The dutiful faces of the mute women gazing up at her remind Ayshe of the purpose of her visit to the Asian shore and fill her with a sickening sense of dread.
My gadfly awaits me on this side of the Bosphorus.
She knows a quicker way, but Ayshe decides to follow a circuitous route through the Kadıköy markets in a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable. Although it’s late spring, she is pleased to find a small café still selling salep. Ignoring the disapproving sideways glances she attracts from people passing along the bustling street, she seats herself alone at a small, outdoor table and sips the hot, creamy drink, savouring the scent of the cinnamon on top.
On the opposite corner is a fishmonger, his trays and racks heaving with marine creatures: a glistening, pink octopus splayed across a vertical board, its tentacles extended and pinned to display its size; a tray stacked high with small squid the colour of pearls; straw baskets overflowing with glittering, slippery fish. But there is something else the fisherman has just laid out, which is shielded from Ayshe’s view by the scrabbling hordes of women elbowing each other out of the way to get at it. Her curiosity gets the better of her, and Ayshe finishes the last of her salep before crossing the street to see what is causing the near riot.
She asks one of the scarfed women standing on the outer edge of the scrum.
‘Hamsi! Hamsi is here!’
Ayshe can’t believe her luck. The hamsi season is almost at an end, and the plump anchovies have all but disappeared from the markets – this late in spring it’s a miracle to find any at all. But the tiny, oily fish are Ibrahim’s favourite. She pushes her way to the front of the pack and manages to get her hands on two pounds of the fat, silvery fish. Tonight, they’ll have hamsi pilav – she’ll line a dish with butterflied fillets, fill it with savoury rice and bake it till it’s fragrant and golden brown. Hopefully that will help her father throw off the deep depression that has consumed him since the incident on the roof of the hotel.
Taking her paper-wrapped parcel, she continues through the market, past turşu shops stacked to the roof with huge glass jars of pickled cucumbers, cauliflower, beets, carrots, cabbage and chillies, gleaming like gems and suspended in vividly coloured brine; and stalls selling countless varieties of olives and cheeses displayed in hessian bags. She stops at a store where the window is filled with a baffling display of sweets and cakes; many are unfamiliar to Ayshe. Stepping through the front door she is struck by an intoxicating bouquet of smells: rosewater, orange blossom, roasted hazelnuts, crushed pistachios, warmed honey, sugar syrup and toasted almonds. She buys a selection of baklava and asks the shopkeeper to package it in a gift box.
Walking back out onto the street, she knows she can no longer avoid the true purpose of her visit. Ayshe takes a turn into one of the many small lanes that branch off the main street. It is a balmy spring day, and the sun warms her back as she trudges up the gentle slope towards the residential area of the district. Under just about any other circumstances, a bucolic day like today would lift her spirits, but what she knows she must confront at the top of the hill only deepens her black mood.
There. She has not forgotten the way, nor, unfortunately, has her hesitancy clouded her sense of direction. She finds the immaculately maintained, two-storeyed timber home, bay windows jutting out above the pavement, stoop swept and windows sparkling clean – one of many in a long row of terraces sweeping up the wide boulevard. The turquoise-blue paint is fresh, with window frames and edgings meticulously picked out in white.
A neighbour who is sweeping the pavement, hunched over a handle-less straw broom, pauses to stare unashamedly as she approaches the door of the neat blue house. Ayshe from Europe hesitates. She knows that once she enters, she will have committed herself and her family to an irreversible course of action. The well of despair at the thought of it is so bottomless, so inescapable. But she is well past the point where she has any choice.
Fighting her desire to flee, she climbs the steps and knocks at the door.
She hears light footsteps along the hallway. The door opens.
‘Ayshe Hanim, hoş geldiniz.’ Fatma is a statuesque beauty, with almond-shaped azure-blue eyes set above high cheekbones and well-defined, full lips. Despite her attempts at modesty, the deliberately shapeless dress she wears fails to disguise her feminine curves. Ayshe leans in to kiss her sister-in-law on each cheek. ‘Hoş bulduk, Fatma Hanim.’
