by Alan Drew
He opened his mouth and she placed the spoonful on his tongue.
“If it was me,” she said, “they’d let me starve.”
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She ran her hand through his hair. It wasn’t his fault, even though she sometimes wanted it to be. She crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. He laughed.
“Eat some more.” He did and it was just like it was when he was a toddler and he wouldn’t eat for her mother. He would always eat for her, though. Back then he might scream and cry with her mother, throw the food on the floor, but rem would make a face and he would eat anything she put in his mouth.
“What are you drawing over here?”
He turned the page to show her. A boy with wings hovered above the soccer field. His wings were yellow and he flew toward a big yellow sun.
“It’s pretty,” she said. “That’s your friend?”
He nodded, closed the book, and put it underneath his sleeping bag.
“Why do people die?” smail said.
“They just do,” she said, looking up at the ceiling of the tent, surprised by the question. “Sometimes they’re old, accidents happen.”
“The earthquake?”
“The earthquake,” she said, but she wondered how such a thing could be an accident. She shrugged. “Sometimes they’re sad.”
“And they get sick?”
“Yeah, sometimes.”
smail played with his shoelaces, and she watched him, hoping he was okay and that he wouldn’t ask her any more questions, because she didn’t really know how to answer them. She could make it worse when she wanted to make it better.
“Or they stop eating.”
He laughed again and opened his mouth for the spoon. When she laid her hand in her lap, he touched the wrist where the gauze was. She pulled her hand away, stood and dropped the rice in the makeshift sink.
“Don’t you tell anyone,” she said, pointing the dirty spoon at him.
He shook his head. “I won’t.”
She dropped the spoon in the saucepan and began boiling water for the evening tea.
“You’re scaring me,” smail said.
Striking the match against the edge of the propane stove, she lit the broiler and a blue flame flared up before settling to orange. She blew out a frustrated breath; she was scared, too.
“Everything will be all right, smail. Don’t worry.”
Chapter 41
A COUPLE OF DAYS LATER THE SUMMER HEAT HAD BROKEN. The brown haze lifted, the hills across the water returned, and Sinan could feel the cool October air brush across his neck as he prayed. Behind the prayer niche, beyond the two-by-fours that supported the flimsy roof of the mosque, the sky shone like polished glass, the kind of Anatolian sky that blinded you, bleached color out of carpets, and sucked the water out of the ground.
He had stopped to pray before going to the tent, stopped to gather his head before being confronted with an angry daughter, a frightened son, and a panicked wife. He needed a break: the double shifts at work, the upheaval in a home that wasn’t a home, and the fear that he would be stuck here in this city was more than he could bear. A resentment was growing inside of him like a thorn bush, and he found himself acting out a fantasy in his head in which he broke down and screamed at his family. He would imagine Nilüfer pleading with him to do something and, in his mind, he would turn on her, saying, “I’m only a man, Nilüfer. I cannot do everything.” And suddenly she would understand and embrace him and he would be relieved of responsibility. He imagined such scenes with his daughter while unloading boxes of cleaning supplies. He imagined them with his son, though he never yelled at the boy, and smail would suddenly eat, he would again be the happy child he’d been before the earthquake and Sinan could then sleep. He could then stop working sixteen hours a day. He could eat a meal of lamb kebabs in peace and know his family was safe.
Closing his eyes, he sucked in the air and the dryness chapped his lungs. He recited the prayers and his heart quit thumping in his ears; he bent his head to the prayer rug and the static in his brain receded to a quiet hum. He could breathe again, and when he sat up he could feel the sore muscles in his stomach, and he noticed the stiffness in his jaw where, for weeks it seemed, he had been clenching his teeth. And it was at times like this—these infrequent calm moments that washed over him like warm spring water—that he almost wished for death, that even though it was a sin to desire such a thing, he wished God would deliver him to Paradise this moment, because this temporary peace would break too soon. He said the prayers twice to extend the moment and allow the world to recede even further along his conscience horizon.
