"Oh, I am sorry. I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Rose."
"Mustafa…" The young man swallowed, his Adam's apple moving up and down.
"Where are you from?" Rose asked.
"Istanbul," he answered curtly.
Rose raised her eyebrows and a trace of panic crossed her face. If Mustafa had any previous experience with provincials, he could detect the provincial's information reflex-the fear of not having enough knowledge of geography or world history. Rose was trying to recall where on earth Istanbul was. Was it the capital of Egypt or perhaps somewhere in India…? She frowned in confusion.
However, ever since he was a teenager Mustafa harbored a fright of losing his grip on time and his appeal for women. So he interpreted the gesture as a sign of having bored Rose by failing to come up with anything interesting to say, and to compensate for the lack, he hastened to cut off the conversation.
"Nice meeting you, Rose," he said, drawling his vowels with a mellow but obvious accent. "I have to go now…."
Very quickly he put back both cans of garbanzo beans, stared at his watch, grabbed his basket, and walked off. Before he disappeared, Rose heard him mumble "bye-bye" and then, as if echoing himself, another "bye-bye." Then he was gone.
Having thus lost this mysterious companion, Rose suddenly realized how much time she had squandered in the supermarket. She grabbed a few cans of garbanzo beans, including the ones Mustafa had left behind, and hurried to the checkout. She passed through the aisle of journals and books, and it was there that she caught sight of something she sorely needed: The Great World Atlas. Underneath the title it said: A World Atlas of Flags, Facts, and Maps/Helping Parents, Students, Teachers, and Travelers Worldwide. She grabbed the book, pinpointed "Istanbul" in the index, and once having found the relevant page, looked at the map to see where it was.
Outside in the parking lot she found the ultramarine 1984 Jeep Cherokee heating up under the Arizona sun while her baby girl slept inside.
"Armanoush, wake up sweetheart, Mama's back!"
The baby moved but did not open her eyes, not even when Rose rained kisses all over her face. Her soft brown hair was tied with a golden ribbon almost as big as her head and she was wearing a fluffy green outfit adorned with salmon stripes and purplish buttons. She looked like a dwarf Christmas tree decorated by someone in a state of frenzy.
"Are you hungry? Mama is gonna cook you real American food tonight!" Rose exclaimed as she put the plastic bags in the backseat, reserving a package of coconut marshmallows for the road. She checked her hair in the rear view mirror, put on a cassette that was her favorite these days, and grabbed a handful of marshmallows before she started the engine.
"Did you know that the guy I've just met in the supermarket is from Turkey?!" Rose said, as she winked at her daughter in the rear view mirror. Everything about her baby seemed just about right: her button nose, her round hands, her feet, everything except her name. Her husband's family had wanted to name the baby girl after her grandmother's mother. How deeply Rose lamented not having named her something less outlandish, like Annie or Katie or Cyndie, instead of accepting the name her mother-in-law had come up with. A child was supposed to have a childlike name and "Armanoush" was anything but that. The name sounded so… so mature and cold, appropriate for a grown-up, perhaps. Did Rose have to wait until her baby girl had reached forty to use her name without it pricking her tongue? Rose rolled her eyes and ate another marshmallow. Then and there she had a revelation: She could call her daughter "Amy" from now on, and as part of the baptism ceremony, she sent the baby a kiss.
At the next intersection they waited for the light to turn green. Rose drummed on the steering wheel, accompanying Gloria Estefan.
No modern love for me, it's all a hustle
What's done is done, now it's my turn to have fun.
Mustafa placed the few items he had selected in front of the cashier: Kalamata olives, frozen spinach and feta pizza, a can of mushroom soup, a can of cream of chicken soup, and a can of chicken noodle soup. Until he came to the United States, he had never had to cook in his life. Every time he labored in the small kitchen in his two bedroom student apartment, he felt like a dethroned king living in exile. Long gone were the days when he was served and fed by a devoted grandmother, mother, and four sisters. Now, dish washing, room-cleaning, ironing, and especially shopping were a huge burden for him. It wouldn't be as difficult if he could only rid himself of the feeling that someone else should be doing these things for him. He was no more used to doing chores than he was to being alone.
Mustafa had a housemate, an undergrad student from Indonesia who spoke very little, worked hard, and listened to odd tapes, such as Sounds of Mountain Streams or Songs of the Whales, in order to go to sleep every night. Mustafa had hoped that if he had a housemate, he would feel less lonely in Arizona, but the result had been quite the opposite. At night, alone in his bed and thousands of miles away from his family, he couldn't fight back the voices inside his head. Voices that questioned and blamed him for who he was. He slept poorly. He spent many nights watching old comedies or surfing on the Internet. It helped. The thoughts stopped at those times. Yet they would return with daylight. Walking from home to the campus, between classes or during lunchtime, Mustafa would catch himself thinking about Istanbul. How he wished he could remove his memory, restart the program, until all of the files were deleted and gone.
Arizona was to have spared Mustafa the bad omen that fell upon every man in the Kazanci family. But he didn't believe in such things. Drifting away from all those superstitions, evil-eye beads, coffeecup readings, and fortune-telling ceremonies in his family was less a conscious choice than an involuntary reflex. He thought they were all part of a dark and complicated world peculiar to women.
Women were a mystery anyway. Having grown up with so many women, it was odd that he had felt so estranged from them all of his life.
Mustafa had grown up as the only boy in a family where the men died too soon and too unexpectedly. He experienced growing sexual desires while surrounded by sisters who were taboo to a fantasy life. Nevertheless, he slipped into unspeakable thoughts about women. At first Mustafa fell for girls who rejected him. Terrified that he would be rejected, ridiculed, and reviled, he turned to yearning for the female body from a distance. This year he had looked angrily at the photos of top models in glossy American magazines, as if to absorb the excruciating fact that no woman this perfect would ever desire him.
Mustafa would never forget the fierce look on Zeliha's face when she called him "a precious phallus." The embarrassment of that moment still burned through him today. He knew Zeliha could see behind his forced masculinity to the real story of his upbringing. She recognized that he had been pampered and spoon-fed by an oppressed mother, intimidated and beaten by an oppressive father. "In the end you have become both narcissistic and insecure," she had said. Could things have been different between Zeliha and him? Why did he feel so rejected and unloved with so many sisters around and a doting mother by his side?
Zeliha always mocked Mustafa and his mother always admired him. He wanted to be just an ordinary man, good and fallible at the same time. All he needed was compassion and a chance to be a better person. If only he had a woman who loved him, everything would be different. Mustafa knew he had to make it in America not because he wanted to attain a better future but because he had to dispose of his past.
"How you doin'?" The young woman at the cash register smiled at him.
That was one thing Mustafa still had not gotten used to. In America everyone asked everyone how they were doing, even complete strangers. He understood that it was a way of greeting more than a real question. But then he didn't know how to greet back with the same graceless ease.