The Debt of Tamar (18 page)

On Friday evening, Ayda returned from the doctor’s office, the happiest she’d been in years. Her suspicions were confirmed—a life was growing inside her. Selim had grown more reticent with each passing day, so she had decided that a note would be the most suitable way to tell him. She’d gone to the calligrapher on her way back from the doctor, purchased an entire box of overpriced, rose-scented stationary, and used six sheets of paper before she was content with her note.

Early that Saturday morning, Selim awoke and said goodbye to the world he knew. By his bedside, he saw an envelope with his name on it. He tore it open gently, removed the pink stationary, but stopped short of unfolding the note. The sweet smell of rose potpourri was more than he could bear. If he read her words, he might be unable to leave. To leave was the kindest thing he could do. She would hate him, she would curse him and then move on with her life. She would not mourn his death like his mother and father had mourned Ali. She was a survivor. He placed her note back on the night table. He knew he had to go.

Three hours later, Ayda awoke to find Selim had already left. The note she had written was by the bedside, no longer in the envelope that had been sealed the night before.

She made her way into the kitchen, half asleep and still puffy-faced. The air outside was as still as stagnant waters and the insipid sky seemed to bloat yellow through the kitchen window as though nauseated with the world below. A small note was taped on the freezer door. “Ayda- check the safe. Money and jewelry yours.” For a moment, she was confused. She looked about the apartment. Everything seemed to be in perfect order. Selim had tidied up the living room. The trash cans were empty. She checked the safe that she’d never had access to. It was unlocked. Inside, blank checks. There were a few velvet pouches containing the jewelry his mother had left behind. She emptied the contents on the glossy wooden floorboards. Countless strands of pearls lay in a small tangled heap. She lifted a heavy necklace before her, shocked by the abundance of blood red rubies dangling like cherry clusters. She gasped at the treasures before her. There was an emerald, at least eight karats, surrounded by radiant white diamonds and cast in a platinum setting. There were dozens of solid gold coins, in every size and from every corner of the globe. Ayda examined a beautiful pear-shaped diamond stone. It was the family stone with which Selim’s father had proposed to his mother. She had seen it once before when Selim had removed the jewels to be appraised for insurance purposes. Then it had been locked away and Ayda dreamed of the day Selim would present it to her on bended knee. She’d been blinded by the stone’s beauty.

“Not like this.” She returned it to the leather ring box and secured the gold latch. These were the old family jewels that had once belonged to a mother who had found it easier to believe that both her sons were dead.

She detached a letter taped to the inside door of the vault. Selim had written his words slowly, precisely, with impeccable penmanship.

Ayda crumbled the note and screamed so loudly, Didi Aslan, an elderly neighbor with a false leg, hobbled by with a bag of ice to check if everything was all right. Didi found Ayda on the floor weeping, on the old Persian rug that had once been housed in Dolmabace palace, tread upon by sultans and princes and courtly peoples. Snippets of the shredded note were strewn about the living room floor like jumbled evidence in a crime scene. It was a note without a heart.

Before heading to the airport, Mustafa cast a curious glance at Selim as he lifted the bag to load it into the trunk of the old Beemer. “Traveling light,
Effendi
?”

“I suppose I am.” The duffel contained a pair of pajamas, a change of underwear, his toothbrush, and the collected works of Hafez

“You must have big shopping plans, fill up this suitcase.” Mustafa patted the loose fabric, which nearly flattened under his palm. When Selim didn’t answer, Mustafa shrugged, placed the duffel on the empty backseat and ferried his boss towards Ataturk International Airport.

They headed through the narrow winding streets along the edge of cliffs leading through the hills and overlooking the flat tin roofs of Istanbul’s shantytowns. On the side of the dusty road, gypsy women and pre-adolescent panhandlers waved down passing vehicles selling sympathy, roses, bottled water and squares of honey-glazed baklava. Selim moved the duffel from the seat beside him and placed it on his lap. “It’s not much, but it’s all I’ll be needing.”