It was nearly sunset when he left the tent and it only took until he maneuvered his left foot into his shoe for the world to crowd in on him again.
“Sinan Bey,” Dylan said, standing above him in the growing dark, smoking a cigarette. “Can I please speak with you?”
Sinan said nothing and felt the blood rush to the surface of his skin as he tied the shoelace.
“Please, sir.”
“I know what you want,” Sinan said. “There’s nothing to talk about.”
“You don’t know everything I want.”
Sinan stared up at the boy. He was dressed in black pants and a gray shirt. His arms were covered and he seemed to be growing a faint beard, one with patches of baldness where the hair wouldn’t sprout yet.
“I’m tired,” Sinan said.
“I know,” Dylan said. “You work like crazy.”
“And you know all the hours to my shifts, don’t you?”
“I don’t mean any disrespect,” the boy said. “You just make it hard.”
“You may not mean it.” Sinan stood and started to walk away. “But you’re selfish enough to cause it anyway.”
Other men who had arrived early to prayer filed out of the mosque and some of them passed in a hurry to get to dinner. Fires were beginning to fill the tent aisles with orange smoke and the smell of barbecued mutton wafted in the air.
“Please, Sinan Bey. I’m trying to do the right thing, but maybe the right thing doesn’t matter to you.”
Sinan spun around, pressed his fist into the boy’s chest. A few men stopped to watch what was happening.
“In your case, you might be right.”
The boy’s eyes filled with water, and he suddenly seemed younger than his seventeen years, as though his manhood were still some distant, unrealized possibility.
Sinan removed his fist from the boy’s chest. “You’re still a child and you don’t understand.” He looked the boy in the eyes. “Stay away from my daughter…please.”
“I love her,” he said.
“I know what boys think,” Sinan said. “My daughter’s thinking about love, but you’re thinking about something else.”
“No, you’re wrong.”
“I’m not wrong. Boys think you feel love with the lips. You think you feel it with your hands.”
“Sinan Bey,” Dylan said. “Would it be different if I was Muslim?”
Sinan looked at the boy, taken aback by the suggestion.
“It’s something I’ve been thinking about,” the boy said.
At that moment Kemal came up behind Sinan.
“Good evening, Sinan Bey.” He laid his hand on Sinan’s shoulder. “Is everything all right?”
The boy glared at Kemal.
“Yes, Kemal Bey. We’re just having a discussion.”
“Okay,” Kemal said, lighting a cigarette now. “Okay, my brother. I’m having dinner with friends over here. If you need anything, just let me know.”
“He’s your friend?” Dylan said. The boy’s eyes were furious.
“Yes.”
Dylan watched Kemal walk away, the muscles in his jaw working.
“Why?” asked Sinan.
The boy looked him in the face, his eyes full of anger, his teeth grinding now. “Nothing,” he said. He looked away. “No reason. Forget it.”
Creeping out
from the cuffs of the boy’s shirt were tattoos that blossomed across the tops of his hands—a dragon’s tail, two points of a star, an ornamented leaf. He wore necklaces that fell beneath his buttoned collar. His eyes were blue, as foreign to Sinan as icebergs and freezing northern seas. His lips, those lips—red and chapped now—had kissed his daughter. Who knew what his hands had done.
“You don’t become Muslim just by buttoning up your shirt,” Sinan said. “Or by growing a beard.” He tugged lightly on the scraggly hair of the boy’s chin and Dylan pulled away, his eyes once again filling with water.
“Five prayers a day,” the boy said. “Fasting during Ramadan. The pilgrimage to Mecca. Alms.” Dylan shot him a self-satisfied look.
“Profession of faith.”
The boy rolled his eyes, and Sinan knew he was cursing himself for his silly mistake. Sinan, though, was glad he had forgotten that one pillar of faith. It was too fundamental to be a nervous oversight, and the boy had lived in the country long enough to understand that.
