The Flea Palace Part 6

Sidar had met her at one of the bars on Istiklal Street. She was the friend of a friend of a friend he had recently met. Other than her coppery hair, the girl had two instantly noticeable characteristics: her eyes and a talent to imbibe beer like a sponge. When the bar had closed down late at night, on her own she had followed Sidar to Bonbon Palace. Once inside, she had scrutinized the flat in a vain attempt to find an item that could be a rapport between the guest and the host. There was no object to talk about. Thank goodness there was Gaba.

Spotting the hazelnut wafer the girl offered him out of her purse, Gaba had sprinted toward her rolling like a ball of fur. Like all burly creatures, he was unaware of more refined techniques of expressing his love. The two of them had tumbled around the floor together in some sort of a game invented there and then. Meanwhile Sidar had watched them from aside, scowling at Gaba's unexpected vigour and ogling at the girl's belly appearing every time her T-shirt slid up a bit. Then suddenly, like the men in the 'Tales of a Thousand and One Nights,' who go mad with anger when the woman they had their eyes on is interested not in them but in an animal, he had interrupted the game, chased Gaba away and drawn the girl to himself. Just like her belly, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s too were milky white. They shivered when kissed.

Shut in the bathroom Gaba had stumbled headfirst from the crest of glee he had climbed just a moment ago. After a while, his bewildered barks had turned first into angry growls and finally into an endless howl. As the girl had shared his sorrow, Sidar had the most spoiled s.e.x ever, coming in castrated ecstasy.

When the door opened, Gaba had refused to move an inch, lying there down by the toilet, indifferent and immobile, as if hadn't been him scratching the door and making all that noise all this time. There he stayed that day, the following day and the day after that. Desperate to win his heart Sidar had bought his favourite foods, sacrificing part of the money put aside for the electricity bill. Gaba had reluctantly smelt the meat, cheese and sausages placed in front of him and remained glued to his spot by the toilet, all the while shooting daggers with his eyes. Only three days later, upon sniffing the roasted rabbit that had cost the rest of the money Sidar had put aside for the electricity bill, had Gaba finally returned to his old self. Sidar listened to his dog's slurping and munching with a grin on his face as if listening to enchanting compliments. The fear of losing Gaba had been so unnerving that he had decided never again to bring another guest into this house.

He had remained true to his word. Meddling in love affairs did not match the life he led anyway. One needed a decent life for such things; it required time, money and energy. He had no money. His energy was limited. As for time, it was becoming short. To dodge his fixation with death, the year 2002 seemed an appropriate time, through its completing a circle by moving from the nothingness of zero to the amplitude of two only to follow the same path back and the earthquake ridden Istanbul, which smelt as rankly of death as 18th century Lisbon, seemed the most appropriate place. Inside his head, just at the spot where he kept banging on the dirty, dusty pipe crossing the living room, Sidar carried his rage like a malignant tumour fattening day by day, making plans to die soon.

Flat Number 9: Hygiene Tijen and Su.

House cleaning sessions fall into two types: those that stem from yesterday and proceed into tomorrow and those that have neither a yesterday nor a tomorrow. So utterly different they are from each other in terms of both causes and consequences that where there is one not even the name of the other comes up. Accordingly, women who do house cleaning also fall into two types: the traditionalists, with a strong awareness of yesterday and tomorrow, and the radicals, with no notion of either.

When the traditionalists clean their houses, they know too well that this will be neither the first time nor the last. The cleaning done at the moment is an important and yet ordinary hoop of an extended chain that advances at regular intervals. The last house-cleaning stint has usually been done only a week (or fifteen days) previously and will be repeated within a week (or fifteen days). Hence every cleaning-day is part of a solid routine and more or less the same as the one before. It always commences and ends in the same way: first the windows are cleaned and the rugs shaken out, then the floors are swept, starting always with the same room and proceeding in order. The furnishings are dusted without altering priorities, the kitchen always receives great attention, tea and meal breaks are taken at approximately the same hours and finally, in the last phase, the cleaning is completed when the bathroom is given a once over. Since the traditionalists have such firm ties with the past and their confidence in the future is just as strong, there is no harm in leaving the unfinished parts until the next cleaning episode.

The cleaning of traditionalists is not a bustle performed in the name of keeping the house in order, but the very mark of order itself.

As for the radicals, in the eyes of these who are less in number and more scatterbrained, every cleaning operation is unique and absolute. It does not matter one single bit if they have done cleaning fifteen days, a week or even a day ago. Since there is not, in the map of their lives, even a single suspension bridge connecting the two separate cleaning days, the cleaning of the past remains there. Thus they always go through their houses as if they had never gone through it before. They set on the task as if held responsible for cleaning it for the first and the last time, as if making a damp den, long uninhabited by anyone except the genies, liveable. It is hard to predict when and where they are going to commence cleaning since any impetus at any moment can incite them into action: be it a melon seed stuck on the switch, soot on the curtains, lime traces in the sink, oil drops on the table cloth, forgotten liquid at the bottom of a gla.s.s that has turned mouldy, a bit of mud on the floor...the tiniest detail can suddenly provoke the radicals to launch an all-out cleaning stint. As such, all cleaning activities are different from one another as no one, including themselves, knows where to start and how to proceed. Actually at the outset they might not even be conscious of embarking on yet another cleaning mission. They could find themselves cleaning the whole kitchen when they are supposed to be simply washing a gla.s.s, the whole bathroom when scrubbing the sink or the whole house when wiping the switch. Their cleaning has neither a 'before' nor an 'after'. For the traditionalists housecleaning is one of many such bouts of activity, for the radicals it is the one and only.

Rather than bringing order, the cleaning done by radicals is the very reason behind the chaos in the house.

