When the Mirror Cracks

by Jan Coffey

  We had all been working hard, starting the process of getting the company ready to sell. I fabricated a lie to my mother about some reunion in Greece of college friends, and I left.

  Ankara is a huge, sprawling city of red tile roofs and high-rise buildings, teetering on the edge of Turkey’s great central plateau. As the plane flew over the city, I spotted a huge gray fortress sitting on a peak in the center of it all, looming protectively over the urban jumble below. It was a sign. That first view of Ankara Kalesi, a symbol of power and continuity, became a source of strength for me.

  And once I was in the city, other signs spoke to me. The crispness of the air, a particular slant of light across the pavement, the sounds and smells.

  Something rose inside of me. A feeling surged and flowed through my veins and arteries more powerfully than anything I’d ever experienced growing up in Southern California. And in an instant I realized what it was. For the first time in my life, I felt I was where I belonged. I was coming home.

  The feeling was short-lived. The hospital where I was born had long since been replaced by a soaring building of blue and white, glass and chrome.

  Who I’d once been, the very place of my birth, had disappeared. It was the perfect metaphor for my life. Reality had been replaced by façade. Truth was replaced by pretense. In a subterranean office, an archival crypt where they kept the old records, they’d buried me.

  I had my passport and my birth certificate. I could prove my identity. Soon after, I started looking into my medical files.

  They were all here. A birth record under my name. Hospital follow-ups. Months of visits and repeated periods of hospitalization. I was a very sick child. The first year of my life I spent more days inside the walls of the hospital than outside. Records of tests and more tests were jammed into the folders.

  In the midst of the reports, I found a long summary in English of a diagnosis for my condition. Cystic fibrosis.

  The words leaped out at me. Cystic fibrosis. The prognosis was terminal. Respiratory and digestive failure imminent. Patient survival unlikely...

  Cystic fibrosis. Debilitating and deadly. And I had it.

  Except I don’t have it. I’ve never had it. The tests my gynecologist ran made no mention of it.

  But Elizabeth’s baby had it.

  Those were the first tears that I’d shed since arriving in Ankara. Not for myself. I cried for the child who never lived. The baby who died of cystic fibrosis. I even shed tears for my mother, thinking how tragic it must have been to be told this news. I still didn’t know who I was. Or how Elizabeth ended up with me. But there was an innocent baby who never lived, who never had the life that I’d been given.

  A day later, maybe it was two days later, I was still in a fog. I mourned like I’d never mourned before. There was a small park across from the hotel. The breeze was chilly, but I hardly noticed it. The lights of the city had come on, and I settled on a stone bench. I was feeling the jagged edges of grief scraping my mind raw.

  I’d come here to find myself. But instead, I lost another part of me. I lost a person I was somehow connected to, but never knew.

  I should have called Elizabeth then. She had lost a child and found me. Raised me. But my mind flickered back to those words I overheard so many years ago. I’d be devastated. But I’d recover. Of course, Elizabeth would recover. She’d recovered when it mattered. When she lost her own baby.

  Once again, I was an outsider. An outcast. And even more than before, I didn’t know who I was. I only knew who I was not.

  Sitting in the park, with the spring night swirling around me, I felt a numbness creeping in. Apathy spreading through my bones like the winter cold. But there was a baby growing inside of me. For her or his sake, I had to shake the dark mood. To escape, I turned on my phone and went on social media. I looked to see if I had any friends in Ankara.

  None.

  Any friends in Turkey?

  One. Apparently, we’d been friends for eleven years. Her page had no posts, and I didn’t know anything about her. I messaged her.

  How do I know you?

  Her answer came back immediately. I am you. And you are me.

  I hopped on the next flight to Istanbul.

  The first time we saw each other was after I left Ankara. I met with Tiam at a little café in Eyüp, a neighborhood in Istanbul. The sun was warm coming through the large windows, and our tea sat untouched. I longed to hear about her. She wanted to hear about me. We each wanted to know what the other knew about our childhood.

