Bliss: A Novel (26 page)

If this theory were true, the Bogomils had met a terrible fate. As heretic Christians they had suffered for hundreds of years in eastern Anatolia, finally converting to Islam on arriving in the Balkans. Then, in Bosnia, they were persecuted and killed by Milosevic’s forces for being Muslims. They believed in the wrong religion in the wrong place at the wrong time, a mistake they had persisted in for a thousand years. Theirs was a nine-hundred-year story, beginning in Samosata and extending all the way down through the ages until the war in Bosnia. Writing the story would be involving work if only İrfan could start writing it.

One day, after mooring the boat at the big tourist town of
Ku
adası
, he bought many books related to the subject, but something prevented him from reading them. He seemed unable to pick up his pen and begin to write.

Perhaps it was impossible for him to get inside the story as long as he was on the Aegean Sea. If he went to eastern Anatolia and talked to people there, studied their faces, habits, and traditions, then, perhaps, he could become immersed in his project.

İrfan knew that these thoughts were futile, because a bloody war was going on in the east and he doubted that it would be possible to go there for many years. In spite of having been to many foreign countries, he would probably die before seeing the eastern part of his own. Better to surrender to the sweet, offshore breeze, watch the wine-colored sea and merely daydream about his book on the Bogomils. Maybe in the coming days, the first sentence would appear, and the rest would follow.

At a town where he had stopped to buy some food, İrfan happened to see a lean-to teahouse under the cool shadow of some old plane trees. After he sat down, the owner came over and said to him in English, “Hello! Tea, coffee?”

İrfan’s height and long beard had caused the man to mistake him for a foreigner. İrfan did not bat an eyelid but answered in English, “Turkish coffee—with only a little sugar, please.”

The man recognized the word “coffee” but not the rest. He struggled to understand. “Sugar?”

“Just a little,” İrfan replied.

The man thought that İrfan wanted his coffee without sugar, and asked again to make sure. “No sugar?” His eyebrows had risen way up.

İrfan shook his head.

Thinking that a better knowledge of English was needed, the owner called his son.

“Come here,” he shouted. “This unbeliever is trying to tell me something.”

İrfan was enjoying himself. Obviously, this man, like all the other shopkeepers, had learned a few words of English, like tea and coffee, but nothing else.

A slim youth appeared.

“Welcome!” he greeted İrfan, who repeated his order. The young man said to his father, “He wants Turkish coffee with a little sugar.”

The man cursed. “Why don’t you say so, you son of a bitch!” He was a corpulent man and beads of sweat were rolling down his face.

“He said what he wanted, Father,” said the boy.

“Shut up and stop trying to show off, just because you’ve learned a few words of English!” the man roared.

A few minutes later, he brought İrfan’s coffee.

“You tourist?” he asked İrfan.

“Yes, tourist.”

“American?”

“American,” the professor replied.

The shop owner’s face lit up.

“Come here!” he summoned his son again. “Ask him if he’d like to buy some land around here.”

The young man paused. “He came here for a cup of coffee. Why ask him that?”

“Don’t interfere,” the man scolded his son. “Last summer an American came here and paid cash down for Nevzat’s fig orchard. These people come here to buy land. What else would they come for?”

The lad made a tremendous effort and said, “You want … You want…”

İrfan realized that the young man’s English was limited and that he did not know how to say “land,” but to prevent him from being humiliated in front of the father, and also to tease him a little, he asked, “Are you lonesome tonight?”

He was sure that the young man knew Elvis’s famous song.

The young man looked at İrfan suspiciously.

His father kept repeating, “What did he say?”

The young man lied. “He’s not interested in land. He said he’s going to drink his coffee and go.”

“There’s a very nice piece of land by the seaside,” the owner insisted. “Ask him if he’d like to see it.”

With great difficulty, the young man said, “She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah!”

İrfan could hardly contain his laughter. He was right. The young man had probably never gone to a language school but had spent his time hanging around in front of tourist bars in order to strike up an acquaintance with foreign girls. So, of course, he knew the names of all the songs.

“It’s now or never,” İrfan said. Then, thinking that a single sentence would sound too short, he quickly added, “Tomorrow will be too late!”

The young man turned to his father, and said, “He says that he’s only here to travel. He’s not interested. I’m off.”

“Stop right there!” his father ordered. “I’ve spent a bundle of money sending you to English courses. Ask him if he has any friends who would like to buy land.”

Unable to look into his eyes, the young man said, “Un, dos, tres, Maria! Chikki chikki, bum bum!”

İrfan nearly burst out laughing. After getting by in English, it was now time to shift to Spanish.

Taking the game a step further, İrfan said seriously, “Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Eva Herzigova, Letitia Casta.”

The young man answered with an even more serious air, “Sharon Stone, Claudia Schiffer, Madonna.”

The young man’s father was following the conversation intently. It seemed like a long one. Perhaps, like Nevzat, he was in for a streak of good luck. He would be in clover if this foreigner bought the useless plot of land he had inherited from his father.

When the young man finished speaking, his father asked him, “What did he say?”

“He said that he’s only here to travel around and that he’s tired of our questions. He asked you to leave him alone. He also said that if you keep it up, he’ll lodge a complaint.”

