by Alan Drew
They searched dark shops, the walls lined with glowing skull posters and pentagrams and naked women with fangs for teeth. They entered a club without any windows and it was so dark inside it seemed the sun had never shone on earth. Teenagers drank and smoked at tables lit by dying candles, their pale faces turned away as though the flickering light hurt their eyes. If they found rem here, she was already lost and there was little he could do.
Marcus screamed over the music to a man behind the bar. The man shook his head, lit a cigarette, and blew smoke in Marcus’s face. Then Sinan followed Marcus down a black corridor to the bathrooms, where he knocked open the stall doors. In one they caught a woman on the toilet and in another they found a boy with a needle stuck in his arm, his eyelids heavy, his pupils as thick and watery as honey.
They climbed the circular staircase, a helix of steps lined with melting candles, out of the basement passageway and exited through an inconspicuous door to an apartment building on a residential street. A man wearing a beard passed them, his cane clicking along the cobblestone street. Two boys kicked a soccer ball against the stone wall of a small cemetery, the turbaned headstones peeking above the masonry as though to see what the living were doing. It was the most average of streets—women leaning elbows on windowsills, lines of laundry flapping in the late morning breeze, a simit seller balancing a tray of bread upon his head and calling out to the hungry. Shocked, Sinan turned to look at the door they had just exited through. There was nothing special about it, nothing to indicate what was beyond its threshold. It looked like every other door on the street—faded blue with strips of paint peeling off the wood, a copper knocker shaped like a woman’s hand, a tiny window with bars pressed against blackened glass. On this street alone there were fifty doors just like it and he shuddered with the thought of where those doors might lead.
Marcus said something in English and kicked a heap of trash bags stacked in the street for garbage day. The bags ripped, spilling fish bones and chicken skin into the street, and three cats appeared to gnaw on the marrow. The bones cracked in the cats’ jaws.
“I don’t know where they are.” Marcus rubbed his temples.
“What has your son done with my daughter?” Sinan said. “What have you let him do?”
“I’m not happy about this either, Sinan,” Marcus said with surprising anger. “Besides, your daughter is as much to blame for this as Dylan.”
“No,” Sinan said. “She wouldn’t have thought of doing such a thing if you hadn’t been here.”
“And you’d still be sleeping in that cardboard tent near the freeway, eating rotten tomatoes and stale bread if I hadn’t been here.” He stopped, took a deep breath, and ran his hand through his gray hair. “The problem with you, Sinan, is that you live in a world that doesn’t exist anymore. You still think women don’t think for themselves. You believe there are boundaries people shouldn’t cross—Americans should stay in America, Brits in England, Kurds in Kurdistan, if such a place even exists. The world isn’t like that anymore, and you can’t escape the world. Your daughter knows that and you don’t yet, that’s why she’s gone, Sinan, that’s why she’s running around with my son. She wants to get away from you, and she’s using Dylan to do that. So don’t you for one moment think I’m happy about this, that I’ve caused this to happen in some way.”
More cats arrived and they climbed on top of the bags, swarmed around the spilled meat, and devoured it.
“You’re trying to hold on to your daughter, Sinan. And I’m trying to hold on to my son.”
Later, as they passed over the bridge once again, Marcus said, without taking his eyes from the window, “Our children are not ours. That’s our mistake. We think they are. It seems so for a while—a few brief years—but they aren’t. They never were.”
Chapter 50
WHEN SHE WOKE—TWO HOURS, THREE HOURS LATER?—the city looked like an overexposed picture, as though a flash had just gone off and blew white holes out of the center of buildings, leaving only the sharpened silver water and the black bridge arching above. Whatever blurry beauty there was in the lights the night before was replaced now with a sickening flatness of light that penetrated her stomach with nausea.
