by Alan Drew
He finished the cigarette and lit another with the tip of the first. His hands were shaking. He blew the smoke out and watched the cloud fly away from his face.
“When he died, he was looking at me,” Malik said, glancing away as though ashamed.
He turned back to Sinan. “I couldn’t let that doctor in the tent.”
Sinan took Malik’s hand, but he couldn’t stop thinking that Malik should have let him in.
“When we came here, I thought Derin would go to a good school, get rich with a good job. He’d never have to see all of that mess.” He threw his hand in the general direction of Diyarbakr and the dry, empty South. “I never gave a damn about independence, anyway. All I really wanted to do was farm. Didn’t care if the land was called Kurdistan or Turkey or Iraq. But the stupid PKK and the military won’t leave you alone; you’re everyone’s enemy if you just want to be left alone. You’ve got to pick a side.” He tossed his cigarette down in disgust. “Is there anywhere in the world you can just be left alone?”
“I don’t know, my brother,” Sinan said.
What Sinan was about to say was shameful and the shame would follow his name forever, but he knew what such a man as Malik would do when he heard it.
“That American boy raped my daughter,” Sinan said. “That’s why she jumped.”
Malik stared at Sinan, his brows narrowing, his eyes welling with water.
“Now this boy’s father is trying to take my son, too,” Sinan said. “Just like they tried to take yours.”
Malik slammed the table with the palm of his hand, the backgammon pieces jumping off the board.
“The fight’s inside myself!” he said. “What does this mam know?”
HE WORKED A DOUBLE shift, polishing the wine bottles, stacking pyramids of beer, lining up the boxes on the shelves perfectly so that no edge hung over another. He waxed the floors and swept beneath the metal racks. He wanted everything to be perfect, wanted to be a model employee so that no one would suspect him later.
After he had punched out, he said goodnight to the manager.
“I wanted to thank you for your kind offer of dinner.”
“Yes, yes, it’s nothing,” Yilmaz Bey said. “Join us one day, please. No one should suffer what you’ve suffered.” The manager placed his hand on his shoulder. “You’re a good man, Sinan. My best employee.”
“Thank you.”
“May your pain pass quickly.”
Then Yilmaz Bey was off to the bathroom, leaving the door wide open and his coat with the wallet in the chest pocket hanging on the wall just a few feet away. Sinan waited a couple of minutes, just long enough to make sure the manager had not forgotten his toothpaste or the comb he brushed his hair and mustache with, and stepped into the office.
When he opened the wallet there were at least a dozen ten-million-lira bills folded neatly inside. The manager wouldn’t miss two of them until later, if he missed them at all. He hung the coat back on the wall, pulled the creases exactly as he remembered them being before, and pocketed the money inside his own coat, right next to the knife wrapped in leather.
It was almost dark when he reached the camp and fires were already burning. Orange smoke rose into the sky and sparks flickered and died like extinguishing stars. A produce truck was parked next to the soup kitchen and a mob of people gathered and pushed against one another to get to the open bed. Sinan was shoved forward by a group of women, and he saw the mayor and another man standing in the bed of the truck, dropping goat meat wrapped in bloody butcher paper into the hands of the people. On the platform where the Americans’ stoves stood, Kemal and Malik pushed over steaming pots, sending scalding soup splashing into the street. Already three silver pots lay glowing in the bonfire, and when Kemal tried to toss this one in, a soldier hit him across the face with a club.
“You’re Turkish soldiers,” Malik screamed, pointing his hand at the man. “Attacking your own people! Your mother must be ashamed.”
Sinan struggled through the crowd, looking for Marcus, wondering if he had been attacked in all of this, wondering if he had already left, and wondering which he wanted more. Behind two soldiers, a few of the Americans stood and watched with their hands hanging at their sides. One woman sat in the dirt, her hand on her forehead, resigned, it seemed, to the chaos. Marcus wasn’t among them.
The camp was nearly deserted and the few people left on the street headed toward the commotion of the bonfire, their sad faces lit up with the orange light. He passed mam Ali as he rushed out of the mosque, his face lined with worry, and Sinan wanted to say to him, “You cannot stop it,” but there was no point.
He found Nilüfer and smail huddled together in the corner of the tent. “We’re leaving,” Sinan said. “Come now.”
But they didn’t move. The fire was high enough now that the walls of the tent glowed orange and smail’s eyes were brilliant with fear.
“It’s okay,” Sinan said. “They won’t hurt you.”
