by Alan Drew
“Malatya,” an elderly man called out. The man stood in the flow of foot traffic, travelers swerving around him as though he were a rock in a stream. “One ticket to Malatya just ten million.”
Malatya was not Diyarbakr but it was close. So close that if he got there and didn’t have the money for another ticket, someone would give him a ride.
“One ticket leaving tonight, third class.”
By tomorrow morning he could be there, standing beneath that desert blue sky, sucking in the sumac dry air.
“This ticket is good?” Sinan said.
“Yes,” the man said. One eye was clouded white but the other shone with sight. “My wife and I were to go together, but she was killed.”
He could go tonight and bring his family later.
“I’ll take it,” Sinan said.
Sinan gave him the ten-million note and the man handed him the ticket. Holding the ticket, his hands shook with excitement. By tomorrow morning—just one more sunset and sunrise—he would be gone from this city. It would be like going back in time, as though he never got on the train at all, had never come to this place.
The old man hobbled toward the station, heaving a trash bag of belongings onto his shoulder. He looked like a hunchback, his thin body a cracking of bones, and Sinan felt an extreme loneliness that broke him out of his passion. His heart sank because he knew he could not take that train.
“Efendim?” Sinan called after the old man. “Sir?” The man turned around, his back bent into a hook by the bag of possessions, his good eye sharp and distrustful.
“I’m sorry, I can’t take this ticket.”
“Try selling it yourself then,” the man said.
“No, no, you don’t understand. I have a family. It was a mistake.”
“Be glad you have a family. We all need the money.”
The man turned and crossed the street between two speeding buses.
Sinan stood there and watched him go, a ticket he would not use pressed into his hand. God punishes us for our sins. Somehow this fact comforted him. A small sin, a small price. What he almost did was much, much worse. What price God would have exacted for that sin he did not know.
Chapter 35
SHE TRIED TO CATCH UP TO HIM, BUT HE PURPOSELY SKIPPED two steps ahead of her. The men watched them again, this time, she thought, with approving eyes: a woman should always walk behind her man.
It was easy to miss the church; a whitewashed wall, twelve feet high, surrounded it, and from the street you wouldn’t notice the bell tower unless you craned your neck to see it. He led her down an alleyway, past an arbor hung with wisteria, to a small metal door cracked enough to let a single person through.
They squeezed inside and suddenly all the street sounds were muffled. The city, just beyond the walls, seemed very far away. Three cats lay stretched in the sun on the steps to the church and a fountain dribbled water into a marble basin slimed with algae. Three orange trees stood in the courtyard, their branches dotted with overripe fruit.
She had never been in a church before and its beauty surprised her. It was a small building, crowded with rows of benches that made it feel populated even though no one was inside. The dome was painted with pink clouds, and a man, the prophet Jesus, she guessed, was frescoed on the wall above the front of the church. He held a black book in one hand. His other hand was held aloft, almost as though he were gesturing to touch her. One finger touched his thumb, while the others—three long, white, elegant fingers—dangled in the air in a sign she didn’t recognize. Jesus’ face was very calm-looking, very kind and thoughtful, almost sleepy-eyed, and she remembered the stories her father had told her about him—the miracles he performed, his admonishments of the Jews, the way the Jews betrayed him and the Romans nailed him to a cross. Hanging there in dazzling gold on the wall in front of her, he did look like a prophet.
She followed Dylan to the front of the church, where tea candles flickered in a metal box. He climbed the steps, and she stopped to watch him, feeling like an intruder on some sacred quiet.
“Come here,” he said, looking down at her.
“Are we supposed to be here?” She glanced toward the rear of the church, looking for the screens that hid the women’s prayer section, looking for anything that would tell her what to do. “The door was almost closed. Maybe they don’t want people inside.”
“Nah,” he said. “Some Greeks were killed here, like back in 1922 or something. Right before the exchange of populations. They don’t want everyone to know how to get in.”
“Come on,” he said again. “I want to show you something.”
He lifted a candle from the metal box and took her hand. They passed beneath Jesus and his outstretched hands, his eyes following them across the marble floor. Dylan’s candle flickered against the wall like light undulating through water. Then, in a darkened corner of the church, the light caught the slender body of a woman in full hijab. It was a strange abaya, though, one that wasn’t black but a beautiful sky blue that matched Jesus’ eyes. The candlelight exposed her feet first and then the curve of her hips beneath the fabric and the shape of her breasts and then her face. Her eyes were cast downward, her long eyelashes touching her cheeks. Her face was absolutely white, like snow freshly fallen on the street before the cars turn it black. A tear hung on her left cheek, suspended there as though it would never fall, and it wouldn’t—it would rest there forever in this darkened corner of a church. The woman was beautiful, sad like all women, but beautiful in her sadness.
“My mom used to take me here when I was little,” Dylan said.
She was covered, but she was different. rem couldn’t say in what way she was different—strands of her hair showed, the abaya was blue—but that wasn’t it.
“You know the story of the Virgin Mary, right?”
For a moment she thought he was going to make a crude joke, but the candlelight illuminated the seriousness of his face.
