That night Derdâ slept on the floor by the door, hoping she might hear a sound from the corridor. When she woke up she stepped outside, glancing at Stanley’s door. It seemed more like a wall with nothing beyond it. Bowing her head, she went downstairs. Rahime opened the door before the doorbell’s singsong melody had finished.
“You know Ulviye, right?” Rahime asked her.
Derdâ nodded.
“She says she speaks to God, too, you know? She told me the other day, the lying bitch!”
Derdâ didn’t want to miss the chance to swear and so she too used the word, fully stressing each letter’s sound.
“Bitch!”
Rahime was delighted to hear her repeat the word and she smiled so broadly that her lips nearly reached her cheek bones.
Derdâ spent twelve hours performing her ablutions and prayers, cooking, eating, and pretending to listen to Rahime before she left for her apartment. On every step up to her floor she stopped and listened for the elevator. Silence. She walked up three steps and then down two, then up one more before counting to fifty—but not a sound from the elevator. After the first eight steps, she gave up on waiting and hurried into her apartment without even looking at Stanley’s door.
For the first few hours that night in the apartment she sat in an armchair she had moved to the window and watched London in the dark. Then she stood up and slowly undressed. Naked, she took a step forward and pressed the tips of her fingers and her nipples onto the window overlooking the city. A naked Derdâ stood at the window of a dark flat on the twelfth floor with her arms spread wide open. Her brow was also up against the glass as she stared at the lights in the distance. At first, she was worried that someone might see her, but soon she was wishing someone would. That night Derdâ stood against her bedroom window like a white flag. That night Derdâ was naked like a cry in the dark. But nobody heard her. The window was soundproof. Nobody could see how crudely her body had been beaten. No one saw all the bruises. No one informed the police, and no one even noticed her display of exhibitionism. Derdâ fell asleep naked.
Her eyelids blinked opened as a black silhouette shifted over her. Realizing someone was in the room, she opened her eyes and quickly sat up, holding a pillow tightly over her breasts. Rahime was sitting on the edge of the bed looking at Derdâ’s naked shoulders, smiling. At first Derdâ couldn’t understand how she’d gotten in, and then she was confused as to where she was. Remembering that Rahime had her keys struck her mind like a stone hurled with hatred. Who knew how long she’d been there. Just next to her in bed. It was morning and the curtains were a shade brighter in the sun. Maybe she had seen her the night before?
“Once I was beautiful like you.”
Derdâ let out a deep sigh. Rahime stroked Derdâ’s shoulder with the palm of her hand and continued to speak: “But look at me now. What has become of me?”
Rahime lay down on the bed in her chador. And putting her head on Derdâ’s chest, she wept. Derdâ caressed the cloth covering her head—it was only thing she could do to console her.
The day was quiet and no one performed prayers. Toward evening, Rahime came to see Derdâ with a shoebox. She whispered, “Do you know what’s inside?”
Without waiting for an answer, she opened the box and took out an object wrapped in scarves. She untied the scarves and presented Derdâ with a small, metal radio.
She turned on the radio and whispered, “Don’t ever tell anyone, ever!” Siouxsie and the Banshees were singing “Peek-a-Boo.”
Rahime laughed and said, “I don’t understand a thing but it’s just so good, isn’t it?” Derdâ laughed, too.
They listened to music and danced until midnight in the only way they knew how. They mostly held hands and jumped up and down, turned themselves around, and bumped into each other. They were doing the pogo, though neither of them knew it.
But it was exasperating for Derdâ to have to swear every half an hour with her hand on the Koran: “I won’t tell anyone about the radio.”
Derdâ woke with a knot in her throat that wouldn’t go away. She couldn’t swallow. It was like a small steel ball was lodged in her throat; she could hardly breathe. It was the last day before Bezir came back and she just couldn’t relax. Each passing moment brought the day closer to its end, each passing second. That was why she had a knot in her throat.
She was thinking of her next-door neighbor’s eyes; she imagined the blue around his pupils, hovering there just before her. Then his pale face came into focus around his eyes, and as it became clearer and clearer, Bezir’s dark face faded away and with it the knot in her throat. She considered knocking on her neighbor’s door. I could tell him to take me away? Beg him to kidnap me? But how would she speak to him? In what language? Then she realized she could communicate with him through pictures. She could draw out her thoughts. Everything: How she came to the apartment five years ago, and the way Bezir tortured her. How they would leave the apartment together and never come back. They would simply walk out the front door, hand in hand. She’d draw him a picture of a heart, an enormous heart.
She jumped out of the bed and raced into the living room. Bezir’s notebook and fountain pen were on his lectern. He was studying Arabic. She grabbed the notebook and the pen and stretched out on the floor. She opened a blank page and she drew a self-portrait. It was easy—a black snowman. Then she drew
