Gardens of Water (8 page)

“God willing, they’ll shut down the Carrefour,” Ahmet said. The French superstore had been built on the other side of the highway in what used to be an empty lot dotted with grazing goats. Their grocery had been losing business ever since. “Fatmah Han
m told me they sell Florida oranges there,” he said, turning up his lips in disgust. “They make them without seeds.”

“Must taste like piss,” Sinan said. “Fruit without seeds!”

It was as close to cursing as Sinan got, and the stunned look on Ahmet’s face gave way to laughter.

“Like a man without testicles,” Ahmet said. “Fruit without seeds! Allah, Allah.” He reached beneath the counter and took a very large drink from the coffee cup.

“You’re the
kirve,
Ahmet. Remember that. You have a duty tonight.”

“Yes, yes,” Ahmet said, and threw the rest of the
rak
into the sink.

Chapter 4

REM GRABBED A SMALL BAG HIDDEN BENEATH HER BED AND
tucked it under her blouse before running down the hallway to lock herself in the washroom. There she pulled out a small vial of olive oil and colorless lip gloss.

Dilek had taught her a few tricks.

Pinch your cheeks until the red comes out, smooth the oil into your skin to make it glow, roll the lip gloss on but then dab it with toilet paper so it isn’t obvious.

She found the tweezers in the bag and yanked stray hairs from between her eyebrows and one growing in a mole on her jaw near her earlobe. She untied her head scarf, pulled the pins from her hair, and let it fall across her shoulders. Her hair was curly and thick and it twisted like vines around her neck. She loved her hair, perhaps partly because she had to hide it away each day—before she was thirteen she hadn’t really thought much about it—and she ran her fingers through it now and imagined they were his fingers. She would have to pin it back in place and coil it again beneath the scarf, but she combed all the tangles out of it anyway, and watched as each strand shone in the overhead light. She did this for ten minutes, hoping, dreaming even, that he would recognize its beauty through the cheap silk fabric and want to touch it.

And when she was done, when she had tied her hair up in her best scarf, she dabbed two fingers of rosewater on the back of her neck, right beneath the point in the fabric, just for good luck.

Chapter 5

I
T WAS AFTER SEVEN WHEN THE GUESTS BEGAN TO ARRIVE,
and
rem was still in the washroom.

“
rem!” Sinan yelled down the hallway. Silence. “
rem! The guests are coming.” No response. He walked down the hallway, his feet slapping against the cheap marble flooring. “
rem.” A girl who ignores her father!

Before he could knock on the door,
rem opened it, and he found his daughter wearing her best head scarf, the one with the gold leaf, which he had bought her for her last birthday. He noticed the color in her face and the way her lips shone and he was glad to see her looking so beautiful for her brother’s party.

“I called you three times.”

“I’m sorry, Baba,” she said, a smile on her face. “I wanted to look nice.”

He wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, but he didn’t want her to start acting pretty. Beauty attracts the wrong type of attention.

“Your mother needs help.”

She walked quickly toward the kitchen, and he watched her go, her hips straining her skirt with that womanly walk that had stolen his child away.

Ahmet, Gülfem, and their daughter, Zeynep, arrived first. They lived on the bottom floor of the apartment building, and Ahmet sang a popular Tarkan song as they climbed the stairs. Sinan stood in the corner of the room, the apple in his stomach expanding into an orange, watching as the neighbors joined the party, bringing with them coins and paper money for
smail, bunches of roses clipped from backyard gardens, and even plates of desserts to add to the table already filled with food. Dressed in the white
sünnet
gown that made him look like a girl,
smail sat on a raised bed near the open window of the main room, the city behind him sparkling in the heat. The bed was padded with blankets and ribbons, and when people passed to congratulate him, they threw silver tinsel in his hair.
smail tried to act like a man, tried not to smile, but when ten-year-old Zeynep, on whom
smail had a boy’s crush, kissed him on the cheek, he giggled.

Ahmet and Sinan pushed the couches out of the way, and the guests danced in a circle on the soft-pile rug in the center of the living room. Ahmet turned up the music on the radio, and the hum of oud strings and the twirling notes of a lute crackled out from the old speakers. Sinan turned the music down, but Ahmet turned it up again, grabbed Sinan by the hand, and pulled him into the circle. Everyone linked pinkies, raised their arms in the air, leaned forward with the music, kicked up their feet, and then stepped to the right to begin the dance again.

Sinan’s wife and daughter, both dressed in their only silk scarves, served plates of food to the people who were not dancing. Sinan tried to help, once he escaped the dancing, but Nilüfer refused him, telling him it would not be proper. She was right, but he was nervous and he needed to do something to keep calm.

The tables overflowed with
mezeler,
but there was more in the refrigerator, keeping fresh out of the heat. On one table, rice and pine nuts spilled out of stuffed peppers,
dolmalar
sat stacked on tea saucers like a pyramid of grape-leaf cigars, Circassian chicken floated in walnut sauce and pools of olive oil. On a wobbly card table sat fava and green-bean salad, spinach in yogurt sauce, and numerous other plates filled with vegetables and fruit and warm loaves of bread. Minced lamb baked in the oven, and cubed mutton with carrots, onions, and broth stewed in pastry bowls. There were eggplants stuffed with ground beef and nuts and rice and cinnamon, meatballs with hot peppers,
börek
layered with goat’s-milk cheese and spinach, and even little bowls of warmed almonds and hazelnuts. Sinan couldn’t help counting the lira in his head.

People broke away from the dancing, filled their plates, and ate without missing a note of the singing. Ahmet, true to form, stuffed his mouth with a dolma while spinning in the center of the room with the rest of the dancers, and Sinan wondered if he had had more to drink before coming to the party. There were small cups of
Rize
tea, many of them, and Nilüfer had to keep the tea brewing constantly.
rem made coffee the traditional way, bringing it to a boil three times before adding the sugar. Mehmet Türko
lu read people’s fortunes in turned-over coffee cups, analyzing the bumps and smears of coffee grounds in the little white saucers. “You will marry young and have six boys,” he told a girl who lived down the street. The girl blushed. “You will have to choose between three beautiful girls,” he told her brother, a boy of only seven. The boy stuck out his tongue at the prospect. Mehmet laughed out loud and reached across the table to hug him to his chest.