THIRTY-FOUR

I, SHEKURE

The last guests of our woeful wedding veiled and covered themselves, put on their shoes, dragged off their children, who were tossing a last piece of candy into their mouths, and left us to a penetrating silence. We were all in the courtyard, nothing could be heard but the faint noise of a sparrow gingerly drinking water from the half-filled well bucket. This sparrow, whose tiny head feathers gleamed in the light of the stone hearth, abruptly vanished into the blackness, and I felt the insistent presence of the corpse in my father’s bed within our emptied house, now swallowed by night.

“Children,” I said in the cadence Orhan and Shevket recognized as the one I used to announce something, “come here, the both of you.”

They did so.

“Black is now your father. Let’s see you kiss his hand.”

They did so, quietly and docilely. “Since they’ve grown up without a father, my unfortunate children know nothing of obeying one, of heeding his words while looking into his eyes, or of trusting in him,” I said to Black. “Thus, if they behave disrespectfully, wildly, immaturely or childishly toward you, I know that you’ll show them tolerance at first, understanding that they’ve been raised without ever once obeying their father, whom they do not even remember.”

“I remember my father,” said Shevket.

“Hush…and listen,” I said. “From now on Black’s word carries more weight than even my own.” I faced Black. “If they refuse to listen to you, if they are disobedient or show even the slightest sign of being rude, spoiled or ill-mannered, first warn them, but forgive them,” I said, forgoing the mention of beatings that was on the tip of my tongue. “Whatever space I occupy in your heart, they shall share that space, too.”

“I didn’t marry you solely to be your husband,” said Black, “but also to be father to these dear boys.”

“Did you two hear that?”

“Oh my Lord, I pray you never neglect to shine your light down upon us,” Hayriye interjected from a corner. “My dear God, I pray you protect us, my Lord.”

“You two did hear, didn’t you?” I said. “Good for you, my pretty young men. Since your father loves you like this, should you suddenly lose control and disregard his words, he will have forgiven you for it beforehand.”

“And I’ll forgive them afterward, as well,” said Black.

“However, if you two defy his warning a third time…then, you’ll have earned the right to a beating,” I said. “Are we understood? Your new father, Black, has come here from the vilest, the worst of battles, from wars that were the very wrath of God and from which your late father did not return; yes, he’s a hardened man. Your grandfather has spoiled you and indulged you. Your grandfather is now very ill.”

“I want to go and be with him,” Shevket said.

“If you’re not going to listen, Black will teach you what it means to get a beating from Hell. Your grandfather won’t be able to save you from Black the way he used to protect you from me. If you don’t want to suffer your father’s wrath, you’re not to fight anymore, you’re to share everything, tell no lies, perform your prayers, not go to bed before memorizing your lessons and you’re not to speak roughly to Hayriye or tease her…Are we understood?”

In one movement, Black crouched down and took Orhan up in his arms. Shevket kept his distance. I had the fleeting urge to embrace him and weep. My poor forlorn and fatherless son, my poor solitary Shevket, you’re so alone in this immense world. I thought of myself as a small child, like Shevket, a child all alone in the world, and remembered how once I’d been held in my dear father’s arms the way Orhan was now being held by Black. But unlike Orhan, I wasn’t awkward in my father’s embrace, like a fruit unaccustomed to its tree. I was delighted; I recalled how my father and I would often embrace, sniffing each other’s skin. I was on the verge of tears, but restrained myself. Though I hadn’t planned to say anything of the sort, I said:

“Come now, let’s hear you call Black ‘Father.’”

The night was so cold and our courtyard was so very silent. In the distance dogs were barking and howling pitifully and sorrowfully. A few more minutes passed. The silence bloomed and spread secretly like a black flower.

“All right, children,” I said much later. “Let’s go inside so we all don’t catch cold out here.”

It wasn’t only Black and I who felt the timidity of a bride and groom left alone after the wedding, but Hayriye and the children, all of us, entered our home hesitantly as though it were the darkened house of a stranger. We were met with the smell of my father’s corpse, but nobody seemed to be aware of it. We silently climbed the stairs, and the shadows cast onto the ceiling by our oil lamps, as always, spun and merged, now expanding, now shrinking, yet seemed somehow to be doing so for the first time. Upstairs, as we were removing our shoes in the hall, Shevket said:

“Before I go to sleep can I kiss my grandfather’s hand?”

