by Elif Shafak
"Are you spying on me?" he asked.
"What?" Zeliha guffawed, only now realizing she had made a discovery without knowing it. "You are so stupid. If you go to prostitutes, that's your problem, I couldn't care less."
Affronted, Mustafa felt a sudden urge to hit her. She had to understand that she could not mock him like that.
Zeliha squinted at him as if trying to read his thoughts. "What I wear and how I live is none of your business," she said. "Who the hell do you think you are? Father is dead and I am not gonna let you replace him like that."
Oddly, as soon as she uttered this line, she recalled having forgotten to pick up her lace dress from the dry cleaner that morning.
Make a mental note to pick it up tomorrow.
"If Father were alive you couldn't talk like that," Mustafa replied. The hazy look he had a moment ago was gone, replaced by an embittered flicker. "But just because he's gone doesn't mean we have no rules in this house. You have responsibilities toward your family, miss. You cannot bring disgrace to this family's good name.
"Oh shut up. Whatever disgrace I might bring will be nothing compared to those you have caused to this day."
Mustafa paused, looking confused. Had she found out about his gambling or was she bluffing again? He had been betting on sports games, only to screw up bigger each time. If Father were alive he would beat him, no matter his age. The russet leather belt with, the brass buckle. Could there be a rationale behind one of the belts hurting more than all the others, or was it simply his imagination concentrating on one particular belt and thereby allowing himself to believe that it wouldn't hurt as much when he chanced upon the others, feeling grateful, even lucky?
But his father was gone now and somebody needed to be reminded of who was in control.
"Now that Dad is dead," Mustafa declared, "I am in charge of this family."
"Are you?" Zeliha laughed. "You know what your problem is? Spoiled, you are too spoiled, precious phallus! Get out of my room."
As if in a dream, out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand rise up in the air to smack her on the face. Still disbelieving that he could hit her, she stared at him blankly and then managed to swing aside at the last instant.
She escaped the slap but that only enraged him. The second attempt burned her cheek. So she hit him back on the cheek, just as hard.
In a minute they were fiercely grappling on the bed like two children, except they had never grappled back when they were kids. Father had never approved of such brawls. For a few seconds Zeliha felt victorious, having hit him really hard, or so she thought. She was a tall, muscular woman and was not accustomed to feeling fragile. Like a champion in the ring, she clutched both hands in the air and saluted her invisible audience, delighted at her triumph: "I gotcha!"
It was then that he twisted her arm behind her back and got on top of her. This time everything was different. He was different. Holding her chest down with one arm, with his other hand he pulled up her skirt.
The very first thing she felt was mortification, and then more mortification. The sense of disgrace was so fervent there was no room inside her for any other feeling. She was instantly debilitated, almost frozen in a bashful kind of way, a way that revealed her upbringing, the embarrassment of being exposed in her underwear prevailing over everything else.
But then, in an instant, a surge of panic washed the humiliation away. She tried to block him with one hand while with the other she attempted to pull her skirt back down, but in next to no time he had lifted it again. She fought, he fought, she slapped him, he slapped her harder, she bit him, he punched her in the face, one single blow. She heard someone shriek "Stop!" at the top of her voice, shrill and inhuman, like an animal in a slaughterhouse. She did not recognize her own voice, just as she didn't recognize her body, as though it were alien territory, when he entered it.
It was then that Zeliha noticed the KODAK balloon in the clear sky.
She closed her eyes as if it were a childhood game, hoping that if she didn't see, she wouldn't be seen. There were only sounds now, sounds and smells. His breathing got heavier, his hands on her breast and around her neck tightened. Zeliha feared he would strangle her, but the fingers soon loosened and the movement stopped. He made a wounded sound as he collapsed on top of her, his chest pressed against hers. She could hear his heartbeat race. What she couldn't hear was her own. She felt like life had been drained away from her.
She did not open her eyes until he slumped over, now soft inside her. When he stood up, Mustafa could hardly walk. Wobbling, he made it across the room and leaned against the door, gasping for breath. He took in a deep breath and caught a mixed smell-sweat and rosewater. He stood there briefly, his back turned to his sister, before he could bring himself to move again and run out of the room.
