She mixed the coffee carefully, gently. Coffee was like love, they said, the more patient you were with it, the better it would taste. But Jamila didn’t know much about that. She had been in love once, and it had tasted sour and dark. Having scalded her tongue, she never spoke of it any more.
As she kept her eyes on the rising foam, she pricked her ears to sounds near and beyond. The valley was alive with spirits. There were creatures here no bigger than grains of rice, imperceptible to the naked eye but potent and perilous nevertheless. Birds tapped on the windows, insects bounced off the water in the buckets as if skittering across the surface of a lake. Everything had a language, she believed. The thunderstorm, the morning dew, the ants crawling in her sugar bowl . . . Sometimes she thought she understood what they said.
She loved nothing more than she loved being a midwife. It was her mission, her one fortune. So it was that in the fog, or scorching sun, or thirty inches of snow, any time during day or night, she was on call, waiting for the knock on her door. This nobody knew, but in her heart of hearts she was married already. Jamila was married to her destiny.
*
Outside the night wind rattled against the windowpanes. Jamila took the coffee off the flames and poured some into a small earthenware cup with a chipped handle. She drank it in slow sips. The fire was a bit like her life, smouldering within, not letting anyone come too close, precious moments burning into embers, like dying dreams.
Far away a bird cried out – an owl, which the locals called the mother of ruins. It hooted again, this time more boldly. Jamila sat there with her eyes clamped shut, her thoughts wavering. Despite the hardships, she remembered her childhood as a happy one. At times one of the twins would pretend to be the Mummy and the other the infant. Though older by three minutes, Pembe would always be the baby while Jamila would be the mother, trying to constrain, control and comfort her. She would rock her little one, singing lullabies, telling stories. Looking back on those games, Jamila was surprised to see how serious they had been.
She recalled how once her father, Berzo, took them to a town where they discovered a Wish Fountain. Women who longed to have babies, mothers-in-law who wanted to put a spell on their daughters-in-law, and virgins who yearned for well-to-do husbands came here, tossing coins into the water. When everyone had left, Pembe rolled up her hems, climbed into the fountain and collected the coins. Then they both ran, as fast as they could, shrieking with excitement, to the closest shop, where they bought boiled sweets and sticks of rock.
Much as Jamila enjoyed the adventure, she felt guilty afterwards. They were thieves. Worse. Stealing people’s wishes was far more despicable than stealing their wallets.
‘Don’t be sentimental,’ Pembe said, when Jamila revealed her worries. ‘They had already let go of those coins and we pocketed them, that’s all.’
‘Yes, but there were prayers attached to them. If somebody had stolen your secret wish, you would be upset, no? I mean, I would.’
Pembe grinned. ‘So what is your secret wish?’
Jamila faltered, feeling cornered. True, she wanted to get married some day – a wedding dress and a buttercream cake like those they made in the city would be wonderful – but it wasn’t that important. She would love to have children, but was that because she really yearned for them, or because everyone told her she should? It would be nice to own a farmhouse and cultivate the land, but it was a fancy rather than a passion. As she thought harder, Jamila was glad that she was only a thief and not a visitor at the Wish Fountain. If she had been given a coin to make a wish, she might not have come up with one.
At her hesitation Pembe scoffed, her eyes aglow. ‘I’m going to be a sailor and travel the world. Every week I’ll wake up in a new harbour.’
Jamila had never felt more alone. She understood that as identical as they were in all respects, there was one vital difference: ambition. Pembe wanted to see the world beyond the River Euphrates. She had the nerve to pursue her heart, and not pay attention to what others thought about her. For a sinking moment it dawned on Jamila that she and her twin were bound to spend their lives apart.
Their father said identical twins were as blessed as they were damned. They were blessed because they would always have someone to count on. Yet they were also damned, because should one of them suffer despondency, they would be destined to suffer together and, therefore, twice as much. If that were the case, Jamila wondered, what was likely to cause them more pain – her sister’s passions or her own apparent lack of them?
