My God, she said, the two of them back out on the street, Dottie in a state of nervous hilarity. Holy shit.
Air whistled harshly in and out of Karim’s flared nose and he looked at her severely and said, I don’t understand you. He flicked his hand with a dismissive gesture. There is a teahouse across the street, Karim said. We will wait there.
Oh, she said, regaining her composure with a quick look over at the shop, the bronzed aura of sanctuary captured behind the glowing squares of paned windows, candles on the tables, a scattering of friendly-looking adults. Subdued, she looked back at Karim sheepishly, her instinct like a clock’s alarm, prodding her to reverse roles, but when she tried to transfer over the leadership she had assumed earlier, he would not have it.
How long should we wait? she asked, and when he answered, As long as you wish, she had to admit the possibility that she had no idea what to do.
They sat opposite each other at a table next to the windows with a clear view across the street to the gendarmerie, watching one another fidget, Karim’s legs as restless as her fingers crab-walking from spoon to napkin, waiting for their tea, sipping the bulb-shaped glasses self-consciously when it came, their exchange no more than an awkward release of monosyllables until Karim, straightening his spine, cleared his throat, confessing he was ashamed to have forgotten that a woman could be as strong, or stronger, than a man. My own mother, he said, is like this, like you . . . but of course, I should say, nothing like you.
Really? said Dottie eagerly, wanting to relax into a bath of peaceful conversation, be a boy and girl together, just talking, as this night was meant to be. Tell me about her. Are you Moroccan? Someone told me that.
No, he said, his father was Moroccan, but Karim himself, by matrilineal tradition, was considered, at least by the government, a Turk, a citizen. Dottie asked why his father had come to Turkey and Karim, his closed body like a fist unclenching, now seemed to appreciate her interest and was not averse to sharing his family’s story of broken traditions and unrealistic expectation and the loss that invariably accompanies change.
My father came from an old family, respected, but not very powerful, Karim began, but immediately she interrupted.
What did they do?
They were tradespeople.
Of what?
Okay, he said. Cooking oil, cooking fuel . . . for many years charcoal; afterward, gas. I mean to say, bottled gas.
Where?
Where?
Where did he live? Like, a village? A city?
A neighborhood in Casablanca.
Oh, she said, her left hand splayed below her throat, as if she had received bad news.
What is wrong?
No, nothing’s wrong, she said quickly and her face expanded with a playful smile. Pearls of candlelight swam in her eyes. I’ll tell you later. What year was this?
My father’s family has always lived in this place, said Karim, puzzled by Dottie’s conspicuous reaction to his father’s birthplace. No one can remember when they did not live there.
Okay, I’ll tell, she said. It’s possible that our fathers have met.
The world is not this small, said Karim, acting as if he would be horrified if indeed it were, and when they compared dates, it seemed improbable that their fathers’ paths had crossed.
It’s not like it would mean anything anyway, she said. Go on. I want to know more.
Throughout the centuries, the family was the family, each generation the same to the one before and the one after, Karim continued in a didactic tone she associated with the self-importance of university students. But the war, the Second World War, he said, switching to Turkish when he was unsure how to express a word or idea in English, had for the first time in the family’s memory made them prosperous, and so his father, firstborn of the postwar generation, was viewed as an opportunity, a chance to lift the family to a long-desired level of wealth and status. His life, in other words, was theirs; the decisions, theirs. And then, of course, he rebelled. Perhaps it would have been so anyway, said Karim, but the family saw his father only as a lottery ticket for influence and . . . and (he paused, searching for the word) esteem. No longer would they be simple merchants; they would slip through the back door of the elite class by sending their children to the best private schools, then overseas to Europe or America to be educated—they did not understand this, you see—in a manner that would cast their children out from the family, far beyond their ability to be a living part of the family organism, to be anything, I suppose you must say, than—she stopped him to look up the words in her Turkish/English pocket dictionary and offered, cherished phantoms? and he continued, nodding uncertainly.
Yes, they would remit money home. Yes, they would visit on holidays. Yes, the family could boast of their accomplishments, but the family would still be required to sell its cooking oil and know its place in society and not imagine that its place was any higher than where it was. So that is my father’s story, Karim said, and Dottie said, Well, what happened?
What happened? said Karim. My father studied in America and made his PhD and became an engineer. He came to work in Turkey. He met my mother.
Where? How? asked Dottie, anticipating a much different narrative than this, Karim’s underfed provincial look suggesting a story more familiar with poverty than middle-class affluence and professional careers.
I feel you are like the devlet—you want to know everything, Karim said. Why?
Why not? she chirped. Maybe I’m a spy. Or just nosy and superficial.
