'Because there are times when we all need the company of the bad,' was the answer.
Asya tried a frown and then rolled her eyes, gaining no effect with either gesture other than a childish face. She whistled a tune from a Johnny Cash song, which she liked to recall on various encounters with her aunts: 'Why me Lord, what have I ever done… '
'What are you whistling?' Auntie Banu asked suspiciously. She didn't know any English and was deeply distrustful of any language that made her miss something obvious.
'I was singing a song that says as my eldest aunt you are supposed to be a role model for me and teach me right from wrong. But here you are giving me lessons on the necessity of evil.'
'Well, let me tell you something,' Auntie Banu decreed, looking at her niece intently. 'There are things so awful in this world that the good-hearted people, may Allah bless them all, have absolutely no idea of. And that's perfectly fine, I tell you; it is all right that they know nothing about such things because it proves what good- hearted people they are. Otherwise they wouldn't be good, would they?'
Asya couldn't help but nod. After all, she had a feeling Johnny Cash would be of the same opinion.
'But if you ever step into a mine of malice, it won't be one of these people you will ask help from.'
'And you think I will ask help from a malicious djinni!' Asya exclaimed.
'Perhaps you will.' Auntie Banu shook her head. 'Let's just hope you'll never have to.'
That was that. Never again did they talk about the limitations of the good and the necessity of the unscrupulous.
At or around that time Auntie Banu once again remodeled her clairvoyant reading techniques, and switched to hazelnuts, roasted hazelnuts more often than not. Her family suspected that the origin of this novelty, as with most other novelties, might have been pure coincidence. Most likely Auntie Banu had been caught gobbling hazelnuts by a client and offered the best explanation that had come to her mind: that she could read them. This was the belief shared by all in the family. Everyone else had a different interpretation. Being the holy lady that she was, rumor had it in Istanbul, she did not demand any money from her needy customers and instead asked them to bring her only a handful of hazelnuts. The hazelnut became a symbol of her bigheartedness. In any case, the oddity of her technique only served to further augment her already bloated fame. 'Mother Hazelnut' they started to call her, or even 'Sheikh Hazelnut,' oblivious to the fact that women in their limitedness could not assume this respected title.
Bad djinni, roasted hazelnuts… though Asya Kazanci had in time gotten used to these and other eccentricities, there was one thing about her eldest aunt she seemed to be having a hard time accepting: her name. It was just impossible to accept that 'Auntie Banu' could metamorphose into one 'Sheikh Hazelnut,' so whenever there were customers inside the house or tarot cards opened on the table, she simply avoided her. That is why, although Asya had perfectly heard the last words uttered by her aunt, she pretended not to. And she would have remained blissfully ignorant had Auntie Feride not walked into the living room at that moment, carrying a huge, flat plate upon which glistened the birthday cake.
'What are you doing here?' Auntie Feride frowned at Asya. 'You are not supposed to be here; you've got a ballet class now.'
Now that was another shackle around Asya's ankles. Like numerous middle-class Turkish mothers aspiring to see their children excel in all the things the children of upper classes supposedly did, her upper-middle class family compelled her to perform activities she had absolutely no interest in.
'This is a nuthouse,' Asya muttered to herself. These four words had become her mantra these days and she repeated it freely. Then she raised her voice a notch, and said, 'Don't worry. Actually, I was about to leave.'
'What's the use of it now?' Auntie Feride snapped, pointing at the plate. 'This was supposed to be a surprise!'
'She doesn't want a cake this year,' Auntie Banu intervened from her corner as she flipped the first of the three waiting tarot cards. It was The High Priestess. The symbol of unconscious awarenessan opening to imagination and hidden talents but also to the unknown. She pursed her lips and turned the next card: The Tower. A symbol of tumultuous changes, emotional eruptions, and sudden downfall. Auntie Banu looked pensive for a minute. Then she flipped the third card. It looked like they were going to have a visitor soon, a most unexpected visitor from beyond the ocean.
