A Measure of my Love

A Measure of My Love © James Fellows 2011

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“The less we make peace with our pain, the more we tend to

make war on others.”

Stephen Levine

“If we could read the secret history of our enemies, we should

find in each man's life sorrow and suffering enough to disarm all

hostility.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


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Chapter 1

October 1912 – Eve of the Wedding

Fatosh Azif was washing her brother’s floundering turban in Kestep’s mud brick laundry when her life irrevocably changed. Fatosh had arrived at the laundry late and the water, which boiled in the copper cauldrons in the early morning, had cooled to tepid. Wood smoke choked the room and tickled her throat. Rolling her eyes heavenward, the dumpy girl let the sacks of assorted clothes thud to the floor and frowning, examined the red creases the sacks had left on her hands. With a deep sigh, she dragged the sacks past the high trough fed with cold water from the fountain, veering first to the left and then to the right leaving a meandering trail in the dirt floor. Her mother’s voice, so jarring it caused eyes to become instantly bloodshot and kept barley bread from rising, echoed in her mind, reproaching Fatosh for her technique. Who cares if dragging the sacks wears them out retorted Fatosh, turning to admire the patterns she had left in the dirt before swinging the sacks onto the wooden, slatted washerboards. We have money enough to buy a new sack each day, if we so pleased, she continued to her imaginary detractor. It was only as she was emptying the laundry bags that the girl’s plump fingers snagged the worn material at the bottom of the second sack forming a small hole. Flushing crimson, she snatched her hand out of the sack as though it were a snare and held the object at arm’s length with her fingertips. Her mind raced, seeking some excuse or explanation that she could proffer to her mother to account for the hole in the sack. As Fatosh plundered her armoury of alibis, the laundry door opened slightly and a squat figure squeezed themselves into the room.


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The fires that warmed the copper cauldrons had long since gutted and the laundry was misted with smoke which made it difficult for Fatosh to make out the identity of the newcomer who loitered impassively behind the largest copper cauldrons. Rather than proceeding toward the water troughs and calling out a greeting, the visitor continued to obscure herself behind the cauldrons, stooping slightly so that nothing of her would be visible. Squinting to get a better view, the young girl’s eyes quickly widened with exhilaration and alarm as she recognised the hunched woman who was watching her. Screwing the sack into a tight ball, Fatosh quickly gathered the clothes from the dirt floor and laid them carefully onto the bench. For the first time that damp spring morning, the girl became aware of the strands of wiry black hair that she’d let carelessly escape from her headscarf to boisterously proclaim her immodesty. With one quivering hand, she held the front of her Yemeni as she stuffed her hair underneath it with the other. Her brow was moist and instead the hair plastered itself complacently across her forehead. Her heart racing, the girl carefully took a tinned copper ewer from the bench and walked with small, even steps towards the warm water. Her head was bowed as though in mourning and under her breath she whispered an entreaty to Allah, the ruler of all worlds and the only Potentate. The woman who stood behind the cauldron was Hatiçe Altinbash, mother of Pantik Altinbash, who had lately returned from a winter in the Hodol Mountains shepherding Iban Aga’s impressive flock of fat-tailed Anatolian sheep. The older village girls, hands part covering their mouths, talked about nothing else than the sight of Pantik winding his excitable flock down the narrow lanes towards the fountains. They had remarked on how impressive he had looked dressed in a cloak of felted wool the colour of flax, his reckless hair full of coarse living and sunshine. But for some reason they didn’t say the one thing that they were all thinking; that when a boy spends a winter in a cave, shepherding a wealthy man’s flock, it is to raise money for one thing alone: the brideprice.


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Although it wasn’t spoken of, Fatosh knew that as well as serving as a bathing house and a place to wash clothes, the laundry served an additional, more clandestine function. Unravelling her brother’s turban, the girl stood tall and took a long breath smoke stinging her dry throat. I will put on a good display, she told herself, rubbing the coarse material of the turban’s two ends together. And the rest, she added, blinking away tears as she fiercely palpated the turban in the smoke filled laundry room, I will leave to Allah.

After supper the following day, as the clinking commerce of pots and pans filled her father’s house, a knock came at the door. Fatosh continued to sweep the dirt floor where her family had just eaten but stole a glance at Nuriye. Her brother’s new wife was plumping up the horsehair cushions, the suggestion of a smile beginning to animate her face. She looked up and catching Fatosh’s eye, raised her delicately arched eyebrows ever so slightly. Both women suspended their chores and moved towards the small room where water was kept warm over the soba and that connected the main living quarters to the selamlik. As Nuriye approached her, Fatosh grabbed her cloak and pulled down on it, so that the tall woman’s ear was nearer to the girl’s mouth. “Father is an important man. He has many visitors after evening prayers,” she whispered through clenched teeth. Letting her head fall back, Nuriye let out an indulgent laugh and placed her arm around the smaller woman’s shoulder. “Most of whom, little sister, enter through the door to the selamlik so as not to catch sight of us,” she replied, pinching Fatosh’s floppy waist, who released Nuriye’s cloak with a squeal and attempted to pull away from her. The taller woman tightened her grip and Fatosh’s pallid face mottled with crimson as she struggled to break free of Nuriye.


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“Must I follow you around this house myself with a stick?” Döndü demanded of Fatosh through pursed lips as her muted anger invaded the main living quarters. Her teeth were clenched and her knuckles drained to white as she gripped the long-handled horse hair broom and glared at her daughter. Her serene expression undisturbed, Nuriye slipped past Fatosh’s mother and into the small adjoining room. Dropping her eyes to the floor, Fatosh sulkily tugged the creases out of her clothes and, one hand fidgeting with the turquoise pendant around her neck, followed her brother’s wife into the next room. Döndü waited until Fatosh was in the next room before walking towards the front door, her feet slapping the earth. The first Fatosh knew of the death of her Nurhan Auntie was when the call to prayer roiled Kestep’s air outside of normal prayer time. Although she was just an infant at the time, Fatosh remembered her mother, Döndü, refusing to participate in any of the ceremonial duties that followed which included washing the body of the deceased and attending the mevlud held forty days after the death. For as long as Fatosh could remember, her mother had blamed the Evil Eye for all her misfortunes, including her failure to keep hardy plants, like solidago, alive, along with the withering of her apricot trees. And as charms of engraved bloodstone and chalcedony began to surface throughout the house, it seemed to Fatosh that the Eye was too being blamed for the death of Nurhan Auntie and fortified against with a new robustness. With her jaw clamped but her hands slightly quivering, Döndü had sewn cloves of garlic into silk and hung coins and turquoise ornaments around the necks of Fatosh and her two brothers, who cast furtive glances at one another in silence as the twine bit into their necks. Döndü’s last acquisition was obtained at great cost to her from a Hajji returning from Medina. The man, intending to die whilst on Hajj and thereby be transported directly to Paradise, had sold all his belongings and was unable to turn down the sum Döndü’s husband, Ibali, offered him for the stone on his return to Kestep. Döndü wore the stone, on which were engraved invocations of the Khalif Ali, the last of the four rightly guided


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Caliph’s and the Prophet’s son-in-law, in an emerald-green sash wrapped tightly around her waist. Just a few days after acquiring the stone, the sound of tinkling was heard at all hours around Fatosh’s family house. Although her arm would twitch involuntarily whenever the tinkling broadcast itself, Döndü told her family that she could hear nothing of this sound they spoke of. All the same, she became thin and nervous until her husband, bringing word from a local soothsayer with whom he had sought counsel, revealed that the sound indicated the presence of benevolent djinns who were known to wear bridal garments trimmed with tiny bells and who had been invoked by Döndü’s extravagant talismans. On hearing this news, Döndü said nothing but her colour quickly returned and she began to more fiercely police her children’s wearing of their turquoise pendants.