He’d originally planned to bring no luggage at all, just a small carry-on, but he figured with his dark features and lack of baggage, the TSA might give him a hard time going through security. It was well known that American security guards were suspicious of passengers arriving from the region, especially those who did not possess a return ticket.

Just before takeoff, Selim popped a sleeping pill. He removed the complimentary headphones from the sealed plastic bag, tried all twelve channels on the plane’s entertainment system, but heard only varying decibels of static. A mother stood in the aisle rocking a wailing baby. Restless passengers glared with disdain, as flight attendants shook their heads and shrugged casually with an air of understanding self-righteousness. His ears had popped and his head was pounding. He waved down a flight attendant with a short blond bob in a bright red skirt. “I’ll have a Johnnie Walker,” he said, as she stood smiling over him.

“There’s a charge for alcohol,” her voice sounded as though they were both submerged in water.

The pounding along his temples worsened. He swallowed, trying to clear the bloating sensation in his sinuses. After rummaging through his pockets, he handed over some cash, but before he even knew it, he was fast asleep.

He awoke six hours later with a cup of ice water and a pocket-size bottle of whiskey on his tray. “Seat backs and tray tables up for landing,” said the blond as she traipsed through the aisle. “You want to keep this?” Her sharply filed fingernail rapped the tip of the unopened bottle.

“Get rid of it please.”

When Selim exited the plane, he rode along the moving walkway towards baggage claim area B. People rushed by, their legs moving speedily while their wheelies screeched along the ribbed walkway. Selim was in no rush, so he just stood, leaning up against the thick plastic rail-guard, until, ten minutes later, he arrived at the baggage claim area.

Recognizing his black duffel, he pushed his way through a crowd of Japanese tourists and plucked his bag from the moving carousel. He made his way to the exit and, not minding the dirty looks of people waiting patiently in line for a taxi, hopped into the next yellow cab that pulled up to the curbside.

After checking himself into the hospital, he was prepped for the nine and half hour surgery that was scheduled for the following morning. The doctors informed him that there was only a small chance he’d survive the surgery, a fact he was fully aware of. The tumor was close to his brain. Experimental in nature, the procedure really had no precedent. Still, to die quickly and painlessly on the operating table was preferable to the alternative. Months of painful disintegration. Quiet resignation. Before the anesthesia kicked in, a strange thought flashed through his mind.

Selim Osman opened his eyes, disappointed that he had survived. The experience wasn’t anything like the movies or books he’d read, where shell-shocked accident victims awoke from some near death collision, mistaking the white washed walls of a hospital room for heaven, a doll-faced nurse for an angel. No, Selim immediately knew that against all odds, he had survived the removal of a cancerous tumor that had spread from his left sinus cavity up to his brain. He felt an excruciating pressure in his head and a racking pain in his stomach. He looked up at the florescent white bulbs overhead and knew immediately that this was not heaven.

The left side of his face had been opened and the tumor, along with all the infected bone and muscle was extracted. His abdomen was sliced open and tissue was removed to try and fill the void where half his face had been. Shards of femur bone were sawed away to be whittled into something resembling a cheekbone, a jaw- anything that might help restore the impression of a face.

Three days after his surgery, he lifted a small, compact mirror and examined his image. The right side of his face was left unscathed, its skin was still even and smooth like liquid marble. The left brow (having been shaved for surgery) was now growing back in patches of dark fuzz, while the right brow was still dark and forested, a reminder that he had once been a handsome man. His left side swelled and sank like the hideous jowls of Munch’s screaming ghosts.

He tilted the mirror and discovered that in the very spot that he had most loved to be kissed, the doctors had carved out a clean, round hole. It was through this hole in the base of his throat that Selim now breathed. He could see the edges of the hole wiggle as he sucked in air from the outside world.