Hygiene Tijen was one of the radicals. Perhaps she had always been so, but her radicalism had reached in the last three years a level that was worrisome to those around her. Not only was she capable either by herself or with the help of a cleaning woman of turning the house upside down at any time, she could also devote her entire day at other times to sc.r.a.ping off the burnt oil deposits wedged in the handle of a single pan. Stain or rust, dust or soot, crumb or residue, mildew or dirt; she couldn't stand to see any of these. When she deemed an object could not be cleaned enough, she had lately acquired the habit of opening the window and throwing it out. Staunchly believing that filthiness was an invasion by microbes, what she really wanted to get rid of at such impulsive moments was not the objects she threw down, but the microbes emanating from them. The tiniest amount of dirt would never stay still but would generate microbes that every minute increased three, even five fold. So she immediately threw this hive of microbes out of the house. Not only the residents of Bonbon Palace but also quite a number of pedestrians happening to plough the street at the wrong time had been witness to Hygiene Tijen's catapulting of items. First she had thrown a burnt-out pot out of the window, upon failing to cope with the feeling that she would never ever be able to remove the tarry marks that betrayed the snow white rice. Then, she had hurled out an old rug after whisking it for hours upon becoming anxious that she could not at all get rid of the dust in the ta.s.sels. Yet just like her cleaning, her way of throwing out items also lacked consistency. When she hurled an object, sometimes she would utterly forget about it, abandoning it in the garden to its fate, whereas some other times she would instantly regret her actions and ask for it to be returned. Then, it fell either upon her daughter, husband or the cleaning lady on duty to go down to pick the item, since she hadn't stepped out of Flat Number 9 for about four months.

There was only one person who could keep up with her pace: Meryem. Their relationship was a perpetual ebb-and-flow. With her constant bagging and caprices Hygiene Tijen too often offended Meryem who, though not at all irked by the amount of work piled in front of her, was extremely sensitive about how she was treated. When Meryem quit, Tijen would hire other daily cleaning women in rapid succession, ending up woefully yearning to get Meryem back and eventually managing to do so with pleas and a wage increase. These days Meryem had again signed an armistice. Though they were at peace now, Hygiene Tijen was worried about the advancing pregnancy of her most trustworthy sanitary soldier. She would evidently have to stop working before long, at most in a couple of weeks.

However, the sour smell of garbage engulfing Bonbon Palace worried Hygiene Tijen even more than the thought of being left without Meryem. She could not stand this smell. Like never before, nowadays she regretted marrying her husband heedless of her parents' advice and thus having to forego a considerable inheritance, as well as the prosperity she once used to live in. Along with the garbage smell, her misery also escalated day by day. Every morning as she opened her eyes into this smell, she felt like throwing up and slammed open all the windows, without realizing that in so doing she scared everyone below into thinking that a new set of items would start to rain down. Before long, unable to judge if the open windows decreased the smell inside or not, she would close them all again and repeat this pattern at least ten times a day.

Hygiene Tijen's nerves, which were already strained to their limits by the garbage smell, had entirely snapped the moment she read the letter sent by the school administration. The teacher writing the letter requested that as a favour to the other children Su should not be sent to school until it was ascertained that she was rid of her lice. Since that day, the washing machine worked non-stop. Su's clothes were all kept in bleach and a feverish cleaning routine reigned in the house. Hygiene's soldiers were fighting a war at dozens of fronts against an enemy immensely fecund and invisible to the naked eye. Yet the cleaning militia, too, were everywhere. Each had taken up a position at a separate location. There were cleaning fluids, some in spray form, some liquid and still others you left to dry (with separate ones for the windows, metals, wood, marble and tiles); brushes, a different one for the sink, toilet and the tub; lime removers, rust removers, stain removers; floor wax, silver polish, sink drainer, toilet pump; a vacuum cleaner (with different hose accessories for liquids, dust, curtains, armchairs, rugs, corners, air filters), carpet-sweeper, mop, duster, pail, brush, sponges and coated sponges (separate for smooth or rough surfaces); detergents with cider, lemon, lilac and pacific islands smells; throat searing disinfectants; cloths for the floors, walls and dusting; moth b.a.l.l.s, lavender pouches, garment bags, soap pieces...all had been mobilized and, along with special shampoos from the pharmacy, were defending Flat Number 9 of Bonbon Palace against lice shoulder to shoulder at every possible corner.

Flat Number 5: Hadji Hadji and His Son, Daughter-in-law and Grandchildren.

'Please grandpa, pleease...' repeated the seven and a half year old while looking sideways at his siblings.

The other two children were glued to the TV. Though the programme they watched had ended about ten minutes ago, they had not yet been able to detach themselves from the vacuum left by the coquettish announcer with the rose bud tattoo. Still, Hadji Hadji considered the demand of his older grandson the joint wish of all children. 'Well, okay, let me tell you the tale of the fisherman Suleyman then,' he said, as he put aside his four books the number of which had not changed in years the second one ent.i.tled, 'Interpretations of Dreams with Explanations.'

'During the old days in the Ottoman Empire, there lived in a cottage a fisherman named Suleyman. He was so poor his hands had not touched money even in his dreams, but he had a golden heart. He lived alone without getting mixed up in anything, not hurting even an ant. Those were the most wretched days for the Ottomans. It was the period of 'The Rule of Women', a time when the country had hit the bottom. The concubines in the palace pulled a thousand tricks every day. So many innocent souls were strangled because of them. The bodies of the victims were thrown into the sea from the palace windows. The corpses would bloat in the water for days, sometimes getting caught in fishermen's nets.'

The six and a half year old, unable to adjust to the spirit of his grandfather's tale after the vivacious morning programme he had just watched on TV, swallowed hard as if to get rid of a bad taste. The little girl right next to him had bent her head down, thrust out her lower lip and sat still, almost petrified.

'One night, Suleyman went out fishing. Luckily, oodles of fish were caught in his net, but he was such a soft-hearted fellow that he was unable to kill any and instead returned them one by one to the water.'

'What kind of a fisherman is that?' croaked the seven and a half year old.

'So Suleyman was going back to his cottage empty handed,' continued Hadji Hadji, having no intention to quarrel with him this morning. 'But all of a sudden he noticed a white protrusion on the water. Though it was dark, there was a shadowy moonlight. He paddled in the direction of this shape and when he was close enough, saw a corpse floating on the water. Had he been some other fisherman he would have just let it float there, feeding the fish, but being the good man that he was Suleyman could not do so. After some struggle, he pulled the corpse into the boat with the help of his oar and uncovered it. What did he see but a young and very beautiful woman! There was a dagger thrust right between her two b.r.e.a.s.t.s, and yet, if you looked at her face, you would think she was alive! She smiled sweetly, as if not at all angry at her murderers. Her lips were like cherries, her eyelashes arrows, her nose an inkstand; as for her hair, it curled all the way down to her heels. Our fisherman Suleyman could not take his eyes off this beauty.'

