“You’re going to hurt yourself,” Adam warned him.
“Exactly the opposite,” he said. “It helps me to think.”
Burak asked endless questions. The teaching was Adam’s first taste of expertise, and though it seemed ridiculous to be considered a master of English, a language he had taken for granted his entire life, it was also somehow flattering. Following Oren’s advice, the two spent the final half-hour reading Newsweek magazines and the Turkish Daily News.
“Our national hero,” Burak said in a proud voice, referring to an article about the founder of the republic. He leaned over and murmured, “But sometimes I do not like.”
Adam had never heard of the man, but his student guaranteed he had seen the somber face a hundred times: national law required that every public room in Turkey display the founder’s photograph. Burak had memorized his schoolboy facts. In a practiced English speech he explained that his people called the founder “Ata,” the father of the country. In the Great War he had helped win the Battle of the Aegean, but only after his life had been saved by a money clip in his breast pocket that stopped an Australian bullet. After the war the general had united their people and had driven out the occupying French, British, and American forces, as well as the enemy Greeks. He established the government without religion, then changed the alphabet from Arabic to Latin in order to better connect the new nation to the modern world.
In his water-polo captain’s voice Burak intoned, “Everybody loves Atatürk!” He bent over the table and whispered, “You know this man died alcoholic. He was not a—a—” He stopped and looked the word up in the dictionary. “He was not a saint. ‘Future future future,’ he used to say. He thought only of future; he never thought of past. Atatürk burned all Ottoman books. He burned our history, our Ottoman literatures.”
“Still,” Adam said, “he sounds like a great man.”
“Great man! Yes, great man. He saved our country. But you see, he was man. Not God. Simply man. He was making mistakes.” Burak cast his eyes down at the imposing stack of TOEFL study materials.
That afternoon, following his tutoring session, Adam met Oren at the Beşiktaş ferry.
“How’d it go?”
“It was all right.”
“Easy?”
“Easy enough, I guess.”
They grabbed an inexpensive meal together in a lokanta, then headed to Taksim Square to the W. B. Yeats. Jeff’s girlfriend, Melodi, approached Adam as he was sitting alone at the bar. He had seen her making her way from table to table: she seemed to know every single person in the pub. Her tight white blouse showed off her heavy round chest, and her gold earrings shimmered as she leaned in close to him.
“You’ve never danced with me, Adam.” She licked her lips and repeated his name—“Adam Dale, Adam Dale”—as if she were tasting him. “You should feel shame, Adam Dale.”
He laughed uncomfortably and gripped his cool pint of Guinness. “I never dance.”
She clicked her tongue and raised her chin with an air of disbelief. Her eyelids were heavily colored in violet, her lips thickly painted. Adam’s heart raced; he felt a pressure building to lean over and kiss her. “Don’t mind watching you dance, though,” he murmured. He thought of Jeff and turned his head away from her gaze.
“I see that.” She grabbed his left wrist. Her touch was gentle—just the slightest bite of one of her long nails—but with it he felt a charge run up his arm.
In the morning, back at the apartment, his mouth dry from all the previous evening’s Guinness, Adam remembered the $150 Burak had paid him. Down by the pier he treated himself to a new pair of Reebok high-tops, a fancy plaid shirt, and an umbrella for the salty evening rains.
The rest of the week with Burak went less smoothly. On Friday Adam barely survived the three-hour marathon tutoring session, and it ended with the water-polo player missing four straight practice vocabulary questions and hurling a tea glass from the waterside café across the pier into the straits.
Adam was frustrated but took his money and headed to the Yeats on his own.
In the dolmuş he realized that this job with Burak hardly qualified as real work. He sensed the ease of the life of an American abroad, the prestige of his citizenship, and though it seemed this prestige suited Jeff and Oren, it felt somehow false to him. He did not entirely understand how these unwritten rules worked—exactly why, for instance, Jeff’s refugees were clamoring to get into the United States, why Burak’s parents would pay fifty dollars an hour for English lessons. But all that mattered now, he supposed, was the money in his pocket. He decided he would press Jeff’s hospitality, and as soon as possible, when he had enough saved, he would find his own place and settle into this city awhile. He’d look for a permanent job, maybe teach at an ESL school—build a life for himself, as Oren and Jeff had done.
At the Yeats, he found Jeff in the back room on the computer, typing an e-mail.
“Can anyone use that?” Adam asked him.
“Just finishing up. Then it’s all yours.”
He watched Jeff type for a moment, his fingers flying across the keyboard—faster, it seemed, than a person could think. Adam fished into his weathered wallet and found, behind an old ATM card, a scrap of paper with the Lutheran mission’s e-mail address.
He’d have to tell his family he was alive. Suddenly it disgraced him to imagine what they would think of his living in a foreign country, as if he were too good for the reservation, as if he were after some kind of white folk’s glory. He considered telephoning, but knew he could never bear the call: the familiar voices of his aunt and his sister, angry, worried, asking when he was coming back.
Jeff set him up at the computer and let him use his e-mail account, then showed him the right place to type the address. Under SUBJECT, Adam wrote, a shout out to the pastor.
