‘Oh, I didn’t know he was married,’ she would say, sobbing. ‘I didn’t know he had a family. He never told me.’
In this version Iskender would not take out the bottle. Instead he would console her. She would give her word never to see Adem again, and even when she turned old and grey, she would honour her promise.
His mind buzzing with such thoughts, Iskender scrutinized the club, and was surprised to see only a handful of people around, most of whom were staff. Too early for the punters. He walked to the bar, which was redolent with a musky-sweet aroma from hundreds of drinks over the years. A large, oval back-mirror with neon lights; a sleek, shiny, wooden countertop. Iskender allowed his finger to move along the scripts and symbols incised on the hard surface.
The bartender – an Afro-Caribbean man with tightly braided hair – was drying a glass. He inspected the customer with a wry glint in his eyes. ‘How old are you?’
‘Old enough,’ said Iskender.
‘Uh-hm, can I see your ID, Mr Old-enough?’
‘Hey, if I’m here it means I’m old enough to be here. Otherwise that hulk at the entrance would never have let me in, right?’
‘Nice try,’ said the bartender. ‘I’ll give you a glass of water for that. Sparkling. No ice. And that’s the most you’ll be getting from me.’
Iskender sipped his water, and stood in front of the stage, observing the curtains on both sides. Was she back there? Should he go find her now? Again, he touched the bottle in his pocket. It felt both cold and warm under his fingers. He was still contemplating his next move, steeling himself for the encounter ahead, when he noticed the bodyguard looking for him. The man tapped his watch, unsmiling, unyielding. Iskender finished his water, thanked the bartender and shuffled out. Nothing was going as planned.
He waited on the pavement, his mind spinning. After what seemed like an eternity he noticed someone coming in his direction. His hair uncombed, his head lowered, his step apprehensive, as if he were afraid that his legs would give way. He didn’t notice the boy as he passed by.
‘Dad –’
Adem stopped and turned around. A smile bloomed on his face, easy and genuine, but it was quickly replaced by a darker expression. ‘Iskender . . . has something happened to your brother or sister?’
‘No. They’re fine, really.’
For a moment Adem seemed relieved. But after relief came suspicion, and after suspicion, irritation. ‘You shouldn’t be here.’
This, too, was something Iskender had failed to anticipate. He had expected his father to be uncomfortable upon seeing him, perhaps unsettled, but anger was not in the picture. Iskender’s face was impassive before he snapped. ‘And neither should you.’
Adem’s mouth turned down at the corners, his eyes blazing. ‘Watch your mouth, lad. You can’t talk to me like that.’
‘I want you to come home, Father,’ he said.
The insinuation was not lost on Adem. ‘Go back to your mother before I break your bones.’
‘What is it with my bones today? Everybody wants to break ’em.’
They stood in silence for awhile. Father and son retreated into their thoughts while holding each other’s gaze, challenging the other to speak first. It was at that moment that an uncanny feeling overtook Adem, as though he were staring into a mirror, watching his younger self. His boy was like him but with more privileges, and none of the anxiety and passivity that had cost him dearly.
‘I’ll return when the time comes,’ Adem said finally.
‘And when will that be? When you get tired of that slut –’
The slap was immediate. Iskender seemed less bowled over by his father’s reaction than by what had come out of his own mouth. He couldn’t believe he had spoken like that. It was against everything in his upbringing.
Having witnessed the slap, the bodyguard angled towards them. ‘Hey, you two. Take it easy or I’ll ring the police.’
‘It’s o . . . kay,’ mumbled Iskender as though to himself. There was an obscure look in his eyes, a sparkle that wasn’t there before. Calmly, too calmly, he turned to his father and said, ‘If you hit me again, I’ll hit you back. My punch is stronger.’
Adem paled. He felt a pain in his chest so sharp that for a second he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t only the shock, the sorrow and the shame of having his son insult him in front of strangers. There was something deeper, more painful. A belated recognition. Now he saw that this was what he himself should have done many years ago. When his own baba beat him, and kept doing so even after Adem had become taller than him, this is what he, too, should have done. It was an excruciating regret.