The ringing of the phone ripped the story apart. The seven and a half year old grabbed the receiver with hands that were becoming more contorted and inward curling by the day. Yes, they had finished their breakfast. No, they were not being naughty. Yes, they watched television. No, grandpa was not telling them one of his tales. No, they had not turned on the gas. No, they did not mess up the house. No, they did not swing from the balcony. No, they did not play with fire. No, they did not go into the bedroom. He swore it was true that grandpa was not telling a tale. His mother must have had a gnawing suspicion that day since she insisted: 'If your grandpa is telling you kids a tale, just say: "It is warm today." I'll understand.'

The seven and a half year old turned and intently looked at the old man who was looking intently at him. Without taking his eyes off the old man, the child murmured distinctly: 'No, mom, it isn't warm today.'

He placed the receiver back. Waiting for a couple of seconds to pa.s.s so that he could enjoy this game he played every day, he tilted back his large head the growth of which could not be stopped and urged with an indistinct smile, 'Come on grandpa, continue!' Only this time, his voice sounded not as if he were making a request but rather as if he were giving his approval.

'Fisherman Suleyman could not possibly leave the corpse of this mysterious beauty back in the water,' continued Hadji Hadji, trying hard to beat the distress of taking refuge in his grandson's compa.s.sion. 'He took her to his cottage and watched her all night long, heartsick with sorrow. At dawn, he dug up a deep grave in his garden. He did not at all want to part with her, but nothing could be done about it. The dead are under the earth and those alive over it. This is how it will be until the Day of Judgment when we will all gather together.'

'Couldn't he just not bury her?' blubbered the five and a half year old.

'No!' jumped in the seven and a half year old. 'If you don't bury a corpse, it'll stink. It'll smell so awful you can't stand it.'

'But it smells awful here too,' whined the other one, thrusting her lower lip out even further.

'Maybe there's a corpse in here too. Did you ever open the closet and look inside?'

'There's no corpse here,' roared Hadji Hadji seeing daggers in front of his older grandson. 'It just smells of garbage. No wonder it stinks when the entire neighbourhood dumps its garbage in our garden! Yet, as the building administrator, I'll certainly find a solution to this problem. Don't worry.' He sat the little girl on his lap. 'And listen, the beautiful woman in the tale had not died anyhow. Before burying her in the soil, fisherman Suleyman said, "Let me remove the dagger on her breast." The moment he took out the dagger, the woman moaned. She had not died after all. The dagger had reached the bone but not the heart.'

Trying to find solace in this unexpected explanation the five and a half year old gave a crooked smile. She cowered on her grandpa's lap, and certainly would have felt a lot more comfortable had she not felt her older brother's gaze upon her.

'Our death is written on our foreheads. Even if they thrust a dagger to your heart, you won't die if it is not so written on your forehead. When the poor woman came back to life, she asked fisherman Suleyman for a cup of water. Then she started to talk. Apparently she was a concubine at the palace. The sultan liked her the most. The other concubines were so green with envy and their hearts were so tainted with evil, they had decided to kill this innocuous soul. Buying off the harem eunuchs, they had made them stab the beautiful concubine's white chest. She told this story in tears and then said: "If you take me back to the palace, our master the sultan will surely reward you with heaps of gold." Upon hearing all this, our fisherman Suleyman became lost in thought. He didn't want gold or anything. He had fallen in love. That night this beautiful concubine slept in his bed in the cottage but fisherman Suleyman slept outside in his boat. Some time in the middle of the night the devil approached him. "Don't take the woman back," he hissed, "How could one take such an attractive woman back? Let her be yours. She could stay here, wash your clothes, cook for you and be your wife." That's exactly what the devil whispered.'

Hadji Hadji silently studied his grandchildren as if expecting them to put themselves in the hero's shoes. Yet, that pertinacious smile on the face of the six and a half year old hinted his mind was not on the moral dilemma of the tale but on the parts that promised s.e.xuality. As for the five and a half year old, she was busy adding another word, 'concubine', into her wallet of words newly learned. Once again, the seven and a half year old was the only one left. When his grandfather's eyes turned to him, he slurred sarcastically, 'Of course he didn't take her back.'

'Of course he took her back!' thundered Hadji Hadji. 'He personally delivered her to the palace. The sultan was delighted. "You can ask for anything from me," he declared, but fisherman Suleyman asked for nothing. He left the palace gates as poor as he had entered them.'

There ensued a p.r.i.c.kly silence. Finally convinced that the tale was over, the six and a half year old hollered: 'I'm so hungry!' The five and a half year old, closing the wallet in her mind, jumped off her grandfather's lap: 'Osman first, Osman first!' While the pot warmed up on the stove, they set upon building their tent, piling sheets, pillows and bedspreads in the middle of the living room. Only the seven and a half year old, he alone kept sitting where he was, maintaining his composure. He had picked up an ill.u.s.trated novel and pretended to be reading it with interest, but his moss green eyes, that looked contracted as they failed to keep up with the growth in his head, were fixated on his grandfather and siblings. Every pa.s.sing day, he detested them more.

Flat Number 7: Me.

Ants raided my balcony today or perhaps it was just today that I noticed ants had raided my balcony. They never remain still. In step with commands that only they can hear, in orderly russet strips they now march back and forth between the dark fissure at the wall and the hot dog I had forgotten on the coffee table. I cannot figure out where they came from and how on earth they made it to the third floor. This apartment building is teeming with all types of bugs. At nights they keep me company whilst I down a few drinks.

My father's curse, I guess. Either his curse or his genes. Back in those days when I a.s.sumed my drinking had nothing to do with his, I thought my father's greatest problem in life was not to know how to drink. Ever since I realized how badly my drinking habits resembled his, I started believing instead the problem was not his drinking but his not knowing when to stop. He couldn't break it off, it was that simple. At the outset, he couldn't possibly foresee where to stop and once he arrived at that point, he would have gone too astray to care about stopping. After he had polished off a few, it didn't take him long to pick up the pace. Before long his bloodshot eyes searched for a road sign. A clear sign, a concrete warning: 'Slow down, fine gravel at ten metres!' or 'Slippery surface! Sharp turn! Graded road!' It was at those times that he needed most someone to come forth and tell him how he looked from the outside. Only we could do that, being closest to him, but we never really tried. Both my mother and I would take our place at the table with him, fill our plates with appetizers, peel apples, dice oranges, make lanterns out of orange peels and simply wait for what was going to happen to happen. My mother had convinced first herself, then me, that my father should not be disturbed while drinking. She was so diffident when she was around him, and perhaps rightly so, but even at that age I knew this was not the only reason for her behaviour. Though it certainly pained her to witness my father's collapse, I couldn't help but think that she also secretly, unknowingly enjoyed it. Observing him squander every night the grandeur he would not even momentarily be bereaved of during the day gave her pleasure. That is why she set those rak tables lavishly garnished with appetizers and mezes each more delicious than the other every night... Every night for twelve years...

