Next, Mona was stomping upstairs to her room. The floorboards protested under the weight of her emotions.
Shirin raised her empty glass and flung it with all her might against the wall. Tiny fragments rained on the floor, like sad confetti. Peri flinched but instantly rose to her feet to go and clean.
‘Don’t move,’ Shirin said to Peri. ‘It’s my mess. I’ll get it.’
‘Okay,’ Peri said. She knew Shirin would pick up only the bigger pieces, but the splinters would stay, stuck between floorboards, waiting to cut them someday. ‘I’m going to my room.’
Shirin let out a sigh. ‘Goodnight, Mouse.’
Peri took a few steps, but then lingered, her eyes fixed on Shirin, whose face had suddenly lost its bravado.
‘He warned me it wouldn’t be easy,’ Shirin muttered to herself when she thought she was alone.
‘Who warned you?’ Peri asked.
Shirin lifted her head, her eyelids fluttering in disarray. ‘Nothing,’ she said. There was an edge to her tone that hadn’t been there before. ‘Look, we’ll talk later, okay? I need a bath now. It’s been a long day.’
Unable to sleep, alone in the kitchen, Peri poured herself another glass of wine, her mind whirling. Had she accidentally stumbled on a secret? Shirin’s inadvertent remark niggled at her. Whether by intuition or by reason, she suspected that behind Shirin’s eagerness to move in together, there was a master manipulator: Azur.
She recalled a passage in one of his earlier books where he explored the peculiar idea that people in bitter disagreement and mutual recrimination should be left alone together in a closed space and made to look each other in the eye. A white supremacist prisoner should be put in the same cell with a black prisoner; a jade miner in a room with an environmentalist; a trophy hunter with an endangered-animal conservationist. At the time she had read those lines, she had not given them much thought, but now it all fell into place. She was inside a game, unwittingly playing her part, controlled by some faraway brain.
In dismay, she slipped upstairs. Mona’s bedroom door was closed. From the bathroom at the end of the corridor came the sound of running water. Inside Shirin was humming a tune that sounded faintly familiar, the melody almost haunting.
Peri tiptoed into Shirin’s bedroom. There were cardboard boxes everywhere. Clearly Shirin hadn’t done much to unpack. On one of the larger cartons was written in capital letters: BOOKS. It was open and Peri could see some of the volumes had been placed on the shelf. By the look of things Shirin had tired of the chore, leaving the rest of the box untouched.
Peri rummaged through the contents. It didn’t take her long to find what she was looking for. Title by title, she fished out all of Professor Azur’s backlist. Grabbing the first one, she turned to the title page. It was signed, just as she had expected.
To Sweet Shirin,
Perpetual émigrée, fearless mutineer, philosophical outcast,
The girl who knows how to ask questions and is not afraid of pursuing the answers …
A. Z. Azur
Peri snapped the book shut with a pang of jealousy. Not that she didn’t know Shirin visited the professor regularly, at least twice a week, and that the two of them were close, but it tortured her to see Shirin’s value in his eyes. She checked the other titles only to find out that they, too, were inscribed. The last one she grabbed, Azur’s latest publication, had a longer inscription.
To Shirin, who is unlike her name,
sweet and sharp, like the pomegranates of Persia,
the land of the lion and the sun …
But must come to know, if not to love, what she regards with contempt;
for only in the mirror of the Other,
can one glimpse the face of God.
Love, my dear,
Love thy stepsister …
A. Z. Azur
What stepsister? Peri knew Shirin did not have one – unless, it was a metaphor for ‘the other woman’.
Peri took a breath as the enormity of the set-up dawned on her. Shirin despised religion and religious people. While she laid into all denominations, it was the faith she was brought up in that she criticized most. She was particularly allergic to young Muslim women who covered their heads out of personal choice. ‘The mullahs and the morality police silence us on the outside. But those girls who sincerely believe they must cover themselves so as not to seduce men, they silence us from inside,’ she had once said. The more Peri mulled it over, the more convinced she was that Professor Azur had placed Shirin in a social laboratory as a way of forcing her to interact with her ‘Other’: Mona.