Sinan hoisted the laundry bag of clothes over his shoulder and Nilüfer carried smail into the street. People ran in the street, some of them clutching packages of meat like bundles of wood to their chests, and the tents of the camp seemed to be on fire with the glow from the soup kitchen. As they walked out toward the freeway, three police cars sped by them, their blue and red lights flashing uselessly in the night.
They reached the highway and hopped on the first bus that stopped along the road. All the people inside stared out the window at the flames and when the three of them climbed the steps into the bus, people stared at them. The lights were bright inside and the glow of the fire out the window was partly obscured by the reflections of the passengers’ faces. From here the flames looked very small and insignificant—a shepherd’s campfire, an open barbecue on a beach, the dying embers of a Nowruz fire.
As the bus pulled onto the highway, smail took his hand and Sinan noticed the blood still clinging to his nails.
“Is Marcus Bey okay, Baba?” smail looked like he was afraid of the answer.
“He’s all right,” Sinan said.
smail looked closely at his father, looked deep into his eyes, and Sinan looked back at him. He grabbed the boy by the back of the neck and pulled his face close to him. “He is all right,” he said. “I promise you.”
smail smiled then, a small, sad smile, and looked out the window at the millions of lights that became the city.
Chapter 61
THE TRAIN LEFT AT MIDNIGHT. IT PASSED OUT OF HAYDARPAA station and rolled on a path of darkness through the lights of the city, millions of windows flashing back at Sinan, millions of people hidden away behind the concrete walls, all wondering if another quake would hit, all closing their eyes and hoping the walls of their apartments wouldn’t come crushing in on them in their sleep.
smail fell asleep on his mother’s lap and Nilüfer took Sinan’s hand in hers. She wrapped each one of her fingers through his and clasped his palm tightly, and he was amazed at the perfection of a hand, the simplicity of a woman’s hand held in his. Before the city disappeared, she fell asleep, her head jostling against his shoulder, and soon the lights faded away and the land became nothing but steady darkness and somewhere out there, somewhere back among those constellations of lights, lay his daughter’s grave.
Sometime in the night he slept and when he woke the train was coming through a mountain pass. The trees stood high and green and above the train granite peaks held freshly fallen snow. Then the train came through the mountains, and the earth opened up beneath them, wide and bright and as expansive as sight itself. It was the steppes of Anatolia and his heart flooded with gratitude for the land.
He woke smail and sat him on his lap. The two of them pressed their noses against the window.
“Look at that, smail,” Sinan said. “You don’t remember this land, but it’s ours. It’s Paradise on earth.”
He and smail watched the land grow closer and the horizon shorten as the train descended, and when they reached the v
alley floor it seemed there was nothing but blue sky.
He had nothing except his son and his wife, and if anyone tried to take them away from him again—anyone—he would kill them for it. He could feel this strength growing in him, like a fist strangling the last of his weakness. He would let nothing threaten that strength again.
The train came into a village and it slowed to let a shepherd pass his goats across the tracks, the wheels squealing to a shuddering crawl.
“Look, Baba.”
smail pointed to an old man driving a donkey cart on a dirt road that ran beside the train tracks. The cart was loaded with apples and with each bump a few rolled out across the road. smail laughed at the apples as they tumbled out and split open into white-fleshed halves. The donkey was old, its hip bones poking against its graying hide, but for a brief moment, just a few wonderful seconds, the man and his cart sped along faster than the train.
Acknowledgments
I WISH TO THANK THE MANY DIVERSE PEOPLES OF TURKEY, whose kindness, generosity, and grace always made me feel welcome while I lived as a guest in their country. Thank you to my students and colleagues at Üsküdar American Academy, who taught me much more than I taught them.
Without the support of the teachers, students, and staff at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop this book would never have been attempted much less finished and published. I am particularly indebted to Ethan Canin for his enthusiastic support for my less-than-polished writing, Marilynne Robinson for her wisdom, and Chris Offutt for his humor and advice. A great big belated thank God for everyone from the Workshop and Trinity Episcopal Church, who provided dinners for Mimi and me after the birth of our son. Thanks to Ben Caldwell for the cigs and drinks and good conversation. Connie Brothers provided support to me and my family in numerous ways that not only made our stay in Iowa more pleasant but also helped me to keep writing at a time when this book was in its infancy. Thanks to Jan Zenisek and Deb West for all the enjoyable wasted time hanging out in the Workshop office when I should have been writing.
Rex Honey’s course on the Middle East at the University of Iowa was immensely important in spurring me to begin this book. Thanks to Dr. Honey for allowing me to write fiction for a term paper project.