What’s up, pastor! he began. He typed with his thumb and index finger joined, searching for the right letters.
writing you from istanbul. want you to know i’m okay and living the high life, i thought i’d tell you i’m in turkey, staying with a friend, you’d like it here pastor, lots of religious buildings and they pray five times a day. do me a favor, tell my mom i’m fine, that you heard from me. i remember what we talked about before i left and your advice and everything, i’ve been thinking and i want you understand it ain’t my fault what dad does to mom. it ain’t my fault half the town deals, or my cousin robbed those houses, i didn’t ask for none of that, you come from a different place, you’re lucky, once you told me you were sent to do your best and help the tribe, that’s fine, you live there, but not really, if you really had to live with all that stuff, see it on a daily basis, sleep in the same house, you’d want to get out too. you’d be angry too. if i typed faster i’d type more, keep an eye on Mom and Verdena for me.—Adam
He clicked SEND, watching the globe spin in the upper-right-hand corner of the screen, then called Jeff over from the pool table.
“This right?”
The screen blinked, YOUR MESSAGE “a shout out to the pastor” HAS BEEN SENT.
“That’s right,” Jeff said. “You finished?”
11
JEFF HAD BEEN about to leave his apartment and was slipping on his shoes when he heard the raucous knocking. He opened the door and had no idea what was being said to him, too shocked to see the heavy man appear out of the past, in a synthetic-leather jacket and Addiddass sweatpants, standing in the dim light, offering a red bottle, smiling and nodding at him. Anarbek’s hair was graying, his double chin and loose jowls covered in white stubble. The words he was shouting were Russian, a language Jeff had not spoken in years. It took him a long moment, staring, before he comprehended.
“Zdrastvooitye, Jeff! Here is the bottle of vodka you like. I need twelve thousand dollars or my life is over.”
Jeff stood in the doorway with his shoes on, his keys in his hands. He forced a smile but kept shaking his head, gauging the inevitability of Anarbek’s sudden appearance. They emb
raced clumsily and exchanged a few pleasantries, though Jeff struggled with his halting Russian. Still shocked, he invited Anarbek in, then changed his mind and explained that he was on his way to the European side to meet some friends, and asked if Anarbek wanted to join him.
“We can catch up there,” Jeff said.
“And talk business,” Anarbek answered.
“Yes, yes, business. Leave your bag. How’d you get here?”
“Flying. In an airplane!”
“Jesus Christ.”
In the taxi across the Bosphorus Bridge, Anarbek thanked Jeff for his letter. Determined to avoid the issue of money, Jeff asked after Anarbek’s son and for news from the village. Anarbek wanted to know how Jeff’s teaching was going.
“I’m not teaching anymore. I thought I wrote you about it. I’m working with—how do you say it?—people who have lost their home. We try to get them sent to America.”
“America!”
“Yes, but it’s difficult.”
“How have these people lost their home?”
“In wars, or politics. Or because of religion.”
“Can you send Mooselmaniye?”
“It doesn’t work like that. I mean, we send a lot of Muslims, but not because they’re Muslim. They have other problems.”
“Like me?”
“No, Anarbek,” Jeff mumbled, “bigger problems than yours.”
In the smoky light of the W. B. Yeats they found Adam nursing his Troy, joking with Mehmet, the bartender, about Oren’s stiff dancing. Jeff pulled up an extra stool and introduced them.
Anarbek took Adam’s hand in his powerful grip. “Ochyen priyatna.”
“What’s that?” Adam asked.
“He doesn’t speak much English,” Jeff explained. “Says it’s nice to meet you.”
“How do you say it?”
“Ochyen priyatna.”
“Ochen pritna, man.”
Anarbek slapped Adam on the shoulders and gave him a wide grin. He leaned over the bar and held four fingers up to Mehmet, and through the pulsing beat of the music called “Wodka!” Then he settled his fleshy elbows against the bar’s brass railing. With the rest of the men he looked back and caught in the quivering lights his first glimpse of the dance floor, where Melodi and her friends were winding their hips, their chests pumping. He turned to Jeff, nodded twice, and the wrinkles of his pockmarked cheeks bunched high around his mouth and remained fixed there in a momentous smile.
Adam bent toward Jeff. “He looks a little like my father.”
“Who?” Jeff yelled.
“My father.”
Jeff glanced up at the Kyrgyz. The resemblance was modest and he had never noticed it before. While Councilman Dale’s expressions were nothing but forlorn, there was always a wide-eyed amusement to Anarbek’s face, and it lacked the Apache’s intensity. “I don’t see really see it,” Jeff said.
“He does. Tell him.”
Jeff translated, and the large man’s eyes sparkled and he laughed. Anarbek stood between them, wrapped his heavy arms around both their shoulders, and exclaimed, “My sons!”
With that, Jeff quickly lost track of how many toasts were raised that evening.
In Kyrgyzstan he had always noticed that the more he drank, the more fluent his Russian became. Now, at the Yeats, entire blocks of vocabulary and grammatical rules came rushing back to him. He and Anarbek struggled through a conversation about the current state of Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka and the bankrupt factory, the dictatorial politics of Central Asia, and more about his job with the refugees. When Jeff brought up Lola and Nazira, Anarbek waved him off. Jeff introduced the Kyrgyz to Melodi and her coworkers, and he stood to greet each one of them, his hand over his heart. “Another old friend,” Melodi said to Jeff, laughing. “He’s charming!” Finally, late in the evening, Anarbek slid his bar stool closer and asked, “When can you give me the money?”
