The Debt of Tamar

by Dweck, Nicole

  The next morning, Ayda was called into the main office and told that her time in the orphanage was over. She was a corrupting influence on the other girls, a cancer that needed to be cut out before it spread. Hard as they’d tried, they’d failed to shape her into a respectable young woman. While they did not normally arrange marriages for girls younger than eighteen, these were special circumstances, the headmistress explained.

  She was prohibited from attending classes and assigned to kitchen and cleaning duties for the next few weeks. One day, while scrubbing the communal toilet bowl, the door swung open and one of the staff members popped her head in. “Go pack up your things. Your suitor is coming to collect you in the morning.” Without waiting for a reply, she disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared.

  Ayda looked down into the toilet bowl, while the door swung shut behind. She examined the reflection staring up at her, a face drowning in piss and shit and misery. She flushed the toilet frantically, once, twice, three times in vain, but the face was still there. Those eyes, big and black and miserable, were wide with fear and loathing. She collapsed over the toilet and cried a cry that held no tears.

  In the afternoon, she was given a Koran as a parting gift, along with an empty orange crate in which to store her belongings. They weren’t much anyhow, an oversized pair of two-toned shoes, three or four grey uniforms, and a few stuffed beanies from a lifetime away...

  Ayda took one look at her future husband, a man three inches shorter than she, with an oily head and a big round belly. She decided right then and there that she would never marry him.

  As he looked her over, he flashed a creepy grin exposing a gold-capped front tooth. “Her hair always this wild?” he asked. His eyes were draped over Ayda but his words were directed to the headmistress.

  “I’m afraid so, and I should warn you, Mr. Dogmaci, she refuses to cover it.”

  With his wrinkled sleeve, he wiped the sweat dripping down his forehead, grunted, then licked his lips. “I’ll take care of that.” He reached for the ends of her tangled ringlets before taking her crate away from her. “Meet me at the car,” he instructed, before turning around and heading towards the lot.

  She was bid farewell by friends who hugged her one last time. They stood in their uniforms, huddled in the doorway of the building’s entrance, their lanky arms waving goodbye as the rusty hatchback pulled away from the only home she’d ever known.

  All throughout the car-ride, Mr. Dogmaci chatted on his cell phone while Ayda watched the world slip away like a river running in the wrong direction. They passed presidential palaces and old crumbling mosques. Streetcars bustled by and deliverymen on rusty bikes went about their business. Gypsy children threw themselves on the windshield begging for change at each traffic light, while Mr. Dogmaci barked out the window and threatened them with his fat, clenched fists.

  The car, stuck in the afternoon traffic, stopped beside an old lady with an ancient face and silver hair cascading about eyes as big and black as the gentlest giant sea creature. While Mr. Dogmaci was laughing on his cell phone, Ayda rolled down the window.

  The old lady approached and extended her hand. In it, she held a single red rose. Ayda accepted this gift without a word, the only true gift she’d received in the decade since her mother’s passing. Then, the old woman retreated to her rickety curbside stand, to eke out a living as her lifetime neared its dusk.

  A half hour passed before the car stopped outside a concrete building surrounded by a patch of dry dirt. The grimy structure rose from the ground like an upturned brick left at an abandoned construction site.

  He led her up the dusty path toward a dilapidated, ground-floor studio. Once inside, Ayda looked around the place. There was a bare mattress on the floor and a toilet (but no sink) separated from the rest of the room by a curtain stapled to the ceiling.

  “Let’s eat!” Mr. Dogmaci announced. He prepared a single piece of broiled chicken. “You’ll be the one cooking the meals from now on,” he explained. When he was done eating, he offered up the remnants of his meal to Ayda. “There’s nutrition in the marrow,” he said as he passed her a plate of bones.

  After clearing away the dishes, she retreated to the mattress. Exhausted and hungry, she dozed off into a fitful sleep while Mr. Dogmaci watched foreign videos on the faulty television set.