Whilst the visitors crossed the threshold into the house and removed their sandals, Fatosh slid her little finger underneath the twine that held the turquoise pendant tightly to her pale throat and held her breath. Even with her breath held, she could feel the rapid thump of her pulse against her finger as her blood sluiced through her body. Even though Fatosh was many years older than when her mother had first fixed the charm around her neck, Döndü had allowed for no slackening of the twine as her daughter had grown up and Fatosh feared that she may well be strangled by this totem of protection before she reached full womanhood.

“It is good that it is tight,” Döndü had replied to Fatosh’s

complaint, “this way, if the twine snaps and you lose the pendant, you’ll more easily notice its absence.” But the tighter it is, the more likely it is to break, Fatosh thought, furious both that her mother was unable to see this and that she lacked the nerve to articulate her thoughts aloud.

As a young child, Fatosh had been able to comfortably slide

her entire fist underneath the twine but now she could feel the end of her little finger swelling as the twine slowed her circulation. And then, unexpectedly, the pressure eased and Fatosh felt a wave of relief as the


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pendant slid from her neck. This relief quickly clotted as the pendant hit the counter and then the dirt floor, where it shattered, spilling its colour at her bare feet. During the moments that followed, Fatosh simply stared at the twinkling constellation of turquoise that wrapped itself thrillingly in light seized from the butter lamp. With ease, she dropped onto one knee, tucking a strand of loose hair behind her ear. From the next room came the sound of voices exchanging greetings. For a moment, Fatosh hesitated before pushing herself to her feet and kicking dirt over the fragments of turquoise that winked at her from the floor. She had bigger things to worry about now. Identifying three distinct voices from the next room, Fatosh set out three tiny tulip-shaped glasses on saucers with a demitasse spoon which rattled as it was laid on each saucer. Every so often, Fatosh caught sight of the fat, loping silhouettes that lapped up against the dark wall of the living quarters – the only part of the room visible to her – as fuel was added to the brazier.

Having seated the visitors, Döndü splashed lemon cologne

onto their hands, whilst Nuriye, who had returned silently to the living quarters, filled glasses with water, waiting until each woman had had their fill before moving onto the next.

A moment later, Nuriye appeared at the entrance to the small

room, her eyes wider than Fatosh had ever seen them. She’s still beautiful though, Fatosh though to herself.

“It’s Pantik’s mother!” she mouthed silently, exaggerating

each word. Fatosh studied Nuriye for a while and then placing the pot on the brazier, continued to prepare tea, moving objects dully around the counter. Stepping forward, Nuriye caught the young girl’s wrist and took the pot out of her other hand.

“Not tea”, she whispered smiling, “you need to make coffee.

You’re going to get married!” “Coffee?” Fatosh asked, as though in a daze, puddling

through thoughts and making no attempt to free herself from Nuriye’s


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grip. The flame of a butter lamp fidgeted, slinging shadows around carelessly.

“Yes, coffee,” Nuriye replied, “If you accept the offer, you

should make coffee and sweeten his mother’s as a sign.” Fatosh turned away from Nuriye and fumbled with the dark

coffee grains, staining her fingers. “Zeynep says he sleeps with his eyes open. How do I know

he doesn’t have other…strange habits?” she asked in a blunt voice, her back to Nuriye. Taking hold of the younger girl’s shoulders, Nuriye gently rotated Fatosh to face her. The girl’s pale forehead was deeply lined and she bit into her lower lip, a look of entreaty in her wide eyes, which glistened with tears.

“How do any of us know?” Nuriye whispered, placing her

hands on Fatosh’s cheeks which felt clammy to her touch. “We just trust that Allah will take care of each of us. And if

he gives us a bad man, we know that that too is his will.” Fatosh’s frown deepened as she heard this and Nuriye offered

her a conciliatory smile before pulling her into her embrace, one hand gently smoothing her hair beneath her yemeni.

“I’ll miss you”, Fatosh said as Nuriye felt the soft dampness

of tears on her shoulder. “And I’m sorry to leave you alone with mother,” she added,

pushing herself away from the older woman. Nuriye chuckled. “Make your new mother a coffee,” Nuriye said, “before the

djinns scare her off. Or,” she added, “before your old mother does.”


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The possibility of being married thrilled Fatosh so completely that in the days that followed Hatiçe’s proposal, she had to hurry into the courtyard to camouflage her flush amongst the potted geraniums. Nuriye, who had, in her pre-nuptial days, also taken recourse to geraniums, knew where to find the girl when she decided to help her start work on her trousseau.

“You are not beautiful,” said Nuriye as she took her sister-in-law by the hand and led her to the divan dressed with silk antimacassars. Taking a pair of steel needles from the wedding chest that had accompanied her from her father’s house on her wedding day, Nuriye gestured at the down that grew on Fatosh’s upper lip. “But we can improve you in other ways.”

In the closeness and intimacy of the summer heat, for restless hours her sister-in-law shared with her the exalted, but it seemed to Fatosh, tedious arts of needlework and quilting. Through those silent and breathless hours after midday prayers, she was shown how to animate cloth with delicate embroidery and to improve cotton and refine wool with lace. Even her mother’s voice, which usually bruised the afternoon silence with its thump and thud, fell quiet during these hours.

“We have some news,” Döndü had said to her husband, once

Pantik’s mother had left on the night of the proposal. The sound of water running over glasses which clinked against one another came from the next room. Beneath that sound, like the faint outline of a hand seen through muslin, came the murmuring and occasional squeak of her daughter and Nuriye. Döndü frowned and brought her hand to her mouth. She had told the girls to keep quiet whilst she spoke to her husband about the wedding proposal. When Ibali didn’t respond, Döndü coughed sharply and pulled her white headscarf more tightly around her face. Her long nails scratched her forehead as she tucked her thin hair


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beneath the scarf and with a sudden flicking movement, the woman flattened the folds of her scarf as it fell over her shoulders.

“There’s something we need to speak about,” she continued,

speaking with a firmness that faltered slightly as she reached the end of the sentence. “We’ve had a…”

“I heard you the first time,” her husband answered in a quiet

voice as he reached for the tea that his wife had recently set down before him on the kilim. Döndü breathed in sharply and then snorted her satisfaction. Before she could enumerate the details of what had recently transpired, Ibali spoke again.

“I expect it’s to do with our daughter. Has she received a

proposal?” His eyes were still focussed on his tea which he stirred slowly, his other hand steadying the glass by lightly touching its rim. Tendrils of saliva stretched from his upper to his lower teeth and made his words sound sticky. At the corners of his mouth, dried spittle had formed an encrustation the colour of egg yolk which Ibali wiped away with a swift movement, powdering the dried spittle when his thumb and forefinger met underneath his lower lip.

For a moment, Döndü could think of nothing to say. A large

silver platter sat between her and her husband, upon which was placed a tall, tinned-copper ewer. Although Ibali was leaning forward from his cross-legged position to stir his tea, his back remained stiff and straight. Murmuring her assent to her husband’s speculation, Döndü then straightened her own back and began to reorder the glasses set out on the platter in front of her. (Although she acknowledged her husband as head of the household, family matters were her domain, and she was determined not to allow him to take her power from her. She would not be discouraged by either his seeming disinterest or his determination to second guess the news that she, as mother to Fatosh, was entitled to bring.)


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“She has received an offer of marriage from the wealthy and respectable house of Veli Altinbash,” she continued sharply, crisply organising the tulip-shaped tea glasses before her, which clinked as they glanced off the metal platter.

“His wife and sisters were here not an hour ago asking as to

whether an offer of their son’s hand in marriage might, with the grace of Allah, find favour with my husband.”

Döndü stopped moving the glasses and looked directly at her

husband, who brought his glass to his lips as he reclined into the straw-stuffed bolster behind him. The noises from the adjacent room had quieted and Döndü began to twist the gold bangles that girdled her wrist, the sinews in her neck becoming taut.

Ibali sipped tentatively at his tea and then uncrossed his long

legs, which he stretched out in front of him, requiring Döndü to shuffle a little to the right, her legs now tucked underneath her. As his legs unfolded, they bumped against the platter, causing an empty glass to tip over. Döndü was leaning forward to correct the glass, whose rim she noticed had become slightly chipped, when Ibali finally spoke.

