Gardens of Water Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Turkish Pronunciation Guide

  Part One

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Part Two

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Part Three

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  For Miriam

  When the earth with her quaking will quake,

  And her burden the earth will cast forth, And

  man will say: “What is the matter with her?”

  On that Day she will tell forth her news, Because

  thy lord will have inspired her. On that Day the

  people will go forward individually, that they

  may be shown their works. Whosoever has done

  an atom’s weight of good will see it, And whoso

  has done an atom’s weight of evil will see it.

  —The Qur’an, Sura 99

  The enemy of the father will never be the

  friend of his son.

  —Kurdish proverb

  TURKISH PRONUNCIATION GUIDE

  While the reader does not need to know all the subtle sound and accent differences between Turkish and English, it is important to recognize the differences in the following consonants.

  c is pronounced like the j in James.

  j is pronounced like the s in leisure.

  ç is pronounced like the ch in child.

  s is pronounced like the sh in show.

  g has no sound, and simply lengthens the vowel sound that comes before it. For example, Baiolu is pronounced Bash-ee-oh-loo.

  Chapter 1

  IN THE RUSH OF BODIES TO BOARD THE FERRY LEAVING STANBUL for Gölcük, Sinan lost his son.

  Five minutes earlier smail had been tugging Sinan in the opposite direction, back toward the city, deep into the labyrinth of arcades and electronics stores of the Sirkeci neighborhood. Sinan suspected it was for the exact purpose of missing the ferry home and delaying the pain of the circumcision ceremony that evening. The boy stomped across the bricks in his white circumcision costume, one hand squeezing Sinan’s fingers and the other hoisting his tasseled staff in the air like a pasha leading a parade. Sinan let himself be pulled for a while, but the horn had already sounded, and, even though he, too, wanted to delay the ceremony, they couldn’t miss that ferry.

  When they had reached Readiye Avenue, Sinan pulled smail into the street just as the traffic broke, Sinan’s shoulders rocking back and forth in an awkward dance on his bad foot. He finally pushed smail through the metal gate to the ferry dock just in time for them to join the throng of men and women leaving work for the day. They ran from the shade of the dock back out into the searing summer sun, Sinan leading smail this time through a sea of elbows, shoulders, and damp backs. They climbed the thin plank of wood used as a bridge from dock to boat, the green water beneath them churning with translucent jellyfish, and they entered the smoky cabin, where smail dropped his staff. He let go of Sinan’s hand, and before Sinan could grab his son’s arm, the boy disappeared, swallowed by the wave of bodies.

  Now Sinan shoved through the crowd to get to the boy, but his foot made it difficult. He pushed against the stomachs of men smoking cigarettes, turning sideways to make himself thinner. “Affedersiniz,” he said to each person he touched, in a voice barely concealing his rising panic. “Excuse me.” But the more he struggled forward, the more he was shoved backward by the jostling mob, and soon he was forced all the way to the other side of the ferry, his back leaning against a rusty chain that kept him from tumbling into the Bosporus.

  “Allah, Allah,” he said out loud. A man standing next to him glanced in his direction.

  “Too many men,” the man said. He lit a cigarette, the smoke flying away from his face. “Too many men, not enough city.”

  “My boy’s lost,” Sinan said.

  The man turned around. He was taller than Sinan and he was able to see over the heads of the crowd.

  “Where?” the man said.

  “At the entrance.”

  The man stood on his toes and yelled across the cabin in a voice so powerful it silenced the crowd.

  “Erkek çocuk nerede?”

  That started a chorus of echoes. “Where’s the boy?” strangers called, their voices rising above the sound of the engine straining to pull away from the dock. “Where’s the boy? Where’s the boy?” they yelled into the wind, as the ferry nosed its white hull out into the blue water. “smail!” Sinan called, joining his voice to the chorus. The men yelled “smail” too, and a pandemonium of concern radiated out through the cabin.

  Then thirty feet away, rising above the heads of hundreds of people, came his son. At first smail seemed to be floating under his own power, a princely ghost taken flight in the sea-whipped wind, but as he drew nearer, Sinan saw the shoulders on which smail rested. The man elbowed through the parting crowd, a cigarette burning in his mouth, his large, hairy hands wrapped around the boy’s stomach. smail’s white teeth gleamed against his skin and his black eyes shone in the afternoon light. The staff was clasped in his fist, and for a moment he seemed to be a king raised high above the people of stanbul.

  “Teekkür ederim,” Sinan said when the stranger handed him his son.

  “Bir ey deil.”

  WHEN THE FERRY DOCKED in their suburb of Gölcük three hours later, smail wouldn’t let go of the railing. Sinan touched the top of smail’s head, and reminded him of the gifts he would receive after the ceremony. He tickled smail’s armpits and tugged on his earlobe, which didn’t earn him the usual dimpled smile, much less a loosening of the boy’s white-knuckled grip. A few women, shuffling toward the exit, smiled in sympathy. The man who had carried smail on his shoulders slid a one-million-lira note into the pocket of the boy’s white satin vest.