Taking a step towards Iskender, Adem slapped him again, harder. That was when the most frightening thing happened. Howling like a wounded animal, Iskender rammed himself into the wall of the club. He hit his forehead. Once, twice, three times. Thud, thud, thud.
Adem tried to control him, but to no avail. ‘Don’t touch me,’ Iskender bellowed.
It was the bodyguard who pulled him away from the wall. But the need to hurt was so engulfing that Iskender couldn’t stop. He sank his teeth into the guard’s shoulder until he drew blood. He stomped on the man’s foot, and shot his head back, hitting the bodyguard’s chin with a loud dull thump. The man was expecting none of this. He lost his composure, and his face flashed crimson. He attacked back.
Adem tried to intervene. ‘‘No, no. Please, don’t. He’s my son.’
Other people clustered around. Customers, waiters, a few dancers. Among them was Roxana, watching the scene with wide eyes and a heavy heart.
When they were finally pulled apart, the bodyguard was trembling. ‘I don’t wanna see you two here again. You hear me? If I see you around I swear to God I’ll hit you so hard you won’t know what day it is.’
‘Come on, let’s go.’ Adem pulled his son by the arm, gently but firmly.
They walked in silence for a few minutes, and once they were out of sight sat on the pavement under a streetlamp. Iskender’s breath came in ragged puffs, as he tasted the blood in his mouth. ‘Mother is seeing someone,’ he said, bone-weary.
‘What?’
‘You heard me,’ said Iskender. ‘You need to return home and fix things.’
Adem took out a cigarette, lit it and offered it to his son. Seeing the surprise on Iskender’s face, he said, ‘Come on. I already know that you smoke.’
He lit another cigarette for himself. They smoked side by side. The night felt chilly, drab but full of possibilities. ‘Does she love him?’
Iskender could not believe his ears. ‘Dad, what are you saying?’
Adem put his hand on his son’s knee. ‘Look, I know you don’t understand. Ten years ago, I would have been mad as hell. I would have done anything to stop it. But now I’m old enough to know I can’t make your mother love me. She asked me several times for a divorce. I’ve ignored her request but it was the right thing to do.’
Hearing the word ‘love’ from his father’s lips astonished Iskender. True, there had been times in the past when he had questioned how and why his parents had got together, but this was no longer about love. Adem was his father, the head of the family. Not a romantic teenager. ‘But Father –’
‘Listen, there was a headman once who told me that a man’s love is a reflection of his character. I never understood what he meant, but now I know.’ He let the smoke curl out of his nostrils. ‘You think I’m not angry at your mother. I am. But I’m angrier with myself. We never loved each other. It was so wrong, our marriage. But I don’t regret it because you were born, and Esma, and Yunus.’
Then something happened that Adem did not take seriously at the time, but that years later he would remember vividly, and always with a piercing regret. Iskender flicked his cigarette, watching its feeble light arc against the darkness surrounding it, and said, ‘If you don’t take care of this matter, the
n I will.’
The Rope
London, October 1978
Quickening her step, Pembe approached the cinema she knew so well by now. The click of her low heels against the pavement was steady, lulling. She did not look up or around, keeping her gaze focused on the ground, as if she were a child again and this was a game. If she did not see the world, perhaps the world would not see her.
She deliberately arrived late each time, reaching the cinema five or ten minutes after the film had started. It lessened the chances of their being seen together. Lately, though, she had grown a bit less cautious. On two occasions she had even walked with him on the street, once to buy some flowers, another time to listen to a street musician. She was still anxious, as always, but now there was an urge inside her, a voice dying to come out, to be heard. Having never experienced anything like this before, she didn’t know what to do with this new audaciousness that was, and wasn’t, a part of her.