“Do you understand what you’re asking me?”
“For twelve thousand dollars. It will be a loan. I’ll pay it all back. In two years. It’s for Bolot Ismailov. He’s crushing us.” Anarbek twisted his hands, as if he were wringing a towel.
Jeff’s head spun from the alcohol, from the outrageousness of the request. “Anarbek, if I had that amount of money, I would give it to you. In one minute I would give it to you, and you would never have to pay it back. But—I am serious—I work for a humanitarian organization. Do you know how much my position pays?”
“You used to tell us you made nothing back in Kyrgyzstan.” He drew even closer. “I never believed you. How can you be American and make no salary?”
“I was a volunteer! I had no salary at all then!”
“Ha! Working for no money. For two years. Ha! My friend, tell me the truth. Please. This is very important.”
Jeff looked him straight in the eye. “Honestly. I make money now. But tell me, how much do you think I make?”
“Twelve thousand dollars.”
Jeff laughed and fingered his goatee. “Well, more. Really, I tell you, it’s more than that.”
“Twenty thousand dollars.”
“Close.” Jeff nodded. “Okay, you are right, just about twenty thousand dollars.”
Anarbek’s wild eyebrows slanted. “So what’s the difficulty? You cannot share some of that?”
“You are asking for half. What will I have to live on?”
His voice rose in surprise. “Jeff Hartig, you earn twenty thousand dollars! You’ll have plenty again next month.”
“Next month?”
“Next month! You will have enough money again next month.”
“Anarbek! In a year! Twenty. Thousand. Dollars. Every. Year. Do you understand? That’s my salary.”
The music had changed—a slow Turkish love song. A few women at the bar sang along in tender, low voices.
“A year?”
“A year!”
“Neyvoztnozhno.” Impossible.
Jeff swiped his palm slowly down his face, pulling the skin. “It is true. I swear. I am not rich. I have a job, but it does not make me so much money. What do you think Americans are? When I wrote, I was worried you and Nazira didn’t have enough to eat. I thought you were desperate. I meant I could send you a few hundred dollars. That would be difficult for me. I thought you could buy bread with it. I was not offering to save the village. It was just a small offer, to help you out.”
Anarbek’s face held the look of a man falling from a great height. “So you make only twenty thousand dollars each year? How do you own a car?”
“I do not have a car.”
“What about those apartments?”
“Apartments?”
The Kyrgyz thrust an accusing finger in his chest. “The apartments you used to say cost a thousand dollars each month. That is what you said!”
“One thousand?” He tried to remember. “I was talking about New York City. But I never lived there. Do you even know how far Arizona is from New York?”
“How much can you give me? Can you give me five thousand?”
He calculated for a moment. “I can give you five hundred.” Through the smoke the disco ball spun lights across the ceiling, like a vision of some distant galaxy. “Even this, I do not know where it will come from.”
“Five hundred dollars! It cost me that to fly here!”
“Well, where did you get that from?”
“From the factory, Jeff! Nobody is getting their salary this month!” Anarbek grabbed him by the front of his flannel shirt. “Do you know what that will do to the village?” Jeff slipped off the stool and steadied himself with one leg on the floor. Pulled forward, he saw he was far drunker than the Kyrgyz, whose tolerance for alcohol had always been astounding. He regretted now the letter he had sent, in a reflex of guilt, after thinking he had seen Nazira on the Internet. He had led his old friend, a man who had shown him endless generosity, this great distance, only to let him down. He cringed, thinking he was about to be struck.
“Then send me to A
merica, Jeff.”
“For what?”
“I’ll find work.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You don’t want to help us. I was your host-father. My family gave you everything in our home. And now you don’t want to help?”
“I want to help, but we don’t send people to America from Kyrgyzstan. Your problems aren’t serious enough.”
To Jeff’s surprise, Anarbek let out a great roar of a laugh, kissed him on both cheeks, pushed him back onto his stool so its legs wobbled off the floor; and exclaimed, “My friend! Tiy bespolezniy! You are worthless! Just like me!”
Jeff was well aware that nomadic Kyrgyz tradition dictated that guests must never be turned away from a home. Since Adam continued to stay in the spare bedroom, the three of them removed a dusty bookcase from the study, and the large man took over the small room. He slept on an extra twin-size mattress Oren loaned them from the lise. The first night, through the wall, Jeff heard Anarbek tossing under the cotton comforter. He heard him wake at four in the morning to forage through the refrigerator and scarf down suçuk and two-day-old bread. In the morning the crumbs of the clandestine meal were spread over the kilim in the kitchen. When Jeff went to shower, he found Anarbek in the bathroom, gargling, then hocking into the sink, and he had to wait his turn. In the bathtub fifteen minutes later he discovered the bar of soap enmeshed in a web of curly black hairs, and he did not want to guess whose hairs they were.
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