“What do you think?” he said, throwing his arm out to Döndü

in a gesture of invitation. “Is he good enough for our daughter?” His voice was much louder this time and as her husband spoke, Döndü flinched, disguising the movement by adjusting her position. Her husband was twenty years her senior and for the first time, Döndü noticed how age had begun, subtly, to wither him. The puckered skin at his throat sagged either side of his epiglottis, from which curly wisps of grey hair sprouted with uncertainty. The blackness of his densely forested eyebrows accentuated his creamy pallor and the saltiness of his small, neatly clipped beard. A stickiness in the corners of his eyes belaboured the movement of his eyelids. His voice had however, lost none of its vigour.


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“He amassed a considerable brideprice by taking care of Ibn Aga’s flock last winter. He remained with them in the mountains despite the intense cold. His father has more oxen than he can fit in one stable and,” at this point Döndü hid her face as she began to smile, “he has no need for donkeys to pull a plough, like our neighbours in Andifli.”

“His mother also assures me that he neither wrestles nor

swears and he is one of the first to take his place in the mosque for Sabah at dawn. And,” Döndü added, looking down at the shiny fabric of her skirt as she ran her hand over its smoothness, “he always sits at the back of the mosque in deference to his elders.”

“He sits at the back of the mosque in order to sleep during the

Hodja’s sermon,” Ibali answered, pushing his indoor shoes off one foot with the big toe of the other. “And since when has a humble shepherd been the suitor of choice for our daughter?”

Döndü looked at her husband with a puzzled expression. “Yes, I know,” Ibali continued, waving his last comment

away, “if it wasn’t a shepherd, it would have been a farm-hand or a tinsmith’s apprentice.” Ibali paused for a moment, setting his glass down and clasping his hands together before letting out an abrupt sigh.

“Very well,” he said, slowly opening his hands. “After all,

these matters are the province of women…” he trailed off. “I do wonder though whether our daughter may be a little young for marriage.”

“Young?” Döndü responded, surprise raising her voice and

titling it upwards before she could catch it. Dropping her eyes to her hands, she cleared her throat before adding, the faintest touch of a reproach in her chastened voice.

“She’s fifteen, Ibali. Fifteen years and four months old. Four


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years younger than Ishmael and exactly one year older than Tazi.” She paused for a moment. “She’s one year older than I was when I married you.”

For the first time that evening, Ibali looked directly at his

wife, who dropped her gaze after a moment or two of holding his. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but stern.

“Do not forget your place,” he whispered, leaning closer

towards his wife, his fist closing tightly around a handkerchief.

Two weeks after the proposal, Ibali, who was also Kestep’s Headman, visited the house of Pantik’s father. The tall man carried a staff, striking the stony earth as he strode up the narrow lane to Kestep’s upper quarter. Rounding the corner towards Pantik’s father’s house, a flock of sheep jumbled down the lane, a few skittering into Ibali as they passed, grazing his trousers with their mud-wrinkled coats.

“You are most welcome”, said Pantik’s father, Veli, as Ibali

stooped so as not to topple his headgear as he passed through the low entrance that gave into the courtyard of Veli’s house. Unlike the other villagers, Ibali wore a tall, crimson fez, the like of which was rarely seen outside the salons and courtrooms of the capital, Stamboul. The fez hid the few remaining filaments of hair that traversed his scalp whilst revealing the thick tranches of hair above either ear.

“This is a great day for my family, Alhamdulillah,” the small

man continued, “that on this day the contract between your daughter and my son shall be agreed and our families joined together.”

Ibali had failed to stoop sufficiently and the top of his fez

caught the door frame, causing it to tilt towards the back of his head.


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With his free hand, Ibali readjusted his fez and nodding his agreement, offered Veli a smile before looking up at the low joist that had disturbed his comportment.

Veli spent a moment longer furtively regarding the

Headman’s attire; the colourful cravat, no doubt dyed in the finest rhubarb dye; the expensive velvet jacket tied with a silk sash. When his eyes fell upon the long baggy salwar, however, Veli frowned.

“It seems as though something has soiled your fine trousers,

Ibali Aga,” Veli said, using the polite suffix to indicate his respect. “May I bring a servant to wipe them clean for you?” His expression of concern grew grave.

Broadening his smile, Ibali paused for a long moment before

reaching for Veli’s hand once again. “Effendi,” he began, addressing Veli in the politest term

known to him and patting the smaller man’s hand with the hand that still gripped his staff, which jerked up and down at an unnatural angle. “This is quite an unimportant thing. It would take more than a little mud to soil this, as you say, great day for our families. Please lead the way. I too am anxious to seal our arrangement.”

Veli’s frown relaxed and he laughed a nervous laugh of

relief, which failed to entirely purge the furrows from his darkening brow. With Veli leading, the two men approached the selamlik. These male quarters had their own private entrance from the courtyard in order that the head of the household could entertain male guests without requiring them first to pass through the main living quarters, the province of the wife, which no man, save close kin, should enter.

On the threshold of the selamlik, Ibali excused himself and

crouching, passed through the adjacent entrance to the stables where the latrines were located. Veli was arranging an array of cushions on the


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divan when Ibali returned. Some of the cushions were covered with lurid printed cloth, whilst others with narrow strips of carpet. Crinkled skirts ranged along the bottom of the divan, concealing broken looms, pots and skillets, whilst along the top of the dull-coloured bolsters were long, dirty-white runners bordered with embroidery and lace, which Ibali presumed to have come from Hatiçe’s trousseau. The room sweltered with colour and pattern and Ibali winced slightly as he took his seat opposite his host, who abruptly stopped his ministrations with the cushions. Pantik’s father offered Ibali another smile and noticed that where the stain had been on his trousers just a few moments ago, there was now a dark patch, perhaps damp from cleaning with water.

Once the two fathers had agreed the brideprice along with the

number and value of bracelets, rugs and quilts that would fill the bride’s hope chest, they stumbled out into the courtyard’s afternoon glow. The fading sunlight, reluctant to quit the day, had let itself become entangled in the honeysuckle, which wove itself into a complicated roof to the courtyard’s right. Under this fragrant canopy, some of the wealthy villagers had gathered to join with Veli and Ibali in drinking a sherbet of pomegranate to ratify the engagement in the presence of Kestep’s Hodja. As the two men emerged from the selamlik, Veli, his face brimming with delight, threaded his arm through Ibali’s, who let his own fall slack at his sides, undoing the link as he caught sight of Hodja Murtaza, the Imam of Kestep’s mud-brick mosque. Whilst many of the assembled company turned to applaud the two fathers as they emerged from the selamlik, Hodja Murtaza’s attention was fully occupied by the story of one villager, to whom he listened in earnest. Seeing this, Ibali left Veli outside the selamlik’s entrance and strode through the assembled well-wishers towards the Hodja. A few paces before reaching the Hodja, both hands extended out in front of him in preparation to receive the Hodja’s own, Ibali caught sight of two young men and his stride slowed. Having ascended the stone steps that led from the stables at the far end of the courtyard, the men were carrying lanterns which would be needed as evening quietly ushered in twilight as night overlapped with day. They had set the lanterns down on a long wooden bench, and as they tinkered


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with the wicks, pools of light spilled out haphazardly onto the courtyard’s stone floor.

“Ibali Aga,” the Hodja said as the Headman arrived, his hands

no longer out in front of him in greeting. For a moment, the Headman said nothing and looked blankly at Hodja Murtaza. His face suddenly hot, Ibali attempted a greeting but his throat felt clotted as though stuffed with straw. Manufacturing a smile, Ibali raised his hands out to the Hodja and uttered a greeting, before furtively surveying the assembled guests and once again, glimpsing at the two men at the far end of the courtyard. Laughing and joking, the villagers reached chaotically across one another to snatch a sherbet of pomegranate that was being served in copper vessels distributed by Veli’s nephew, who, with Veli’s hand at the small of his back, was being steered anxiously towards Ibali and the Hodja. Cries went up as the sherbet was spilled and men grabbed and flapped at the hands of their more impatient kin who attempted to sip at the concoction before the appointed time. Ibali was aware that the Hodja was asking him a question but his mind was so busy processing the scene before him – so ordinary in spite of the presence of the two men – that there was nothing left over with which to reply. The aroma of honeysuckle that sweetened the air was nauseating.