  She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she woke up to find him unzipping her jeans. She struggled to get to her feet, but quickly realized she didn’t stand a chance against his two hundred plus pounds. “Stop fidgeting! You know I didn’t get a penny for you.”

  She pleaded for him to stop, but he just kept on rationalizing.

  “No one would have taken you in,” he explained as he yanked the jeans from around her ankles. “I’m a charitable man, you understand?”

  Ayda thought to scream, but when she turned toward the window and saw nothing but an abandoned parking lot, she blotted away her tears, grit her teeth, and forced herself to succumb to his touch. When he was done, he pushed her from the bed and told her to sleep on the floor.

  Ayda waited until she could hear him wheezing in his sleep. Then she gathered her clothes and headed towards the door, snatching Mr. Dogmaci’s long overcoat on her way out. She slipped away from that drab apartment and on towards her unknown fate, running for half a mile before stopping to dress herself properly.

  With nowhere to go, she lived under bridges alongside squatters and river rats. Eventually, she managed to land a job waiting tables at a sea-side café patronized by tourists wearing visors and oversized T-shirts and was taken in by the kind Armenian woman who owned the place.

  She had been working long hours there for two years, when one day, something odd happened. She was told to take the week off. As it so happened, the restaurant had been rented out to a production crew who thought it a charming location to film the opening scenes of a sitcom pilot.

  She headed over to the bizarre where she spent all of her savings on a cheap red dress. Then, she sat on set in her polyester frock, not being noticed for three days straight. On the fourth day, something extraordinary occurred.

  It started with a sudden shriek, followed by gasps and groans. Then there was the sound of sirens in the distance. The sound grew stronger, until an ambulance with flashing lights arrived on scene. The leading lady was carted away with a fractured leg, having tripped while walking in high-heels along the old cobblestone street.

  Ayda examined the director. He shook his head frantically as the ambulance pulled away. “What are we going to do now!” he shouted at his crew. “We need to finish the opening scene today! We’re not working on an unlimited budget, people!”

  Ayda smoothed down her dress and made her way over to the director. She tapped gently on his shoulder causing him to turn abruptly.

  “What!” he barked at her.

  “I know all the lines. You can finish shooting today.”

  The muscles in his face began to droop lamely. He stared at her blankly before his eyes narrowed and his face reddened. “Who the hell is this!”

  “I know the lines,” she repeated calmly.

  “Anyone know who this is!” he spun around and shouted to no one in particular.

  “There’s no reason to delay production.” She swallowed a knot rising in her throat.

  He blinked a few times, then shook his head. “Listen sweets, this is a professional production company. Experienced actors only. Go home.” He turned his back and walked away.

  “I have experience!” She hurried after him and planted herself directly in his path. “Believe me, I have experience.”

  He frowned and cursed under his breath, before spitting on the dry dirt and tossing the script in her direction. “You better not be wasting my time!” He hurried off and left Ayda standing in her cheap red dress, clutching the script in her arms and whispering thanks to Allah.

  *

  Selim was halfway through the journal when he heard footsteps down the hall. The knob squeake
d as it turned. Ayda stepped in. Her hair was soaked and her mascara was running down her cheeks. At some point in the past hour, it had begun to pour. Selim hadn’t even noticed.

  Her eyes moved to the journal that lay open on his lap. He studied her for a long moment. Setting the journal aside, he stood and made his way towards her. He took her face in his palms and wiped away streaks of mascara.

  Beneath his blackened fingertips, her skin was soft with youth and warm with shame. The hem of her pants were discolored and muddied, and her hair—just hours before perfectly coiffed—was pulled back and soaked in a tangled bun.

  The sight of her brought tears to his eyes. He took her in his arms, not sure if he was crying with her, crying for her, or perhaps, crying for himself.

  19

  His headaches were getting worse by the day. For a full year, Selim had suffered from the migraines. He drank black tea infused with jasmine, nearly overdosed on ibuprofen tablets, and stayed in bed sometimes all day. The doctors said it was stress. Selim assumed that it was the physical manifestation of guilt in his body, but after eleven months of growing pressure in his temples, Selim found out that his condition had been misdiagnosed from the very start.

