"Are you all right, sir?" It was the stewardess with the sapphire eyes.
He gave a curt nod and answered, this time in English. "Yes, thank you. I'm OK. Just a bit airsick…."
Under the velvety light of a streetlamp penetrating the curtains, Auntie Zeliha lay slumped with the cell phone still in her hand, the vodka bottle leaning against her chin, and the cigarette still lit in her other hand.
Auntie Banu tiptoed into her room. Briskly she smothered the smoldering blanket and stubbed the cigarette butt out in the ashtray. She grabbed the cell phone and placed it on the cupboard, took the vodka bottle and hid it under the bed, then tucked her sister under the bedsheet and turned off the lamp.
She opened the windows. The air was crisp with the salty tang of a sea breeze. As the smoke and smell inside the room wafted out, Auntie Banu looked at her youngest sister's pale face, tired beyond her age. In the dim, yellowish light filtering in from the outside, Zeliha's face had grown incandescent, as if alcohol and sorrow had given her a radiance rarely encountered in nature. Auntie Banu softly kissed her on her forehead, compassion welling in her eyes. She then glanced left and right at her two djinn who had been carefully watching her every move from their usual places on her shoulders.
"What are you gonna do, master?" asked Mr. Bitter, a tinge of gloating in his voice. He did not bother to hide his delight in seeing his master so helpless and distressed. It always amused him to see the powerlessness of the mighty.
Auntie Banu wore just a hint of a frown. She gave no response.
Mr. Bitter then jumped aside and sat by the bed, dangerously close to Auntie Zeliha in deep sleep. His eyes brightened with the idea that had just crossed his mind. He harshly grabbed the end of the bedsheet, almost waking Auntie Zeliha, and tied the sheet on his head like a head scarf.
"Let me tell you something," Mr. Bitter declared, arms akimbo, voice thinned to a feminine tone, imitating someone. "There are things in this world…"
Auntie Banu instantly recognized whom he mimicked and felt her spine tingle.
"There are things so awful in this world that the good-hearted people, may Allah bless them all, have absolutely no idea of. And that's perfectly fine, I tell you; it is all right that they know nothing about such things because it proves what good-hearted people they are. Otherwise they wouldn't be good, would they? But if you ever step into a mine of malice, it won't be one of these people you will ask help from."
Auntie Banu stared at Mr. Bitter with awe but the latter now pulled the bedsheet off his head, jumped back to his previous position, facing the place where he had spoken from, ready to depict the second speaker in his imaginary dialogue. To imitate the second speaker he grabbed the remaining golden raisins Zeliha had left last night, and in a flash magically arranged them in the air, making a long necklace and several bracelets. He then put on the necklace and the bracelets and grinned. It wasn't hard to fathom whom he was mimicking now. It wasn't hard to recognize Asya's style.
Suffused with the charm of his narcissistic creativity, Mr. Bitter went on, "And you think, Auntie, I will ask help from a malicious djinni!"
Mr. Bitter now took off the necklace and bracelets, leaped back onto the bed, put the bedsheet back over Zeliha, and replied in a thicker tone, "Perhaps you will, dear. Let's just hope you'll never have to."
"Enough! What was all that?" Auntie Banu cut in furiously, though she knew the answer.
"That-" Mr. Bitter hunched forward and bowed like a humble actor encountering with thunderous applause at the end of his performance-"was a moment in time. It was a petite slice of memory.
With venom in his eyes, he then straightened his back and raised his voice: "That was a reminder to you of your very own words, master!"
Auntie Banu felt a fright so strong her entire body shuddered. There was so much malevolence in this creature's gaze, she didn't know how to explain to herself why she didn't tell him to get out of her life once and for all. How could she be drawn to him like this, as if they shared an unpronounceable secret? Never had Auntie Banu been so afraid of her djinni.
Never had she been so afraid of the acts she might be capable of committing.
SIXTEEN
Rose water
"There goes another evil eye. Did you hear that ominous
sound? Crack! Oh it echoed in my heart! That was somebody's evil eye, so jealous and malicious. May Allah protect us all!"
Thus exclaimed Petite-Ma Sunday morning at the breakfast table as a samovar boiled in the corner of the room. As Sultan the Fifth purred under the table waiting to be fed another chunk of feta cheese, and the candidate who had been fired on this week's Turkish version of The Apprentice appeared on TV in an exclusive interview announcing what had gone wrong and why he shouldn't have been fired, a tea glass cracked in Asya's hands. So unexpectedly did this happened that it gave her a jolt. All she knew was that she had as usual filled up half the tea glass with black, brewed tea, poured hot water to the brim, and then, just when she was about to take a sip, heard a crack. The glass fractured from top to bottom in a zigzag, like an ominous rift appearing on the face of the earth from a violent earthquake. In a flash, the tea inside the glass started to leak out and a dark brown puddle formed on the lacework tablecloth.
"Is there an evil eye on you?" Auntie Feride said, peering at Asya suspiciously.
"Evil eye on me?" Asya laughed bitterly. "I'll bet there is! Isn't everyone in this city jealous of my beauty?"
"There was an article in today's newspaper about an eighteenyear-old who dropped on his knees and died while crossing the street. I think it might have been the evil eye," Auntie Feride said with an air of genuine fear.
"Thanks for the morale boost," Asya said. But her grin quickly turned into a frown when she noticed what her crazy aunt was now gaping at: the snowman and snowwoman shakers. Just yesterday Asya had hidden them in a cupboard with the hope that nobody would find them for at least a month. And there they were on the table again. The ceramic pair was not only shoddy and kitschyand regrettably durable-but also so alike that it was hard to tell which one was the pepper, which the salt.
"I wish Petite-Ma was feeling better, she could have poured some lead for you," Auntie Banu remarked with as vexed a look as Asya'had ever seen on her face. Though indisputably the most experienced in the house with respect to the crepuscular and the paranormal, Auntie Banu was not authorized to pour lead since that required being initiated by a practitioner, a right she had been denied in the past.
Oddly enough, almost ten years ago, when she was still in the earlier stages of Alzheimer's and had decided that the time was ripe to choose the next woman in the family to hand over the secret of lead pouring, Petite-Ma picked out as her successor not Auntie Banu, as everyone had rightly expected, but the all-time champion agnostic Auntie Zeliha-a decision which back then had caused considerable turmoil in the family.
"Are you kidding?" Auntie Zeliha remarked upon hearing the old woman's decision. "I can't pour lead, I am not even a believer. I'm an agnostic!"
"I don't know what that word means, but I can tell it is no good." Petite-Ma snorted. "You've got the talent. Learn the secret."