The Healer's Daughters

by Jay Amberg

  “I had no idea about the bombing…about what was going to happen,” Serkan says, his voice rising. “But I knew that something… It’s my… I should’ve…” Wide-eyed with anger and frustration, he begins again to pace. “I bought a phone!” He pulls an inexpensive single-use phone from his jeans pocket. “I tried to call. I did.” He claws at his throat. “I didn’t have Mom’s new number. It’s in my contact list, but that Georgian bastard…” He stops, stuffs the phone back in his jeans pocket, and turns to face his sister and his grandmother. “I called you, too, Elif! It went…it went straight to voicemail. Four times. No, five.”

  “Yes, Serkan,” Elif says. “My phone was off.” Her phone, as always when she is working, was switched off and stowed in her backpack. It still is.

  “I tried. I really did.”

  “Serkan,” Elif says, “I wasn’t there either. And I have no excuse.”

  “I came as fast as I could,” Serkan repeats, turning away from the two women. “The traffic… I couldn’t get here any faster. I couldn’t!”

  Elif looks up at the television mounted on the wall near the ceiling. The teaser said that an updated report on Bergama’s second bombing was next, but there are still only adverts for paper products on the screen.

  “Near Baliksehir, I began to hear the radio reports.” Serkan swallows hard. “‘The terrorist attack at the Bergama Aesklepion.’ The ‘ancient curing center,’ they called it.” He glances back at Elif and then stares down at the room’s beige carpeting. “Multiple fatalities! The Hamits had them killed just to cover… I should have…!”

  “Serkan!” Elif’s voice is sharp. “Daesh claimed responsibility!”

  “It’s not Daesh!” he retorts. He shakes his head vehemently. “It’s the Hamits! Mustafa…I’m—”

  “Serkan!” Elif snaps. She waves him over to the chairs, but he stands rigidly, glaring at the carpet.

  Finally, on the monitor’s screen, the video, taken from the center of the Aesklepion’s theater just above the box where the local dignitaries were sitting, begins with a shot of Özlem Boroğlu smiling as the audience applauds. It then zooms out to include the backs of the three people, two large men in dark suits and a petite woman in a dress, climbing the stairs on the left of the stage. Just as they reach the podium, the small woman raises a bouquet of red roses to give to Boroğlu.

  As shouting erupts off to the side, the camera pans to the right where a young, dark-haired boy is climbing onto the stage. Silver-gray duct tape, wound heavily around a vest, covers his chest. He wears a black-and-white headband. When he reaches the stage, he hesitates, seemingly disoriented, as though he is listening to some distant voice. In that moment, the camera quickly zooms out again. Near the podium, the larger of the two men pushes the other man so hard that he and the speaker and the podium all tumble off the front of the stage. The large man, with the dexterity of an athlete, then pivots and hurls himself across the stage. The camera pans to follow him. As the boy, his face now contorted, begins to rush forward, the man plows into him, taking them both off the stage and out of sight. The camera focuses for a second on the top of a stone recess next to the theater’s exterior wall. Then, a flash of light causes the camera’s lens to careen wildly and go dark.

  Although she has seen the video twice before, Elif’s breath catches. Her grandmother’s hands are trembling, her breathing quick and shallow. Serkan stands transfixed. “He saved Mom!” he says to the television. “Recep saved her!” He squeezes his hands into fists. “And the Hamits killed him! Killed them!”

  Elif rises from her chair and approaches him, but the veins in his neck are pulsing and she does not at first attempt to touch him. “Yes,” she whispers, “Recep saved a lot of people…Mom, too… Maybe…I hope…” She reaches for her brother’s hand. “But the Hamits didn’t kill him…”

  Fists still clenched, he pulls away from her.

  “It was Daesh!” she says, reaching for him again. “The boy had on a Daesh headband!”

  He yanks himself free of her. “The Hamits did it,” he shouts. “I should never have… My deal started…!” He hyperventilates and then, not able to catch his breath, screams at the TV, “Not Daesh, you fucking idiot! The Hamits!”

