The Bastard of Istanbul

SIXTEEN Rose water

"There goes another evil eye. Did you hear that ominous

sound? Crack! Oh it echoed in my heart! That was somebody's evil eye, so jealous and malicious. May Allah protect us all!"

Thus exclaimed Petite-Ma Sunday morning at the breakfast table as a samovar boiled in the corner of the room. As Sultan the Fifth purred under the table waiting to be fed another chunk of feta cheese, and the candidate who had been fired on this week's Turkish version of The Apprentice appeared on TV in an exclusive interview announcing what had gone wrong and why he shouldn't have been fired, a tea glass cracked in Asya's hands. So unexpectedly did this happened that it gave her a jolt. All she knew was that she had as usual filled up half the tea glass with black, brewed tea, poured hot water to the brim, and then, just when she was about to take a sip, heard a crack. The glass fractured from top to bottom in a zigzag, like an ominous rift appearing on the face of the earth from a violent earthquake. In a flash, the tea inside the glass started to leak out and a dark brown puddle formed on the lacework tablecloth.

"Is there an evil eye on you?" Auntie Feride said, peering at Asya suspiciously.

"Evil eye on me?" Asya laughed bitterly. "I'll bet there is! Isn't everyone in this city jealous of my beauty?"

"There was an article in today's newspaper about an eighteenyear-old who dropped on his knees and died while crossing the street. I think it might have been the evil eye," Auntie Feride said with an air of genuine fear.

"Thanks for the morale boost," Asya said. But her grin quickly turned into a frown when she noticed what her crazy aunt was now gaping at: the snowman and snowwoman shakers. Just yesterday Asya had hidden them in a cupboard with the hope that nobody would find them for at least a month. And there they were on the table again. The ceramic pair was not only shoddy and kitschyand regrettably durable-but also so alike that it was hard to tell which one was the pepper, which the salt.

"I wish Petite-Ma was feeling better, she could have poured some lead for you," Auntie Banu remarked with as vexed a look as Asya'had ever seen on her face. Though indisputably the most experienced in the house with respect to the crepuscular and the paranormal, Auntie Banu was not authorized to pour lead since that required being initiated by a practitioner, a right she had been denied in the past.

Oddly enough, almost ten years ago, when she was still in the earlier stages of Alzheimer's and had decided that the time was ripe to choose the next woman in the family to hand over the secret of lead pouring, Petite-Ma picked out as her successor not Auntie Banu, as everyone had rightly expected, but the all-time champion agnostic Auntie Zeliha-a decision which back then had caused considerable turmoil in the family.

"Are you kidding?" Auntie Zeliha remarked upon hearing the old woman's decision. "I can't pour lead, I am not even a believer. I'm an agnostic!"

"I don't know what that word means, but I can tell it is no good." Petite-Ma snorted. "You've got the talent. Learn the secret."

"Why me?" Auntie Zeliha asked while forcing herself to consider the possibility. "Why don't you choose my eldest sister? Banu will be more than happy to learn the secret. I am the last person you should teach magic to."

"This has nothing to do with magic. The Qur'an forbids us to practice magic!" Petite-Ma retorted, looking slightly affronted. "You are the right person. You have the determination and spirit and fury."

"Fury? But what do you need fury for? I could have been the perfect candidate if this were about hurling obscenities at obnoxious people, but I doubt I would be of any use when it comes to helping others." Auntie Zeliha broke into a grin.

"Do not underestimate the good in you," Petite-Ma replied.

It was then that Auntie Zeliha unleashed a remark to end the subject once and for all. "I am not the right person for this task. I might be a confused agnostic, but at least I've got the balls to stay one!"

"Wash your mouth out with soap!" Grandma Gulsum flashed a scowl, overhearing the discussion.

But Auntie Zeliha entirely avoided the subject after that. Half of her family was staunchly secularist Kemalist, the other half, practicing Muslim. While the two sides constantly conflicted but also managed to coexist under the same roof, paranormality, crosscutting ideological divisions, was deemed to be as normal in their lives as consuming bread and water on a daily basis. This being the general framework, Auntie Zeliha, for her part, had chosen to spurn both sides equally.

Consequently, after all these years, Petite-Ma remained the one and only lead pourer in the Kazanci domicile. Lately she felt obliged to stop the practice, however, when one day she found herself with a blazing hot pan of melted lead that she didn't know what to do with. "Why are you handing me a boiling pan?" she asked in visible panic. They had gently taken the pan from her and, ever since then, never entrusted her withh the task. But now that the topic had come up once again, all heads turned toward the old woman to see if she was following the conversation.