“And modesty,” Sinan added. “You must have modesty.”
The boy was looking at the ground now.
“No,” Sinan said, flatly. “It wouldn’t matter.”
Dylan looked up and Sinan saw the switch in his eyes. One moment he was pleading, his eyes soft and watering with what looked like desperate love, and then in the next second darkness flooded them.
“You just hate me,” the boy said.
Sinan turned his back and walked away.
“Nothing I do is right.”
Sinan didn’t look over his shoulder, but he could tell Dylan was following him.
“You can’t stop us.”
“Yabanci.” Sinan heard Kemal’s voice. “Foreigner, leave the man alone.”
“My mom saved your son.”
There was a scuffling of feet and then Kemal and Dylan were yelling, but Sinan didn’t turn around; he just kept walking and let someone else take care of the boy.
AND THEN, AS IF God were angry with him, as though he was to be tested further, he found Nilüfer walking toward him through the row of tents.
“Can you not come home first, Sinan?” She held smail’s pad of paper in her left hand, panic gathering in her face. “Even the muezzin is still finishing his tea.”
“What’s wrong?”
She grabbed his hand without stopping and tugged him in the direction he had just come.
“What’s wrong, Nilüfer?”
She shook her head and squeezed his hand and they rushed together back toward their tent, Sinan trying to read her face. An image of his dead son flashed in his head, and he was angry with her for keeping this from him, for even a minute. No, he wasn’t dead. She’d be on the ground weeping if he was. He was sick. He had caught the sickness from that boy.
At the tent, she shut the canvas flap and threw the pad on the sleeping bags.
“Look at this, Sinan,” she said, flipping the pages.
Nilüfer stood back and bit her nails as he sat on his knees, bent over the paper.
In the bottom half of the picture, a boy stood among broken buildings and bodies drawn in red. He gazed into the sky at the floating body of another boy, his skin a bright yellow, his eyes two black holes in his head. The boy in the sky had something that looked like wings attached to his back.
“Look at this one.” She flipped the pages to a sheet covered in black crayon. “This was before the boy died.”
The crayon marks were violently stitched together as if smail had been trying to rip the paper. But in the left-hand corner, surrounded by a sickly yellow light, he had drawn the body of a boy, his legs curled up to his head in an unnatural fashion, his hands twisted behind his back, the elbows breaking at odd angles. But what was most disturbing was the boy’s face—the eyes were drawn with X’s and the mouth was a gaping red hole. Next to the boy, smail had written “Me.”
“I think he’s sick,” Nilüfer said, whispering. “But not sick like bleeding inside, but sick here.” She pointed to her head.
“He’s not crazy, Nilüfer.” Although he thought the same thing when he saw the picture. “He’s just scared.”
The boy used to draw pictures of birds he saw down at the waterfront. Beautiful, if childish, renderings of storks with their long, black plumes, terns with the bright orange arrows on their beaks, and wild flamingos, sketched in bright streaks of pink, that he spied last spring crossing the sea on their way to the southern coast.
“Oh, Sinan,” she said. “What was it like? Our baby! He shouldn’t have to go through such a thing.”
“I know, canm,” Sinan said. He held her hand. “I know.”
“Talk to him, Sinan. He’s saying things today that scare me.”
“What things?”
“Asking strange questions he’s too young to ask. Speak to him.”
“Where is he?”
“The soccer field.”
“You left him alone?”
“No, he’s with rem.”
THE SOCCER FIELD WAS illuminated with floodlights nailed to wooden poles, and, against the darkness of the camp, it seemed to glow as if it were the center of the world. A few boys played a halfhearted game at the opposite end of the field, their voices echoing in the cooling night air like muffled screams. He found the two of them at the edge of the field, rem sitting in the grass and smail juggling a soccer ball. For a moment it seemed they existed wholly separate from him, as though he had nothing to do with their presence in the world. He watched them as though he were dead, a ghost watching his children from the other side, hoping they reflected back some essence that said he had lived in the world. smail kicked the ball in the air. rem smiled and clapped as he tried a fancy kick.