  Someone knocks on the room’s door. As Serkan gasps for air, Elif reaches out a third time.

  He jerks away. “My deal… I couldn’t…didn’t stop them!”

  “Shut up!” Elif whispers fiercely to her brother as she glances at the opening door. “Shut up!”

  He wheels and smashes his right fist into the yellow cinder block wall.

  As the short, sturdy fortyish doctor in pale-green scrubs enters the waiting room, Serkan grabs his hand and averts his eyes. She stares at him for a second, turns toward Elif, and says, “Hello, I’m Doctor Mutlu.” Elif nods, but she can’t find words. Her grandmother sucks in her breath and bows her head. “Özlem Hanim came through the surgery,” the doctor continues. She takes off her surgical cap, revealing thick strawberry-blonde hair, and then gestures for Elif and Serkan to sit with their grandmother.

  Elif takes the remote control from the wooden end table and turns off the TV. She then sits next to her grandmother and pats the chair on her other side for Serkan. He remains standing, his left hand still covering his right. The doctor sits next to Elif and then leans in toward Elif and her grandmother. Serkan takes a step closer but still does not sit down.

  “Özlem Hanim,” the doctor says, “has suffered a severe traumatic brain injury.” She looks up and nods at Serkan, who looks away. “She has not regained consciousness, but she is stable.”

  Özlem’s mother again takes Elif’s hand in both of hers and squeezes hard. Tears slip down her cheeks. Elif, who has been holding her breath through the doctor’s information, exhales.

  Shifting her position, the doctor pats Elif’s and her grandmother’s wrists. “She’s not at all out of danger,” the doctor says. “The next twenty-four hours will be critical. Her brain is still swelling. There are significant contusions and at least one hematoma.” Seeing the confusion on Elif’s grandmother’s face, the doctor pauses. “I’m sorry,” she says. “Her brain crashed back and forth inside her skull causing bleeding and at least one blood clot.” She shakes her head. “She’ll have to remain sedated for days, except when she’s brought out periodically for neurological tests to evaluate her condition. We have to be careful to avoid overstimulation.” She pauses, seemingly measuring what to say next. “Seeing her may be a little shocking. Her face is badly bruised and swollen. We’ve had to drill into her skull to insert a brain oxygen monitor and, separately, an intracranial pressure catheter. The pressure of her skull on her brain as the tissue swells may still have to be relieved through another surgical procedure.”

  Elif’s grandmother leans into her, energy ebbing fast now that there has been news of Özlem’s condition.

  As Serkan looks away again, he chokes, “My deal…I…” Shaking his head, he begins to cry. Elif isn’t sure if he is weeping for their mother or himself.

  Elif asks, “If she lives… Is there…will there be…permanent brain damage?”

  The doctor frowns at Serkan before saying, “It’s too soon to tell.” She takes a breath and looks into Elif’s eyes. “In some cases, there can be a full recovery. But at best, it’s always a long, difficult road.”

  51

  KAIKOS VALLEY

  “It was stupid!” the Hamit patriarch says, his voice sharp. “You are not stupid, but you fail to think things through!” As the sun rises over the Kaikos Valley he drives the black Range Rover fast along the two-lane road between Dikili and Bergama. Mustafa, his son, holds his iPhone up by the windshield and frowns. The reception out here in the middle of nowhere is barely one bar. Although he has not worked out or showered, he feels much better, physically, than the last time they made this drive. He knew enough
not to visit Damla when he arrived at midnight, and he didn’t have a beer, much less any raki. His father, however, is on his case worse than ever.

  “I did think it through,” Mustafa answers. “And it worked!”

  “She’s alive!”

  “She’s virtually dead! We’re rid of her!”

  His father slams the palm of his right hand against the steering wheel. “What does that mean?”

  “She won’t survive.”

  “That’s not what my man at the hospital told me.”