Shaken though she was by the discovery, there was something that troubled Peri even more. Maybe it wasn’t just Mona. She swallowed hard, seeing herself, for the first time, through Shirin’s eyes. Her lack of certainty, her hesitancy, her timidity, her passivity … Qualities someone like Shirin would abhor. Three Muslim women in Oxford: the Sinner, the Believer and the Confused. It wasn’t only Mona who had been selected for this bizarre social experiment. She now understood: the second stepsister was Peri herself.
She put back the book, closed the box, left the room. How she regretted leaving the peace and quiet of her college room and ending up in this house, where their every move would be reported to Professor Azur. She felt like a fly inside a glass jar; warm and safe at first glance, trapped nonetheless.
The Chakras
Istanbul, 2016
‘The retired teacher will be forgotten,’ Adnan said one more time. ‘Nothing shocks us any more. We’ve become desensitized.’
‘But, darling, aren’t you being a bit harsh, what else can we do?’ asked the businesswoman. ‘Otherwise, we’d go mad!’
At these words, the psychic joined in with an impatient toss of his head, ‘Nations have a zodiac sign, like individuals. This country was born on the 29th of October. Scorpio, ruled by Mars and Pluto. Who is Mars? The God of War. Who is Pluto? The God of the Underworld. The planets say it all.’
‘Astrological mumbo-jumbo,’ said the religious newspaper tycoon. ‘What do you mean by “gods” when we all believe in one Allah?’
The psychic straightened his back, looking offended.
‘The entire Middle East has its chakras blocked,’ said the journalist.
‘No wonder,’ the businessman interjected. ‘The only energy they know is oil. Talk about spiritual energy!’
‘So which chakras in your professional opinion need to be opened?’ asked the businesswoman, ignoring her husband’s remark.
‘The fifth,’ came the answer. ‘It is the throat chakra. Stifled thoughts, unexpressed desires. It starts here at the back of the mouth and puts pressure on the oesophagus and stomach.’
A few guests touched their necks.
‘Speaking of which, my throat is dry, I need to open up my chakra,’ said the businessman. ‘Kizim, bring us more whisky.’
The psychic went on, ‘There’s a technique that can be used to unblock a nation’s chakras …’
‘Is it called democracy?’ Peri suggested.
The plastic surgeon checked his watch. ‘Oh, gosh, it’s late. I’d better get going. I’ve got an early flight.’ Although he had settled in Stockholm many moons ago, he often returned to Istanbul, where he had business interests and, according to rumours, a lover young enough to be his daughter.
‘Fine, you’ll disappear and we’ll deal with the mess,’ the PR woman said.
Those who went away in search of better lives in foreign lands were at once envied and belittled. It wasn’t about New York, London or Rome. To those who stayed behind it was the very idea of life elsewhere. They, too, longed for new skies to walk under. Over breakfasts and brunches they made elaborate plans to move abroad – almost always meaning the West. But their plans, like sand castles, slowly eroded with the rising tide of familiarity. Relatives, friends and shared memories anchored them. Little by little, they forgot their yearnings for another place – until the day they ran into someone who had actually done
what they had once wished to do. That’s when resentment kicked in.
The plastic surgeon sensed the mood against him. He said, ‘Sweden isn’t paradise either.’
A feeble line of reasoning that convinced no one. Come tomorrow he would travel back to Europe and leave them alone with their problems. He would eat cinnamon buns while they would be dealing with regional instability, political turbulence and bombs.
Peri smiled at him in sympathy. ‘Not easy to stay, not easy to leave.’
She wanted to explain that those who stayed behind, despite the hardships, enjoyed lasting friendships and wider social networks, while the ones who migrated for good remained incomplete, jigsaw puzzles missing a critical piece.
‘Well, how tragic he has to live in the Alps!’ said the journalist’s girlfriend, who, despite her boyfriend’s nudges, was still drinking.
