“How old is she?”
“Thirteen,” my aunt replied.
I was thirteen years old the summer that Amy died.
Now that they knew what was wrong, my aunt and her friend put on “Back to Black” and sat there drinking their wine and smoking cigarettes. The windows were open. The sheer curtains slowly billowed in and out with the evening breeze. At that moment, there in my aunt’s place, I was happy and felt at peace. As I sat there on the sofa, I listened in on their conversation, but occasionally I drifted off to sleep. My aunt was telling a funny little love story about the developer who had built the place. At one point she brought out an old photograph. I was dying to lean over and take a look at it myself.
“Which one is he?”
“This one.”
“He looks just like Kadir İnanır!”
Their laughter filled the small living room, seeping into every crevice and corner, just like the smoke of their cigarettes.
“So you sacrificed a sheep before laying the foundation?”
“Well, my mother had made a vow, you see . . .”
“How old were you at the time?”
I heard my aunt exhale a puff of smoke. “Seventeen.”
“Was it your first time?”
“More or less.”
“How did it happen?”
“It was the developer’s first time.”
“And for you?”
“This isn’t about me! I’m talking about the apartment buildings on this street.”
I wanted to turn around, pry open my eyes, and watch those two young women as they sat there across from each other, laughing and chatting, their thighs shifting under them as they crossed and recrossed their long legs. Every time they took a sip of wine, I could hear it. But then I decided it was better to imagine what they were talking about, conjuring it up in my mind’s eye, as they leaned back on the threadbare mustard-yellow sofa. When she paused for a second, I could sense that my aunt was peering at me to see if I was really asleep or not. The world stopped, time stopped, and not even a VPN could get around that frozen moment.
Her friend asked, “Is she asleep?”
The poor woman would end up getting shot at the Syrian border. It would happen on the pretext that she had ignored a warning to “stop” as she was reporting about people crossing the border to the other side. What a wretched thing, not knowing how you’re going to die.
My aunt pursed her lips—I even heard that. I think those were the days when I started being able to see things I couldn’t see and hear things I couldn’t hear.
“Is what you’re going to tell me so private?”
“No, not at all!”
They opened another bottle of wine. The cork released its stubborn, passionate grip on the mouth of the bottle with a satisfying pop. Years later, when I saw my aunt twirling a bottle of wine in her hand, I would remember that night when she opened bottle after bottle of wine for her friend without a second thought. It stuck in my mind because my aunt said, “Wine is so expensive now—it costs a small fortune! It took me hours to decide whether or not to buy a bottle.” Because she was unemployed. Because she couldn’t find work. Because she had no way to make a living. She couldn’t work as a journalist—they wouldn’t let her.
But back then, she had a job. That wasn’t long ago. Just four years, to be precise, and yet so much has changed. How can life change so quickly? Or rather, how can it go to shit so fast?
Wait, let me get back to the point. My aunt was telling a love story:
“So he built our place. They agreed that my mom would get three apartments in return for the plot of land. The developer had just taken over the business from his father, who was starting to run an even bigger operation. They were from a town on the Black Sea coast.”
Occupational disinformation, digression . . . My aunt always starts off with the past, by delving into the background. Because you can’t live today without the past. Especially childhood and youth—they are like the sky above us, always there.
She went on:
“He had this sweet, crooked smile. I think that’s what hooked me first. And he had an amazing car. I saw it for the first time parked in front of our old wood house. My mom pulled out a chair for him and he sat down, placed his hands on his knees, and bowed his head. He was wearing a well-cut summer suit and his hair was immaculate. You know, the classic look. He smelled nice, not like strong aftershave or cheap cologne. Something softer. He asked for a glass of water, so I brought him one. He looked me up and down, and I melted on the spot.”
“How old was he?”
“Around twenty-seven.”
“Was he single?”
“Of course he was. His family married him off in a hurry when they found out that he and I were spending time together.”
“And that’s how you parted ways.”
“That’s exactly how we parted ways. But who cares—everyone splits up sooner or later. Who’s ever heard of love ending happily?”
“Sure, so let’s say that there’s no such thing as happy love—the kids’ll hear it and post it on their Facebook pages.”
“Right. ‘As my aunt says . . .’”
Laughter and more laughter . . . Such a fine means of shaking off gloomy memories. My aunt laughed and laughed some more, and then she broke down in tears. This time it was her friend who asked, “Is something wrong?” emphasizing each syllable like swinging the knocker of a door.
I could hear my aunt sobbing. By that point I may have forgotten to pretend to be asleep, or at the very least not bothered to put on a show of breathing gently like someone in the depths of slumber. In any case, my aunt was in no condition to be checking to see if I was asleep or not.
“Were you madly in love with him?”
My aunt nodded sadly. I could now clearly see without opening my eyes. She was nodding, trying to hold back her tears.
She’d been deeply in love with him.
And she’d been worse off than if she’d died from love.
After that night, I understood when I heard my grandmother yelling at my aunt.
“If only that love of yours had done us some good! You gave yourself away to that guy, so why didn’t you at least get him to throw an apartment with a view into the deal?”
