of her and left her only with the taste of this man’s blood.
Her mother’s sleeping bag rustled again, and the shadow of Nilüfer’s face hung near her cheek.
“You can’t stay out so late,” she said, loud enough that it hurt rem’s ear.
“Yes, Anne,” she said.
Her mother lay back down and turned her back. Her father didn’t move. rem cried into the fabric of the bag, amazed that she could do it so silently.
Chapter 27
“ALLAHU AKBAR!” THE MUEZZIN CALLED IN A VOICE THAT WAS like a knife splitting the morning silence. “I bear witness that there is no god but the One God.”
Nilüfer touched his hip and rested her hand there a minute, as though waiting.
His foot was healed and he could have gotten up to go to morning prayer, but he drew his head down into the sleeping bag and tried to ignore the wavering voice and his wife’s insistent fingers.
I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of God.
The sun was not up yet but the lightening sky was turning the inside of the tent blue.
Come fast to prayer.
Her hand remained on his hip, and now one of her fingers tapped against his bone.
Nilüfer had told him about the wooden mosque the Americans had built, at the request of Imam Ali, to replace the one destroyed in the quake, but he had not gone.
Come to success.
If it had been smail’s fate to survive the quake, then God had known his fate all along and had planned his fate as such. If that outcome was predetermi
ned, he wouldn’t have needed to leave his wife and daughter alone, unprotected for four terrible days. It seemed a cruel trick now, to keep smail trapped in that hell—a test no man could pass.
Prayer is better than sleep.
Nilüfer’s finger stopped tapping. She pulled her hand away and turned her back to him.
God is the Greatest. There is no god but the One True God.
And then the call ended and silence filled the space left by the muezzin’s voice, but the echo seemed to linger in the air.
Later, Nilüfer brought him breakfast. Again, watery eggs and an oily garlic sausage that was burned on one side.
“Your foot is better?”
“Almost,” he said.
“I think it’s better,” she said.
“Is it your foot? Have you been dragging it around all your life?”
She set the eggs in front of him, but he was not hungry. He hadn’t been hungry for days.
“You should eat,” she said.
“I’m no child, Nilüfer.”
“Then stop acting like one!”
He sat up. Her eyes were brilliantly angry. He took a bite from the sausage and chewed while looking out through the tent opening at the yellow ground.
“We can’t stay here,” she said, her voice calm now.
“You begged me to come.”
“To get food, to get you better, to make sure smail was not bleeding.” “What do you want me to do?” He pushed the plate of eggs away and she pushed them back.
“Eat!”
He bit off another piece of the sausage and rolled it around in his mouth.
“We can go into the city,” she said. “There are jobs there.”
“Jobs,” he said. “What do you know about jobs?”
“Yes, jobs,” she said, as though just saying the word would make it all happen.
“And stay where?” he said, shaking his head at her now. “We have ten million to our name.”
Her eyes widened as though she were surprised at how little it was, as though she had not thought of that.
“Don’t be stupid, Nilüfer.”
“This is the man I married?” she said, standing now. Her head hit the top of the tent and she tried to slap the fabric away with her hand. “You’ve never called me such things before. You were a good man, Sinan, but now you sit here like a stupid donkey. You still have a family.”
“Don’t tell me what I already know.” He hesitated, trying to calm himself down. “I’m only one man, Nilüfer.”
She clucked her tongue at him.
“If this is you, you’re not even that,” she said, and then she left the tent.
REM STAYED AROUND THE tent that morning, serving Sinan tea and shaking out the sleeping bags. She asked him about his foot. It was getting better, he said. She asked him if he was tired, if he was sleeping well. I’m sorry if I disturbed you last night. He was sleeping fine. I love you, Baba. I love you, too.
That afternoon, after rem and Nilüfer left to do the laundry, Sinan lay staring up at the ceiling when smail burst into the tent with an envelope in his hand.
“Baba,” smail said. “Baba, a letter for you.”
The boy handed the envelope to him. It was postmarked Diyarbakr, but there was no return address—a trick, he knew, in case the government thought the letter was a coded message for terrorists.
“Where did you get this?”
“A postman came to the school carrying a big bag over his shoulder. He poured them out on the floor.”
He pulled the knife out of the breast pocket of his coat and cut open the envelope. It was from his aunt, written in awkward Kurdish.
Dear Sinan—
Oh, God, I hope you and your family are alive. The pictures on the television are horrible. May God, His mercifulness, keep you safe. If this finds you well, I want to tell you that the soldiers left last week. The PKK stopped fighting after Öcalan’s capture. The men have hung flags in their shop windows and no paramilitaries have come to take them away. The war is over, Sinan. We’ve built a house for you and your family. It’s a simple home, but it will keep the snow out and the chickens in! Come home. I want to see my brother’s son again.
Love—
Aunt Melike
He read the letter again to make sure he had not misunderstood it. The war is over. It was impossible to believe, but how he’d hoped for it. Come home. Hoped for it forever, it seemed.