After all, my father was too much of everything. He was too handsome, too dexterous, too pedantic, too intricate, too egotistical, too unflappable, too frivolous...too much for me and my mother; too much for the housing complex we lived in, the army he served at, the towns he was appointed to, the animals he failed to heal...too much for the life he led...I cannot tell for sure if there ever was a time when I loved him, but I do remember being proud of him once. As a kid I was proud of him because he was tall and handsome, far too much. Back in those days, oodles of stories circulated about children being kidnapped and raised by the gypsies and I remember thinking of my father being one of the kidnapped kids thereafter accidentally mixed in with us. He was so unlike everyone else. We all had similar features, brownish hair, average height and the same laughter. When annoyed we averted any eye-contact, even our stormiest moments looked composed, so patient, ordinary and meek we were, men and women all the same. However, amidst us there he was, with a height that did not fit through doors, a head of hair that turned burning blonde under the rays of the sun, piercing hazel eyes that darkened when sad and always looked you directly in the eye as if to get you to account for your actions, a temperament that swayed between opposite poles and a checkered record of outbursts, flaws and failures piling up day by day along with his sins.

If my father had not been so handsome, robust and self-a.s.sured, my mother would have probably been more at ease. That malicious angst furtively gnawed at her bliss and cast shadows in her eyes shadows that could be deciphered even in her engagement photos where she stood fretfully smiling on his arm, wearing an aquamarine engagement dress with a huge synthetic magnolia attached to her collar. She must have abhorred the hypocrisy of time. First having me, next my brother, then two miscarriages one after another, and finally the daughter she so much wanted, raised spoilt and turned in the end into a replica of herself... I have always found pitiable the way in which middle-aged women who were once beautiful vent half-coyly, half-superciliously, how beautiful they were in their youth, showing every one, each and every time the same old photographs to make their claim credible. Even more pitiable than that is when their children, especially their sons, show the same photographs of 'my-ma-was-so-beautiful-when-young' in a rather coy, but mostly supercilious manner to their own acquaintances, especially to the women they fall in love with. As for us, because of my father, or maybe I should say thanks to him, neither my mother could play this game, nor my brother and myself.

If my father were, could ever have been, any different, my mother would have probably found it easier to come to terms with the evanescence of youth just like all those housewives around her with their two or three children, middle income, middling life and the poison of their many compunctions seeping out from either their tongue or their gaze. Those women and their husbands were normal. What was far from being normal was my father's condition. They were married; their lives, children, money, home, frustrations and past were all identical, but the pa.s.sing years had treated my mother and my father very differently. While my mother had soon become worn-out, my father would even decades later still look as young and robust as he had been in their engagement photos. I can't blame ma for failing to bow to the ephemerality of her youth when next to her was a youth that never faded. There was nothing she could do, and in the fullness of time the lenses through which she viewed herself became more and more hazy. Since the photographs she could have otherwise exhibited to prove how beautiful she had once been were bound to disclose not only the drastic change in her but also the complete lack of change in my father, unlike the other housewives with two or three children, middle income, middling life and the poison of their many compunctions seeping out either from their tongue or their gaze, my mother kept no photo alb.u.ms in our guest room.

Being too busy priding in and imitating my father, for a long time I must have failed to notice my mother's fretful nature. From every new branch of age I perched on over the years, I watched my father with admiration. When he put on his uniform, his face acquired a deliberate toughness, just like those of all the other soldiers. Yet, unlike them, his was a deliberation that could dissipate and a toughness that could thaw at any moment. The clues of this transformation were already there during the day. That stern stare of his which glazed over as if he needed to prove that he took care of animals not because he was fond of them but simply because it was his job to do so would soften, if even for a moment, when he healed a colt, relieved the pain of a cat whose jaw had melted in the acid-filled hole it had tumbled into or gave a weasel attacked by dogs the final peace it yearned for. At any one of those moments, I could perceive how bored he was from incessantly taking off and putting on two contradictory faces. A contradiction reflected in the two professions he carried out simultaneously: veterinarian and soldier.

As he ran around all day long hurling orders left and right with that impressive air of his, he awakened among women an admiration tainted with envy and among men envy tainted with admiration. Yet inside the uniform he wore he kept another personality, as if carrying around a baby porcupine he could not heal: someone who purported to live beyond sorrow and pleasure, was scared silly of death, could not bear to afflict or be afflicted by pain, could not easily recuperate when confronted with injustice, someone who knew, not rationally but intuitively, that he was doomed to screw up sometime somewhere; someone unsteady and tender, troubled and untrustworthy, pessimistic and enraged, aggressive and alcoholic... As long as the sun was up in the sky and he was doing his job, he could indeed hide the baby porcupine. He was so captivating and striking at such times that even my mother liked to grab one of us three to stop by his workplace with any old excuse. Both my siblings and I were thrilled to be next to him during the day. Alas, these were the times when we saw him the least. Then night would come along and, as his aura would lose its sparkle and his face its appeal, my father would metamorphose.

My mother had made a division of labour the rationale of which I could never grasp. According to her scheme, while my father drank each one of us had certain tasks to perform and roles to play. My brother and sister were to quietly watch television and go to bed early, whereas my mother and I were to stay at the table and act as witnesses. Since my father hated to be alone at the rak table, we watched him in shifts. First it was my turn. As soon as he sat down at the table, I took my place across from him. My mother would then be busy deep-frying the pastry, mixing the sauce of the meatb.a.l.l.s or carrying out to the table the appetizers each prepared in a more burdensome fashion than the other. Meanwhile, I would remain at the table and answer my father's questions. He always asked the same questions, which were all about school, and always cut short my answers to tell his, which were all about life. That wouldn't offend me at all. As a matter of fact, this first phase of the evening was the most enjoyable time of my father's soliloquy. When halfway through the first gla.s.s, he would be so cheery and chatty that, even though I knew to the letter what was going to happen soon, I couldn't help but feel blessed to be there with him. Then my mother would come and sit next to my father with an expression that barely revealed her thoughts, and as they started chatting about the events of the day in a muttering, monotonous voice, I would go to my room to do my homework. Two or three hours later when I returned to the table, time would have elapsed, my mother's eyes would have drooped with sleep and the chat would have long come to an end. Thus begun the third and final phase of the evening the phase when everything gorgeous rapidly rotted...the phase wherein the baby porcupine scuttled over the table and I, upon touching its quills, got offended...

