Finally, he speaks. ‘It is late now. I’ve travelled a long way. Every part of me is in pain. We can talk properly in the morning.’
‘Of course.’
She cannot sleep. The night sounds visit her: the screech of a cat fight, the haunting call of an owl. She lies, wide-eyed, exhausted but relentlessly awake, and waits for dawn. She cannot shake the feeling that there is a strange presence in the house, that something has come back with him. It does not feel like a homecoming.
In the morning her mother sits silent in her corner. She does not take her eyes from Kerem, except, occasionally, to glance up at the treasured portrait of him, smiling down at them. Nur cannot begin to guess at what is occurring inside her mind. In some lucid part of it is she recognising him, celebrating his return? Or is she seeing all that is different in him? Is is she trying to reconcile this wasted spectre with the ruddy painted youth upon the wall, who now seems almost to be flaunting his health, his wholeness. When Nur had dared to imagine her brother’s homecoming, in the early time before she resigned herself to his loss, she thought of it as the key that would unlock her mother’s silence, return her to herself. Somehow, she had thought, everything else would be easier to bear with him restored to them. She sees now what a foolish dream that had been. Because in that version he had been a little thinner, a little older, but unmistakably himself.
Even her grandmother is uncharacteristically quiet. Before she understood that this is what a homecoming might look like, Nur would have expected her to shout the triumph of her grandson’s survival from the rooftop, to summon their neighbours to come and bear witness to the war hero returned. Instead she sits in her chair, twisting the brilliant rings upon her fingers. And unlike Nur’s mother, she hardly looks at Kerem: when she does it is with an expression of bemusement, even pain. Nur has never seen her so discomfited.
In the light the state of his physical degradation is all the more evident. Nur finds herself emptying most of their weekly supply of yoghurt into a plate in front of him, drizzling it with ladlefuls of honey, several handfuls of nuts – cutting him a third of their weekly loaf and insisting they have plenty. He eats like a starving man – which of course he no doubt is – unaware of his surroundings, of anything at all, until the food is gone. Then he seems to surface. He is more beautiful with the thinness. It almost hurts to look at him.
There is so much she would like to ask him; about the places and things he has seen. It would be a way of understanding him, the changes that have occurred in him. But she senses there is also much that she is afraid to learn. The greatest change, the one that unnerves her most, is not something external. These physical blights will heal with time. The thing that Nur feels, as only a sister can, is something beneath the skin. She can find no trace here of the gentle brother she knew, the man who only ever wanted to share his learning with others. Someone – something – new and fierce has taken his place. She thinks of the old stories, of djinns who could take any form, including those of humans – those of loved ones. There was often something striking about them that would give them away, though. Some quirk that had not been present in the original … the eyes, often it was that. She understands this now as she never has before. Because there is something different about his eyes: or perhaps behind them.
She would not admit it to anyone, even if she had anyone to whom she could speak of it. But the truth is this: this man sitting at the table is a stranger. And he frightens her.
The Prisoner
To come home and discover this: his family living like paupers. His mother an invalid. She has become a mad old woman. She stares blankly ahead, as though the mind has long ago taken flight of the corporeal self. He sits beside her, tries to coax some sign of animation from her.
He reaches out a hand, to touch her arm. She flinches away with such force that the pitcher of water beside her is knocked to the ground with the terrible crash of breaking pottery. The blank-eyed look has briefly given way to one of terror.
‘Djinn,’ she hisses, accusingly. ‘Djinn!’ And he knows that she truly believes that she is looking at a demon. He feels a shadow of the old horror creep into the room. He sees a woman beside a river, and other faces, old, and young …
‘No,’ he shouts, as she begins to wail. ‘No – Anne, please!’
Nur rushes into the room. She hunkers down, strokes her mother’s hair, soothes her, murmurs words that are almost like song – a lullaby. She turns and looks at him with unbearable pity. ‘It will take time, Kerem. For her to understand … to come back to herself.’
He sees that his sister has covered her hair with her veil, as though ready to go out. There is a paper bag in her hands.
‘Where are you going?’
She gives a small, involuntary flinch – so small that perhaps only a brother would notice it. He is sure before she even speaks that it will be a lie. ‘To the school. I am teaching there now, Kerem. I am not sure I am as good at it as you, though. The children—’
‘And what are you holding?’ He snatches for one of the boxes before she can stop him, prises it open. Inside he sees a box of loukoum.
‘For the class,’ she says.
He lets her go. But he