  “What’s your name?” the man said.

  “smail.”

  “smail what?” the man said.

  “smail Baiolu.”

  “That’s a fine name. A strong man’s name.” The man winked at Sinan. “Can’t stay a boy forever,” he said.

  Sinan thought the man was scolding him for smail’s age—nine, at
least a year too old for the sünnet—but the man’s smile betrayed nothing but generosity.

  When the deck was cleared of people, Sinan touched his son’s hand and felt the boy’s fingers stiffen. “We have to go,” he said.

  Behind smail, the sun collapsed in red bands along the horizon.

  Sinan knelt beside smail and put his hands on the boy’s shoulders. “It will hurt, but that pain will pass and God will know you’re willing to endure pain for him. A man has to endure pain, smail. But it will pass.”

  smail looked at the ground, his long eyelashes pressed against his cheeks.

  “Baklava soaked in honey afterward? Two, maybe?”

  Finally, the boy smiled.

  THEY HAD LEFT HOME that morning, just as sunlight broke above the bay, and took the three ferries the length of the Gulf of zmit into stanbul. Sinan hadn’t been to stanbul since they had first arrived in the city from Yeilli, their village in the Southeast, seven years ago, but it had been smail’s special request to be paraded around the city on the day of his circumcision. Sinan hated stanbul—too many people, too much cement, too little sky—but smail was fascinated by it. Even after a full day of stomping around the city that caused Sinan’s foot to ache, his son’s fascination rubbed off on Sinan.

  People had been kinder than he had expected. A woman in a pastry shop had offered the boy a slice of chocolate cake laced with pistachio nuts, a bite of which smail promptly dropped on the white satin of his pasha’s costume, soiling the garment that had cost Sinan a week’s earnings. A taxi driver gave them a free ride up to Topkap Palace, where, like sultans of another age, they gazed out over the shimmering waters of the Bosporus. They marveled at Boaziçi Bridge, standing like a huge metal suture between the hills of Asia and Europe. They counted the boats crisscrossing the Sea of Marmara—massive tankers that shoved the water aside, lumbering car ferries leaning into the current, driftwood-sized fishing spits—and settled on the number forty-six. As they passed the fish houses in Kumkap neighborhood, the musicians at one of the tourist restaurants left their table and followed smail down the street, blowing their reed flutes to announce his passing.

  Nilüfer and rem had stayed home to cook the food for the party tonight. If they had still lived in Yeilli, Sinan’s aunts and uncles and cousins would have helped, and the whole family would have paraded smail through the unpaved streets. Sinan kept the memories of his own sünnet celebration to himself; he didn’t want his son to know what he was missing. But the images had flashed in his mind throughout the day—his father hoisting him onto their best horse, his mother walking beside him, one hand resting on his knee, and the horse’s belly swaying against her own pregnant bulge. It was one of his last memories of her, and even though her face had been white and she wouldn’t smile, he hadn’t thought to tell his father to get her home. Three days later, his father would leave Sinan with his aunt while he drove his mother to the good hospital in Diyarbakr. She was bleeding, his aunt told Sinan. The doctors would make her better and he would have a little sister or brother when they came home. Only his father came back.

  Now the call to sunset prayer echoed from dozens of speakers, the amplified voices ricocheting off the cement walls of apartment buildings. Sinan was nervous, too, and a knot the size of an apricot had hardened inside his stomach. The walk home took them past the fishmonger’s, and Sinan gave smail money to buy the fish heads and severed tails for the street cats. Eren Bey, the fish seller, wrapped the remains in paper and handed them to smail.

  “Wait,” Eren Bey said, holding up one bloody finger. From a fern-lined basket filled with his best palamut, he grabbed the largest fish, wrapped it up with a sprig of oregano, and dropped it into smail’s hands. “Fish will make you a strong man.” He flexed his bicep and slapped the bump of muscle. “All the women in the world will kiss your feet.”

  Eren winked and smail smiled.

  “Please,” Sinan said, “he’s just a boy.”

  “Efendim,” the fish seller said, his hands held out as if he were mildly insulted, “just a joke.”

  They stopped at the rotting wooden konak where the street cats lived, but the cats were not there. smail threw the fish parts through the broken window anyway, a gift for their return. They took maghrib prayer at mosque, and Sinan listened as smail stumbled through the Arabic. Afterward, they climbed the hill that led to their apartment, and the bright lights of the amusement park below spun against the darkening sky. Sinan promised, as always, to take smail there someday for a ride on the Ferris wheel.