Veli frowned when, sidling up next to Ibali, he took a copper

vessel of sherbet from the tray and passed it to the Headman. Ibali’s face was a deep red and his shoulders quivered as he received the vessel from Veli. Veli turned towards the Hodja who had resumed his conversation with the villager before taking a small step away from Ibali, who was blinking rapidly.

Ibali swallowed hard as he drew closer to Veli. “Did you employ those two men over there?” he asked, the

strain on his face betraying his effort to keep his voice low and even. “I, err…” Veli stammered, looking down at the fierce grip


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that the Headman had on his wrist, which he immediately released, his eyes remaining wide and focussed on Veli’s answer.

“Yes, I… they’re from Andifli. Nobody in Kestep is

prepared to work as a servant in another man’s house,” Veli answered. “Not that you could afford to pay them, if you could find

someone willing,” Veli’s neighbour chipped in. Ibali took a small step back and smoothed his greying

moustache with his thumb and forefinger, dislodged the dried spittle at the corners of his mouth, rubbing it between his fingers. “But all the same…” he began, frowning at Veli, his voice breaking into fragments of exasperated laughter that failed to touch his eyes. “…these men…” he added.

Veli had turned his attention to the Hodja who had begun to

utter the words that would solemnize the engagement. He looked back to Ibali with an apologetic smile that crinkled the corners of his eyes.

“I think the ceremony is beginning” he said, turning his palm

out in a subtle gesture that steered Ibali’s attention towards the Hodja. Blinking, Ibali stepped back from Veli and lifting himself up

to his full height, turned, with a trace of irritation, to listen to Hodja Murtaza’s words. A glaze stretched across his eyes and he picked at the large black mole that rode on his cheekbone as the Hodja conducted the ceremonial rites that accompanied the confirmation of every engagement in Kestep. On several occasions, Veli had to gently touch the Headman’s elbow to indicate that he was required to speak and, once the “words were cut,” to drink his draught of sherbet. As the villagers dispersed, Ibali made his way to the latrine that was located beside the stable, manufacturing smiles as villagers variously shook his hand or, in a manner he considered quite over-familiar, slapped him on the back. When he arrived at the toilet, his entire body convulsed as he vomited


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the sherbet of pomegranate into the pail before him. Drawing water from an adjacent bucket, the Headman splashed water onto his face and rinsed his mouth before returning to the gathering that dwindled in the dwindling evening light.

By the time Fatosh had knelt and kissed the hand of her fourth uncle, her hands were already bulging with 50L notes. She was grateful to see through the thick material of her heavy veil that her fiancé, Pantik, who she was following, had, despite his spindly frame, far larger hands than she herself did. He had also folded the notes carefully, whereas Fatosh, quite unused to handling money, had simply screwed the notes into a ball in her sweaty palm. “Take this” she said, thrusting the notes furtively into Nuriye’s hands as the couple entered the main living quarters where they would do the rounds of the women of the family. The men had begun dancing in pairs outside, the sound of wooden spoons clacking in time with their energetic footwork.

The ring ceremony took place shortly after the engagement

had been confirmed and provided an opportunity for friends and relatives to offer small gifts to the betrothed. Officially, the ring ceremony was also the first occasion Fatosh had had to see her fiancé after the engagement had been confirmed by their fathers. Pantik had been brought into the room by his father, Veli, and had stood opposite her rather stiffly as a village elder had read a prayer before slipping the rings, which were tied together with a red ribbon, onto their fingers. Also, looking down at the floor, Fatosh noted that Pantik was wearing the same ankle-high leather boots that he had worn to their first unchaperoned meeting. With sadness, Fatosh recalled the look of dismay that had appeared on her cousin Zeynep’s face when she had confided to her, just an hour earlier, that today would not be the first time that she


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and Pantik had spent time together since their engagement had been made official.

“I didn’t know that your parents had already arranged a

meeting between the two of you,” Zeynep had said, clearly astonished. Spring sunlight surprised the whitewashed room and then grew woozy as it became involved in heaps of faded gowns, muslin veils and calico dresses the women sorted through in preparation for the ring ceremony. With her younger brother, Tazi, Fatosh had vacated the room when Nuriye had married her elder brother. Where Fatosh had once unrolled her bedroll, there stood Nuriye’s imposing oak wedding chest, from which there now poured a stream of complicated and unfamiliar garments, scented with bouquets of lovage and marjoram.

“Oh. They didn’t arrange anything…” Fatosh replied

nonchalantly, as she knelt before Nuriye’s chest, dragging out a linen shift and tossing it to Zeynep.

Zeynep drew her nose slowly out of the shift that she had

been sniffing and peered over it at Fatosh, whose eyes were wide with mischief and delight.

“You had an unchaperoned meeting with Pantik?” she

whispered, her voice emptied of all warmth. “Yes!” Fatosh squealed, burying her round face in the

petticoat she had just drawn from the chest, smothering the preposterousness of it all with Nuriye’s musty linen.

“It was so easy. I could have done it right under mama’s nose

and she wouldn’t have noticed!” The words came fast, like undammed water, rivering their way into Zeynep’s consciousness as Fatosh clutched the petticoat to her chest. Zeynep brought her hands together in a gesture of prayer at her mouth, her eyes wide with distress. Observing her cousin’s expression, Fatosh paused and then began to frown. Releasing


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the tight grip on the petticoat, her pale cheeks slowly reddened and she began to blink rapidly, a trait inherited from her father, the Headman, Ibali. Finally, she dropped her gaze into her lap, her head lolling.

“Whose idea was this?” Zeynep asked, exasperation clotting

her voice. “Was it Pantik Altinbash?” she said, her deep brown eyes wide and focussed.

Fatosh shook her head limply from side to side. “Well was it

one of his brothers? I’ll bet it was his older brother.” Zeynep said, a glint of anger in her voice.

“All the newly-engaged girls meet with their fiancés in

secret,” Fatosh whined, her hands picking at a loose seam in the petticoat in her lap.

Since the death of her parents, Zeynep and her brother Nazim

had been adopted by their Veli Uncle and had grown up in his house in Kestep’s upper quarter, the same house that Fatosh would be moving to, once she married Pantik. The longing that Fatosh had already began to feel for the old life, although her wedding day would not be until the autumn, was in some part assuaged by the knowledge that she would be living with Zeynep. It was Zeynep who brushed her hair with long, soothing strokes when she was sad and Zeynep who allowed Fatosh to braid her hair, even though both the women knew it would end in a tangled disaster that would reduce them to tears of laughter. As Zeynep fixed her with a steely glare, that comfort appeared to be receding.

“I will speak to Pantik the moment I return,” Zeynep

continued. “Where was it you met? In Ibn Aga’s barn?” Zeynep watched as dark spots appeared on the petticoat in Fatosh’s lap and she realised her cousin was crying.

“Nothing happened,” Fatosh croaked through her tears. “I

don’t even think Pantik wanted to be there.” Zeynep’s eyes softened a


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little and she let out a soft sigh. “He’d brought me a pot of candied chestnuts,” Fatosh

continued, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye with her hand. “But his hands were shaking so much, he spilled them over the floor in the barn. He then spent ages gathering them up, put them in a pot and gave them back to me. Then he said his brother, who was keeping watch outside, had heard someone and that he had to go.” She was sobbing now with deep sighs that she stifled by biting on a finger. With her other hand, Fatosh drew the pot of candied chestnuts from her sash and held them out to Zeynep as evidence.

