by Elif Shafak
Nice plan! Once in Istanbul, Lady Peacock/Siramark suggested, you can send reports to the cafe every day.
Wow, you will be our war reporter, enthused Anti-Khavurma, but there followed an even longer pause as no one joined in the joke.
Armanoush leaned back in her chair. Deep in the stillness of the night she could hear her father's unruffled breathing and her grandmother tossing in her bed. She felt her body slipping sideways, as if part of her craved sitting in this chair all night long to savor what insomnia was like, while part of her wanted to go to bed and fall into a deep slumber. She munched the last bit of her apple, feeling a rush of adrenaline about her dangerous decision.
Armanoush turned off the table lamp, leaving a grainy light radiating from the computer. Just when she was about to exit Cafe Constantinopolis, however, a line appeared on the screen.
Wherever your inner journey might take you, please take care of yourself dear Madame My-Exiled-Soul, and don't let the Turks treat you badly.
It was Baron Baghdassarian.
SEVEN
Wheat
It had been more than two hours since she had woken up, but Asya Kazanci was still lying in bed under a goose-feather quilt, listening to the myriad sounds only Istanbul is capable of producing while her mind meticulously composed a Personal Manifesto of Nihilism.
Article One: If you cannot find a reason to love the life you are living, do not pretend to love the life you are living.
She gave this statement some thought and decided she liked it well enough to make it the opening line of her manifesto. As she proceeded into the second article, outside on the street somebody slammed on his brakes. In next to no time the driver was heard swearing and shouting at the top of his voice at some pedestrian who had materialized on the road, crossing an intersection diagonally and also on a red light. The driver yelled and yelled until his voice dwindled amid the humming of the city.
Article Two: The overwhelming majority of people never think and those who think never become the overwhelming majority. Choose your side.Article Three: If you cannot choose, then just exist; be a mushroom or a plant.
"I cannot believe you are stilll in the same position that I found you in half an hour ago! What the hell are you doing in bed, lazy girl?"
That was Auntie Banu, having ducked her head into the room without feeling the need to knock on the door first. She was wearing an eye-catching head scarf this morning of a hue so dazzlingly red that from a distance it made her head look like a huge, ripe tomato. "We have finished a whole samovar of tea while waiting for you, our Lady Queen. Come on, rise and shine! Can't you smell the grilled sucuk? Aren't you hungry?" She slammed the door shut before waiting for an answer.
Asya muttered under her breath as she pulled the quilt up to her nose and turned to the other side.
Article Four: If you have no interest in their answers, then do not ask questions.
There amid the typical bustle of a weekend breakfast, she could hear the water dropping from the tiny faucet of the samovar, the seven eggs feverishly boiling in a stockpot, the slices of sucuk sizzling inside the grill pan, and somebody continually flipping through the TV channels, skipping from cartoons to pop music videos and from there, to local and international news. Without needing to sneak a peek, Asya knew that it was Grandma Gulsum who was in charge of the samovar; just like she could tell it was Auntie Banu who grilled the sucuk, her unparalleled appetite having returned now that the forty days of Sufi penitence was over and she had successfully declared herself a clairvoyant. Asya also knew that it was Auntie Feride who flipped through the channels, unable to decide on one, having enough room in the vast land of schizophrenic paranoia to absorb them all, cartoons and pop music and news at the same time, just like she yearned for success in multiple tasks in life and ended up accomplishing none.
Article Five: If you have no reason or ability to accomplish anything, then just practice the art of becoming.
Article Six: If you have no reason or ability to practice the art of becoming, then just be.
"Asya!!!" The door banged open and Auntie Zeliha rammed in, her green eyes glittering like two round pieces of jade. "Do we have to keep sending envoys to your bed to make you join us?"
Article Seven: If you have no reason or ability to be, then just endure.
"Asya!!! "
"What?!!!" Asya's head popped up from under the bedcovers in a curly, raven ball of fury. Jumping to her feet she kicked the pair of lavender slippers beside the bed, missing one of them but managing to catapult the other directly on top of the dresser where it hit the mirror and from there parachuted to the floor. She then pulled up her loose-around-the-waist pajamas in a funny sort of way, which, if truth be told, did not quite support the dramatic effect she wanted to generate.