“smail,” he said. “Come here.”
The boy did and sat down next to him on his sleeping bag. He drew the boy to his side and placed the letter in his hands.
“You don’t remember the woman who wrote this,” he said. “But you’ll meet her soon, God willing.”
“Who is it, Baba?”
“It’s your dede’s sister, my aunt. Someone who loves you very much.”
“How can she love me, if she doesn’t know me?”
“She knew you when you were very young.” He kissed smail on the cheek. “You used to bring her handfuls of pebbles. She washed them and kept every single one of them on the windowsill.” He laughed. “Once you brought her a dried-out goat turd.”
smail wrinkled his nose in disgust. “She washed your hands and put that one on the windowsill, too!”
smail ran his fingers over the words on the paper. “What does it say?” The boy could not read the Kurdish, a fact that saddened him. When they got back to Yesilli he would teach the boy his language, even if the government still forbade it.
“It says ‘Come home and tell smail to bring me gold nuggets this time.’”
HE FOUND NILÜFER AND rem at the washing bins, hanging clothes on the line.
“Take a walk with me,” he said.
“Leave me alone.” Nilüfer hid behind a freshly laundered shirt, but through the white fabric he could see her angry face.
“Take a walk with me.” He pulled the shirt off the line and was presented with her olive-black eyes. “I have something to tell you.”
“Tell me now.”
“No,” he said. “Take a walk with me.”
He grabbed her by the waist and dragged her away from the clothes.
“They’re wet, Sinan. I can’t leave them like that.”
“Leave them.”
“Finish hanging the laundry, rem,” Nilüfer said. “Hide the underclothes behind the blouses. I’ll be back.”
They walked beneath the old guard tower, where a man aimed a long camera lens toward the rows of tents. A man next to him scribbled notes on a small notepad and then spoke into a tiny microphone he held in the palm of his hand.
“I received a letter today,” he said.
“A letter?” she said. “The government can’t bring us food, but they can find us to deliver letters?”
They passed the soup kitchen and the wooden benches set out for eating. Beyond the benches, a crowd had gathered to listen to a Gypsy family playing music in the open field. Sitting on the tailgate of his dented Lada station wagon, the Gypsy father ran his fingers across an electronic keyboard powered by a gas generator.
“Who sent it?” She tugged on his arm now. “Stop playing these games.”
But he wasn’t playing a game. He was afraid it wasn’t true. He didn’t want to say it, for fear he’d wake up and have it all be a dream.
He handed Nilüfer the letter.
The blind daughter of the Gypsy family sang Roma songs with a twirling voice as though her tongue were a spindle, her white eyes staring blankly at the crowd. A single finger tapped against the microphone.
“Aunt Melike?!” Nilüfer said.
“Yes.”
The Gypsy mother stood holding a tin cup in her hand, tipped just so to reveal nothing inside. On another day, in the old life before the earthquake, that cup would have been filled with coins before the song was finished.
“The soldiers have left Yesilli?”
“Yes,” he said. “That’s what her letter says.”
It was true then. He hadn’t im
agined it.
The Gypsy woman’s skirt was filthy, her feet covered only in blackened socks. They had nowhere to go. Being a Gypsy was worse than being a Kurd.
“We can go home!” Nilüfer said.
THE MOSQUE THE AMERICANS had built was a sturdy A-frame with no walls; it looked nothing like a mosque, but it managed to keep the men sheltered from the weather. The Americans had placed a water truck near the entrance and it was here that Sinan washed himself before prayer, trying to keep the mud from splashing on the cuffs of his pants. Inside, the open floor was covered in worn prayer rugs and frayed blankets. A framed tile of God’s name glazed in Arabic sat propped on a metal chair and acted as the prayer niche. Facing this, a couple of dozen men, mostly elderly, prostrated themselves in submission.
He decided to attend evening prayers, ashamed by his anger with God. God had a reason for everything, and a man who doubted His wisdom was arrogant, selfish, and sure to be damned. With each prostration, each recitation, he tried to become nothing, but his humbleness was clouded by the clear vision of his old home in Yesilli: the jagged white teeth of the mountains, the crystalline blue sky, the snow-white steppes like blankets of bleached wool. His chest vibrated with the possibility of return, and while he bowed his head before the mihrab he remembered a day when he was eleven and his father took him to Ensar Bey’s field on the edge of town.
His father didn’t allow him to come here, and for that exact reason Sinan had been to this field before with the other boys of Yesilli. He had seen the Turkish soldiers behind the cement barricades and knew not to pass them. He knew, also, that occasionally they came into town and took someone away and that that someone, whoever it might be, never came back.
The sun was low on the horizon. Two soldiers sitting in a car without a roof on the rise above the field were silhouetted against the sky.
“Here,” his father said and turned his back to the men. “Face me.”