Like Ayshe, Fatma’s hair is covered by a scarf, and her face is bare. She extends a hand, inviting Ayshe into the house. Ayshe steps over the threshold and slips off her shoes; she is committed now. She presents the package of baklava to Fatma, who offers the obligatory words of thanks and places it on the hallstand.
The two women’s relationship has always been polite and civil, if somewhat strained. Although of a similar age, they could not be more different. Fatma shared Omer’s disapproval of Turgut’s and Ayshe’s lifestyle, condemning them as dissolute and irresponsible, and with two daughters’ dowries to worry about now, she resents the money that flows from her family’s coffers to support her dead brother-in-law’s wife and son and their degenerate existence. To her, Ayshe’s arrogance is staggering. To think that a woman, a widow, can run a business, sheltering a prostitute under her roof and mixing with foreign men, even on the European shore, is beyond belief and reason.
For her part, Ayshe has never had much respect for her sister-in-law, dismissing what she sees as Fatma’s servile docility and smug piety as antiquated and irksome. But today the tension between the two women is heightened. Fatma regards Ayshe coolly. She gestures up the stairs with an elegant wave of her wrist. ‘Come.’
At the top of the stairs, she points to a closed door.
‘That is the number one bedroom.’ Walking further along the narrow corridor, Fatma opens the door to a second room.
‘We thought this room would be suitable for young Orhan.’
Against one wall is a small, neatly made bed covered with an embroidered satin quilt. On the floorboards lies a small red and ochre prayer rug; the only adornments in the room are two framed Islamic texts that hang on the wall above the bed. Sunlight streams into the spacious room through open lace curtains. Ayshe moves over to the window and looks out at the street below. In the distance, above the rooftops of the neighbouring houses, she can see the Bosphorus and, beyond that, the pointed spire of the Galata Tower in Beyoğlu and the lush green gardens and terraces of Topkapi Palace on Seraglio Point. She feels a bitter pang of nostalgia at the sight of the opposite shore.
Ayshe turns to Fatma, who stands in the doorway, hands clenched together tightly, knuckles whitening. ‘It’s a beautiful room, Fatma. But what about your lovely daughters? Where will they sleep now?’
Fatma smiles thinly in response. ‘They will share a room for now, but they will both marry soon enough.’ She turns and walks back into the hallway, opening a third door. ‘Your father may sleep here.’
Like the first room, it is neat and contains a single, narrow bed. But it is tiny, with barely enough space to pass around the foot of the bed, and much more spartan than the extravagant, lushly carpeted bedroom that Ibrahim currently enjoys. The single window opens onto a narrow enclosed external stairwell and only admits an insipid grey light. Ayshe can’t hide her disappointment. The thought of her father in this dark and poky room amplifies her growing disquiet. Sensing her misgivings, Fatma attempts to reassure her.
‘It will be a different life for Ibrahim Bey. But the girls will take good care of him.’
‘Perhaps he could take Orhan’s room?’
Fatma shakes her head firmly.
‘Omer always prayed he would have a son to fill that room.’ She walks to the end of the hallway and opens another door. ‘Here – you will be next to your father.’
Ayshe walks into the room that’s intended for her. Like her father’s, it is dark and small, with most of the space occupied by a double bed. She edges around to the other side and turns to face Fatma, who
is standing tensely with her arms crossed and her lips pressed tightly together.
‘This will be your room.’ She shifts uncomfortably. ‘Omer will join you on every third night.’
For a moment, Ayshe puts her own qualms to one side. If this scenario represents an unimaginable upheaval for her and her family, it must be doubly distressing for Fatma. Thanks to Omer’s sense of familial obligation, her world is about to be turned on its head. Her own daughters’ position in the family is to be usurped by another woman’s son, and she will be compelled to share her husband in the most intimate of ways with someone she neither likes nor respects. Ayshe speaks to Fatma softy.
‘And you are comfortable with this arrangement?’