Murat Ozay graciously provided the translation of the Radiohead lyrics.
Few people were more critical to the creation of this book than my wonderful agent, Dorian Karchmar. Her more than four years of patience, support, insightful criticism, and stubborn determination to make me work when I wanted to stop gave me confidence and hope when I had little.
I’m extremely grateful to Kate Medina at Random House, who showed so much enthusiasm and interest in this book. Publishing for the first time is an overwhelming experience, but Kate managed to make the process enjoyable. I couldn’t have asked for a better editor. Thanks to Gina Centrello, publisher, for strongly backing this debut. A big thanks, also, to everyone at Random House who worked to get this book to as many readers as possible, particularly Tom Perry, Sanyu Dillon, Avideh Bashirrad, Sally Marvin, and Carol Schneider. And last but in no way least, a very grateful thanks to Robin Rolewicz and Abby Plesser, who made this whole publishing process as easy as possible.
I had essentially given up writing until I met Robert Rosenberg in Istanbul. He had the guts to begin a novel when I was scared to begin a short story, a fact that was both intimidating and inspiring. His kind but forceful encouragement for me to write, his trust in me to read the early drafts of his novel, and our shared mini-workshops over Efes beer on various rooftop terraces stoked my long-extinguished desire to be an author. He is a great friend, a fantastic critic, a wonderful writer, and a constant source of positive encouragement.
Janet Baker volunteered to read the manuscript at a critical time in its genesis and provided important objective critiques.
Cheers to Caren Streb for her incredible friendship, her sublime taste in food and wine, and her endless excitement and joy for life; to Adam Davis, whose talent in all the arts is a constant inspiration to me; and to Craig Rutter, for being one of my oldest and dearest compadres. Thanks to all of the above for helping me keep one foot always in California.
Thanks to my family and my wife’s family for all their encouragement and support in countless ways.
Without my wife, Miriam Drew, I would not have had the confidence to write this book. Her faith in me got me through all the days I thought I was not smart, talented, or tough enough to write anything worth reading, and my love for her makes me want to impress her. And my son, Nathaniel, always reminded me that few things are more important than good macaroni and cheese, big trains, and slow bike rides in the sun.
BOOK SOURCES
Books that were indispensable to me in the production of this novel are as follows: Atatürk, by Andrew Mango, Who Are the Turks?, by Justin McCarthy and Carolyn McCarthy, and Turkey Unveiled, by Nicole and Hugh Pope; The Kurds: A People in Search of Their Homeland, by Kevin McKiernan, and Kurdistan: In the Shadow of History, by Susan Meiselas; The Qur’an, as translated by M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, and The Qur’an, as translated by M. H. Shakir; Merriam-Webster’s Encyclopedia of World Religions, edited by Wendy Doniger, Biblical Quotations for All Occasions, by J. Stephen Lang, The Koran: Selected Suras, translated by Arthur Jeffrey, and The Wisdom of the Prophet, translated by Thomas Cleary; Understanding Islam, by Thomas W. Lippman, Islam and the West, by Bernard Lewis, The Middle East, by Dr. William Spencer, Warriors of the Prophet, by Mark Huband, and Terrorism, Theirs and Ours, by Eqbal Ahmed.
The New York Times, The Economist, The International Herald Tribune, and The Turkish Daily News kept me up-to-date on happenings within Turkey.
About the Author
Born and raised in Southern California, ALAN DREW has traveled extensively in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. He has lived on the Northern Cheyenne Reservation in eastern Montana, where he worked with emotionally disturbed children. He taught English literature for three years at a private Turkish high school in Istanbul, arriving just four days before the devastating 1999 Marmara earthquake. In 2004 he completed a master of fine arts degree at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he was awarded a Teaching/Writing Fellowship. He currently lives with his wife and son in Cincinnati, Ohio.
Gardens of Water is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2008 by Alan Drew
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to Alfred Publishing Co., Inc., for permission to reprint an excerpt from “How to Disappear Completely,” words and music by Thomas Yorke, Philip Selway, Edward O’Brien, Colin Greenwood, and Jonathan Greenwood, copyright © 2000 by Warner/Chappell Music Ltd. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing Co., Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Drew, Alan
Gardens of water: a novel / Alan Drew.
p. cm.
1. Families—Fiction. 2. Muslim families—Fiction. 3. Americans—Turkey—Fiction. 4. Earthquakes—Turkey—Fiction. 5. Turkey—Fiction. 6. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3604.R48G37 2008
813'.6—dc22 2007019959
www.atrandom.com
eISBN: 978-1-58836-680-1
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