A few threads from Pembe’s grey coat caught in the door as she hurriedly pushed it open. She entered the building, inhaling the odour from filthy ashtrays, and the familiar smells from the refreshment bar, buttered popcorn, crisps and sweets. The swirls on the stained carpet made her dizzy if she stared at them for too long. She found it all strangely comforting. No sooner had she stepped into the foyer than a sense of lightness descended upon her. She felt calm, sheltered. The earth stopped moving, prompting her to do the same, and without a worry for the future she allowed the moment to surround her.
The young usher at the entrance to the auditorium checked her ticket, then opened the doors and signalled for her to follow him. The film had started. It was half dark inside, bathed in the silver light that bounced off the screen at each bright scene. As she followed the usher’s torchlight, Pembe took a quick look round. There were ten or fifteen people inside, more than usual. For a fleeting second, she felt a tension that hadn’t been there a moment ago.
Elias always sat in the same place. The middle row, the middle seat. Once someone else had occupied the seat, a glitch that had caused Pembe to go and sit next to a stranger. ‘Hello, darling,’ the man had said, grinning. Horrified, Pembe had leaped to her feet and moved to the front row, where Elias was waiting for her, blissfully unaware.
Now, careful not to trip, Pembe passed by one empty row after another. She noticed an elderly couple holding hands, engrossed in the film. She tried to imagine Elias and herself in the same position, old, frail but still in love. Even the dream didn’t feel real.
As she kept edging her way forward, in her distractedness, she did not notice the person sitting in the back row. He had hid himself, having slid down in his seat, his head tilted to the side, merely a shadow. He sat there in the darkness, watching, waiting.
The caramel torchlight stopped at row G. There in the middle, sitting on his own, his eyes shaded by an expectation he didn’t allow himself to indulge, was Elias. Thanking the usher, Pembe glided into her seat, her breath quick. Elias turned, smiling. He reached out to her, his forefinger running along her fingertips, like a blind man recognizing his beloved from a touch. He squeezed her hand tenderly. She squeezed back. Over the course of these past months, they had mastered a language with lots of gestures and not many words. Slowly, he leaned forward and planted a kiss on the inside of her wrist, inhaling the smell of her skin. Pembe’s heart pounded in her chest. She still didn’t look at him. That, too, felt like a childhood game. If she didn’t see him, he wouldn’t be visible and if he weren’t visible, perhaps he would never disappear.
Together they watched The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. She had not seen the film before. He had. It was their first film with sound. The week before, the cinema had finished its run of silent movies, and launched a new series of classic spaghetti Westerns. Having already agreed to meet there and being fond of the place, they had seen no reason to change plans. Besides, Elias assumed that the film, with its laconic characters and few words, would be equally easy for her to follow.
In just a few seconds, Pembe found herself drawn into the film. As Blondie, Tuco and Angel Eyes engaged in a maze of conflicts, inciting and dodging all kinds of danger, she watched the story unfold, taking sides. When the Bad inquired, ‘If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?’, she lowered her eyelids, considering the sentence until its meaning hit her fully. When the Bad scoffed at the Good, telling him that, in fact, they were not that different, she couldn’t help but flinch. Lately she had begun to contemplate the meaning of good and bad as never before. It was her sister’s letters that had compelled her. Her twin was the respectable one, virtuous and pure, unwavering. That left her as the Bad, the unchaste. But it had not always been like this. How fast things changed. Nothing was permanent, everything evolving in a constant flux.
When Tuco sat on a donkey with a noose around his neck, about to be hanged, a flash of dread crossed Pembe’s face. She turned her head sideways. For a fraction of a second she thought she saw someone in the back row observing her, but when she checked again it was too dark to be sure. She then heard the Ugly say, ‘People with ropes around their necks don’t always hang.’
Pembe closed her eyes. For a sickening moment she was in a different place, a different time.
‘Hey, are you all right, sweetheart? You seem to have drifted off,’ Elias said in her ear, and added in a playful whisper, ‘It’s just a film.’
She nodded. It was only a film, she knew. In real life, people with ropes around their necks always hanged.
