With Derdâ now right in front of him, he couldn’t help but stretch out his hand and take the girl by the arm. Derdâ pulled her arm back and jumped away, but then stopped, turned back, and looked at the man with grayish-blond hair. The man stood up and put his hands up in the air, open palms facing Derdâ as if to say, “I surrender,” and he said, “I’m so sorry! It’s just that I’m your number one fan. Really, I am very sorry, indeed.”
No one had ever apologized to Derdâ in her own home, but she knew all too well the meaning of an apology at Stanley’s, as part of her job was to force people to apologize and grovel before her. She kept listening to the man. He stood up and was an arm’s distance away from her. He extended his hand for her to shake.
“The name’s Steven. And it’s a real pleasure to meet you.”
Derdâ looked down at his thin, wrinkled hand and then looked at his face. She didn’t take his hand.
“Could I speak to you for a moment?” asked the man. “If you have time, of course? We could have coffee somewhere?”
Derdâ looked just how she did in her films. She was short, but somehow seemed taller than everyone else. She was often silent, but it seemed like she was angrily cursing inside.
“I know you from your films,” said the man. “Sensational stuff!”
Derdâ recognized the word: film. She chuckled from under her chador.
“Please,” the man begged. “Just five minutes. There’s a place just around the corner. I promise I won’t keep you very long.”
Derdâ’s voice cracked—it was the first time she had spoken since her rebirth.
“Alright,” she managed to say.
The man bowed like a true gentleman and held out his hand to show Derdâ the way. “This way, please.”
Derdâ walked three paces ahead of him.
They went to one of the oldest pubs in Crouch End. A group of old age pensioners gawked at Derdâ in her black chador like she’d come from another planet. Soon a waitress arrived and Derdâ hastily asked her where the bathroom was. The waitress gestured toward the back of the pub. Derdâ took her bag and went.
In the bathroom, she examined her reflection in the narrow mirror for some time before she took off her chador and the nightgown underneath. She folded them and put them in her bag. Then she put on a pair of black jeans (clearly an indication of Stanley’s goth taste), a black Cramps T-shirt, and a black leather jacket. She unzipped her thick black plastic shoes and looked at them with disgust before chucking them in a can overflowing with soiled toilet paper. Then she put on her new red Dr. Martens.
She was totally transformed. She was a new woman, her hair flowing freely down to her lower back. She touched it and frowned. It made her mad. She wasn’t bothered by the jeans or the T-shirt, but having her hair in full view was too much too fast. With her bag slung over her back and her leather jacket over her arm, she took a deep breath and opened the bathroom door.
Derdâ’s number one fan couldn’t believe his eyes. So many things raced through his mind just then. The girl was much more beautiful than he ever imagined she would be; her breasts were smaller than he’d imagined them, but her face seemed somehow familiar.
He ordered coffee for himself and was pleased when Derdâ asked for the menu. He would have more than just five minutes with her. After some hesitation over words she didn’t know, Derdâ randomly pointed to a dish on the menu. Her choice was steak with mushroom sauce and French fries. It was her lucky day and she didn’t even know why.
“I’m sorry to say it, but it seems we won’t be able to understand each other?”
Derdâ was inspecting the dirt between her nails and marveling at the parts of her body now fully exposed; she raised her head and said, “Maybe.” She seemed to have a faint recollection of the man.
“Then let me ask you this, could it be that we’ve met before?”
Derdâ didn’t understand.
“Where are you from? Which country?”
She still didn’t understand.
“Spain? Italy? Romania? Somewhere else?”
Derdâ just smiled pleasantly. She really didn’t understand a word. Just then the waitress brought Steven’s coffee and a paper placemat with a history of the pub, a napkin, a fork, and a steak knife for Derdâ. The man went on naming countries.
“Greece? Turkey?”
Suddenly Derdâ tuned in. She didn’t exactly understand what the man was trying to say, but she was sure she’d heard the word “Turk.” Now he knew that he had something and he said “Türkiye?” Derdâ nodded. He continued in Turkish.
“Alright, OK, now I remember you. You were just a child then. You applied for a visa with your father in Istanbul.”
Derdâ squeezed the handle of her steak knife. She knew the decision she’d make at that second was crucial. The son of a bitch who’d opened the door to the past five years of hell was sitting right across from her. Now she recognized Steven. The taste of that horrid chocolate he’d given her that day still lingered in her memory. She imagined driving her steak knife deep
