by Jan Coffey
“What if the note wasn’t from the spa? What if someone from outside came in and handed it to them?”
“Like who? This is your first time in Istanbul. Who knows you?”
“My point exactly. That’s why I’m curious.”
“You’re a mess.” She leaves the remote on the dresser and pokes the jacket I just tossed on the back of the chair. “Talk about a mess. How much effort does it make to hang this thing?”
I grab the jacket from the back of chair before she hangs it up for me.
“Did you bring any moisturizers? Your skin looks dry.”
Glancing in the mirror, I see nothing wrong with my skin.
“They have a massive gym downstairs. Maybe you should go down there and check it out.”
One moment, she wants to be my friend and the next she’s trying to reform me, improve me, make me become a better version of myself. At the very least, a version that she’d be happy with. I could understand her sentiment when I was fourteen, but at the age of thirty-two?
The same goes with her displays of affection. On any given day, I still don’t know if she’ll shower me with love or be openly critical of me. I’ve known for a long time that our relationship is an emotional minefield. But maybe that’s the way it is with most mothers and daughters.
“Do you mind going and watching TV in your own room?”
“You’re throwing me out?”
“No, I’m asking you to go so I can work.” I hang the jacket in the closet. “You’ve paid me to come on this trip and make sure the sale of your company goes through. Now let me.”
She respects me as a professional more than as a daughter. Both she and Jax had a lot of confidence in my abilities. I was recruited to work for Externus two years ago. Close quarters, considering the size of the company. But the job took precedence, and it worked out. My education and experience as a software engineer and small business strategist had paid off.
“Fine, I’m going, but don’t forget the gym is open twenty-four hours.”
Never a conversation without an insult. I’m relieved when she finally goes.
All the lights are on, and the windows are open. The curtain moves in the breeze. The geraniums on the outside windowsills are blood red. A crimson rose in a crystal vase and a plate of Turkish sweets sit on a side table. I pick up the note beside them.
The note is from the hotel management, hoping I enjoy my stay. They’re pretending this morning didn’t happen.
I check the time on my phone. It’s a few minutes after nine in Istanbul. Three in the morning next day in Osaka. I need to speak to Kyle about the schedule and what’s left to do on my end for the acquisition. He’s very efficient, great at the job, and has probably sent me some emails about it already. First, I open Instagram and post a couple of the pictures I took of the mosque in the neighborhood of the hamam.
My phone rings. Speak of the devil. It’s Kyle.
“What are you doing up so late?” I ask as a way of greeting. “Or are you up early?”
“Staying up late.”
I wonder if he had company. Maybe she’s still there in the room with him. I’ve spent too much time dissecting our relationship since Autumn has been gone. Did we change? Were we ever really in love? Did the earth move when we first met, when we first made love?
We both went to Cal Poly, him three years ahead of me, but didn’t meet until Elizabeth and Jax started Externus. He was one of the first hires. His parents are from the East Coast and divorced. Boarding schools since fifth grade.
Maybe the earth did tilt a little when we first hooked up. That was two years ago, right after I started there. Kyle is tall and handsome. He’s got that blue-eyed, blond-haired, cover model look. He turns heads when he crosses a room. And he’s smart. And charming, when he sets his mind to it. He was the perfect salesperson for the company. And me? I was always just me. Not too tall, not too short. Heavy in the chest and hips. And my face? My nose is too long, my mouth too wide. My eyes are the best part of my face. But how far does that take you?
If I’m lacking in the self-confidence department, it’s partly due to a lifetime of being reminded by my mother that we live in Los Angeles, the home of the best plastic surgeons in the country.
Kyle must have found something attractive about me though. It was his suggestion that we move in together.
The silence is deafening on the line. Neither of us is speaking. A wall-like hedge has grown between us. The seeds were planted the day I told him I was pregnant. He never said anything cruel though, like suggesting that I get rid of it, or that he didn’t want any part of it.
Getting pregnant was my doing. I could have lied and said it was an accident, but it wasn’t. I wanted a child more than I cared about my relationship with Kyle. And his role in raising her was way down on the list of priorities.
Like mother, like daughter. Elizabeth has never told me the name of the man who got her pregnant. Whether it was a one-night stand or not, I don’t know. Even mentioning the topic has been a sure way to start an argument. She was forty-three years old when she gave birth. Her last chance at starting a family. I suppose I was thinking the same thing. Except in my case, Kyle is no stranger, and I was only thirty-two.
The divide between us keeps getting wider. I don’t know why he hasn’t moved out of our apartment. Maybe he’s waiting for me to go.
I pluck a petal from the rose on the table and rub it between my fingers.
“How’s the conference?” I ask him.
“Good. How was your day with Elizabeth?”
“She took me to a Turkish hamam.” I consider telling him about the unexpected note in the locker room, but I don’t.
“Is that all?”
Something about his tone tells me I haven’t answered his question. “Would you like to know what I had for lunch?”
“That would be a start.”
“First, tell me what you’ve been up to.”
“I just got here. It’s been all work.”
Our flights left LAX a couple of hours apart yesterday.
“Who have you met with? Anyone I know?”