  For thirty years I slept in the real Christina’s bed. I wore her shoes. I lived her life. I called her mother my mother. All during the flight from Ankara, I feared that when we met, there would be drama and open resentment.

  I realized immediately that I was wrong. There was not even a hint of tension between us. Coming together felt more like a reunion. We weren’t two strangers. It was as if we were sisters. As if we’d known each other for our entire lives.

  After hearing Tiam’s story, I had to fight the inclination to call Elizabeth in California and shred her, scorch her with a hundred horrible but fitting words. I wanted desperately to tell her that the sick child she’d abandoned in Turkey so many years ago was sitting right in front of me. I wanted to curse her for taking me from my real mother without her consent.

  Tiam wouldn’t let me.

  She amazed me from those first moments. Bright and beautiful and self-aware. She didn’t want anything from me or from her birth mother. Her only wish was that perhaps someday an opportunity would present itself when she could face Elizabeth.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to leave Istanbul without meeting my true mother. Tiam and I took a tram to their apartment in a Kurdish enclave on the other side of the sparkling waters of the Golden Horn. She called Zari but said nothing about me, except that she was bringing home a new friend for dinner.

  20

  Zari

  Then

  In Kurdistan, a person can knock at anyone’s door, and they will be greeted with warm hospitality. It was part of Zari’s faith as well as her culture to welcome guests. The belief that Allah was All-Generous was woven into the fabric of who she was. She’d raised her daughter to be the same. And more days than not, Tiam would call to say that friends would be accompanying her back to their apartment for dinner, or to stay the night.

  Tiam was generous and pure of heart. People recognized her quality and were drawn to it. And Zari loved her all the more for it.

  To prepare a meal for two or twenty made no difference to Zari. Their grocer was down the street. Their butcher kept late hours. She’d gained so much experience feeding large numbers of people over the years that Emine teased that she should open a restaurant.

  Tiam’s call this afternoon was brief. “I’m bringing a new friend to dinner, Maman.”

  She didn’t mention a name, nor did she say anything about who this new friend was. Generally, she would offer something like, We take classes together, or She’s the cousin of so and so, or We met when I was waiting for my appointment at the doctor. At the very least, she would mention a name.

  As she started the rice, Zari sighed. She was terrible with remembering the friends’ names. She constantly mixed them up. Azra would be called Zehra, and Zehra became Nisa. Oh well, at least they were properly fed.

  Tonight, for some reason, Zari’s heart was beating faster. She felt hot and flushed. There was a jitteriness in her stomach that she couldn’t explain. Tiam had been doing well with her recent change of treatment. It had been four months since she had last been hospitalized. The feeling Zari had now was different from the anxiety that plagued her whenever Tiam’s health took a downturn.

  Trying to ignore it, she made enough food to feed a dozen. Some of Tiam’s friends were vegetarian now, so Zari always had some meatless dishes, just in case. At the last minute, she ran to the bakery and bought some fresh bread and baklava.

  As she put the purchases on the counter, she realized th
e restlessness wasn’t going away. She couldn’t understand what was happening to her. Maybe it was menopause. She was fifty-two. Her doctor told her she’d be showing the signs soon. Going into the bathroom, she stared at her flushed face in the mirror.

  She was getting older. The years had etched their marks around her lips and on her forehead. But her eyes were the same, and they grew misty now as memories of years past came back to her.

  Back in Qalat Dizah, many nights Yahya would call before coming home for dinner. She would never forget the flip in her heart as she waited for him by the door and saw him coming down the lane. She flattened her palm against her stomach.

  There had been no warning when he appeared in the crowd the day Tiam graduated from pharmacy school. The class assembled in the quad, all of them dressed in their black caps, gowns, and white sashes. Zari had been filled with such pride, and she cried as she held on to Emine and watched the child she raised stride across the stage to receive her diploma. She didn’t know what made her turn her head, but as Tiam descended the steps, Zari saw him. For a moment, their eyes met. Yahya. How it must hurt him to look on them. Always from a distance. Always from the edges of their lives.

