She did not open her eyes until he slumped over, now soft inside her. When he stood up, Mustafa could hardly walk. Wobbling, he made it across the room and leaned against the door, gasping for breath. He took in a deep breath and caught a mixed smell-sweat and rosewater. He stood there briefly, his back turned to his sister, before he could bring himself to move again and run out of the room.
As soon as he stepped into the corridor, he heard the outer door being opened, his family now back home. He hurried to the bathroom, locked the door, turned on the shower, but instead of getting in, he collapsed to his knees and threw up.
'Hello!!! Where's everyone?' Banu's voice came from the front room. 'Anybody home?'
Zeliha rose to her feet and attempted to smooth down her clothes. Everything had happened so swiftly, perhaps she could convince herself that it hadn't happened at all. But the face she saw in the mirror revealed a different story. There in the frame of her reflection, her left eye looked swollen with a purplish half circle under it. The very first thing Zeliha felt upon seeing her eye was a pang of guilt at her habitual skepticism. All these years she had snickered at cheesy action movies whenever someone got a purple eye, never believing that the human eye could swell that color with one blow.
Her face yes, but her body hadn't been damaged, she concluded. She touched herself to see if she still had feeling. How come she could feel the touch of her fingers but nothing else? If she were hurt or sad, wouldn't her body know? Wouldn't she know?
There was a knock on her door and without waiting for a response, Banu popped her head in. She was about to say something but her mouth opened and closed without words as she stood frozen, staring at her youngest sister..
'What happened to your face?' Banu asked anxiously.
Zeliha knew if there ever was a time to reveal this, it was now. She could either tell it now or hide it forever. 'It's not as bad as it looks,' she said slowly, the moment already gone and the choice made. 'I went out for a walk and then I saw this man beating the hell out of his wife in the middle of the street. I tried to save a battered woman from her husband, but I guess I ended up getting beaten myself.'
They believed her. It was something she would do, something that could only happen to her, if it were to ever happen to anyone.
The day Zeliha was raped she was nineteen years old. An age deemed to be a grown-up according to the Turkish laws. At this age she could get married or get a driver's license or cast a vote, once the military permitted free elections to be held again. Likewise, should she need one, she could also get an abortion on her own.
Too many times Zeliha had the same dream. She saw herself walking on the street under a rain of stones. As cobblestones fell one by one from above, digging a hole underneath, digging it deeper, she started to panic, afraid to follow suit, afraid to be swallowed without a trace by the hungry abyss. 'Stop!' she cried out as stones kept rolling under her feet. 'Stop!' she commanded the vehicles that sped toward her and then ran her over. 'Stop!' she begged the pedestrians who shouldered her aside. 'Please stop!'
That next month she missed her period. A few weeks later she paid a visit to a newly opened lab near her house. FREE PREGNANCY TEST WITH EACH BLOOD SUGAR TEST! it said on a sign at the entrance. When the results arrived, Zeliha's blood sugar turned out to be normal and she was pregnant.
Once there was; once there wasn't.
In a land far, too far away, there lived an old couple with four children, two daughters and two sons. One daughter was ugly, and the other was beautiful. The younger brother decided to marry the beautiful one. But she did not want to. She washed her silk clothes and went to the water and rinsed them. She rinsed and cried. It was cold. Her hands and feet were freezing. She came home and knocked on the door, but it was locked. She knocked on her mother's window, and her mother answered: 'I'll let you in if you will call me mother-in-law. ' She knocked on her father's window, and he answered: 'I'll let you in if you will call me father-in-law. ' She knocked on her older brother's window, and he answered: 'I'll let you in if you will call me brother-in-law. ' She knocked on her sister's window, and she answered: 'I'll let you in if you will call me sister-in-law. ' She knocked on her younger brother's window, and he let her in. He hugged her and kissed her, and she said: 'Let the earth open up and swallow me!'
And the earth opened up and she escaped into an underground kingdom[3] .
Looking out the kitchen window with a spoon in her hand, Asya sighed as she watched the silver-metallic Alfa Romeo depart.
'You see?' She turned to Sultan the Fifth. 'Auntie Zeliha didn't want me to go to the airport with them. She is being mean to me again.'
How stupid of her to allow herself to be vulnerable the other night when they had all gone out to drink! How stupid of her to count on finally bridging the barrier between them. It would never entirely disappear. This mother she had auntified would always re
main at an unbridgeable distance. Maternal compassion, filial love, familial camaraderie, she sure needed none of that…. Asya paused and spat out: 'Shit.'
Article Twelve: Do not try to change your mother, or more precisely, do not try to change your relationship with your mother, since this will only cause frustration. Simply accept and consent. If you cannot simply accept and consent, go back to Article One.
'You are not talking to yourself, are you?' said Auntie Feride, just then entering the kitchen.
'Actually, I was.' Asya instantly exited her trancelike rage. 'I was just telling my cat friend here how strange it is that the last time Uncle Mustafa was here he wasn't even born and Pasha the Third ruled the house. It's been twenty years. Isn't it strange? The man never visits us, and now here I am scooping out his ashure because we still welcome him.'
'What does the cat say?' Auntie Feride asked.
Asya smiled sardonically. 'He says I'm right, this must be a nuthouse. I should lose all hope and work on my manifesto instead.'
'Of course we will welcome your uncle. Family is family, whether you like it or not. We are not like the Germans; they kick their children out of the house at the age of fourteen. We have strong family values. We don't meet just once a year to eat turkey…. '
'What are you talking about?' Asya asked, puzzled, but before she reached the end of her question, she sort of guessed the answer. 'Are you referring to the Americans' Thanksgiving Day?'
'Whatever.' Auntie Feride dismissed the information. 'My point is that Westerners don't have strong families. We are not like that. If somebody is your father, he is your father forever; if someone is a brother, he will be your brother till the end. Besides, everything in this world is strange enough already,' Auntie Feride continued. 'That is why I like to read the third pages of the tabloids. I cut and collect them so that we don't forget how crazy and dangerous the world is.'
Never having heard her aunt attempt to rationalize her behav-r for before, Asya couldn't help but look at her with renewed inter
est. They sat there in the kitchen amid appetizing smells, while the March sun shone through the window.
They sat together until Auntie Feride left after hearing her favorite VJ announce the video clips of a new band, and Asya craved a cigarette. She craved not as much a cigarette as smoking that cigarette with the Dipsomaniac Cartoonist, though it surprised her that she had missed him so much. She had at least two hours until the guests came back from the airport. Besides, even if she were late, what difference would it make to anyone? she thought.
A few minutes later, Asya closed the door softly behind her.
Auntie Banu heard the door, but before she could call out, Asya had already stepped out.
'What are you planning to do, master?' Mr. Bitter croaked.
'Nothing,' Auntie Banu whispered as she opened a dresser drawer and took out a box. Inside the velvet cover rested the pomegranate brooch.
As the oldest of the Kazanci children, this brooch was given to her, a present from her father, who had inherited it from his mother-not his stepmother, Petite-Ma, but from the mother he never talked about, the mother who had abandoned him when he was a child, the mother he had never forgiven. The brooch was both sublime and heartbreaking, Auntie Banu feared. This nobody knew, but she had once kept the golden pomegranate with ruby
