It was quarter to nine in the evening when mother and daughter reached the seaside konak. Wrought-iron balconies, white marble steps, mosaic fountains, high-tech security cameras, electric gates, barbed-wire fencing. The estate resembled less a house than an island, a palatial citadel that had locked itself out of the city, if not the other way round. Every security measure had been taken to ensure that no hawkers, no burglars, no criminals and no unwelcome lifestyles crossed its threshold.
Peri kept her injured right hand close to her chest, holding the steering wheel with her left. On the way they had stopped by a chemist’s and had the pharmacist, a middle-aged man with a grizzled moustache, attend to the gash. When he inquired how this had come about, Peri had said briskly, ‘Chopping vegetables. This is what happens when you cook in a hurry.’
He had laughed. The pharmacists of Istanbul were a wise breed. They would neither let a lie go undetected nor pursue uncomfortable truths. Prostitutes with injuries caused by customers, pimps or self-mutilation; women battered by their husbands; drivers thumped by other drivers – they could all walk into chemists’ shops and blurt out their lies, safe in the knowledge that even if they were not believed, at least they would not be questioned.
Peri checked the bandage, grimacing as she saw the crimson stain that had seeped through the gauze. She would have preferred to take it off before entering the party to avoid difficult questions, but the pain, the blood and the risk of infection were enough to change her mind.
As soon as they stopped at the gate, a burly security guard in a dark suit and a cloud of aftershave appeared. While he parked the car, Peri and Deniz passed through the manicured garden with vine-covered trellises. A gentle wind ruffled the leaves of the plane trees.
‘Darling, I shouldn’t have chased that man. What was I thinking?’ said Peri, breaking the silence. With her good hand she touched her daughter, ever so lightly, as though the girl were fragile, her anger made of glass. They used to be so close; in the past they’d had their own codes. It was hard to believe now that this was the same girl who used to shake with laughter at her silly jokes and hold her hand when a Disney character shed tears. That sweet child had disappeared, leaving this stranger in her place. The transformation – for she had no other word – had caught Peri unprepared, even though she had read scores of articles on how puberty came earlier and earlier – especially for girls. She had always been determined to have a far better relationship with her daughter than the one she’d had with her mother. In the end, wasn’t that the only real aspiration to be fulfilled in life: to do a better job than our parents, so our children might be better parents than we were? But what we often discover instead is how we unwittingly repeat the same mistakes as the previous generation. Peri also knew that anger all too often masked fear. She said softly, ‘I’m sorry if I scared you.’
‘Mum, you did scare me,’ said Deniz. ‘You could have been killed!’
Her daughter was right. Back in that alley she could have lost her life to the tramp. But what Deniz did not know was that the opposite was just as true, if not more so – she could have killed the tramp.
‘I’ll never do such a thing again,’ Peri said, as they reached the stairs to the house.
‘Promise?’
‘Promise, sweetheart. Just don’t say anything to your father; it’ll make him worry.’
Deniz paused – an instant of hesitation that disappeared as quickly as it had come. She shook her head. ‘He has a right to know.’
Peri was about to say something in return but the huge oak door, carved with flowers and foliage, opened from inside. A maid in a black skirt and white chiffon blouse stood at the entrance, smiling. From behind her rose the sounds and smells of a dinner party in full swing.
‘Welcome, come on in, please.’
The maid spoke with a striking accent – probably Moldavian or Georgian or Ukrainian, one of the many foreign women who worked in Istanbul households, while back home their children were raised by relatives and friends, and their spouses waited for monthly payments to arrive.
‘Why did you bring me here?’ Deniz hissed loudly.
‘I told you, your friend’s going to be here. Come on, let’s enjoy the evening.’