Being the object of all the attention at the breakfast table, PetiteMa raised her head and looked curiously back at her family, while continuing to chew loudly on a piece of sucuk. She gulped down her bite, belched, and just when she seemed to be slipping off into her own world once again, shocked everyone with the clarity of her memory.

"Asya, my dear, I will pour lead for you and crack whatever evil eye might have clustered around you."

"Thank you, Petite-Ma." Asya smiled.

When Asya was a young girl, Petite-Ma had on a regular basis poured melted lead to ward off the evil eye around her. The truth is, given the weedy toddler that she once was, Asya seemed in need of a little boost at the onset of her mortal life. For some reason she used to frequently trip over and fall down, face-first, cutting her bottom lip each time. Suspecting the evil eye, instead of the toddler's yet unbalanced steps, they would hand her to Petite-Ma.

At first the ceremony had been a fun game for Asya, amusing and exciting, and also somewhat gratifying since she was flattered to be at the center of so much attention. She remembered taking great pleasure in every paranormal feat as a child, back when she was still young enough to have faith, not necessarily in magic, but in her family's ability to command destiny. She used to enjoy every detail of the ritual: sitting cross-legged on the prettiest rug in the house while a blanket would be stretched above her head, feeling protected and well hidden inside this peculiar tent, listening to the prayers uttered from all sides, and finally, that sizzling sound, like a shriek, the sound of Petite-Ma pouring melted lead into a pan full of water, as she kept repeating: "Elemtereft~ kem gozlere ~i~. Goz edenin gozune kizgin fi~. "

The lead would quickly solidify into ever-changing shapes. If there happened to be some evil eye in the vicinity, there would always materialize a hole in the lead in the shape of an eye. To this day Asya didn't remember an occasion where there wasn't one.

When all had been said and done, even though Asya had grown up watching Auntie Banu read coffee cups and Petite-Ma ward off the evil eye, she had eventually inherited her mother's skeptical agnosticism. She had deduced that it all boiled down to a matter of rendition. If you were looking for purple unicorns, it wouldn't take you long to start seeing them everywhere. In a similar vein, if there ever was a rapport between divinatory material-be it coffee cups or poured lead-and the process of interpretation, it ran no deeper than that between the desert and a desert moon. Though the latter needed the former as background scenery, it undoubtedly had an autonomous existence of its own. A desert moon existed outside the desert. Likewise, what the human eye saw in a piece of gray lead could not be reduced to the shape that materialized there. If you looked long and devotedly enough, you could even come across a purple unicorn there.

But despite her lingering disbelief, now that Petite-Ma remembered the routine, Asya did not intend to object. Her affection for Petite-Ma was too profound to turn the offer down. "All right." She shrugged. She was also confident that the old woman would probably forget the issue in a matter of minutes. "After breakfast you will pour lead for me, like in the old days."

The door of the bathroom downstairs opened just then and Armanoush joined them, looking sleepless and worn out, despondency showing in her beautiful eyes. This was a different Armanoush, barely connected with the world around her and somehow older. She walked in slowly and cautiously.

"We are very sorry for the loss of your grandma," Auntie Zeliha said after a brief silence. "You have our most heartfelt condolences."

"Thank you," Armanoush replied, avoiding everyone's eyes. She grabbed an empty chair and sat between Asya and Auntie Banu. Asya poured tea into her glass, while Auntie Banu served her eggs and cheese and homemade apricot marmalade. They also gave her the eighth simit, not having broken the habit of buying eight simits from a street vendor every Sunday morning.

Yet Armanoush looked at the food indifferently. She stirred her tea distractedly for a few seconds, and then turned to Auntie Zeliha and asked, "Can I come to the airport with you to pick up my mother?"

"Sure, we will go there together," Auntie Zeliha said, and translated her words to the rest.

"I am coming too," Grandma Gulsum interjected.

"Okay, Mom, we'll all go there together," Auntie Zeliha said.

Asya blurted out: "I am coming too."

"No, miss, you stay here," Auntie Zeliha responded with a tone of finality. "You stay and have your lead poured."

Asya stared at her as if to say: What the hell was that? Why was she left out? If there ever was any degree of democracy and freedom of speech in this house, it was reserved for everyone but her. When it came to matters about her, the domestic regime automatically metamorphosed into sheer totalitarianism. Asya sighed with a look that bordered on despair. Then, without knowing why, but somehow goaded by a sudden urge to put pepper in her food, she grabbed the ceramic shakers. A fleeting uncertainty crossed her face as she dismissed the ugly snowman and grabbed the ugly snowwoman, and with that, sprinkled way too much salt on the last bites of her scrambled egg.

