Cemile Abla had one condition for the potential grooms who came to meet her. They had to meet at her home, not outside. And they had to come after dark (she had no intention of falling prey to the tongues of those pint-sized gossip mongers playing ball out in the streets), but not too late (She didn’t know yet if these new neighbors of hers were the snoopy sort or not). Sure he can come over, we’ll drink some tea and chat and get to know one another, she’d say. And then we’ll see. Having so thoroughly enjoyed their first visit, the gentlemen would want to meet a second time. By the second visit, however, they did not have to be told: It would become blatantly obvious that Cemile Abla had absolutely no intention of marrying. Disappointed and resentful, they’d go back home, and after a few days, all they would recall was the delicious cake, the tarts, and the faint smell of fish.
Luckily, Cemile Abla had so far encountered only two obstinant potentials. The first was a lawyer with a single, long eyebrow. He drank his tea warm with four heaps of sugar. For some reason he just hadn’t been able to find a proper companion and, because his heart could no longer bear his mother’s griping, he had decided to take care of the matter as swiftly as possible. After all, his mother—may she live long—was on her deathbed (as she had been for years). And so from now on he was not going to be picky; he was willing to overlook small defects. On his second visit he informed Cemile Abla that he was going to take her to kiss his mother’s hand and discuss engagement plans. An apartment in Üsküdar was ready and waiting for them; they could sell this ramshackle house with its creaking wooden planks and put the money in the bank. The three of them, mother, son, and daughter-in-law—may they live long—would come together and build a happy little nest of their own.
The second one was a handsome, bright-eyed, bushy tailed man. He was at least ten years younger than Cemile Abla, well off, and apparently had a hankering for older women. So much so that by their second meeting he had two plane tickets in his pocket and had already booked a room at a hotel in Bodrum. “Are we going to stay in the same room?” Cemile Abla had asked. Was it such a bad idea for them to slip under a blanket and get to know one another better for a few days, seeing as they were about to share the same pillow for the rest of their lives? The worst part about it was that the man’s smoky voice and the sparse hair on his fingers up to the first joint actually turned her on. “I’m not going anywhere until you say yes,” the young candidate had announced. When he smiled, his lower lip protruded ever so slightly.
Today’s guest didn’t look much like a mama’s boy. And he had no intention of locking Cemile Abla up in a hotel suite or anything of the sort. He was very polite; his first wife had died of breast cancer (—What a pity /—Yes, it was truly a pity); he was Nalan’s brother’s army buddy, so he wasn’t really a stranger. His eyes were red, as if he cried all the time (—I think I need to change my glasses prescription /—Oh my, yes, you should get that looked at right away); he was a retired history teacher (—Yet you’re still so young /—But I just can’t deal with teenagers anymore); he suffered from gastritis and ulcers; he couldn’t have salt because of his blood pressure; and he was very lonely.
Cemile Abla was too happy with her own life to settle for alleviating some guy’s loneliness. The thought of growing old and dying in a home full of stomach pills and history books gave her goosebumps. (—What’s the matter, Cemile Hanım? Are you okay? /—Oh, it’s nothing. Just a little chill.) Besides, she’d made her decision as soon as he told her that he hadn’t had a bite of fish since he was a child, and that he held his nose whenever he walked by a fish stand.
“You see, I had this accident once when my mother tried to force me to swallow fish oil,” he’d explained, and just as he was about to go into the details, Cemile Abla excused herself and went to the kitchen.
Cemile Abla had long ago reconciled herself to the fact that she would never be able to find a husband like her father; and deep inside she was relieved about this. But at the same time, she didn’t want to be rude to her matchmaker friends, or the eager potentials who came to visit. At some point in the middle of their first meeting, she would get lost in thought and weigh the possible match thoroughly, sincerely, without prejudice, and with a clear head. But there was no need to waste any time considering the possibility of a man who couldn’t tolerate the smell of fish.
