When Ubeydullah stood up, Bezir followed his father.
“We should be going. We have a long journey ahead of us.”
Before Ubeydullah could finish, Ebcet turned toward the inner room and shouted, “Mübarek! Bring her in.”
The door swung open and Derdâ stepped into the room. Mübarek held her by her shoulders and pushed her forward. Only Derdâ’s eyes were visible. First she looked at Ubeydullah. She felt fear well up inside her. Then she saw Bezir. And the fear redoubled. She turned her head and held her hand out to her mother now standing beside her. Saniye took her hand and then let it go. Derdâ had a few things packed in her school bag: her dark red dress, underwear, and a pair of shoes. Bezir took the bag from Saniye and followed Ubeydullah to the door. He didn’t look at Derdâ once. Mübarek shoved Derdâ forward and then turned and looked at Saniye. They were both crying, but tears couldn’t change anything now.
Bezir opened the back door of the car and stood waiting for Ubeydullah to get Derdâ’s ID card from Ebcet. Derdâ took a few steps forward then collapsed an arm’s distance from the car. She was wearing a black chador, so no one could see the stain.
It was eleven-year-old Derdâ’s first period. The bleeding was so heavy her blood pressure plummeted and she fainted. Ubeydullah and Bezir went to stay with a relative in Girinti and would return two days later. Saniye washed Derdâ and put her to sleep. Ebcet was preparing an apology for Ubeydullah, he worried that the old man would be displeased by this unfortunate incident and might abandon the agreement. But the old man said, “It is auspicious,” and he felt relieved, tucking the envelope full of money under his pillow.
The second visit was even shorter than the first. They came, got Derdâ, and left. Now her blood was flowing. She had nothing else to shed. Not even a tear fell from her eyes as she looked at her mother for the last time.
It took them fifteen hours to reach Istanbul and another hour to reach Çemendağ. They stopped three times on the way but Derdâ never once ate. They didn’t say more than sixteen words in the sixteen hours on the road. Derdâ didn’t sleep at all. She looked out the window and fiddled with her black gloves. She took them off and put them on again and again without the men in the front noticing. She made a fist and put her glove on and flapped the empty fingers around. Finally, the door opened and she got out of the car.
They went up to the fourth floor of an apartment building. It was Derdâ’s first ride in an elevator. Two doors on the fourth floor were already cracked open when they arrived, a collection of heads peering out from behind each door. Women kissed Ubeydullah’s hand and took Bezir’s bags before disappearing inside. Men and women filed into separate apartments. For a moment, it seemed that everyone had forgotten Derdâ standing by the elevator, but the woman saw her and pulled her inside. Derdâ entered the women’s apartment.
The women surrounded her and took off her chador to examine her. Derdâ felt totally numb. One of them asked her name but Derdâ told her it was none of her business and they all laughed at her. But the woman got her revenge when Derdâ went to the bathroom. She followed her in and slapped Derdâ across the face. Derdâ tried to lock the bathroom door, but saw there wasn’t a key in the keyhole to turn. Doors only locked from the outside in the Hikmet Tariqat. The master of the house was the sole keeper of the keys.
They had been traveling all night so Ubeydullah and Bezir slept until noon prayer. Derdâ wasn’t tired but the women insisted. They showed her to a bedroom and closed the door behind her, and Derdâ closed her eyes. She opened them when she heard the key turning in the door. She looked up at the ceiling. She could make out fractions in the patterns in the cement. She tried to add and subtract them. When she started thinking about her mother she shut her eyes immediately. Derdâ gave up on her mother in that bed.
Ubeydullah and Regaip walked down Çemendağ’s main street and entered the apartment building. They went up to the fourth floor and into the men’s apartment. In the living room men sat on their knees, listening to the imam recite the Koran. Ubeydullah told Regaip to sit down beside Bezir, who didn’t even turn to look at him. There was a knock on the door and someone opened it.
Derdâ entered the living room with a woman no older than she was. She told Derdâ to sit down. The imam’s voice filled the silent room. Then he fell silent. He opened the marriage registry, found an empty page, and carefully inscribed the name Derdâ. He looked up at Regaip, and Ubeydullah said, “Regaip.” The imam inscribed his name, too. Then he added the names of the witnesses and completed his list with the name of the groom, Bezir. He asked them the amount of money agreed upon, using the customary Islamic euphemisms. Ubeydullah told him how much he had paid for the girl. The imam looked at Regaip, who nodded his head in agreement.
Then the imam began to read verses from the Koran when suddenly he looked at Regaip and chanted a long sentence which began, “By the