No sooner had they taken a step inside than Peri saw her husband pushing through the guests towards them, his expression a mixture of apprehension and irritation. Slim-cut nut-brown jacket, crisp white shirt, blue-and-fawn tie, shoes polished to the lustre of glass – Adnan had taken care with his appearance. A self-made man, he had worked his way up from humble beginnings to accumulated wealth through property development. He often said he owed his success to no one but Allah the Almighty. Peri, much as she respected her husband’s hard work and business acumen, was unclear why the Creator would have favoured him over others. Adnan was seventeen years older than Peri, but it seemed to her that the age difference became most apparent whenever he was upset and the lines in his forehead deepened – as they did now.
‘Where have you been? I called you fifty times!’
‘I’m sorry, darling, I lost my phone,’ Peri said, in the most soothing voice she could muster. ‘Long story, let’s not talk about it now.’
‘You know why we’re late, Dad?’ Deniz said, her eyes lit up at seeing her father. ‘Because Mum was busy chasing thieves!’
‘What?’
Deniz pushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. She had her father’s nose, long and slightly bulbous, and his confidence. ‘Ask her,’ she said, before walking towards a girl her own age, who was looking bored among the older guests.
But there was no time to explain. The owner of the mansion, having interrupted his conversation with a well-known journalist, strode over to them. He was a broad-shouldered, stockily built man with a bald head and the ruddy complexion of a heavy drinker. Not a single wrinkle lined his face, every inch of which had absorbed the latest anti-ageing treatments. When he smiled his features remained stock-still, save for the merest twitch at the corners of his lips.
‘You made it!’ the businessman boomed. His blue eyes, glittering with mischief, sized her up. ‘What happened to your hand? Did someone try to kidnap you? It’s your fault. You shouldn’t be so beautiful!’
Peri smiled, even though the joke made her blanch. She hoped neither he nor anyone else would comment on the state of her dress: torn at the hem, spattered with frappuccino. Mercifully, the stains of blood were disguised as uneven brownish marks. She said, ‘We had a little accident on the way here.’
Adnan’s brow furrowed with concern. ‘An accident?’
‘Nothing important, believe me,’ Peri said, as she touched her husband’s elbow – a signal not to ask further. She turned to the businessman, amiably. ‘What a gorgeous house you have.’
‘Thank you, my dear. Unfortunately, we have enough reason to suspect we’ve been struck with the evil eye. One calamity after another. First, our pipes burst. The ground floor was flooded to our ankles. Then lightning struck, a tree fell on to our roof, can you imagine? All in the course of these past few months.’
‘You should have a nazar boncugu,’* Adnan suggested.
‘Well, we have something even better. Tonight we’ve invited a psychic!’
‘Oh, really?’ Peri inquired, not because she was interested in the subject but because she knew she was expected to say something. She had a feeling that lately public interest in mediums and fortune-tellers had rocketed. Perhaps it was no coincidence that in a country where instability was the norm, there was such a craze for prophecies and predictions – mostly expressed by women, though pertinent to both sexes. Amidst chronic political ambiguity and lack of transparency, the crystal-gazers, whether fake or genuine, served a social function by shifting uncertainty into some semblance of certainty.
‘Everyone says he’s terrific,’ the businessman said. ‘This guy doesn’t just talk to the jinn. He commands them. Whatever he orders them to do, they obey, apparently. He has jinn wives – a full harem!’ He snort
ed on the last word, but, noticing Peri was not joining in, he fixed his eyes on her. ‘What’s wrong? You look like you’ve seen an apparition yourself.’
Peri instinctively recoiled. There were times when she had wondered whether people could read her face and know she had visions, things they couldn’t see. Fortunately, the businessman had no wish to listen to anything other than his own voice. ‘I know brokers who consult this guy before buying stocks. Crazy, isn’t it? Psychics and stock markets.’ He laughed. ‘My wife’s idea. Don’t blame her. Poor thing, she lost it a bit after the crash.’
It had been all over the news. About six months ago, a dry-cargo vessel, 335 feet long and sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone, had run aground and straight into the waterfront residence. It had destroyed the seawall and the elaborate south-facing balcony, which dated back to the last century of the Ottoman Empire.