“rem,” he said when he reached them. She stood up immediately, stopped smiling, and brushed off her skirt. “Your mother is expecting you back at the tent.”
“Of course, Baba.” She brushed past him, her skirt rustling together, her feet scuffing up clouds of dirt, and he could feel her anger in all of her movements.
“Watch, Baba,” smail said. “Watch.” The boy bounced the ball on his left knee three times before kicking it into the air and heading it awkwardly to his left side where it rolled into the darkness beyond the field. smail ran to get the ball and came back.
“Where’d you learn that?”
“Wait, Baba, wait. I didn’t do it right.” He tried again and this time missed the ball when he kicked. He smacked the ball with his fist and tried again.
“Football’s hard,” Sinan said. “It’s okay.”
“Wait.”
This time he headed the ball and it dropped right in front of him. He stuck his chest out in an attempt to control the fall, but he missed it and the ball hit the hard ground and rolled away.
He let out a little cry of frustration and kicked the ground, sending up a cloud of dust.
“That’s good, smail. I’m very impressed.”
“I’m not doing it right.” He stared at the ground.
“No, no. It’s good. You’re just like Alpay.” Sinan put his arm around the boy. “I couldn’t do that, and I’m a thousand years older than you.”
“Not a thousand,” smail said, smiling faintly.
“Okay, okay,” Sinan said. “Only a hundred and one years older.”
smail laughed. “You can’t do it because of your leg, not because you’re old, Baba.” smail playfully pushed him in the stomach.
“Yes,” Sinan said, hurt by his son’s innocent statement. “You’re right. Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Marcus Bey taught me. But I’m supposed to bump it with my chest and then stop it with my foot. That’s the hardest part,” he said. “Stopping it.”
“What else did he teach you?”
“Nothing,” smail said. “Just that. He’s nice.”
“Get the ball and let’s play.”
“You can’t play.”
“What, you think I’m too old?”
“Yes,
a thousand years too old.” But he was running into the darkness toward the ball. He vanished for a minute and then reappeared, running full speed into the light, his skinny legs like little matchsticks pushing the ball ahead of him.
Then smail suddenly stopped and did a fancy behind-the-back kick that sent the ball rocketing toward Sinan. He stopped it with his good foot and bounced awkwardly on his bad one until he was able to return the ball. It was a soft kick that only made it halfway to the boy. smail ran to it and kicked it back, and without saying a word remained standing closer to his father.
They kicked the ball back and forth a few times, and the simplicity of the action—he and his son tapping a ball to each other—flooded Sinan with love. It was such a pure feeling that he wished he had spent more time doing this. It struck him that perhaps it was not his leg that kept him from playing football with his son, but his seriousness, his obsession with work, and the way he had let everyday burdens become more important than simple joys. smail kicked the ball a few feet to the right of Sinan, and he tried to run to get it but he stumbled and fell.
“Are you hurt, Baba?”
“No, shoot it again.”
“It’s okay.”
“Shoot again, smail.”
smail kicked the ball softly, but Sinan’s foot hurt now and when he put weight on it he tripped and fell again.
“Kick it again, smail.” He felt, for some reason, that if they could just keep kicking the ball to each other in the lights everything would be fine.
“It’s all right, Baba.”
“No. Again.”
But smail was already at his side. “I’m tired.”
They sat in the grass together and watched the boys flit and dodge toward the water-jug goalposts. They pushed one another, all elbows and flailing hands, and dashed across the field like insects fluttering in lamplight. smail, tired though he said he was, bounced the ball between his outstretched feet. Sinan waited; the boy was working himself up to a big question, and Sinan didn’t want to scare him out of it.
“Baba,” he said. “How come God gave you that foot?”
“I can’t speak for God, smail.” It wasn’t the question Sinan expected. “But if God can do anything, why wouldn’t he give you a perfect foot?”