Anarbek and Mehmet were up for the drink, and they tried to convince Adam to come celebrate their victory, but he refused again. Oren seemed slightly put off, but Jeff regarded Adam with a slight smile and convinced the others to leave them alone.
Adam sat down with Nazira on the side of the basketball court, where over the pine trees he could make out the top towers of the Bosphorus Bridge. He concentrated on tracing the mud on the ground with the end of a stick.
“You’re a very good basketball man,” she said.
“I’ve been playing a long time. I played in university.”
“I always like to play sports. When I was a girl, I used to play football with the boys at school. The teachers were so angry with me. ‘That is not a sport for girls,’ they said. When I got older, I started watching only.”
“In Arizona, the girls play all the time. They’re pretty good, really.”
“Do they play with you? On your side?”
“Yeah, sometimes. Here, come on, we’ll practice.”
He led her back to the court and showed her first how to bank in a lay-up, then how to dribble the ball. She pounded it too hard with her flat hands, as if swatting at flies, and once the ball kicked off her foot and she bounded into the woods to chase it. But slowly she caught on.
“That’s pretty good,” he said. “That’s what you’ve gotta do. Now see if you can take it to the hoop. Shoot a basket.” She carried the ball, ran a few steps on the tips of her toes, then heaved it up, and it smashed straight into the rim, just missing her head on the rebound. He retrieved the ball and dribbled with his left hand only, between his legs, then behind his back. She ran in circles around him, laughing, and at last collapsed into a squat.
“You are the winner,” she said, out of breath. “Okay, you are the winner. But only for today.”
On the walk back to Jeff’s apartment, the smell of Nazira’s warm skin reminded him of dandelions. She laughed generously at the littlest things: the whistles of street vendors, a grandmother holding a bawling child, a dog howling at the muezzin’s call to prayer. He noticed how, embarrassed by her smile, she would cover her mouth with her hand, and he loved how, when she stepped in front of him, her skirt clung to the curve of her hips. These long flowing skirts were so different from the loose black jeans of the Apache girls he had known.
In the apartment he kissed her, for the first time, against the back of the door, and then she pulled him into the living room, across the rugs, still kissing, and they knelt on the couch. He was tentative—he didn’t want to make her uncomfortable, but she surprised him. She was more confident, more passionate than he expected. She bit down on his lips, she nibbled his ears, and they worked each other into a dizzy, sweating haze, until Nazira suggested they stop and get some water.
The two pretended nothing had changed when the men returned that night, though Adam sensed that everyone knew. Monday morning, after Jeff left for work, Adam ran down the steps of Kader Caddesi to buy bread and cheese from the waterfront bakery and peaches and bananas from the bazaar. They ate with Nazira’s father. She prepared the tea, and Adam showed them how to make grilled cheese sandwiches. He threatened to put bacon on hers.
His weekday schedule with Burak was heavy, four hours each afternoon. But it made no difference; he couldn’t have seen her anyway. Nazira continued to sell jackets and accompany Anarbek to his business meetings on the European side. In the evening he met her at Kebapistan for dinner, and afterward, alone, they strolled the misty Üsküdar shoreline, listening to the wailing of the oil tankers. Adam bought her a lemon ice cream at Mado’s, and as they walked along Nazira slung her arm through his and offered him tastes of her dessert.
From the pier by the lighthouse Nazira pointed out the Marmara Hotel; its upper floors, the highest point along the straits, gleamed a dim purple in the late afternoon sun.
“A skyscraper,” she said to Adam. “I have only seen them in photos, until I came here. What is the highest floor you have been?”
“I went up the Empire State Building in New York once. A hundred floors.”
“Is it frightening?”
He pointed to the hotel. “I’ll take you up there sometime. You’ll see.”
She gestured to the dense sprawl of the city, the buildings clambering upon themselves from the edges of the water. “You will live then here in Istanbul, Adam?”
“I gotta find my own place. Maybe you can help me. You’ll be here a few weeks, like your dad, isn’t it?”
