alone.
Mustafa had a housemate, an undergrad student from Indonesia who spoke very little, worked hard, and listened to odd tapes, such as Sounds of Mountain Streams or Songs of the Whales, in order to go to sleep every night. Mustafa had hoped that if he had a housemate, he would feel less lonely in Arizona, but the result had been quite the opposite. At night, alone in his bed and thousands of miles away from his family, he couldn't fight back the voices inside his head. Voices that questioned and blamed him for who he was. He slept poorly. He spent many nights watching old comedies or surfing on the Internet. It helped. The thoughts stopped at those times. Yet they would return with daylight. Walking from home to the campus, between classes or during lunchtime, Mustafa would catch himself thinking about Istanbul. How he wished he could remove his memory, restart the program, until all of the files were deleted and gone.
Arizona was to have spared Mustafa the bad omen that fell upon every man in the Kazanci family. But he didn't believe in such things. Drifting away from all those superstitions, evil-eye beads, coffeecup readings, and fortune-telling ceremonies in his family was less a conscious choice than an involuntary reflex. He thought they were all part of a dark and complicated world peculiar to women.
Women were a mystery anyway. Having grown up with so many women, it was odd that he had felt so estranged from them all of his life.
Mustafa had grown up as the only boy in a family where the men died too soon and too unexpectedly. He experienced growing sexual desires while surrounded by sisters who were taboo to a fantasy life. Nevertheless, he slipped into unspeakable thoughts about women. At first Mustafa fell for girls who rejected him. Terrified that he would be rejected, ridiculed, and reviled, he turned to yearning for the female body from a distance. This year he had looked angrily at the photos of top models in glossy American magazines, as if to absorb the excruciating fact that no woman this perfect would ever desire him.
Mustafa would never forget the fierce look on Zeliha's face when she called him 'a precious phallus.' The embarrassment of that moment still burned through him today. He knew Zeliha could see behind his forced masculinity to the real story of his upbringing. She recognized that he had been pampered and spoon-fed by an oppressed mother, intimidated and beaten by an oppressive father. 'In the end you have become both narcissistic and insecure,' she had said. Could things have been different between Zeliha and him? Why did he feel so rejected and unloved with so many sisters around and a doting mother by his side?
Zeliha always mocked Mustafa and his mother always admired him. He wanted to be just an ordinary man, good and fallible at the same time. All he needed was compassion and a chance to be a better person. If only he had a woman who loved him, everything would be different. Mustafa knew he had to make it in America not because he wanted to attain a better future but because he had to dispose of his past.
'How you doin'?' The young woman at the cash register smiled at him.
That was one thing Mustafa still had not gotten used to. In America everyone asked everyone how they were doing, even complete strangers. He understood that it was a way of greeting more than a real question. But then he didn't know how to greet back with the same graceless ease.
'I am fine, thank you,' he said. 'How are you?'
The girl smiled. 'Where are you from?'
One day, Mustafa thought, I will speak in such a way that no one will ask this rude question because they will not believe, even for a minute, that they are talking to a foreigner. He picked up his plastic bag and walked outside.
A Mexican American couple crossed the sidewalk, she pushing a baby in a stroller, he holding the hand of a toddler. They walked unhurriedly while Rose watched them with envy. Now that her marriage was over, every couple she saw seemed blissfully content.
'You know what? I wish your grandma-the-witch could have seen me flirting with that Turk. Can you imagine her horror? I cannot think of a worse nightmare for the proud Tchakhmakhchian family! Proud and puffed up… proud and..' Rose didn't finish her sentence because she was distracted by a most puckish thought. The light turned green, the cars that were lined up in front of her lurched forward, and the van behind her honked. But Rose remained motionless. The fantasy was so delicious she could not move. Her mind wallowed in many images, while her eyes beamed a ray of pure rage at an oblique angle. That, indeed, was the third most common side effect of postmarital chronic resentment: It not only made you talk to yourself and be obstinate with others, but it also made you quite irrational. Once a woman felt justifiable resentment, the world turned upside down, and unreason appeared perfectly reasonable.
Oh sweet vengeance. Recovery was a long-term plan, an investment that paid off over time. But retaliation was quick to act. Rose's first instinct was to do something, anything, to exasperate her ex-mother-in-law. And there existed on the surface of the earth only one thing that could annoy the women of the Tchakhmakhchian family even more than an odar: a Turk!
How interesting it would be to flirt with her ex-husband's archenemy. But where would you find a Turkish man in the midst of the Arizona desert? They didn't grow on cacti, did they? Rose chuckled as her facial expression changed from recognition to one of intense gratitude. What a lovely coincidence that fortune had just introduced her to a Turk. Or was it not a coincidence?
Singing along with the song, Rose moved forward. But instead of going straight on her route she veered to the left, made a full U-turn, and once in the other lane, sped in the opposite direction.
Primitive love, I want what it used to be. In next to no time the ultramarine 1984 Jeep Cherokee had reached Fry's Supermarket's parking lot. I don't have to think, right now you've got me at the brink. This is good-bye for all the times I cried…
The car moved in a semicircle, then maneuvered crosswise, thus reaching the main exit of the supermarket. Just when Rose was about to lose any hope of finding the young man, she spotted him patiently waiting at the bus stop with a flimsy plastic bag next to him.'Hey, Mostapha!' Rose yelled, cocking her head from the half-open window. 'Wanna ride?'
'Sure, thanks.' Mustafa nodded and made a frail attempt to correct her pronunciation: 'It's Mus-ta-fa '.
Inside the car, Rose smiled..'Mustapha, meet my daughter, Armanoush…. But I call her Amy! Amy this is Mustapha, Mustapha this is Amy….'
While the young man beamed at the sleepy baby, Rose studied his face for signs of recognition but couldn't find any. So, she decided to give him another hint, this time a more revealing one: 'My daughter's full name is Amy Tchakhmakhchian.'
If the words had inspired any negative recognition, Mustafa's face didn't show it. So Rose felt the need to repeat, just in case it hadn't been understood the first time: 'Armanoush Tchakh-makhchi-an! '
It was only then that the young man's hazel eyes flickered, though not exactly in the way Rose had anticipated.
'Chak-mak-chi-an… yak-mak-q…! Hey, that sounds like Turkish!' he exclaimed happily.
'Well, as a matter of fact, it's Armenian,' Rose said. Suddenly she felt insecure. 'Her father-I mean, my ex- husband-' She swallowed hard as if trying to get rid of some sour taste. 'He was, I mean, he is, Armenian.'
'Oh yeah?' he said nonchalantly.
He didn't get it, did he? Rose wondered to herself as she chewed the inside of her mouth. Then, as if breathing out a suppressed hiccup long welling up in her throat, she let out a whoop of laughter. But he is cute… very cute…. He will be my sweet vengeance! she thought.
'Listen,' Rose said. 'I don't know if you like Mexican art but there is a group exhibition opening tomorrow night. If you don't have other plans we could go to it and grab a bite afterward.''Mexican art…?' Mustafa paused.
'People who have seen it elsewhere say it's really good,' Rose said. 'So what do you say…. Would you like to come with me?'
'Mexican art…!' Mustafa echoed with confidence. 'Sure, why not?'
'Awesome.' Rose cheered up. 'It's so nice to meet you, Mostapha,' she said, distorting his name again. But this time Mustafa felt no need to correct her.