Zeynep took the sweets from Fatosh and laid them to one side

before dragging herself across the floor to sit beside Fatosh. Shaking her head to flick her hair off her face, Zeynep placed her arm around Fatosh’s shoulders, which stiffened at her touch. Placing her other hand on Fatosh’s cheek, the older woman drew her cousin’s face in towards her chest. The girl resisted momentarily before collapsing into the crook of Zeynep’s arm.

“What kind of man gives his fiancé chestnuts picked off the

floor?” she whimpered into Zeynep’s chest, her words muffled by the snugness of her cousin’s embrace.

“Oh, my darling…” Zeynep murmured, stroking Fatosh’s

cheek, “I doubt Pantik could believe his luck when you showed up in Ibn Aga’s barn.” She began to chuckle to herself.

“He managed six months in the Hodol Mountains with Ibn

Aga’s flock, but after five minutes in the barn with you…” Her voice broke up into laughter which made Fatosh too chuckle.

“Does Edi know about this?” Zeynep asked, her voice again

becoming serious as she levered Fatosh away from her. After marrying Zeynep’s brother, Edi was, excluding the baby she was now carrying, the


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most recent addition to Veli’s household. His household was growing at such a rate that migrant labourers had been employed to help with the construction of the rooms needed to house everyone.

Fatosh crinkled her brow and rubbed her eyes wearily. She

shrugged her shoulders, her head lolling to one side. “People don’t really notice things,” she said, “I sometimes

think that not even Allah is interested in my life.” She paused for a moment, regarding once again the petticoat in her lap. “Why are you talking about Edi now?”

“She’s been saying things about you, that she hopes Pantik

knows what he’s getting into…that your behaviour could stain your family’s reputation.” Zeynep stopped, her eyes narrowed slightly as she watched for a flicker of recognition in Fatosh’s eyes. “That you should spend more time with your own people…I thought the two of you were friends. You were spending so much time together at the start of this year. Have you fallen out?”

Fatosh sighed, a look of boredom passing over her face

which, before it took possession of all her features, was transformed into something quite entirely different.

“What is it?” Zeynep asked, her eyes once again clear and

attentive. “Nothing” Fatosh responded, her face crinkling as she

dissolved once again, into floods of tears.

Edi was by far the tallest of the women who stood around the edges of the main living quarters waiting to greet the couple and offer them small gifts - angora scarves or embroidered yemenis - as they passed by,


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respectfully kissing each hand as they passed. Pantik had completed his circuit and, through the curtained opening, Fatosh glimpsed him, arm in arm with another man, dancing in awkward circles in the courtyard outside. Many of the women whilst waiting for Fatosh huddled in a conference with their neighbour, remarking on topics as various as Pantik’s choice of bride and Fatosh’s choice of dress. Only Edi was silent as, with small steps that now began to drag a little, Fatosh drew closer to her.

“Congratulations,” Edi murmured as Fatosh kissed her hand

and pressed it to her forehead. Taking Fatosh’s hand in her own, Edi placed a sash the colour of terracotta in her hand and closed her fingers around it. Fatosh was dimly aware of how ludicrous she must have looked with so many scarves and yemenis stuffed into the bulging sash around her waist.

“Pantik is a wonderful man,” Edi added, holding both of

Fatosh’s hands in her own. The girl looked up into Edi’s eyes and attempted to gently untangle her hands from Edi’s grasp. “As is your father. He is a man who lays down laws for all the villagers to follow and, no doubt, he is just as rigorous at laying down the laws, derived from our beloved Prophet, that the women of his house should obey. We should be careful not to humiliate our fathers,” Fatosh’s hands had become moist in Edi’s grip. “Or the men to whom we are, by the sacred order of the Prophet, betrothed.”

The eve of Fatosh’s wedding arrived with a sickening promptness for which she blamed the moon, to whose ethereal waxing all village celebrations were tied. Hanging her trousseau in preparation for tomorrow’s showing, Fatosh was now grateful for the moon which slipped casually in through the naked window to illuminate her handiwork. It had been fifteen days since notice of the pending marriage


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was pegged in Arabic at the portal of the village mosque – an opportunity for anybody who had misgivings about the union to have their voice heard. And yet nothing had been said. Veli had paid the remainder of the brideprice and her father had sent his two sons out in to the village with pita dipped in boiled molasses to distribute as wedding invitations just hours later. Fatosh had spent that same day with her mother and Pantik’s family buying lengths of muslin and gaudy calico from the same travelling bazaar in which Pantik excitedly haggled for halva which he later shyly served his future wife and her mother in the corner of a gloomy inn.

Tomorrow, Fatosh whispered to herself, I shall be married.

Inshallah. Out of habit, she brought her hand to her throat where her turquoise amulet had once hung but only the soft, pudgy skin of her neck remained. The moon had slipped unnoticed from the room and in the darkness it had restored, Fatosh felt the presence of a djinn brush past her grasping hand.


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Chapter 2

1883 - Andifli

The watermelon cart, which had carried Kishgilli Dede the two days’ distance from Konya, shuddered as it turned down the rutted track to his home, Andifli. Thudding melons bashed against the cart’s sides, waking Kishgilli, who scrutinised the enfolding darkness through narrow eyes before clambering to the front of the cart. “This was all fields,” the driver shouted, taking the reigns in one hand and gesturing into the darkness to the left of them with the other. “Hundreds of dönüm wide. I remember when the barley was as tall as a man,” he pulled up the reigns and the horses slowed to a trot, “and the wheat and rye twice that height. Before your time, though. We’re going back twenty years or more.” At the side of the track, Kishgilli watched the moonlight curve off the decayed teeth of a pitchfork abandoned upright in the earth. A little further along, his eyes picked out a harrow full of unspent harvests, repossessed by the weeds. The young man’s stomach tightened and he wished somehow to delay this homecoming. “Please, baba,” Kishgilli called nervously above the clop and chinking rattle of the horses, “I can walk from here. This detour will add an hour to your route. Drop me here and turn around.” The cart lurched once again as the horses lost their footing. Kishgilli released the wooden cross-bar behind the driver’s seat and snatched his bag from underneath the ricocheting melons, grabbing hold of the cross-bar once again. “And this track, here…” the driver continued, shaking his head. “You could ride it without worrying about your horses crippling themselves.”


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“There’s no need to take me any further,” Kishgilli repeated, placing one hand on the driver’s juddering shoulder and squeezing it. “I can walk the rest of the way to my village. You have been very kind.” He opened his tattered bag and rummaged for something inside. After a few moments of scrabbling amongst roasted chickpeas, his hands emerged empty and instead he reached into a purse hung around his neck and withdrew a tattered piece of paper. Looping his bag onto his back, Kishgilli scrambled to the front corner of the cart. As the driver pulled up on the reigns, Kishgilli leapt out of the cart whilst it was slowing. “Take this,” he said, a little out of breath as he caught up with the driver. Kishgilli unfolded the paper and held it out to the older man. “It’s a religious poem recited by the Hodja of the Alaeddin Mosque in Konya.” The driver squinted and then waved a hand at Kishgilli. “To these eyes it’s not worth the paper it’s written on, my boy.” Turning away from Kishgilli, the driver spluttered a hacking cough and sent a parcel of phlegm skidding onto the dirt track. “I wrote it,” Kishgilli continued, to which the driver raised his eyebrows. “Ah, Effendi you are an educated man?” He snatched the inscription from Kishgilli’s hand and despite being illiterate, held it close to his purblind gaze. “Does it contain the name of Allah and The Prophet?” he asked, “For if it does, it will be sure to bring blessings on my house.” Kishgilli nodded, to which the driver folded the inscription and tucked it into the dirty indigo sash around his waist. Snapping the horses’ reigns, the cart began to turn around. “You’ll find no home for your learning there,” the driver called, tilting his chin upwards to indicate the distant fires of Andifli. “A fine comb for a bald head!” he called, laughing, as his voice was swallowed by the thud of horse hooves pounding the earth.