During the rest of the breakfast Asya remained remote and reserved. Watching her from aside, Auntie Banu rose to her feet after a while and asked, her voice sopping with compassion, "Why don't you and I go out shopping, sweetheart? We can leave after breakfast and be back in two hours. It'll be fun!"

"But first-" Auntie Banu perked up in midsentenc e-" come and help me in the kitchen to dole out the ashore."

Asya nodded her head in surrender. What the hell? she thought. What the hell…?

The kitchen smelled like a popular diner might on a busy weekend afternoon. The scent of cinnamon pungently outweighed all others. Asya took a scoop and started to dole out ashore from a huge pot into small glass bowls, one and a half scoops in each. She wondered why Auntie Zeliha didn't want to take her along to the airport. There certainly was room in the car. It crossed her mind that perhaps Auntie Zeliha was trying to keep her away from the visitors. Asya had noticed that her mother was not thrilled with the news of Mustafa's return after twenty years.

"Can I help you?"

When she turned around she spotted Armanoush standing, watching her.

"Sure, why not? Thanks." Asya gave her a bowl of slivered almonds. "Would you sprinkle a few of these into each bowl?"

For the following ten minutes they worked side by side as they exchanged brief, poignant words about Grandma Shushan.

"I came to Istanbul because I thought if I made a journey on my own into my grandmother's city, I could better understand my family heritage and where I stood in life. I guess I wanted to meet Turks to better absorb what it means to be an Armenian. This whole trip was an attempt to connect with my grandma's past. I was going to tell her that we looked for her house… and now she's gone…." Armanoush began to cry. "I didn't even have the chance to see her one last time."

Asya gave Armanoush a hug, though clumsily, not being used to showing love and compassion. "I'm so sorry for your loss," she said. "Beforee you leave Istanbul, you and I can go hunt for other reminiscences from your grandma's past. We can go to that place again and talk to other people, see if we can find anything."

Armanoush shook her head. "I appreciate that, but the truth is, once my mother is here, it'll be hard to go around alone. She's very overprotective."

They got quiet hearing footsteps behind them. It was Auntie Banu, coming to check how they were doing. She watched them decorate the desserts for a while. "Does Armanoush know the tale of the ashure?" she asked, smiling, not so much a question as an introduction to a narrative.

As the two young women worked together, cracking pomegranates and sprinkling cinnamon powder and slivered almonds on dozens of ashure bowls lined up on the counter, Auntie $anu began.

"Once there was, once there wasn't, in a land not so far away, the ways of the human beings were despicable and the times were bad. After watching this wretchedness for long enough, Allah finally sent a messenger, Noah, to correct the people's ways and to give them a chance to repent. But when Noah opened his mouth to preach the truth, nobody listened to him and his words were interrupted by curses. They called him names: crazy, lunatic, erratic…."

Asya cast an amused look at her aunt, knowing how to get to her: "But more than anyone else it was the betrayal of his wife that devastated Noah, right Auntie? Didn't Noah's wife join the ranks of the pagans?"

"Indeed she did, that she-snake in the grass!" Auntie Banu replied, torn between narrating a religious story fittingly, and peppering it with a few remarks of her own.

"Noah tried hard to convince his wife and his people for eight hundred years…. And don't ask me how come it took him that long," Auntie Banu counseled. "Because time is a drop in the ocean, and you cannot measure off one drop against another to see which one is bigger, which one smaller. Just like that, Noah spent eight hundred years praying for his people, trying to bring them to the right path. One day God sent him the Angel Gabriel. `Build a ship,' the angel whispered, `and take a pair of each species.'… "

Translating a story that needed no translation, Asya's voice dropped a notch, for this happened to be the part she liked least.

"Eventually, in Noah's ark there were good people of all faiths," Auntie Banu continued. "David was there; so were Moses, Solomon, Jesus, and peace be upon him, Mohammed. Thus equipped, they embarked and started to wait.

"Soon the flood came. Allah commanded: `O sky! Now is the time! Let your water pour down. Do not hold yourself back anymore. Send them your water and wrath!' He then commanded the earth: `O earth, holdd your water, do not absorb it. The water, rose so quickly no one outside the arc could survive."'

Now the translator's voice rose, for this happened to be Asya's favorite part. She liked to visualize the flood in her mind's eye, washing away villages and civilizations, as well as all the unwanted memories of the past.