'What do you mean she doesn't want a cake? It's her birthday for heaven's sake!' Auntie Feride exclaimed with her lips puckered and an irate glimmer in her eyes. But then another thought must have come to her because she turned toward Asya and squinted. 'Are you afraid that someone poisoned the cake?'
Asya looked at her in astonishment. After all this time and so much direct experience, she had still not been able to develop a strategy, that golden strategy, to stay calm and cool in the face of Auntie Feride's outbreaks. After faithfully sojourning in 'hebephrenic schizophrenia' for years, Auntie Feride had recently moved into paranoia. The harder they tried to bring her back to reality, the more she became paranoid and suspicious of them.
'Is she afraid of someone poisoning the cake? Of course she is not, you harmless eccentric!'
All the heads in the room turned toward the door where Auntie Zeliha stood, corduroy jacket over her shoulders, high heels on her feet, with a quizzical expression that made her look heartbreakingly beautiful. She must have sneaked into the room and then stood silently listening to the conversation, unless she had developed a talent for materializing at will. Unlike most Turkish women who might have enjoyed short skirts and high heels in their youth, Zeliha had not lengthened the former and shortened the latter as she got older. Her style of dress was as flamboyant as it had ever been. The years had only added to her beauty while taking their toll on each of her sisters. As if she knew the effect of her presence, Auntie Zeliha remained in the doorway, eyeing her manicured fingernails. She cared deeply about herr hands because she used them in her work. Having no liking for bureaucratic institutions or any chain of command, and possessing too much exasperation and anger inside, she had realized at an early age that she would have to choose a profession where she could be both independent and inventive-and also, if possible, inflict a bit of pain.
Ten years ago Auntie Zeliha had opened a tattoo parlor, where she had started to develop a collection of original designs. In addition to the classics of the art-crimson roses, iridescent butterflies, hearts pumped with love-and the usual compilation of hairy insects, fierce wolves, and giant spiders, she had introduced her own designs inspired by one basic principle: contradiction. There were faces half-masculine half-feminine, bodies half- animal half-human, trees half-blossomed half-dry…. However, her designs were not popular. The customers wanted to make a statement through their tattoos, not to add yet another ambiguity to their already uncertain lives. Their tattoos had to express a simple emotion, not an abstract thought. Learning her lesson well, Zeliha had then launched a new series, a compound collection of images, which she entitled 'the management of abiding heartache.'
Every tattoo in this special collection was designed to address one person only: the ex-love. The dumped and the despondent, the hurt and the irate brought a picture of the ex-love they wanted to banish from their lives forever but somehow could not stop loving. Auntie Zeliha then studied the picture and ransacked her brain until she found which particular animal that person resembled. The rest was relatively easy. She would draw that animal and then tattoo the design on the desolate customer's body. The whole practice adhered to the ancient shamanistic practice of simultaneously internalizing and externalizing one's totems. To strengthen vis-a-vis your antagonist you had to accept, welcome, and then transform it. The ex-love was interiorized-injected into the body, and yet at the same time exteriorized-left outside the skin. Once the ex-lover was located in this threshold between inside and outside, and deftly transformed into an animal, the power structure between the dumped and the dumper changed. Now the tattooed lover felt superior, as if the key to the ex-love's soul was in his or her hands. As soon as this stage was reached and the ex-love lost his or her appeal, those suffering from abiding heartache could finally let go of their obsession, for love loves power. That is why we can suicidally fall in love with others but can rarely reciprocate the love of those suicidally in love with us.
Istanbul being a city of broken hearts, it didn't take Auntie Zeliha long to expand the business, becoming legendary particularly among bohemian circles.
Now Asya averted her eyes so as not to have to stare any longer at her mother, the mother whom she had never called 'mom' and had perhaps hoped to keep at a distance by 'auntifying.' A surge of self-pity engulfed her. What an unpardonable injustice on the part of Allah to create a daughter far less beautiful than her own mother.
'Don't you understand why Asya doesn't want any cake this year?' Auntie Zeliha said when she had finished with the inspection of her manicure. 'She's just afraid of gaining weight!'
