Peri glanced around at her dinner companions – a mixed bunch of scholars and students from various disciplines. When she first walked in, she had assumed that all these people, despite their differences, shared the same forte: intelligence. They must be special to be in Azur’s inner circle, she had decided, more knowledgeable and more sensitive than the average. How presumptuous she had been. What they all had in common was that each of them, for one reason or another, was about to celebrate the New Year alone – before Azur had intervened and collected them, like scattered shells on a remote beach.
‘There’s another reason why I should like us to toast our host,’ continued the elderly professor. ‘For playing Bach on repeat. If everyone listened to Bach for ten minutes every day, I can assure you there’d be an increase in the number of believers.’
Azur shook his head. ‘Be careful, John. As you know better than I do, Bach is a theological minefield. It’s true, his music is seen as the sublime instrument of the voice of God. But the more you listen, the less God appears necessary to its creation. You’ll come to understand his works as simply the highest expression of the human spirit. Bach could make you a believer – or a true sceptic.’
Several people laughed.
‘Please help yourselves,’ said Azur, opening his hands.
All at once the guests turned their attention to the food. Three large serving plates stood in the middle of the table. On the first was a pile of steamed beans; on the second, black rice; and on the third, a large turkey roasted golden. And a decanter of ruby-red wine. That was it. There were no dressings or condiments. It was all simple, almost affectedly so. Peri smiled to herself as she thought of her mother. Selma would rather die than invite people to such a modest table. She had told her daughter that the secret of a successful dinner party was ‘making sure you provide two special dishes per person. For four guests, you must have eight; for five, you must have ten.’ Tonight there were twelve people and three dishes. Her mother would have been appalled.
The guests began to serve themselves from each platter, before passing it to the next person. When it was her turn, Peri took generous portions, suddenly aware that she had not eaten all day long.
The nameless blonde leaned into Azur. ‘Did you make all of this yourself?’
Peri perked up. If she had to ask him that, she couldn’t possibly be his wife.
‘Yes, my dear, let’s see how you’ll enjoy it,’ said Azur, and then, addressing everyone, he added, ‘Bon appétit.’
In the dancing candlelight, his eyes were forest-green; the tips of his eyelashes seemed to glow and his lips, which Peri had never dared to examine before, appeared nearly as vivid a colour as the wine he was drinking.
Azur angled his head and looked sideways at Peri through lowered lids, his expression one of mild surprise. She blushed, horrified at the realization that she had been staring at him too long. Immediately, she turned to Darren, grateful for his presence.
Dessert was Christmas plum pudding. Azur poured a splash of brandy over the still warm pudding and lit it with a match. Blue flames burst out all over the surface; they swirled and made merry, before exuding the last sigh of their brief, innocent lives. With a practised hand, Azur sliced the pudding and served everyone a generous piece with custard sauce. The guests, who had fallen silent as they watched the performance, having savoured their first bite, complimented their host on his culinary skills.
‘You should write a cookbook,’ the physics professor suggested. ‘This is delicious. How did you make it?’
‘Well, one learns,’ Azur murmured.
For Peri, those words offered a clue to his private life. He must be single, she deduced. She hoped someone would probe the matter but no one did. Instead, they plunged into a conversation about the invasion of Afghanistan. The energy around the table changed as some of the guests aired discontent with Tony Blair, praising the backbench rebellion in the Labour Party. Just the same, there was a sense of calmness in their tone that Peri found hard to associate with politics. In Turkey, all the political exchanges she had ever witnessed, from those of her father’s friends to her own, were besieged with the three capital R’s: Resentment, Rage and Resignedness. When subjects were heavy, emotions were high and the prospect of things improving slim, style was the first thing to be sacrificed in a conversation. Whereas here they spoke in such a way as to prioritize style over content. So suffused was her mind with cultural comparisons that she lost track of the talk at the table and when she saw everyone looking at her, she didn’t immediately grasp why.
The elderly professor came to her aid. ‘We were just saying, you’ve an interesting country.’
Remembering Shirin’s warning against the word ‘interesting’, Peri glanced at her professor. But Azur, observing her over the rim of his glass, looked curious to hear what she was going to say.
‘What do you think? Will Turkey ever get the chance to be admitted into the EU?’ asked a woman with short white hair spiked into feathery wisps. She was the elderly professor’s wife.
‘Well, I hope so,’ Peri said.
‘Don’t you think it’s culturally … different?’ butted in the blonde.
‘I don’t know what you mean by different,’ Peri said, a battleground opening up in her soul. On the one hand, she wished to speak critically, there being so many things about her country that frustrated her. On the other hand, she wanted these people to like her motherland. A defensiveness descended on her. A sense of responsibility. Never before had she felt as if she were representing a collective entity.
‘So you don’t see religion as an obstacle?’ asked the physics professor. ‘Do you ever worry that Turkey could become like Iran?’
Peri said, ‘There’s that danger. But Iran is a society of memory and tradition. We Turks are good at amnesia.’
‘Which do you think is preferable?’ asked Darren beside her. ‘Remembering or forgetting?’