  And then he walked away.

  Gazing into the mirror now, Zari brushed away the falling tears. She loved him. No matter who he was, or what he’d become, or what life he led. There had never been another man except for him. He would always be her husband. Her love. She’d given him her heart and had never taken it back.

  Why was it that even as she aged, the tide of her emotions ebbed and flowed as if he was her moon, her sun, her universe?

  She couldn’t have her daughter arrive at the house and see her like this. Taking a deep breath, Zari splashed cold water on her face and dried her eyes.

  Going back into the kitchen, she texted Tiam.

  Where are you, angel

  Almost home

  Tiam had her own key. Zari walked to the window overlooking the street. Her heart continued to feel unsettled, her body restless. Spring was late this year. It was too cold to open the window. Scanning the passersby from her fourth-floor vantage point, she saw her daughter and the woman she was bringing home. She could only see the tops of their heads. Her friend wore no hijab, and she was carrying a large bouquet of flowers in her arms.

  Yahya brought her flowers every Friday after Jummah.

  Zari raced to the kitchen and drank a tall glass of cold water to calm herself. Going back to the door of the apartment, she opened it and heard their footsteps on the stairs. The two were coming up, whispering in English.

  As they drew closer, Zari’s heart pounded harder and faster. The friend’s lilting tone and her soft laugh dug into her memories.

  She heard her own voice in the timbre and pitch of the words. The happy laughter of a toddler sitting on her lap. The soft skin of an infant’s round face pressed against her shoulder and neck, small fingers clutching her hair.

  My maman.

  Could it be? Her throat burned from the force of the tears struggling to break free. She was afraid she might collapse before they ever came through the door. Dreams belonged in her mind. She was imagining things.

  Zari backed into the sitting room and held onto the nearest chair.

  “We leave our shoes outside,” Tiam told her, speaking in English.

  They were on the landing.

  “Here, give me your coat.”

  “Teşekkür.” Thank you.

  “You can speak English with her. She’s very good.”

  “Teşekkür,” she said again. There was an emotional catch in her voice.

  Tiam came in first and saw Zari. Her smile was wide, her eyes bright. “Maman, I want you to meet…Why are you crying, Maman?”

  Zari’s gaze was fixed on the young woman who stood behind her daughter.

  “Hello, Mrs. Rahman. Thank you for having me in your home for dinner.”

  Zari looked past the bouquet of flowers being held out to her. She stared at the cleft in her chin, the high cheekbones, the curly hair, the lovely hazel eyes that immediately reminded her of Yahya.

  “Maman, please meet my friend Christina.”

  It was possible. It was happening. She was here.

  Zari shook her head fervently. Her prayers had been answered. “No. No. Come here, my daughter. You’ve come back to me.”

  Part VII

  …In and out, above, about, below,

  ’Tis nothing but a magic shadow-show,

  Played in a box whose candle is the Sun,

  Round which we phantom figures come and go.

  — Omar Khayyam

  21

  Christina

  As I sit in the hotel’s business center, I wonder if Kyle is sleeping. He has a gift for compartmentalizing his life that I envy. Relationship, work, and daily routines don’t interfere with each other. And when he needs sleep, he gets sleep.

  He’s not completely wrong. It’s true that I already came to Istanbul twice this year—in April and again in June. But my trips weren’t for a rendezvous with some boyfriend. Each time, I came to see my family. My real family.

  After that first trip to Ankara and Istanbul, I went to talk to Jax. He was more than my boss. He was married to Elizabeth, but he was also my close friend and mentor. I grew up without a father figure in my life, and he was the closest thing to it for me. I needed someone to confide in. He was the only one I could truly trust.

