He feels … difficult to explain exactly, closest at this time to his real self. Not his wartime or professional self. Merely a man taking a simple pleasure.
Leaving the barber’s, he finds himself in the grand thoroughfare before the Aya Sofia, Baedeker in his hand. He found the book at a market stall, a strange relic of a time recent and yet so far off for everyone in this city, soldiers and civilians aside. He looks up in wonder at the gilded domes and then down at the page, only to see a rush of movement before him. He leaps back on instinct before he can properly understand what has just happened. Unseen until the last second, a little boy has run into his path and spat on the ground at his feet. He looks down, absolutely stunned, at the small gobbet of saliva where it seems to foam in the dust, and then at the boy. The child is tiny, with that pinched look that so many of the youth have here. He is caught as though frozen in the act of running away, almost equally surprised by his own act of defiance. For a moment they stare at one another, both wondering what George is going to do. And then a woman launches herself at the child, shielding him with her arms. ‘Please,’ she cries, looking up at George. ‘Please, forgive.’
There is much George would like to say to her. After the initial affront of the act, it suddenly seems rather amusing. The boy is so small, after all, his bravery quite astonishing. He would like to explain that no harm has been done, that if he had been in the boy’s position, he would hope he would have done the same. In this moment he feels all the frustration, the impotence, of the language barrier between them. ‘It’s all right,’ he says, putting up a hand. ‘It’s all right.’
Nur
Through the open windows come faint strains of music with a foreign flavour: Russian and American imports. It is a relief not to be out on the streets; for the time being this cramped apartment is a place of sanctuary.
One November evening, a couple of years ago, she and the boy had stayed late at the school: she planning the next day’s lessons, he reading at one of the desks. They were travelling home when a series of huge explosions rattled the windows of the tram. All of the passengers crouched low in their seats, bracing against the onslaught. Perhaps some, like she had, had been at Mahmut Paşa the day the English planes came … or had heard stories of it from others, stories steeped in gore.
Then someone had pointed to the sky and they saw it ablaze with coloured light; green, red, gold. It took her a while to recognise that these were fireworks, like those she had seen at Eid Mubarak a lifetime ago. It was some display by the Allies, no doubt – no one else in this city had anything to celebrate. The boy had asked if they could go and watch. Together they had climbed the cobbled streets of Pera to get a better look, past the doors of meyhanes and restaurants. The boy lingered outside these, caught by the faint sounds of revelry within – she tugged him on.
From here it seemed the colours were everywhere, the Golden Horn lighting up with reflected fire. The boy gave a shriek of delight. She had been thrilled at this unexpected show of emotion, this sign, perhaps, of a brief respite from the things that haunted him. She had actually worried that they might remind him of that terrible night. After this re-assurance, she had begun to enjoy the fireworks too.
How democratic they were, for anyone who chose to watch them – though she doubted this had been the intention. They seemed to be lost on their intended audience, in fact, who seemed too absorbed by their business inside the meyhanes. Then without any warning one of the doors had opened and a chaos of khaki-clad bodies had been disgorged into the street in front of them, some clutching spilling glasses of beer.
Nur had pushed the boy behind her, but had not had time to prevent one of the men stumbling into her, catching her hard on the shoulder. Involuntarily she had shoved back with both hands, merely trying to keep him from knocking her down. He had toppled and briefly tried to right himself before his momentum had got the better of him, sending him crashing backward to the ground. She had stood there stunned by the act, by her sudden, unexpected power. His fellow soldiers had been beside themselves with glee – laughing and pointing, slurring insults at him where he sat in the pool of his spilled beer. Then the fallen one had looked up, and she had seen that the shock had sobered him; that his expression was pure menace. She had humiliated him, she understood this look to mean, and she would pay.
She had turned to the boy. ‘Run.’
They had fled back down the way they had come, through the cobbled streets. The men had pursued them for a while, alternately laughing and shouting orders. But the men were drunk, and she knew the streets better – knew a secret shortcut through a series of interconnecting alleyways that would take them back to the tram stop.
They had escaped, but she still has a queasy fear of one of them recognising her in the street one day and demanding retribution. If she were arrested, what would become of them all … the boy, her mother, her grandmother? She looks at them all now, and decides it