  Mustafa waves his phone at his father. “You talked to your source last night.” He struggles to keep his tone respectful. “My source texted me ten minutes ago! She’s in a coma. Paralyzed. Unable to speak. A fucking vegetable!”

  Mustafa’s father shakes his finger at the telephone. “You and your tweets.”

  “They’re not…” Mustafa stops himself. His father doesn’t even understand the difference between tweets and texts. He doesn’t get how the world has changed. How the nature of their business has changed with it. And how the opportunities to make money are exponentially greater.

  “You’ve made a mess of it!” his father growls.

  “It’s supposed to be a mess!” And that’s exactly the point. The old man doesn’t understand that the more the news reports are contradictory, the better. Özlem Boroğlu’s death was never going to go unnoticed. And now there’s so much conflicting information, so much disinformation, that no one will figure out what really happened. The family will, as always, be fine. Untouchable! It might even be good if the old bitch lives a few weeks, keeps the media frenzy focused on her rather than on the family’s business. “There’s no evidence,” he says, “nothing that connects us. It looks like a fucking Daesh attack!”

  His father turns his head, but the old man’s trademark glare does not reach Mustafa through his aviators. “The reporters will swarm here like flies!” the patriarch shouts.

  “Exactly!” Mustafa retorts. He reaches to the dashboard and turns on the air conditioning even though his father’s window is open. “ISIL has already claimed responsibility. The bomber’s identity was leaked to the media twenty minutes ago.”

  “He was a child!”

  “He was a Syrian. The son of a foreigner, a Frenchman. A Daesh operative trained at the Al Farouq base in Raqqa.” There’s no way he’s going to admit to his father that those ISIL assholes didn’t tell him they were sending a boy to do the job.

  “He screwed up!” His father is spitting mad. “He didn’t cleanly take out the target!”

  “It’s better this way. Better if the old bitch lingers in a coma like that boy in town did!” He, too, is angry about the Syrian boy hesitating, giving that hulking moron a chance to be a hero, but he won’t on this point give a millimeter to his father. He’s got to change the narrative, spin it so that this operation, his operation, is a winner. Just like all his other deals. “You told me after we saw that letter that we’d have to rid ourselves of the old bitch if she got too close to the Galen cache. That’s what we had to do, and that’s what we did!”

  “We?” His father squeezes the leather-covered steering wheel and rolls his wrists like he’s shifting a motorcycle. “I told you that getting in bed with ISIL would be bad for the family.”

  “You told me I was in charge of day-to-day operations.” He glances at his phone, but reception is still too weak.

  “And look what’s happened!”

  “Yes, look what happened! We’ve more than tripled our revenue in the last year!”

  “By making deals with ISIL! The family has always stayed out of politics.”

  “You mean, paid off whoever was in power!”

  “Not extremists! Never! They’re too unstable. Can’t be trusted… I’ve told you that!”

  His father has—too many times. “We’ve made a fortune selling artifacts we’ve gotten from them. Huge profits!”

  His father turns the Range Rover onto the narrow road that cuts through one of their larger properties. “You’ve gone too fast. Haven’t thought—”

  Mustafa can’t listen to this any more! “Or maybe, you’ve gone too slow!” he shouts. “We’re making more money than—”

  “It’s all too risky!”

  “It’s all working!”

  “You don’t even know who you’re making deals with!”

  “So I need to get to know people like that Russian bastard Vlad!”

  “Yes!” The patriarch shakes his head. “No! But you need to be able to read them. Men like Vlad—”

  “Read them?” He holds up the phone. “In three minutes I can get as much information, personal and professional, as I need.”

  “It’s not the same!” the patriarch says. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.”

  Two hundred meters ahead, Bora and another younger cousin stand next to a white pick-up truck parked on the side of the road by a stand of poplars.

  “You should’ve known not to promise Vlad something you couldn’t deliver.”

  That again. “I’m going to deliver!”

  “You’re going to Los Angeles!”

  “Not for another two weeks!”

  “Twelve days!”

  “Yeah. I’ve got almost two weeks!”

  “You’re going to lie low. Not draw any attention to yourself—or the family.”