Depending on the day, my mother would either walk around the house grumbling, curl-up crying next to my sister and sleep there that night or, if all was fine and dandy, wash the dishes in the kitchen humming a cheery song. However, whatever she chose to do, she'd never return to the table, delegating to me the task of keeping my father company until the very end of the third phase. Yet this was the longest part, the longest and indisputably the most gruelling. The ice in the bucket would have now turned into a lukewarm, cloudy water afloat with cigarette ash and breadcrumbs, the meatb.a.l.l.s at the plate would be cold and congealed, the fine-chopped onions in the salad a smelly squander, the ashtray filled to the brim; the leftover appetizers would have lost their delicacy, the sliced melons their freshness and my father his grandeur.

When I think about it after all these years, it seems bizarre that even though I was the only one among the three siblings who witnessed our father's most disgraceful moments, it was again I who took over his bad habits. My younger brother drinks and smokes once in a while, only when he has to mingle with drinkers. As for my younger sister, she ended up becoming one of those women who never frequent smoke-filled locales, who sulk when someone smokes around them, regard a drunk with dismay, an alcoholic with disgust, and a hobo by changing their route; deeming in the final a.n.a.lysis every drunk an alcoholic and every alcoholic a vagabond. To top it all she transferred these festering habits to her little daughter in their entirety. Whenever I attempt to light a cigarette in their house, my little niece reacts like a tiny robot whose b.u.t.tons are being pushed, and, wrinkling her nose in visible repulsion as if she had just seen a dead rat, starts to deliver a memorized speech about the dangers of smoking. It boils my blood to see people, especially kids, embrace with such rehea.r.s.ed pa.s.sion a statement that is not even their own. At their house there isn't a single ashtray I could use. Inside the ostentatious walnut cupboard in their living room, in addition to all sorts of hefty drinks with different gla.s.ses for each type of drink, there are dozens of porcelain, marble, crystal, silver, gold-coated, steel, bronze, wood, beaded, miniature painted, marbled, statue-like, toy-like, kitschy or far too cla.s.sy ashtrays bearing the emblems of the resorts and foreign cities they have visited as a family; but when it comes to flicking the ash of my cigarette, there is not a single ashtray in use. I wonder, from among her three children, did my mother keep me away from my siblings and close to my father at nights because among her children it was only I who resembled him? Or, on the contrary, did I, among the three children end up resembling our father because she kept me away from my siblings and close to him at nights? Put differently, is this my father's curse for the day I left him p.r.o.ne and alone at the table during yet another 'third phase' wherein I could no longer stand his offhanded and uncouth words? Or is it because ultimately he and I are simply the hoops of the same genetic chain where numerous, industrious genes in tidy strips march on ad infinitum in accordance with pre-determined codes?

I must have been twelve or thirteen. When my brother had the mumps, we shut ourselves in the house for days, forever stuffing ourselves with oleaster, watching TV glued to our seats and only ever getting up to go to the bathroom. In one of the old Turkish movies we watched back then, the leading actress, who was secretly in love with the man her sister was about to marry, vomited blood onto snow-white needlepoint bordered handkerchiefs and was diagnosed with tuberculosis. During the scene where the physician told her she would die soon, my brother and I had burst into laughter spewing out oleaster dust. The film was outrageously ridiculous and just as surreal; it belonged to a stale age and was miles away from credibility. It was no more possible to believe in the death from tuberculosis of the actress on the screen with a face paled with make-up, hair whitened with flour and eyes sloppily empurpled, than it was to believe in the death from cirrhosis six months previous of our father.

Toward the end of the film, my mother came back from the market with my sister. Since neither had had mumps, they were supposed to stay away from my brother. Still, my mother sat right in between us with a doting smile. Holding our hands in between her palms, she muttered in a hesitant yet composed voice that she was about to remarry. On screen the actress with the tuberculosis stumbled down as she tried to descend the stairs to join the crowd celebrating the marriage of the man she loved and her sister. She collapsed coughing. My brother and I bent double in laughter, my mother laughed too. Still standing by the door my sister stared at my mother with astonishment soon replaced by tears. We chuckled again, but this time my mother did not join in. Tilting her crumpled face, she blew her nose into her needlepoint bordered snow-white handkerchief. Perhaps there was no handkerchief after all but it has been seared as such in my memory because that was the way I wanted to remember it. All the oleaster dust we had been spewing out lifted off with a sudden gale and swirled and swirled in the middle of the room like a gauzy snowstorm escalating in anger until no one could see one another anymore; it then drizzled down, forming a canopy over us all, delicate and yellow. Like everything, everything was surreal.

When someone in the family dies unexpectedly, his belongings render surreal not only death or the G.o.d who deems that death befitting but also the lives of the ones left behind. Since my siblings had spent less time with my father and had not seen him surrounded by his belongings in his nest as much as I had, they probably did not experience this alteration as much as my mother and I. When night fell and the table was set, my mother would involuntarily start cooking her usual appetizers and I would take the same place always at the same hour, with a stale sense of duty. It was then that my father's belongings prevented us from acknowledging that the emptiness which sat on the chair across from us was death, and death was real. It was not only his emerald-green spiral striped rak pitcher, his leather wallet embroidered with a horse's head or his chiselled lighter, that always flickered unevenly even when its gas had been refilled and its flint changed, that prevented this. Nor was it his snuffbox embossed on the lid with a purple-bodied and russet-winged owl, whose mistakenly connected eyes made it appear neither ill-omened nor wise but bewildered at most. As long as the living room and the house stayed put and we were unable to leave, there always would be a surreal side to my father's death. Eventually, when it became only too apparent that just as we couldn't move into another house, neither could we fend off this confusion, my mother and I ended up in a tacit partnership that involved our dressing up the ghost of my father and making it sit down at the table with us at night. Yet this secret collaboration which could have brought us closer, in the end, irretrievably separated our paths.

