Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [83]
I have to find her. I check the kitchen, but my mother is nowhere to be found. My suspicion snowballs into an avalanche.
“Did Mom go to bed, Dad?”
“What did you say?”
I repeat my question.
“What’s the matter with you, boy?” he says, his eyes glazed over.
I insist on an answer. He seems to feel sorry for me. He looks me straight in the eye, and talks to me like I’m suffering from some kind of amnesia or something.
“You never had a mother,” he says. “You know that. She never was. She never could be.”
Don’t say that, Dad! Don’t talk like that! Don’t think like that!
He doesn’t explain. He just stares at me as if to say that I should know that there is no such “thing.” The glint from his knife stabs me in the eye, blinding me. And so I listen, straining to hear the sound of my mother—a word, any word that’s been captured in the walls, a scream still hanging from the curtains. I want to grab onto it before it flies away, caress it, shelter it in my ear. But I can’t hear a thing, except for the grunting of the man pretending to be my father. I’m looking for my home. I leave, distraught and angry. I wait on the street until sunrise. To witness the return to normalcy.
Morning comes, but the darkness doesn’t leave, it only fades to gray. Dark gray. Walking through the pungently male clusters of students on the plaza, I start to abandon all hope. I enter the Covered Bazaar. It’s like a scene out of One Thousand and One Nights. I’m the main character in a bad fairy tale. I want to succumb to the beckoning young buck apprentices and buy a pair of alvar, not as a souvenir but to wear in earnest. I want to buy a tesbih, not as decoration but to click in my hand. I want to wander into the Oriental Café and get hooked on a hookah. I wander through the labyrinth of the bazaar, hoping to get lost, when one of the arched entrances catches my eye. It’s completely black, a hole leading to nowhere. I delve inside, wishing for the worst, hoping to hit rock bottom.
Suddenly, I find myself in one of those movie theaters that shows the karate flicks with the porn interludes. The place reeks of semen. The floor is sticky. I see a sliver of light in the distance. I run, my feet clinging to the gunk on the floor. The insidious goo rises and rises, until I’m in the stuff all the way up to my knees. My whole body throbs. I’m in terrible pain. I finally make it out. I reach the light.
I’m on the ferry, sitting next to my friend and that boring guy, who’s still talking. I look outside; everything seems normal. I watch the brunette woman across from me licking her ice cream with gusto, another girl down the row courting the boy next to her. I now realize just how wrapped up I’ve been in whatever it is that boring guy’s been saying. I’ve been hostage to his drivel for a full half hour, the cramp in my stomach growing more and more crippling the longer I listen.
He talks like he’s seen, done, knows it all. He has a small store where he sells religious books. I try to envision the bookstore. It smells of rose oil, and men dressed in alvar, men from another century.
“The people are waking up, though, slowly but surely,” he says.
“Waking up to what? The benefits of literacy?” I ask.
He leans back and smiles. He’s so sure of himself, it’s repulsive.
“That too,” he replies, “but what I really meant was that they are waking up to the fact that they are living in sin. The most remarkable thing about it is that they can’t see just how immersed in sin they themselves really