‘They both have their drawbacks,’ Peri replied without hesitation. ‘But I’d rather forget. The past is a burden. What’s the use of remembering when we can’t change anything?’
‘Only the young have the luxury to forget,’ said the elderly professor.
Peri bowed her head. She had not wanted to sound young. If anything, she had wanted to sound clever and wise. Much to her surprise, however, she noticed Azur nod in agreement. ‘If I had to make a choice, I might have opted out of having a memory too. I can’t wait to get Alzheimer’s.’
The beautiful woman placed her hand on Azur’s. ‘Darling, you don’t mean that.’
Peri averted her eyes. She didn’t know these people; their pasts, their connections, were all beyond her. She could only sense but not catch on to the things left unsaid, the subjects they gently tiptoed around.
Shortly before midnight, as tea and coffee were being served, she excused herself to go to the lavatory. The face she saw in the mirror while washing her hands was that of a young woman who, time and again, failed to be confident and light-hearted. She had always blamed herself for not knowing how to be joyful. Surely she must have done something wrong so as to spawn unbidden unhappiness. But perhaps people who could not pass the Happiness Test were not at fault. Sadness was not a manifestation of laziness or self-pity. Perhaps such people were simply born this way. Struggling to be happier was as futile as struggling to be taller.
On the way out, in the hall, amidst portraits of all kinds, Peri saw a photo that made her stop.
The woman in the picture – high cheekbones, wide-apart eyes, full lips – was naked save for a crimson scarf tied loosely around the waist. Her hair was pulled back into a careless bun, her shoulders pale and shiny, like ornaments made of polished ivory. Her breasts were large and round, the nipples erect in the midst of dark circles; her navel was slightly prominent, and with one hand she held the cloth that covered her legs, ready to let go of it at any moment. The smile on her lips hinted at her pleasure in being photographed. It also said she knew the photographer.
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In a daze, Peri swayed forward as if she had trespassed on a forbidden zone. She stood motionless, paralysed in the moment. Somewhere in the bowels of the house a clock ticked away. A presentiment, both familiar and impossible to get used to. With a surge of trepidation she sensed the presence of the baby in the mist, alarmingly close. There it was, the same round face, trusting eyes, purple stain covering half his face. He was trying to tell her something – about the woman in the picture. Sadness. There was so much of it around here – intense, untouched. Peri could not tell whether she had stumbled upon an old sorrow or whether she herself had brought it along.
‘Go away!’ Peri whispered in horror. She had no patience for him. Not now. Not here.
The baby in the mist pouted.
‘What are you trying to tell me? You can’t come here, this place –’
A voice cut her off. ‘Who are you talking to, Peri?’
She turned around to find Azur standing behind her. His eyes glimmering with golden sparks gave nothing way.
‘I was just talking to myself … and looking at her,’ Peri said, pointing at the wall. Sneaking a sideways glance, she was relieved to see the baby in the mist had started to dissolve, a coil of steam in the air.
‘My wife,’ Azur said.
‘Your wife?’
‘She died four years ago.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’
‘Again?’ he asked, his gaze jumping from the woman in the photograph to the one in front of him. ‘You really must stop …’
‘Her features are Middle Eastern,’ Peri quickly added to deflect his criticism.
‘Yes, her father was Algerian. Berbers, like St Augustine.’
‘St Augustine was a Berber? But he was a Christian.’
Azur looked at her, taking in her youth. ‘History is vast. Berbers were Jewish, Christian, even pagan once. And Muslims. The past is full of encounters that may seem bizarre to us today but made perfect sense back then.’
The words, though they had nothing to do with her, opened up a vacuum inside Peri, an unexplored space. In her experience, not only the past but the present, too, was full of encounters that defied reason.
‘You look pale,’ he said.
That was when she opened up to him. As they stood there listening to the sounds of the guests close by, Peri told her professor that ever since she was a child, for a reason she could not fathom, she had had ‘surreal experiences’. She had shared this with her father, who had dismissed it as ‘superstition’ and with her mother, who had feared she was possessed by a jinni. Since then she had shared it with no one, lest they judge her too.
Azur listened, a look of wonder spreading across his face. ‘I can’t comment on your surreal experience. But I can tell you one thing with conviction: don’t be afraid of being different. You are very special.’
A burst of excited voices from the drawing room interrupted them.
‘It must be midnight!’ said Azur, raking his fingers through his hair. ‘Let’s continue this later. We must! Come to my rooms.’
He moved towards her and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘Happy New Year!’
Then off he went to kiss the others.
‘Happy New Year, Professor!’ Peri murmured to his back, his warmth lingering on her skin.
Come to my rooms. Surely this was no ordinary remark. Unbidden excitement rushed through her. He had said she was special – very special. He could see through her like no one else could. As she stood there, unmoving, contemplating, it all became steadily clearer, the final drop before all her expectations, all her hopes, crystallized. By the time she returned to the celebration, she had convinced herself that her professor, too, had feelings for her.
Shortly after midnight the guests began to leave. Only when she stepped into the cold did Peri remember Troy. She threw a nervous glance at the high hedge – there was nothing there save the night.
