“I’ll get some from my Dad too. I’ll lie about what it’s for, tell him it’s for school or something. Or that I’m sick. I don’t know. But I’ll come up with more. I promise.”
“There’s no way we could’ve afforded it,” Zeynep said, shaking her head. “You can’t even imagine how much they were asking for, sweetheart. Even your father couldn’t have gotten us out of it, believe me.”
She thought of Hasan’s expression, the way he had drooled when he stared at her legs. She doubted the asshole would’ve made do with just the money, but she didn’t tell Neşe that.
Neşe turned around and gave Zeynep a frightened look, all the blood suddenly drained from her face.
“Don’t worry, baby. I took care of everything.”
Zeynep took a puff from her cigarette.
“I told you about that mafia godfather, the one our asshole did business with — Kâzım Ağa. Well, I had a little talk, a little more than a talk, with his son last week, and invited him to the house. An hour before your appointment. He’s no different from all the other assholes. He wanted me to be his mistress, to make me part of his harem. He would’ve taken care of my husband, too, if I’d asked, I’m sure of that. But for what? Why save myself from one animal just to go and be a slave to another? Believe me, from now on nobody’s going to make me do anything I don’t want to.
“Anyway, our boys wouldn’t recognize him; they’re new in Istanbul. And I’m sure that when our boys burst in, he reached straight for his gun. He’s the panicky type. So he wouldn’t have left them any choice. He keeps a gun under his pillow even when he’s making love, can you believe that? They’ll never be able to show their faces in Istanbul after this, trust me. Kâzım Ağa would skin them alive. They either hightail it out of here or they’re finished. Simple as that.”
She took a deep breath.
“If they do cause us any trouble, I’ll make sure the ağa gets wind of their names. I’m sure he’d believe me and not them. I’ve even made up a story already, just in case.”
Her eyes wide, Neşe peered at the woman standing next to her. She felt extremely grateful, but also ashamed. And now, after what she’d just heard, she felt a slowly growing sense of admiration too.
“I’m so sorry, for everything,” she said in a low voice, like a child who’s just broken a toy. “He told me you would get divorced, that your relationship was over. But when I learned the truth... I hated him. I swear, I was going to be out of your lives, if only he’d left me alone.”
“I know, sweetheart,” said Zeynep, smiling. She reached out and ran her hand through Neşe’s long red hair. Neşe gently leaned in toward her.
“You weren’t his first lover. I couldn’t even count how many there’ve been. But even I wasn’t able to leave him, so how could a little angel like you possibly have done it?”
She thought of all the beatings she’d taken, all the slaps to the face, for some bullshit reason or another. But now, all that was over.
Zeynep slipped her arm around the waist of the younger woman, who snuggled up next to her, resting her head on Zeynep’s shoulder.
Two large seagulls passed in front of them, so closely that if they’d reached out, they could have touched them.
Part II
Pushing Limits, Crossing Lines
The smell of fish
by Hıkmet Hükümenoğlu
Rumelihisarı
Cemile Abla had a bad habit. It was a habit that tormented her so much it gave her stomach cramps. But other than that, she was a fairly carefree woman. No one had ever heard her complain, not even when her knees ached on rainy days. She was just grateful to have friends who came knocking at her door frequently enough to make her forget her loneliness. She had enough money to buy meat twice a week, and a house with a roof that never leaked in the winter. In fact, according to Nalan, if Cemile Abla would only, finally, sell her two-story wooden home, she’d have plenty of money to squander for the rest of her life.
“Your house stands out like a rotten tooth in the middle of all these new ones,” Nalan had told her. Nalan was a tiny woman whose hair had begun to thin out a couple of years before, but her skin was still as smooth and shiny as could be. She and Cemile Abla had been best friends ever since they were kids. Their mothers — may they rest in peace — had been neighbors for fifty years. When her oldest son got married, Nalan sold her house in Rumelihisarı and bought a new three-bedroom apartment in a faraway neighborhood — and, as she had told Cemile Abla, she’d made enough money off the deal to pay for her son’s lavish wedding to boot. Nalan’s was the one and only house on her street that hadn’t changed hands to be demolished and replaced by an expensive apartment building with a view of the Bosphorus.
Cemile Abla’s wooden house stood all alone, tall and proud at the top of the stone stairs, a bastion of the past. The neighborhood real estate dealer was constantly at her heels, yapping like a newborn puppy. If he could just convince her to sell, he’d make a small fortune on the commission alone.
But no matter how suffocated she felt by the profusion of restaurants along the shore — a new grand opening every week! — the throngs of graduates of the nearby university storming in for Sunday breakfast with their entire families in tow (Nalan complained, saying they probably didn’t have any eggs of their own at home), and all the automobiles jamming the avenue, Cemile Abla was determined not to sell her house — no matter what. Luckily her friends’ and the real estate dealers’ insistence never went beyond harmless banter; she knew deep down that if they’d pressed her just a bit more, there’s no way she could have said no.
Cemile Abla had gone shopping at the supermarket to get ready for the guests she was entertaining that evening. For her everyday needs she went to the little ant-infested grocer down the hill, but on special days like this one, she preferred browsing the big stores with their wheeled carts and long corridors illuminated by glaringly bright lights. It gave her that same dizzying sense of exhilaration that she used to get back as a senior in high school after a reluctant visit to the amusement park, at the insistence of friends.
She had decided to offer her guests chocolate cake and canapes on white bread with tea. Having bought a jar of the most expensive cocoa, a container of French mustard, and a few of what the man at the deli counter told her were the best cheeses of Italy, she headed home, inhaling the scent of the Bosphorus along the way. From a short distance away, her eyes met with those of Captain Hasan, and she smiled. Captain Hasan must have come back from fishing early, for it was uncommon to see him on the shore at that time of day. He was sitting on a low stool on the edge of the sidewalk, an extinguished cigarette stuck in the corner of his mouth, leaning over, trying to teach the scrawny boy he’d recently hired how to tie knots. His red and blue boat rode the gentle waves just behind them. (“A person who has a ship, not a boat, is called a captain,” Cemile Abla had complained at the age of seven. Her father had patted her head and replied, “If that’s the way Hasan likes it, then what’s it to us?”)
“I’ve got a three-and-a-half-kilo bluefish for you,” Captain Hasan said joyfully. “Caught him at the crack of dawn, he must’ve been drunk, fell for it hook, line, and sinker!”