by Alan Drew
“Sometimes God has reasons we can’t understand, and we have to accept them.”
“Seems mean,” smail said.
“God is not mean, smail.” He made sure his son was looking at him. “God is love and He is merciful and He is kind.”
“If I was God, I would have given you a perfect foot.”
“Son, look at my face.” The boy did. “Look at my nose. It’s crooked, but it can still smell the salt in the air. My teeth are brown, but they still chew my food. I may need glasses, but I have two eyes and they can see you—even if you are a little blurry.” He smiled and smail smiled back. He reached down and pulled off his shoe and his sock. “This foot, smail, is part of God’s world just like everything else. It’s part of me, and without it I wouldn’t be Sinan Baiolu. You remember the Gypsy girl who sang so beautifully, the blind one?”
“Yes, Baba.”
“God didn’t give her the gift of sight, but he gave her a beautiful voice. That’s her gift and it makes up for what she lacks. No man is made perfect, smail. Some have weak lungs, some have weak eyes, and some have weak hearts. I have this. If we were perfect, we wouldn’t need God. He understood that when he made us, so he made us imperfect because he wants to keep us close to him.”
“So what did God give you to make up for your foot?”
The question caught him off guard for just a second, before he jumped to tickle smail. “You, my son. You!” The boy laughed and giggled and squirmed out of his grasp.
Sinan sat back down and drew smail close to him.
“You can’t change what God has given you. If a man has one good eye, he doesn’t curse God for not giving him two. He thanks him for sight.” Sinan held the boy’s cheeks and kissed him on the forehead. “It’s all a gift. All of life is a gift.”
The two of them sat silent for a while and watched the boys chase the soccer ball around the field. Sinan could feel his son working on another question and he waited quietly for him to ask it.
“Baba?”
“Yes.”
“What’s Heaven like?”
“It’s hard to explain, smail.” How could he explain this to the boy? “The Qur’an says that Heaven includes what no eye has ever seen, no ear has ever heard of, and no human mind has ever thought of.”
“Is it beautiful? Do you hurt in Heaven?”
“You do not hurt in Heaven,” Sinan said. “No, there’s no pain. And it’s more beautiful than I can imagine, so I can’t tell you what it looks like. God will reveal that on Judgment Day.”
“How do you know it’s beautiful if you can’t imagine it?”
“Because the Qur’an says so and the Qur’an is the word of God and I trust God.”
smail stared at the ground and ran his tongue over his lips in concentration. Sinan wished he could see inside his son, wished he could understand every turbulent thing that was happening inside his body and calm it.
“If you’re a good Muslim, do you live forever? Because someone told me that if you’re a Christian you’ll live forever and ever.”
“Who told you that?”
“Someone.”
Sinan thought about forcing the name out of him, but it was the wrong time.
“Your spirit will live forever, smail, but not your body. Your body must die first, but your spirit will live in Heaven with God.”
“But why do Christians live forever?”
“That’s not what it means. A Christian has to die, too.”
“That’s not what he said.”
“It’s the same, smail. We all die, but our spirits live on.”
“So is Dylan’s mother in Heaven?” The boy looked up at him, his eyebrows knitted together. Sinan didn’t know. Christians were people of the Book, but they worshipped God imperfectly.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” Sinan said. “He was a good boy and now he’s in Paradise with God.”
“He wasn’t my friend,” smail said. “Just a boy I played soccer with.
He was kind of mean.”
It was silent a moment. They watched the soccer game break up and the field became nothing but a bleached plot of dirt.
“If Derin’s in Heaven, then Sarah Hanm must be, right?”
“Yes, smail. Sarah Hanm is in Heaven.”
“Good,” smail said. “Good.” “Baba?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to die.” He kicked the ball once and it rolled to a stop a couple of feet away. “Sometimes when I sleep, I feel like I’m stuck under the broken houses again and I think I’m going to die. I’m curled up and the space keeps getting smaller and my legs and arms get squeezed tighter and tighter and I can’t breathe. It feels heavy and dark and lonely, and my bones hurt. I don’t want to die.”