"For heaven's sake, can't I possibly have a moment's peace on a Sunday morning?"
"Regrettably there exists no moment on earth that lasts two hours," Auntie Zeliha pointed out, after watching the distressing trajectory of the slipper. "Why are you getting on my nerves? If this is a teenage rebellion that you are going through, you're too late, miss, you should have been there at least five years ago. Remember, you are already nineteen."
"Yeah, the age you had me out of wedlock," Asya croaked, knowing she shouldn't be so brutal but doing it anyway.
Standing in the doorway, Auntie Zeliha stared at Asya with the disappointment of a visual artist who after drinking and working on a piece of art all night long sleeps with satisfaction, only to wake up later the next morning confronted with the bedlam he has created while intoxicated. Despite the dourness of the discovery, she didn't say anything for a full minute. Then her lips twisted into a morose smile as if she had just realized that the face she had been looking at was in fact her own image in the mirror, so alike and yet completely detached. Her daughter had turned out to be just like her in character, though vastly different in appearance.
As far as the personality went, it was the same skepticism, the same unruliness, the same bitterness she had displayed when she was Asya's age. Before she knew it, she had neatly passed on the role of the maverick of the Kazanci family to her daughter. Fortunately, Asya didn't look world-weary or angst-ridden yet, being too young for all of that. But the temptation to raze the edifice of her own existence was there, softly glittering in her eyes, the sweet lure of selfdestruction that only the sophisticated or the saturnine will ever suffer from.
As far as the appearance went, however, Auntie Zeliha could plainly see that Asya barely resembled her. She was not and probably would never become a beautiful woman. Not that there was anything wrong with her body or face or anything. In point of fact, when regarded independently every part of her was in good shape: the right height and weight, the right curly raven hair, the right chin… but when added together, there was something flawed in the combination. She wasn't ugly either, not at all. If anything, a mediocre prettiness, one that is good to look at but won't stick in anybody's mind. Her face was so average many who met her for the first time had the impression of having seen her before. She was uniquely ordinary. Rather than "beautiful," "cute" would be the best compliment she could get at this stage, which was perfectly okay, except that here she was painfully going through a phase of her life in which "cuteness" was the last thing she wanted to be associated with. Twenty years down the road she would come to see her body differently. Asya was one of those women who though not pretty in their teens or attractive in their youth, could nevertheless become quite good-looking in their middle age, provided they could endure until then.
Regrettably Asya was not blessed with even a wee bit of faith. She was too mordant to have confidence in the flow of time. She was a burning fire inside without the slightest faith in the righteousness of the divine order. In that respect too, she greatly resembled no one but her mother. With this kind of moral fiber and in this mood, there was no way she could be patient and faithful, waiting for the day life would turn her body to her advantage. At
this point in time, Auntie Zeliha could clearly see that the knowledge of her physical dullness, among other things, was pricking at her daughter's young heart. If only she could tell her that the beauties would only attract the worst guys. If only she could make her understand how lucky she was not to be born too beautiful; that in fact both men and women would be more benevolent to her, and that her life would be better off, yes, much better off without the exquisiteness she now so craved.
Still without a word Auntie Zeliha walked toward the dresser, fetched the slipper, and placed the now united pair in front of Asya's naked feet. She stood up before her mutinous daughter, who instantly lifted her chin and straightened her back in the posture of a proud prisoner of war who had surrendered arms but certainly not his dignity.
"Let's go!" Auntie Zeliha commanded. Mutely, mother and daughter convoyed toward the living room. The folding table was long set for breakfast. Despite her grump iness Asya couldn't help noticing that when the table was festooned like this, it fit perfectly, almost picturesquely, with the huge, firebrick rug underneath, glowing in its intricate floral patterns within a handsome coral border. Just like the rug, the table above looked ornamented. There were black olives, red pepper-stuffed green olives, white cheese, braided cheese, goat cheese, boiled eggs, honeycombs, buffalo cream, homemade apricot marmalade, homemade raspberry jam, and olive-oil-soaked minted tomatoes in china bowls. The delectable smell of newly baked borek wafted from the kitchen: white cheese, spinach, butter, and parsley melting into one another amid thin layers of phyllo pastry.