‘The Alps are in Switzerland, not Sweden,’ someone tried to correct her but the journalist’s girlfriend ignored the comment. With her tummy tucked into her tight mini-skirt, she jumped to her feet and pointed a painted, half-chewed fingernail at the plastic surgeon. ‘You lot are deserters! You go and live abroad in comfort … we’re the ones who deal with the extremism and fundamentalism and sexism and …’ She turned around as if looking for another -ism nearby. ‘It’s my freedoms that’re in danger …’
‘Speaking of danger …’ The hostess turned to the psychic. ‘Darling, I must show you the house. Only you can tell me why we’ve had so many freak accidents. First, there was the flood, then the lightning. And did you hear about the ship? Sailed straight into the mansion, like an action movie!’ She glanced at her husband to check if she had forgotten something.
‘The tree,’ said the businessman helpfully.
‘Oh, yes, a tree fell on our roof! Do you think it’s the evil eye?’
‘Sounds like it. Never underestimate the power of envy,’ said the psychic. ‘Did you have the maids’ rooms checked? One of them might have put a curse on you.’
‘You think they would dare? I’ll throw them out in a heartbeat if we find anything suspicious.’ The businesswoman felt her throat as if she couldn’t breathe. ‘Where would you like to start?’
‘The basement. If you are looking for a jinx, always check the darkest corners.’
As the psychic and the hostess brushed past, Peri picked up a vibration. Another second passed before she recognized it was her husband’s phone. She paled – Shirin was calling back.
The House in Jericho
Oxford, 2002
Soon it became clear that they each had a different part of the house as their favourite spot. For Shirin it was the bathroom – more precisely, the freestanding claw-footed bathtub. With candles, bath salts, creams and oils, she turned it into a shrine to self-indulgence. Her evening ritual was to fill the tub to the brim with hot water, into which she added a dizzying mixture of scents. Soaking up to an hour, she would read magazines, listen to music, file her nails, daydream.
Mona’s preferred place was the kitchen. She woke up early, never missing her morning prayer. She performed her ablutions, spread out her silk prayer mat – a gift from her grandmother – and prayed for herself and others, including Shirin, who, Mona believed, was in need of a divine nudge. What the force of that nudge might be, she left to Allah, for He knew best. Afterwards she went downstairs to the kitchen and prepared breakfast for everyone – pancakes, ful mudammas, omelettes.
As for Peri, her special spot was the four-poster bed in her room. Shirin had given her an extra set of Egyptian-cotton bedlinen, as soft as rabbit’s fur, which made Peri even more attached to this item of furniture. She studied here. At nights when she lay on her bed, she would listen to the rustling of the wind in the upper branches of the alder tree outside or the distant coursing of the river. On the opposite wall shadows would sway to a silent rhythm. She saw shapes that reminded her of country maps, imaginary and real; territories for which people had been killed in scores of thousands, blood upon blood. Exhausted by the pace of her imaginings she would fall asleep, soothed with the knowledge that when she woke up the next day the world would still be there, just as it was.
In the mornings while Shirin, a late sleeper, was still in bed, and Mona, an early riser, was praying, Peri would go out for a run. As she urged her body along she would think about Azur. What had he expected when he urged Shirin to bring the three of them together – what was in this for him? The harder she tried to solve this mystery, the stronger was her resentment, rising up from inside, like bile.
Most of the acrimony revolved around the kitchen table, often to the smell of baking bread. Once Shirin stormed out, screaming, she was done with it, but then she returned for dinner. Another time it was Mona who followed the same pattern. Their arguments focused on God, religion, faith, identity and, a few times, sex. Mona believed in remaining a virgin until marriage – a devotion she expected of both herself and her future husband – while Shirin poked fun at the whole idea. As for Peri, who was neither devoted to the notion of virginity nor as comfortable with sexuality as she would have liked, she listened, feeling somewhere in between, as she often did.
