Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [19]
With no place to go, he spent his time behind the neighborhood coffeehouse, shivering and whimpering like a dog in a graveyard. At the end of the second day, he was getting a drink and washing his face at the fountain behind the mosque, when the sound of the imam’s frazzled voice sent a chill down his spine. Though only a few years older than him, the imam looked like a ghastly old man, what with his turban, robe, and beard, and squinty eyes behind dark glasses; in a voice that sounded like something out of the netherworld, the imam was saying something about his mother’s death. He approached the imam timidly so that he could hear better. It had been months since the young man’s mother had died, the imam explained. It was the young man’s stepfather who had informed the imam of the woman’s death one evening, asking that she be buried the next day following the morning call to prayer. It is only for Allah to judge, it is true, the imam said, and as a sinner the stepfather bore the weight of his own sins. But he had to admit that he did not like the look of the stepfather that night. Instead of sorrow for the departed, his eyes had shined with raw sparks of fear, sated flickers of rage. Of course, only the dearly departed, the man’s stepfather, and Allah knew what had happened that night, whether the woman had passed on naturally, or due to an accident, or whether she was the victim of a malicious deed.
“So, you mean you have no idea why or how my mother died?” the young man suddenly asked.
Unfazed by the interruption, the imam told him that other than the suspicious look in the stepfather’s eyes, there didn’t appear to be anything out of the ordinary. Maybe she really had died of natural causes; maybe she’d just run out of breath or her heart had just stopped beating.
It was obvious, however, that the imam had not taken a liking to his stepfather, a man who in his entire lifetime had not once donated a dime to the mosque, attended anyone’s mevlit service, or gone to Friday prayer, or any of the bayram prayers for that matter. Or maybe the imam simply felt a twinge of pity for this desperate, suffering young man.
There would be no peace for him, and he would not be able to mourn properly, until he knew the why and how of it, and the imam was aware of this. And so he told the young man that his stepfather had gone to Istanbul, that he was there in a neighborhood called Sirkeci, that there the young man would find a coffeehouse run by his relatives, and that he could ask his stepfather to tell him the truth of the matter himself once he found him. The young man felt an urge to hug the imam, to kiss his hand, to wipe his skirts on his face. But he was out the door before the imam could even finish saying, “May God pardon his faults.”
There was no doubt in his mind: It was his stepfather who was responsible for his mother’s death. That tyrant, that drunkard, that asshole with the many wives had consumed his mother, whose very hand the young man held in such high esteem that it seemed too precious for his lips. He’d taken her life. Sent her to the grave much, much too early, without even going to the trouble to tell her son about it.
He knew that if he did not get his revenge, he would be defiling the memory of his mother, damning her love for him, betraying the breast whose milk he had craved since his first breath of life.
When he first disembarked, the crowd and noise that he found in Sirkeci had sent his head spinning. The tram siren, the honking cars, the people scurrying along the muddy sidewalks,