by Loren Edizel
THE NEIGHBOUR FROM ACROSS who’s always watching my house, Nalân Hanım, asked me today if Nuray is my sister. She knows I’m an only child; we have lived here since I was a teenager. I told her she is my cousin. When we go out to meet the “cousins” in the Impala, all made up and in tight clothes, I swear those sheer lace curtains quiver all around the neighbourhood. The lady next door to the right who used to ask my father to clip the honeysuckle bush that fell over her wall on account of its migrainous fragrance, has already asked me about the people in the car, with pursed lips and a disapproving gaze. I told her that they were our cousins. We are part of a very large extended family.
“Hmmph,” she sneered, “how come they were never coming around before? When your sainted father died, none of these people came to the funeral.”
I told her this branch of the family had fallout with my dad, a long time ago, and their father had also passed away, so we had turned a new page. I don’t think she believes me. She asked if they were infidels. I told her no, they were all Ramadan-fasting Moslems. “What has the world come to?” she shook her head in apparent disbelief as she walked away, her left hand tapping her thigh gently. I never thought I could lie so fluently, but there it is. I’m certain life with Nuray will give me plenty more practise.
SHE SITS, NURAY DOES, LOOKING OUT from the cumba, her arms folded under her chin, waiting for the sun to set on this cloudless late summer evening. I got her into the habit of sunset watching. “What are you scribbling all the time?” she said a few minutes ago, looking bored. When she pouts the sides of her plump mouth go down a little. She is beautiful, with her thick black mane that reminds me of the deepest hours of the night, and she’s especially lovely when she doesn’t try too hard; but she does try hard often. She puts her heart into looking campy and I don’t know why she keeps insisting men are heartbreakers and creeps, when she acts so seductive around them. “Well”, she said, “who else am I going to flirt with? Can I seduce you?” She batted her long fake eyelashes at me, “I didn’t think so,” she sighed. “So, where is the fun? Where is the thrill? You wouldn’t know sugar, would you? Because you are not twisted, you weren’t born like me, with a cunt—yes, she did say it like that, paf!—that wants to eat the world alive, that wants to take it all in and turn it into cells and blood and magic. Don’t cringe! You have the same tasty mussel. But you, dear, wear flat nuns’ shoes, plain colours, invisible clothes, and straight hair, not to mention a single thick brow. Do you even know what your breasts look or feel like? You are as far from your body as the Moon is from Earth. I may not like men, darling, but I sure do like my body!” her upper lip had a few beads of sweat on it and her cheeks were flushed. She said all this with a nonchalant shrug and winked at the end. I was flustered and pretended I had to run some errands, so I could get away, catch my breath and feel less shaken. How dare she be so vulgar with me? I thought I was angry, at first. As I walked around the neighbourhood, it occurred to me this may have been something like arousal.
So now, I’m writing about it and she is asking me what I’m scribbling, giving me a sidelong glance with her half-closed dark eyes. “Well,” I said, “I’m writing about you.” She cocked her head.
“Really?” She reached over to grab the notebook and I pulled it away just in time.
“Nuray, you touch this notebook and I will never speak to you again. It’s a promise.” I was dead serious. This is the only thing in my life that I will never share. These pages are the pit of my heart. The rest is a muted approximation, what passes for me, a skittish creature guided by fear of censure. Why is it so easy for her to use an obscene word like cunt and ruin a perfectly innocent mollusc that is a mussel so flippantly in the same breath? How will I ever eat the latter again and not think of the former? How come she can say it just like that, while I break into sweats at the mere thought and feel like a social outcast even when no one knows what I’m thinking?
LATELY, SHE HAS BEEN DOING SOME OVERTIME at work, which means I commute alone in the evenings, a situation in which I’m finding relief and comfort once again. My thoughts and daydreams remain uninterrupted. Since that odd conversation, colours seem brighter all around me: Patron’s red tie with its dark blue paisley motif, the greyish white dust on the green table lamp on my desk, the maroon varnish over the ancient cracks on the wooden floor in my living room, the stone wall on which the honeysuckle vine crawls with its yellowed flowers. These flowers look like spinsters, don’t they? They have that faded countenance; yellow and white, ageless yet old, droopy but scented. It is not that I find the colours themselves richer or more enticing; rather, they seem to have acquired a stubborn hue drawing my eye to the deeper shades where everything eventually disappears into darkness.
I have been unwell. Is Nuray’s lack of inhibition to blame, or my shaken propriety? Or is it the sudden realization that I’m already in my mid-thirties and will not become a mother? I will not wed, most certainly. My overdue pubescent fantasies about my boss, the earthquakes ripping my heart when he leans too close to me, all of that is fading to black. There is nothing ahead that was not there before. Is Nuray my saviour or my enemy? I feel tired. I feel a great injustice has taken place, on account of two words. She has removed my dreams and given me commonplace reality.
