“Mama, please,” said Kosmas.
“Stay right there!”
“Siktir,” whispered Kosmas, shaking his head.
Daphne giggled at his profanity. “You’re sexy when you curse.”
Rea’s cane made a tinny snapping noise each time it hit the slate pavement: a leitmotif of impending menace . . . tink . . . tink . . . tink . . . like the incessant dripping of Chinese water torture. Daphne’s mirth turned to fear. She inadvertently seized Kosmas’s forearm.
Rea’s brow contracted. Her fuchsia lips hardened, then curled into a smile. “We wish you many years, Daphne,” she said, in her most delicate salon voice, “and a very happy name day.”
Daphne leaned toward Rea to give her a hug, but the older woman responded with a perfunctory kiss and pulled away.
Fanis brushed a crumb off the wedding shirt that Hüsnü Mirza had made for him last summer. He straightened the silk scarf that he had tied at his neck. “Maşallah,” he said tentatively. Fanis had said it to convince himself that he was happy for Kosmas, and he found, as he let the word settle, that he truly was. At least somebody was going to get married and perpetuate their race. He transferred his gaze to Aliki, who sat at the head of the table, nervously blinking her blue-powdered lids. It was the first time he had seen her since their encounter outside the Greek Consulate, and he was eager to show that he harbored no resentment. “Aliki,” he whispered, “do you think that Rea’s really going to come round?”
Aliki stuck the knuckle of her index finger to the bottom of her nose and said, “The countryside is always beautiful before the storm.”
“Daha dur bakalım,” said Gavriela, in Turkish. Let’s wait and see.
“Yaaaa,” said Julien, with a doubtful eyebrow-raise.
Kosmas took off his leather jacket and held up his finger to Emine, who was passing by. “Would you mind bringing a knife and plates, please?” He peeled back the flaps of the pastry box resting at the center of the table and revealed a large, glistening, snail-shell-like pastry. Fanis took a deep breath of baked butter: this was the real thing, just like the butter Kalypso’s mother had used in her homemade bâtons salés.
“Is that . . . ?” said Daphne.
From behind, Kosmas pulled her long hair over her shoulders to the nape of her neck. “The Balkanik,” he said.
Daphne grabbed his hands, brought them to her face, and kissed them. “You did it.”
Kosmas whispered something in her ear. She smiled and nuzzled her shoulders into his chest. That was it, thought Fanis. The boy had her. Even if he didn’t know it yet.
“Nobody remembers how to make the Balkanik,” said Gavriela.
“Uncle Mustafa had some old Ottoman books written by his grandfather, who had a Rum business partner. I found the recipe in one of them.”
Fanis looked down at the plate. If the Balkanik pastry could be resurrected, then perhaps there was hope for their community. “Bravo,” he said.
“I’m proud of you, son,” said Rea. She took the knife from Emine, symbolically crossed the pastry thrice, and cut it into slices. The inside was exactly as it always had been: filled with different-colored and -flavored creams.
“Each cream represents one of the Ottoman Balkan peoples,” Kosmas explained. “Bulgarians, Romanians, Albanians, Greeks, Serbs, Croats, Jews, and Turks.”
Fanis stood and bustled around the table, serving each of the plates from the left, like a seasoned waiter. This little trick, he had learned long ago, made him appear caring and helpful in women’s eyes while simultaneously affording him peeks at their décolletage. Although the older ladies had nothing worth seeing and Daphne’s lemons were well covered by a conservative top, the lotus-flower tattoo on Selin’s left breast showed clearly beneath the edge of her white cotton blouse. Fanis paused for a second, staring at the flower. Purity that rose from the mud. Perhaps he should get a tattoo like that.
Julien clicked his tongue in disapproval and murmured, “Ayıp,” the Turkish word for “shame.” Selin made a half-hearted attempt to pull her blouse closer to her chest and shot Fanis a coy smile. Rea handed Fanis the last piece. He withdrew his eyes from Selin’s and lifted his plate to his nose. The aromas were delicate: vanilla, chocolate, cardamom, pistachio, and a few that he couldn’t distinguish. He sank his fork through the pastry and chewed deliberately while looking up at the bright new leaves of the linden tree. Strangely, no memories came to him. Not even of Kalypso. Instead of reliving his past experiences of the Balkanik, he was anchored to the present, to the flittering sun and shade beneath the linden tree, to the sounds of pleasure his friends made, to the way the Bosporus breeze ruffled Selin’s curls, to the honking of horns in Sıraselviler Avenue, to the scent of the cemetery lilacs. He was just here. Now. At Neighbor’s House. With the hole in his heart finally filled.
Julien pronounced the standard wish: “And next year with health.”
“Forever health!” the friends replied in chorus.
“God willing,” said Fanis. “But this day, this moment, is more than enough.”
Acknowledgments
I owe an enormous debt of gratitude to four women brilliant women: Nadine El-Hadi, my editor at Hoopoe Fiction and the best editor I could have hoped for; Alexandra Shelley, my writing teacher, who taught me so much that I still feel her sitting on my shoulder and whispering advice, even when I write in Greek; Alison Jean Lester, author of Lillian on Life, who read, encouraged, and critiqued; Rana Haddad, author of The Unexpected Love Objects of Dunya Noor, who believed in the novel and introduced me to Nadine.
Many thanks to all at The American University in Cairo Press for their professional excellence.
I dedicate this novel to my husband, Michail.
Although some settings in this novel are drawn from life, the characters and the plot are entirely fictional.
Selected Hoopoe Titles
My First and Only Love
by Sahar Khalifeh, translated by Aida Bamia
The Girl with Braided Hair
by Rasha Adly, translated by Sarah Enany
The Magnificent