For what she did next was nothing other than being a complete spoilsport. As she served my father's ghost at the table, she increasingly depicted him not as he had been but as she had always wanted him to be. Being the good housewife that she was, she aspired to sweep away from our collective memory all the traits of her dead husband she had never liked in the first place. When she had finished with her sweeping, sitting at the table with us was this facsimile of a man as colourless and l.u.s.treless as a droning elegy a man who had always worked for the good of his family, had no other luxury than sitting down with his wife at night to down a gla.s.s or two, kept whatever venom he might have to himself, never faltered, never complained; it was if he hadn't been made of flesh and nerves. My mother so loved this bogus apparition, and so wholeheartedly believed in it that when she decided to remarry six months later, the man she chose as husband for herself was exactly the same as the ghost at the table.

All through this period, every crumb of information she swept outside her memory I collected one by one, less because of my devotion to my father than because of my fury towards my mother. In the end, however, the alternative ghost I had tailored did not turn out to be any closer to truth than the one she had created. All in all, my father was neither as distinguished as my mother later convinced herself, nor as ignominious as I claimed in contrast. Still, both of us tenaciously embraced our respective delusion. In point of fact, it cannot be considered total deception since we were merely covering up each other's partial unfairness with our own partial righteousness. It was as if the same cadaver lay in two different graves: buried in one grave were my father's mornings, and in the other, his nights. Whenever we wanted to recall his memory, my mother visited one grave and I the other.

Years later, when Ayshin had conducted with a British colleague a survey in three Istanbul neighbourhoods on how popular Islam shaped everyday life, she had mentioned in surprise seeing two graves for the same saint, a fact that none amongst her sample groups found odd. I did not either.

It was at around this time that I finally surrendered to the unremitting requests of both Ayshin and my mother to meet one another. On our way back from a visit to my mother, Ayshin apparently unable to identify the 'father' she had heard about from me with the 'first husband' she had heard about all day long from my mother had already reached the conclusion (as always happens in such situations) that one of us was lying and that this lie was addressed especially to her. After a brief hesitation wherein she tried to track down the real personality of the deceased, she drew the conclusion that I was the one who lied and did so solely to justify 'my condition.'

What was meant by my 'condition' was my escalating alcohol consumption. What Ayshin did not know then was that I did not have such a problem until we got married. Not that I blamed her or our marriage. I cannot determine a starting point anyhow. The only thing I do know is that after a while, my life drew a circle of allusion returning to the beginning and I found myself on the chair my father once sat on. However, there were significant differences. Ayshin was not like my mother. She did not set lavish tables for me and neither did she remain pa.s.sive. She pretended to take 'my condition' lightly and then was offended; she approached me compa.s.sionately and then was offended; she got upset and then was offended; she threatened me and then was offended; she belittled me and then was offended; she supported me and then was offended; she abandoned me and then was offended; she returned to me and then was offended... She tried hard in every way she could think of to fight my drinking, with frequent intervals of being offended. I too tried hard to please her. I guess I felt grateful to her, especially at the beginning. Her interventions verified the fact that unlike my mother, she didn't enjoy seeing her husband stumble and nor was our marriage like that of my parents. With genuine grat.i.tude I struggled and everything went well for about five months. I managed to cut down the drinking. Yet before long, this most praiseworthy progress turned me into my own rival. At first when I overdid it, then when I drank a bit too much, and finally whenever I drank, she rebuked and sarcastically scolded me for my inability to repeat my earlier success. 'We know you can do better than this,' said Ayshin, 'We know it, don't we?'

There is something in this 'we' that is like the sour core of a sweetly sucked candy...a dulcet magma...a scorching, burning, conquest-obsessed lava sprouting from a single source to spread to every corner, taking everything in its way under its coattails until there is no being left outside itself... G.o.d talks like this in the holy books; addresses as 'we' when narrating all the acts of creation, destruction, punishment and reward. Mothers too talk in the same format with their children. 'Are we hungry?' they ask, or conclude, 'Though we have been naughty today, actually we are well-behaved.' Despite the fact that the decision reached and the choice made belongs solely and entirely to them, they annex into the borders of their own existence that of the other as if there were not two separate personalities out there. The 'we' formula employed by G.o.d in the Qur'an, by mothers when addressing their children, and by Ayshin when referring to my drinking problem is not '(We = I + You)', but '(We = I + I)'. To remain outside of such a sweeping 'we' is simply impossible.

I could not remain outside either. Consecutively, repeatedly I stopped drinking numerous times in rapid succession, first with enthusiasm and perhaps a bit of success, subsequently with a somewhat slackened interest, then with weakened effort, and towards the end, with no hope. Each time we prepared new calendars together: calendars where days, rather than years const.i.tuted the turning points, where time was measured by promises that could not be kept. In neat squares we would draw monthly calendars box by box. Whenever I deviated from the plan, I would convince Ayshin with great difficulty not to indicate it on paper like a stain but rather prepare a new one from scratch. To my calendars, each trivial event presented an appropriate opportunity, every special day a genesis. Thus when I received my doctorate, on New Years' Eve, on my thirty-third birthday, on the first snow of the year, when we survived in one piece the traffic accident that totalled the front of our car, on our wedding anniversary, on Ayshin's thirty-first birthday, when I learned my thesis director had lung cancer, on the night when my sister and I brawled raucously at long last spilling our guts out, on the day when I received the news about my stepfather's death, on all sorts of gatherings acknowledging the value of life, on the pretext of Ayshin and I going out of Istanbul for the weekend, on roads, parties, hotels, sh.o.r.es... I ga-ve up, ga-ve up, ga-ve up drinking, each time zealously supported by my wife...