Maybe you are a superficial spy, he said, the first joke he had ever made in her presence. She marveled at his smile, how disturbingly beautiful it was, perhaps because of its rarity or its surge upward into his eyes, soaking through their hardness, and she said, Oh, that’s so much better, you should smile more. But come on, she said, tell me the rest, and Karim told her his father, when he finished his doctoral studies in the United States, applied for jobs in many places in the world, none of them Morocco, and eventually accepted a position in Turkey, because it was an Eastern country that was modern and Islamic, but not too modern and not too Islamic for his taste, which had been corrupted—Karim used the word sickened—by the West. This was many years ago, said Karim, that my father came to Erzurum, to build roads and bridges throughout the countryside, and it was there I was born. Do you know it? Erzurum?
No, she said, but she had a classmate from Erzurum, who told her that wolves came out of the surrounding forest and wandered through the campus of the university, and Karim confirmed that yes, this was true. Yes, many types of wolves, he added cryptically.
How long have we been here? she wondered out loud. Should we order more tea?
Summoning the waiter, Karim looked at his wristwatch and declared he had a plan. Let me ask you, please, he said to her. Do you have money? I mean, dollars, and she gave him the twenty she kept hidden in her wallet for emergencies, which he then gave to the waiter, with instructions to take a tray of tea and the “gift” across the street to the gendarmes. And tell them, he said, Osman’s friends are waiting.
I should have thought of this before, Karim said after the waiter left to conscript one of the kitchen boys for the mission.
Yeah, of course, me too, said Dottie, impressed by Karim’s belated maneuver, right out of her father’s playbook. I wasn’t thinking.
And you? he said, his eyes mirroring hers, lambent with flame, her uneasy attraction to him like a radio’s poor reception, the signal wandering in and out through a soup of static created by Osman. I thought you were an American but your passport is red.
Red, she explained, was the color for diplomats and their families. Then she sat back as if to see him more completely, her head tilting with consternation when he asked who’s daughter she was, the question spoken in English yet she had shuddered
at his use of the Arabic phrasing, wondering if it were possible that Karim too had been enlisted somehow by her father.
Why are you asking me that? she said, attempting to sound nonchalant but frowning with suspicion.
Because you are asking the same of me, he said, perturbed. Is it not allowed?
Sorry, Dottie said automatically, telling him her father was posted at the embassy in Ankara. She was unable to rid herself of the nagging thought that some relationship existed between her father and Karim, given her dad’s spidery habit of weaving webs. I know this might sound weird, she said. You don’t work for my father, do you?
Is it possible to work for your father? said Karim, his interest sharpening. You mean, as a driver? Or . . . what?
I don’t know, she said. Maybe.
With your permission. I wanted to ask about your father . . . I mean to say, before. At the café. What does your father do?
I don’t know really, she said, reluctant to pursue this line of inquiry and uncomfortable with the intensity of Karim’s eyes upon her, inquisitive and mesmerizing. He’s a diplomat. He talks to people.
Tonight, he said, before you and Osman came to the café, the Jew—
Don’t say the Jew, said Dottie, bristling. Her name’s Elena.
Yes, okay. That one.
What’s my name? she needled. I’ve never heard you say it.
Dodi.
Thank you, said Dottie.
That one was bragging about your father, to make us feel weak.
What did she say?
She said your father goes to Afghanistan to kill Communists. Could this be true?
Of course not, she said with a supercilious guffaw. That’s so incredibly insane.
Yes, I myself said to the Jew she is lying, but this other girl, the French yabanci, confirms the Jew is speaking the truth.
Her name is Elena. Stop saying the Jew.
But your father. It is true about him, yes? The Americans are in Afghanistan against the Soviets. This is no secret.
How would Elena and Jacqueline know what’s true or not true about my father? said Dottie, infuriated with Elena for spreading a specious rumor and with Karim for his unacceptable display of prejudice. Do diplomats in suits and ties go around shooting people?
There was a missile, yes?
No.
I am sorry to have bothered you with the Jew’s lie.
She bucked in her chair and said, Stop saying that.
I was hoping this story was true. If such a story were true, I would take your father’s hand to kiss and pray for God to protect him. Tell me, can your father help me to reach Afghanistan?
You don’t listen. Say Jew one more time and I’m leaving.
Really? To go where? We are waiting for your boyfriend, yes?
Enraged by his smugness she said, Say it one more time and I swear—
Forgive me, he said, his smile this time patronizing and not beautiful. I did not know this girl’s name. Elena.