I HAVE NOT BEEN ABLE TO WRITE anything in this journal for weeks. Last week she started coming home with me again. No overtime, no cousins, no out of town visits. She chatters endlessly about clothes, about girls at work, and politics. I lean my head on the tram window, half-listening. In a way, I’m glad she is back with me. I missed her energy, I suppose. She did the same thing again, this time to a different tram conductor. “Ah, my toes, look at them, look!” she removed her sandal and showed her baby toe and bunion having acquired a deep carmine hue. “Mr. Conductor Uncle, it is such a long way to walk from the stop to my house, and there are at least a THOUSAND stairs to climb still. Would you be so kind as to let me off here?”
The old man glanced at the red-hot bunion and as he was moving his eyes back to the street, he took in her Gigantic Stuffed Breasts in White Shirt and stopped the tram. Just like that.
“You have to stop doing this, Nuray! It’s really awful.” She giggled and told me to shut up as she waved and smiled at the conductor as if he were our new best friend.
“I got exciting news for you! I don’t think I can wait until we climb these goddamn stairs all the way up.”
“You’re not putting my hair in curlers again.” I stopped walking.
“No, stupid,” she started fishing in her large purse and giving me things to hold, her wallet, her lipstick and powder case. “Here!” Two train tickets to Istanbul. She fished in her purse some more and took out another paper. A hotel in Moda. By the sea. “I asked them for a room with a view. We’re leaving next Thursday. We’ll spend Friday and Saturday there, and then we’ll take the train back on Sunday. Our first trip together!” I was about to open my mouth to tell her I had to ask my boss for the time off first. “Shh!” she frowned, “don’t talk to me about your Patron! I told him it was a surprise for your birthday. He said fine. All arranged.”
Never been to Istanbul before. In my mind Dario Moreno’s version of “Istanbul c’est Constantinople…” keeps replaying. I couldn’t help singing it out loud during my bath and even splashed around. As I was looking for clothes, I shouted from my room, “Nuray, did you ever realize that our names mean pretty much the same thing? Moonlit night, moonshine. Did you? We’re like sisters, you and me!” She pushed the door open suddenly, as if she’d been waiting there for me to speak, making me jump, underwear in hand. “Get out!” I shouted. “Out!” She shrugged, “Don’t act like you have something I don’t have. Besides, you’ve already seen me naked and…” she said as she moved closer, “we’ll share the same room. Even the same bed! They have really big beds there. Here!” She started taking off her clothes quickly and pulled my arm to stand side by side in front of the mirr
or on the wardrobe. “Here, take a good look. Essentially, everything you have, I have bigger.” She started laughing with that head-swishing neigh. Our breasts hung there, four large orbs side by side, each a different size with their soft, extended roundness sitting differently on our chests, nipples at various heights. I have more muscular legs and thicker knees and calves; hers have a wobblier look, thinning toward finer joints. She took my hand and made me turn around, so we could crane our necks and look behind us, to analyze our backs and buttocks. “You are really muscular!” she whistled, “and you practically do nothing to deserve it. I’m full of cellulite, look at those thighs! I should lay off all those gevreks and baklava. But, ah, who cares?” She was smiling as she reached for her bra and started putting everything back on again.
No one’s ever seen me naked before, except my mother when I was little, and the doctor once or twice. I was mortified. “I can’t imagine showing all this to a man.”
“Don’t worry, darling, someone must have already seen it all, from a keyhole, or a window. Unbeknownst to you.” I thought she would neigh again or cackle after she said these words, but she simply slipped on her dress and left my room.
Later in the evening, in the cumba sipping our tea, we sat silently gazing across the street, over the brick rooftops at the bay of Izmir, its thick grey aquatic mass with slivers of yellow skipping here and there trying to stay afloat on the crests of small foamless waves, all unstable and shimmering, a solitary plane tree across the street crowding the left corner of the window, its majestic immobility betrayed by the leaves’ intermittent shudders and to the right, a couple of freighters in the horizon looking static, as if simply placed there, cardboard cut-outs from a black and white postcard. A vegetable vendor was pushing his cart, shouting in his sing-song cadence the names of his remaining vegetables, his deep voice echoing up and down the hushed street in the early hours of the evening. A woman at the top of the street shouted at him hoarsely. I could see her bust leaning out from a window, a cigarette dangling from her lower lip, curlers on her head partially hidden by an orange-coloured kerchief tied at the back of her neck, still in her nightgown at dusk, motioning for him to come, her flabby arms waving furiously. She disappeared and reappeared with her basket tied to a rope, asking him for the price of his eggplants. He must have said something, I could not discern it. I could only hear her telling him he had to discount it on account of it being the end of the day. “Where are you going to find another customer to take all those eggplants” she asked with nasal gruffness. She halved the price, blowing smoke from the cigarette still dangling from her lips. The vendor was already loading the long slim eggplants into her lowered basket, after weighing them, muttering his displeasure, and spitting on the ground beside his cart. But she must have been right, or he must have been tired of pushing the heavy contraption all day. She tugged on the rope quickly, her head and the basket disappearing momentarily, and then the empty basket once again descended at the end of its rope, presumably with money. The grocer fished it out, counted it meticulously, and made a sign that all was well when she once again poked her head out of the window. I had a better view of her face this time. She had heavy cheeks that sagged from their own weight and a down-turned mouth, like Churchill’s. The grocer made his way slowly down the slope of the road to get to the stairs, where he adroitly manoeuvred his cart down one step at a time, diagonally, taking care not to move the few remaining peppers and squash until he reached the avenue and disappeared around the corner. I heard his voice, “Fresh squash and delicious green peppers,” weakening by the third announcement and then the voice of the woman with the cigarette took over, in echoes, from her apartment father away, “Aylin, get here and give me a hand! Aaylin … Ayliiin, get here, I said, and make it quick!” Who was Aylin? Nuray and I turned our heads and strained to see, but the open window remained dark. Someone somewhere turned on the radio in time for the evening play, and we listened to the wife’s shrill voice confronting her husband over some suspicion of infidelity. There were creaking doors, heavy rain, and footsteps in the following act. Ominous music hinted that the wife was going to be murdered. We sat there, unable to move, listening to a woman’s voice screaming in agony until the play was cut by a husky man’s voice announcing it was to be continued the next day.