Timur Bey (—My father was a great admirer of Tamberlaine, that’s how I got my name. /—Won’t you have another piece of cake?) was so excited that he failed to notice Cemile Abla’s evasive answers, her distress, her constant escapes to the kitchen. His mind was elsewhere: He had one foot in the grave, he was certain that this was his last chance, so he had promised himself that he wouldn’t give up until he had resolved this matter once and for all.
When Cemile Abla returned from the kitchen with fresh cups of tea, she found Timur Bey standing there expectantly. He took a small box covered in red velvet from his pocket, opened it with his thin fingers, and removed a diamond ring.
“It was my grandmother’s. My late wife, may she rest in peace, wore it all the time, and I hope that you, too, will like it.”
“Timur Bey, I’m shocked,” said Cemile Abla. She placed the tray on the coffee table. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Please. Please, I beg you, don’t say no.” He took a deep breath before continuing. “If you reject me, I don’t know what I will do, I don’t know how I will survive. Believe me, I couldn’t bear it, I don’t think I could possibly go on. I’ve waited so long, only the thought of the day I would once again give this ring to a woman I love has kept me going. But I swear, I’m at the end of my rope. If you don’t … life for me will be meaningless …” He took the fingers of Cemile Abla’s left hand into his own and squeezed them so hard he nearly broke them.
Cemile Abla stared ahead blankly, hoping that this response would put an end to the conversation.
“Forgive me …” said Timur Bey. “I’m so terribly excited, I don’t know what I have to say to convince you. But I can tell you this—I’ll talk for as long as it takes, for hours if I must. I’ll do whatever, whatever it takes …”
Waiting for the cake in the oven to rise, Cemile Abla laid her knives out on the marble counter, which smelled of detergent. She still used her father’s set of knives. Those ebony-handled, steel blades had become an extension of her own body; they were more familiar to her than her own hands, her own fingers. She laid the five knives out according to size, the smallest of them the length of her pinky and as thin as a razor, the largest bulky enough to split a soda can in half. The chopping knife which she used to cut the heads off of larger fish she placed lengthwise at the top of the row. Next to the chopping knife she set the scissors that she used to remove their fins; they were sharp enough to cut off a tree branch as thick as her wrist. She caressed each of them, a sweet shiver of pleasure running through her as she felt their metal upon her flesh, and then like a nurse preparing for surgery, she conducted a final inspection of each.
She could see the towers of Hisar from her kitchen window. Who knows what went through the minds of the war-weary janissaries as they leaned upon those rocks and rolled their cigarettes five centuries ago, she thought. Was there a woman watching them from behind the tulle curtains of her kitchen window on the hill behind them? Was there a seaside road for the carriages, or did fields covered with trampled grass extend to the edge of the Bosphorus? Could you look into the water and see the bottom back then? Did they ever imagine that years later the Turks would be selling tickets to “infidels” so that they could climb up those steep stairs and take in the view from above? That concerts would be held right in the center of the towers, behind those high walls? Or that college students would play backgammon and drink tea on the slope where heads used to roll? It frightened Cemile Abla the way everything changed, incessantly, over time. Actually, she was rather fond of the small innovations, like color television, markets selling hundreds of varieties of cheese, and hot water every day; she had no objecti
ons to these. But she knew that if things were simply left to take their course, soon there wouldn’t be anything familiar left around her, and she would find herself caught up in the wheels of a way of life utterly foreign to her. But she had no intention of changing her way of life just because everything else had changed.