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Autumn had settled into the earth and the night air was cold and crisp. Now fully awake, Kishgilli wrapped his arms around himself to quell a slight tremor. He passed an unharvested field of corn stalks that had become bent and decrepit. From the smell, the young man could tell that the crop wasn’t from this year’s planting. He quickly looked away, concentrating his gaze on his quickening steps as he paced along the furrowed track, snapping his bag from one shoulder to another, unable to find a comfortable position for the satchel. As he walked, Kishgilli recalled the folklore that had come down to him from uncles and grandfathers – the tales that children crowded in close to one another to hear a bearded village elder recount in hushed, conspiratorial tones. Eight generations earlier, so the legend went, Kishgilli’s ancestors had quit their nomadic life to start a village in a juniper grove. This decision was taken notwithstanding a superstition current at the time, that were a nomad to build a house, his flesh would rot and engender worms. For centuries, the tribe’s fondness for the pastoral life together with this fear, kept them riding the plains rendered to them by Prince Ala-ed-Din in return for their assistance in deposing the Mongol armies that worried the territories of the Seljuk Kingdom.

Only after Andif Effendi and his brothers had established his village, whose layout was inspired by an imperturbable reflection in an ancient well, did they come across a grand sarcophagus nestled in a tangle of walnut trees. Through etchings on the wall of the blue domed mausoleum in which the sarcophagus was housed, Andif Effendi learnt that the remains of celebrated saint Rashid-el-Jowaini were there interred. Although this saint was much spoken of and beloved by the people, the location of his final resting place had been mislaid by the Ottomans. Concerned that the mud wrestling practised on feast days would disturb the saint’s repose, Andif Effendi moved his village to a mountainside of the Daglari range eight miles distant, from which the snow capped summit of Mount Hasan was, in winter, just visible. He named the village Andifli.


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As word of the saint’s whereabouts spread, pilgrims from all over the Empire journeyed to the tomb. Since the nearest caravanserai was some half a day’s distance, they chose instead to lodge in Andifli - the village of wattle houses plastered with clay, dotted by juniper trees and built on a slope. At the crest of the slope, Andif Effendi built a mosque roofed with straw and pollarded mulberry branches. As the villagers struggled uphill along the cracked stone path to reach the place of worship each day, they were reminded, as the Effendi had intended, of their brothers in distant lands who struggled to practise their faith, and so soon came to take nothing for granted. By the time the village had passed two summers, peasants too from nearby hamlets travelled by mule or donkey along tracks turned golden by ox-eye camomile in the spring to listen to the pilgrims speak with rapture and aplomb of the glory and mercy of Allah in Andifli’s meadows and pastures. And so too came merchants and mendicants in their caravans, tinsmiths with their amalgams and alloys, and the unhealed, all of whom needed a place to stay and a meal, for which the villagers were authorised to accept no more than twenty silver kurush or as many duck eggs as they could hold in one hand.

From these beginnings, Kishgilli was told, Andifli grew. As families multiplied and children spilled onto the streets, the lavishness of its hospitality, the most supreme of Islamic virtues, increased. By way of welcome, the villagers suspended garlands of chilli peppers between their rooves, which dangled over the narrow stone-filled streets. From the houses, the sounds of cleaning, mending and folk songs poured as the people prepared to put their warmest quilts and most prized kilims at the service of their visitors. Watchmen toured the village to make sure that water was flowing freely from the cisterns embedded into the village walls behind a grating of gilded bronze. In the gardens beyond the courtyards, lamps were hung amid the boisterous profusion of climbing roses and the flaming rampage of bougainvillaea. The squawk of cockerels mingled with the clatter of cartwheels as watermelons were freighted in from the fields. Moonflower petals littered the streets.


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Yet in the time it took for a field left fallow to become fertile once again, all this had changed.

The evening turned cooler and, seeing the lights of his village

more clearly up ahead, Kishgilli’s pace had become more hurried. By the time he caught sight of a stooped figure at the junction of the narrow track that led to Andifli’s Great Square, Kishgilli’s strides were twice as long as when he had disembarked from the watermelon cart an hour earlier.

“My boy!” shouted Chibli once he was sure that the tall frame

and hastening gait approaching him belonged to Kishgilli Dede. Steadying himself with an old cane and holding a lantern above his head, which illumined the track ahead, Chibli Nusrat ambled towards Kishgilli, delighted laughter escaping him in gasps. Laughing, the two men embraced, neither of them in that moment able to find the words to greet the other.

“How long have you been waiting?” Kishgilli asked stepping

back from the small, rotund man. He smiled as he recognised the familiar aroma of coconut hair pomade that Chibli used to stymie the exuberance of his long, black curly hair and reached unconsciously for Chibli’s plump hand, which he held in his own.

“No time at all,” replied Chibli, squeezing Kishgilli’s hand in

return. “But it’s such a walk,” Kishgilli continued, using his free

hand to gesture at the distance from his home that Chibli would have had to cover. His youthful face grew serious and taut.

“Nonsense. Allah in his mercy sees to it that I have energy

enough to perform all those acts which matter,” Chibli declaimed, giggling when he realised the bawdy implications of his comment.


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Having failed to transact the traditional greeting, Kishgilli

kissed Chibli’s hand and raised it to his own forehead, smiling sheepishly.

“Don’t worry about that nonsense,” Chibli said, freeing his

hand and gripping Kishgilli tightly around the back of his neck. “I can’t believe that you are back! And all the things I’m going to learn from you!” He handed the lantern to Kishgilli and, placing an arm around his waist, turned with him towards the village. “Let’s get you out of the cold.”

“Wait,” said Kishgilli, slowing their pace to a stop, “please

first tell me about your daughter’s child. Was it a boy like you guessed? You made no mention of it in your letters. Has she had her dis bulguru yet?” he added, referring to the dish of cracked wheat kernels and chickpeas that was served to all female family and friends when a child’s first tooth comes. The smile on Chibli’s lips held fast but its colour fell from his eyes.

“Another time,” he said, nodding to himself. Kishgilli

frowned in puzzlement, the flow of inquiries momentarily staunched. “But I’m so…” Kishgilli began, seizing the man’s hand

again, until a flicker of grief crossing Chibli’s face made him desist. The men walked on in silence. Kishgilli breathed in the

nocturnal air, which was dense with the night and the loamy sweetness of freshly tilled earth. Closing his eyes to better savour the tang, he felt as a young boy again and allowed himself, cautiously and for the first time that evening, to yield to the comfort of being home.

“You must be excited to see your mother,” Chibli said,

turning to look at Kishgilli, whose pale skin was washed yellow by the lambency of the lantern.


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“Yes, yes, of course,” he answered after a pause, nodding his

head with such vigour that his turban became loose. “There’s no need to worry,” Chibli continued, speaking more

softly. “She will be overjoyed to see you.” He patted the young man on the back in a gesture of reassurance.

“Is my mother well?” Kishgilli asked, to which Chibli shook

his head from side to side in an infuriating gesture which could have meant yes, no or maybe, as together they walked to the decrepit hut where Kishgilli’s mother, Günay Dede, lived with her elderly father, Hajji Mustapha.

Chibli had arrived in Andifli with his family over twenty years ago, and one year before the birth of Kishgilli Dede. On that first night, the family, exhausted from their many months abroad, were brought by the night watchman to the house of Kishgilli’s grandfather, the widower, Mustapha Dede. Chibli never tired of recounting to Kishgilli the story of the hospitality they received.

“Your grandfather, although he was Andifli’s Headman at

that time, did not have enough food to feed everyone. Do you know what he did?”

Chibli repeated the words of Mustapha Dede. “ ‘Bismillah,

Praise be to Allah who gives us His blessing by sending us these guests.’ And he turns down the light. And I’m thinking, why do you turn down the light? Is it a custom of you people, or maybe you need to save fuel, but at this time Andifli is very prosperous, so I think not.” Although Kishgilli knows the climax of the tale, Chibli still pauses for dramatic


33

effect, his hands hovering in the air like a travelling magician from Aksaray.

