Any other teenage girl would have picked at her eyebrows, peeled the dry skin off her lips, or gnawed the insides of her cheeks during the sohbet sessions. But Derdâ’s personal protest would not be through pain. She had enough of that from others. So many only wanted to cause her harm. She wouldn’t be one of them. So she found pleasure in her silent scream. It was her only revenge. She pleasured herself in a world of suffering. This was the only way to deny she was a victim. At least to herself.
Ubeydullah never knew that Bezir beat Derdâ; Rahime never told him what she had seen in the bathtub. In fact, Ubeydullah took a liking to Derdâ. He felt compassion for her. On those rare occasions when he came over, he’d call her his daughter. But he couldn’t see what was under her chador. He couldn’t see the welts on her knees (the work of belt buckles) or the bruises on her shoulders (the marks of fists).
Bezir beat her because speaking was too difficult. He beat her because kickboxing still couldn’t control his anger. A teacher in the school he’d attended briefly encouraged him to try kickboxing, but sixteen years of practicing the art hadn’t managed to tame the beast. He beat her because years had gone by and Derdâ still hadn’t gotten pregnant.
Derdâ heard the door open across the hall and she jumped up and pressed her ear to the door, closing her eyes. A thin, tall man with short-cropped hair appeared in her mind’s eye. His eyes, she thought, were they blue? She couldn’t say. But she knew that one of her fantasy men would have a face at the next sohbet. At least that she was sure of.
Bezir had to go to Istanbul for four days. Derdâ was overjoyed at the thought of being alone, if only for a few days. But her joy was cut short when she was told she would pass all waking hours with Rahime.
Rahime was always smiling. It was like her face had been fixed with glue. She always smiled. She smiled when she ate, she smiled when she prayed. She smiled when she looked at Derdâ. A smile was a permanent fixture on her face. She had something she wanted to tell Derdâ.
“Do you know why Bezir went to Istanbul?”
“For business.”
Rahime narrowed her smile.
“Is that what he told you?”
“Yes,” Derdâ answered.
Rahime’s smile grew larger.
“Ah, my girl, if only you knew. Don’t tell anyone you heard this from me, but he went to find a girl.”
Derdâ’s response was too sudden.
“Will he leave me then?”
“Do you want him to?”
She knew her answer to this question was important, and could result in a terrible beating four days later.
“No, no,” said Derdâ.
This time Rahime laughed, her smile broadening.
“Stupid girl! Why wouldn’t he be looking for another girl? When he has a wife like you. You’re an idiot, a moron!”
Derdâ turned her head and narrowed her eyes. She looked at Rahime, who was covering her mouth with her hands trying to control her laughter. Then it dawned on her—something was not right about Rahime. She was insane. Thirty-two-year-old Rahime was out of her mind, and Derdâ was the first person to notice. Her only daughter to Ubeydullah was only fourteen when she was married off as the third wife to Azamet, the eldest man in the neighboring apartment block. Rahime knew she’d never see her daughter again, and that she wouldn’t recognize her even if she did. She gave up trying to understand anything about the world.
Derdâ listened to Rahime natter on about her private conversations with God until the evening prayer. Always smiling, she whispered to Derdâ, “Nobody else can hear. He only speaks with me. He says that he’ll take me to his paradise.”
Every once in a while, she stopped speaking as if she just remembered something, her smile frozen on her face, then several absent seconds later she started up again.
“‘Rahime,’ he says to me. ‘You’re my favorite servant. I believe only in the sincerity of your prayers. The others are all liars …’”
She made Derdâ swear again and again not to tell anyone about her conversations. Almost every two hours.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?”
She brought out her Koran.
“Put your hand on it,” she said. “And swear!”
They had dinner and Derdâ returned to her apartment to sleep. She began to slowly climb the stairs, the key to her prison on a rope around her neck. As she was unlocking the door, the elevator arrived at the fourteenth floor and Derdâ froze, the key still unturned in the lock. The elevator doors slid open and Derdâ couldn’t help but look over her shoulder. Stanley stepped out of the elevator in a leather overcoat with black kohl around his eyes. He looked at her, looming over her in his giant, steel-tipped, knee-high Dr. Martens. His blue eyes were like the sky behind black clouds.
Like a black ghost, Derdâ slowly turned around, leaving the key in the lock, to look at Stanley. The yellow ceiling lamp suddenly went out, enveloping them in darkness. They were both invisible. Derdâ thought of running to him and throwing her arms around him. Stanley would return her embrace and they would rush into the elevator and travel to eternity. But there was something Derdâ had forgotten: it was impossible for them to escape in the dark. When Stanley stepped forward the motion-sensor triggered the hall light. They were still staring at each other, less than six feet between them. The light went off again and this time Derdâ stepped forward, moving so quickly that Stanley surely heard the rustle of her chador. Years older than Derdâ, Stanley acknowledged her with a curt nod and turned toward his door. Though drunk, he managed to insert his key and in one swift movement he opened the door