The plump man muttered, “… ucking infidel. So he’ll make a complaint against me in my own country. I wouldn’t sell him land now even if he begged me to. Tell him to finish his coffee and get the hell out of here!”

“Okay.”

Then the boy turned to İrfan and said, “Cicciolina, bye bye!” before retreating along with his father.

İrfan was amused.

After finishing his coffee, he paid the bill and stood up to leave. In Turkish he said, “Thanks. Keep the change.”

The teahouse owner’s eyes popped out of his head, and his son’s face turned crimson. Wishing he might disappear, he kept his eyes fixed on the ground.

When İrfan returned to his boat, he was still laughing, pleased by the unexpected delight these few minutes had brought him.

IS THIS WHAT DEATH IS LIKE?

When observed from the unfinished, desolate viaduct, the view of Istanbul presented a picture of misery, a scattered, mournful city, like the ruins left behind by a defeated army. It extended into the distance like a wounded giant—and all out of proportion, deformed.

No glimpses of the glamorous temples of the Paleologues, combining the form of the basilica with that of the dome, of the Ottoman mosques with their triple-balconied minarets, of the cheerful messages spelled out by festive Ramadan lights strung between these minarets, of Catholic or Orthodox churches, of imperial galleys with forty banks of oars, or of the palaces with porphyry columns, which transformed the Bosphorus with their brilliance, could be seen in this part of Istanbul.

This was a city distorted by immigration, its tissues swollen and its joints displaced. Under a gloomy, gray sky, drizzle and yellow haze blurred the outlines of jerry-built concrete-block shantytowns, green spaces saved from the axe either because they were military zones or cemeteries, and the distant skyscrapers.

On this wet, unpleasant Istanbul day, the two thin figures standing on the half-built, high concrete bridge paid no attention to the city, or the drizzle, or the occasional lightning flash or crack of thunder that livened up the dismal scene. This was any one of many unfinished bridges and roads around Istanbul, abandoned once the rapacious construction companies in league with a few ambitious bureaucrats had made sufficient profit from illegal deals and shoddy workmanship.

When Meryem looked down, she saw an enormous empty space stretching away beneath her toward a rocky piece of ground. It reminded her of the precipice in her dream, which had made her inmost being shiver and prompted her to take shelter from the coastal wind. This time, it was not the birds flying above, but Cemal, standing silently behind her like a serpent, who made her blood freeze.

Early that morning, Meryem had been woken abruptly and bundled out of the house. The way they had left Yakup’s house at dawn without bidding a proper farewell, the absence of Yakup himself, the expression of terror on Nazik’s face, and Cemal’s implacable attitude indicated that the fate she had tried for so long to ignore was about to overtake her.

As they walked along the road wet with rain, then through muddy fields, Meryem realized that the day of reckoning had arrived. Cemal had taken his own bag but left hers behind at Yakup’s house, suggesting that Meryem would no longer need that ragged bag or the few pieces of frayed clothing. She understood now the real reason for their sudden journey to Istanbul.

Now, here she was, trembling on the edge of the precipice, waiting to be thrown down like a used tissue. She recalled the fat, oily faces of the village women, who had grinned and wished her good luck in Istanbul. She remembered the hens she and Cemal had thrown into the air, to make them fly like airplanes. It was as if she had to review every small detail of her short life. She recalled how the birds’ feet and wings had been broken. “I’m so sorry,” she thought. “Cemal, are you sorry, too? Did you ever think about those hens? They hadn’t far to fall. It’s higher here—so high. Is Istanbul always so deserted and lonely? I’m cold, Cemal. My dress is wet. My back is freezing. Actually it’s not the cold that is making me shiver, but fear. Have you ever felt such fear, Cemal? I have no wings to flap like that crow flying away over there. I can’t look down while flying as it can, my heart would stop. God, why don’t you love me? Why have you gone on punishing me ever since the day I was born? Cemal, God doesn’t love me. He loves you. Why doesn’t he love me? Forgive me,
eker
Baba. I didn’t sin on purpose. My aunt with the stony heart, who shut the door in my face, didn’t warn me. If God had only loved me just a little…”

Meryem did not know whether she was thinking those words inside her head or saying them aloud. Dizzy and nauseated, she felt her stomach contract each time she looked into the void. Her belly perceived its depth, and gravity exerted its pull.

Suddenly, she heard Cemal say, “Say your prayers and show you believe in God.”

He did not sound angry, and his voice was surprisingly soft. The warmth in his tone encouraged Meryem to turn around to look at him, but Cemal caught her by the shoulders and forced her to face the drop.

“Show that you believe in God,” he said again. “After committing so many sins, at least say your prayers before you stand in front of Him.”

After she had chanted three times in a loud voice the Islamic confession of faith:
“
E
hedü
en la ilahe illallah, Muhammeden resulullah,”
the sudden, total silence made Meryem desperate. There was nothing more she could do now. God, who had never loved her, was punishing her for the last time, and here she was at the edge of this fearful drop. Cemal was merely the means, a wretched murderer fulfilling God’s will that Meryem be punished.