  Mustafa’s phone pings. He looks down at the message.

  “Got that?” his father shouts as he slows the Range Rover.

  Mustafa nods more to the phone than to his father.

  “Got that?” Saliva sprays from his father’s mouth.

  52

  RAQQA

  The sheikh is sweating heavily by the time he reaches the top of the stairs. He shifts the potted orchid to his left hand. With his attendants stationed on either side, he pauses before the woman’s door, wipes his forehead, and adjusts his turban. Since that day when she inflamed his rage, he has sent her a dozen gifts including antique gold Lydian jewelry. She has thanked Allah but has barely acknowledged him. Her mistake is, however, about to be corrected.

  He will certainly not tell her that he traded her son’s life for the jewelry. And he will absolutely not inform her that her boy is already dead, a martyr like her husband. He will instead insist that her son’s future safety depends solely on her submission to him and his wishes. He pulls in his stomach, thrusts back his shoulders, and raps on the door.

  Even though she has prepared herself for this moment, she is startled by the knocking. The doctor the sheikh sent the day after he ruined her face and who still attends her regularly has let her know a little of the sheikh’s plans for her. The doctor, who was kind to her, also told her that her nose will never again be straight and that her fractured left cheek is permanently marred, but she does not care at all about any of that. The swelling has receded enough that she can see clearly out of her right eye; the vision in her left remains blurry.

  Both eyes averted, she opens the door and steps back. She is wearing her double burqa and niqab, even though it is not a day for her Guardian to take her outdoors. She does not, however, have on her heavy black gloves. Her chafed hands fold, and her torn fingertips dig into her palms.

  He shuts the door behind him and, remembering that he was not going to berate her for the problems she caused last time, offers her the orchid.

  Her head bowed, she takes the plant, murmurs, “Allah Akbar,” and sets it on the floor next to the door. Then, she stands again silently before him.

  He locks the door’s deadbolt. Her submissiveness arouses him. “I bring you news,” he says, his voice firm and authoritative.

  She nods but does not answer.

  “Your son is safe.” As are all of those in paradise.

  “You will return h
im to me?”

  “No…” His arousal blocks him from the answer he rehearsed. “Not yet…” But then the words come to him. “But I assure you that he is no longer in danger.”

  Her neck stiffens. Her hands, folded in front of her, tighten. There is, as always, deceit and arrogance in his voice, but now there is something more. Smugness. Supremacy!

  He looks across at the table where his other gifts are stacked. Only the jewelry box has been opened. He can’t help but smirk—women are so weak. They can be bought with baubles. His voice cracks as he adds, “I alone can keep him safe.”

  She nods again. His words are all fraudulent, always. As her mind fixes on the way he said “safe” and on the phrase “no longer in danger,” the fingers of her right hand go to the cuff of her left sleeve. The air-raid sirens begin to wail, but like her wounds, the noise, the external threats, mean nothing to her.

  “I alone will make you safe again.” She will succumb, he thinks. When you are powerful, you can do anything you want to women. He reaches up and unfastens her niqab. His fingers tremble as he touches the cloth. And that face that was once so beautiful, so alluring to everyone, has become even more so because it is now his creation. The still-bandaged nose, the left eye a plum, the gray-black bag beneath the right eye, the lumpy discolored yellow and purple of the left cheek. The split and swollen lips. He has planned every moment, but he is becoming so excited that he might have to take her right here on the floor. And he realizes that he should have remembered to have her water turned on so that he could properly clean himself afterward.

  As he holds her niqab open, she stares at the shining silver band of his wristwatch. Her mind flashes to the meteor shower of pain, but she neither gasps nor shudders. Her fingertips brush the two spheres at the top of the ornate golden hairpin in her sleeve. Cold, dark energy fills her chest as her fingers clasp the pin. The iciness rises in her throat and suffuses through the hot devastation of her face. Her mind stone-cold, she keeps her head bowed and her eyes cast down. “How soon may I see him?” she asks.