Gardens of Water (58 page)

“You’ve got to understand, Sinan, that these were the only people willing to come here on such short notice.”

“So it’s true?” Sinan said.

“Some people might talk about Jesus.”

“They’re trying to convert people?”

“Sinan,” Marcus said, his voice growing more sharp and weary at the same time. “Listen, without these people, you’d still be sitting in that little circle of grass by the freeway waiting for the government to figure out which way is up.” He pointed his finger in the general direction of the freeway. “Your kids would be starving. If a few of them want to talk about Jesus, that’s a small price to pay, isn’t it?”

“Is it them or is it you?”

Marcus ran his hand through his hair.

“Sinan Bey,” Marcus said. “
smail’s been asking me questions. I answer them.” “You’re not really here to help, then,” Sinan said. “You’re here taking advantage of our weakness.”

“Not me, Sinan.” He waved a finger at him. “I’m not with these people. I just got them through my school connections.”

“Your missionary school connections,” Sinan said. “You brought them here.”

“I found someone who could help, and that’s all I did. Some of them are Baptists and some of them don’t believe the same thing I do. They were ready with people and supplies.” He threw his head back and looked at the point of the tent top. “Lord! C’mon, Sinan, when the body can be saved you worry about the soul later.”

“No,” Sinan said. “I think you’re thinking food and tents are a small price to pay to win some Muslims.” Sinan stood. “You’re all rich. What’s a few tents and some bags of food to you? You smile in my face and stab me in the back. You Americans are all the same.”

“No,” Marcus said.

“At first it seems like you’re helping, but really you’re taking what you want and the helping stops after you take it.”

“Please, my friend, calm down.”

Marcus held out his hand to try to calm him, but Sinan was too angry to be calmed.

“That’s not me,” Marcus said. “I used to be like them, but that’s not me anymore.”

Sinan stopped pacing.

“Sinan,” he said. “That’s not me. When I first came here with my wife I was very young and I used to believe the things they told you in church. I used to believe it was only people who accepted Christ that went to Heaven, and that seemed like such a sad thing—that billions of people would die without a chance at salvation. That thought depressed me in a way I can’t explain.” He rubbed his hand across his forehead and Sinan could hear the passion in his voice. “It made me black with guilt—and mad. Why was I one of the lucky few when so many people were damned to Hell I decided the only explanation was that they had not heard the good news of Christ, and I thought it was my moral obligation to share it. Now I think…I don’t know, I think what any of us knows about God is like one drop of water in the ocean.”

Sinan wasn’t sure what to say. He wasn’t sure if he should believe this man. His heart was telling him he should, but his mind was wary.

“And Sarah just confused me even more.” He pulled his glasses from his nose and rubbed his temples. “When I met her she was as strong in her belief as I, but later she changed. She was so much better than I am—selfless, loving, thoughtful, not full of the egoistic passions I suffer from. When she died, she was more of a Buddhist than anything.”

Sinan thought about what he told his son, and he was afraid he had actually told a lie. He thought people of the Book could be saved, but he didn’t know about ones who rejected it completely.

“Sinan,” Marcus said. “I should be happy for her now, but I don’t know if she’s—God, it sounds so stupid to say out loud—I don’t know if she’s in Heaven.”

“She was a good woman.”

“I know.”

Sinan waited a moment, but he didn’t want to be drawn away into Marcus’s problems.

“If my son has questions,” Sinan said, “I’ll answer them.”

“Yes,” Marcus said. “Yes, you’re right.”

“There will be trouble if this continues,” Sinan said. “If these people keep going into the tents.”

Marcus nodded. “I’ll talk to Peter.”

“You’ll get them to stop?”

“They’re helping.”

“You’ll stop them?”

Marcus cocked his head to the side in an expression of doubt. “I’ll try, Sinan.”

Chapter 44

W
HEN SHE REACHED THE TOP OF THE HILL, DYLAN WASN’T
there. Fog stretched toward the beach, a wall of clouds reflecting orange from the dock lights that lumbered like the massive body of an approaching sea animal, and when the first wet tentacles surrounded her she shuddered and crouched on the hillside. The sea suddenly disappeared and she was surrounded by darkness, the orange light gone, the sky and its stars blotted out, leaving her lost on this small patch of dust at her feet.

She was alone and the fog blew the sound of her breath back at her. Her heart beat inside her head so hard that she thought it would convulse and shudder to a stop. Something touched her shoulder and she swung at it, her open hand hitting something solid and then something soft, cartilaginous, that gave away under the pressure.