“After the bulghur pilav, and it’s a very nice one, your mother

and grandfather do not wash their hands,” he continues conspiratorially. “This is strange, I think. You Ösmanlis are very clean people – why you not wash your hands?” After a pause, Chibli’s eyes become incandescent with understanding and he smiles broadly.

“Just like Abu Talha from the Qu’ran!” he says, making a

fist with his hand for emphasis as he recalls the story of the family who took in a poor and wretched man at the Prophet’s request. Discovering they have only food enough for one, Abu Talha serves a meal for the visitor, turning the lamp down low to save the visitor the embarrassment of seeing that Abu Talha and his wife have no food on their plates.

Although, he has recited this story an infinite number of

times, when it is over, Chibli rubs his eyes, which have become moist. As a mark of respect for the man who has become like a mentor to him, Kishgilli casts his eyes down to the ground, his heart steeped in the soft murmurings of joy which the story provokes.

Chibli asks Kishgilli how old he is, to which he adds one

year to determine the exact point in the past that this story happened. After a moment of reflection, Chibli concludes. “Always I have been in Andifli one year more than you,” his voice firm but playful. “Never you will catch me – even I am more of Ösmanli than you!” Kishgilli laughs, genuinely amused at this notion articulated by Chibli in his distracted Turkish, recadenced with his peculiar foreignness.

As well as being the first man to settle in Andifli from distant

lands, Chibli’s possession on his arrival of a pair of pincers qualified him in the eyes of Andifli’s Council of Elders to be the village dentist.


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“I am not dentist,” he had cavilled, “I am singer. I am singing very friendly.” And as evidence, he began singing the Persian ghazels of Sadi and Hafiz with such enchantment that the figs and quinces within earshot spontaneously ripened and burst, causing Chibli’s already florid face to redden further and runnels of hair pomade to stream into his tiny eyes.

But Chibli’s arrival in Andifli with a pair of pincers in March,

a month famed for its high incidences of toothache, was deemed too auspicious to ignore. Having no need for a singer, Andifli’s Council of Elders told Chibli that he and his family could remain as long as he agreed to practise dentistry. In a language which sounded like Andifli’s own, broken and put back together wrongly, along with gestures and theatre, Chibli agreed, on the condition that he was allowed to sing on the feast days of the Kurban and Seker Bayram.

As Chibli’s command of Turkish improved, he was able to

regale the villagers with stories of his homeland, a land of wadis and date palms and extraordinary mosques sumptuously dressed with tiled snatches of opal sky. This country, hemmed by the ancient rivers of the Tigris and Euphrates, he called ‘Mesopotamia’: the land between two rivers.

Although he was quick to adapt to their ways, Chibli

protested vocally about the practice of fumigating a house of sickness by smoking anchovies, which had come to Andifli from the shores of Trabzon, describing it as barbaric. This custom he replaced by the burning of spices that smelled of dark memories, which were called by him ‘anise’ and ‘cardamom’, and which latched like a stain unnaturally onto clothes and involved themselves in hair. On clear nights, Chibli showed the Andiflians stars they had never noticed and gave them exotic names, the sound of which caused an inexplicable homesickness to arise in the breasts of the men, which lasted until the new moon rose. Indeed, so exotic did the Andiflians consider these new arrivals that when Chibli


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dropped his staff, they were surprised so see that the rules of the physical universe still applied to him, gasping as it fell to the ground.

The women of Andifli were, at first, fearful of Chibli’s three

daughters, who had dark honeyed skin which glistened with nobility and upon which summer’s flies were never seen to alight. Their wondrous eyes, outlined with kohl, spoke of the swirling mysteries of the galaxies and in their walking, they exuded the aroma of rosewater and the private sanctity of prayer. Nothing they wore was useful, simply ornamental, and carpets flowed like water out of the looms into which they spun silk as fine as angora hair. On nights that were in their homeland considered holy, fireflies constellated a winking galaxy of light around the places they had visited in the day. Such easy sophistication embarrassed the women of Andifli, who regarded their own cracked, bare feet and the sacks they wore on their heads during the rain with a new disdain.

Chibli’s wife, not wishing to cause distress to the community

that had welcomed them determined, albeit cautiously at first, to find a way to ease the tension that fomented in her daughters’ wake. Handing armfuls of her husband’s hair pomade to her girls, she instructed them to leave a jar inside the bucket that each woman of the house used to dump their ashes in at the end of the day. Within days, as the men of the house emerged to tend the fields or livestock, their hair neat and slick with pomade, Chibli’s wife knew that her offering had been accepted and that they were welcome to stay in Andifli.

Chibli’s first customer was, like Chibli, an outsider and came

to him a few weeks after Chibli had settled in Andifli. “Your father had travelled to Andifli with a caravan of

pilgrims,” Chibli had explained to Kishgilli. “And when he arrived he was hit on the side of the jaw by a pile of camel dung that cracked his tooth! Do you know who threw it? Your mother! She was aiming at her cousin but she hit your father! Never a woman can throw straight!”


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The young women had been collecting dung for fuel, some dropping it in wicker baskets, others gathering it up in the folds of their skirts, when they came to blows over the rightful possession of a particularly robust pile of animal droppings. The skirmish stopped abruptly once the wayward missile struck the stranger, and the small party of girls pulled their headscarves close and with small, hurried steps made their way back to the village.

When, as a young boy, Kishgilli first heard this tale, he

became rapt, asking his mentor to describe his father, who he had never met. Soon after though, Kishgilli grew quiet, gouging shapes with a sharp stone into the dirt floor of his house, until Chibli, sensing his distress, got the boy to show him the chrysalis he was keeping in an earthenware pot. From then on, Chibli chose not to speak of the man who, although he had never seen his son, would exert an influence in his life quite beyond all proportion.

It took some time for Kishgilli’s mother to open the door to her son. The warped wooden door was too large for its frame and scraped and rattled as it was yanked at from the inside.

“My daughters will be waiting for me,” Chibli muttered,

rubbing the young man’s back by way of parting gesture. “I will see you tomorrow at morning prayer. Praise be to Allah for bringing you safely back to us after these years.” He smiled, squeezing Kishgilli’s hands, before shuffling into the blotchy darkness that had gathered up the street. Turning back to the house, Kishgilli saw that the door was now slightly ajar. After a moment’s hesitation, he removed his sandals, took the satchel from his shoulder and crouching, passed underneath the low aperture and into the tiny house.

Günay had seated herself in front of the brazier on the

careworn kilim that was pitted with holes from the spitting fire. Kishgilli


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had thought often of his mother during his time away. Although his image of her had become blunted by time, it had, nevertheless, still brought him some measure of comfort. That this comfort was often perforated with worry and a regret that he could not shake did not make it any less dear to Kishgilli. The soft place within him that was made tender by kindness and in which kindness was kindled had been nurtured through her love. Every embrace and gesture of tenderness – a hand on his cheek, a face softened by sympathy, was an ongoing conversation of the heart, the opening lines of which had been begun by his mother’s first gentle touch. Such affection though, had not been a staple of Kishgilli’s relationship with his mother, which was often fraught with disagreement and conflict. Nevertheless, Günay still represented a distillation of these feelings for her son. This was not something that Kishgilli himself could have put into words. Indeed, had he been asked to cast about for some physical counterpart that embodied these feelings, he would have said, frowning with disapproval at such an obvious question, that it was Allah who was compassionate and all-merciful. But it was was the familiar face of his mother that loomed just below his level of awareness as he gave his answer. And it was this truth that carried Kishgilli, his feet tangling in the ropes of his satchel at his feet, as he stumbled across the room to his mother’s awkward love.

Günay’s body remained stiff as her son, on bended knees

before her, hugged her close to him. Beneath the coarse fabric of her smock, Kishgilli felt the sharp edges of her collarbones prod at his broad chest. How frail she had become! Drawing away from his mother, Kishgilli let his hands fall into his lap, his fists slightly clenched as he strained to smile.

