Gardens of Water (74 page)

The rumors, as ridiculous as they seemed at first, were difficult to ignore. Each time Sinan heard a new one—after prayer, while walking to work, stepping out of his tent to use the water closet—the rumor gathered the strength of the previous ones and was lifted upon a wave of anger that made him want to believe them, until, finally, they began to feel like the truth. Didn’t the Americans kill his father? Didn’t they kill his daughter? Didn’t Marcus try to make him a Christian?

Then one night the whole camp was presented with evidence to prove the rumors. It was after dinner when everyone sat outside their tents, taking tea and smoking cigarettes before the evening cold set in. Sinan was outside with
smail, trying to get the boy to kick the soccer ball, when the Armenian paraded U
ur, the Gypsy boy, down the street. The boy, who before the earthquake had worn nothing but dirty sweatpants with a funny-looking mouse sewn into the pocket and an equally dirty plaid button-down, now wore clean jeans and a red American basketball jersey with a bull’s face on the chest. He had new white shoes on his feet and he walked as carefully as possible, avoiding all puddles and trying not to kick up any dust. And around his neck, hung a gold cross, just as Kemal Bey had said.

Sinan had never seen the boy smile, either before or after his parents’ death. He was simply a thin brown thing that foraged in the trash, gathering cardboard and wood to fortify the walls of his squatter’s house. Now, though, he smiled widely, his little boy cheeks pushing his eyes into creases. He looked back and forth at the people as he came down the street, flashing his wide grin at them as if to say,
Look what I’ve got. Look what you can have, too.

“Stupid Roma,” Ziya Bey, the man next door, said.

But everyone watched him—his brand-new clothes, his expensive shoes, his gold necklace—and in a way he didn’t seem so stupid anymore.
smail stopped to watch him, too. The sun hung low in the sky and the light glinted off the necklace.
smail stared without blinking at the Gypsy boy until the Armenian led U
ur around the corner of the street and out of sight.

“Go inside,” Sinan said.

smail ignored him.

“
smail,” he said. “Go inside.”

The boy did, but not before he leaned on one foot to see around the corner.

Chapter 58

H
E WOULD NOT LOSE HIS SON, TOO.

On Sunday, when he had the morning off, he and
smail took the ferries into the city to visit Eyüp Camii, the holiest mosque in
stanbul.
smail still wouldn’t speak, nearly ten days now of silence. Sinan’s stomach turned at the thought of traveling into that city again. So, the two of them sat silent together in the hull of the ferry, listening to the
clang
and
ping
of the engine. Outside, the fog was as thick as curdled milk and water droplets streaked across the window.

When they caught the last ferry from Yalova to
stanbul and he saw the opening to the Bosporus, Sinan lowered his head and stared at the floor and he didn’t raise it again until the boat bumped the dock in Sirkeci. Even then, as he held on to
smail’s shoulders in the rushing crowd, he would not look over his shoulder toward the bridge.

In Sirkeci, men opened doors to groceries, splashing buckets of water on the cement sidewalks and sweeping away the grime before laying out the produce of the day. He remembered the simple pleasure of washing down his square of pavement in front of the
bakkal
and he swore if he could have that life back again he would never complain.

In the windows of a pastry shop, a woman placed colorful cakes under bright lights that made the glazed fruit shine like jewels. The
pastanesi
was famous in
stanbul and Sinan stopped to show the boy. The woman waved to
smail and offered him a pistachio madeleine.
smail took the sweet bread but he stood there in the shop, the bread between forefinger and thumb, his hand dangling at his side. The woman handed one to Sinan, but stared at the boy, apparently wondering what was wrong with him. Sinan bit into the madeleine and raved about the taste, but
smail simply set the cookie on the silver tray next to the register and walked out.

The fog lifted and they walked the thin, twisting streets draped in the morning shadows of leaning Ottoman buildings, their ornamented balconies and cracked floral tiles radiating the morning sunlight. Here the sky above them was just a mean sliver of gray, and he wondered how people could live their whole lives in such a place. Living here was like being pressed between cement slabs. In Ye
illi the mud huts of the village sat low to the earth, the walls curving from the ground like something sculpted out of the soil. And the sky was towering, as though a million paper-thin layers of blue had been draped atop one another all the way up to Heaven. It made a man feel small and that was a good thing.

At Sobac
lar Avenue, they had to wait to cross and when they did they could only make it to an island in the center of the street. There they were swallowed up by traffic, the blur of cars and taxis racing by on either side, the dark smoke of bus exhaust blowing into their hair, and pop music blaring from passing windows. When there was another break, Sinan lifted
smail into his arms and ran, his body swaying awkwardly, to the other side before the next wave overtook the street.