“We’re not talking about me. I called because I’m worried about you.”
Massaging a kink in my neck, I stare at the ornate ceiling. I think of the picture Elizabeth showed me on his Instagram account. Do I really want to bring it up? I decide that I don’t.
“Why are you worried about me?” I ask finally.
“Christina, we’re a team.”
“I know we’re a team.”
“So why did I have to hear about today from your mother?”
I don’t have to ask what he’s talking about. This is about the crib. My throat tightens. I don’t want to dig up the memory or think about what happened or how I felt.
“When did she call you?”
“It doesn’t matter. You should have called me yourself this morning after the episode.”
Episode makes me think of TV dramas. Elizabeth and Kyle have a close relationship, probably because of Externus. She thinks the world of him. She believes he’s the best thing that ever happened to the company and to me personally. She loves Kyle and doesn’t want to lose him. But after the company is sold, keeping him means he has to stay with me.
“When did she call you?” I don’t wait for him to answer. “Or maybe I should ask how many times she’s called you.”
“Once. She left me a voicemail. Thought I should know about it. She’s worried about you. I’m worried about you.”
“So now you know.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know. It was a combination of things. Exhaustion, I think. I woke up in a new place, jet-lagged. I was confused for a few minutes. Nothing to worry about. I’ve been perfectly fine since this morning.”
I want to shift the conversation away from me.
“Tell me what to expect this week. Any surprises with the buyers?”
Before they started Externus, Jax and Elizabeth bot
h used to work for the same Silicon Valley company. He was a programmer; she worked in accounting. Jax saw a need for a company to serve as a distribution platform for independent video game designers.
The gaming business is bigger than Hollywood, with higher revenues than the music and movie industries combined. With a focus on independent game designers, Externus’s revenues were a sliver of the big guns. But since distributing two well-received, first-person shooter games this past year, the company’s value has skyrocketed. Jax and Elizabeth were ready to sell.
Earlier this year, there was an offer from one of the big fish in Japan, but Jax refused. Their intent was to buy and dissolve us. Instead, Jax put out feelers to a number of small-to-medium-sized gaming companies.
This week, Istanbul will serve as neutral ground for a limited auction of Externus involving three potential buyers from France, Sweden, and Russia.
“Other than a reshuffle of the schedule, I don’t foresee any problems. I emailed you what I have. But before I get there, why don’t you get into Jax’s emails and make sure there are no surprises.”
When I hang up with Kyle, the clock on top of the antique wardrobe says it’s only nine-thirty. Taking my laptop, I head out.
I take the stairs to the rooftop lounge. The A’ya Terrace has clusters of chairs and benches, cream colored with tastefully patterned throw pillows. The only people I see are two businessmen chatting at the far end. A white-jacketed server tells me that the bar is closed, but I’m welcome to sit anywhere. He also offers to get me refreshments from the kitchen if I so wish it. Politely, I send him away.
The night is cool, but I grabbed a sweater on my way out. For a moment, the breath hitches in my chest as I stare at the brilliantly lit Hagia Sophia, guarded by its four minarets. The significance of the four-thousand-year history of this city is a testament to human survival. I have a thing or two to learn from it.
I take a seat facing the ancient mosque and open the laptop. A few minutes later, I’m poking through company files. My inbox shows the emails Kyle sent me. This sale is as important to me as it is to Elizabeth and Kyle. Each of us stands to make enough to reshape our futures.
The hair on my neck prickles, and I turn in the seat, wondering if someone is watching me. The same two men as before are there, but no one is paying any attention to me.
I turn to the computer, and my heart aches when I glance at some of Jax’s last messages. He died too early. At the age of sixty-eight, he had no reason to suspect he wouldn’t be around for at least a couple more decades. But he was a planner and he did think ahead. He was big on goals and on research. He always had contingency plans. This week is no different.
One of Kyle’s emails asks about the company’s attorney and whether I’d seen the notes on the draft of the acquisition contracts. I have faith that everything is ready to go, but I log out of my account and log into Jax’s company email. The contracts that Kyle wrote about are easy to find. Two months ago, right before Jax died, the lawyer added some notes and questions on the terms. I check Jax’s sent mail to see if the issues were ever addressed. There’s a draft email, but he never had a chance to send it back. Of the emails that he did send during that last week, one with an attachment stands out. The subject line is Baghdad.
Curious, I open it. It was sent to an email address that I don’t recognize. The message simply says, All of them too.
My phone vibrates. I ignore it, realizing it’s Elizabeth.
A shadow moves on top of the stairs. The figure of a large man passes under the lights.
I click on the attachment. It’s a PDF of a news article from two years ago. Certain names are underlined. The article concerns an Iraqi-born billionaire named as a defendant in a $4 billion lawsuit filed in Baghdad on behalf of survivors of Saddam Hussein’s chemical weapons attack in Iraqi Kurdistan on March 16, 1988. The Halabja Massacre. Planes and artillery pounded the city and environs with Sarin and mustard gas. Over five thousand Kurdish civilians killed. More than ten thousand injured. The complaint names five co-defendants, alleging that these men were co-conspirators in the assault.