She shook her head. “I can stay only a few more days, Adam. But you must come visit me. I am waiting for you.”
Walking back, he imagined a life with her in this city of palaces, in an apartment of their own, or traveling with her to some distant nation whose name he could not pronounce, to her home in the mountains, a place no one on the reservation had ever heard of—true distance.
Nazira found herself humming old Kyrgyz folk songs to pass the morning hours on the street. She could not hide her excitement when she met up with Sashenka for lunch. Describing Adam, her voice had a sudden truer depth. With his dark good looks, his serious nature, his unstated kindness, he was unlike any man she had known. She told the Romanian about watching him play basketball—how she marveled at the grace and assurance of his game, at his magical ability, like something learned in a circus, to hurl the ball from a distance straight through the little hoop. He was modest; he made no effort to impress, he disdained small talk, and she sensed honesty in his straightforward words, his simple phrases, his encouraging exclamations.
Her face that Wednesday was fixed in a half-smile. She listened to Sashenka’s own tales—of being ripped off by such and such a customer, of fighting with such and such a company over a telephone bill, of avoiding such and such police officer—with a glowing amusement. And she found her appetite had increased: she ordered extra dishes of eggplant, and after lunch she even shared one of her friend’s Turkish cigarettes, coughing the whole time.
“You are in love. I can see,” Sashenka said. She swung a finger back and forth. “But stupid girl, you are in love with the wrong man. You should have lost your heart to the father of your child.”
Nazira shrugged. “Who can control who you lose your heart to?” She had come to the conclusion that love could not be pursued; it could not be sought in a magazine or demanded in a letter.
“And have you told him about your son?”
“I will. He understands these things. He is very smart.”
Sashenka shook her head in amused disbelief. “At least you are not sleeping with him.” And then, in an especially loud voice meant to embarrass her, she said, “You have not slept with him yet, have you?”
“I will sleep with him when I please!” Nazira said just as loudly, drawing glances from two Russian businessmen at the next table. The idea had not occurred to her, but suddenly the possibility of being with Adam filled her with pleasure. She was living the brave, modern life of a city woman. And it was only after she spoke the words that she realized they were in direct conflict with her need to return to the village, her impatience with her father.
Sashenka exploded in laughter and treated Nazira to the lunch. She paid with a single ten-million bill and, waiting for change, said, “Pazhalstah. One favor.”
“Anything.”
“Tell me”—she leaned her weight on the table—“how can I find my own American Prince Charming?”
Friday afternoon Adam and Nazira ferried for the first time together to the European side and strolled up and down Istiklal Caddesi, in and out of the bustling music and chocolate and perfume shops. They entered the skyscraper through the metal detector, ascended the escalator, and came across an aquarium so large, the tropical fish seemed to be flying in swarms across the hotel lobby.
“It’s a very beautiful lobby,” she said. “So many couches!”
He pointed out the registration desk, and Nazira smiled and shrugged and glanced down at the red carpeting. As Adam signed the registrat
ion form, he realized with satisfaction that they could have been anyone. He could have passed for Turkish—he was dark enough. He might have been Arab, African, or Jamaican. The desk clerk may have thought Nazira was from China or Thailand. He wrote a false name—Chester Gatewood—on the reception form, paid for the room with two of Burak’s hundred-dollar bills, and took the keys. In the elevator Nazira grinned up at him and hugged him close around the waist. Neither had spent this amount of money on anything so frivolous.
In their twenty-second-floor room Nazira ran to the window, and Adam tugged open the curtains for her. Darkness was falling, and through their reflections in the glass the city spread before them in all its grandeur: the minarets, the buttresses, the sea walls. Everything was mirrored in the water of the straits, so it was as if they were seeing two cities—an illusion interrupted only by a cruise ship drifting beneath them. In silence they watched the stars peep out in the sky, wheeling their great arc over the distances.
“I have never seen this,” Nazira said softly. “Thank you, Adam.”