As soon as he stepped into the corridor, he heard the outer door being opened, his family now back home. He hurried to the bathroom, locked the door, turned on the shower, but instead of getting in, he collapsed to his knees and threw up.
"Hello!!! Where's everyone?" Banu's voice came from the front room. "Anybody home?"
Zeliha rose to her feet and attempted to smooth down her clothes. Everything had happened so swiftly, perhaps she could convince herself that it hadn't happened at all. But the face she saw in the mirror revealed a different story. There in the frame of her reflection, her left eye looked swollen with a purplish half circle under it. The very first thing Zeliha felt upon seeing her eye was a pang of guilt at her habitual skepticism. All these years she had snickered at cheesy action movies whenever someone got a purple eye, never believing that the human eye could swell that color with one blow.
Her face yes, but her body hadn't been damaged, she concluded. She touched herself to see if she still had feeling. How come she could feel the touch of her fingers but nothing else? If she were hurt or sad, wouldn't her body know? Wouldn't she know?
There was a knock on her door and without waiting for a response, Banu popped her head in. She was about to say something but her mouth opened and closed without words as she stood frozen, staring at her youngest sister..
"What happened to your face?" Banu asked anxiously.
Zeliha knew if there ever was a time to reveal this, it was now. She could either tell it now or hide it forever. "It's not as bad as it looks," she said slowly, the moment already gone and the choice made. "I went out for a walk and then I saw this man beating the hell out of his wife in the middle of the street. I tried to save a battered woman from her husband, but I guess I ended up getting beaten myself."
They believed her. It was something she would do, something that could only happen to her, if it were to ever happen to anyone.
The day Zeliha was raped she was nineteen years old. An age deemed to be a grown-up according to the Turkish laws. At this age she could get married or get a driver's license or cast a vote, once the military permitted free elections to be held again. Likewise, should she need one, she could also get an abortion on her own.
Too many times Zeliha had the same dream. She saw herself walking on the street under a rain of stones. As cobblestones fell one by one from above, digging a hole underneath, digging it deeper, she started to panic, afraid to follow suit, afraid to be swallowed without a trace by the hungry abyss. "Stop!" she cried out as stones kept rolling under her feet. "Stop!" she commanded the vehicles that sped toward her and then ran her over. "Stop!" she begged the pedestrians who shouldered her aside. "Please stop!"
That next month she missed her period. A few weeks later she paid a visit to a newly opened lab near her house. FREE PREGNANCY TEST WITH EACH BLOOD SUGAR TEST! it said on a sign at the entrance. When the results arrived, Zeliha's blood sugar turned out to be normal and she was pregnant.
Once there was; once there wasn't.
In a land far, too far away, there lived an old couple with four children, two daughters and two sons. One daughter was ugly, and the other was beautiful. The younger brother decided to marry th
e beautiful one. But she did not want to. She washed her silk clothes and went to the water and rinsed them. She rinsed and cried. It was cold. Her hands and feet were freezing. She came home and knocked on the door, but it was locked. She knocked on her mother's window, and her mother answered: "I'll let you in if you will call me mother-in-law. " She knocked on her father's window, and he answered: "I'll let you in if you will call me father-in-law. " She knocked on her older brother's window, and he answered: "I'll let you in if you will call me brother-in-law. " She knocked on her sister's window, and she answered: "I'll let you in if you will call me sister-in-law. " She knocked on her younger brother's window, and he let her in. He hugged her and kissed her, and she said: "Let the earth open up and swallow me!"
And the earth opened up and she escaped into an underground kingdom[3].
Looking out the kitchen window with a spoon in her hand, Asya sighed as she watched the silver-metallic Alfa Romeo depart.
"You see?" She turned to Sultan the Fifth. "Auntie Zeliha didn't want me to go to the airport with them. She is being mean to me again."