In the evenings to follow, Selim slept sitting upright, fearful that his pillow might smother the hole in his throat, afraid that he would suffocate and die. It was not long after that he was walking again. He was six foot four inches tall and moved as a stone statue
,
dragging each leg cautiously, as though at any moment, he might crack. The operations—one to remove the cancer and the other to remove tissue and bone to reconstruct his face—had left him with a limp, and as a result, he appeared as a giant teetering in the wind. It was strange for the medical students to see a man with such enormous stature possess such an ethereal quality, as though he might disintegrate at the flick of a light switch.

The right side of his face was the flag of Ottoman pride and a testament to a centuries-old heritage of glory. The right side commanded respect and took it without asking. Selim Osman had sealed business deals and mergers. He had melted powerful business moguls into the seats of their chairs. The right side bore the history of the Osman royal dynasty.

Selim’s room hummed with the usual soundtrack to death, a morose symphony of bleeping instruments that strummed to the failing rhythm of his heart and mind. A fly struggled overhead, caught in the florescent light panels. Outside, a squealing little giggle hiccupped from the lungs of a boy strewn across a gurney in the hall. It sounded again, more boldly this time, breaking with tinkling effervescence. The laughter receded like the tide, but Selim’s ears still rang with the memory of youth and nostalgia for days gone by.

It was the first Friday of the month, a contemptuously lovely spring day in May. Sunlight poured through the windowpanes, barring the room in stripes of shadow and light. Selim Osman curled his massive frame into a fetal position, as an obsequiously plump, middle- aged nurse wiped him down.

She held a wet sponge with the very tips of her short, stubby, fingers, bathing him with the same repulsion one might bathe a flee-bitten stray. Selim looked away, ashamed that, at thirty-two years of age, he was being washed by a stranger. Every so often, she would look at him and say, “Very good Mr. Osman.” When she was done sponging his back, she came around facing him. She peered into his eyes with such intensity that he was forced to look back at her. Smiling sweetly, her fat cheeks gathering into two pink rolls.

“Are we done?” he said shivering.

She nodded, then patted him down with a rough towel.

At three o’clock that afternoon, Hannah Herzikova entered his hospital room. Her low heels clicked against the hard, cold floor.

Selim looked up.

“Excuse me,” she whispered. “Just visiting my father.” She pointed towards the room divider as though they could both see the man behind it, then passed the foot of his bed, disappearing behind a pale blue curtain that divided the room. The legs of an armchair screeched against the tiles as she made herself comfortable.

“Hi, Papa,” Selim heard her say.

“
Chérie
, I’ve missed you.” The man’s voice was hoarse, his strained breathing louder than his words.

“Let me help you.”

“That’s all right, I can do it on my own.”

Selim could hear the man fidgeting with the manual controls to his adjustable bed.

“How am I feeling? I’m fine. It’s you that I’m worried about. Tell me, how’s the portrait coming along?”

“Not too bad, still working on it, but haven’t been able to get the eyes right.”

“You need to get them right. If the eyes aren’t right, then nothing else is.”

“Pop, I’ll get them right. We’ve plenty of time.” She sounded irritated.

“Hannah—”

“I know.”

“You need to finish it,” he said.

“I’ll finish it when I finish it.”

The legs of the small wooden chair screeched once more against the tiles. Selim could hear her shuffling with her things.

“I found this box in the attic,” she said after a few minutes. “There’s a bunch of old stuff inside. Some photos, I thought you might want to see them.” When he didn’t answer, she continued, “I looked through them.”

“Did you?” The man sounded irritated.

“I didn’t recognize a single person in those pictures, Papa. Not a
single
one besides you.”

“No. You wouldn’t.”

“Who is the little boy in this picture? The one with the scar above his eye? Was he a friend? And the small woman with her hair pulled tight? Was that your mother? You always said you didn’t have any photos from France.” There was a moment of silence, then, “Are you upset, Papa?”