by Elif Shafak
But if you say, ‘Bummer, when did that happen? You just never know with women, do you’, or something along those lines, then you’d share your mate’s pain. He’d still be a loser but privately.
She used to bring Trippy custard tarts, which the screws would rarely allow him to have. She kept baking all the same. A slim woman with copper hair, chalky skin, freckles all over her arms and an expression of immense patience. An illusion, of course. Nobody is that patient.
Today she came to tell him in person. You’ve got to hand it to her. She could have sent a note or no note at all, like some wives do. But she came and explained, in her own way, and in her gruff smoker’s voice delivered words that tasted like ash. She told him she had met someone, and how smashing he was with the children, who needed a male role model around, especially their son, now that he had turned five. She told him that the kids would come to visit Trippy, because he was their father and nothing could change that. Then she kissed him for the last time, left a custard tart and was gone. Bam!
I often wonder what it would feel like to have a wife. A woman who knows your weaknesses and your failures better than you do, all your dead spaces, and has the map of your soul drawn into her palm, and loves you all the same. Someone who plants in your heart a lifetime of things so pleasant yet so minute you don’t realize how much you have come to depend on them until you lose them all. God knows how much I regret not knowing that.
But I don’t regret that my son, Tom, calls another man dad. I would have made an awful role model anyway, a lamentable father. And a lamentable father is like a fishbone lodged in your throat. You’re not exactly sure how you got stuck with it, but when you do get rid of it, something remains, a permanent scar no one can see from the outside but you always sense is there. Nobody needs that kind of rubbish.
I remember once asking my mother why she had married my father. It was the closest I could get to inquiring whether she loved him or not.
She turned and looked me in the face. The light from the window caught the flecks in her green eyes. Amber and gold. I saw how pretty she was. You don’t normally notice your mother’s beauty. But that day I saw it plain and clear. It made me uneasy. A strange fear gripped me at that moment, and I didn’t like it.
‘It was a different world back then,’ she said. ‘Nothing similar to your life here in London. You young people are so lucky.’
It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear. No handkerchiefs embroidered with each other’s initials. No palpitations of sweet desire. There were no amorous promises whispered in the dark in my parents’ past. Love was such a remote possibility that they didn’t even pretend. My sister knew it. She was aware the three of us were here only because of duty, surrender and indifference, not because of love. That is why I was disobedient, she was rebellious, and Yunus was perceptive.
Esma and I used to talk all the time.
‘You two chatter like a downpour,’ Mum would say. ‘Rain outside the house, rain inside!’
I must have told Esma things I had not shared with anyone else – not even with the boys or with Katie. I confided in her because she always had something interesting to say. She was good with words. But also because, deep in my heart, I knew she was the only one in our family who was enough of an insider to get the picture and enough of an outsider to fall out of the picture. I liked that – until the autumn of 1978. Something snapped in me then and could never be fixed again.
*
Trippy spends the rest of the afternoon dead silent. His face is the colour of days-old piss. He put on a brave show in the visitors’ room. He told his wife that he understood, that he really did, and wished her the best in life. Nema problema! He thanked her for being so supportive and generous all these years. Then he signalled to the guard that the visit was over, walked her to the door and kissed her goodbye, joking that he would miss her custard tarts.
Now he’s sitting with his back to the wall, his jaws clenched and eyes steeled. The reality has sunk in, and he thinks she’s a cold-hearted bitch who stabbed him in the back. Human nature being what it is, we hate most those we love most.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ Trippy says, moving his hand to and fro, as if pulling out an imaginary clump of weeds.
‘It’ll pass.’
‘Bugger it. The hell it’ll pass.’
I try a different approach. ‘You always tell me there are tons of miserable people out there. Everyone’s got shit.’
Trippy pays me no attention. ‘I’m sure she has a bun in the oven,’ he says. ‘From that git.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I fucking know,’ he shouts.
He springs to his feet and paces the floor. His eyes land on the Houdini poster. For a moment, I get the impression he’s going to pull it down and rip it apart. But he doesn’t. Instead, a crestfallen look washes over his face. Then he lurches forward and, with all his might, punches the wall.
