Gardens of Water (62 page)

“Let’s wash your back.”

Sinan pulled the curtain back just enough to let his hands inside. Taking the soap, he lathered it up in his palms, and scrubbed down
smail’s shoulders before moving to his back. The boy’s skin was so soft, clean, and without blemish. His shoulders were broad, especially for someone so young. His spine was perfectly straight and both legs were the same length, the calves of each perfectly formed and connected to tendons that allowed him to walk with a grace Sinan could only dream of. If each man was the image of God, then God was a malformed thing, given to weakness and petty selfishness. Yet his son, this boy, seemed the perfection man was supposed to reflect.

He was a Kurd and the world would tell him he was nothing. He was poor and the world would give him nothing. He was a Muslim and the world would ignore him, and being ignored was like being dead. The boy had his name and his name was everything. Take away his name and the boy had no future, no honor, no respect, no reason to look in a mirror and see his own perfection.

“Ouch, Baba! You’re doing it too hard.”

smail’s skin was red from the scrubbing. He stopped and told the boy to rinse off.

What if
rem did something that denied her entry to Heaven? Skin was only the container of the soul, but the soul was a fragile membrane—it could easily be ripped and once it was, there was no sewing it back together. To kill her before she destroyed that, she would remain innocent, she would enter Paradise as a child, as clean as the day she was born.

And
smail wouldn’t have to feel less than anyone in this world, ever.

“We’re done,
smail.” He handed the boy a towel. “Dry off.”

When they got back to the tent, Marcus was waiting for him.

“She’s with Dylan, isn’t she?” Marcus said.

Sinan simply nodded because if he spoke it would be to attack the man.

“Go inside,
smail,” Sinan said.

“He hasn’t been back in two days.” Marcus thrust his hands into his jeans pockets. “I think I know where they are.”

“Then you’ll take me there tonight,” Sinan said.

“Too late for the buses.”

“Don’t you have a car?”

“No.”

Sinan thought he might be lying, but, then again, why would he?

“Tomorrow then.”

Chapter 48

S
HE SHOULDN’T HAVE BEEN ALONE WITH HIM IN THE APARTMENT
. No, she could do anything she wanted now! Her father wasn’t here. Her mother wasn’t watching her every move. Like Dilek had said, another quake could hit tomorrow. Besides, what was she thinking when she ran off with him? That they would sleep in the street like Romas? But she couldn’t help the feeling; it was wrong for her to be here.

He was in the bathroom, taking a shower. She sat petrified on the couch in the front room, listening to the water running and watching the steam tumble through the cracked open door. She wished he would close the door. Was he expecting her to come in there? Did he simply forget? She thought about closing it herself, but as much as she had dreamed about his body, she was afraid to see it now.

Pictures of Dylan’s mother hung on the walls. Not just his mother—the whole family, too—but it was his mother that caught her attention most. It was like sitting in the room with a ghost, her green eyes shining down from every wall. She wondered what Sarah Han
m would think about this. Would she accept her as her daughter? Did she realize—somewhere in Heaven or Hell—that none of this would have happened if she were still alive? There was a picture of her on a beach—young, blond, her hair blowing into her eyes. She wore a two-piece red bathing suit, and her stomach was flat as unleavened bread. The curve of her breasts peeked beneath the bathing-suit top and she looked very happy despite being nearly naked in public. There was another picture of Sarah Han
m hiking a canyon in shorts and carrying a huge pack on her back. A black-and-white photo of her smiling, her head thrown back laughing, as though she were a star in an old movie. In all these pictures, it was obvious the person with the camera was in love with her, not just in love but in love with her beauty—the way her hair caught the light, her bright green eyes, her perfect lips. There were other pictures, though, and in these photographs Sarah Han
m stood on the periphery, hiding behind a tree at a terrace dining table, holding her hand up against the camera eye. At a certain point, the pictures of her stopped and were replaced with pictures of Dylan. Then one last picture sat above a small desk in the corner of the room: Sarah Han
m much older, on a beach again, her body covered in long pants, her arms hidden in long sleeves, her thinness gone. Her weight was apparent even beneath the billowing clothes, and
rem thought she was trying to disguise the fact that she had grown ugly. In the center of the picture, Dylan and his father smiled at the camera, their teeth very white, their naked chests red with sunburn, their arms wrapped around each other. She suddenly felt sad for this dead woman; a woman, it seemed, was always forgotten eventually.