And there was blood, not a lot, but it was there, a blossom on her skirt and marks like cabbage stains on her fingertips where she had, apparently, held herself in her sleep. It was real, it had happened, and after she cried silently so as not to wake up Dylan, she pried his fingers from her skirt and pushed away his hand. Somehow she hadn’t thought there would be blood, as though it were a myth told by conservative mothers to scare their daughters, a fantasy to excite boys. Yet the truth was here, and, also, the finality of it, and no regret would turn back the clock and make her say, with confidence, “No.”
Dylan’s shirt was off and his chest looked pale, almost like translucent salamander skin against the ugly scarring of his tattoos. His hair was caught in his mouth, his pants turned sideways on his skinny hips, and she couldn’t find any beauty in him now. He looked like a stranger, like some man passed out in the morning in front of a meyhane, the pores of his skin reeking of cheap rak.
She pulled the edges of her blouse together, and that’s when she realized she had lost a button. She panicked and dropped to the patio and searched for the circle of plastic. She patted the ground beneath the chaise lounge and ran her fingers through the grass and checked the grooves between bricks. She plunged her hands into the pool, but the water was blue and the button was blue and the sun shot blinding sparkles across the surface. She couldn’t catch her breath and she slapped the ground even where she could see it wasn’t there. She needed that button. She had to have it. She would sew it back on her blouse, and she would wash the skirt—even though the blood had already dried and no cold water would wash it away now—and she would wash her mother’s clothes and fold her father’s shirts and she would kiss smail with all the love of a mother. If she did everything exactly as it was supposed to be done, she could turn back the clock, erase one day and one night from existence.
Chapter 51
IT WAS A COLD NIGHT, A FIST OF AUTUMN AIR PRESSING DOWN. Wrapped in wool blankets the Americans gave them, they ate in silence in the tent, hiding from the eyes of the people of the camp. Even smail joined the silence. He solemnly ate his bowl of chicken soup and stared at the ground. Silence, though, couldn’t hide the shame and anger passing between Sinan and Nilüfer. It was as though they were live wires just waiting to be touched.
Shortly after they turned out the light for the night, the door to the tent ripped open and rem came stumbling in.
“Anne, Anne,” she said. She sounded out of breath and panicked.
Sinan turned on the lantern and the tent lit a brilliant white until his eyes adjusted to the light. rem stumbled across the tent, tripping over smail’s legs, and tried to find her mother’s arms. Nilüfer, though, had already turned her back; she did it so quickly that it seemed she had practiced for this moment. She sat like stone, her head up, staring at the canvas of the tent.
“Anne,” rem said. “Please, Anne.”
But Nilüfer did not move.
“Anne, please,” rem said. “I’m sorry, Anne!”
rem pulled at her mother’s blouse, stretching the fabric to reveal Nilüfer’s shoulder. She grabbed at her mother’s arms, trying to lift them, trying to get them to hold her, but Nilüfer would not move.
rem stopped then and a sound, like the wind being sucked out of a pipe, escaped her mouth.
“Baba, please. Please listen to me,” she said crawling to him. She stared into his eyes and her teeth chattered. Streaks of tears ran down her face, but these were not the tears of juvenile frustration, these were a different kind of tears, the kind Sinan never wanted to see his daughter cry. And he never would have if she had only obeyed him.
Without hesitation he took her in his arms and held her.
“Oh, Baba.”
He could feel her ribs expand against his arms as she ga
sped for air. Her heart beat against his chest and he could feel how alive she was with pain, so full of it like a terrible disease lodged in her muscle tissue.
“Canm,” he said. “Calm down.”
“She can’t stay here,” Nilüfer said.
“Close your mouth,” Sinan said to Nilüfer.
“Canm,” he said, stroking rem’s head now, feeling the fibers of her hair beneath the rough cotton head scarf. “Canm, calm down.”
She took in a deep breath and shook letting it out.
He stroked her cheeks, smoothed the water away with his thumbs, and pinched the drops that hung from her earlobes.
“We’ll take a walk, canm,” he said. “Okay?”
She sucked in another breath and nodded.