Now ninety-six years old, Petite-Ma was sitting at the far end of the table, holding a teacup even thinner than herself. With an engrossed and somewhat befuddled look on her face, she was watching the canary twittering in the cage by the balcony door, as if she had only now noticed the bird. Perhaps she had. Having entered the fifth stage of Alzheimer's, she had started to muddle up the most familiar faces and facts of her life.
Last week, for instance, toward the end of the afternoon prayer, as soon as she had bent down and put her forehead on her little rug for the stage of sajda, she had forgotten what to do next. The words of the prayer she had to utter had all of a sudden fastened together into an elongated chain of letters and walked away in tandem, like a black, hairy caterpillar with too many feet to count. After a while, the caterpillar had stopped, turned around, and waved at Petite-Ma from a distance, as if surrounded by glass walls, so clearly visible yet unreachable. Lost and confused, Petite-Ma had just sat there facing the Qibla, glued on her rug with a prayer scarf on her head and the string of amber prayer beads in her hand, motionless and soundless, until someone noticed the situation and lifted her up.
"What was the rest of it?" Petite-Ma had asked in panic when they made her lie on the sofa and put soft cushions under her head. "In the sajda you must say Subhana rabbiyal-ala. You must say it at least thrice. I did. I said it three times. Subhana rabbiyal-ala, Subhana rabbiyal-ala, Subhana rabbiyal-ala," she twirped the words repeatedly, as if in a frenzy. "And then what? What is next?"
As luck would have it, it was Auntie Zeliha who happened to be by her side when Petite-Ma raised this question. Having no practice in namaz, or in any religious duty for that matter, she had absolutely no idea what her grandmother might be talking about. But she wanted to help, to soothe the old woman's anguish in any way she could. Thus she fetched the Holy Qur'an, and skimmed through the pages until she came across a resemblance of solace in some verse: "Look what it says. Whenn the call is sounded for prayer on Fridays, hasten to the remembrance of God… but when the prayer is ended, disperse abroad in the land and seek of God's grace and remember God, that you may be successful" (62:9-10).
"What do you mean?" Petite-Ma blinked her eyes, now more lost than ever.
"I mean, now that the prayer has ended in one way or another, you can stop thinking about it. That's what it says here, right? Come on Petite-Ma, disperse abroad in the land… and have supper with us."
It had worked. Petite-Ma had stopped worrying about the forgotten line and had dined with them peacefully. Nonetheless, incidences like this had lately started to occur with an alarming frequency. Often subdued and withdrawn, there were times in which she forgot the simplest things, including where she was, which day of the week it was, or who these strangers were with whom she sat at the same table. And yet there were also times it was hard to believe she was ill, as her mind seemed as clear as newly polished Venetian glass. This morning it was hard to tell. Too early to tell.
"Good morning, Petite-Ma!" Asya exclaimed as she shuffled her lavender feet toward the table, having finally washed her face and brushed her teeth. She leaned over the old woman and gave her a sloppy kiss on both cheeks.
Ever since she was a little girl, of all the women in her family, Petite-Ma retained a most special place in Asya's heart. She loved her dearly. Unlike some others in the family, Petite-Ma had always been capable of loving without suffocating. Shewould never nag or nitpick or sting. Her protectiveness was not possessive. From time to time she secretly put grains of wheat sanctified with prayers into Asya's pockets to save her from the evil eye. Other than crusading against the evil eye, laughing was the thing she did best and mostthat is, until the day her illness escalated. Back in the past, she and Asya used to laugh together a lot: Petite-Ma, a lengthy stream of mellifluous chuckles; Asya, a sudden spurt of rich, resonant tones. Nowadays, though deeply worried about her great-grandmother's well-being, Asya was also respectful of the autonomous realm of amnesia that she drifted into, being constantly denied autonomy herself. And the more the old woman digressed from them, the closer she felt to her.