"For days on end they sailed and sailed, it was all water everywhere. Soon food became scarce. There wasn't food enough to make a meal. So Noah ordered: `Bring whatever you have.' And they did, animals and humans, insects and birds, people of different faiths, they brought whatever little they had left. They cooked all the ingredients together and thus concocted a huge pot of ashure." Auntie Banu proudly smiled at the pot on the stove as if it were the same as the one in the legend. "That is the story of this dessert."

According to Auntie Banu every significant event in world history had taken place on the day of ashure. It was on this day that Allah had accepted Adam's repentance. So was Yunus released by the dolphin that had swallowed him, Rumi encountered by Shams, Jesus taken to the heavens, and Moses given the Ten Commandments.

"Ask Armanoush to tell us the most important date for the Armenians," Auntie Banu remarked, thinking there was a good chance it could be this very same day.

As soon as the question was translated, Armanoush replied, "The genocide."

"I don't think that suits your pattern." Asya smiled at her aunt, skipping the translation.

It was then that Auntie Zeliha appeared in the kitchen armed with her purse. "All right airport passengers, it's time to go!"

"I'm coming with you." Asya dropped the scoop on the counter.

"We've talked about this," Auntie Zeliha responded indifferently. It didn't quite sound like her. A husky, scary tinge infiltrated her tone, as if someone else were speaking but using her mouth. "You stay at home, miss," decreed the stranger.

What upset Asya most was the fact that she couldn't read Auntie Zeliha's expression. She must have done something wrong to upset her mother, but she had no idea what it could be, unless, of course, it was her very existence.

"What have I done to her this time?" Asya lifted her hands in despair when Auntie Zeliha and Armanoush had gone.

"Nothing, my dear; she loves you so," Auntie Banu muttered. "You stay with me and the djinn. We'll all finish decorating the ashure and then go shopping."

But Asya didn't feel like going shopping. With a sigh she grabbed a handful of pomegranate seeds to sprinkle on the stillundecorated bowls to the side. She scattered the seeds evenly, as if leaving behind a trail of marks to guide some star-crossed fable child homeward. It occurred to her that pomegranate seeds could have been tiny, precious rubies in another life.

"Auntie." She turned to her eldest aunt. "What happened to that golden brooch that you had? The pomegranate brooch, remember? Where is it?"

Auntie Banu paled as Mr. Bitter on her left shoulder whispered into her ear: "When do we remember the things we remember? Why do we ask the things we ask?"

Noah's flood, terrifying though it was, started gently, inaudibly, with a few drops of rain. Sporadic drops, heralding the catastrophe to come, a message noticed by no one. There were dark, gloomy clouds clustered in the sky, so gray and heavy, as if loaded with molten lead full of evil eyes. Each hole in each cloud was an unblinking celestial eye that shed a tear for each sin committed on earth.

But the day Auntie Zeliha was raped was not a rainy day. As a matter of fact, there was not even a single cloud in the bright blue sky. She remembered the sky on that ill-omened day for years and years to come, not because she had turned her eyes up toward the heavens to pray or beg Allah for help, but because during the struggle there came a time when her head was hanging over the bed, and while unable to budge under his weight, unable to fight him back anymore, her gaze had inadvertently locked on to the sky, only to catch sight of a commercial balloon slowly floating by. The balloon was orange and black, and on it was stenciled in huge letters:

KODAK.

Zeliha shivered at the thought of a colossal camera taking pictures of everything happening down here on earth at that moment in time. A Polaroid camera taking a snapshot of a rape inside a room in a konak in Istanbul.

She had been alone in her room since late morning, enjoying the solitude, which was a rare occasion in their household. When her father had been alive, he wouldn't permit anyone to close the doors of their rooms. Privacy meant suspicious activity; everything had to be visible, in the open. The only place where you could lock the door was the bathroom, and even there someone would knock on the door if you lingered inside for too long. It was only after her father's death that Zeliha was able to close her door and retreat into herself. Neither her sisters nor her mother recognized her need to shut off from the world. From time to time Zeliha fantasized how fabulous it would be to move out and have a place of her own.