“I checked in on him just now,” Hayriye said. “Your grandfather is in such pain and discomfort it’s clear that evil spirits have taken hold of him. The fever of the illness has consumed him. Go to your room so I can prepare your bed.”

Hayriye herded them into the room. As she laid out the mattress and spread out the sheets and quilts, she was going on as if every object she held was a marvel unique to the world, and muttering about how sleeping here in a warm room between clean sheets and under warm down quilts would be like spending the night in a sultan’s palace.

“Hayriye, tell us a story,” said Orhan as he sat on his chamber pot.

“Once upon a time there was a blue man,” said Hayriye, “and his closest companion was a jinn.”

“Why was the man blue?” said Orhan.

“For goodness sake, Hayriye,” I said. “Tonight at least don’t tell a story about jinns and ghosts.”

“Why shouldn’t she?” said Shevket. “Mother, after we fall asleep do you leave the bed and go to be with Grandfather?”

“Your grandfather, Allah protect him, is gravely ill,” I said. “Of course I go to his bedside at night to look after him. Then, I return to our bed, don’t I?”

“Have Hayriye look after Grandfather,” said Shevket. “Doesn’t Hayriye look after my grandfather at night anyway?”

“Are you finished?” Hayriye asked of Orhan. As she wiped Orhan’s behind with a wet rag, his face was overcome with a sweet lethargy. She glanced into the pot and wrinkled up her face, not due to the smell, but as if what she saw wasn’t sufficient.

“Hayriye,” I said. “Empty the chamber pot and bring it back. I don’t want Shevket to leave the room in the middle of the night.”

“Why shouldn’t I leave the room?” asked Shevket. “Why shouldn’t Hayriye tell us a story about jinns and fairies?”

“Because there are jinns in the house, you idiot,” Orhan said, not so much out of fear, but with the dumb optimism I always noticed in his expression after he’d relieved himself.

“Mother, are there jinns here?”

“If you leave the room, if you attempt to see your grandfather, the jinn will catch you.”

“Where will Black lay out his bed?” said Shevket. “Where will he sleep tonight?”

“I’m not sure,” I said. “Hayriye will be preparing his bed.”

“Mother, you’re still going to sleep with us, aren’t you?” said Shevket.

“How many times do I have to tell you? I’ll sleep together with you two as before.”

“Always?”

Hayriye left carrying the chamber pot. From the cabinet where I’d hidden them, I removed the remaining nine illustrations left behind by the unspeakable murderer and sat on the bed. By the light of a candle, I stared at them for a long time trying to fathom their secret. These illustrations were beautiful enough that you might mistake them for your own forgotten memories; and as with writing, as you looked at them, they spoke.

I’d lost myself in the pictures. I understood from the scent of Orhan’s beautiful head, upon which I’d rested my nose, that he, too, was looking at that odd and suspicious Red. As occasionally happened, I had the urge to take out my breast and nurse him. Later, when Orhan was frightened by the terrifying picture of Death, gently and sweetly breathing through his reddish lips, I suddenly wanted to eat him.

“I’ll eat you up, do you understand me?”

“Mama, tickle me,” he said and threw himself down.

“Get off there, get up you beast,” I screamed and slapped him. He’d lain across the pictures. I checked the illustrations; apparently no harm had come to them. The image of the horse in the topmost picture was faintly, yet unnoticeably, crumpled.

Hayriye entered with the empty chamber pot. I gathered the pictures and was about to leave the room when Shevket began to cry:

“Mother? Where are you going?”

“I’ll be right back.”

I crossed the freezing hallway. Black was seated across from my father’s empty cushion, in the same position that he’d spent four days discussing painting and perspective with him. I laid out the illustrations on the folding bookstand, the cushion and on the floor before him. Color abruptly suffused the candlelit room with a warmth and an astonishing liveliness, as if everything had been set in motion.