“Is that the kind of thing you do in a car on the Bosporus? Okay, so you did it. Of your own will. That’s what you wanted. But, you stupid girl, you should’ve convinced him to give you an apartment with a view!”
My other grandma and my mother’s sister used to have conversations like that as well. Talking about the past is like chewing gum. Or maybe it would be more apt to say that it’s like chewing the cud.
My mother would defend my father’s sister, complaining, “You still haven’t had your fill of gossiping about our in-laws after all these years . . .”
In the end, my mother solved the problem by threatening her sister when she caught her alone once:
“Now look here, she saved herself by becoming a journalist. What have you done with yourself?”
“What’s wrong with what I’ve become?”
“You’ve had your hands in the pants of just about every guy in your department. Traditional handicrafts, ha!”
“Watch your mouth!”
“At least my sister-in-law has stuck with one guy the whole time. But you? If you let our mother egg you on to say one more bad thing about that woman, I swear I’ll—”
“Are you threatening me?”
“Yes. The whole school’s talking about you, saying that you’re unbeatable in the art of handicrafts.”
My mother punctuated that last sentence with a gesture I later understood to mean a hand job. Her sister’s jaw dropped.
“How dare you! And for your information, your mother-in-law is quite the slut herself.”
“You’re the one people call a slut.”
My mother and my aunt—her sister, I mean—would get into spats like that. But quietly, so I wouldn’t hear. I w
as around ten years old at the time.
“Don’t talk like that in front of her.”
My aunt decided to drop out of university, and dropping her habit as a serial dater as well, she got married to a guy from the neighborhood. He in turn dropped his ambitions in the field of engineering so he could work at his father’s appliance shop in Tophane. His political aspirations, which began with membership in the youth branch of a party, were undeterred by the fact that he never managed to become a member of parliament.
I know that I’ve been talking about everyone except for myself. But that’s the only way we can exist—by talking about others, by seeing ourselves in their darkest moments and being afraid. We are secreted away not so much in the stories about the things we like, but the things we dislike. And that is precisely why we dislike them, because we know that, by shifting our position ever so slightly, we could be the protagonist of such stories.
So my father’s sister had fallen head over heels in love with that developer with the crooked smile who wore pristine suits and stepped out of his Mercedes with a swagger. But a Mercedes wasn’t enough for him—he wanted a BMW. His father said, “Well, do some business and you’ll get one!” That’s why our handsome developer was driving around in his father’s old Mercedes. But my aunt didn’t pay any attention to that. As they say, love is blind.
“He had such a wonderful laugh,” my aunt told her friend that night, the night that Amy died. “I’ve never met another man with such a wonderful laugh.”
Personally, I would have asked more questions about him, but my aunt’s friend asked, “So, you never saw him again?” That’s a journalist for you—always so technical.
My aunt shook her head sadly. As I lay curled up on that mustard-yellow sofa, I watched everything unfold as if I was watching a movie. In my mind’s eye, I could see that excited young woman in love and the old wooden house, which I had seen in photographs. I could see it all: how she dashed down the stairs when she heard his Mercedes turn onto the street at the top of the hill; how she stepped out the door nonchalantly as if she was just going for a walk and strode past the Mercedes with a swish of her skirt, only to lock eyes with the developer in the rearview mirror as he pretended to be checking on the progress of the construction of the new buildings; how the construction workers looked at her in profound quietnes—yes, I intentionally left off the final s because I want the quietness to be even more quiet, but let’s get back to the story—and the developer cocked an eyebrow when he saw their glances and how they quickly looked away; how she reached the bottom of the hill and turned in the direction of Tophane, looking back once in a while; how he caught up with her in Fındıklı and honked the Mercedes’s horn; how she leapt into the car with a laugh; how the lovers gazed into each other’s eyes but didn’t kiss out of fear that someone they knew would see them; and how they set off down the road together.
That’s how I described it to the girls.
We stopped hanging out at the Star Beerhall after school. Because we didn’t have a car, we walked everywhere, our uniform skirts rolled all the way up to our asses, cigarettes in hand. Hoping to be more like them, I’d started smoking as well. We tried to be as rude as we could be. When we were crossing the street in Şişhane, we bumped into a woman. She snapped, “You call yourself students of Dame de Sion?! What a disgrace!”
“Disgrace? You and your mother—that’s the disgrace!”
Derin blew smoke in the woman’s face.
“What’s the world coming to? Girls from my high school acting like this . . . Shocking, simply shocking! It’s enough to give you a heart attack.”
But even that wasn’t enough.
So, why had it happened?
That dour, doughy-faced woman had pushed a young boy who tried to sell her a packet of tissues. Not just pushed, but shoved—so hard that the poor kid fell down and his packets of tissues flew into the street. Clutching his arm in pain, he got to his feet. Just then a car went by, nearly hitting him, and he started gathering up the packets in a panic. We helped him. So yes, we bickered with that hag for the sake of getting revenge on her for how she treated that kid.