“Ah, shit,
rem.”

When she turned she found Dylan fallen over on the ground, on the little patch of earth that was hers. He held his hand to his nose. She pulled his hand away and there was a little blood, but she kissed him hard on the lips anyway. He kissed her back and she could feel the warm blood on her lips. She surprised herself by kissing his neck, his collarbone beneath his shirt, the curls of hair on his chest.

“Let’s leave,” he said. “Tonight.”

“No,” she said. “I can’t do that.”

But she couldn’t stop kissing him.

He blew out a frustrated breath and pushed her away. The fog swirled around them and his head and shoulders seemed to fade in the mist.

“You want me to give up my family?” she said.

“Yeah. Haven’t they already given you up?”

“No,” she said. “They’re holding on as tightly as they can.”

“What’s this then?” He threw his hand at her. “What’s this we’re doing?”

She said nothing and the silence enveloped them. She tasted blood and salt. A foghorn bellowed and she felt dizzy for a moment, remembering the steep fall to the water.

“I’ve been here every day and night waiting for you.”

Her chest burst with love and anger and frustration.

“I thought I lost you,” he said.

“No,” she said. “You knew I couldn’t leave.”

“But you could,” he said.

“Look at this,” she said, holding out her wrist to him now. “Look. You think I’ve enjoyed being locked up in that tent? How stupid are you?”

He gazed at her wrist now, his eyes growing wider with realization. He took her hand and ran his thumb across her palm.

“You’d rather hurt yourself than hurt them?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I—no, I want to be happy.”

“Then come with me. This place is terrible now. Fuck our parents.”

“Please don’t say that.”

“Jesus!”

He let go of her wrist, stood, and kicked dirt, and she could hear the pebbles launch into the air.

“What do you want,
rem?”

Allah, Allah!
She stomped her foot.

“I want you to come to my parents’ home for dinner. I want you to bring a box of chocolates and take your shoes off at our door. I want my father to kiss you on each cheek and invite you into the living room. I want my mother to serve you her terrible chocolate-and-pistachio cake and for you to eat every dry bite of it and tell her how wonderful it is.” She was yelling now, screaming into the stifling fog. “I want to watch you and my father sipping tea as you ask his permission to marry me, and have my mother whisper into my ear what a handsome and good man I have chosen. I want my father to walk me down the aisle and deliver me to your arms. I want fireworks at the reception. I want to dance with
smail in my wedding dress.”

Dylan sat back down in the dirt, his head bowed between his knees. She stood for a moment, feeling empty and relieved somehow, and then sat down next to him, the heat between their legs a little fire of warmth in the icy fog.

“I went to see your father today.” He lit a cigarette and the smoke flew away from his mouth to join the clouds. “I told him I wanted to convert.”

A pang of hopefulness hit her, even though she knew that sitting here meant the meeting didn’t go well.

“You’d do that for me?” She was moved, but the gesture bothered her, too. If he could so easily give up his religion, couldn’t he easily give her up, too—for a more beautiful woman, for boredom, for almost anything?

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “He hates me and it doesn’t matter what I do.”

“His father was killed by Americans.”

“Jesus, I’ve spent my whole fucking life in this country. I’m about as American as you are.” He blew smoke and the warmth hit her cheek. “He says it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t change anything, but he’s over at my dad’s tent bitching him out because ‘someone’s’ been talking to
smail about Jesus. It changes things for his precious son but not for me, not for you.”

She pulled the cigarette from his fingertips and took a drag.

“Have you thought about that?” He took the cigarette back. “He’s ready to tear my dad apart for trying to convert his son, but he’s not willing to budge an inch for a guy about to come over to his side because he loves his daughter. Damn hypocrite.”

“Is it true?”

“What, my dad trying to convert your brother?”

She nodded.

“Yeah, it’s true. He loves the kid. Thinks
smail’s some sort of miracle or something.” He laughed a sad laugh. “You should see the way he looks at him.”

She envisioned her father looking at
smail. When
smail wasn’t looking, she’d catch her father staring at him, a look on his face that betrayed all his pride, his love—a look that was glowing but full of pain at the same time.

“It’s like he thinks he’s perfect or something.”

She touched his back. An intense desire to kiss him blurred into a need to comfort him. She thought, for the first time, she understood him completely.

“It’s you,
rem,” he said. “I’ve got you and that’s it.”

She put her arm around him and he fell against her, his face pressing into her shoulder.

“Jesus,” he said, lifting his head now. “I think you broke my nose.”

He pressed the end of it to the left and then he laughed and she laughed with him.