Yashim began to assemble his ingredients. Constantinedes weighed out two oka of potatoes and tumbled them into Yashim’s basket, replacing the scoop on the scales with a flourish.
“Four piastres, twenty—twenty—twenty—eighty-five the potatoes—five-oh-five—and anything else, efendi?”
“What’s happened to George?”
“Beans today—yesterday’s prices!”
“They say you’re going to take over his pitch.”
“Five-oh-five, efendi.”
“An oka of zucchinis, please.”
The man picked the zucchinis into his scoop.
“I heard he had an accident. How did it happen?”
“The zucchinis.” As Constantinedes tilted the scoop over Yashim’s basket, Yashim gripped it by the edge and gently raised it level again.
“I’m a friend of his. If he’s had an accident, I may be able to help.”
Constantinedes pursed his lips thoughtfully.
“I can ask the kadi,” Yashim said, and let go of the scoop. The kadi was the official who regulated the market. The zucchinis rained down into the basket. “Keep the change.”
The man hesitated, then scooped up the two coins without looking at them and dropped them into the canvas pouch at his waist.
“Five minutes,” he said quietly.
4
YASHIM stirred his coffee and waited for the grounds to settle. Constantinedes tilted the cup against his lips. “We all got a choice. We don’t want aggravation, see?”
“Yes. Is George all right?”
“Maybe. I don’t ask.”
“But you’ll take over his pitch.”
“Listen. This was between them and George. Keep us out of it. I’m talking to you because you was his friend.”
“Who are they, then?”
The man pushed his coffee away and stood up.
“A little piece of everything, that’s all.” He bent down to pick something off the ground and Yashim heard him whisper: “The Hetira. I’d leave it, efendi.”
He walked back to his stall, leaving Yashim staring at the shiny thick dregs in his coffee cup, wondering where he had heard that name before.
5
ISTANBUL was a city in which everyone, from sultan to beggar, belonged somewhere—to a guild, a district, a family, a church or a mosque. Where they lived, the work they did, how they were paid, married, born, or buried, the friends they kept, the place they worshiped—all these things were arranged for them, so to speak, long before they ever balled their tiny fists and sucked in their first blast of Istanbul air, an air freighted with muezzins, the smell of the sea, the scent of cypresses, spices, and drains.
Newcomers—foreigners, especially—often complained that Istanbul life was a sequence of divisions: they noticed the harem arrangement of the houses, the blank street walls, the way tradesmen clung together in one street or a section of the bazaar. They frequently gave way to feelings of claustrophobia. Stambouliots, on the other hand, were used to the hugger-mugger atmosphere of warmth and gossip that surrounded them from the cradle and followed them to the grave. In the city of belonging, Yashim well knew, even the dead belonged somewhere.
He ran his thumb along the table’s edge. It occurred to him, not for the first time, that of all Istanbul he might be the exception which proved the rule. Sometimes he felt more like a ghost than a man; his invisibility hurt him. Even beggars had a guild that promised to provide their burial at the end. The ordinary eunuchs of the empire, who served as chaperones, escorts, guardians—they were all, in that sense, members of a family: many belonged to the greatest family of all, and lived and died in the sultan’s service. Yashim, for a spell, had served in the sultan’s palace, too; but his gifts were too broad to be comfortably contained there, between the women of the harem and the secrets of the sultan’s inner sanctum. So Yashim had chosen between freedom and belonging; and a grateful sultan had bestowed that freedom on him.
With freedom had come responsibilities, which Yashim worked hard to fulfill, but also loneliness. Neither his condition, nor his profession, such as it was, gave him the right to expect to see his own reflection in a pair of eyes. All he had were his friends.
George was a friend. But what did he know about George? He didn’t know where he lived. He didn’t know