It was on this balcony that Kaiser Wilhelm II had had tea with a pasha known for the scale of his ambitions and his admiration for German culture and military prowess. That same pasha had then spread rumours that the Kaiser was a Muslim, he having had the opening lines of the Quran whispered into his ear at birth, even before he was placed on his mother’s breast: his real name was Hajji Wilhelm, lifelong friend and adamant guardian of Islam – a convenient label when the day arrived for the Ottomans to enter the war on the side of Germany.
It was also on this historic balcony that a young Turkish heir, besotted with a White Russian dancer who had escaped to Istanbul after the Bolshevik Revolution – having failed to persuade his family to accept his beloved – had put a pistol to his head and shot himself. The bullet, after travelling through his brain and smashing his skull, had exited behind his left ear and pierced the wall behind him, where it would stay undiscovered for three decades.
In its stormy history the mansion had seen heroes rise and fall, empires soar and collapse, maps expand and shrink, dreams turn into fine dust. But never before had it been rammed by a ship. The vessel’s prow had sliced through the wall, demolished a painting by Fahrelnissa Zeid and miraculously stopped just short of the Murano chandelier. Now, in memory of that day, a miniature toy ship dangled from the same chandelier, giving the hosts a chance to relate the story, again and again.
‘Oh, there you are! We thought you’d never come,’ a voice cried from behind them.
It was the businessman’s wife. She had spotted Peri as she left the kitchen, after pelting the cook with orders. She wore an emerald-green designer cocktail dress with a high collar and open back, cinched at the waist. On her finger a ring of a similar colour flashed bright, the stone as big as a swallow’s egg. Her lips were tinted bright crimson and her hair was pulled up into a bun so tight it reminded Peri of the goatskin stretched on a darbuka.*
‘The traffic …’ said Peri, as she kissed her hostess on both cheeks.
That was the one excuse that won forgiveness no matter how late you were. Once the word was uttered it rendered any other explanation redundant. Peri scanned the faces of her hosts, seeing with relief that it had worked. They looked convinced, although her husband clearly was not – but she would have to deal with him later.
‘Don’t you worry, honey; we all know what it’s like,’ said the hostess as she eyed Peri’s dress, taking in every rip and stain.
‘I didn’t have time to change,’ said Peri. True, she felt naked under the scrutiny, but she also derived a secret satisfaction – at a party full of designer bags and overpriced dresses – from shocking everyone just a tiny bit.
‘Relax, you are among friends,’ said the hostess. ‘Would you like to borrow one of my dresses?’
Peri entertained an image of how, given her record so far this evening, she would probably spill tomato sauce on the woman’s dress. She shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine; thank you for offering.’
‘Well, then, come and eat, you must be starving,’ the woman said.
‘What can I get you to drink? Red? White?’ asked the businessman.
‘So kind, but I must use the ladies’ first,’ said Peri.
She followed a maid into the depths of the mansion, all the while feeling her husband’s eyes burning a hole in her back.
Inside the bathroom, Peri locked the door, closed the toilet lid and sat down. Gulping in a lungful of air, she massaged one temple with her fingertips, overcome with exhaustion. She had neither the energy nor the will to go out and face all those people, and yet she knew in a little while she must. If only she could slip away through the toilet window.
Carefully, she unwrapped the bandage. The knife had sliced her palm from one end to the other; it wasn’t too deep a cut, no stitches had been required. Even so, at the slightest movement, it hurt like hell and started to bleed again. Now, as the wound throbbed with each beat of her heart, she could not help trembling. The gravity of what had happened was finally dawning on her. Her mouth was dry as dust. She wrapped up her hand again.
When Peri stood up to wash her face, her eyes widened with surprise. Right across from her was a massive reef aquarium, on which the sink had been set. Inside the glass tank swam dozens of exotic fish, all of them shades of yellow and red, the colours of the football team the businessman supported. Everyone knew he was a huge fan, had a private box in the team’s stadium and enjoyed being photographed with the football players on every occasion. Someday soon he intended to become the President of the club and had been manoeuvring actively behind the scenes with this goal in mind.