She washed the bluefish thoroughly before laying it out on the counter. When she had to deal with a really big fish, first she’d cut it up into pieces in the bathtub, roll it in newspaper so as not to make a mess, and then carry it to the kitchen before she set about boning it. This time she wouldn’t have to go to so much trouble. She used the sharp side of the mid-sized knife to scrape off the fish’s scales. The crisp crunchy sound of the fins as she cut through them always gave her goose bumps on the back of her neck (according to her father, these very scissors were responsible for slicing off four fingers of a careless apprentice). She removed its gills. She made a shallow cut into its belly with the thin knife and plunged her hand in to remove its intestines. The gooey mass that clung to her fingers no longer made her sick to her stomach. With two swift swings of the meat cleaver she separated the head and the tail. She suddenly got the feeling that the fish was stirring beneath her hand, struggling to escape; but she just took a deep breath and proceeded with her task. Using her pinky and ring finger, which were still clean, she turned on the faucet and cleaned the blood clots off the fish. With the razor-sharp edge of the small knife she sliced the fish open along the length of its spine, from where its head had just been moments before, all the way down to its now absent tail. She used a large knife to pry into the fish horizontally and in a series of rapid movements separated out the bones, gathering them together in a pile on the side. Throwing out the bones of the fish would be a sin; she’d boil them for soup in the evening.
Once she’d washed and thoroughly dried them off, she applied a thin coat of olive oil to the steel of her knives, meat cleaver, and scissors before wrapping each one up in a piece of cloth and placing them in their respective drawers.
Timur Bey was still on his feet, holding the wedding ring out to Cemile Abla.
“Please sit down, Timur Bey,” she said.
“Please don’t say no,” said Timur Bey.
“I can never say no, I just can’t.”
The man’s face suddenly lit up. “So that means you say yes. I haven’t misunderstood, right? You accept?”
“If only you had chosen someone worthy of your grandmother’s wedding ring. It would have been better for both of us, really.”
“I’m sure my grandmother would have gotten along with you wonderfully, if she were still alive,” said Timur Bey. He then plopped himself into the armchair, as if he’d only just realized he was standing up. Reaching for his tea, he seemed perplexed by the ring in his hand, not knowing where he should put it. But, thank goodness, he did not stand up again; instead he reached out, extending the ring to Cemile Abla from the armchair.
“I know from the films on TV how it’s supposed to be done nowadays, but … such things really don’t suit me. I apologize. The truth is, I was planning to get down on my knees to propose, but now that I’m here I just …”
Cemile Abla stared ahead. It would all be so easy, if only she knew a way to say it without hurting the man. But at the moment, she couldn’t think of anything at all.
“Please, I beg you, don’t turn me down, don’t do this to me,” he said. “I swear on my honor that I will do everything in my power to make you happy. Who knows, maybe you’ll grow to like me once you get to know me better.”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that you are a very good, kind person, Timur Bey.”
“Besides, the important thing is to have a life partner to share your loneliness with, isn’t that right?”
Cemile Abla shook her head faintly, as if to say, I suppose so. The more the man talked, the more uneasy she became, and the greater her desire to open the windows and take a long, deep breath. She was horrified at the ring so stubbornly forced upon her, dangling there beneath her nose. As if completely unaware of how odd he was acting, Timur Bey remained still as a statue with his arm in the air, the faintly trembling ring held between his thumb and forefinger. Cemile Abla panicked at the thought that his arm might grow frozen in that position, remain airborne like that forever. She couldn’t stand it any longer, and she quickly grabbed the ring, thus rescuing the man from his perilous position.
Unable to come up with a better idea, she politely placed the wedding ring on the edge of the table.
“We should celebrate,” the man said.
“But you haven’t drunk your tea,” Cemile Abla quickly objected. “It must be ice cold by now.”
The man downed the tea in a single gulp and excitedly began making plans. “Let’s go out for a nice dinner, if you’d like. Look, we’re in luck, there’s a full moon out tonight. We have to celebrate, and we have to do it right. We can’t go just anywhere. Let’s go to your favorite restaurant …”
She had to wait a few more minutes before the medicine began to take effect. But Cemile Abla was tired of talking. “Have you ever thought about what happens to us after we’re dead, Timur Bey?” she finally asked, desperately wanting to change the subject.