The thud is loud, deep, sickening. Suddenly I remember a moment in time. My father and I. We were on the street, quarrelling. The flare in his nostrils, the glare in his eyes – or was I the angry one? Yes, I flipped my lid and rammed into the wall. I struck my head again and again. People came running, the club’s bodyguard was mad as hell.
Trippy’s next thump brings me to my senses. I try to intervene but he pushes me so hard I land on my back. Until I grab his arms and wind him down, he manages to hit the wall several more times.
‘You keep doing that and you’ll get all the screws here. You hear me?’
His knuckles are bleeding, and his breath comes out in short gasps. I hold his head between my elbows, and wait for the moment to pass.
‘You don’t need this,’ I say.
‘Like you know.’
‘I know.’
‘I need to take it out on something,’ he protests.
‘We should get you a punch bag, then.’
Trippy goes thin-lipped. I know what he’s thinking. A bag is no good. Lifeless, dull, muted. He wants to feel the flesh under his knuckles, hear the bones crack. If he were a free man tonight, he would go to a bar, drink like a fish and get into a nice, heated fight. Being a weedy bloke, they would rough him up. But that would give him something to joke about the next day. Something to focus on.
Still holding him, I tilt back my head and look him in the eyes. ‘Hit me.’
‘What?’ he asks, his voice breaking up.
‘Shhh, keep it down . . . ’ I say. ‘I’m a trained boxer. You forget?’
I watch the confusion drain out of his face. ‘You’re nuts,’ he says and laughs, but we both know that means yes.
A kind of frenzy takes hold of me. I strip off my T-shirt and toss it away. I take a deep breath and let it go. I work on my breath for a while, never holding it too long. Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale . . .
Shoulders down, stomach out, I clench my hands and tighten up my muscles. You have to have space. Between you and the enemy, the fist and the internal organs, the individual and the society, the past and the present, the memories and the heart . . . in everything that you do or that happens to you in this life, you need space. The space will protect you. The trick in taking a hard punch is to know how to create extra space.
All the time Trippy is watching me with a raised eyebrow as he always does when confronted with something he doesn’t understand.
‘So what are you waiting for, scumbag?’ I prompt him.
The first blow comes a little unsteadily, sideways. It must have hurt him more than it hurt me. I let out a long, low whistle.
‘What?’ Trippy asks, annoyed.
‘Nothing,’ I say, allowing a smirk to cross my face.
Trippy hates people smirking at him. He just can’t help it. It makes his blood boil. In fact, no one in this joint is particularly fond of smirks.
My abdomen is hard from years of working o
ut but the force of the next hit catches me off guard. I feel a sharp jab under my ribcage, which comes and goes. Trippy stops and stares at me, surprised by his own strength.
Another memory pops into my mind. I remember the day my mother took me to a hammam in Istanbul. I must have been six or so. The steam, the heat, the echoes, naked female bodies with their legs apart, a granny and her sagging tits. Terrified, I hurried out. Mum caught me, shook me hard. ‘Where are you going?’
‘I don’t like it here.’
‘Don’t be silly. I don’t call you sultan for nothing,’ she said. ‘Behave like a sultan or I’ll call you a clown instead.’
Space. I need to have more space from her memory. It drives me insane.
I smirk again. ‘Come on, clown! I’m fillin’ my boots here!’
Trippy’s next punches are stronger, concentrated. He’s not a stocky man, but he’s no wimp. He reminds me of a hunting dog – thin, lean, without an ounce of fat on its body, but stubborn, unrelenting.
We go on like this for a good while. At one point Trippy gets carried away and sends a blow that lands on my chin, but other than that he works on the same spot. Somewhere behind that muscle there is my appendix, sleeping, curled up like a worm – an unnecessary organ. Although no good for anything, it still managed to kill Houdini.