Utterly still, we looked at the pictures at length, silently and respectfully. When we made even the slightest movement, the still air, which bore the scent of death from the room across the wide hall, would make the candle flame flicker and my father’s mysterious illustrations seemed to move too. Had the paintings taken on such significance for me because they were the cause of my father’s death? Was I mesmerized by the peculiarity of the horse or the uniqueness of Red, by the misery of the tree or the sadness of the two wandering dervishes, or was it because I feared the murderer who’d killed my father and perhaps others on account of these illustrations? After a while, Black and I fully understood that the silence between us, as much as it might’ve been caused by the paintings, was also due to our being alone in the same room on our wedding night. Both of us wanted to speak.

“When we wake tomorrow morning, we should tell everybody that my hapless father has passed away in his sleep,” I said. Although what I’d said was correct, it appeared as if I were being insincere.

“Everything will be fine in the morning,” said Black in the same peculiar manner, unable to believe in the truth of what he’d spoken.

When he made a nearly imperceptible gesture to draw closer to me, I had the urge to embrace him and, as I did with the children, to take his head into my hands.

Just at that moment, I heard the door to my father’s room open and, springing up in terror, I ran over, opened our door and looked out: By the light that filtered into the hallway, I was shocked to see my father’s door half open. I stepped into the icy hallway. My father’s room, heated by the still-lit brazier, reeked of decay. Had Shevket or somebody else come here? His body, dressed in his nightgown, rested peacefully, bathed in the faint light of the brazier. I thought about the way, on some nights, I’d say, “Have a good night, dear Father,” while he read the Book of the Soul by candlelight before going to sleep. Raising himself slightly, he’d take the glass I’d brought him out of my hand and say, “May the water bearer never want for anything,” before kissing me on the cheek and looking into my eyes as he used to do when I was a girl. I stared down at my father’s horrid face and, in short, I was afraid. I wanted to avoid looking at him, while at the same time, goaded by the Devil, I wanted to see how gruesome he’d become.

I timidly returned to the room with the blue door whereupon Black made an advance on me. I pushed him away, more unthinkingly than out of anger. We struggled in the flickering light of the candle, though it wasn’t really a struggle but rather the imitation of a struggle. We were enjoying bumping into each other, touching one another’s arms, legs and chests. The confusion I felt resembled the emotional state that Nizami had described with regard to Hüsrev and Shirin: Could Black, who’d read Nizami so thoroughly, sense that, like Shirin, I also meant “Continue” when I said, “Don’t bruise my lips by kissing them so hard?”

“I refuse to sleep in the same bed with you until that devil-of-a-man is found, until my father’s murderer is caught,” I said.

As I fled the room, I was seized by embarrassment. I’d spoken in such a shrill voice it must’ve seemed I wanted the children and Hayriye to hear what I’d said — perhaps even my poor father and my late husband, whose body had long decayed and turned to dust on who knows what barren patch of earth.

As soon as I was back with the children, Orhan said, “Mama, Shevket went out into the hallway.”

“Did you go out?” I said, and made as if to slap him.

“Hayriye,” said Shevket and hugged her.

“He didn’t go out,” said Hayriye. “He was in the room the entire time.”

I shuddered and couldn’t look her in the eyes. I realized that after my father’s death was announced, the children would thenceforth seek refuge in Hayriye, tell her all our secrets, and that this lowly servant, taking advantage of this opportunity, would try to control me. She wouldn’t stop there either, but would try to place the onus of my father’s murder onto me, then she’d have the guardianship of the children passed on to Hasan! Yes, indeed she would! All this shameless scheming because she’d slept with my father, may he rest in divine light. Why should I hide all this from you any longer? She was, in fact, doing this, of course. I smiled sweetly at her. Then, I lifted Shevket onto my lap and kissed him.

“I’m telling you, Shevket went out into the hallway,” Orhan said.

“Get into bed, you two. Let me get between you so I can tell you the story of the tailless jackal and the black jinn.”

“But you told Hayriye not to tell us a story about jinns,” said Shevket. “Why can’t Hayriye tell us the story tonight?”

“Will they visit the City of the Forsaken?” asked Orhan.

“Yes they will!” I said. “None of the children in that city have a mother or a father. Hayriye, go downstairs and check the doors again. We’ll probably be asleep by the middle of the story.”

