The traffic began to accelerate and the driver shifted gears. Before long the soccer fleet veered right toward the stadium.
'Then why did you quit that job?' Asya wanted to know.
'I fell asleep at the wheel. One moment I am speeding down the road. The next moment there is a terrible blast, like it is judgment Day and Allah is summoning us all. When I open my eyes, I find myself inside the kitchen of this shanty house by the road.'
'What is he saying?' Armanoush whispered.
'Believe me, you wouldn't want to know,' Asya whispered back.
'Well, ask him how many dead he carries in his hearse per day?'
When the question was translated, the driver shook his head:
'It depends on the season. Spring is the worst time of all; not many people die in spring. But then comes the summer, the busiest season. If it is above eighty degrees, it gets pretty hectic for us, especially the old…. They die like flies…. In the summer Istanbulites die in droves!'
He paused broodingly, leaving Asya with the semantic burden of the very last sentence he had constructed. Then he glanced at a pedestrian in a tuxedo shouting orders into his cell phone and exclaimed:
'All these rich people! Huh! They stockpile money all through their life, what for? How foolish! Do shrouds have pockets? It's a cotton shroud that we are all going to wear in the end. That's it. No chic clothes. No jewelry. Can you wear a tuxedo to the grave or a ball gown? Who holds the skies for these people?'
Asya had no answer to offer, so she didn't attempt one.
'If nobody's holding it how could we possibly live under this sky? I see no celestial columns, do you? How can one play soccer in these stadiums if Allah says `I am not holding the sky up anymore'? '
With that question still hovering in the air, they turned the corner and finally reached the Kazanci domicile.
Auntie Zeliha was waiting for them in front of the house. She exchanged a few words with the driver and tipped him.
The Volkswagen, the silver metallic Alfa Romeo, and the Toyota Corolla were lined up in front of the house. It looked like everyone had arrived before them. The house was full of guests, all waiting for the coffin to be unloaded.
Upon entering the house Asya and Armanoush encountered a jampacked, all-female space. Though the majority of the guests were clustered in the living room on the first floor, some were momentarily dispersed to the other rooms, either to change a baby's diapers or to scold a child, to gossip a bit or to pray, now that it was time for the afternoon prayer. With no bedroom to retreat into, the girls headed to the kitchen, only to find all the aunts there whispering about the tragedy that had befallen them, as prepared trays of ashure to be served.
'Poor Mama is devastated. Who would have thought all the ashure she had cooked for Mustafa would be served to his mourners?' Auntie Cevriye said, standing near the stove.
'Yeah, the American bride is devastated too,' Auntie Feride remarked, without lifting her gaze from a mysterious stain on the floor. 'Poor thing. She comes to Istanbul for the first time in her life and loses her husband. How creepy.'
Sitting at the table, listening to her sisters while smoking a cigarette, Auntie Zeliha said softly, 'Well, I suppose she will go back to America now and remarry there. You know Allah's share is three. If she married for a second time, she has to marry for a third time. But I wonder, after one Armenian and one Turkish husband, what will her third choice be?'
'The woman is mourning, how can you say such things?' asked Auntie Cevriye.
'Mourning is like virginity.' Auntie Zeliha heaved a sigh. 'You should give it to the one who deserves it most.'
Aghast at what they had just heard, the two aunts flinched in stupefied amazement. It was in that instant Asya and Armanoush entered the room, followed by Sultan the Fifth, meowing in hunger.
'Come on, sisters, let's give the cat something to eat before he devours all the ashure,' Auntie Zeliha said.
Just then Auntie Banu, who had for the last twenty minutes or so been working at the counter, brewing tea, slicing lemons, and listening to the ongoing debate without ever interjecting, turned toward her youngest sister and decreed: 'We've got more urgent things to do.'
Auntie Banu opened a drawer, pulled out a huge, shiny knife, grabbed an onion lying on the counter, and cut it in half. She then cupped one half of the onion and pushed it toward Auntie Zeliha's nose.
'What are you doing?' Auntie Zeliha jumped in her chair.
'I am helping you to cry, my dear.' Auntie Banu shook her head. 'You wouldn't want the guests inside to see you like this, would you? As much of a free spirit as you might be, even you need to shed a tear or two in the house of the dead.'
With the onion under her nose, Auntie Zeliha closed her eyes, looking like an avant-garde statue that had no chance of being exhibited in a mainstream museum: The Woman Who Couldn't Cry and the Onion.
Auntie Zeliha opened her jade green eyes and sniffed a tear. The onion had worked.
'Good!' Auntie Banu nodded. 'Come on, everyone, we need to go into the living room. The guests must be wondering where their hosts are, leaving their dead alone!'
So said the sister who once used to play 'mom' to Auntie Zeliha, singing her half-made-up lullabies, feeding her cookies on cardboard boxes turned into imaginary tables, narrating stories that always ended with the pretty girl getting married to the prince, cuddling and tickling her, the sister who made her laugh like no one else.
'All right!' Auntie Zeliha agreed. 'Let's go, then.'
So they ambled into the living room, the four aunts in the front, Armanoush and Asya following behind. In harmonized steps, they entered the room full of guests, the room where the body was.
Sitting in the corner on a floor cushion, her light blond hair covered with a scarf, her eyes puffy from crying, her plump body squeezed in among strangers, was Rose. She instantly gestured to Armanoush, calling her to her side.
'Amy, where were you?' Rose asked, but before waiting for the answer, she hurled other questions at her: 'I have no idea what's going on here. Could you find out what they're going to do with his body? When are they planning to bury him?'
Having barely any answers herself, Armanoush inched closer toward her mother and held her hand. 'Mom, I'm sure they know what they're doing.''But I'm his wife,' Rose faltered over the last word, as if she were starting to doubt that.
They had laid him on the divan. His hands were placed with the two thumbs tied together on his chest, where a heavy blade of steel lay so that the corpse would not swell up. Two large coins of darkened silver were placed on his eyelids so that they wouldn't flip open. On his mouth they'd poured a few spoonfuls of water from Holy Mecca. Beside his head, in a copper plate, bits of sandalwood incense were burned. Though no windows were open, not even slightly ajar, the smoke in the room revived every few minutes as if fanned by an undetectable breeze sneaking in from somewhere behind the walls. When it perked up like that the smoke zigzagged around the divan, dissolving finally into a grayish whiff. But now and then the smoke followed a distinct route, descending closer and closer to the corpse in circles within circles, like a marauder bird going after its prey down on earth. The smell of sandalwood, as sour and sharp as it was, became so intense that everyone's eyes watered. Most didn't mind; they were crying anyway.
There was a crippled imam squeezed into a corner. In utter absorption he swayed the upper part of his body as he read the Qur'an aloud. There was a rhythm to his recitation, a beat that went up and up and then suddenly came to a halt. Armanoush tried not to pay any attention to the stark disparity between the imam's diminutive body and the stoutness of the women surrounding him. She tried equally hard not to eye the void where the man's fingers were supposed to be. On each hand the imam had only one and a half fingers. It was impossible not to wonder what had happened. Was he born like that, or had they been chopped off? Whatever the story, the incompleteness of his body was one reason why all these women were so at ease next to him. In his, imperfection resided the key to his perfection, in his lack of wholeness the secret of his holiness. He was a soul of thresholds, and like all souls of thresholds, had something eerie about him. He was both a man and yet so holy you could not possibly regard him as one. He was a holy man and yet so crippled you could not possibly disregard how mortal he was. No matter what, the crippled imam was in no need of fingers to turn the pages of the Holy Qur'an in his mind.
