But his father was gone now and somebody needed to be reminded of who was in control.
"Now that Dad is dead," Mustafa declared, "I am in charge of this family."
"Are you?" Zeliha laughed. "You know what your problem is? Spoiled, you are too spoiled, precious phallus! Get out of my room."
As if in a dream, out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand rise up in the air to smack her on the face. Still disbelieving that he could hit her, she stared at him blankly and then managed to swing aside at the last instant.
She escaped the slap but that only enraged him. The second attempt burned her cheek. So she hit him back on the cheek, just as hard.
In a minute they were fiercely grappling on the bed like two children, except they had never grappled back when they were kids. Father had never approved of such brawls. For a few seconds Zeliha felt victorious, having hit him really hard, or so she thought. She was a tall, muscular woman and was not accustomed to feeling fragile. Like a champion in the ring, she clutched both hands in the air and saluted her invisible audience, delighted at her triumph: "I gotcha!"
It was then that he twisted her arm behind her back and got on top of her. This time everything was different. He was different. Holding her chest down with one arm, with his other hand he pulled up her skirt.
The very first thing she felt was mortification, and then more mortification. The sense of disgrace was so fervent there was no room inside her for any other feeling. She was instantly debilitated, almost frozen in a bashful kind of way, a way that revealed her upbringing, the embarrassment of being exposed in her underwear prevailing over everything else.
But then, in an instant, a surge of panic washed the humiliation away. She tried to block him with one hand while with the other she attempted to pull her skirt back down, but in next to no time he had lifted it again. She fought, he fought, she slapped him, he slapped her harder, she bit him, he punched her in the face, one single blow. She heard someone shriek "Stop!" at the top of her voice, shrill and inhuman, like an animal in a slaughterhouse. She did not recognize her own voice, just as she didn't recognize her body, as though it were alien territory, when he entered it.
It was then that Zeliha noticed the KODAK balloon in the clear sky.
She closed her eyes as if it were a childhood game, hoping that if she didn't see, she wouldn't be seen. There were only sounds now, sounds and smells. His breathing got heavier, his hands on her breast and around her neck tightened. Zeliha feared he would strangle her, but the fingers soon loosened and the movement stopped. He made a wounded sound as he collapsed on top of her, his chest pressed against hers. She could hear his heartbeat race. What she couldn't hear was her own. She felt like life had been drained away from her.
She did not open her eyes until he slumped over, now soft inside her. When he stood up, Mustafa could hardly walk. Wobbling, he made it across the room and leaned against the door, gasping for breath. He took in a deep breath and caught a mixed smell-sweat and rosewater. He stood there briefly, his back turned to his sister, before he could bring himself to move again and run out of the room.
As soon as he stepped into the corridor, he heard the outer door being opened, his family now back home. He hurried to the bathroom, locked the door, turned on the shower, but instead of getting in, he collapsed to his knees and threw up.
"Hello!!! Where's everyone?" Banu's voice came from the front room. "Anybody home?"
Zeliha rose to her feet and attempted to smooth down her clothes. Everything had happened so swiftly, perhaps she could convince herself that it hadn't happened at all. But the face she saw in the mirror revealed a different story. There in the frame of her reflection, her left eye looked swollen with a purplish half circle under it. The very first thing Zeliha felt upon seeing her eye was a pang of guilt at her habitual skepticism. All these years she had snickered at cheesy action movies whenever someone got a purple eye, never believing that the human eye could swell that color with one blow.
Her face yes, but her body hadn't been damaged, she concluded. She touched herself to see if she still had feeling. How come she could feel the touch of her fingers but nothing else? If she were hurt or sad, wouldn't her body know? Wouldn't she know?
There was a knock on her door and without waiting for a response, Banu popped her head in. She was about to say something but her mouth opened and closed without words as she stood frozen, staring at her youngest sister..
"What happened to your face?" Banu asked anxiously.
Zeliha knew if there ever was a time to reveal this, it was now. She could either tell it now or hide it forever. "It's not as bad as it looks," she said slowly, the moment already gone and the choice made. "I went out for a walk and then I saw this man beating the hell out of his wife in the middle of the street. I tried to save a battered woman from her husband, but I guess I ended up getting beaten myself."
They believed her. It was something she would do, something that could only happen to her, if it were to ever happen to anyone.
The day Zeliha was raped she was nineteen years old. An age deemed to be a grown-up according to the Turkish laws. At this age she could get married or get a driver's license or cast a vote, once the military permitted free elections to be held again. Likewise, should she need one, she could also get an abortion on her own.
Too many times Zeliha had the same dream. She saw herself walking on the street under a rain of stones. As cobblestones fell one by one from above, digging a hole underneath, digging it deeper, she started to panic, afraid to follow suit, afraid to be swallowed without a trace by the hungry abyss. "Stop!" she cried out as stones kept rolling under her feet. "Stop!" she commanded the vehicles that sped toward her and then ran her over. "Stop!" she begged the pedestrians who shouldered her aside. "Please stop!"
That next month she missed her period. A few weeks later she paid a visit to a newly opened lab near her house. FREE PREGNANCY TEST WITH EACH BLOOD SUGAR TEST! it said on a sign at the entrance. When the results arrived, Zeliha's blood sugar turned out to be normal and she was pregnant.
Once there was; once there wasn't.
In a land far, too far away, there lived an old couple with four children, two daughters and two sons. One daughter was ugly, and the other was beautiful. The younger brother decided to marry the beautiful one. But she did not want to. She washed her silk clothes and went to the water and rinsed them. She rinsed and cried. It was cold. Her hands and feet were freezing. She came home and knocked on the door, but it was locked. She knocked on her mother's window, and her mother answered: "I'll let you in if you will call me mother-in-law. " She knocked on her father's window, and he answered: "I'll let you in if you will call me father-in-law. " She knocked on her older brother's window, and he answered: "I'll let you in if you will call me brother-in-law. " She knocked on her sister's window, and she answered: "I'll let you in if you will call me sister-in-law. " She knocked on her younger brother's window, and he let her in. He hugged her and kissed her, and she said: "Let the earth open up and swallow me!"
And the earth opened up and she escaped into an underground kingdom[3].
Looking out the kitchen window with a spoon in her hand, Asya sighed as she watched the silver-metallic Alfa Romeo depart.
"You see?" She turned to Sultan the Fifth. "Auntie Zeliha didn't want me to go to the airport with them. She is being mean to me again."
3
Indo-European. folk tale, retold from "A Brother Wants to Marry His Sister," Range, Lithauische Volksmdrchen, no. 28.