A thick smell rolled through the yard. Smoke gushed out of the imam’s mouth, and when he drew some back in through his nose, his nostrils quivered. He looked at us the way Elif had looked at me, as if to measure our weight to the gram.
My grandfather stirred. “Mehmed, why have you come?”
The imam moved his eyes from Grandpa onto me. The droopy eyelid twitched; a sharper curve twisted his lips. From the smoke his voice had dropped, but it was still as smooth as singsong.
* * *
“There lived a man during the rule of our great Sultan Ahmed the Third, three hundred years ago. His name was Manol, the son of a miller, a pious Christian, a good Bulgarian, like the two of you. Manol was in love with a beautiful girl, but two weeks before their wedding the girl went missing. That evening in the tavern, one of the Turks, the aga’s nephew, drank too much rakia and started babbling. He had been thirsty, he said, and the girl had refused to give him water. Manol’s sweetheart. They found her body outside the village, at the bottom of a well. The aga promised to put his nephew on trial, but by sunrise the nephew had vanished from the konak, on a white horse to Istanbul, it was rumored.
“Manol stuck a knife in his sash and took to the mountains. He joined a gang of bandits, became a kardjaliya. They lay in wait at the passes, these bandits, ambushed the Turkish caravans, killed the merchants, and robbed their riches. At night they raided Turkish hamlets, set them on fire, raped women and left them widows, and their children they left orphans.
“The great sultan himself dispatched a janissary unit to hunt down this evil. One dawn, the bandits were sleeping in their lair, exhausted from last night’s pillage. They had just burned a small hamlet to the ground, slashed many throats, left behind many widows. Hungover and so unable to sleep, Manol had gone to a stream not far from the cave, and was quaffing water like a buffalo, when he heard the first gunshots and the dogs barking. He set off through the bushes, but how could he outrun the janissaries and their bloodhounds? His stomach was heavy, his head was spinning, his knees were giving way. He found himself out of the woods, and on the mountain path before him there came a little donkey, and by the donkey a Turkish priest, an imam. The dogs were barking, closer with each bark, and without thinking, Manol flung himself upon the imam, broke his neck, undressed him, threw the body off the cliffs, and donned the holy garment.
“In a cloud of dust the first janissaries appeared and called off the bloodhounds that had already surrounded Manol. ‘As-Salamu Alaykum, hodja,’ they greeted him, and he tried to smooth over his beard, which was maybe a bit too bushy for an imam’s. ‘Have you seen any bandits running?’ one janissary asked him, and in Turkish Manol answered: If he had seen them, would they have spared him to tell the story? ‘Don’t look so scared, hodja,’ the janissary told him. ‘From this day on, the mountain breathes free again.’
“And really, down the path Manol saw the rest of the janissaries coming, giant on their horses, and roped by the ankles, dragged naked through the dirt, he recognized his dead comrades. ‘We’ll drag them across every hamlet,’ the janissary said, ‘so every widow may spit in their faces, so every orphaned boy may piss on their bones.’
“‘Allah is great,’ Manol said, and, as was expected, spat on the corpse that just then was being dragged past him — the body of his beloved captain. After that, all thought left him. The janissaries vanished; the sun gashed like a wound in the cloudless sky. One moment he found himself deep in the woods; the next he was standing on the path again. One moment he was petting the donkey; the next the donkey had gone. He was dying of thirst, but when he came to a stream, he crossed it without stopping. I’ll kill myself, he decided, but kept on walking.
“The sun was setting when he reached a hamlet. Women sat outside the ruins of their smoldering houses and watched him pass, their eyes red and puffy. There were women around the village well, weeping, pulling buckets of water and splashing it on the ground to cool it down a little, to wash away the stench of smoke and broiled flesh that hung in the air.
“‘Our souls are burning, hodja,’ they cried out when they saw him. ‘Do something so our hearts won’t burst with sorrow.’
“He watched them and thought of their husbands’ throats he’d sliced open the night before. He watched the well and remembered how in another lifetime the men in his village had lowered a tiny boy, to tie a rope to his sweetheart’s ankles, so they could pull out her body.
“‘Sisters,’ he said to the women, and wanted to tell them — I’m not an imam. Instead he called them to gather around him, dropped a bucket in the well, and filled it with water. He washed his hands, mouth, nose, arms, and face, hair and ears. He washed his feet. And he felt blood and death flow away from him in a muddy trickle. Then, after each woman had performed the ablution, he began singing. What he sang, he didn’t understand. How he knew the verses, he didn’t care to consider. All he knew was that Allah held him in His mighty palm. Allah had thrown him in darkness, had led him along a steep path. And all that had happened had happened on purpose, so he could draw water from this well, console these women, and sing in the name of the Everlasting, the Resurrecter.”
* * *
For a long time we sat frozen. In the distance the door of a ruined house was slamming against its doorframe and a dog was barking somewhere in the Muslim hamlet. Wind blew in the mouth of the well beside us and I thought I could hear all the wells in the village, howling.
“From that day onward,” the imam said, “Manol was known as Mehmed Abdullah. And he, Mehmed Abdullah, became the first imam of Klisura. When he returned to dust, his son became imam, and then his son after that. For three hundred years, Mehmed Abdullah’s sons have summoned the righteous to prayer across the hills of the Strandja. For three hundred years, their wives have borne them one boy after another, a holy bloodline. It is this line,” the imam said, and gently smoothed Aysha’s headscarf, “that ends with me here. As willed by the Ever Relenting, the Watchful, glory be to His name.”
He had forgotten his cigarette and the ember had gone out. With a shaking hand he struck a new match and from the heavier stench his eyes watered. But he smiled a serene smile.
“How much I prayed to Allah,” he said, “when my wife was first pregnant that He should send me a boy. And He did, the Merciful. A beautiful boy.” He puffed on the cigarette and exhaled carefully away from Aysha. “The boy died a baby.” Then he smoked, deep in thought, and all I heard was the smack of his lips after each new drag and the tobacco crackling. It seemed that the memory of Mehmed Abdullah had awoken in him other memories, one linked to the other, and when he spoke again I thought I could hear the links of the chain rattling, if only for a second.
“That darkness, I don’t wish it upon my worst enemy. I don’t wish it upon you, my American friend. Allah, I said, weak, full of doubt, having just buried my boy. Why are you wounding me like this? But I bowed and worshipped and soon my wife was pregnant again. Send me a son, Allah, I prayed. Instead, He sent me a daughter. How I hated her that day, how I hated my wife, myself, my God. Why, I asked Him, are you wounding me like this? But soon my wife was pregnant a third time. Surely, I thought, the Almighty will have mercy. Surely, He won’t allow Mehmed Abdullah’s bloodline to end. Then this little hedgehog was born,” he said, and leaned forward and kissed the back of Aysha’s head. “And my heart was filled with a thousand needles. And when we found out that my wife could have no more children I fell before Allah, defeated. Almighty, I said, I shall never know why you wounded me like this. But I accept it. You expect me to hate my daughters, like any father in my place would, but instead, I vow to love them. And because I love them, I know You’ll try to hurt them. And so, I vow to raise my daughters so they may protect themselves even after I’m gone. Do you know, my American friend,” he said, and looked straight at me, his voice low and his eyes unblinking, “how you raise your dog to be a wolf-killer? You start her off early, from a little puppy, and you never spare the stick. You starve her, even when her howling at night plants daggers in your skull. You never let up. And when the wolf arrives, she snaps his thick neck like a twig.