  It was his fourth visit to the doctor’s office in three months. Selim filled out the registration forms and returned the clipboard to Denize, the pretty nurse who took his blood pressure each time he visited. “Have a seat. We’ll let you know when the doctor is ready to see you, Mr. Osman.”

  Selim took a seat in the brightly lit waiting area and leafed through a newspaper. The front page was taken up by just one article. He skimmed the story and learned that the nation’s most prominent writer would stand trial for “insulting Turkishness.” The author, a world-renowned Nobel laureate, was being punished for publicly acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. He faced up to three years in jail for his indiscretion. “You can’t stop progress,” Selim thought to himself, then went through a list in his mind of powerful individuals he could contact that might be able to aid in the man’s release.

  “Selim Osman, the doctor is ready for you,” the receptionist called out a few minutes later. “Straight ahead, fourth door on the left.”

  He put down the paper and headed down a narrow corridor tiled with yellow and white, checkered squares. He was instructed to remove his clothing and change into a blue gown. As usual, he was slightly embarrassed when it barely reached the midway point of his thigh. A few minutes later the nurse came in and took his blood pressure. She asked a series of questions, nodding sympathetically as Selim went over his symptoms with her for the third time in several weeks. “Headaches, night sweats, blurry vision.”

  A week later, Selim received a phone call from Denize. “The doctor wants you to come in.”

  Selim opened his leather planner and flipped to the calendar at the back. “How’s this Wednesday?”

  “Can you make it in this afternoon?”

  “I’ve got a meeting later today.” His eyes scanned the pages of the calendar. The week was completely booked. It hadn’t been easy, but he’d finally gotten an appointment with the deputy minister, Abdul Gurat, one of the most powerful voices on the council. He was one of the few men with the power to pardon the novelist who was facing imprisonment for his “Crimes against Turkishness.” Selim had discovered that Gurat actually rented office space in one of the buildings he owned. They were to meet later in the day, at Gurat’s home in Etilar. He intended to cut the minister’s rent almost to nothing. He hoped this gesture might help “convince” the minister how unjust imprisoning the man would be. He knew the system was not perfect, but it was the only way to get things done.

  “Selim, the doctor wants to see you some time today.”

  “I need to clear up my schedule. Next week is wide open actually.”

  “It’s about your test results.” Denize cleared her throat as though she were about to say something else.

  “All right, I’ll be there in an hour.” He put down the phone and called his receptionist on the intercom.

  “Call the minister, cancel my appointment.”

  “Effendi, it was not easy to get that appointment. I doubt he’ll want to reschedule. He’s a very proud man.”

  “Tell the minister an emergency has come up.”

  “But, Effendi—”

  “Just do it.”

  An hour later Selim was at the clinic. For the first time Denize did not ask him to change into a pale blue gown and wait in an examining room, but rather, she showed him into the doctor’s office, a small space, just big enough for a desk and two chairs.

  A car alarm sounded outside. The doctor rose and made his way to the window overlooking the concrete parking lot below. He peered out for a moment, then shut the window, effectively muting the shrill sound. Dr. Ehrlich shook Selim’s hand and gestured for him to sit down in a maroon upholstered chair. It was considerably lower than the armchair Dr. Ehrlich occupied, and Selim felt uncomfortable as he tried to straighten his posture.

  “It’s a very rare form of cancer,” the doctor explained, as his spectacles bobbed up and down with each frown. “It didn’t even occur to us at first. You don’t fit the prototype at all.”

  Selim allowed his body to slump into the deepest part of the cushion.

  “Sinus cancer is typical in men over the age of sixty. It affects almost exclusively people of oriental descent. No one could have imagined.” The doctor told him these things gently, trying to assuage the shock he expected from Selim, a shock that never came, because Selim had expected it all along. There was a five percent survival rate. The doctor explained that the term “survival” referred to people who lived five years beyond their diagnosis.