At the bed he dialed for room service and asked for a bottle of wine. The man on the line suggested he try a red called Yakut.
He cradled the phone on his shoulder. “You like red wine?” he asked Nazira.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Is it tasty?”
“Never had any.” Adam spoke back into the phone. “Bring up one of those Yakuts.”
While they waited, he spotted a remote control. But when he pointed it at the television and pressed the green button, the air conditioner on the wall behind them beeped three times, then blew a wave of cool air over their heads.
“That feels nice,” Nazira said.
She was wearing a black skirt and sitting with her legs crossed over the edge of the bed. She closed her eyes and leaned into the breeze. Adam found another remote control in a drawer and managed to turn on the satellite TV. He kept flipping channels: Hindus praying, a motocross race in Singapore, an Iranian music video, a Spanish aerobics instructor. Light-headed, nervous, they both laughed harder at each channel. He settled on a program showing the film Scream 2 and stretched out across the bed as Nazira disappeared into the bathroom.
A man in white brought the wine, and Adam paid him with a fifty-dollar bill, giving back the ten dollars change as a tip. The man opened the bottle with a tug, and pushed a cart with glasses into the room.
The air conditioner worked in overdrive, but even using the correct remote control, Adam could not shut it off, and the room was growing frigid. He could hear Nazira behind the door, playing with the hair dryer, turning it on and off, high and low. He suddenly wondered why he was doing this. She would probably be leaving in a few days, and he’d never see her again. The whole thing was unwise, ridiculous, but he felt driven by forces he couldn’t stop. She came out wearing her blouse untucked—it fell below her waist and covered half her skirt. She stepped softly to the bed and ran her hand over the sheets. Adam gestured to the wine and poured some for each of them.
“We should make the toast,” Nazira said. “It is one of our traditions.”
“Go ahead.”
She clenched her lips and thought. “To meeting,” she said.
“To meeting.”
Their glasses touched.
“Not that bad,” Adam said. “A fine wine.”
“The best I ever tasted.”
“Check out this bed.” Adam told her. “Check out how soft it is. And feel these pillows. I used to sleep on an old mattress on the floor. I thought it was the most comfortable thing in the world. I’m glad I never tried one of these.”
Nazira sprawled on her stomach beside him and crossed her legs above her. He could see the whiteness of the back of her knees. She sipped her wine. “I did not sleep in a bed until I went to the university.”
“What’d you sleep on?”
“Adam, we spread rugs on the floor. Every night. Big thick rugs my grandmother made. And many, many pillows.”
“Was that comfortable?”
She shrugged. “It was the only thing we knew.”
“We’ll be spoiled now. No more sleeping on the ground, isn’t it?”
“No more sleeping on the ground.” They touched their glasses again.
While they drank, Adam told her the story of how he had met Jeff, how Jeff had come to the reservation so convinced he could change things, how he had hired Adam out of high school to work in the teen center, how his cousin Levi had trashed the place and Jeff had left them, but they’d kept in touch.
“Even when he screws up, he means well,” Adam said. “He’s tried to help me out.”
“He means well, yes, but still I get so angry with him.”
“Why angry?”
“I like Jeff very much. But he is so alone. Do you know? I cannot talk to him. Sometimes I think he cares only of himself.”
Nazira asked more about the reservation. Drawn out, against his will, Adam found himself speaking of his father to her. He said usually he thought he hated the man, but it had to be wrong; you couldn’t hate your own father. She sat still and listened silently.
At last they put their glasses aside. He pulled up the sheets, and they both crawled under. Their legs grazed, and they each shifted slightly away, then laughed. He could feel her warmth beneath the covers. The air conditioner, blinking an arctic fifteen degrees Celsius, roared above the bed like an airplane.
“Can you shut the machine off?” Nazira asked.
“I haven’t figured out the technology.” Adam played with the remote. “I think it’s broke.”
Nazira sighed. “Back in my village everything is broken. The lights. The door in my house. My television. The school windows. I have a kitchen table with only three legs.”