Still, why were we so rude, so vulgar?
Who were we trying to fool by acting like that, while we spoke French fluently and were even learning Latin? We were even fooling ourselves. It was as if we’d murdered the real Dame de Sion students and pulled their uniforms onto our corpses, like freakish attire slipped over the life and culture of Istanbul.
Laughing, we made our way down to Unkapanı Bridge. That was the first time I told them the story about my aunt’s love affair, and I even remember flicking my cigarette butt into the water as I talked.
The night that Amy died still hadn’t come to an end. But it was ending, as my aunt pulled a blanket over me and turned the music down. Her friend had just left. There was still some time before she’d be shot and killed while reporting on the border. Syria hadn’t been dragged into chaos yet, and as people contentedly went about their lives, war was the last thing on their minds. Sadly, life is like that: shaped by things that are the furthest from our minds, things that we don’t imagine could ever happen. I think that Amy found peace. If she hadn’t died, life would’ve taught her what she needed to do to go on living. But she’s gone. And I’m still here because I don’t want to go.
3
WHAT’S GOING ON?
Finally I took off my backpack, which involved a rather frightening balancing act, and then I settled comfortably into the hollow at the top of the tree. As I leaned against a stout branch, I wondered how I would go on staying there. Sure, I had imagined how I’d handle the matter of pissing and all that business, but then what? Then again, perhaps imagining was the flip side of reality.
I was like a child who had wept and wept, becoming cleansed on the inside and rejuvenated in the process. Carefully, I opened the zipper of my backpack, making sure I didn’t drop it. Since I didn’t have my phone, I could only guess about the time, but I don’t think that more than an hour had passed. And while I knew it was September, I didn’t know what day it was. If the world was filled with emoticons—and I wish it was—I’d put one here; that way, we could understand each other more easily and with much more sincerity.
In order for me to come to the conclusion that it was September 14, my mind had to make certain leaps like a nightingale hopping from branch to branch, all the while fearing the fact of my own existence. On September 11, I’d visited Pembe’s grave. I’d planned on paying a visit to Derin’s on the next day, but it didn’t happen, I was too exhausted to get out of bed. I called her mother—or maybe she called me, I’m not sure—and she said to me, “I go every Friday, as that’s the day of prayers. Come with me if you’d like.” Friday was the eighteenth of the month. As of that morning of the call, two days had passed.
If she were still alive, Amy would turn thirty-one today.
Shit!
So there I was at the top of a tree on Amy Winehouse’s birthday.
Ugh!
This is very strange. But I’d better not get hung up on such details. Obsessing is dangerous; it’ll give you cancer in the end. The best approach is to forget everything right away, because if you start thinking about things too much, you’ll get screwed twice over, and then what? Get well soon! What else can you say?
The contents of my backpack proved to be anything but useful. If I were to get thirsty, for example, what would I do? And if I fell asleep, would I roll out of my perch? I decided to lash myself to the tree with the turnbuckles and straps I found in my backpack. So my hobby of slacklining turned out to be useful. But where I really needed such acrobatics was in real life, down on the ground.
I wonder if the dead can see us. I mean, when the people we love depart from this world, do they come back sometimes, watching us as we go through this adventure we call life?
At last I could close my eyes, free from the anxiety that had been haunting me. Before, I’d been thinking about what time it might
be. Midnight, perhaps. Maybe later. Then I told myself to stop thinking about such matters and cut myself off from the world. But just as I was saying that to myself, I heard a voice: “Hey, you. Yes, you, up in that tree . . .”
4
FOLLOW
I haven’t said much about my mother, who as I may have said was a dietician. She’d go from door to door in search of work. Telling you more about her would be the proper course of action, but I know if I should do that now, you might get upset, as you’re probably wondering about that person who called out to me in the darkness of night. It’s true that I see others my age as being younger than me. That’s because I’ve been through so much more than them.
Yes, you’re curious about that person. Admit it. Go on being curious.
It wasn’t for nothing that I said this was a story of love and freedom. A story of two youths stricken by illness. That person was looking up at me from below. In order for a story to be a story, two people have to be involved in the plot.
I felt like Gulliver in the land of midgets. Allow me to apologize for repeating myself, but I don’t want you to overlook an important point—I myself have a habit of overlooking things—and that point is this: I climbed a tree that was at the farthest end of the park. There was a high wall that separated the palace grounds from the park, and the tree that I climbed was next to that wall. In the past, the gardens of Topkapı Palace extended all the way to the sea, with pavilions and mansions scattered here and there. One of those was later turned into a boutique hotel. I think I told you that I heard the sound of the hotel’s air conditioner. The person who called out to me—a young man—was standing in the garden of the hotel, which was glimmering in the night like a lantern. Later I’d say to him, “You’ve got some sharp eyes!”
And he’d say, “At first, I thought you were a monkey of some kind. Or a really big bird.”
But at that moment, when I wasn’t swinging between the past and the future like a pendulum, I wanted to shout at him, “Leave me alone!”
The Girl in the Tree Page 4