Thursday afternoon, when Peri returned to the house in Jericho, she found Mona and Shirin mutely watching a scene of chaos on TV. The camera was jerking around to the sound of wailing sirens, shattered glass, blood on the ground. A synagogue in Tunisia had been attacked by terrorists. A lorry loaded with natural gas and explosives had detonated in front of the building, killing nineteen people.
Biting at the inside of her mouth, Mona said: ‘God, please may it not be a Muslim who did this.’
‘God won’t hear you,’ Shirin said.
Mona gave her an icy stare. When she spoke again the softness had drained from her voice. ‘You … are mocking me!’
‘I’m mocking the futility of your prayer,’ Shirin replied. ‘Do you really think you can change the facts if you plead hard enough? What’s happened has happened.’
The mutual aggravation between Mona and Shirin was growing by the minute. The fight they had that evening was the worst ever.
Peri retreated to her room without dinner, threw herself on to her bed and cupped her hands over her ears as their shouting continued downstairs.
Tomorrow morning, she thought, and hoped, they’ll be ashamed of the things they’ve said to each other.
In all likelihood, however, they would leave it behind – until the next quarrel. Of the three, only Peri would commit to memory their every word, every gesture, every hurt. Since childhood she was a dedicated archivist, a recorder of painful reminiscences. Her memory she treated as a duty, a responsibility that had to be honoured to the very end – even though she sensed that a burden so large could only pull her down someday.
When Peri was little she could understand the language of the wind, read the signs sculpted in half-reaped fields or in the snow falling from acacias, sing with the water flowing from a tap. She even thought that she could one day see God with her own eyes, if only she tried. Once, while walking with her mother, she encountered a hedgehog that had been run over by a car. She insisted on praying for its soul – which appalled Selma. Heaven was a small, confined space reserved for the select few. Animals were not accepted, her mother explained.
‘Who else can’t go to heaven?’ Peri asked.
‘The sinners, the evildoers, those who abandon our religion and swerve from the right path … and those who commit suicide. They won’t even be given a funeral prayer.’
And hedgehogs, apparently. The roadkill was thrown into their rubbish bin. That night Peri slipped out of the house and took the dead creature from the smelly receptacle. She had not been able to find any gloves and when she touched its lifeless body she shivered, as if something had passed from the animal’s corpse into her. She dug a hole with her hands, buried the hedgehog and marked the place with a headstone she’d made out of a wooden ruler. Then she prayed. Gradually, it became a favourite game of hers, choreographing fune
rals. She organized burials for dead bees and withered petals, broken-winged butterflies and toys damaged beyond repair. Those unwelcome in Cennet.
As she grew up, she learned to suppress her oddities, one by one. All her anomalies were pulverized by family, school and society into a dull powder of ordinariness. Save for the baby in the mist. But she always knew that she was different. A strangeness she must do her best to hide; a scar that would remain forever etched on her skin. She put so much effort into being normal that often she had no energy left to be anything else, leaving her with feelings of worthlessness. At some point unbeknownst to her, solitude had stopped being a choice and become a curse instead. An emptiness inside her chest, so profound and so permanent that she imagined it could be compared only with the absence of God. Yes, perhaps that was it. She carried the absence of God within. No wonder it felt so heavy.
The Pawn
Oxford, 2002
Peri wheeled her bicycle across Radcliffe Square with a shoulder bag of books and a bunch of grapes left over from lunch. In front of the Radcliffe Camera, she spotted Troy sitting on a bench with a group of friends, talking animatedly. When he saw Peri, he broke from the group and walked towards her.
‘Hi, Peri. Still reading for Azur?’
‘And you … still spying on him?’
The curling of his lip was affirmation enough. ‘That man shouldn’t be allowed to teach at a respectable institution. You know he doesn’t give a toss about his students? It’s all about his ego.’
‘The students like him.’
‘Yeah, sure. Especially female ones … Your friend, for instance. Shirin.’ His head jerked oddly as he pronounced her name.