“In Red Cliff,” he said, “we’ve got a junked old refrigerator and swing set in my yard. Every house has dead trucks in front. Housing Authority never fixes any broken pipes. Your water goes out, it’s out for weeks.”
“We are always losing the water too! I did not think that happened in your country.”
“It does, though.” He gave up on the remote control and tossed it onto the nightstand.
Nazira was staring up at the back wall, her arms crossed over her chest. “It makes people crazy in my village. Everyone is trying to leave, to Russia, to the capital. My father is afraid to go back.”
“What about you?”
“Adam, I told you, I have to go back.”
He stroked her shoulder. “You can stay here with me a little longer.”
She drew a deep breath. “I never told you one important thing.”
“What’s that?”
“I have a child, Adam. A son.” She looked up and watched his eyes drop. She bent her head and stared forward at the expanse of white sheets.
“A son?” His voice surprised her in its calmness.
She hesitated. “My son has blue eyes. They are so blue. His hair is brown, lighter than our Kyrgyz hair. It looks like this.” She pulled up her hair.
“Spiked?”
“Yes. He is so sweet. Adam, he is my life. He was—how to say?—a gift to me.” They lay in silence a moment longer. Beside her Adam was scratching his leg with his thumb, and she could smell the saltiness of his skin, at once off-putting and enthralling. She went on, telling him how her son loved horses and could already ride if she helped him up. She was teaching him to read, and he had learned all of his letters, Cyrillic and Kyrgyz. She was even teaching him English words. He could remember the names of many animals in three languages. She paused. “You are disappointed with me?”
“No, it’s okay.” He touched the back of her neck, unsure what to say to her or whether it was smart to say anything. “It’s okay. In Red Cliff the women I know are always having children. How old is he, your son?”
“He is five years old.”
“What’s his name?”
“His name is Manas.”
“I gotta meet him sometime.”
Her voice ros
e. “Would you?”
“Maybe I’ll have to come over with you. Meet this kid.”
She turned to him and smiled in genuine excitement, not covering her teeth this time. “Maybe you will?”
The horror movie droned on in loud bursts of music. Adam stretched his feet and curled back his toes. “When I was ten,” he said, “my father killed a bobcat. I got the fur. I kept it on my bed, at the end there. Grew up sleeping with a bobcat.”
Nazira lay her hand on his chest. “Do you miss your bobcat?”
He looked at her out of the corner of his eye. “I’m too old for it now.”
“Am I better than your bobcat?”
Abandoning himself, he slid his arm under her head and pulled her toward him, her eyelashes like feathers against his neck. “You’re better than the bobcat,” he said. He closed his eyes, more comfortable, he decided, than he had ever been. They nearly fell asleep like that, with the television and air conditioner blasting, their limbs entwined beneath the sheets. When Adam glanced up it was just after eleven. Nazira was stroking the edge of his collarbone and staring into his face. Without a word they undressed each other beneath the covers and made slow, nervous love. The Apaches said everywhere was the center of the world. But Adam felt there, inside Nazira, was more the center than anywhere else. Great powers from great distances had conspired to pull them together. Their bodies arched, and in the middle of her heavy breathing, between her hurried kisses, through her halting gasps, for the first time he knew he had arrived.
They returned to the apartment after two that morning. Nazira expected her father to be furious, but in their bedroom he greeted her with a startling hug. Good news! He had been by the Grand Bazaar that morning, and his long-awaited invitation to the Hakan Pazarlama factory had come. On Monday he would meet with Faruk’s uncle and at last finalize the deal to export sheepskin from their village to Istanbul. He wanted her to accompany him to Yeditepe, south of the city, to the Organized Leather Industry Zone, in order to help translate. Bursting with enthusiasm, he spoke without pause for fifteen minutes—he had been holding in this news all day—and he did not even ask where she had been. The roughness of his voice, the sound of Kyrgyz after a magical evening of English, shook her out of her reverie. But the news was good, she told herself. She had feared her father would keep her here for weeks.
This Is Not Civilization Page 26