*
They were eight sisters, ages ranging from nine to twenty. The eldest of them was named Hediye, a gift. That was what she was, a present from the Creator, the firstborn, much treasured, even if a girl. She had a heart-shaped face, sharp nose, large almond eyes, grey like storm clouds. As the eldest in a family with many siblings and a meagre income, she spent her childhood playing with real babies instead of toys. Hediye was always cleaning, cooking, scrubbing, washing, feeding and rocking the younger ones. Her palms were hennaed, her wrists adorned with bracelets, fake gold, but nothing looked fake on her. Pembe did not remember hearing her complain even once, even though everyone else seemed to be whining all the time. Somehow Hediye had accepted her role, her unending responsibilities, ageing before her time, a girl-woman. Upon Naze’s death she was her natural replacement, caring for them all, but especially for the twins, who were still young. When Berzo remarried, his daughters saw the woman as Papa’s wife, but never as more than that, for their mother was none other than Hediye.
‘I’ll never get married,’ she was fond of saying. ‘I’ll look after my sisters until all of them have tied the knot. I’ll die a spinster.’
These words, heartening as they were for the twins to hear, did not turn out to be true. In the winter of 1957 Hediye started seeing someone. A medical man, an inoculator, appointed by the government to provide vaccines against tuberculosis, distrusted by most villagers, hated by all children. How it had all started, how they had met, twelve-year-old Pembe would never learn and the woman she was today could not construe.
Love was an illness, invigorating and uplifting, but a malady nonetheless. Suddenly Hediye was bolder than ever, indomitable. Even their stepmother seemed to fear her, unable to boss her around any longer, uncomfortable in her presence. For Hediye was resolute. The girl who had never had a moment for herself was now eager to make up for lost time. On a cloudless night, when the moon was a golden sickle in the sky, she eloped with this man whom she barely knew.
The next morning there was no one around to give inoculations. The children of the village rejoiced. The remaining vaccines were thrown into the Euphrates, erasing all traces of the stranger who had intruded into their lives, injected them with his ways and, in the end, stolen one of their number.
Pembe remembered the grief that engulfed the house, empty and heavy at once. It felt as if they were mourning a death. But Hediye was now worse than dead. No one
asked about her, at least not aloud, her name deemed a profanity.
Their stepmother was particularly vindictive. ‘May God burn you in hell!’ she swore, seeing imaginary Hediyes everywhere. Suddenly everything that had been fomenting inside her – her shame at not being able to give a baby to a man who had married her solely to have a son; her agony at being as barren as a desert; and her resentment at having to take care of another woman’s eight children – erupted into a sharp, sour fury at Hediye.
Berzo, however, was oddly silent. His eyes had sunk into their sockets. His head was low, brooding. He barely went to the tea house any more, sitting at home all day long, withdrawn and sulking, smoking cigarettes with an inch of ash dangling at the ends.
It was a harsh winter. Four months passed. One late afternoon in early spring, Hediye returned. She should have sent a message to see if her family were prepared to accept her. Instead she had taken a bus and come back, just like that. The medical man had turned out to be a coward. Even though he had promised to marry her, at the slightest opposition from his family, he had changed his mind, abandoning her in the big city on her own.
Hediye regretted what had happened. She was also frightened. But this was the only home she knew. She had no other place to go. Upon her arrival, finding the door open, she shuffled in. Neither Berzo nor his wife was in the house. But the twins were and the moment they saw Hediye they yelled in joy, clapping their hands, celebrating the return of their mother-sister. They ran rings round her, like planets orbiting the sun.
Yet Hediye was different. Insecure, reserved, tongue-tied. Drawing her knees together, keeping her eyes cast down, she sat on the edge of the divan; in her own house she was like a guest who wasn’t sure of being welcome.
After a while their stepmother lumbered in, carrying a huge pile of fleece wool on her back. Her back had hunched, and her cheeks were flushed from the effort. She didn’t notice Hediye at first. But she instantly detected the awkward silence in the room, and the twins’ discomfort.