He wanted to lie to his son, he wanted to tell him that he wouldn’t die, but the boy already knew the truth and there was no comforting him about this fact.
“I don’t want you to die, either,” Sinan said. “But we all die someday and then we get our reward.”
smail rubbed his knuckles across his eyes, and Sinan ignored the tears so that he wouldn’t embarrass his son.
“Let me tell you, smail, about Heaven.” This, though, was a lie he could tell. One lie, especially a hopeful one, was okay. “Heaven is very green, the brightest green of the most beautiful trees. There are gardens of water with rivers and lakes and tall waterfalls that sparkle like a million cascading diamonds. When you peer into the water, thousands of brightly colored fish stare back at you. The mountains are tall and covered in snow, but it’s not cold. You can slide down the face of the mountains, but the snow is as warm as bathwater. The sun always shines, but it never hurts your eyes and the sky is so blue it looks like it’s been painted with hundreds of coats of paint. There is every kind of fruit you can imagine to eat, and even more you haven’t imagined yet, and all of them, every single one of them, tastes like candy.”
The boy was smiling now, looking out toward the cool white of the floodlit field, but his eyes looked distant, Sinan thought, distant as though he were looking beyond the field, out into the blackness of the nighttime sea, and imagining the perfect Heaven, building it in his mind out of the ugliness of this earth.
Chapter 42
REM SAT IN THE DARKNESS FOR A WHILE, JUST OUTSIDE THE glare of the floodlights and watched her brother and her father. They kicked the ball to each other, and she felt a pang of sadness for her father—his foot made him so awkward and she suddenly felt embarrassed for him. But smail was beautiful—the way he moved with the ball was so elegant for a young boy, the way he balanced on one foot and popped the ball back in the air with the perfect arc to land on his knee, the way he danced above the ball when dribbling. He was beautiful and she could, at this moment, understand her parents’ love for him because she felt it, too.
They played for a while and she tried to remember what it was like to play with her father. He had taken her fishing as a girl, in the stream that ran down from the mountains. She didn’t remember ever catching anything, but both of their lines dangled together in the rushing water, and the snowcapped mountains shone above them like white teeth in the sun. They took naps in the afternoon sun and he held her hand as he snored on the riverbank, and even though the soldiers were just on the other embankment and jets occasionally passed overhead, she felt safe and happy, as though these terrible forces had no power over her crippled father.
“rem,” she heard a voice say.
She turned around and found Dilek rushing toward her. They hugged and kissed and held each other for a few moments.
“People said you were out,” Dilek said.
“Not for long,” rem said. “What are they saying?”
“You don’t want to know.”
“I know anyway,” rem said.
“Ignore them. It’s mostly the iman teyzeler with missing teeth and breasts down to here.” She held her hands like she were supporting heavy bags of water near her waist. “You weren’t asleep the other
day, right?”
“I almost called to you, but it would have made my mother furious.”
“Dylan wants to see you.”
“I know. I want to see him, too.”
“No,” Dilek said. “He wants to see you tonight. He said you’d know where.”
rem watched her father and brother. They were sitting now, two small figures in a pool of blinding light, looking out at the dusty field. Her father placed his hand on smail’s back and something about that made her want to cry. She should have been excited about Dylan, but all she could think was that she wanted that touch from her father, that public display of affection.
“My father wants to go back to the village,” rem said. Saying it out loud for the first time made a lump rise in her throat. “He thinks there will be a Kurdistan or something stupid like that.”
“It’s no good here now,” Dilek said.
rem stared at her. “Do you know what it’s like there?” she said, anger in her voice. “There’s nothing there, Dilek. It’s desert and mountains and in the winter you’ve got to sleep next to goats because they’ll die outside in the cold. It smells like shit—all the time!”