Everyone seemed to have a car, except for Peri and Darren. The beautiful blonde – a proud teetotaller, in her own words – offered to give them a ride.
It was a short drive back to Oxford, oddly silent after the hubbub of the evening. BBC Radio 4 was broadcasting a programme about the love-letters of Gustave Flaubert. Sensual words filled the car, infusing the listeners with a sense of solitude, a longing for a romance yet to come. Sitting next to the driver, Peri wondered if in the past people had a better understanding of love. She rested her head against the half-frosted window and kept her gaze on the road ahead, patches of which were illuminated under the car’s headlights before being swallowed up by the night. She thought of Azur and the woman in the photograph. What had their sex life been like? She thought about how he smiled when he saw his guests refill their plates; how he cradled his coffee mug in both hands and held it up, enjoying the steam as it caressed his face; how he helped the women with their coats, including her, as he saw everyone off at the end of the night and how different he was from the way he was in the classroom, unintimidating, tender, surprisingly fragile.
Back in Oxford, Peri and Darren got out of the car together. The cutting cold of early evening had been replaced by a crispness in the air. They walked, talking non-stop, until they reached Peri’s temporary lodging. They kissed under a street light. They kissed again in the dark. Feeling tipsy, less from the wine than the intensity of the evening, Peri closed her eyes, excited more by his excitement than her own.
‘May I come upstairs?’ he asked.
She saw the boy he had once been – clutching his mother’s hand as they crossed the street, learning how to treat women with respect. If she said no, she knew he wouldn’t insist. He would go his way, perhaps disappointed but without being rude. The next day if they ran into each other he would be kind to her and she to him.
‘Yes,’ she said, acting on an impulse she didn’t want to question.
She was aware that in the morning she would wake up with a harrowing feeling. Guilt for sleeping with someone who, in truth, she cared little about; guilt for letting down her father and making her mother’s worst fears come true. Even though they would never learn any of this, she would have a bad conscience the next time she talked to them and probably for a long while afterwards. But there was something that bothered her even more. As she returned Darren’s touches and kisses, she was thinking about someone else. Overriding all her emotions was the knowledge that it was her professor she desired.
They said, what one did in the first hours of the New Year would determine what one did the rest of the year. If only that weren’t true. For she had entered the first day of January with complicated emotions pressing on her heart. She hoped that 2002 would not be the year of guilt.
The Lie
Oxford, 2002
Before the holiday ended, Peri took the train down to London, having decided to accept Shirin’s invitation. She watched students and families with small children file onto the coaches. In her compartment – she’d bought a first-class ticket by mistake – were three smartly dressed middle-aged men indistinguishable from each other and a woman of uncertain age, her auburn hair in a perfect coiffure. They eyed Peri coldly, as if to say: You don’t look like you belong in this carriage. Finding her seat number, she buried herself in The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart.
She had taken her God-diary with her, into which she now wrote: The eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me, Eckhart says. If I approach God with rigidity, God approaches me with rigidity. If I see God through Love, God sees me through Love. My eye and God’s eye are One.
The train thrust forward, its steady rhythm pounding in her consciousness. In a little while a steward approached, clattering into the compartment with a trolley from which he distributed plastic trays with breakfast and a variety of drinks. Coming to Peri, he informed her that she had two choices. Menu one: ham & cheese croissant. Menu two: scrambled eggs with pork sausage.
Peri shook her head. ‘Do you have anything else?’
‘Vegeta
rian?’ asked the steward.
‘No, it’s the pork,’ Peri said.
The man’s eyes, dark and sunken in his thinly bearded face, studied her for a brief moment. Peri’s gaze slid to his nametag: Mohammed.
‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said and disappeared.
A minute later Mohammed appeared with a chicken sandwich. He gave it to Peri, smiling. Only when the man had moved on did it occur to Peri that he might have given her his own food. His lunch, probably. Invisible strands of solidarity threaded among strangers who, upon finding out they shared the same religion or nationality, developed an instant affinity. A camaraderie that manifested itself in the smallest details – a smile, a nod, a sandwich. She felt like an impostor, though. The man seemed to have taken her for a good Muslim, but was she really?
Culturally she was a Muslim, no doubt. Yet the number of prayers she had learned by heart would not exceed the fingers of her hand. She neither practised her religion nor acknowledged, as Shirin did, being a lapsed Muslim. There was something about the word ‘lapsed’ that brought to mind eggs past their sell-by date or butter gone rancid. Her relationship with Islam, whether practising or not, had not expired. Her confusion was a continuing affair. Alive. Perpetual. If she stood anywhere at all, it was with the bewildered. But if she told this to Mohammed, would he want his sandwich back?
When Peri was little, quarrels would erupt in their house every Eid al-Adha. Mensur was against the ritual of sacrificing animals. He believed that money spent on a lamb would be better given to those in need. That way the hungry could fill their stomachs while the sated could pat themselves on the back; and no animals would have to die in the process.
Selma disagreed. There was a reason why God had wanted things to be this way, she said. ‘If only you cared to read the Holy Book, you’d understand.’
‘I read it,’ Mensur said. ‘I mean, that part. It makes no sense.’