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By Root 256 0

Cemile Abla. It was from her father that she’d learned to work a fish so deftly. On her way home from school, she used to stop by the stand that once stood on the right side of the pier. There she would remove one squirming, restaurant-bound fish at a time from the shallow tubs of water and cut off their heads and tails before scaling and skinning them; the bigger ones she would bone as well. When she was still too short to reach the counter, she’d prop herself up by standing on an old cheese tin. Then she’d run home and watch cartoons for half an hour, munching on some bread and jam that her mother had prepared for her, before starting on her homework. Actually, if she’d gone straight home instead of stopping by the fish stand, she would have had an extra hour to watch cartoons. But she was more fond of the knives and the fish than she was of TV. With each day her fingers grew a little more used to the tools, her wrists stronger, her movements more graceful. Nothing could take the place of that odd feeling she would get. Every now and then her teachers would scold her because her hands smelled of fish, but it was worth it just to see the proud smile on her father’s face as he watched her working at the counter. And it wasn’t only her father who held her in such affection; she’d become the apple of everyone’s eye, all the way from Ortaköy to Sarıyer. Awed by her love of fish and her skilled mastery of the knife, each and every fisherman, young and old alike, saw Cemile Abla as his own ideal daughter, sister, or even wife. And the fact that her father was the famous Ali Reis didn’t hurt either.

The scrawny boy was off in his own little world, watching a sports car drive by, when Captain Hasan slapped him on the back of the neck. “Get off your ass and help Cemile Abla with her bags!” he yelled. “You some kinda idiot, boy? Do I have to tell you everything? And wrap that fish up.”

“There’s really no need, Captain Hasan, I can carry the bags myself,” said Cemile Abla. “They’re not heavy anyway.”

But she knew what would happen. The man would insist, and once again she wouldn’t be able to say no. Cemile Abla was annoyed with herself. Sometimes she even hated herself for giving up so easily, for acquiescing to things she really didn’t want to do. But no matter how hard she tried, she could never manage to say no when people persisted with her. She became horrified, thinking that if she said no she’d be thought rude, or that she’d insult the other person, or hurt their feelings; she’d get a lump in her throat and her palms would grow sweaty. She wouldn’t be able to look the other person in the eye; she just couldn’t stand the thought of how that person’s eyes would dull with disappointment as soon they heard the word “no.” And so that was her constant dilemma. She’d have to drink that third cup of coffee despite her heartburn, go shopping with the girls even if she preferred to do so alone, go picnicking at Kilyos with her old neighbors even though she really didn’t feel comfortable wearing a swimsuit.

Simply because she loved them so much, because they made such a fuss, because they insisted.

Actually, these things were the least of her troubles. What really got on Cemile Abla’s nerves was how her friends pressured her to get married, how they were constantly introducing her to potential grooms.

In her youth, Cemile Abla used to love to walk to Bebek and get a cherry-vanilla ice-cream cone, sit on a park bench with a dog-eared Sait Faik book, and just relax. But nowadays, in front of the ice-cream stands stood long lines of bronze, blonde-haired girls, pot-bellied boys, and odd, shaggy dogs of a sort she had never seen before. Cemile Abla had begun to feel like a stranger in her own land, as if at any given moment she might be caught and deported. But instead of worrying herself over nothing, she’d made a resolution not to venture beyond the cemetery, the boundary of white marble separating Rumelihisarı from Bebek, during normal waking hours. She would go for walks in the wee hours of the night, once the fancy dining high-lifers