Early this morning the Kazanci women had left home to visit the grave of Levent Kazancl, but Zeliha had excused herself. She didn't want to go to the cemetery with the whole family. She'd rather go there alone, sit on the dusty ground, and ask her father several questions he had left unanswered in his lifetime. Why did he always have to be so harsh and unloving toward his own flesh and blood? Zeliha wanted to know. She also wanted to ask him if he had any idea how much his ghost still haunted them-to this day they couldn't help but lower their voice sometimes during the day, afraid of disturbing Daddy with their presence. Levent Kazanci didn't like noise, especially children's clamor. As toddlers, they had to talk in whispers. Being a Kazanci child first and foremost meant learning the meaning of dad, not as in "Daddy" but as in "DAD": Deliberate Ache Deferment. The principle of DAD was applied to every moment of their lives. If a child happened to trip and cut herself in a room next to his, for instance, she would hold in her wail, press her hand tightly on the wound, tiptoe downstairs into the kitchen or into the garden, make sure she was far enough away not to be heard, and only then, only there, let loose a painful cry. Underlying it all was an alluring but never-realized expectationthat if you behaved correctly, Father wouldn't get angry.

Every evening when their father returned from work, the children would assemble in front of the table before dinner, waiting to be inspected. He never asked them directly if they had behaved well during the day. Instead he lined them up like a small regiment, and stared at each of their faces for varying amounts of time: Banu (more worried for her siblings than for herself, always the protective elder sister), Cevriye (biting her lips so as not to cry), Feride (eyes rolling nervously), Mustafa, the only son (hoping to make his way out of this miserable group, still assuming he was his father's favorite), and the youngest, Zeliha (a subtle sourness welling up in her heart). They waited until Father finished his soup, and then gradually asked one or two or three… or sometimes, if they were lucky, all of them at the same time to join thetable.

Zeliha did not mind her father's repeated scoldings or even his regular spankings as much as she did these predinner inspections. It pained her to wait there by the table to be looked over, as if whatever wrong she might have committed during the day was written on her forehead with ink so invisible only Father could read it. "Why can't you ever get anything right?" Levent Kazanci asked each time he read a misdemeanor on one of the children's foreheads and decided to punish them all for it.

It was almost impossible to correlate this Levent Kazanci with the man he developed into once he stepped outside the house. Anyone who ran into him outside the konak would have taken him for an icon of reliability, considerateness, togetherness, and, righteousness, the kind of man each one of his daughters' closest friends dreamed of marrying one day. Inside the house, however, his kindness was reserved for strangers alone. Just like he took his shoes off as soon as he entered the house and put on his slippers, just as naturally he transformed from a gentle bureaucrat to an authoritarian father. Petite-Ma once said the reason why he was so strict with his children was because he had suffered as a child, having been abandoned by his own mother.

Sometimes Zeliha couldn't help but think it had been fortunate that her father died so early, like all other males in their ancestry. A man as dominant as Levent Kazanci would have probably not enjoyed his old age, becoming weak and ill and in need of his children's mercy.

If she went to her father's grave, Zeliha knew she would want to talk to him, and if she talked to him, she might cry, cracking like a tea glass under an evil eye. But even the thought of crying in front of others was enough to repel her. Recently she had promised herself she would never become one of those weepy women and that whenever she needed to shed tears, she would do it alone. Hence, on that rainless day twenty years ago, Zeliha had chosen to stay at home.

She had spent most of the day lying in bed, browsing through magazines and daydreaming. Next to the bed stood a razor blade she shaved her legs with and a bottle of rosewater lotion she had applied afterward to soothe her skin. If her mother had seen this, she would have been extremely upset. Mother believed women should wax all their bodily hair but never shave. Shaving was for men only. Waxing was a womanly collective ritual. Twice a month the Kazanci women gathered in the living room to wax their legs. First they melted a clump of wax on the stove, which gave off a sweet smell like candy. Then they all sat on the carpet and applied the hot, sticky substance to their legs, chatting all the while. When the wax stiffened they peeled it off. Sometimes they all went to the local hamam and waxed their legs there on the huge marble slab under the steam. Zeliha hated the hamam, that all-women space, just as she hated the ritual of waxing. She preferred to shave with a razor; it was quick, simple, and private.

Zeliha dangled her legs over the bed and checked herself in the mirror across the way. She put some more lotion in her palm and as she slowly smeared the lotion on her skin, she studied her body carefully, admiringly. She was cognizant of her beauty and did not try to conceal it. Mother said beautiful women had to be twice as modest and careful with men. Zeliha thought that was sheer claptrap from a woman who had never been beautiful herself.

Languidly, Zeliha walked across the room and put a cassette into the tape player. It was an alla turca album by one of her favorite singers, a transsexual with a divine voice. The singer had started her career as a man, playing the hero in melodramatic movies; eventually he had undergone surgery to become a woman. She always wore flamboyant costumes topped with glittery accessories and lots of jewels, and so would Zeliha, if she had that much money. Zeliha adored her and had all of her albums. It was time the singer made a new album but she had recently been banned by the military, which was still controlling the country although it had been three years since the coup d'etat. As to why the generals didn't like the idea of a transsexual singer on stage, Zeliha had a theory.

