A Recipe for Daphne

Emine, a Muslim girl who had worked at Neighbor’s House a few years ago, quit, and—apparently—returned. Although civil marriage between Muslims, Jews, and Christians was perfectly legal in Turkey, Kosmas had no desire to marry without the blessing of the Church. Still, he had been unable to prevent himself from being seduced when, one evening after a particularly hard day at the Lily, Emine had insisted on making him Turkish coffee instead of tea. She had carried it with great care so that the foam wouldn’t break and set it gently on the table before him. As she retreated, with the subservience of an odalisque, her arm had brushed his shoulder. A good Turkish girl would never have let that happen by accident. Later that same evening, she’d left Neighbor’s House wearing, instead of her short-sleeved uniform top, a headscarf and raincoat: the creative compromise between secular and religious dress. Kosmas, who had always had a weakness for hijabi women, had been instantly hooked. Nevertheless, it had taken him three months to work up the courage to ask her out, and by that time she was already engaged. Julien had tried to assuage Kosmas’s disappointment. “Don’t worry, my boy,” he’d said. “When one woman leaves your life, ten arrive to take her place.” But the promised ten never came.

“What can I get for you?” said Emine. She had gained a few kilos.

“Nothing,” said Kosmas. “I mean, may I have seven teas, please?”

“Right away.” As Emine arranged the tulip-shaped glasses on a tray, Kosmas discreetly observed her from behind. He visually caressed the wisps of hair escaping the full bun at the nape of her neck; by ten o’clock that evening, they would all be covered with a titillating headscarf.

“Haven’t seen her before,” said Emine, still with her back to him.

“American,” said Kosmas.

Emine dropped two sugar cubes onto each saucer. Without looking up from her work, she said, “You’d better be quick. The men here are going to be all over her.”

“I gave her my card.”

“Did you get hers?”

Kosmas tapped his fingers on the counter. “No.”

Emine sighed. “You have to get hers. She won’t call you.”

“I’ve never been good at these things,” said Kosmas.

“I know.” Emine filled the bottoms of the tulip-shaped glasses with dark-brewed tea. Before topping them off with hot water, she paused. Something had caught her eye. “Are you sure you want seven?”

Kosmas looked out the window. The American lifted an arm as thin as a swan’s neck, waved him goodbye, and left the tea garden with her aunt.

“The extras are for you,” said Kosmas. “My treat.”

“Always such a gentleman,” said Emine, with a fond smile.

“Yeah, for all the good it does me.”

The next morning—Sunday—Kosmas rose early. A few days before, Madame Eva, his mother’s best friend, had offered to arrange a meeting with a Levantine Catholic girl named Rita Tereza. Since the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople allowed marriage with Catholics and Armenian Apostolics—provided they signed a triplicate affidavit saying they would baptize their children Rum Orthodox—Kosmas had agreed to the matchmaking.

As he showered, images of Daphne arranging her long hair flooded his still sleepy mind. So he turned the tap to cold, gave himself a good shock, and said out loud, “She’s a high-class salon type. She’ll never fancy you.”

He shaved with care, all the while fantasizing about Rita Tereza’s blue eyes, which Madame Eva had described as “very sweet.” He imagined that they would go for a walk along the Bosporus after church and stop for tea and sweet börek. The afternoon might end with a tender kiss at her doorstep, which meant that he had to eliminate every last bristle so that it wouldn’t scratch her rose-petal lips. After rinsing and drying, he reached for his Davidoff Cool Water, but it wasn’t in its place on the clothes washer. His mother had probably tossed it somewhere during one of the obsessive ceiling-to-floor bleach-downs she performed at least twice per week with the help of her cleaning lady. He rummaged through Rea’s bin of nail polish, her lipstick drawer, and her hairclip basket, where he finally found the blue–black bottle. He spritzed himself generously. As with pastries, scent was just as important as appearance.

Kosmas dressed in gray pants and a polite white shirt, with the sleeves turned up to the elbows. After pulling his socks as high as they would go—a fixation he had developed as the result of Rea’s distaste for socks pooling at ankles—he slipped on his brown bit loafers, took a quick glance at the cloudy morning sky, grabbed an umbrella, and was outthe door.

He climbed Yeni Çarşı Street, turned into the sleepy Grand Avenue, and hurried into a cobbled byway leading to the Panagia church. The rain began just as he was entering the gate. He greeted the two gruff Antiochians serving as guards and waited until he was inside to cross himself because his mother had taught him never to do so in the street. In the night-sky-painted narthex, he lit three candles: one for himself, one for his dead father, and a third for the blue-eyed beauty whom he was about to meet.

Kosmas had never seen the Rum Orthodox churches so full that “there was no room for a pin to drop,” as his elders fondly described the golden days before the 1955 pogrom. On that Sunday, the church contained no more than twenty warm bodies: a dozen old women with flowers and barrettes in their hair; a handful of fifty-something dames in short skirts; a few men in suits; and a couple of Greek tourists in shorts and athletic shoes. A headscarved Russian woman was venerating an icon in the ornate gold-painted iconostasis wall that separated the nave from the sanctuary. Fanis was chanting away at the cantor’s stand and—judging from the way he dragged out the syllables—enjoying his own voice. The well-dressed Rum women congregated near the bishop’s throne, where they could see and be seen. The Rum men had taken positions near the door, through which they