The water stopped running in the bathroom and she dug her nails into the couch. She tried not to look, but the door was open and she couldn’t make herself ignore it. His movements disturbed the light, bouncing shadows around the small room. Through the crack in the door she watched the steamed-up mirror and the blurry image of his slender body—a white hip, a dark spot beneath the smear of his belly, the curve of his back as he bent to dry his feet. He suddenly swiped the towel across the mirror and she looked away, back at the picture of Dylan’s once-beautiful mother half-naked on a beach.

When he came out, he was dressed and his wet hair dripped onto his tight black shirt. She could see the plates of his chest beneath the fabric.

“Won’t they find us here?” she said.

“My father doesn’t give a shit,” he said. He scraped his fingers through his scalp. “He’s too busy saving people.”

“My father will come after us.”

He would find them. She couldn’t imagine what he would do to Dylan, but he would take her back to the camp, lock her up inside that horrible tent all day, and she would sit there sweating, listening to the people outside in the sun, lie there as the laughter of children echoed from the soccer field. They would move somewhere else and she’d be locked up inside another gray apartment. Eventually, he’d find her a husband, some kind traditionalist that would treat her like a jewel box, like some prized possession that cooked and cleaned and gave birth and changed diapers and did it all again whenever he wanted, and she would wake up one morning and realize she had become her mother. And that every day from that day forward would be like the day before it and the one before that until day and night didn’t matter anymore and life would feel like one long hour of work with death at the end.

“He’ll find us,” she said.

Dylan smiled, a strange smile full of disregard.

“We won’t be here,” he said. “C’mon, we’re going out. But you’ve got to change.”

He took her hand and led her into the bathroom. The steam had cleared, except for a few streaks on the mirror. He stood behind her. They both stared into the mirror, and his blurry nakedness flashed in her mind. She smiled with the memory until she really looked at them together. He was head and shoulders taller than she. Dressed in black, with his hair slicked, with his leather bracelets and tattoos, he looked like someone from a television show, and she the poor peasant girl, the ones the television shows always made fun of, the ones people thought were stupid and passive and ugly.

“If you want to fit in where we’re going,” he said, “you’ve gotta get rid of this.”

He placed his hands on either side of her head. They were big hands and she thought he could crush her head if he wanted. “I mean, I don’t care,” he said. “But people here will.”

“For months,” he said, “I’ve wanted to see your hair. It’s got to be beautiful.”

She wanted to believe he thought her beautiful, but it sounded forced; somehow she didn’t believe him. She looked away.

“Hey,” he said, grabbing her chin. “Look at yourself.”

She did. Her big, hooked nose, the pimples on her chin, the shadow of hair above her lip. She looked Kurdish and Kurds weren’t known for their beautiful women. Macedonians were beautiful. Armenians. The light-skinned Turks with their blue eyes and blond hair.

His hands pulled at the scarf now.

“No,” she said, and placed her hands on his. This was dangerous. She thought if she let this happen, then there was no stopping anymore. That’s what her mother always said. Let a man see your hair, your neck, and you’ll soon be pregnant. But no boy had ever spoken to her like this.

“I love the way your lips always pout.”

He pulled on the scarf again, despite her hands.

“Makes me want to kiss them.”

And she found her hands moving to help him. How stupid her mother was—as if exposed skin could get you pregnant, as if it took nothing more than that! As if a woman’s self-control was contained in a sleeve of cheap fabric!

“I’ve been dying to do this,” he said.

Together they pushed it off her head and her hair, all pinned up like a bird’s nest, shined in the bathroom light.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said as he pulled the first pin from her hair, his hands so soft, his fingers combing out the tangles one by one.

THEY MET HIS FRIENDS
in front of the French
lisesi,
a colonnaded building locked behind a huge wrought-iron fence. Dylan slapped hands with one of the boys before kissing him and the others—another boy and a girl—on each cheek. Dylan’s friends were Turks, but rich Turks, she could tell, just from the cut of their jeans and the easy arrogance of their movements. Nothing about them suggested they had suffered or sacrificed anything, and it was only rich Turks who could seem this purely unburdened. It took Dylan a while to introduce her and she stood behind him, wishing she could disappear.

The boys ignored her, but the girl kept glancing at her between interjections in the conversation.
rem looked away and pretended to be listening to the boys’ conversation, but when the girl joined the conversation,
rem watched
her.
Baggy jeans rested on the girl’s hips, and she wore big, black shoes with silver studs on them. The strap of a black canvas bag hung between her breasts so that the material of her tank top pressed closely against her chest and
rem could see the points of her nipples. The girl was Turkish, but not even Dilek would dress like this. What shocked her most was the way the girl seemed to be trying to look like a boy. If
rem could show as much skin as this girl, she’d try to look as beautiful, as feminine as possible, so that she could enjoy boys’ eyes watching her.