“It was the husband who did it, I’m sure. We have to listen tomorrow.”
“No more fried eggs, please, Nuray.” I rose from my chair to make a salad. I decided we were going to eat nothing but vegetables until the trip to Istanbul, after feeling the cutting pinch of my panties’ elastic around my bloated midriff. “We have shorts to wear and so much waxing to do,” I added, the excitement of the trip waning dangerously fast as I looked at the stubble on my legs.
“Are you always like this?” She reclined in the chair and lifted the mass of hair off her nape, twisting it with her fingers. “Ready to turn every adventure into some kind of martyrdom? God almighty! What is wrong with you?”
“My underwear is pinching my guts. I’m worried I won’t fit into all those things we will have to wear in Istanbul. Okay?”
“I should have just gone alone!” She got up and stomped to the door, slamming it behind her. I heard her going down the few steps heavily and saw her light up her cigarette as she marched down the street. She blew smoke out of her nostrils and never looked back.
I wanted to run after her and say I was sorry, tell her we could eat eggs everyday, and I didn’t give a damn, just come back home, please, but I just sat there, watching her disappear around the corner. I’m not sure how long I sat in the cumba. It got dark; the streetlights came on. People got ready for bed all around the neighbourhood. Lights went out one by one. I rose from the chair and went to my room to sleep with the door slightly ajar so I would hear her entering the house. I must have fallen asleep at some point. In the morning when I awoke she was having breakfast, dressed for work and ignoring me. She took the earlier tram. I got out of the house feeling like a prisoner. Strange how the vastness of the world surrounding you, the thousands of sounds and voices, the ever-changing sights of a city can feel so narrow and stifling when you’re jilted. I suffocated and sighed all the way to work, ignored the King of Zippers when he shouted from behind the closed door of his office. “Giritli, I have news for you. Pour us some tea and come sit with me.” The King of Zippers is the love of my life. Why do I not care about his news? The thought sent me spinning down the well of melancholy that had sucked and swallowed the world’s sights and sounds earlier. My mind was now in that bare room covered with Nile-green semi-gloss paint; a tiny, small, square space with a wooden chair in the middle, surrounded by shiny walls I imagine they must have in prisons to easily wash off the blood or graffiti or other unsightly traces of previous inhabitants. A place to feel abject and forgotten. Her office is down the long hall from mine. Fifty steps, a staircase, and I’m there. If I had the courage to walk the distance and peek in, what would I see? Her head bent over the typewriter, black waves of ink descending from her scalp to cover the down-turned eyes and mouth. If she looked up and saw me there, would her anger turn into a smile? I shuddered standing at the doorway, waiting. Her clack-clack-clacking stopped abruptly. I was completely absorbed by the sight of my shoes, prepared for a storm of accusations.
“Psst!” she went, “Psst, Mehtap, don’t stand there looking foolish. Either get in or get back to your office.”
It was as easy as that. She giggled and gazed at me with that twinkle in her eyes. “Idiot!” She smiled. I burst into tears.
“Why did you walk out, huh? I was so worried something would happen to you. You’re crazy to be walking the streets at night, all alone. And your anger slices into me. Don’t ever do this again!”
“I saw how worried you were, snoring cosily in your bed!” She emitted a few neighs, twisting her head. “Next time you ruin my fun, I’m moving out. I swear.”
“I can’t help who I am. Why are you so
harsh?”
“Sit down, sugar.” She motioned to the chair with an old broken typewriter on it, moving her wrist furiously, to indicate I should remove it from there.
“The boss was calling me before I got here. I have to get back.” I hesitated before moving towards the doorway.
She shrugged, “I understand we should eat more salads, fewer eggs, shave and wax and so on and so forth. But the way you say it, it’s like the world was coming to an end unless we did these things. You assassinate the excitement right out of a moment. You know? Here we were having a lovely evening, listening to a play on someone else’s radio, dreaming about Istanbul and all was fine. Why couldn’t you just get up and make that salad without any announcements, like you’re accusing me of turning you into a fat and hairy orangutan. Just wax your damn legs and eat your grapefruits all day, why should I hear about it?”