I achieved success but not enough. Since I had once managed not to put a drop in my mouth for weeks, every gla.s.s I had thereafter inevitably meant a move backward. I myself was the role model I craved to be; the ideal which slid out of my palms like a slippery soap, whom I kept chasing after but could not seize even when I caught it by the trouser leg was me. After a while, Ayshin too started to confuse what was 'insufficient' with what was a 'fiasco'. From that point on, the reason for her interventions tended to be blurry. Her worrying about my health was no longer the reason for her to force me to compete against myself. Words and actions lost their primary meanings; through convoluted ways, everything became the indication of something else. My calendars were each a barometer now. Ayshin measured how much I loved her by the number of days I spent without imbibing. Yet when love is the issue, numbers and proportions only cause trouble. 'Very' became such a feeble adjective whenever 'more' was do-able. I loved Ayshin very much but we both knew I could do better than that. Somewhere along the way there had been a misunderstanding, leading Ayshin to believe that it was necessary for me not to reduce drinking but to stop cold, and that I could only reach this goal with the help of love, her love. If I could ever accomplish this it would be 'for her sake.' I was trapped. She had initially wanted me to reduce drinking for the sake of my health, then for the sake of our relationship and next, before I knew it my drinking had become not my problem but hers.

On one of those days, I drew a huge crimson 'X' on my calendar. This latest re-birth which had by chance fallen on the 22nd of the second month was in two ways different from the previous ones. First, while hitherto I had honestly stopped drinking, now I was stopping drinking honestly. Second, unlike my previous oaths, I remained true to this one till the end. From 22/2/2001 to 22/2/2002 when the court divorced us in one hearing, I did not put a drop of alcohol into my mouth in Ayshin's presence.

She watched for a while this brisk, definite development with a contentment marred by incredulity. Still she did not go any further, playing the detective to uncover the truth. Even though she constantly kept me under surveillance while I was with her, she did not once pry into what I was getting up to in the shady zone outside her field of vision. I wonder if the saint with two graves had ever crossed Ayshin's mind during those days, for at this juncture my circle had rotated once again and, just like my father, I had a.s.sumed two separate personalities in two separate parts of the day. There was a clear difference between the two of us however. My father was teetotal during the days and drunk at nights. With me, it was the opposite, as necessitated by my circ.u.mstances: I was sober during the nights and drunk during the days.

The human body shelters within it a clock that works not only from right to left, but also the other way round. It all depends on how you set it up. I had become fully adapted to the new system within at most two weeks. Not having regular work hours at the university was a blessing. During daytime I did not miss any opportunity that came my way and went around constantly drunk, but at night as soon as I went home I sobered up as if hit on the face with a pail full of ice water. I stayed sober during the nights and right after Ayshin left for work in the morning, started drinking at breakfast. In the last a.n.a.lysis, day or night did not make much of a difference: to properly manage one, I needed to mess the other one up. Contrary to what I had feared, this particular arrangement did not weigh heavily either on my stomach or my conscience. Perhaps one gets used to anything as long as he knows there is no alternative on the horizon.

When making this arrangement, however, I had simply overlooked the fact that everything has a life cycle of its own a hint my father knew all those years. The morning hours were not apt to hide secrets away. Not only because we mingle with others all day long or have duties to perform in full view of everyone, there is something else in daytime, intrusive and insidious, transforming the city into an open forest of unseen creatures. The moment I placed a few crumbs of secrets into a tree hollow, somebody would s.n.a.t.c.h it away. Wherever I turned my head, I saw among the branches, twigs and leaves that surrounded me hundreds of eyes dazzled by the sun; a harsh beam of light which made it impossible to comprehend who was looking from where and with what intent. In that suffocating brightness of daytime, I wobbled amidst whispers, unable to distinguish the faces behind the voices. I could sense that others caught the smell of liquor on me, and every so often my tongue stumbled at words or my mind was distracted. I could sense it all but never could I discern who around me knew of my secret and to what extent.

It was precisely at this juncture that Ethel came and perched amidst my life with all her weight. We had not been seeing each other for two years. After losing the Mevlevi ney player and hurling enough poison to last me forever over my decision to get married to Ayshin, she had gone to the United States to settle down there with a bright, versatile Pakistani brain surgeon. Then she returned, just as suddenly and impetuously as she had departed, barging into my life fortuitously at a moment when I needed her or someone like her the most. I had forgotten that Ethel's greatest pleasure in this life was walking with her muddy feet on the priceless carpets in the spotless living rooms of women like Ayshin. She was quick to make me remember that. It didn't take her long to discover my addiction and when she did, she neither disparaged me, nor put me on trial, nor suffocated me with questions that already had the answers within.

Instead she handed me an expertly drawn map created in how many years on what kind of a life experience I still cannot fathom so that I could wander around in the forest of bodiless eyes and faceless sounds with minimum damage. This chart of hers was so technical. It included short liquor breaks adjusted to my work hours, one shot of hard liquor hidden in fancy thermoses, tiny clues about what would suppress the smell of the particular drinks, reinforcing drugs that would help me collect my thoughts, antioxidants, vitamins, minerals, artichoke tablets to appease my liver... With the seriousness and perseverance of a seasoned trainer coaching for the international games a young athlete with measly means but boundless dreams, she prepared the best possible program available under the circ.u.mstances. In fact, she did much more than that. All during those years, at every single opportunity she kept me company and drank with me.

One of the gravest strokes of misfortune a married woman could face at a time when her husband is searching for ways to trample on the rules and prohibitions set by her is for life to present him with an accomplice in the guise of another woman. Once such a chance event occurred, I instantaneously found myself in a room filled with contorted mirrors that made Ayshin appear far more distant and Ethel much closer than they actually were. Perhaps, however, the outcome was not as clear-cut as I believed it to be. After all, when Ayshin initiated divorce months later, the reason behind this decision was neither Ethel nor my infamous addiction.

Flat Number 8: The Blue Mistress.

The Blue Mistress had been sitting without taking her eyes off the thin, crimson stripes of peppered oil oozing from the half-eaten, half-messed-up chicken with ground walnut. There was nothing she could do. She did not even want to talk, let alone raise objections. There wasn't much to say anyhow. She had been caught in the ultimate trap of mistresshood: children!