“Yes,” she said. “A little.”
“Mom always said that Mary was the strong one. It was easy for Jesus, she said, because he knew he was God’s son, he knew the pain would end. But Mary had to watch her son die, had to be left behind. I think that’s why she couldn’t buy the story the way my father can.”
Then suddenly, as if that was all he wanted to say, he snatched the candle away and left the woman in darkness again.
“Stop,” rem said. She grabbed Dylan’s hand and moved the candle beneath her again, a ghost rising from the mortar of the wall.
She watched the form flicker in the light. Her body seemed to move, just barely, under the spell of the single flame, as though the woman took shallow breaths to remain still.
“She’s always been my favorite,” Dylan said. “Out of all of them.”
She looked proud, rem decided. That’s what was different about her. She was sad, but proud, as though she kept her sadness like a prize.
Dylan walked her to a podium now and took her hands and Jesus Bey still stared down at them.
“Marry me,” he said.
“Marry you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “We’re in a church.”
“No,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Do you, oh-so-beautiful rem Baiolu”—and here he smiled his best smile, the crooked one that was devious and innocent at the same time—“take Dylan Roberts to be your lawfully wedded husband?”
“You know this doesn’t count,” she said.
“For better or for worse, in sickness and in health…”
“You’re crazy.”
“If we want this,” he said, “we’ve got to make up our own rules.”
He untied a black leather bracelet from his wrist, took her left arm and pulled her close to him so he could tie it around her wrist. His shoulder was against hers and she watched his face, his downcast eyes, their long eyelashes, as he tied the knot in the bracelet.
“My mother gave this to me,” he said.
“No. I can’t,” she said, but
she wanted it and she wanted him to protest her protest.
“Yes,” he said and turned the bracelet around on her pale wrist so the knot wouldn’t show. He ran his fingers across the blue veins that showed just beneath her skin. Electricity shot up her arm and tickled her side.
“Until death do you part?”
She laughed.
“I do,” he said. “Say, ‘I do.’”
“No.”
“C’mon.”
“All right,” she said. “Now leave me alone.”
“You may kiss the bride.”
“Not in a church,” she said.
When they were outside again, thunderclouds blackened the sky, and the bricks were slick with smatterings of raindrops. It was getting late and the express ferry had already blown its horn, but she couldn’t make herself care too much. She slipped and nearly fell and he grabbed her by the waist and held her close and she let him. They weren’t married and maybe they never would be, but it was fun to pretend, so fun it almost seemed real.
Chapter 36
LATER THAT EVENING, AS SINAN RODE THE BUS PAST THE crowded Kadiköy market, through the traffic and past the people standing in front of the fish stalls, their faces lit up by the exposed electric lights, he thought, for a brief moment, he saw rem walking down a dark alley away from the brightly lit stalls, her arm around a man’s waist. A storm had just blown through and the cobblestone was wet and shiny and the man held her close to him. But then the bus passed by the gray walls of the Orthodox Church and turned onto the long ramp to the TEM freeway and he was gone, the bus swerving into the evening traffic, the shoulders of the tired passengers bumping together like corpses forced to sit up straight.
After taxes, they needed nearly 140 million lira to escape. He’d written the exact number on a piece of paper he folded into his coat pocket and now, before the sun set over the Marmara, he unfolded the paper and read the number again. Insallah, he could have it in three weeks. Twenty-one mornings, and on the twenty-second they would see the sun rise on Kurdistan.
Chapter 37
“THIS IS THAT BOY’S,” NILÜFER SAID, HOLDING THE CD PLAYER out to him. “I found it under her sleeping bag.”
Nilüfer attacked him as soon as he got home from Kadiköy, after he had sat for hours in traffic, sweating in the wet heat and brown exhaust. Now she held the device in her hand as though it were a murder weapon.
rem sat in the corner of the tent with her arms crossed over her body. Her face was flushed and she scowled so that through her parted lips he saw her white teeth. smail was rubbing his sister’s back, trying to calm her.
“It’s not his,” rem yelled. She shrugged off her brother’s touch and the boy went and huddled on his sleeping bag.
“Keep your voice down,” Nilüfer said. “People are already saying enough. You lied to me and you’re still lying to me!”
“He gave it to me,” rem said with a smug smile. “It’s mine now.
Baba knows about it.”
Nilüfer faced him, her head cocked to the side, her pupils narrowing for an attack.
“You knew about this?”
“It’s just music,” he said.
Nilüfer smashed the CD player to the ground, the top to the device cracking off and rocketing across the tent.
“There,” she said. “There’s your music player.”
“Anne!” rem cried, diving across the sleeping bags to pick up the broken machine. “You ruined it! You ruined it, Anne. What will he do?” Her anguish was shocking.
“Yours, huh?” Nilüfer said. She stood over rem and spoke down at her. “I will not have you ruin our name! Do you know what people are saying, Sinan?”
She turned to face him, her arm extended toward her daughter. “Do you know what people are saying I was at the laundry today and they’re saying terrible things, right in front of me. They saw them get on the ferry together. No one spoke to me, but they said things so I could hear.”