Memories
London, December 1977
As he took a handful of oatmeal biscuits off the conveyor belt and placed them inside the next tin box, Adem Toprak had a revelation: he could not remember his mother’s face any more. He stopped for a moment, gooseflesh sweeping up and down his body – a pause that caused him to miss the next cluster of biscuits. Bilal, standing several feet down the assembly line, noticed the mistake and quietly covered it up. Had Adem realized what had happened, he would have given his friend a grateful nod, but in that moment he was still trying to recall what his mother used to look like.
There was a woman in the back of his mind, distant and hazy, as if she were standing in a fine mist. She was tall and slim, her face like marble, her pale eyes calm, concerned. A wedge of sunlight from a latticed window fell on the back of her head, leaving half her face in shadow. Her hair was coppery-brown, the colour of autumn leaves. But as the light dimmed, it changed to a shade so dark it appeared ink-black. Her lips were full and round. Perhaps not; Adem could not be sure. Perhaps she had thin lips that turned down at the corners. The woman seemed to change every second. Hers was a face sculpted out of melting wax.
Or perhaps he was confusing the memory of the woman who had borne him with the image of his wife. The long, wavy, chestnut hair that he now saw belonged to Pembe, not to his mother, Aisha. Had his wife become such an inseparable part of his existence that she eclipsed all his memories – even those from a time before they had met? He shifted his weight from one foot to another and closed his eyes.
Another recollection came. He and his mother were in an emerald-green field that overlooked a dam. He must have been eight. His mother had let down her hair, which Istanbul’s notorious poyraz* kept blowing about her face. Ahead of them, the sky was a generous blue, flakes of gold, pewter and silver skittering across the faraway hills. Of the dam’s numerous gates only a few were open, and the lake level was low. The boy felt dizzy as he watched the waters churning beneath them. Any other day his mother would have warned him not to get so close to the edge, but oddly not that day.
‘Sheitan waits on the ledges to pull down whoever gets too close.’
That’s why they fell all the time – toddlers who leaned over balcony railings, housewives who stepped on windowsills to clean the windows, or chimney sweepers who clomped about near the eaves. Sheitan would clutch their ankles with his claws and yank them down into the emptiness below. Only cats survived because they had nine lives and could afford to die eight times.
Hand in hand, they had walked down the hill, until they reached the huge walls that sloped all the way down one side of the dam. Aisha sighed at the top of the gully, her lips moving. She seemed to have forgotten that the Evil One loomed close. Or perhaps not, because, once he concentrated on what she was saying, the boy realized she was praying – to ward off misfortune, no doubt. He was relieved, but only momentarily. What if the Devil were hiding somewhere behind the bushes, ready to push them into the void? With a sudden impulse, he pulled his hand from his mother’s and glanced around until he was certain there was no one else there. When he turned his head again, she wasn’t by his side.
Bit by bit, second by second, he watched her fall.
*
Adem opened his eyes to find Bilal staring at him with something akin to alarm on his face.
‘What’s going on, man?’ Bilal asked over the c
latter of the machines. ‘You’ve missed more than a dozen batches.’
‘Nothing.’ Adem put his right hand to his heart and patted. ‘I’m fine.’
Bilal’s smile was slow but genuine. Nodding, he went back to his work, as did Adem. During the rest of the afternoon he managed to tackle every single biscuit. But those who knew him well could sense something was niggling him. Outside his control, beyond his power, an aching unease was crawling in the depths of his soul, sinister as a storm cloud.
He knew what it was: the fear of a cornered animal. He felt hounded, ground down, as if injected with a poison that didn’t kill but slowed the prey. Wherever he turned he could see his predators’ shadows. There was nowhere to escape – unless he left England for good. But he could not abscond, with his children and wife relying on him. And if he wanted to take his family with him, he would have to find money. A lot. He was stuck. The Chinese were aware of this too. That’s why they didn’t even bother to check on him every day. They knew they could find him whenever they wanted to – whenever he skipped a payment. But there was another reason why Adem couldn’t go anywhere: Roxana.