Being the mistress of a married man is to know too much about what should remain unknown but not know what to do with this surplus knowledge. Mistresses are cognizant of the most hidden, most shameful secrets of certain members of the same s.e.x who they have never met before and are probably not at all likely to meet hereafter. While spouses know little about them and are most probably not even aware of their existence, mistresses have long since gathered by the armloads all sorts of information...th.o.r.n.y, meaningless, morbid details... If the aforementioned have the habit of plastering their faces with cream before going to bed at night, for instance, a mistress will even know what this cream smells like. Likewise they would know the latter's taste in clothes, their devotion to make-up, the type of mothers they were, the sort of jewellery they wore, at what time they went to bed and got up, their eating habits, unceasing curiosities, hideous obsessions, frigidities, hypocrisies, complexes, and also, what their possible reaction would be if they learnt the truth. Mistresses know all the answers without having asked the questions about these kinds of things. They do not seek confidential secrets, rather secrets come to them. They come because in order to provide their mistresses with evidence of the kind of pandemonium they live in, men who are 'Long Time Complainers of Marriage Who Still Don't End Marriage,' and 'Want Change Without any Loss', throw about headlines each more blatantly provocative than the last, like a crummy, popular daily newspaper ends up goading itself while trying to inflame its readers' emotions. Contrary to what spouses suppose, those who grumpily, maliciously gossip about them are not the mistresses but their husbands in person. Mistresses are just good listeners. Not only do they not make the slightest effort to learn more, but also, as long as they are confident about their power and content with their privileges, they do not even touch these armloads of unpleasant knowledge heaped onto their laps. They get to probe, pardon and protect their foes who in the meantime would not hesitate in drowning them in an inch of water.

However, even Achilles has a heel and even on satin sheets there is a mothhole at some spot, an air hole that deflates all the power of mistresses with a hiss. From the moment they have a mistress, men who are 'Long Time Complainers of Marriage Who Still Don't End Marriage' and 'Want Change Without Any Loss' start to love their children as if they have never loved them before. It is a sincere love and just as pathological. Just like Adam has covered his nakedness with a grape leaf, so too do the 'LTCM' men of the 'SDEM' team and 'WCWL' sub-team cover all their shortcomings with their love of children. As years move along and the number of mistresses increases, their fondness for their children spreads far and wide. Just like Eve was obliged to obtain herself the same grape leaf, so too are the mistresses bound to appreciate their lovers' attachment to their children, an attachment that steadily increases in folds, getting more sensitive with each fold and acquiring immunity in the process.

The Blue Mistress lifted the gaze she had fixated on the thin, crimson oil stripes oozing from the chicken with ground walnuts, half-eaten half-messed-up, and looked at the olive oil merchant with a weariness bordering on fury. The man's twelve year old daughter had taken to bed with a fever. He had been snapped at by his wife when he had attempted to scold her for neglecting the child: 'If you love your daughter so much, try not to go to your mistress tonight!' Having been until that point confident of hiding his illicit affair from his wife, the olive oil merchant had been truly flabbergasted. A dreadful brawl had then erupted in the house and the sick child had heard everything.

The Blue Mistress got up from her chair and gave the man a warm hug. She told him in a cruelly soft voice there was nothing to worry about, his daughter would get well soon, and her broken heart could be easily mended since the kid loved her father very much. She had uttered exactly what was expected, not a word more or less. The olive oil merchant looked at his mistress with a sour grat.i.tude. He seemed more comfortable now that he had heard exactly what he expected to hear.

As the Blue Mistress saw him off all the way to the door, the olive oil merchant smiled for the first time in hours. 'Well done,' he murmured just when about to go out, pointing at the table left behind.

'It wasn't I who made them,' shrugged the Blue Mistress, 'I bought it all from the market.' From her voice, it was hard to tell whether she was enraged or not.

The olive oil merchant stood still for a moment. From his stare, it was hard to tell whether he was surprised or not.

Flat Number 2: Sidar and Gaba.

In the la.s.situde canopying Flat Number 2, entirely severing it from the world outside, Gaba snored away, each paw pointing in a different direction. Since he had curled himself not only within the serenity taking over the house but also on top of his housemate, there was no way Sidar could budge until Gaba woke up. Not that Sidar minded that. He loved to stay still without achieving anything, not even trying to, with barely any energy, feeling slightly zany and slovenly, embraced by aimlessness, next to the being he loved the most in this world...to stay just like that, simply and purely stay... He too slid into sleep.

In a wide, weed-filled garden framed by an ornate steel railing, Sidar stood gazing at an amber-haired young girl who had wrapped herself in silvery tulles and stretched out on a chaise long. The girl looked astonishingly like one of his sisters but was more beautiful. She had been motioning him to come hither. Sidar checked Gaba sleeping away at the entrance. Though he knew only too well that Gaba should not be left there alone, he pushed open the humongous entrance gate without taking his eyes off the girl and plunged in. Though the garden was greener than it appeared from the outside, the pool at its centre was for some reason bone-dry. Bugs the size of fists wandered around in it. The girl got up smiling and Sidar suddenly saw that she was much, much taller than him. What's more, the girl did not stop growing, as she stretched toward the sky. The shoes she wore had towering heels. The girl suddenly stumbled and while trying to recover her balance, she stomped her foot on the ground, making a noise that sounded like 'Tock!'. 'Don't!' Sidar exclaimed, but this plea of his created just the opposite response from the girl, for she started to stamp her feet like mad: 'Tock, tock, tock!'

'Stop doing that. Are you nuts? Stop it!' Sidar yelled, worrying that Gaba might wake up. He turned back to check him, but the humongous gate with the steel railings that only seconds previously had been cracked open was both closed and now very far away. As the girl kept hopping, 'Tock, tock, tock,' what Sidar had feared happened. Gaba started to bark, tearing himself apart. Throwing the girl a bitter look, Sidar ran hurriedly toward the gate. At the same moment he found himself running dazedly toward the door in Flat Number 2 of Bonbon Palace. There was an ear shattering noise all around. While Gaba barked, the door jolted; while the door jolted, Gaba barked some more.

When Sidar had finally opened the door, standing in front of him was Muhammet, proud to have made his kicks talk. The child gave him a once over from top to toe and held out a napkin-covered plate: 'Madam Auntie sent you this.'

Sidar rapidly rid himself of his grogginess and smiled brazenly. A joke had come true. The traditional halva that old women neighbours distributed from door-to-door had reached him just at the right time, just when he was yearning for sweets after an acid trip. Sidar and his friends had termed this among themselves: 'Tradition infiltrating the unconventional.' He thanked the child, stumbling over his words in delight, grabbed the plate and slammed the door on him. Having caught the smell of the recently delivered food, Gaba had stopped barking, waiting eagerly with his wet nose in the air. Sidar winked at him teasingly, lifted the napkin and stood dumbfounded. What faced him was not halva, but two floured cookies. Floured cookies with the ends slightly crushed and the powdered sugar on top spilled. Sidar's face paled.

He had remembered.

Flat Number 7: Me.