The thing it took me some time to learn is this: belonging is not a fixed state. You can be told for many years that you belong; that you are a uniform part of a greater whole. That your identity is the same thing as the identity of a nation. Then, one day, you discover that the criteria for membership have changed. Differences are exposed; aspects of your life that you had never understood as different. Suddenly they have become radical, perverse, blasphemous. ‘Look at the way you pray!’ they say. ‘Look at the food you eat, the tongue you speak in, the colour of your skin, the sort of bed you lay your head on … even the sound of your name. You are as different from us – we have only just realised it – as a cat is from a dog. You have been hiding among us, but now we see straight through your deception. Whoever told you that a cat may be friends with a dog? What nonsense! We are sworn, eternal enemies. We have found you out. We will tear you apart.’
I open the suitcase, and take out a small tobacco tin. There is a man in London who imports this variety of tobacco from the old place. For many years it has been delivered in a heavy, compact package smelling powerfully of burned toast, and then decanted into one of several small tins like this. My memories are scented with it, mingled with the chemical tang of a hospital ward.
The image on the lid depicts a reclining odalisque, flattering the Westerner’s idea of the Ottoman woman, anachronistically flanked by two Egyptian sphinxes. ‘MURAD TURKISH TOBACCO’, the type proclaims proudly. Below a bold invitation: ‘Judge it for yourself!’, weathered to hesitance by the years. The colours on the tin are mere reminders of themselves, those once primary brights, the enamel paint disintegrating.
I discovered this particular tin in a drawer of the desk in the study. I remember how, sitting at his desk, I attempted to prise off the lid. Even though I put all my strength into it I could not find any give in the metal; it was welded shut by rust. This, naturally, only made me the more determined. Finally it gave – and suddenly, all at once.
It was not tobacco, inside, but sand. The discovery felt like a trick, a practical joke. Some of it had scattered onto the floor. I spent an hour collecting grains from where they had embedded themselves into the rug and excising them from between the floorboards. They were a pale colour; there were tiny shards of shell caught amongst them. The pink of fingernails, pinker, the inside of your lip. This was not the greyish sand of an English beach. I knew that this was the relic of a warm place, where the light got into things.
There isn’t sand in here any more, though. Now it contains something altogether more precious.
Nur
‘You have been to see the boy today as well.’
‘It is important, Büyükanne. He is very unwell.’
‘You have seen the English doctor too, then, I suppose. There must be some way in which he wants to gain from this. I cannot understand, otherwise, why he would help.’
‘He is not English, he is Scottish. And …’ quickly, realising the thing that she should have said first, ‘he helped because I begged him. I believe he felt a certain duty.’
‘I wonder.’ Her grandmother closes her eyes, pantomiming deep thought. ‘How many doctors do you think would travel across the Bosphorus in the middle of the night to an unknown neighbourhood to help a foreign woman? And then to take the child in, no doubt against orders …’
‘I believe that he is not a bad man, despite everything.’
‘But he is also one of the same men who incarcerated your brother, for four years. And you have seen what that has done to him, who he has become.’
‘No, he is not the same. He was never involved in that: he was in Mesapotamia, and Persia.’
Her grandmother gives her a look.
‘You have talked to him.’
‘Only as much as I have had to, to appear civil.’
‘You need to take care, canım.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I know that life has been difficult for you these last few years. And I know that we do not always make it easy for you. And perhaps sometimes it is not clear that we see what you are doing for us. I do see it, though, my darling girl.’
The affection takes Nur unawares. She has to press the heels of her hands to her eyes to stop the tears that are suddenly fighting to appear.
‘And I know that the loss of a husband … and of the little one.’
‘Don’t—’ Her grandmother is the only one who knows of the second loss. Nur feels now that she is wielding it unfairly.
‘I sometimes think it would have been better if you had not married at all. One more loss for you. And when one has lost a husband there goes with it a certain … variety of affection that cannot be replaced by family.’
Nur thinks that there is little point in explaining that she does not recall experiencing such a thing in the short time with Enver.
‘And I only think—’
‘Well,’ Nur says, sharply, ‘I think that if one spends too much time sitting, and thinking, and doing nothing else, one is liable to fantasise.’
She feels even as she says it that she has gone too far. She waits for her grandmother’s wrath, known and feared since childhood. And yet to her surprise it does not come. Instead there is a strange noise, a small hitch of breath. Concerned, she looks at the old woman. And sees – miracle of miracles – that she is weeping.
‘Büyükanne …’
‘I do not say it because I am afraid of the shame. Though of course it would