  It felt very natural that he should be dying. Cancer lived in the empty spaces behind his cheek and nose and jaw. It had spread and infected the bone structure throughout the left side of his face. It was still less painful than the guilt. Unlike cancer, the guilt had spread throughout every bone in his body.

  All these years, he had held himself responsible for Ali’s death. His mother had held him accountable, and although his father had never admitted it, he knew Baba had felt the same way. All of Istanbul knew he was to blame. Selim knew it too.

  And so, he was not surprised to learn his pounding headaches and night sweats were symptoms of a disease that would surely kill him. He wasn’t frightened by this news, or angered in the least. On the contrary, Selim felt a profound sense of relief, as though he’d been holding his breath and could finally take a deep, soulful sigh. For the first time since his brother’s accident, he felt a sense of order in his universe, a sense that everything was finally as it should be. A life for a life. This realization filled him with calm.

  “I know you must be feeling so many different emotions right now. Do you have anyone you can talk to?” he heard the doctor ask.

  He thought back to the video games he and Ali had played with as children. Baba had brought the games back from overseas business trips in America, and all the neighborhood boys would come to the Osman villa in Ortakoy to watch Selim and his brother battle with green aliens that took away lives just by zapping their neon bug-eyes. In English, the words “Game Over” would come across the screen. “You’re dead,” Ali would scream. “My turn!” Selim’s thumbs would ache and his eyes would sting from long hours in front of the television screen. In the end, he was usually relieved when the aliens would come with their spinning saucers, shine a light over his bleeding human remains, and zap him into a galaxy far away from home.

  Game Over.

  Then he’d be off to the pantry to stuff his mouth with sugarcoated almonds and chocolate cherries, before brushing his teeth and heading to bed.

  “Talk to me. What’s going through your head,” the doctor pressed on. “Selim, say something.”

  He looked into the doctor’s eyes and smiled sadly. Dr. Erlich had been the one to sew up his elbow as a youth when he’d fallen while trying to jump the fence surrounding the pool
. He pumped Selim’s stomach at age five, when he’d drunk a bottle of liquid soap because it smelled like cherries. He set Selim’s broken leg after the accident and tended to the burns along his arms and torso caused by the scalding pavement he’d laid on before the ambulance arrived. He’d tried to resuscitate Ali, he’d tried...

  Dr. Erlich’s lips were moving but Selim only caught snippets of what he was saying. “Treatment in New York…experimental surgery…” Soon, the room was quiet, except for the rustling of the ceiling fan overhead. Dr. Ehrlich handed Selim a glossy white folder entitled “Coping with Cancer.”

  Selim stood up and the two men shook hands. “There’s a lot to think about,” said Dr. Erlich, “but the New York surgery, if you turn that down, there’s nothing left but a few months.”

  Selim thanked the doctor, then left the room.

  “Game over,” he whispered under his breath, before closing the door behind him.

  20

  “I love you,” Ayda whispered one night, five months after they had begun their affair. He gathered her body in his arms, stroked her dark hair between his fingers, and answered only in his mind.

  In the weeks leading up to his departure, she began to sense a distance brooding between them. He was more easily agitated than ever before, turning cold and distant for no apparent reason. He hadn’t told her about his visits to the doctor, the diagnosis, or the surgery scheduled at the end of the month that was likely to kill him. He didn’t know how to tell her any of it.

  “My agent says there’s a leading role for me in a feature film,” she said one night while getting ready for bed. “Did you hear me, Selim? A real movie. I’ve wanted to get out of television for so long.” With her back towards him, she addressed him through the reflection in the vanity mirror. “Most of the filming will be done in Germany.” Her eyes scanned his face for a reaction. She opened a drawer, removed a hairbrush, and smoothed her thick hair back into a neat bun before making her way over to the bed. “I told him I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t want to be away for six months. There’s so much I would miss here.” She loosened the tie of her robe and let it fall to the floor in a small heap.