I’m surprised by the cryptic message and the article. Jax never got involved in politics. He was an engineer and a businessman. He was no politician or historian. I’m curious what this is about. I read on.
The Halabja Massacre was and remains the largest poison gas/chemical weapon attack launched against civilians since World War II. The assault was part of a highly organized, three-year, genocidal campaign called Anfal, during which the Saddam Hussein Regime murdered as many as 180,000 Kurdish civilians, destroyed approximately 4,000 Kurdish villages, and depopulated entire areas of the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
I read the article again. Perplexed, I search for other emails to or from that address. Nothing. I sit back against the cushions. One connection I have with what I’m reading is the date. I was born in 1988.
I think about logging into Jax’s personal email to see if there’s more to this story. I don’t have his password, but that wouldn’t be too hard to figure out.
Before I do, the call to prayer rings out in the crisp night air, forcing me to pay attention. I love hearing the adhan. Five times a day, Muslims in the city halt what they’re doing and pray for a few moments.
I check the time. Ten minutes past ten.
On this rooftop terrace, I can hear it coming from several mosques across this section of the city. The blending of the men’s voices is beautiful and haunting. It stirs my emotions. Adhan means ‘to listen’. I shut the laptop and close my eyes. I drift away from my troubles and listen.
The call ends, and the city sounds edge to the forefront. It seems as if they fall silent for only a moment out of respect. I open my eyes. The two businessmen are gone, and the server is nowhere in sight. I’m alone on the rooftop, except that again I have a sensation of being watched. A line of sweat runs down my spine and chills my skin.
I turn in the seat and see her. The woman in the brown headscarf is here. She is standing twenty feet away from me. My heart drums in my chest.
Shadows from torches on the rooftop create dark stripes across her face. I have to speak to her.
I get up, but my mother’s voice stops me and I turn away.
“I’ve been searching for you everywhere. I called you, but it went to voicemail. I stopped by your room, but you didn’t answer the door. I asked the front desk if you’d left the hotel, but they didn’t know. I was sick with worry.”
“We said goodnight.”
Elizabeth glances around her as if searching for an excuse. “I couldn’t sleep. I figured I’d come and hang out with you. By the way, did you talk to Kyle at all tonight?”
“Never mind Kyle. She’s here.”
“Who’s here?”
“The woman at the airport. The one outside of the hotel. The one on the street by the hamam.”
“Where is she?”
When I look around, she’s gone.
7
Christina
I’m dressed and working on my laptop before the call to pre-dawn Fajr prayer comes in through my open window.
What did people do before the Internet? Without it, how would we know essential things like the “fact” that using a cotton swab can lead to infection and erosion of your skull?
After Autumn’s death, my gynecologist suggested that I see a therapist. What I had gone through was traumatic, and she made me understand that emotionally I needed help. In many ways I was relieved; my life seemed to be coming apart. I didn’t tell Elizabeth or Kyle about the sessions. Neither one of them completely understood what I was facing.
What I’ve learned through therapy since is that grief and depression have similar symptoms. In my case, sadness ebbs and flows, but it never goes away. When I told my doctor I was coming to Istanbul only two months after my daughter was gone, she gave me a prescription for antidepressants. But I didn’t fill it. I was still in a kind of denial.
What happened yesterday, ho
wever, makes me think I should be prepared. I don’t want to do anything that will jeopardize this trip and the role I need to play. I do a quick Google search, and the results ease my mind a little.
Most medicines that require prescriptions in Europe or the US are freely available over the counter in Turkey. Just enter any pharmacy and ask for it by name. Bring your prescription if you have it.
Elizabeth doesn’t know anything about the prescription either. I plan to keep it that way. The front desk people are extremely helpful. They don’t roll their eyes when I ask for the nearest pharmacy. Nothing is said or hinted about yesterday whatsoever.
The place they send me to is toward the Grand Bazaar. They assure me someone at the pharmacy will be able to speak English.
The old Ottoman jail-turned-hotel we’re staying at is growing on me. Maybe it’s the staff’s helpfulness or the dozen places in the gardens or the rooftop terrace, where one can escape to work or hide.
I start along the cobblestone streets through the heart of Sultanahmet, this part of old Istanbul. I’m not in a huge hurry. The sun is rising, its golden glow spreading upward, above the buildings. The area immediately around the hotel is shadowy and quiet. Only a few cars and delivery vans are on the narrow streets, and fewer people are on the narrower sidewalks. Two laborers pass me, pulling hand trucks loaded with boxes.
I pause before an alley between two ancient stone buildings. All along the dark passageway, people are huddled against the walls. Dull gray and brown blankets are their sole possessions. I live in Los Angeles where homelessness is an epidemic. An ache swells in my chest. I know each of them has a story. They had lives before, homes before, families before, children and parents before. They once loved, wanted, dreamed. But they’re lost now, looking for any temporary refuge they can find in this city. In any city.
Close to me, the weathered face of a woman looks up. Beside her, a young girl also lifts her head. She could be the same child I saw yesterday only a few blocks from here. The battered cardboard sign says the same thing. Syrian. Hungry. Help. The large dark eyes are immediately alert. I feel queasy, thinking about the dangers of living on the street.