*
Six weeks ago, Adem had woken one morning to a sensation of exhilaration and elevation so intense it was like soaring in a dream. The portents were there. The signs had never betrayed him before. His palms were itchy, his heart was beating faster than usual, his left eye twitching ever so slightly. Nothing bothersome. Just a faint tic that came and went, like a coded message from the skies. An ordinary day in other respects, but the feeling stayed with him. All afternoon everyone was polite to him and he was polite to everyone. It was a fine, sunny day, and the sky’s reflection in the Thames was vivid and full of promise.
After sunset he went to the gambling den. One day soon, not long from now, he would stop doing this. He would break the habit, chop it off his body, as if he were pruning a sick branch from a healthy tree. Just as it was impossible for the tree to regrow the branch, he would never have the urge again. But not now. He wasn’t ready to give it up quite yet. For today it’s all right, he assured himself. Today the signs are favourable.
It was the basement of a double-fronted terraced house in Bethnal Green, resplendent with age. Inside it was a different world, though. There were five rooms: in each of them men played snooker or gathered around roulette, blackjack or poker tables. The air was thick with smoke. Those with more money or less fear were in the room at the back. From behind the tightly shut door one could hear the murmurs, the occasional gasps and grunts, and the rattle of the roulette wheel.
It was a place for men. The few women who minced around were already spoken for and therefore unapproachable. There were unwritten rules here that everyone obeyed. Indians, Pakistanis, Indonesians, Bangladeshis, Caribbeans, Iranians, Turks, Greeks, Italians . . . Everybody spoke English but swore, conspired and prayed in his mother tongue. The Lair, they called it. Run by a taciturn Chinese family who had lived in Vietnam for generations and been forced to leave after the war. Adem always felt uneasy next to them. The Chinese were not protective of each other like the Italians, nor were they temperamental like the Irish. There was always an unknown quality to their demeanour. A bit like the weather, they were prone to changing on a whim.
That evening Adem played blackjack and a few dice games, and then moved to the roulette wheel. He placed his first bet on black. It was an auspicious start. Next he did a combination bet. He won again, but the amount was not much. He switched to red and won thrice in a row, each time leaving his winnings from the previous bet on the current one. It was one of those magical moments when he could feel the roulette wheel. Just like him, the wheel lacked a solid memory. You could place the same bet over and over, and your chances of winning would still be the same. Roulette didn’t observe any recognized patterns. So he played without memory, concentrating on every new bet as if it were his first and his last.
The men in the room gave him a thumbs-up, patted him on the shoulder and muttered words of encouragement. It was a remarkable feeling to be respected by strangers. To be admired and envied. He played another round, still triumphant. Now the crowd around the table had thickened. Fifteen minutes later he was still watching the ball spin around the wheel, still winning. The dealer asked for a break.
In need of fresh air Adem stepped out into the street. There was a tall, hulking Moroccan he knew from the factory, sitting by himself on the pavement.
‘You’re a lucky man,’ remarked the Moroccan.
‘Kismet. Not every day is like this.’
‘Maybe Allah is testing you.’ The man paused, giving him a cursory glance. ‘You know what they say. He who wants to ride a fast horse could break his back, but the horse has to gallop.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘I don’t know but I like the sound of it.’
They laughed, their voices carrying in the night air.
‘Here’s a good one,’ said Adem. ‘One can flee to the end of the world but one cannot run away from his behind.’
‘Uh-hum.’ The Moroccan was about to raise his glass when he noticed his companion’s empty hands.
‘I don’t drink,’ Adem said by way of explanation.
This elicited a chuckle from the other man. ‘My, oh my. Look at you! You’re hooked on gambling but when it comes to booze you turn into a pious Muslim.’