  By the time they reached their apartment, the knot in Sinan’s stomach had grown to the size of a small apple. He massaged the spot with his fingertips and it rolled around inside his stomach. He wondered, briefly, if he could delay the ceremony one more year. But people were already coming, the sünnetci was already scheduled, and he would have to make his son suffer the pain tonight.

  “Go on and see Ahmet,” Sinan said to smail. He knew his brother-in-law would spoil the boy, treat him like a child one last time before smail had to bear the burden of trying to be a man. “I’ll come and get you at the grocery later.”

  Sinan climbed the curving staircase of his apartment building. American music blasted down the stairwell and rattled the metal railing. He hated their apartment. From the outside it looked nice: the cement walls were painted yellow and the stairway to the front door was made of mediocre marble that shined when the apartment manager bothered to polish it. But inside you could hear a man whisper through the plywood doors, the plaster walls were chipped, and on stormy afternoons, when the rain rolled across the bay as though the sea had stood up and formed a wall, the wind slipped through the cracks in the mortar and deposited saltwater and cement dust in the corners of the living room.

  In the kitchen, Nilüfer was covered in sweat and a dusting of flour. Little balls of dough stuck to her fingertips.

  “Sinan.” She smiled. “Canm,” she said, and purposely pressed her doughy hands to his face.

  “Stop that, Nilüfer,” he said, but he let her smear the dough across his cheeks.

  She kissed him once on each doughy cheek. Sinan tucked a stray strand of hair beneath her head scarf.

  “How long has this been going on?” he asked, motioning with his head toward the music blasting through the ceiling.

  She shrugged. “Forty-five minutes?” She looked behind Sinan. “Where’s smail?”

  “With Ahmet.”

  “Well, go get him. I need to get him ready.” She squeezed loaves of bread he had brought from the grocery that morning. “This bread is too hard. You need a new bread man,” she said. She walked into the kitchen. “The yogurt is runny. This heat is ruining it all. The börek won’t rise, the peppers are like rubber.”

  “Nilüfer, it will be fine,” he said. “I’ll go to the store and get more bread. Stop worrying.”

  She leaned a fist on a hip and blew air through her teeth. “As though you don’t worry.”

  He touched his stomach and made a face.

  She waved her hand at him. “See.”

  He laughed. “All right, all right.”

  He looked around the corner to where his daughter sat watching television and made sure rem could not see them before touching Nilüfer’s hips and kissing her on the lips—a long kiss, the kind he usually gave her only in their bedroom.

  “Quit with that,” she said, but her hands rested on his chest. She slapped him on the shoulder and whispered, “We don’t need any more children.”

  “What’s this?” Sinan said. Some sort of pastry sat in a circular tray on the kitchen table. It wasn’t a Turkish dish.

  “Pecan pie,” Nilüfer said with an astonished lifting of her eyebrows. “Sarah Hanm brought it down for the party.” She glanced toward the ceiling.

  “The American’s wife?” he said. “Pecans?”

  An American family occupied the sixth floor, the one directly above them. They spent only the summers here, just sitting around, drinking wine on the te
rrace, and listening to jazz music, as far as Sinan could tell.

  “Her name’s Sarah,” Nilüfer said, glaring at him. “Sarah Roberts, and she’s nice.”

  “Maybe, then, she could teach her son some manners.” He pointed to the throbbing ceiling.

  “We should have invited them. I feel bad.”

  “You should be helping your mother,” Sinan said to his daughter, sticking his head around the corner into the living room.

  “Baba, I’ve been working all day.” She didn’t look at him when she spoke. He didn’t know what it was about fifteen-year-old girls, but he had never known a child so rude to her parents.

  He glanced at the television. It was an American show dubbed in Turkish, and the actors’ mouths stopped moving before the lines were finished being said. A scantily dressed blond girl killed monsters with a stake.

  He watched the show for a minute, enough to determine that it dealt with the devil and sex.

  “I don’t want you watching this. It’s not moral.”

  “Baba, Buffy kills the vampires, the evil ones. What’s more moral than that?”

  He snapped off the television.

  “Baba!”

  “Get yourself ready for tonight,” he said. “It’s your brother’s special night.”

  rem ran down the hallway. “smail, smail, smail,” she said, “always smail.” She slammed the door to the room she shared with her brother and the music upstairs stopped.

  Sinan let out a frustrated breath of air. “How are we raising our children?” he called toward the kitchen.

  “You could say hello to her first,” Nilüfer said, popping her head around the corner of the kitchen.

  “So she could ignore me and stare at this stupid box?”

  “Sinan, it’s only a television show.” He heard the oven door squeak open. “She’s been working hard since this morning. Be nice.”

  He switched on the television again and watched for a minute, turning his head to the side to consider it. There was killing and there was kissing, enough for him. He shut it off.

  “I’m going to invite them,” Nilüfer said, standing in the hallway now.

  “No.” It was bad enough they lived above him, but he didn’t want the Americans inside his house, especially on this day.