Dilek laughed. rem had never cussed before and it made her feel good in a guilty way.
“I didn’t mean go there.” Dilek smiled a knowing smile. “Allah, Allah,” she said. “He’s so cute. I like his eyes. They have those flecks of brown in them.”
“They’re nice, aren’t they?” She leaned into Dilek and Dilek wrapped her arms around her.
“You’re so lucky,” Dilek said. “I’m jealous. My mother’s driving me so crazy, I think I’d run off with him if he wanted me to.”
“Your mother wouldn’t hate him. Your mother would be happy for you; she’d help you plan the wedding.”
They were silent a moment. rem knew she would have to make a decision tonight, and she didn’t know what that decision would be.
“These two women came to our tent yesterday,” Dilek said. “One of them was beautiful, rem, and she wore this amazing diamond ring. I couldn’t stop looking at it.” Dilek showed her with her own bare finger. “Little ones all the way around and then one big one in the middle.”
“What’d they want?” rem said. She watched her father press the tip of his nose against his face and she laughed silently.
“We just talked about stupid stuff, mostly. I asked the beautiful woman about her house in Texas and she told me that it had a pond in the backyard and a barn for horses. She has four kids, she said, and my mother asked her how she stayed so skinny.”
“How?” rem really wanted to know. Turkish women had kids and their hips grew three sizes overnight, like a flower blossoming in the moonlight.
“She works out at a gym, she said. But I bet she had someone have the kids for her.”
rem laughed.
“It’s true. I heard something about it on television.”
“Shut up.”
“No, the rich women don’t want to get ugly for their husbands so they hire someone to give birth,” Dilek said. “They use test tubes or something.”
“Dilek,” rem said. “I love you but sometimes I think you’re crazy.”
“It’s different in America. The husbands let you do what you want, but you have to stay pretty for them. If you’re not pretty, they divorce you for a younger, prettier woman.”
“Sounds like a dumb conversation.”
“You’re pretty, rem. You could be like that woman. You might even get to skip all that pain of childbirth and still have the kids.”
“Shut up, Dilek,” but she playfully shoved her friend, enjoying her fantasy and weighing the possibilities.
“Well, they were nice. At least the pretty woman was. The ugly one handed my mother something on a piece of paper and when my mother read it she crumpled it up in her fist. They left after that. The other woman was mad, but the pretty one just smiled and wished us well.”
“My father wouldn’t have even let them in the tent.”
“Yeah, well, your parents are backward, rem.”
rem looked at her, surprised to hear her friend say it openly. It was understood between them that her parents were the “village parents,” but Dilek had never been so rude as to say it out loud.
“I’m sorry, rem. I love you, but you know it’s true.”
Chapter 43
REM WAS NOT AT THE TENT WHEN HE DROPPED OFF SMAIL. It made him angry, but he was thinking about his son now.
“Find rem,” Nilüfer said, as he walked back out into the night. “And tell her to come home before I swat her behind.”
“I will,” he said, but a man can worry about many things at once—his body stiff with concern, his head cramped with ache from it—and he can only take care of one thing at a time.
Now he stood outside Marcus’s tent, a faint yellow light glowing through the skin of the material, and tried to keep himself calm. He was about to invite himself rudely into the man’s tent at a late hour. He was about to accuse the people who had helped them. He called to Marcus. He heard a shuffling of papers, scratching of feet across the floor, and then the American pulled back the tent flap. He wore wire-rimmed glasses that magnified the blue eyes behind the lenses.
“Why are they preaching to my son?” Sinan said, losing control of his mouth.
Marcus removed the glasses from the bridge of his nose and rubbed his eyes. He looked like he had been sleeping or studying very seriously.
“Sinan,” he said. “Come in.” He held open the door flap to the tent and Sinan entered into the weak light within. Next to a turned-down sleeping bag, a large black book with gold-leafed pages lay open. A propane lamp hissed light over the book, and in the harsh white glow Sinan could see handwritten notes scrawled in blue across the pages.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you,” Sinan said, suddenly feeling self-conscious as he entered the man’s living space.
