But how will your father and his family let you go to Turkey? That was Alex the Stoic, a Bostonian Greek American who was content with life as long as he was surrounded by sunny weather, tasty food, and pretty women. As a loyal follower of Zeno, he believed that people should do their best not to push their limits and be happy with what they had. Don't you think your family in San Francisco will be worried?
Worried? Armanoush grimaced as the faces of her aunts and grandmother crossed her mind. She knew they would be worried sick.
They should not know anything about this, for their own good. Spring break is coming and I can spend the whole ten days in Istanbul. Dad will think I am in Arizona with my mom. And mom will think l am still here in San Francisco. They never talk to each other. And my stepfather never talks with his family in Istanbul. There's no way this can be revealed. It'll be a secret. Armanoush squinted at the screen as if she were perplexed by the statement she had typed there. If I keep calling my mom on a daily basis and my dad every two or three days, I can keep everything under control.
Nice plan! Once in Istanbul, Lady Peacock/Siramark suggested, you can send reports to the cafe every day.
Wow, you will be our war reporter, enthused Anti-Khavurma, but there followed an even longer pause as no one joined in the joke.
Armanoush leaned back in her chair. Deep in the stillness of the night she could hear her father's unruffled breathing and her grandmother tossing in her bed. She felt her body slipping sideways, as if part of her craved sitting in this chair all night long to savor what insomnia was like, while part of her wanted to go to bed and fall into a deep slumber. She munched the last bit of her apple, feeling a rush of adrenaline about her dangerous decision.
Armanoush turned off the table lamp, leaving a grainy light radiating from the computer. Just when she was about to exit Cafe Constantinopolis, however, a line appeared on the screen.
Wherever your inner journey might take you, please take care of yourself dear Madame My-Exiled-Soul, and don't let the Turks treat you badly.
It was Baron Baghdassarian.
SEVEN
Wheat
It had been more than two hours since she had woken up, but Asya Kazanci was still lying in bed under a goose-feather quilt, listening to the myriad sounds only Istanbul is capable of producing while her mind meticulously composed a Personal Manifesto of Nihilism.
Article One: If you cannot find a reason to love the life you are living, do not pretend to love the life you are living.
She gave this statement some thought and decided she liked it well enough to make it the opening line of her manifesto. As she proceeded into the second article, outside on the street somebody slammed on his brakes. In next to no time the driver was heard swearing and shouting at the top of his voice at some pedestrian who had materialized on the road, crossing an intersection diagonally and also on a red light. The driver yelled and yelled until his voice dwindled amid the humming of the city.
Article Two: The overwhelming majority of people never think and those who think never become the overwhelming majority. Choose your side.Article Three: If you cannot choose, then just exist; be a mushroom or a plant.
"I cannot believe you are stilll in the same position that I found you in half an hour ago! What the hell are you doing in bed, lazy girl?"
That was Auntie Banu, having ducked her head into the room without feeling the need to knock on the door first. She was wearing an eye-catching head scarf this morning of a hue so dazzlingly red that from a distance it made her head look like a huge, ripe tomato. "We have finished a whole samovar of tea while waiting for you, our Lady Queen. Come on, rise and shine! Can't you smell the grilled sucuk? Aren't you hungry?" She slammed the door shut before waiting for an answer.
Asya muttered under her breath as she pulled the quilt up to her nose and turned to the other side.
Article Four: If you have no interest in their answers, then do not ask questions.
There amid the typical bustle of a weekend breakfast, she could hear the water dropping from the tiny faucet of the samovar, the seven eggs feverishly boiling in a stockpot, the slices of sucuk sizzling inside the grill pan, and somebody continually flipping through the TV channels, skipping from cartoons to pop music videos and from there, to local and international news. Without needing to sneak a peek, Asya knew that it was Grandma Gulsum who was in charge of the samovar; just like she could tell it was Auntie Banu who grilled the sucuk, her unparalleled appetite having returned now that the forty days of Sufi penitence was over and she had successfully declared herself a clairvoyant. Asya also knew that it was Auntie Feride who flipped through the channels, unable to decide on one, having enough room in the vast land of schizophrenic paranoia to absorb them all, cartoons and pop music and news at the same time, just like she yearned for success in multiple tasks in life and ended up accomplishing none.
Article Five: If you have no reason or ability to accomplish anything, then just practice the art of becoming.
Article Six: If you have no reason or ability to practice the art of becoming, then just be.
"Asya!!!" The door banged open and Auntie Zeliha rammed in, her green eyes glittering like two round pieces of jade. "Do we have to keep sending envoys to your bed to make you join us?"
Article Seven: If you have no reason or ability to be, then just endure.
"Asya!!! "
"What?!!!" Asya's head popped up from under the bedcovers in a curly, raven ball of fury. Jumping to her feet she kicked the pair of lavender slippers beside the bed, missing one of them but managing to catapult the other directly on top of the dresser where it hit the mirror and from there parachuted to the floor. She then pulled up her loose-around-the-waist pajamas in a funny sort of way, which, if truth be told, did not quite support the dramatic effect she wanted to generate.
"For heaven's sake, can't I possibly have a moment's peace on a Sunday morning?"
"Regrettably there exists no moment on earth that lasts two hours," Auntie Zeliha pointed out, after watching the distressing trajectory of the slipper. "Why are you getting on my nerves? If this is a teenage rebellion that you are going through, you're too late, miss, you should have been there at least five years ago. Remember, you are already nineteen."
"Yeah, the age you had me out of wedlock," Asya croaked, knowing she shouldn't be so brutal but doing it anyway.
Standing in the doorway, Auntie Zeliha stared at Asya with the disappointment of a visual artist who after drinking and working on a piece of art all night long sleeps with satisfaction, only to wake up later the next morning confronted with the bedlam he has created while intoxicated. Despite the dourness of the discovery, she didn't say anything for a full minute. Then her lips twisted into a morose smile as if she had just realized that the face she had been looking at was in fact her own image in the mirror, so alike and yet completely detached. Her daughter had turned out to be just like her in character, though vastly different in appearance.
As far as the personality went, it was the same skepticism, the same unruliness, the same bitterness she had displayed when she was Asya's age. Before she knew it, she had neatly passed on the role of the maverick of the Kazanci family to her daughter. Fortunately, Asya didn't look world-weary or angst-ridden yet, being too young for all of that. But the temptation to raze the edifice of her own existence was there, softly glittering in her eyes, the sweet lure of selfdestruction that only the sophisticated or the saturnine will ever suffer from.
As far as the appearance went, however, Auntie Zeliha could plainly see that Asya barely resembled her. She was not and probably would never become a beautiful woman. Not that there was anything wrong with her body or face or anything. In point of fact, when regarded independently every part of her was in good shape: the right height and weight, the right curly raven hair, the right chin… but when added together, there was something flawed in the combination. She wasn't ugly either, not at all. If anything, a mediocre prettiness, one that is good to look at but won't stick in anybody's mind. Her face was so average many who met her for the first time had the impression of having seen her before. She was uniquely ordinary. Rather than "beautiful," "cute" would be the best compliment she could get at this stage, which was perfectly okay, except that here she was painfully going through a phase of her life in which "cuteness" was the last thing she wanted to be associated with. Twenty years down the road she would come to see her body differently. Asya was one of those women who though not pretty in their teens or attractive in their youth, could nevertheless become quite good-looking in their middle age, provided they could endure until then.