Though thrown off guard by the question, Timur Bey did his best to respond, as courtesy demands. “Unfortunately, I’m not really able to perform the duties of our religion as well as I should. But still—”
“I think it’s going to be wonderful. We’ll float in an endless sky like white balloons. Now and then we’ll come together and form great big, even more beautiful clouds, then we’ll split up into small pieces again and glide off in different directions. We’ll wander in circles around a soothing light, and nothing will have a beginning or an end.”
Timur Bey struggled to keep his eyes open, fighting the dead weight of his eyelids. He tried to spring to his feet, but failed. When he asked in a barely audible voice where the bathroom was, Cemile Abla got worried. If the man locked himself in the bathroom, she would have a nasty situation on her hands. She would have to break down the door. But Timur Bey was already on his feet, staggering toward the dining room door.
“I just need to wash my face,” he mumbled. “It’s just because I’m so happy, I guess …”
As soon as he reached the hallway, he collapsed to the floor. Cemile Abla, who was just a few paces behind him, took a deep breath of relief. How nice that Timur Bey had already made it halfway to the bathtub all by himself.
Two hours later, as she once again wrapped her knives, scissors, and meat cleaver up in their cloths and returned them to their drawers, three large, black trash bags stood in front of the kitchen door.
The mother of the first of the two stubborn groom candidates had somehow gotten Cemile Abla’s telephone number and called less than a week after her son went missing. Her voice undulated with concern; she found the situation humiliating, that she had to talk with Cemile Abla under these conditions, when they hadn’t even met, but she had no other choice. “Well, I tell you, I’ve been really worried myself, ma’am,” said Cemile Abla. “I made all these preparations. I thought to myself that a man like your son, a man from such a good family, would at least call and let me know that he couldn’t make it. But unfortunately, I haven’t heard from him at all. And I had to give all those pastries and cakes to the neighbors’ kids.”
That night, she thought that she’d be able to carry the bags, which stood lined up in front of the kitchen door, by herself; she might not be able to carry them all at once, but certainly she was strong enough to take them out one by one. But her knees were so sore that she gave up after dragging the first bag down the hill. “There must be an easier way to do this,” she mumbled, when the solution struck her—Captain Hasan. She headed down the shore and found him sitting on a stool just on the other side of the pier, puffing on a cigarette as he gazed upon the lights of distant ships. Just as she had guessed he would, Captain Hasan got up from his seat without asking a single questi
on, without waiting for any explanation, in fact, without even the slightest glint of curiosity in his eyes. He ground his cigarette beneath his foot and followed Cemile Abla over to the bottom of the hill. First they carried the bag she had brought down to the captain’s boat, then they went to her home and grabbed the other two bags. Even Captain Hasan had run short of breath; using the sleeve of his shirt, he inconspicuously wiped away the beads of sweat that had gathered on his brow from all the climbing.
“Don’t you worry, Cemile Abla,” he said with a grave expression once they had made their final descent. “I’ll drop these straight into the current at the mouth of the Bosphorus. Nobody will know.”
When they ran into one another around noon three days later, they didn’t mention it; Captain Hasan just shook his head as if to say, Mission accomplished. And though she could hardly conceal her curiousity, Cemile Abla never asked: Had he simply dropped the bags into the strait, or had he untied them and dumped out the contents?
Thankfully, nobody called to ask about the second potential groom. And this time around Cemile Abla was more experienced; she didn’t even attempt to carry down the three large, black bags she’d set in front of the house. She went straight down to the shore and found Captain Hasan. She didn’t need to say a word; she gave him a certain look, and he immediately understood that she needed his help once again. Captain Hasan seemed to handle the bags with more ease this time; in only fifteen minutes he had taken all three down and loaded them onto the boat without shedding a single drop of sweat. “I should set off before sunrise,” he said. “I’ll take care of these and then come back and pretend I forgot something and pick up that lazy-boned boy.” The car-fanatic apprentice had just started work earlier that week.
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