How stupid of her to allow herself to be vulnerable the other night when they had all gone out to drink! How stupid of her to count on finally bridging the barrier between them. It would never entirely disappear. This mother she had auntified would always re
main at an unbridgeable distance. Maternal compassion, filial love, familial camaraderie, she sure needed none of that…. Asya paused and spat out: "Shit."
Article Twelve: Do not try to change your mother, or more precisely, do not try to change your relationship with your mother, since this will only cause frustration. Simply accept and consent. If you cannot simply accept and consent, go back to Article One.
"You are not talking to yourself, are you?" said Auntie Feride, just then entering the kitchen.
"Actually, I was." Asya instantly exited her trancelike rage. "I was just telling my cat friend here how strange it is that the last time Uncle Mustafa was here he wasn't even born and Pasha the Third ruled the house. It's been twenty years. Isn't it strange? The man never visits us, and now here I am scooping out his ashure because we still welcome him."
"What does the cat say?" Auntie Feride asked.
Asya smiled sardonically. "He says I'm right, this must be a nuthouse. I should lose all hope and work on my manifesto instead."
"Of course we will welcome your uncle. Family is family, whether you like it or not. We are not like the Germans; they kick their children out of the house at the age of fourteen. We have strong family values. We don't meet just once a year to eat turkey…. "
"What are you talking about?" Asya asked, puzzled, but before she reached the end of her question, she sort of guessed the answer. "Are you referring to the Americans' Thanksgiving Day?"
"Whatever." Auntie Feride dismissed the information. "My point is that Westerners don't have strong families. We are not like that. If somebody is your father, he is your father forever; if someone is a brother, he will be your brother till the end. Besides, everything in this world is strange enough already," Auntie Feride continued. "That is why I like to read the third pages of the tabloids. I cut and collect them so that we don't forget how crazy and dangerous the world is."
Never having heard her aunt attempt to rationalize her behav-r for before, Asya couldn't help but look at her with renewed inter
est. They sat there in the kitchen amid appetizing smells, while the March sun shone through the window.
They sat together until Auntie Feride left after hearing her favorite VJ announce the video clips of a new band, and Asya craved a cigarette. She craved not as much a cigarette as smoking that cigarette with the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, though it surprised her that she had missed him so much. She had at least two hours until the guests came back from the airport. Besides, even if she were late, what difference would it make to anyone? she thought.
A few minutes later, Asya closed the door softly behind her.
Auntie Banu heard the door, but before she could call out, Asya had already stepped out.
"What are you planning to do, master?" Mr. Bitter croaked.
"Nothing," Auntie Banu whispered as she opened a dresser drawer and took out a box. Inside the velvet cover rested the pomegranate brooch.
As the oldest of the Kazanci children, this brooch was given to her, a present from her father, who had inherited it from his mother-not his stepmother, Petite-Ma, but from the mother he never talked about, the mother who had abandoned him when he was a child, the mother he had never forgiven. The brooch was both sublime and heartbreaking, Auntie Banu feared. This nobody knew, but she had once kept the golden pomegranate with ruby seeds in salted water to wash away its sad saga.
Under the watchful gaze of the djinn, Auntie Banu caressed the brooch, feeling the glamor of the rubies glowing inside. Until she met Armanoush it had never occurred to her to investigate the story of the pomegranate brooch. Now that she knew the story, however, she couldn't figure out what to do next. Tempted as she was to give the brooch to Armanoush, for she believed it belonged to her more than to anyone else, she hesitated because she wasn't quite sure how to explain why she was giving it to her.
Could she tell Armanoush Tchakhmakhchian that this brooch had once belonged to her grandma Shushan without telling her the rest of the story? How much of her knowledge could she share with those whose stories she learned through magic?
Forty minutes later on the other side of the city, Asya entered through the squeaky, wooden door of Cafe Kundera.
"Yo, Asya!" the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist called out cheerfully. "Over here! I'm here!"
He hugged her and then, as she drew back from his arms, he exclaimed, "I've got news for you, one piece is good, one is bad, and one is yet to be classified. Which one would you like to hear first?"
"Give me the bad one," Asya said.