"Good morning my pretty great-granddaughter," Petite-Ma replied, impressing everyone with the clarity of her memory.
Sitting there with a remote control in her hand, Auntie Feride chirped without looking at her. "At last, the grumpy princess is awake." She sounded jovial despite the tinge of harangue in her voice. Just this morning she had dyed her hair, turning it to a light blond, almost ashen. By now Asya knew too well that a radical change in hairstyle was a sign of a radical change in mood. She inspected Auntie Feride for traces of insanity. Other than that she seemed to be absorbed in the TV, watching with delight a terribly untalented pop singer spinning around in a dance too ridiculous to be real, Asya couldn't find any.
"You have to get ready, you know, our guest is arriving today," Auntie Banu said as she entered the living room with the tray of borek fresh out of the oven, visibly pleased to have her daily carbohydrates. "We need to get the house ready before she arrives."
Trying to push Sultan the Fifth away from the dripping little faucet with her feet, Asya poured herself tea from the steaming samovar and asked dully: "Why are you all so excited about this American girl?" She took a sip of the tea, only to make a face and search for sugar. One, two… she filled up the tiny glass with four cubes of sugar.
"What do you mean `why are you all excited'? She is a guest! She is coming all the way from the other side of the globe." Auntie Feride stretched her arm forward in the Nazi salute to indicate where and how far the other side of the globe was. The thought of the globe brought an agitated timbre to her voice, as the map of global atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns flashed in her mind's eye. The last time Auntie Feride had seen this map on paper, she was in high school. This nobody knew, but she had learned the map by heart down to its tiniest detail, and today it remained engraved in her memory as vividly as the day she had first scrutinized it.
"Most importantly, she is a visitor sent to us by your uncle," broke in Grandma Gulsum, who still tenaciously retained her reputation of having been Ivan the Terrible in another life.
"My uncle? Which uncle? The one I have never seen to this day?" Asya tasted her tea. It was still bitter. She threw in another cube of sugar. "Hello, wake up everyone! The man you are talking about has not visited us even once ever since he stepped on American soil. The only thing we have received from him to prove he is still a
live are patchy postcards of Arizona landscapes," Asya said, with a venomous look. "Cactus under the sun, cactus at twilight, cactus with purple flowers, cactus with red birds…. The guy doesn't even care enough to change his postcard style."
"He also sends his wife's pictures," Auntie Feride added to be fair.
"I couldn't care less about those pictures. Plump blond wife smiling in front of their adobe house, where by the way we have never been invited; plump blond wife smiling in the Grand Canyon; plump blond wife smiling, wearing a huge Mexican sombrero; plump blond wife smiling with a dead coyote on the porch; plump blond wife smiling, cooking pancakes in the kitchen…. Aren't you sick of him sending us every month the poses of this complete stranger? Why is she smiling at us, anyway? We have not even met the woman, for Allah's sake!" Asya gulped her tea, ignoring the fact that it was still scalding hot.
"Journeys are not safe. The roads are full of perils. Airplanes are hijacked, cars crash in accidents even trains tumble. Eight people died in a car accident yesterday on the Aegean Coast," Auntie Feride noted. Unable to make eye contact with anyone, her eyeballs drew nervous circles around the table until they landed on a black olive resting on her plate.
Every time Auntie Feride conveyed ghastly news from the third page of the Turkish tabloids there followed a prickly silence. This time it was no different. In the ensuing silence Grandma Gulsum grimaced, disturbed to hear her only son being disparaged like this; Auntie Banu tugged on the ends oilier head scarf; Auntie Cevriye tried to remember what kind of an animal "coyote" was, but since twenty-four years in the profession of teaching had made her terrific with answers and equally bad with questions, she didn't dare ask anyone; Petite-Ma stopped nibbling the slice of sucuk on her plate; and Auntie Feride tried to think of some other accidents she'd read about, but instead of more macabre news, she recalled the bright blue sombrero that Mustafa's American wife was wearing in one of the pictures-if only she could find anything close to that in Istanbul, she sure would like to wear it day and night. In the meantime, no one noticed that Auntie Zeliha's face looked woeful all of a sudden.