Peri watched the fish in their artificial universe, pristine and protected. On both sides of the sink were silver hamam bowls with repoussé motifs, in which were stacked perfectly rolled, perfectly starched hand towels. All around on the floor, candles burned with tall flickering flames. A blend of aromas caught her nose, sweet and syrupy. Underneath she detected a sharp synthetic smell of detergents – an ugly reminder of the tramp’s glue.
A strong urge to do something unexpected and bold took hold of her. She wanted to smash the aquarium to pieces, shards of glass flying every which way while the fish were sent skidding across the marble floor. Off they would go, flipping their tails, gasping for air, the thrill of escape coursing through their being; they would skate along the corridor, zigzag in and around the feet of the guests, the light from the chandelier reflecting off their scales; they would glide out of the back door, slide from one end of the terrace to the other and, just when they feared death was imminent, plunge into the deep sea, where they would find old friends and relatives that had stayed in the same waters, bored and unchanged.
The new arrivals would tell the other fish what it felt like to live in that big mansion above the sea, relinquishing the vastness of the blue in exchange for not having to worry about their next meal. Soon the fugitive fish would be swallowed up by large predators, for how could those used to the pampered habitat of a rich man’s aquarium survive in dangerous waters? All the same, they would not trade a single minute of freedom for all the years in captivity.
If only she could find a hammer … Sometimes her own mind scared her.
The Breakfast Table
Istanbul, 1990s
Umut’s imprisonment, like a torch shone into dark corners, exposed the weaknesses and failings the Nalbantoğlus had been hiding, as much from themselves as from others. Anyone who observed them would have noticed the hole Umut’s absence had opened up in the midst of their lives, but they chose to pretend it wasn’t there, that hungry hollow. It was no more than a coincidence that Mensur began to drink more heavily; a coincidence too that Selma’s cheeks turned an anaemic yellow from lack of sleep after nights of praying and lack of proper food after days of fasting.
Increasingly, Peri’s dreams became more disturbing, her screams louder. She slept with the lights on and kept an amber necklace by her bed, having read that amber drove the demons away. Nothing helped. In her dreams she saw schools that looked like jails, and wardens who bore a strange resemblance to her mother or father. She found herself covered in maggots a
nd faeces, her hair shaved to the scalp, arrested and imprisoned for a crime she did not know she had committed. From these nightmares she always woke with a galloping heart, and needed several extra seconds to rejoin the real world.
Mensur had changed. Gone was the man who would down a few with his friends in the warmth of old ballads and lively political debates. He now preferred to drink alone, silence his faithful companion. For a long while his body, strong and sound, showed no signs of deterioration – save for the half-circles under his eyes, dark crescents in a pallid sky.
Then came the inevitable. In the mornings Mensur would wake up sweating and aching, looking worn out, as though he had been breaking stones in his sleep. He was often confused, nauseous. Trying hard to hide the trembling that invaded his body, he stood distant, buried in silence, or he spoke too much, uncontrollably. The company he worked for decided to give him early retirement when it became obvious he was in no state to work. Without a daily job he spent more time in the house – a change unwelcome to his wife and younger son. Apprehensive, frazzled and easily flurried, he resembled an overstretched empire fighting on two fronts: the old Eastern frontier, the battle with his wife; and the newly opened Western one, the battle with Hakan. He was losing on both sides.
They quarrelled constantly, viciously, father and son, a jumble of male voices, hurtful accusations rising above the breakfast table, like shoals of dead fish floating to the surface after a dynamite explosion. Outwardly, it was over the pettiest issues – a comment about a tasteless shirt or the slurping of tea – yet, inside, the rift went deep.
Always, without exception, Selma stood behind her younger son. She was feistier fighting for her offspring than for herself. Fierce and vigorous, a falcon defending her chick against the enemy raptor. That made two against one. An equation that forced Peri to take sides and rush to her father’s aid, if only for the sake of balance. However, she didn’t really want to win. All she wanted was some sort of ceasefire. A temporary suspension of pain.