"I am going to prison. My drawings of the prime minister as a penguin weren't well received, I guess. I am sentenced to eight months in prison."
Asya stared at him with astonishment that soon widened into alarm.
"Shush, dear," the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist mumbled in a meek voice, putting his finger on her lips. "Don't you want to hear the good news?" Then he beamed with pride. "I decided I need to be true to my heart and get a divorce."
As the shadow of bewilderment that marred her face faded out, it finally occurred to Asya to ask, "And the yet-to-be classified news?"
"Today is my fourth day without a drink. Not even a drop! You know why?"
"I guess because you went to Alcoholics Anonymous again," Asya replied.
"No!" the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist drawled, looking hurt. "Because today was the fourth day since I last saw you and I wanted to be sober the next time we met. You are my one and only incentive in this life to become a better person."
Now he blushed. "Love!" he declared. "I am in love with you, Asya."
Asya's hazel eyes slid toward a frame on the wall, the photo of a rutted road from Camel Trophy 1997 in Mongolia. It would be nice to run into that picture now, she thought, to be traversing the Gobi Desert in a 4x4 Jeep, heavy, dirty boots on her feet, sunglasses on her face, sweating out her troubles as she went, until she'd become as light as a nobody, as light as a dry leaf in a gust, and thus waft into a Buddhist monastery in Mongolia.
"Don't you worry, little bird," the pomegranate tree smiled and shook the snow on her branches. "The story that I'm going to tell you is a happy one. "
Hovhannes Stamboulian pursed his lips, as his mind worked feverishly, and the whirl of writing swallowed him up. With each new line added to this last story of his children's book, generations of lessons swirled back to him, some disheartening, others raising his spirits, but all similarly reverberating from another time, a time without beginning or end. Children's stories were the oldest stories in the world, where the ghosts of generations long gone spoke through the words. The urge to finish this book was so instinctive and undeniably riveting as to be irrepressib
le. The world had been a gloomy place since he had started writing it and now he had to finish without ado, as if its becoming a less heartrending place depended on this.
"All right, then," the Little Lost Pigeon chirped. "Tell me the story of the Little Lost Pigeon. But I warn you, if I hear anything sad, I will take wing and fly away."
After Hovhannes Stamboulian had been taken away by the soldiers, his family did not have the heart to enter his writing room for days. They had been in and out of every room but that one, and kept the door closed as if he were still inside working day and night. But the despondency permeating the house had become too intense and too palpable to pretend that life could return to normal. Soon Armanoush decided they would all be better off in Sivas, where they would stay with her parents for a while. It was only after this decision that they entered Hovhannes Stamboulian's room and found his manuscript, The Little Lost Pigeon and the Blissful Country, waiting to be completed. There among the pages they also found the pomegranate brooch.
Shushan Stamboulian saw the pomegranate brooch for the first time there on the walnut desk that belonged to her father. All of the other details of that ominous day faded away, but not that brooch. Perhaps it was the twinkle emanating from the rubies that had mesmerized her, or else seeing the world around her fall apart in a day made this the only thing she could remember. Whatever the reason, Shushan never forgot that pomegranate brooch. Not when she dropped half dead on the road to Aleppo and was left behind; not when the Turkish mother and daughter found her and took her into their house to heal her; not when she was taken by bandits to the orphanage; not when she ceased to be Shushan Stamboulian and became Shermin 626; not when years later Riza Selim Kazanci would fortuitously chance upon her in the orphanage and, finding out she was the niece of his late master, Levon, decide to take her as his wife; not when she would the next day become Shermin Kazanci; and not when she would learn she was pregnant and would become a mother, as if she wasn't still a child herself.
The Circassian midwife revealed the sex of the baby months before his birth, by observing the shape of her belly and the types of food she craved. Creme brulee from posh patisseries, apfelstrudel from the bakery opened by White Russians who escaped from Russia, homemade baklava, bonbons, and sweets of all sorts…. Not even once during her pregnancy had Sherrnin Kazanci craved anything sour or salty, the way she would have had she been expecting a girl.
