“What the hell is XO?” I say. “What the hell is this phone for?”
“To keep contact,” she says and slips the phone back in her jeans. “Hugs and kisses.”
“Remember,” I tell her as she gets back to bed. “Even if there is no contact …”
“Kick your heel, and fall for penalty. I remember.”
“Atta girl,” I say and we laugh. “What story do you want to hear?”
“Any story. Something nice. About our family. Back home.”
Back home. I kiss her on the forehead. “Okay,” I say. I take a deep breath while she lies on my chest and prepares to listen. “And so this story, this story, too, begins with blood,” I say. “And with blood it ends. Blood binds those in it and blood divides them. Many have told it before and many have sung about it, but I didn’t learn it from them. I was born and I knew it. It was in the earth and in the water, in the air and in the milk of my mother. But it was not in your mother’s milk and not in your air, so you must listen now as I tell you.”
I can feel her breath, tiny and warm against my neck. I rest a hand on her hair.
“See now,” I say, “how black smoke plasters the sky of Klisura. Feel the fires that burn the flimsy houses. Hear the children screaming and their mothers weeping. Ali Ibrahim is converting slaves to the true faith. ‘Who else will refuse to put a fez on his head?’ Ali says, and his deep voice cuts through the air like a damascene sword. He sits on his black stallion not far away from a chopping log, in a yard filled with soldiers and poor peasants. Dark blood has soaked into the log, and only five more heads must be cut for the blood to finally reach the feet of Ali Ibrahim’s horse.
“ ‘Whose head will roll next?’ Ali asks. Weeping rises above the crowd. A young girl steps forward. She moves slowly; she swims above the ground. Her hair is long, so long that it trails in the dirt behind her and winds out of the yard like a river. Snowdrops wreath her head, and a white gown envelops her in a ghostly cocoon. Her blue eyes cut through the darkness around Ali and search for his face.
“He watches as she comes near.
“ ‘Why, my poor brother,’ the girl asks him, ‘have you forgotten your own? It is your blood you shed as you slay them, my brother. It is your blood you spill.’
“Ali takes out his yataghan and jumps off the horse to cut the girl. The frightened eyes of the villagers — Christians he has sworn before the sultan to convert to Islam — follow him as he swings the sword through the air, desperately trying to butcher this apparition. But, as usual, the girl is gone. She has sunk back in his mind, only to return again on some other occasion and in some other form.”
I stop for a moment to catch my breath.
“Taté?” Elli says. “How is this story about our family?”
“Wait,” I say. “Just listen. And try to fall asleep. It’s getting late. So this story,” I say, “does not begin with Ali Ibrahim, really, although it ends with him. It begins eighteen years earlier with the birth of my great-grandmother — the prettiest woman who ever lived.
“It is well known, even before her birth, that my great-grandmother would be the most beautiful woman in the world. So on the day she draws her first breath, men from all over come to pay her tribute. The line in front of the house is so long that it takes the last man twelve years before he finally falls at her feet and presents his gifts of honor.
“Because of my great-grandmother’s supreme beauty, the laws of cause and effect in the village break down for a while. An event is no longer followed by its usual consequence but instead leads to something completely unexpected. This is first noticed when a few of the men waiting to see the newborn get so anxious that they start throwing stones at the house. Contrary to all expectations, the windows do not shatter, but the leaves on the nearby trees momentarily turn red and begin falling as if autumn has come months before its time. Five houses down, a girl desperately falls in love with her uncle because two kids try to drown a bag of black kittens in the river, and an old woman is run over by a bull because on the other end of the village a housewife forgets to put potatoes in the stew.
“Word that the child destined to be the most beautiful woman has been born spreads quickly. It travels from the steep banks of the Danube through the snowcapped peaks of the Balkan range to the vast rose valleys of Kazanlak and the strait of the Bosporus until it finally reaches the ears of the great sultan in Istanbul. His Greatness immediately loses sleep over the beauty of my great-grandmother simply by listening to others talk about her. For days, a wretched shadow, he sits under the fig trees longing for her, and nothing seems to bring him pleasure anymore. The songs of the most exotic canaries of Singapore are but dreadful noise to his ears. The caresses of the prettiest of his wives chill him to his bones and make him want to weep in solitude. Eating is his only way out of the misery. With every sunrise the sultan devours a dozen dishes of baklava, each one more soaked in honey than the one before. With every noon he feasts on three roasted lambs garnished with trout liver and woodpecker hearts, and when the sun sets behind the palace he seeks comfort in the meat of twenty ducks and two baby calves. All this food makes him so obese, so absolutely humongous, that nothing within a hundred steps can escape his shadow.”
“He’s a fat bastard,” Elli says, and giggles. “Like in the movie.”
“Exactly,” I say. “Fat bastard describes him spot on. For eighteen long years this fat bastard of a sultan prays to Allah to give him good health so he can live long enough to hold the most beautiful of all women in his arms. On one misty spring morning after almost two decades of suffering, the sultan disbands his harem and sends his servants to call for the great vizier.
“ ‘It is obvious that I have lost my mind over this woman,’ the sultan tells him. ‘I have waited long enough for her to grow up, and now I should finally hold her in my arms. Tell the best silk weaver to make the finest black feredje. Then send our most merciless janissary along with one hundred soldiers to take her from her house. Tell them to veil her with the feredje and never to look at her face, because whoever lays eyes upon my bird I will punish with blindness.’
“The vizier signs a firman and puts the sultan’s red seal on it, then gives it to the best rider with the swiftest Arabian steed and tells him: ‘Run all day and all night until you reach the village of Klisura, where Ali Ibrahim is converting slaves by the sword to our true faith. Find him and give him this firman. Tell him to obey every word in it lest he lose his head. Be back in one moon and the sultan will give you your weight in gold. Come a day later and your head will roll in the dirt.’
“The rider finds Ali Ibrahim waving his yataghan through the air near the chopping log in the yard filled with peasants and soldiers. He gives Ali the firman and waits for him to read it.
“ ‘Never have I been more humiliated,’ Ali Ibrahim says, and throws the letter at the feet of the notice bringer. ‘I should at least take the pleasure of killing you for bringing me such news. Go back to His Greatness and tell him that Ali Ibrahim will bring him the most beautiful of all women. But along with her, you tell him, Ali Ibrahim will turn her whole village to the true faith; for Ali has sworn to reveal the face of Allah to the slaves, not to chase harlots for the sultan.’
“After these words he jumps back on his black stallion and casts a last glance at the yard washed in red and the crowd of trembling faces. He orders half of his men to carry on with the conversion, while the remaining hundred soldiers he leads out of the valley, heading for the village of my great-grandmother, the most beautiful woman in the world.”