Fatma turns and leaves the room, avoiding the question. ‘Omer is a good man and a fine husband.’
Wordlessly Ayshe follows Fatma back down the narrow staircase to the salon.
Omer sits in a high-backed armchair in the sunlight-filled front room, newspaper held in front of him. One of his daughters enters from the back of the house with a coffee in a small cup balanced on a silver tray, which she offers to him. He accepts it with thanks and a restrained smile, sips the hot drink and gives a nod of approval. By the window, Fatma and Omer’s other daughter is bowed over a fine piece of linen, painstakingly picking out decorative designs on a tablecloth intended for her trousseau. Fatma moves over to examine her handiwork, and murmurs words of encouragement.
Standing in the doorway, Ayshe feels like an unwelcome interloper. Omer acknowledges her arrival with raised eyebrows and a proprietary wave, inviting her to enter. Fatma quietly ushers the girls out of the room so that Omer and Ayshe can discuss matters in private.
Folding his newspaper and placing it on the small, inlaid wooden table beside his armchair, Omer stands and faces his widowed sister-in-law.
‘You have seen the new arrangements? And everything is satisfactory?’
‘It is a good home.’ There is nothing else Ayshe can say.
‘Yes. It will be done, then. First you must observe the traditional period of mourning, wear your black, and then we can be married. I will come after prayer this evening and we will tell Orhan.’
Ayshe’s stomach clenches with anxiety and her heart begins to pound.
‘No. Allow me one more day. And I will tell him in my own way, please.’
Well accustomed now to Ayshe’s avoidance of the inevitable, Omer is not surprised, but nor is he particularly pleased by the delay. But in the spirit of peaceful accord, he agrees to the concession.
‘As you wish.’
She leaves the room and farewells Fatma and her daughters. Fatma is still cool and reserved, but the two girls show her appropriate deference and affection. She walks out of the house and back down the street towards the ferry that will carry her back to her own home, fingernails digging raw half-moons into her palms as she resists the urge to run, and fighting the tears that she feels pooling in her eyes.
One more day. That’s all we have left to us. One more day.
As Ayshe returns to the European side of the city, she is rent in two by the knowledge of what she must do, and crippling despair weighs on her heart as heavily as a lead curtain. She keeps her thoughts to herself and goes through the motions when she arrives home, but is testy, more easily vexed. Cursing silently to herself, she fumbles as she fillets the tiny silvery hamsi she brought home from the Kadiköy markets. She tears the delicate flesh and makes a mess of a dish she has made more times than she can count. Even the joy that gleams in her father’s eyes when he sees the glistening dome of baked fish and rice does little to lighten her mood.
Snapping at Orhan and punishing him for some minor infraction, she sees his open-mouthed look of shock and is unsurprised when he comes into her room later that evening long after he has gone to bed, black hair tousled and sweaty, eyes wide, face blanched from the assault of nighttime demons. She lifts the coverlet and he crawls underneath, snuggling against his mother’s side, his heavy head resting on her bosom and his shoulder wrapped in her slender arm. Her mind wanders to their home-to-be and she finds it hard to picture them lying together like this in her new room. She lies there in the dark on her back for some time, feeling the sweet rise and fall of Orhan’s breath.
But she is too unsettled to sleep. After she is sure her son is in a deep slumber, Ayshe gently swings her legs over the edge of the bed and steps onto the cool floorboards. Moonlight floods into the room, falling on a framed photo of her standing with Turgut, sombre and serious on their wedding day. Beside it is an image she much prefers: Turgut as a wild-eyed musician seated on a bentwood chair, his oud resting across one knee, and on the other a young Ayshe, in her mid-twenties, her carefree hand resting on his shoulder.
She stands and walks over to the dresser, taking a wrapped parcel from the bottom drawer and opening it carefully. The stiff brown paper crackles like wildfire. She takes the contents gingerly in her hands before turning to face the full-length mirror in the corner. The long, black widow’s dress unfurls like a shroud as Ayshe holds it against herself.