  It’s still hard to fathom that he’s really gone. I can picture him now, sitting in his cluttered office like Jabba the Hutt, his glasses perched precariously on the end of his nose, surrounded by a forest of computers and monitors and gaming apparatus. Over the past couple of months, I finally found the answer to why I’d felt like a square peg in a round hole for my entire life. For years, I’d lived as one person, but actually I was another. Jax knew I hadn’t been my usual self lately, but he’d chalked it up to the pregnancy. With his pale blue eyes fixed intently on me, he listened quietly as I told him everything.

  After my April trip, after being reunited with my birth mother, I was overwhelmed by such a chaotic tangle of love and guilt and wonder. It was unforgettable, that moment in Istanbul. We stood—Zari and Tiam and I—holding onto each other in an embrace that could not be broken for a very long time. That embrace has not been broken since.

  After learning the truth about my history, it took me days to subdue the rage coursing through me for everything these two women had been forced to endure. But if Tiam was tolerant of what Elizabeth had done to them, Zari didn’t want to talk of Elizabeth and was only interested in me. My real mother gathered me over and over again in her arms. She was so filled with love and joy. Love was—and is—a powerful force in her, and as I stood there with her arms around me, I felt its tender shoots spreading through me, all the way to my heart.

  When I left Istanbul, I consented to Tiam’s wishes. She wanted to be the one to reveal the truth to Elizabeth when the time was right.

  Jax could have arranged the meetings for the sale of Externus anywhere, but he chose Istanbul. I wasn’t supposed to be here, but I wondered if he was trying to help Tiam meet Elizabeth.

  He’s gone, but this trip is sure to provide that moment of reckoning. Elizabeth is with me. I’m still waiting for Tiam to initiate contact with her. I’ve seen her at the airport, at the hotel, at the tram station. Each time, I think this is the time when she’ll approach and speak to Elizabeth. But every time, she disappears.

  I called Tiam last night when I arrived at the airport. The voice mail I left her was a little rattled. Now, with the sun edging over the buildings to the east, I wait for her response. I don’t have the name of the driver yet, but I want to know if she has any idea who it might have been, and why he was asking about her.

  I think of Kyle upstairs. I didn’t leave him on a positive note.

  I don’t fault him for thinking I’m having an affair, even though there’s never been anyone for him to be suspicious of. I don’t
have any male friends now that Jax is gone. Still, I could have been more forthcoming about these trips. My lack of honesty with him stems from the way Elizabeth treats him and talks about him. For more times than I like to remember, she’s bluntly told me how she wishes she could be in my shoes, and she isn’t only talking about my age or my career. She’s talking about my relationship with Kyle.

  Tiam’s text finally arrives. We’ll meet in an hour by the stone benches that line the walkways on the east side of the Suleymaniye Mosque. I pack up and leave through the lobby. The day promises to be cool and clear, but it’s too far to walk. The morning commute has begun in the city, however, and I don’t want to take a cab. The last thing I want is a driver like last night.

  One of the hotel doormen suggests an alternative.

  “You can board the tram by Hagia Sophia, Miss Hall. Ride it to Eminönü. From there, the walk is uphill but manageable. Ten minutes, at most. The Suleymaniye Mosque is a very large place. You cannot miss seeing it when you leave the tram.”

  I definitely won’t miss it. I don’t tell him, but I’ve been there before. The second time I came to Istanbul, Tiam took a couple of days off from work, and we saw a great deal of the city. The beautiful Ottoman-era mosque was one of the first places we visited.

  The tram runs every ten to fifteen minutes, but I don’t have to wait long before it arrives. Standing amid a crush of commuters and tourists, I hold onto a chrome pole and think of ways to convince Tiam not to put off her meeting with Elizabeth for much longer. I don’t want her to miss this chance. But at the same time, I feel for her. I can understand her hesitation. She wishes that her disease hasn’t made her so terribly fragile and weak. Her argument with me when we spoke on the phone before I got here was that she wants to face her birth mother as a strong woman. She wants to stand in front of her and say, You were wrong to give up on me. Look at me. I’m thriving in spite of you.