“I won’t fall asleep,” said Orhan.

“Where is Black going to sleep tonight?” said Shevket.

“In the workshop,” I said. “Snuggle up tight to your mother so we can warm up nicely under the quilt. Whose icy little feet are these?”

“Mine,” said Shevket. “Where will Hayriye sleep?”

I’d begun telling the story, and as always, Orhan fell asleep first, after which I lowered my voice.

“After I fall asleep, you’re not going to leave the bed, right, Mama?” said Shevket.

“No, I won’t leave.”

I really didn’t intend to leave. After Shevket fell asleep, I was musing about how pleasurable it was to fall asleep cuddled up with my sons on the night of my second wedding — with my handsome, intelligent and desirous husband in the next room. I’d dozed off with such thoughts, but my sleep was fitful. Later, this is what I remembered about that strange restless realm between dreaming and wakefulness: First I settled accounts with my deceased father’s angry spirit, then I fled the specter of that disgraceful murderer who wanted to send me off to be with my father. As he pursued me, the unyielding murderer, even more terrifying than my father’s spirit, began making a clattering ruckus. In my dream, he tossed stones at our house. They struck the windows and landed on the roof. Later, he tossed a rock at the door, at one point even trying to force it open. Next, when this evil spirit began to wail like some ungodly animal, my heart began to pound.

I awoke covered in sweat. Had I heard those sounds in my dream or had I been awakened by sounds from somewhere in the house? I couldn’t decide, and so snuggled up with the children, and without moving, I waited. I’d nearly assured myself that the noises were only in my sleep when I heard the same wail. Just then, something large landed in the courtyard with a bang. Was this also a rock, perhaps?

I was paralyzed with terror. But the situation immediately got worse: I heard noises from within the house. Where was Hayriye? In which room had Black fallen asleep? In what state was my father’s pitiful corpse? My God, I prayed, protect us. The children were deep asleep.

Had this happened before I was married, I’d have risen from bed, and taking charge of the situation like the man of the house, I’d have suppressed my fears and scared away the jinns and spirits. In my present condition, however, I cowered and hugged the children. It was as if there were no one else in the world. Nobody was going to come to the aid of the children and me. Expecting something awful to happen, I prayed to Allah for deliverance. As in my dreams, I was alone. I heard the courtyard gate open. It was the courtyard gate, wasn’t it? Yes, absolutely.

I rose abruptly, grabbed my robe and quitted the room without even knowing myself what I was doing.

“Black!” I hissed from the top of the stairs.

After hastily donning shoes, I descended the stairs. The candle I’d lit at the brazier blew out as soon as I stepped out onto the courtyard’s stone walkway. A strong wind had begun to blow, though the sky was clear. As soon as my eyes adjusted, I saw that the half-moon was flooding the courtyard with moonlight. My dearest Allah! The courtyard gate was open. I stood stunned, atremble in the cold.

Why hadn’t I brought a knife with me? Neither did I have a candlestick or even a piece of wood. For a moment, in the blackness, I saw the gate move of its own accord. Later, after it appeared to have stilled, I heard it squeal. I remember thinking, This seems like a dream.

When I heard a noise from within the house, as if from just beneath the roof, I understood that my father’s soul was struggling to leave his body. Knowing my father’s soul was in such torment both put me at ease and plunged me into agony. If Father is the cause of these noises, I thought, then no evil will befall me. On the other hand, his tormented soul, frantically fluttering about, trying to escape and ascend, so troubled me that I prayed to Allah to comfort him. But when it occurred to me that his soul would protect me and the children, a feeling of great relief washed over me. If there were truly some demon contemplating evil just beyond the gate, let him fear my father’s restless soul.

Just then, I worried that perhaps it was Black that was upsetting my father so much. Would my father bring evil upon Black? Where was he? Just then, outside the courtyard gate, on the street, I noticed him and froze. He was speaking with somebody.

A man was talking to Black from the trees in the empty yard on the far side of the street. I was able to infer that the howling I’d heard as I lay in bed had come from this man whom I straightaway knew to be Hasan. There was a plaintive strain, a weeping in his voice, but also a threatening overtone. I listened to them from a distance. Within the silent night they’d given themselves over to settling accounts.