“I don’t care what they’re saying,” rem said.
“Are they true?” Nilüfer said, pulling rem to her feet with one swift jerk of her arm. “And where’d you get this,” she said, tugging on a black bracelet hanging from rem’s wrist.
“Enough,” Sinan said. He jumped between them, but they argued through him as though he were not there.
“Which rumors, Anne?” rem said, looking directly into her mother’s eyes. “You tell me which ones and I’ll tell you if they’re true.”
Nilüfer stared at rem a moment before she seemed to lose her will and turned away. She spun around again, though, pointed a finger at rem, and whispered through her teeth. “I will not have you ruin our name, rem!” She stabbed her finger in the air as though it were a weapon. “You will not ruin our name. You selfish child!”
rem burst into tears and ran out of the tent.
Nilüfer watched after her. “She’s running around like a wild animal.” She put her hands to her mouth and began chewing her fingernails. “They’re saying terrible things, Sinan. People have seen them. And where was she today? Where did they take that ferry? Marcus Bey didn’t even know where his son was. You tell me if these rumors are true, since you seem to know all about this.” She took a step toward him and poked her finger into his chest. “I’ve spent too many years sweating at hard work, too many years stuck in a hot kitchen. I’ve kept my mouth shut too many times so I could be called a good woman, and for this girl—for you—to ruin my name!”
“Nilüfer,” Sinan said. “Calm down, Nilüfer. Like you said, she’s just a child.” He tried to put his arms around her.
“Don’t tell me to calm down,” she said. “A child, yes. Your child! You don’t care about her. If you loved her, you wouldn’t let this happen.”
“I’ll talk to her,” Sinan said.
“Talk to her I’ve already talked to her and she’s lied to me. You should hear the things people are saying.”
“People spread rumors about others to keep eyes off themselves.”
“You should lock her up in this tent until she learns her place. Thinks she knows what it is to be a woman!” She ripped a piece of nail from her thumb and spat it on the floor. “If you loved her that’s what you’d do, lock her up in here until that boy is back in America.”
“Nilüfer, do you want to go to work sixteen hours a day?” Sinan said, raising his voice. smail cowered on the bag, hiding as best he could from all of them. “Do you want to worry about taking care of all of us? Do you want the burden of trying to make you all happy? Do you know what that’s like? Don’t tell me what to do, unless you want all that.”
“Yes, you’re the only one who works,” she said under her breath. “Of course.” She sat down and pulled smail into her lap.
“Nilüfer,” Sinan said, coming to sit down next to her. “A hundred and forty million will get us to Diyarbakr. I’ll have the money in three weeks. Just three weeks. We have a house there, family. The American boy won’t matter then.”
She didn’t look up. Her palms remained pressed against her eyes and her wrists glistened with water.
“I never thought you were a weak man,” she said quietly.
He stood up and looked down at her. “We’re in a tent, Nilüfer,” he said, spitting the words at her as though she had no sense at all, as though she were the stupidest woman in the world. He heard the tone in his voice, but he didn’t care. “How do you lock a girl up in a tent?!”
She said something he couldn’t hear and he let it go.
“In three weeks I’ll have the money. Just twenty-one days more, Nilüfer.”
“But everything can change in one day, my husband.”
IT TOOK A WHILE, but he found his daughter on the bare hillside between the city and the camp where the sea spread below like a hole in the earth, just a dark pool of emptiness that was darker than the moonless sky. He had trouble seeing her at first, but soon he caught her shape hunched in the darkness.
“You scare me when you run away,” he said.<
br />
She was silent, but he heard a sniffle and he sat down next to her. It was pitch-black on the hill between the fires of the tent city and the bulldozer floodlights in town, and he couldn’t make out her face, only the outline of her head and shoulders.
“You don’t know what it’s like to be a parent,” he said. “I’m always afraid something will happen to you. Every day I worry life will be mean to you.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a dark shape prowl the ridge of the hill. He turned to see what it was, but what he thought he saw was gone, replaced by the luminous rising moon.
“There are things in the world, rem, that will try to hurt you.
They don’t care about you. They just want something. Everyone wants something. Your mother and I love you and we’re trying to protect you.”
“Yeah, I felt so protected after the quake, Baba. You disappeared.”
Only his guilt kept him from slapping her. He suddenly felt the steepness of the hill. The land in front of him fell toward the sea, and when he moved his foot little landslides of rock tumbled silently into the dark.
“I kissed him, Baba. That’s the ‘terrible’ thing people saw.”
An image of his daughter kissing the American boy turned his stomach.
“What they’re saying, though, I don’t know,” rem continued. “What people say is always worse than what you’ve done. That’s what Dylan says.”
He tried to control his anger, but it boiled to the surface and he remained quiet for a minute, trying to get the burn to subside. “This is not how I raised you,” he said finally. “It’s a sin.”
rem blew air out of her mouth. “Baba, you raised me to be like mother.” She scraped her heel into the dirt and loosened some rocks. “You told me you wanted me to be happy.”