In a few minutes the iron doors at the end of the corridor fall open, the lights are turned on. Somebody in a cell near by sniggers as if enjoying the commotion, and three screws come running. They storm in, thinking we’ve been fighting. Trippy puts his arm around me to prove to them that that is not the case. We are good friends. He gives a proud smirk. That does it. The smirk. As I said, nobody around here likes that.
Before we know it, there is shouting, swearing, threatening and shoving, a theatre of authority, a spectacle of power, and too much light, sharp and piercing, projected on us. Trippy and I cower like bugs caught in the kitchen at night.
‘Don’t you get it? We weren’t fighting,’ Trippy screams his head off.
‘What were you doing, then?’ says one of them. ‘Dancing?’
Trippy looks at me, momentarily confused, as if asking, ‘Yeah, what were we doing? What on earth got into us?’
*
Next morning Officer Andrew McLaughlin comes by, his vanity following him like a hungry dog. He has got used to the job but not to me. He’s read the reports of the night before and says we must have been on drugs, for no man in his right mind would start a fight just like that. On the pretext of searching for our stash, he orders his men to leave no stone unturned – the books, the blankets, photos of Trippy’s children, my notebook, even the insides of our bed mats.
Trippy gnaws at the insides of his mouth to suppress a smile. We’re both thinking the same thing. We are miraculously clean. If this search had been a few days ago, they would have found a few goodies. But that’s all gone now. We have nothing to worry about.
Just when they seem to be leaving, Officer McLaughlin stops. He has something in his hand, and he asks, ‘What is this?’
It’s a postcard with a photo of a carousel in an amusement park. Wooden horses, lights in the background. There is no one in the image, only a red balloon floating away and the suggestion of an unseen force lurking about, perhaps the wind.
‘I can’t hear you!’ McLaughlin says.
Neither Trippy nor I answer. Officer McLaughlin starts to read aloud, changing his voice to a mocking imitation of a woman’s.
‘Dear brother . . . or shall I not call you that any more? What can I call you, then? Askander? Iskender? Alex? Sultan? Murderer? Do you remember the carousel Mum took us to when we first arrived in London? Wasn’t it something? Yunus wasn’t born yet and God knows where Dad was. Just you, me and Mum.
I’ll never forgive you for what you’ve done. You might rot in prison or burn in hell, but neither the Queen’s nor God’s punishment will ever wash off this sin in my eyes. In the courtroom, I’ll not support you. Whatever Uncle Tariq says, I’ll testify against you. As of today I am mourning two deaths: that of a mother, but also of a brother–
Esma
‘Your sis is cool,’ says Officer McLaughlin, putting his hand on his heart as if hurt. ‘It’s nice to see one member of your clan knows right from wrong.’
He doesn’t look at anyone when he says this but as soon as he’s done talking his eyes lock on mine. I reach out to take the postcard from him, but he swings it up in the air, playfully. ‘Tut, tut.’ He purses his mouth. ‘First you gotta answer me: why were you making Trippy hit you?’
At my silence, Officer McLaughlin shrugs and examines his fingernails. ‘All right. I’ll leave you two for now,’ he says finally. ‘I’ll take this lovely card with me, Alex. When you feel like telling the truth, you come and see me, and I’ll give it back.’
I don’t need to hold the postcard in my hand to see what it says. He doesn’t know that I’ve memorized every single word on it. Every ‘not’, every comma, every ‘Mum’.
As soon as Officer McLaughlin has gone, I sit back. My throat closes and my eyes water. Try as I might to stay still, stay sane, I’m losing it again. I slap myself. It doesn’t work. I slap again. It’s going to be a bad day, I can tell.
Iskender Toprak
Racism and Rice Pudding
London, December 1977
Since the day she was born as the seventh daughter of a woman who longed for a son, Pembe had come to see this world as a hotbed of favouritism and inequalities, some of which she accepted as unchangeable, the ways of humans. But never in her life had she been subjected to open hostility for being who she was. Until that day in early December 1977 – the day she met him.
There was only one client at the Crystal Scissors – the retired librarian who seemed in no hurry to be anywhere – and Pembe asked the owner, Rita, for a break to do some shopping. Yunus had been craving his favourite dessert – rice pudding with orange blossom – and she intended to surprise him that evening.