I understood that I was all alone in the world with my children. I was thinking that I loved Black, but to tell the truth, what I wanted was to love only Black — for Hasan’s melancholy voice singed my heart.

“Tomorrow, I’ll return with the judge, Janissaries and witnesses who’ll swear that my older brother is alive and still fighting in the mountains of Persia,” he said. “Your marriage is illegitimate. You’re committing adultery in there.”

“Shekure wasn’t your wife, she was your late brother’s wife,” Black said.

“My older brother’s still alive,” Hasan said with conviction. “There are witnesses who have seen him.”

“This morning, based on the fact that he hasn’t returned after four years campaigning, the Üsküdar judge granted Shekure a divorce. If he is alive, have your witnesses tell him that he’s now a divorced man.”

“Shekure is restricted from remarrying for a month,” said Hasan. “Otherwise it’s a sacrilege contrary to the Koran. How could Shekure’s father consent to such disgraceful nonsense?”

“Enishte Effendi,” Black said, “is very sick. He’s on his death bed…and the judge sanctified our marriage.”

“Did you work together to poison your Enishte?” said Hasan. “Did you plan this out with Hayriye?”

“My father-in-law is deeply distressed by what you’ve done to Shekure. Your brother, if he’s really still alive, could also call you to account for your dishonor.”

“These are all lies, each one!” said Hasan. “These are only excuses cooked up by Shekure so she could leave us.”

There came a cry from within the house; it was Hayriye who’d screamed. Next, Shevket screamed. They shouted to each other. Unwitting and afraid, without being able to restrain myself, I shouted too and ran into the house without knowing what I was doing.

Shevket ran down the stairs and fled out into the courtyard.

“My grandfather is as cold as ice,” he cried. “My grandfather has died.”

We hugged each other. I lifted him up. Hayriye was still shouting. Black and Hasan heard the shouts and everything that was said.

“Mother, they’ve killed grandfather,” Shevket said this time.

Everyone heard this, too. Had Hasan heard? I squeezed Shevket tightly, and calmly walked with him back inside. At the top of the stairs, Hayriye was wondering how the child had awoken and sneaked out.

“You promised you wouldn’t leave us,” said Shevket, who began to cry.

My mind was preoccupied now with Black. Because he was busy with Hasan, he didn’t think to close the gate. I kissed Shevket on either cheek and hugged him even tighter, taking in the scent of his neck, consoling him and, finally handing him over to Hayriye, I whispered, “You two go upstairs.”

They went upstairs. I returned and stood a few steps behind the gate. I assumed Hasan couldn’t see me. Had he changed his position in the darkened garden across the way, perhaps moving behind the trees that lined the street? As it happened, however, he could see me, and as he spoke he addressed me, too. It was unnerving to convene in the dark with somebody whose face I couldn’t see, but it was even worse, as Hasan accused me, accused us, to realize deep down that he was justified. With him, as with my father, I always felt guilty, always in the wrong. And now, moreover, I knew with great sadness that I was in love with the man who was incriminating me. My beloved Allah please help me. Love isn’t suffering for the sake of suffering, but a means to reach You, is it not?

Hasan claimed that I’d killed my father in league with Black. He said he’d heard what Shevket had said, adding that everything had been laid bare and that we’d committed an unpardonable sin deserving of the torments of Hell. Come morning he’d go to the judge to explain it all. If I were found to be innocent, if my hands weren’t red with my father’s blood, he swore to have me and the children returned to his house where he’d serve as father until his older brother came back. If, however, I were found guilty, a woman like me, who’d mercilessly abandoned her husband — a man willing to make the highest sort of sacrifice — for her no punishment was too severe. We patiently listened to his fury, then noticed that there was an abrupt silence amid the trees.

“If you return of your own free will to the home of your true husband, now,” said Hasan, assuming a completely different tone, “if you silently pitter-patter back with your children without being seen by anyone, I’ll forget the fake wedding ploy, the crimes you’ve committed, all of it, I’ll forgive it all. And, we’ll wait together, Shekure, year after year, patiently, for my brother’s return.”