Forget it, she said, but her mood had turned precarious. She forgave him and then changed her mind and then changed it again, her emotions seesawing with exhaustion and the telltale cramping low in her stomach. She wanted everything at once—to cry, fight, sleep, scream, telephone Daddy, smoke hashish with the lycée boys, see Osman, be held, be alone, be hateful and be in love and be mad at Karim or maybe make out with him down by the water. Karim’s jealousy was shockingly transparent, the way his lips had curled around boyfriend, the word she had blurted out to the gendarmes to try to get them to listen to her, but perhaps Osman himself would no more accept or validate this word than the police. Or, Jesus H Christ, her father, whom she had once overheard telling a colleague he loved Turkey because it was impossible to kill one billion Muslims—whatever he meant by that, other than his completely irrational loathing of Islamic people, another reason she found it difficult to believe he had become a comrade-in-arms with Afghans, despite the incriminating fact that her father was committed heart and soul to the downfall of communism, that he carried the scars of that endless battle on his own flesh. She could not calculate the slippery algebra of enemies (if the enemy of my enemy is also my enemy, then what?) to predict her father’s actions and responses in the world, except as they applied to her, and certainly, absolutely, to her use of boyfriend, that word she could not yet imagine a place for in the reality that was the two of them, father and daughter, where even the word mother had a radioactive existence. The movie, already in her head, was, Um, Daddy, I have a present for you, for those hang-ups of yours. Muslim boy. We’re going steady. Check out this cool abaya he gave me to wear. Peekaboo, Daddy-o.
They both turned their attention to the aproned kitchen boy returning from across the street, coming to their table to deliver a note, which Karim unfolded and read. What’s it say? she asked, and he showed it to her—Go home—and she said, What should we do? Perhaps we should go home, Karim said, but she wanted to stay and he said, then, for a while longer he would stay as well. But it is pointless, you should realize, he added.
She had a moment’s lucidity, a revelation that she and Karim were incompatible, irreversibly and until the end of time incompatible, yet she did not like this feeling of permanent volatility and, grasping for common ground, tried to switch the conversation back around to his own family.
Your mother, she said, reaching across the table toward his hands, an unconscious but sisterly gesture, a spontaneous coaxing touch, which she saw too late was unwelcome. You haven’t told me anything about your mother.
She is a very pious woman, said Karim, his face darkening as he withdrew his hands from the table to his lap. Not like my father, who salutes the ezan with a bottle of whiskey. And not like your friends. Why do you choose whores and Jews for friends?
Excuse me, said Dottie. That’s so obnoxious.
Excuse me, please, he said. You are Christian, yes?
Catholic.
Ah, I mean to say, a Roman. And in the eyes of believers an infidel. He saw she dressed with modesty and did not behave in a manner he found impious. Please, I respect you, Karim said, although I do not live like you, nor do I want to live like you. But your friends, they bring disgrace to your reputation. You should understand they make you less than you are.
Why are you getting angry? she asked, angry herself, and she struggled to smother the incendiary heat of her own temper, one of the pieces of her personality she did not own, or refused to own, because these parts were not her, or not herself, or made her feel like she wasn’t herself, and they did not exist until they did, rising to the surface as her true self sank below, and afterward they were just gone, like a dream, which is what she told herself they were. Selves that seemed real until you woke up, or until, like a saint’s visitation, God began speaking.
Angry? No. I am giving advice. Because I respect you.
Okay, she said. Sometimes Yesho doesn’t make it easy to be her friend. But it’s really none of your business who my friends are.
The impure behavior of women, he told her, was the business of all men.
You need to get over yourself, she said. What’s your problem? Are you some kind of religious freaks, you and your friends?
You do not know my country or my faith well enough to say these things, said Karim. The military and the elites are the ones in Turkey who are illiterate and backward, not the religious people. The parliament—filled with idiots. They believe people are not mature enough to make their own democracy. For the devlet, religious tolerance is a crime. Tolerance spreads the disease of democracy throughout society. The devlet says we want to destroy democracy by asking for too much of it. Tell me, how can you have too much democracy? The devlet insults my intelligence, and these girls you call your friends are the enemies of God. These girls could not walk the s
treets of Erzurum as they walk the streets of Ortakoy. The faithful would strike them with stones.
Tolerant! she said. Is that what you think you are?
God willing, I would throw the first stone.
I cannot figure out, she said, why you and Osman are friends. He’s not like you.
How do you know what Osman is? said Karim. You are a yabanci. How do you know what any Turkish man is? You are Christian.
Nice guys are the same, she said. It doesn’t matter what else they are. Remembering Yesho’s inadvertent and unanswered disclosure, she asked Karim to tell her why Osman had joined his group.
What group are you speaking of?
Your religious club or whatever it is.
Religious groups are forbidden by the devlet, he said. Maybe you did not know. There is no group. We are Mehmets who served together, he said, but she did not understand what he meant.
Recruits. In Turkey we call them Mehmets. We are friends from the army.
What!
Could it be Turkish men do not find it necessary to tell the girlfriend everything?
I can’t believe it, she said. Osman, a soldier?
Every Turkish boy must give one year to the military. Three years ago, he told her, they were conscripted and sent to Diyarbakir, to fight against Kurdish insurgents. We killed no one—Osman, me—but I will confess, he said, we were often cruel. What choice did we have? Osman, who had just returned from England, was unhappy in the army, said Karim, but he himself discovered something he had not anticipated, that he enjoyed a soldier’s life very much.
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