She looks at her moonlit reflection and silently weeps.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
‘You hold that there. Hold it tightly – don’t let it move about, or I might slip and whack your finger . . .’
Orhan’s brow is furrowed, his tongue pressed against his top lip, as he concentrates and attempts to follow Connor’s instructions.
‘Right. That’s good. Now – keep it steady, and I’ll bang the nail in.’ Connor raises the hammer and brings it down with a strong and efficient movement, driving the nail into the plank Orhan holds against the frame of the chicken coop. Since he arrived at the Otel Troya, the free-ranging poultry have irritated Connor’s farmer’s instinct for livestock management, and, finding himself with some time on his hands, he has recruited Orhan to help him construct an A-frame pen for the hotel’s feathered residents. Besides, it is an excuse to do something useful.
At the bench top in the kitchen that overlooks the courtyard, Ayshe absent-mindedly takes small mounds of cumin and coriander–spiced rice and rolls them neatly and firmly within grapevine leaves, packing them tightly inside a pan lined with slices of fresh tomato. Her hands move instinctively – her attention is elsewhere. She gazes at her son and the broad-shouldered Australian man working quietly in the yard. Connor’s sleeves are rolled up to his elbows, and she can’t help but notice his muscled forearms flexing as he raises the hammer. Golden hairs glint against suntanned skin, and a light sheen of perspiration shines across his forehead.
Ayshe’s feelings for Connor have caught her by surprise, softening in a way she could never have anticipated. For so long, Australia and its menfolk had loomed like a spectre in her imagination, a mute target for her grief, loss and bitter fury. She had no one else to blame. When the Çanakkale campaign ended, Turgut had simply not returned. He did not write. There had been no knock at the door from a uniformed messenger delivering condolences from the Ottoman army, or a list or newspaper with his name printed in an inventory of dead and injured. Just silence. For a while, Ayshe had maintained her faith that he would come back, experiencing waves of blind optimism, then frustration and, finally, desperation. Until the day she acknowledged to herself that he was gone. On that day, she turned her impotent rage on those men who had travelled halfway across the world to invade her home. The Australians – their accursed Anzacs – had carried the weight of her heartbreak. It had been an effective diversion for her. Until this man came lumbering through her door and challenged all the things Ayshe thought she knew, disarming her with his quiet resolve and lack of guile. Any lingering animosity she still harboured disappeared when she saw the close bond forming between her son and the Australian.
As liberated as she is, the world of men is opaque to Ayshe, but watching Orhan with Connor she can see that it is governed by rules that transcend language, age and geography. It has been many years since Orhan has had a strong man in his life whom
he also admires. Her son adores his grandfather, but as Ibrahim’s mind disintegrates, Orhan coddles him as he would a baby brother. Even when Turgut was still with them, he was so distracted by his music and social life outside the family home that Orhan never interacted with his own father in this way. They had fun together, went on adventures, but Orhan was still young.
Watching her son with Connor, she is struck by a horrible realisation. Her son detests his uncle, and even if Orhan lives beneath the same roof as Omer, he will never feel the same warmth towards him. If she is brutally honest, she doesn’t want Omer choking her son’s spirit with his dour counsel. This thought brings her back to the present, and she flinches at the thought of what she has promised to do today. She had resolved herself to her fate yesterday. But when she woke this morning and caught sight of her black widow’s dress hanging in the wardrobe like a carrion bird, she still couldn’t bring herself to put it on.
Natalia works by Ayshe’s side, adding to the growing stack of dolma. She interrupts Ayshe’s reverie, murmuring to her under her breath in French.
‘He is handsome, don’t you think?’
‘I do not think about other men. I am married.’ Ayshe’s cheeks flush; she is embarrassed that the Russian woman has caught her gazing at Connor.
‘No, of course . . . It has been four years for you, no? There must be cobwebs up there.’
Ayshe raises a hand and laughs, feigning indignity.
‘Natalia . . . please!’
‘Don’t pretend you don’t miss it . . .’
The Water Diviner Page 17