Adem’s face closed down like a trap. He was not an addict. He could stop playing whenever he wanted. As for his reasons for not drinking, it was something he rarely talked about, especially with strangers. But tonight he made an exception. He said flatly, ‘My father was a heavy drinker.’
No sooner had he returned to the basement than the lights went off. Another power-cut. The third this week. These days London was grey in the mornings with rainclouds, black in the evenings with shutdowns. That candle shop in Hackney must be raking it in, Adem thought. There was good money in wholesaling candles, a business that had become as vital as selling bread and milk.
Adem strained his eyes through the half-lit corridor, until he reached the room at the back. There were three Chinese at the table, sulking by a paraffin lamp – men of few words and impenetrable expressions. Adem knew it was time for him to leave. He had to be satisfied with what he had earned. He grabbed his jacket, tipped the dealer, and was about to walk out the door but then stopped.
Later on, whenever he recalled this moment, which he would do fairly often, he would think of the emergency handles on trains. He had never tried pulling one, but he knew if someone did, the train would come to a sudden halt. That night he had stopped as if there were such a handle attached to his back and someone had tugged and tugged on it.
A young woman had entered the room, like an apparition from the shadows. In the faint lamplight her sandy hair had an uncanny glow, curling below her ears, small and delicate. Leather miniskirt, white silk halter top, stiletto daggers on her feet. Every inch of her heart-shaped face sent out the message she was not pleased to be there, she’d rather be somewhere far away. He watched her sit next to one of the Chinese – a bald, portly man who acted as if he were the boss, and perhaps he was – and whisper in his ear. The man smiled a half-smile and caressed her thigh. Something tore inside Adem.
‘So, you are still here. You want to play another round, my friend?’
This man had asked the question without raising his head or looking at anyone in particular. And yet Adem knew, as did all the people in the room, that the question was directed at him. He could feel the gaze of each person, but it was her eyes that pierced him – a pair of blue sapphires. He had never seen eyes that big, bright and blue. If his wife had met this woman, she would have feared the evil eye. For Pembe believed that if someone with such eyes stared at you, even for a moment, you had to run back home and burn salt on the stove.
Adem’s face was aflame. He saw in that precise moment that he was about to commit
the worst mistake in gambling, if not in life: to let yourself be provoked. But understanding this was one thing, accepting it quite another. With a tilt of his head, he answered, ‘Yes, I’ll play.’
He pulled it off again, though it was different this time. The energy around him had changed. He and the roulette wheel were two separate entities now, no longer in sync. Yet he didn’t budge. He remained planted in his seat, watching the goddess watch the ball spin.
The lights came on. He took this as a good sign and continued to bet. He gained again and then again. The stakes were high. It was dangerous. It was insane. The Chinese tried to look unperturbed but their nervousness was beginning to show. Among the crowd Adem caught the eyes of the Moroccan, his brow furrowed in anguish. Shaking his head, the man mouthed, ‘Enough, brother!’
But Adem couldn’t quit. She was staring at him from the other end of the table, her lips like cherries, full and inviting, and he felt the possibility, a chance in a thousand but a chance nevertheless, of winning her heart if he kept on winning at roulette. Seconds later he heard someone call her and that’s how he found out her name: Roxana.
Straight-up bet. He placed all his chips on the number fourteen. The ball spun counter to the wheel, like the two tides in his life, family and freedom, pulling him in opposite directions. A chorus of sighs rose from the onlookers – ripples of water reaching the shores. Now the ball made a jolt before finally landing in a slot. The wheel moved through another full turn. Her face lit up with amazement and appreciation, and something that he likened to admiration. He didn’t need to look to know that he had won.
That was when one of the Chinese muttered under his breath, but in a loud-enough voice, ‘Don’t you have a family waitin’, my friend? They must be worried for you. It’s getting late.’