"It's because they feel threatened by her presence." She winked at Pasha the Third, who was curled on the bed like a heavy cushion of pure white fur, watching her with two narrow slits of brilliant green eyes. "Her voice is so celestial and her costumes so ostentatious, I am sure they are worried that when she appears on TV, nobody will listen to the generals with their husky voices and frog green uniforms. Can you imagine? What could be worse than a military takeover? A military takeover that goes unnoticed!"

It was then that there was a knock on the door.

"Are you talking to yourself, silly?" Mustafa exclaimed, poking his head inside. "Turn that awful music down!"

His hazel eyes glittering with the fervor of youth, his dark hair overly brilliantined and combed back, he could be called handsome if it weren't for the tic he had developed Allah knows when. He had the habit of tilting his head to the right when speaking, a brusque, mechanical movement that intensified when he was especially nervous or around strangers. Sometimes others mistook this tic for shyness, but Zeliha thought it was nothing but a sign of sheer insecurity.

Propping herself up on one elbow, she shrugged. "I can listen to whatever I want, the way I want."

But instead of quarreling with her or slamming the door shut behind him, as he had done numerous times before, he paused, as if distracted by a thought. "Why do you wear these short skirts?"

The question was so unexpected Zeliha looked at him stunned, only now detecting the hazy veil in his stare. This year more than ever, she thought, he has been working himself into a jerk. She uttered the last word aloud: "Jerk!"

Pretending not to hear that, Mustafa scanned the room. "Is that my razor blade over there?"

"Yes," Zeliha confessed. "I was going to put it back."

"What did you do with my razor blade?"

"That's none of your business," she said, although with some

hesitation.

"None of my business?" his brow deepened further. "You sneak into my room, steal my razor, shave your legs so that you can show them to all the men in the neighborhood, and then tell me it's none of my business. Well, I'll tell you what. You are damn wrong, miss! It is my business to make sure that you behave."

Zeliha's eyes brightened a little. "Why don't you go and busy yourself with something else? Go and masturbate!" she snapped.

Mustafa blushed. He looked at his sister with venom in his eyes.

It had become clear recently that he had trouble relating to women. Even though he had grown up among women of all age groups and was used to being the center of their attention, his experience with the opposite sex still lagged dramatically behind his male peers. Though twenty by now, Mustafa felt like he was still stuck in that dangerous threshold between boyhood and manhood. He could neither return to the former nor leap into the latter. All he knew about the threshold was that it unnerved him and all he knew about being unnerved was that he didn't like it. He abhorred the carnal cravings of his body, and yet at the same time he was lured to them. In the past he had succeeded in holding his impulses back, unlike the other boys in his class, who would masturbate continually. Between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, he had managed to suppress what he named "it," managed not to masturbate. But last year, after failing his college entrance exam, years of selfcastigation and self-loathing had provoked a backlash in him and the urge had come back even stronger, in the form of IT.

IT came upon him everywhere, any time of the day. In the bathroom, in the basement, in the toilet, under the bedsheet, in the living room, and once in a while, when he sneaked into his youngest sister's room when there was no one around, in her bed, on her chair, by her desk…. Like a capricious patriarch, IT demanded absolute obedience. No matter how much he obeyed, Mustafa would never use his right hand. The right hand was reserved for clean things, clean and consecrated. It was with his right hand that he'd touch the Qur'an, hold a rosary, and open closed doors. It was with his right hand that he would take the old people's hands to kiss. As blessed as the right hand was, the left hand was reserved for the abominable. He could masturbate with his left hand only.

Once he had a dream where he masturbated in front of his father. There was no expression on his father's face; he just watched from his place at the dinner table.

The last time Mustafa had seen his father stare at him like that he was eight and being circumcised. He remembered that miserable boy, lying in a huge, showy satin bed with presents all around, waiting to have it cut, surrounded by relatives and neighbors, some chatting, some eating, some dancing, while others were busy teasing him; seventy people there to celebrate his initiation from boyhood to manhood. It was on that day, right after the circumcision, right when he had let out an awful cry, that Father approached him, kissed him on the cheek, and whispered in his ear: "Did you ever see me cry, my son?" Mustafa shook his head. No, nobody had ever seen Father cry. "Did you ever see your mom cry, my son?" Mustafa nodded heartily. Mom cried all the time. "Good." Levent Kazanci smiled gently at his son. "Now that you are a man, behave like a man."

