Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [34]
“Your house stands out like a rotten tooth in the middle of all these new ones,” Nalan had told her. Nalan was a tiny woman whose hair had begun to thin out a couple of years before, but her skin was still as smooth and shiny as could be. She and Cemile Abla had been best friends ever since they were kids. Their mothers—may they rest in peace—had been neighbors for fifty years. When her oldest son got married, Nalan sold her house in Rumelihisarı and bought a new three-bedroom apartment in a faraway neighborhood—and, as she had told Cemile Abla, she’d made enough money off the deal to pay for her son’s lavish wedding to boot. Nalan’s was the one and only house on her street that hadn’t changed hands to be demolished and replaced by an expensive apartment building with a view of the Bosphorus.
Cemile Abla’s wooden house stood all alone, tall and proud at the top of the stone stairs, a bastion of the past. The neighborhood real estate dealer was constantly at her heels, yapping like a newborn puppy. If he could just convince her to sell, he’d make a small fortune on the commission alone.
But no matter how suffocated she felt by the profusion of restaurants along the shore—a new grand opening every week!—the throngs of graduates of the nearby university storming in for Sunday breakfast with their entire families in tow (Nalan complained, saying they probably didn’t have any eggs of their own at home), and all the automobiles jamming the avenue, Cemile Abla was determined not to sell her house—no matter what. Luckily her friends’ and the real estate dealers’ insistence never went beyond harmless banter; she knew deep down that if they’d pressed her just a bit more, there’s no way she could have said no.
Cemile Abla had gone shopping at the supermarket to get ready for the guests she was entertaining that evening. For her everyday needs she went to the little ant-infested grocer down the hill, but on special days like this one, she preferred browsing the big stores with their wheeled carts and long corridors illuminated by glaringly bright lights. It gave her that same dizzying sense of exhilaration that she used to get back as a senior in high school after a reluctant visit to the amusement park, at the insistence of friends.
She had decided to offer her guests chocolate cake and canapes on white bread with tea. Having bought a jar of the most expensive cocoa, a container of French mustard, and a few of what the man at the deli counter told her were the best cheeses of Italy, she headed home, inhaling the scent of the Bosphorus along the way. From a short distance away, her eyes met with those of Captain Hasan, and she smiled. Captain Hasan must have come back from fishing early, for it was uncommon to see him on the shore at that time of day. He was sitting on a low stool on the edge of the sidewalk, an extinguished cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, leaning over, trying to teach the scrawny boy he’d recently hired how to tie knots. His red and blue boat rode the gentle waves just behind them. (“A person who has a ship, not a boat, is called a captain,” Cemile Abla had complained at the age of seven. Her father had patted her head and replied, “If that’s the way Hasan likes it, then what’s it to us?”)
“I’ve got a three-and-a-half-kilo bluefish for you,” Captain Hasan said joyfully. “Caught him at the crack of dawn, he must’ve been drunk, fell for it hook, line, and sinker!”
“Thanks, but my refrigerator’s already crammed full,” replied Cemile Abla, placing her bags on the ground on either side of her. “Give it to someone else, it would be a sin to waste it.”
“No way, it’s for you. Nobody else knows how to cook it right. They’d make a mess of the poor thing … So, you want me to bone it or you want to do it yourself?”
Cemile Abla took a deep breath, turned her eyes to the clouds, exhaled, and answered, “I’ll take care of it. Thanks.”
It was said that nobody along the entire Bosphorus could clean a fish as well as