“No problem,” Marcus said.
Marcus sat on the sleeping bag, placed a ribbon in the crease between pages, and closed the black book. He set his glasses aside and grabbed another pair, these causing his eyes to recede back into his face. Through the lenses and in the sharp tent light, his eyes looked like two blue crystals. Sinan was reminded of Atatürk and the power of blue eyes.
“Sit down, Sinan, please.”
But Sinan didn’t sit. “Who’s preaching to my son Is it you?”
“What are you talking about?” Marcus rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. “Please, sit down, my friend.”
Sinan suddenly felt foolish standing bent over in the middle of the tent and sat at the foot of Marcus’s sleeping bag.
“I’m sorry we have no tea to offer.”
“I didn’t come for tea. I simply want an answer to my question.”
At that moment, Dylan bent through the opening to the tent. Marcus looked up at him and then glanced down at his wristwatch.
“Is this about that stupid young man at the funeral?” Marcus said.
“You tell me.”
Marcus said something to Dylan in English. The boy was wearing headphones, and even here, some five feet away, Sinan could hear the beating of drums and hissing sounds coming from those earpieces. Dylan held his hands in the air, palms up, and said something that seemed to indicate that he didn’t hear his father. He saw Sinan then and froze momentarily.
“yi akamlar,” Dylan said, an undisguised strain in his voice.
“Good evening.”
Marcus pointed at his wristwatch and spoke sharply in English. Sinan looked away until they were done, embarrassed to be present for the scolding. Dylan flopped down on his own sleeping bag, turned his back to the two of them, and flipped the pages of a magazine. Marcus slid his glasses off his nose and rubbed the lenses with the end of his shirt. “Explain to me what happened,” he said, looking at Sinan now.
Sinan told him about the drawings, Nilüfer’s concern, and the discussion at the soccer field.
“The boy simply misun
derstood,” Marcus said. “Whoever it was meant no harm.”
Dylan laughed sarcastically. Marcus snapped his head in the direction of his son, but the boy continued turning the pages of his magazine.
“Children ask questions,” Marcus elaborated. “Maybe the answer was a little misguided, but I’m sure it was meant only to comfort smail.”
“They’re trying to convert you, you know?” Dylan said suddenly, his voice sounding impatient, his back still turned. His Turkish was precise, better than his father’s.
“Dylan,” Marcus said, a violence in his voice Sinan had not heard before. Then to Sinan: “Dylan believes everything is a conspiracy.”
“They think you’re not good enough as you are,” the boy said, turning around now to face his father. “They think they’ve got the way to Heaven all figured out and if you don’t do it their way you’re out of luck.”
Marcus spoke very loudly and quickly in English to Dylan and Dylan spoke calmly and with authority back to his father. The boy turned around to face Sinan, but he stared at his father as he spoke.
“See, that’s what these people do,” Dylan said. “They come in after some bad shit happens, start feeding people and telling them they love them, and then they hit them over the head with the love of Christ and how he’ll save all the poor, misguided Muslims from judgment. You know—the millennium’s coming, Armageddon and all that. The earthquake is just the beginning, so get ready!”
“Dylan,” Marcus said. “Stop being rude.”
“Right,” he said. “Rude.” He laughed and his eyes lit up with bitterness. “The truth’s always rude. They want to win your soul for Christ, promise you white clouds to sit on, some lame harp music playing in the background. They can’t just let you be what you are. The whole fucking world has to be like them.”
“Dylan, stop.”
“You know, you trust the wrong damn people, Sinan Bey.”
Marcus reached across and grabbed his son’s wrist and said something in English. Dylan tried to pull away, but Marcus held his son’s arm tightly and didn’t let go. The boy tried to laugh it off, but his face was red.