KODAK.
Zeliha shivered at the thought of a colossal camera taking pictures of everything happening down here on earth at that moment in time. A Polaroid camera taking a snapshot of a rape inside a room in a konak in Istanbul.
She had been alone in her room since late morning, enjoying the solitude, which was a rare occasion in their household. When her father had been alive, he wouldn't permit anyone to close the doors of their rooms. Privacy meant suspicious activity; everything had to be visible, in the open. The only place where you could lock the door was the bathroom, and even there someone would knock on the door if you lingered inside for too long. It was only after her father's death that Zeliha was able to close her door and retreat into herself. Neither her sisters nor her mother recognized her need to shut off from the world. From time to time Zeliha fantasized how fabulous it would be to move out and have a place of her own.
Early this morning the Kazanci women had left home to visit the grave of Levent Kazancl, but Zeliha had excused herself. She didn't want to go to the cemetery with the whole family. She'd rather go there alone, sit on the dusty ground, and ask her father several questions he had left unanswered in his lifetime. Why did he always have to be so harsh and unloving toward his own flesh and blood? Zeliha wanted to know. She also wanted to ask him if he had any idea how much his ghost still haunted them-to this day they couldn't help but lower their voice sometimes during the day, afraid of disturbing Daddy with their presence. Levent Kazanci didn't like noise, especially children's clamor. As toddlers, they had to talk in whispers. Being a Kazanci child first and foremost meant learning the meaning of dad, not as in "Daddy" but as in "DAD": Deliberate Ache Deferment. The principle of DAD was applied to every moment of their lives. If a child happened to trip and cut herself in a room next to his, for instance, she would hold in her wail, press her hand tightly on the wound, tiptoe downstairs into the kitchen or into the garden, make sure she was far enough away not to be heard, and only then, only there, let loose a painful cry. Underlying it all was an alluring but never-realized expectationthat if you behaved correctly, Father wouldn't get angry.
Every evening when their father returned from work, the children would assemble in front of the table before dinner, waiting to be inspected. He never asked them directly if they had behaved well during the day. Instead he lined them up like a small regiment, and stared at each of their faces for varying amounts of time: Banu (more worried for her siblings than for herself, always the protective elder sister), Cevriye (biting her lips so as not to cry), Feride (eyes rolling nervously), Mustafa, the only son (hoping to make his way out of this miserable group, still assuming he was his father's favorite), and the youngest, Zeliha (a subtle sourness welling up in her heart). They waited until Father finished his soup, and then gradually asked one or two or three… or sometimes, if they were lucky, all of them at the same time to join thetable.
Zeliha did not mind her father's repeated scoldings or even his regular spankings as much as she did these predinner inspections. It pained her to wait there by the table to be looked over, as if whatever wrong she might have committed during the day was written on her forehead with ink so invisible only Father could read it. "Why can't you ever get anything right?" Levent Kazanci asked each time he read a misdemeanor on one of the children's foreheads and decided to punish them all for it.
It was almost impossible to correlate this Levent Kazanci with the man he developed into once he stepped outside the house. Anyone who ran into him outside the konak would have taken him for an icon of reliability, considerateness, togetherness, and, righteousness, the kind of man each one of his daughters' closest friends dreamed of marrying one day. Inside the house, however, his kindness was reserved for strangers alone. Just like he took his shoes off as soon as he entered the house and put on his slippers, just as naturally he transformed from a gentle bureaucrat to an authoritarian father. Petite-Ma once said the reason why he was so strict with his children was because he had suffered as a child, having been abandoned by his own mother.
Sometimes Zeliha couldn't help but think it had been fortunate that her father died so early, like all other males in their ancestry. A man as dominant as Levent Kazanci would have probably not enjoyed his old age, becoming weak and ill and in need of his children's mercy.
If she went to her father's grave, Zeliha knew she would want to talk to him, and if she talked to him, she might cry, cracking like a tea glass under an evil eye. But even the thought of crying in front of others was enough to repel her. Recently she had promised herself she would never become one of those weepy women and that whenever she needed to shed tears, she would do it alone. Hence, on that rainless day twenty years ago, Zeliha had chosen to stay at home.
She had spent most of the day lying in bed, browsing through magazines and daydreaming. Next to the bed stood a razor blade she shaved her legs with and a bottle of rosewater lotion she had applied afterward to soothe her skin. If her mother had seen this, she would have been extremely upset. Mother believed women should wax all their bodily hair but never shave. Shaving was for men only. Waxing was a womanly collective ritual. Twice a month the Kazanci women gathered in the living room to wax their legs. First they melted a clump of wax on the stove, which gave off a sweet smell like candy. Then they all sat on the carpet and applied the hot, sticky substance to their legs, chatting all the while. When the wax stiffened they peeled it off. Sometimes they all went to the local hamam and waxed their legs there on the huge marble slab under the steam. Zeliha hated the hamam, that all-women space, just as she hated the ritual of waxing. She preferred to shave with a razor; it was quick, simple, and private.
Zeliha dangled her legs over the bed and checked herself in the mirror across the way. She put some more lotion in her palm and as she slowly smeared the lotion on her skin, she studied her body carefully, admiringly. She was cognizant of her beauty and did not try to conceal it. Mother said beautiful women had to be twice as modest and careful with men. Zeliha thought that was sheer claptrap from a woman who had never been beautiful herself.
Languidly, Zeliha walked across the room and put a cassette into the tape player. It was an alla turca album by one of her favorite singers, a transsexual with a divine voice. The singer had started her career as a man, playing the hero in melodramatic movies; eventually he had undergone surgery to become a woman. She always wore flamboyant costumes topped with glittery accessories and lots of jewels, and so would Zeliha, if she had that much money. Zeliha adored her and had all of her albums. It was time the singer made a new album but she had recently been banned by the military, which was still controlling the country although it had been three years since the coup d'etat. As to why the generals didn't like the idea of a transsexual singer on stage, Zeliha had a theory.
"It's because they feel threatened by her presence." She winked at Pasha the Third, who was curled on the bed like a heavy cushion of pure white fur, watching her with two narrow slits of brilliant green eyes. "Her voice is so celestial and her costumes so ostentatious, I am sure they are worried that when she appears on TV, nobody will listen to the generals with their husky voices and frog green uniforms. Can you imagine? What could be worse than a military takeover? A military takeover that goes unnoticed!"
It was then that there was a knock on the door.
"Are you talking to yourself, silly?" Mustafa exclaimed, poking his head inside. "Turn that awful music down!"