Whenever he masturbated he would never dare pull his pants down fully, not only out of fear of getting caught by someone in the house, but because he was irritated by the ghost of his father still whispering in his ears that same sentence over and over again. Suddenly in the past year his body had prevailed over not only his will but also his father's inspecting gaze. Like some contagious diseasefor he was sure this had to be some sort of a disease-he started masturbating at all hours of the day and night. Stop it. Can't stop it. Stop it. Can't stop it. In dreams he would see himself caught by his parents while in the act. They would ram against the door, break it open, and bust him red-handed. Amid screams and wails, Mom would kiss and pat him on the back, while Father would spit on him and spank him hard. Where Father would leave bruises, Mom would rub in a_speck of ashure, as if the dessert was some sort of an ointment. He woke up disgusted and shivering each time, sweat beaded on his forehead, and to calm down he would masturbate.

Zeliha knew none of this when she scoffed at him.

"You have no shame," Mustafa said. "You don't know how to talk to your elders. You don't care when men whistle at you on the streets. You dress like a whore and then expect respect?"

Zeliha broke into a scornful smile. "What's the matter? Or are you scared of whores?"

Mustafa just looked at her.

A month ago he had discovered the most infamous street in Istanbul. He could have gone to other places, where he could have found less inexpensive, less shoddy, and less disgraceful sex, but he deliberately went there-the cruder and the uglier the better. Dingy houses lined side by side, the smells and the stains and the lewd jokes men cracked less because they were humorous than because they needed a laugh; prostitutes in each room on every floor, prostitutes who perhaps never refused your money but all the same would disparage your performance. He had returned from there feeling filthy and weak.

"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 the 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 irrepressible. 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.

Indeed it was a boy, a boy born into harrowing times.

"May Allah bless my son with longer life than any man in this family has ever had," Riza Selim Kazanci said when the midwife handed him the baby. He then put his lips to the baby's right ear and announced to him the name he'd carry hereafter: "You will be named Levon."

Honoring the master from whom he had learned the art of cauldron making was not the only incentive behind this nominal choice. By naming their son Levon, he was also hoping it would be a favor to his wife for having converted to Islam.

Thus he chose the name Levon and like a good Muslim repeated it thrice: "Levon! Levon! Levon!"

Shermin Kazanci, in the meantime, remained as silent as a displaced stone.

It wouldn't take long for the triple echo to boomerang back to them in the form of a negative question. "Levon? What kind of a Muslim name is that? No Muslim boy can be named that!" the midwife balked aloud.

"Ours will," Selim Kazanci rasped in return, a defense he would repeat each time. "I made up my mind. Levon it shall be!"

But when the time came to take the baby to the Population Registrar, he softened.

"What is the boy's name?" the lanky, edgy-looking clerk asked without lifting his head from over a mammoth, clothbound notebook with a maroon spine.

"Levon Kazancl"

The officer lifted his reading glasses to the bridge of his nose and took a long look at Riza Selim Kazanci for the first time. "Kazanci is indeed a fine surname, but what kind of a Muslim name is Levon?"

"It is not a Muslim name; it was a good man's name nevertheless," Riza Selim Kazanci replied tensely.

"Sir," the officer raised his voice a notch, sounding selfimportant and knowing it. "I know what an influential family the Kazancis are. A name like Levon will not serve you well. If we write down this name, this boy of yours might have problems in the future. Everyone will assume that he is Christian, although he is a hundred percent Muslim…. Or am I mistaken? Is he not Muslim?"

"He sure is," Riza Selim immediately corrected. "Elhamdulillah. " For a fleeting moment it occurred to him to confide in the clerk that the boy's mother was an Armenian orphan converted to Islam and this would be a gesture to her, but something inside told him to keep this information to himself.

"Well, then, with all due respect to the good man you want to name this child after, let's make a slight change. Make it something akin to Levon, if you so wish, but choose a Muslim name this time. How about Levent?" The clerk then added kindly, too kindly for the harshness of the statement he was about to make: "Otherwise, I am afraid I will have to refuse to register him."

And so it was Levent Kazanci; the boy born upon the ashes of a past still smoldering; the boy no one knew his father had once wanted to name Levon; the boy who would one day be abandoned by his mother and grow up sullen and bitter; the boy who would be a terrible father to his own children….