He put on his coat and wrapped his wool blanket around her shoulders.
Outside, people were burning fires—a bonfire in front of the soup kitchen where the Americans gathered, fires in metal trash cans where the men smoked, and smaller fires in propane grills where the women huddled. rem leaned against him as they walked past the tents. He wrapped his arm around her thin shoulders, feeling the bone beneath the skin. People stared at them as they passed in the street. A family pressed together around a propane stove, blue flames lighting their cheeks and reflecting in their eyes. Sinan stared back at them, trying to stab them with his eyes, trying to get them to look away, but they wouldn’t.
He took her to the beach, the spot where the sand ended and the hill that separated the camp from the ruined town rose into the dark sky. They sat together near the water, rem still clinging to his chest, holding fistfuls of his shirt. “I loved him, Baba,” she said.
He was afraid to ask what happened, because he thought he already knew the answer, but it was important to be sure.
“What did he do?”
The flames reflected in the small waves as though fires burned beneath the surface.
“I wanted him to touch me.” She looked at him, her chin pressed into his stomach. Her eyes were as black as soil, beautiful and glowing with water, fantastically her own, his daughter’s. It was unbelievable to him that someone with his blood running through her could be so beautiful. “I’m sorry, Baba, but I did. I wanted him to touch me, but I didn’t want him to do that. I swear I didn’t. I didn’t know he would do that!”
She buried her head in his stomach, the wet bleeding through his shirt, her sobs echoing off the hillside with amplified intensity. The firelight caught the edge of her neck, the skin exposed where it led to her chin, and he could see her larynx jump as she cried. Understanding what she meant, he looked up at the sky and saw a faint star, just one dim point of light through the orange smoke and fire reflections. She was ruined. She had tempted the boy and he had ruined her. The pain caught in his throat and he thought he was choking. She had ruined him, his name, everything. What is a man who cannot control his own daughter? What is such a man? Nothing.
He shoved her away and his hands grew minds of their own—his fingers desired to choke her, his knuckles were desperate to break her nose. She had soiled smail’s name, too, and the only way he could make it clean again was to destroy her. She had forced him to this, given him no choice, and for that reason alone he wanted to rip the life out of her.
She tried to grab on to his legs but he kicked her away.
“You’re not my daughter,” he said.
She was on her knees, her arms outstretched to him.
“Please, Baba! I thought I wanted to leave you. I thought he would make me happier, but I was wrong.”
He needed to rip her hair out, had to knock her teeth down her throat. He wanted to kiss her, rock her to sleep, lay a blanket over her tired body and let her rest.
“I love you,” she said. “I want to be with you and Anne.”
“You’re not my daughter.” It was the most horrible thing he could say, so horrible yet he still spat the words at her.
She lunged at him, but he slapped her to the sand.
“Leave,” he said, his voice shaking. “I will not see you again.”
“I can’t,” she said, getting to her feet again.
He reached into his pocket and held the knife in his hand. “Leave,” he said, his voice growing weaker. “You won’t go back with me.”
She glanced at his hand in the pocket.
“Baba,” she said, her voice as soft and as distant as though she were falling off to sleep. “Baba. You wouldn’t.”
He stared at her, grinding his teeth to stay strong, the handle of the knife gripped firmly in his palm.
She looked him up and down, as though he were a stranger just presented to her, and then she turned her back and stumbled through her first step. Recovering her balance, she walked down the beach, past the orange smudges of fire smoke, until very slowly, like a person becoming a ghost, she disappeared.
Chapter 52
BEACH PEBBLES ROLLED BENEATH HER FEET BEFORE WAVES sucked them out to sea. She watched the wet line where it met the dry beach, watched as the sea froth touched the outline of the previous wave and created a new line, one farther up the beach, one that crawled higher up her ankle with each swell. Water in her eyes blurred the dock lights and stars, but she didn’t cry anymore. She was surprised by her silence, intrigued by her lack of pain—it was exactly like something had snapped inside her, some sinuous connection between mind and heart.