‘Rita, is okay if I go for one hour?’
Rita was not only her boss but also a dear friend. A tall black woman with a huge bosom, chipped teeth, the biggest Afro in town and a smile as sunny as the summer skies, Rita always used to talk about the place where she had come from. Jamaica. To Pembe’s ears, the name felt nutty and crunchy, like a roasted cashew.
‘Go, darling,’ said Rita. ‘I’ll take care of the librarian. I bet she wants to tell me all about her holiday in Italy.’
Pembe left the salon feeling light and heavy at the same time. Light, because she had a full hour all for herself. Heavy, because things had not been going well recently. Esma was always sulking, a book in her hand, going through another phase. Iskender was worse. He came home late every evening, and she was worried that he had befriended the wrong kind of people; and her husband . . . well, she didn’t want to know what exactly he had got himself into this time, disappearing for weeks on end, bringing home smells from another woman, when he did appear.
Adem was a sad man. He often talked about his childhood, mentioning the same forlorn memories again and again, unable to let go. It was like one of those snacks that you knew were harmful but you couldn’t stop munching on, even when full. Inadvertently, almost without realizing it, he would start to talk about the past. As for Pembe, trusting that time, or her prayers, would put things in their place, she carried on without an ounce of protest, reassuring herself that it was all for the best – or would some day turn out to be. To her the future was a land of promises. She had not been there yet, but she trusted it to be bright and beautiful. It was a place of infinite potential, a mosaic of shifting tiles, now in a seamless order, now in mild disarray, for ever re-creating itself.
To him the past was a shrine. Reliable, solid, unchanging and, above all, enduring. It provided insight into the beginning of everything; it gave him a sense of centre, coherence and continuity. He visited i
t devotedly and repeatedly, less out of need than out of a sense of duty – as if submitting to a higher will. Whereas Adem was religious about the past, Pembe was faithful about the future.
Unlike the morning’s soft sun, the early-afternoon weather had turned nippy and windy. Pembe was wearing the buttoned-up grey coat that made her look older, and also like a wartime girl who had to keep careful track of every scant penny, which, in fact, was what she was doing. She did a quick shop at Tesco, buying the ingredients she needed. Just as she was passing by the bakery around the corner, she spotted chocolate eclairs in the window. Not large, thick and filled with whipped cream but small and glossy, the way she liked them.
Though she rarely gave in to temptation, she made a beeline for the eclairs and entered the shop, the bells behind the door jingling merrily. Inside was the baker – a corpulent woman with legs covered with varicose veins and eyebrows so thin as to be almost invisible – chatting fervently with an acquaintance. Meanwhile her assistant was serving the customers. A skinny man, no older than twenty, with beady, blue eyes, inflamed cheeks that pointed to overly sensitive skin and hair cropped so short it was hard to tell its colour. His forehead was covered with spots, and his knuckles and arms had several tattoos, including a large swastika.
As there was another customer – a well-dressed elderly woman – ahead of her, Pembe had to wait. A minute later the bells jingled again, and a middle-aged man walked in, but she barely glanced at him.
The old lady was quite picky and had a tendency to change her mind every few seconds. She wanted plain scones, three, well, maybe four, but how about some Eccles cakes, no, on second thoughts, she would like the fruit scones, please. The strawberry tarts looked worth considering too, but were they fresh and the pastry crisp, she wondered, because, if so, she might like to get the tarts instead of the scones, which were a bit too everyday. And on it went.
Each time she changed her mind the assistant put the item back on to the tray where it belonged and took the next cake in demand, showed it to her and waited for her approval. When she finally made up her mind, settling on a half-dozen iced buns, they began discussing how to wrap them – was it better to put them in a paper bag, which was light and easy, but could get torn on the way, or to place them in a box, which was safer, of course, except harder to carry. Raising his head from behind the glass case, the assistant gave the waiting customers the once-over, focusing on Pembe. She didn’t notice the bitterness in the young man’s stare, but the shopper behind her did.