Was he drunk? There was something so infantile in his voice and what he was now proposing to me in front of my husband that I feared it might cost him his life.

“Do you understand?” he called out from among the trees.

I couldn’t determine exactly where he was in the blackness. My dear God, come to our aid, to us, Your sinning servants.

“Because you won’t be able to live under the same roof with the man who killed your father, Shekure. This I know.”

I momentarily thought that he could’ve been the one who killed my father, and that he was now mocking us, perhaps. This Hasan was the Devil incarnate. But I couldn’t be certain of anything.

“Listen to me, Hasan Effendi,” Black called out to the darkness. “My father-in-law was murdered, this much is true. The most despicable of men killed him.”

“He’d been murdered before the wedding, isn’t that so?” said Hasan. “You two killed him because he opposed this marriage sham, this fake divorce, the false witnesses and all your deceits. If he’d considered Black to be appropriate, he’d have given his daughter to him years ago.”

Having lived for years with my late husband, with us, Hasan knew our past as well as we ourselves did. And with the passion of a spurned lover, he remembered every last detail of everything I’d discussed with my husband at home, but had subsequently forgotten, or now wanted to forget. Over the years, we’d shared so many memories — he, his brother and I — that I worried how strange, new and distant Black would seem to me if Hasan were to begin recounting the past.

“We suspect that you were the one who killed him,” Black said.

“On the contrary, you were the ones who killed him so you could marry. This is evident. As for me, I have no motive.”

“You killed him so we wouldn’t get married,” said Black. “When you learned that he’d permitted Shekure’s divorce and our marriage, you lost your mind. Besides, you were furious with Enishte Effendi because he’d encouraged Shekure to return home to live with him. You wanted revenge. As long as he remained alive, you knew you’d never get your hands on Shekure.”

“Be done with your stalling,” Hasan said decisively. “I refuse to listen to this prattle. It’s very cold here. I froze out here trying to get your attention with the rocks — didn’t you hear them?”

“Black had lost himself in my father’s illustrations,” I said.

Had I done wrong in saying this?

Hasan spoke in precisely the same false tone that I sometimes resorted to with Black: “Shekure, as you are my brother’s wife, your best course of action is to return now with your children to the house of the hero spahi cavalryman to whom you’re still wed according to the Koran.”

“I refuse,” I said, as if hissing into the heart of the night. “I refuse, Hasan. No.”

“Then, my responsibility and devotion to my brother forces me to alert the judge first thing tomorrow morning of what I’ve heard here. Otherwise, they’ll call me to account.”

“They’re going to call you to account anyway,” said Black. “The moment you go to the judge, I’ll reveal that you’re the one who murdered Our Sultan’s cherished servant, Enishte Effendi. This very morning.”

“Very well,” said Hasan calmly. “Make that revelation.”

I shrieked. “They’ll torture the both of you!” I shouted. “Don’t go to the judge. Wait. Everything will become clear.”

“I have no fear of torture,” Hasan said. “I’ve been tortured twice before, and both times I understood it was the only way the guilty could be culled from the innocent. Let the slanderers fear torture. I’m going to tell the judge, the captain of the Janissaries, the Sheikhulislam, everybody about poor Enishte Effendi’s book and its illustrations. Everybody is talking about those illustrations. What is it about them? What’s in those pictures?”

“There’s nothing in them,” Black said.

“Which means you examined them at the first opportunity.”

“Enishte Effendi wants me to finish the book.”

“Very well. I hope, God willing, that they’ll torture the both of us.”

The two of them fell silent. Next, Black and I heard footsteps in the empty yard. Were they leaving or approaching us? We could neither see Hasan nor tell what he was doing. It would’ve been senseless for him to push through the thorns, shrubs and brambles lining the far end of the garden in the pitch-blackness. He could’ve easily left without being seen, had he passed through the trees and wound his way before us, but we didn’t hear any footsteps nearing us. I boldly shouted, “Hasan!” There was no response.

“Hush,” said Black.

We were both trembling from the cold. Without hesitating too long, we closed the gate and the doors tightly behind us. Before entering my bed warmed by the children, I checked on my father again. Meanwhile, Black once again seated himself before the pictures.