Behind her she heard footsteps, the quick landslide of rocks shoved aside by feet. She didn’t turn around and she didn’t speed up; she didn’t even feel her shoulders rise, waiting for the blow to her head, and she smiled to herself with the recognition of this strange new freedom.
The feet drew closer, a splash followed by another.
“rem.”
A kicking of pebbles.
“rem,” and she recognized her brother’s voice.
When she turned around, he was nearly to her, a full-out sprint as though he were chasing a ball passed behind a defender.
She bent to her knees and he flew into her like he was trying to tackle her.
“Come back,” he said. He held on to her forearms as though bracing to tug her back to the tent.
“No,” she said.
“Baba’s crying,” he said.
“I know.”
“He’ll forgive you,” smail said. “He’s just mad right now.”
She touched his forehead, the way she used to when he was a baby to check his temperature. For a moment she imagined him years younger—the line of snot coming to a bubbling rest on his top lip, his hot head resting against her bare arm, his little boy fingers holding on to her pinky.
She wanted to tell him what was in their father’s pocket, but he was a child and she wanted him to remain so as long as possible.
“They love you, smail,” is all she said.
She kissed him on the forehead. His eyes were huge, two round planets hovering between eyelids.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m just going for a walk.”
Chapter 53
THIS TIME HE WOULD USE THE KNIFE.
All that night he stood outside Marcus’s tent and waited for Dylan to come out. He would catch him on his way to the toilets, stab him in the dark while everyone slept, slice open his throat so he would gasp and gasp and gasp until it was finished.
He stood there in the shadows and waited until the air was filled with snores and the Dipper slid behind the black mountains. He stood there in the cold, his heart still pumping hard, his hands sweating, until a ribbon of red, like an open wound, appeared in the sky.
But there was no movement in the tent and when the sun was well above the mountaintops and people had risen to eat their breakfast, he realized that neither Dylan nor Marcus was in the camp anymore. Even if they were, Sinan would have to kill the boy now in broad daylight, in front of people’s children. He felt more than willing to do so, even savored the idea, but the American and his son were gone.
“WHERE IS SHE?” NILÜFER said when he return
ed.?
smail was wrapped to the neck in his bag, but his eyes were open, watching Sinan.
“Gone.”
“Where?”
“She’s gone, Nilüfer.”
She looked at him closely, checking his eyes to see if it were true. She turned and stared at the white wall of the tent a moment, holding a flute of tea to her lips but not drinking. Then with firm precision she slapped the glass against the floor of the tent so that it made a muffled pop. She sat for a moment with her flattened palm against the broken glass before picking every piece off the floor, placing them in the palm of her other hand like they were splinters of priceless jewels.
smail watched Sinan for a moment, his eyes unblinking, and then turned and tugged the bag over his head.
Chapter 54
SHE DIDN’T KNOW HOW FAR SHE WALKED, BUT SOMETIME IN the afternoon she made a decision and once that decision was made it was as though all her organs stopped pumping and her body felt quiet.
She climbed the hill that led to the highway and stood with the men who waited for the bus into the city. They smoked and talked while cars blurred by. She noticed one man watching her, his eyes falling on the spot of blood on her skirt. She untied her scarf and handed it to him.
“Here,” she said. “This is yours.”
He wouldn’t take it. He turned away and smoked his cigarette.
She laughed and dropped it at his feet.
She didn’t take the bus, but instead hailed a taxi.
“Beyolu,” she said.
“Beyolu?” the taxi driver said.
“Yes, to meet my husband. Hurry, please, I’ll be late and he’ll be angry.”
The man looked at her strangely, but threw the car in gear and sped down the highway.
She rolled down the window and felt the wind in her hair and watched the fractured buildings of the broken towns become the red roofs of the suburbs until the city exploded in yellow and pink high-rises, their glass windows shining in the sunlight.