Were it not for the pomegranate brooch, could Shermin Kazanci have ever found the urge to leave her husband and son? It is hard to say. With them she had started a family and a new life with only one direction for it to go in. For her to have a future, she had to become a woman with no past. Her childhood identity was nothing more than morsels of memory, like crumbs of bread she had scattered behind for some bird to nibble on, since she herself would never be able to return the same way back home. Though even the dearest memories of her childhood eventually vanished, the brooch remained vividly ingrained in her mind. And years later when a man from America appeared at her door, it would be this very brooch that helped her to fathom that the stranger was none other than her own brother.

Yervant Stamboulian appeared at her door with dark, bright eyes set off by black, bushy eyebrows, a sharp nose, and a thick mustache that grew to his chin, making him look like he was smiling even when doleful. With a trembling voice and in words that were lacking to him, he announced who he was and then told her, half in Turkish, half in Armenian, that he had come all the way from America to find her. As much as he wanted to hug his sister there and then, he knew she was a married Muslim woman now. He stayed on the doorstep. Around them the Istanbul breeze drew circles and for a second it was as if they were pulled out of time.

At the end of their brief exchange, Yervant Stamboulian gave Shermin Kazanci two things: the golden pomegranate brooch and time to think.

Perplexed and dazed, she closed the door and waited for the revelation to sink in. Beside her on the floor Levent crawled and babbled with unbounded enthusiasm.

She went quickly to her room and hid the brooch inside one of the drawers in her wardrobe. When she came back she found the toddler laughing, having just managed to pull himself up into a standing position. The baby stood like that for a full second, took a step, then another one, and brusquely fell back on his bottom, the delightful fear of his first steps sparkling in his eyes. Suddenly the boy broke into a toothless smile and exclaimed: "Ma-ma!"

The entire house took on a rare, almost ghostly luminosity, as Shermin Kazanci broke out of her daze and repeated to herself: "Ma-ma!" This was the second word that had come out of Levent's mouth, after experimenting with "Da-da" for a while and finally saying "Ba-ba" the day before. Now she realized her son had uttered the word father in Turkish but the word mother in Armenian. Not only had she herself had to unlearn the language once so dear to her, but now she was obliged to teach the same process to her son. She stared at the toddler, baffled and brooding. She didn't want to correct "Ma-ma" by replacing the word with its equivalent in Turkish. The withdrawn but still vivid profiles of her ancestors surfaced. This new name, religion, nationality, family, and self she had acquired had not succeeded in overtaking her true self. The pomegranate brooch whispered her name and it was in Armenian.

Shermin Kazanci cuddled her son and for three full days managed not to think about the brooch.

But on the third day, as if her mind had been reflecting and her heart aching without her knowing it, she ran to the drawer and held the brooch tightly in her palms, feeling its warmth.

Rubies are distinguished gemstones known by their fiery red color. Yet it is not uncommon for them to alter their color, growing darker and darker inside, especially when their owners are in jeopardy. There exists a particular kind of ruby which the connoisseurs call the "Pigeon's Blood"-a precious blood-red ruby with a hint of blue, as if dimmed deep inside. That ruby was the last surviving reminiscence from The Little Lost Pigeon and the Blissful Country.

On the eve of the third day, Shermin Kazanci found a brief moment of solitude after dinner to sneak into her room. Appealing for consolation that no one could grant her, she stared at the Pigeon's Blood.

Only then did she acknowledge what she needed to do.

A week later on a Sunday morning she went to the harbor where her brother awaited her with a pounding heart and two tickets to America. In lieu of a suitcase, Shermin only had a small bag. She left all her possessions behind. As for the pomegranate brooch, she put it in an envelope with a letter explaining her situation and asked her husband two things: to give the brooch to their son as something to remember her by, and to forgive her.

When the plane landed in Istanbul, Rose was exhausted. She moved her swollen feet carefully, fearing they wouldn't fit into her shoes anymore, though she was wearing comfortable orange leather

DKNY footwear. She wondered to herself how on earth these stewardesses with their high heels could stay on their feet through a whole day of flying.

It took Mustafa and Rose half an hour to get their passports stamped, get through customs, pick up their luggage, exchange money, and find a car rental service. Mustafa thought it would be better if they had their own car, rather than using the family car. From a brochure Rose first chose a Grand Cherokee Laredo 4x4, but Mustafa advised something smaller for the crammed streets of Istanbul. They agreed on a Toyota Corolla.

Shortly thereafter, the two of them walked out of the arrivals area, pushing a cart loaded with a matching luggage set. They found a semicircle of strangers waiting outside. Among the group they first spotted Armanoush, smiling and waving; next to her was Grandma Gulsum, her right hand pressed on her heart, about to faint from excitement. A step behind them stood Auntie Zeliha, tall and aloof, wearing a pair of dark purple-tensed sunglasses.