“Did you get my letters?” he asked, his voice rising

hopefully. “Keep your voice down,” Günay replied as she loosened the

sash around her waist. “Your grandfather is sleeping.”


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“With Allah’s grace he is well?” Kishgilli asked, his voice cracking slightly with concern.

“A man of his age – and a hajji at that – shouldn’t have to

drag a plough to harness and carry water from the well. But in your absence, what else were we to do? ”

“Here,” Günay held out a handful of letters that she had

withdrawn from her sash. “You didn’t read them!” Kishgilli said with exasperation as

he examined the clutch of unopened letters. “I told you to take them to Chibli Aga. He would have read them to you.” His voice had grown soft again as he heard his grandfather murmur in the adjacent room. Günay shrugged her shoulders and after a moment or two, began to shake her head.

“That man is a fool. How would I know that what he was

reading to me was true? He could have easily pulled the wool over my eyes. And anyway,” she paused, flinging her wizened hand at the pile of letters Kishgilli was holding. “Do you even know that that man knows how to read?”

Ignoring his mother, Kishgilli leafed through the seven

unopened letters. At the bottom of the bundle, he found the last letter, the first he had sent, had in fact been opened. Taking the letter out of its envelope, he smiled at his neat but expressive penmanship. The crumpled letter had clearly been well handled. The lines of the original fold had been over scored by new but asymmetrical creases made by somebody unfamiliar with the simple art of folding a letter and who, it would appear, had been anxious to return it to its envelope. In places, the ink was smeared and smudged, as though through contact with water. Kishgilli looked up at his mother, who had turned her narrow back to him as she struggled to her feet with one hand supporting her lower back.


39

“You were probably expecting a proper banquet all set out for your homecoming,” Günay said. Her legs remained locked unnaturally straight as, hinging at her hips, she clattered amongst the tin pans stored on a low shelf beside the brazier.

“I’m afraid, my son, your beloved Allah has not seen fit to

bless us with much in the way of harvests these last years.” Günay discarded a few dirty pots one after another and Kishgilli winced at the clanking, looking with concern towards the room in which his grandfather slept.

“So we’re hoping that all your years of learning are going to

put some bread on our table.” She had turned around to face him, bunching her loose skirts in one hand, whilst gesturing towards Kishgilli with the pan in the other.

At the mention of his studies, Kishgilli was reminded of

something he had brought back from Konya with him and began foraging in his bag. “You must be eager to hear about my time in Konya,” he said over the sound of well water being decanted into a pan.

“Your friend Ösman’s boy is getting big,” his mother replied,

beginning a new thread of conversation. “All Andifli says that his wife will soon be expecting her second – and to think, you and him – exactly the same age!”

Despite the subtext of his mother’s conversation, Kishgilli

felt warmed by the mention of Ösman, his twin brother, not by blood, but by timing. Born only minutes apart, the boys had fought for the attention of Andifli’s lone midwife, who divided her industry between the two mothers-to-be, whose brittle and deadly screams reached such a pitch that they ignited the straw-thatched roof of an adjacent stable.

Anxious to bear sons, the women had observed a strict diet of

fried aubergine and tomato paste which stained their lips a deep


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incarnadine, inherited by both boys who were delivered into adjacent living quarters on the stroke of midnight. Years later, learning of the simultaneity of the date and hour of their birth, the boys assumed themselves to be twins, reinforcing the bond that existed despite differences in temperament and appearance.

As she walked towards her son, carrying a pan of tea, Kishgilli found it hard to believe that his mother’s blanched and pursed lips had once been the deep red imbued by her preference for tomato paste. Forcing the thought from his mind, he unrolled a pendant, embroidered with white brocade and coloured with rhubarb, its fine fringes delicately woven from horsehair. The moment he had seen the tapestry, he had wanted to buy it for his mother. Over several years, Kishgilli had saved a portion of the small stipend the boys of the Medressa were allowed to buy oil for their lamps and to put towards their two suits of clothes a year. Once he had saved almost enough money, Kishgilli haggled with the merchant who sold religious scrolls every Friday beside the Selimiye Mosque, as the mosque-goers, discarding their footwear in the marble-paved and pillared vestibule, looked on distractedly before passing into the mosque.

A group of burly labourers, smoking tchibouks and awaiting

their turn with the open-air barber watched Kishgilli haggle from beneath the shade of a white cotton umbrella.

“You don’t stand a chance against that boy,” called one to the

merchant. From the mosque’s tallest minaret, the muezzin’s cry scattered a flock of birds who had settled in the nearby fig trees. Beneath the trees, a pastry hawker removed a silver platter loaded with ring-shaped sesame breads from his head and set them onto a tripod stand.

“Being overly fond of wealth does not become a Muslim in

the eyes of the Prophet,” Kishgilli parlayed to the vendor, who looked up at him through his eyebrows, frowning.


41

“What did he say?” the vendor shouted across to the labourers.

“He says, ‘best to give him the scroll now before he beats you

down to an even lower price,’ the man replied, to which Kishgilli laughed bashfully, scratching the back of his head. The vendor shook his head ruefully.

“For the sum you’re offering” he said, dusting off a smaller

scroll, “I could give you this one. And that way,” he continued, squinting at Kishgilli as he pushed the scroll into his hands, “you wouldn’t have to worry about my wife and children going without food.”

For a moment, Kishgilli, who was busy preparing a witty

riposte, paused. Closer to the mosque’s harem, a coffee vendor, his trade denoted by the cotton hankerchief tucked apron-wise into his girdle, stoked his charcoal brazier in the shade of a sculptured fountain.

“This one will do fine,” Kishgilli said softly, stuffing the

scroll into the deep pockets of his white caftan and handing over the money.

Back in their cramped living quarters with its soot-

besmirched walls, Kishgilli watched his mother approach, holding out an empty earthenware cup to her son.

“Take it,” she said, gesturing with the cup, a pan of tea in her

other hand. “I brought you this,” Kishgilli replied, holding the scroll out

to his mother. “It was made in Konya.” When she didn’t reply, Kishgilli continued, embellishing his story with things he knew to be untrue. “At my request, it was blessed by the Hodja of the Selimiye Mosque. I explained that it was for my mother.”


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Günay’s eyes narrowed and Kishgilli saw her jawbone bulge slightly. The sound of a dog scratching against their door was followed by a whimper and a muffled cough from his sleeping grandfather.

“Why did you buy me this?” his mother asked, her voice

quiet and slow. She was no longer holding the cup out to Kishgilli. Kishgilli was transfixed by the pan in her other hand which his mother appeared to have forgotten about and had tilted to such an extent that the hot tea was close to spilling onto the kilim.

“I thought that…” Kishgilli began. “Can I eat it?” she interrupted, her voice even and controlled.

“Can I plant it? Can I pay our land tax with it?” “No, you…” “Eh? Eh?” her voice was rising and her hands began to

tremble. “Mother, you’re spilling the tea!” Günay stared blankly at her son who gestured at the pan in

her hand. “It’s spilling on the kilim,” Kishgilli repeated, to which his

mother slowly turned her head to look at the pan. “I don’t care!” she shrieked, raising the cup she was holding

and hurling it at the wall behind Kishgilli, who flinched as shards of crockery rained down upon him.

“Steady the pot, daughter,” Kishgilli’s grandfather, Mustapha

said, materialising at the entrance to the living quarters. The little man


43

spoke distractedly, turning his embroidered cap over in his hands before stretching it over his head.

“Let’s not waste good tea on the kilim when we have a thirsty

guest.” Günay exhaled shrilly, breaking her father’s gaze and turning

abruptly back towards the brazier. “Come and greet your grandfather, my boy,” Mustapha

continued, holding a wrinkled hand out to Kishgilli. “I’m glad to be alive to see this day.”

“You haven’t changed,” joked Kishgilli, as Ösman, flummoxed by his friend’s affection, shunted awkwardly into Kishgilli’s embrace as the two men stood outside Andifli’s decrepit mosque the following morning.

“What do you mean?” asked Ösman, catching hold of his son’s waving fist before it could make contact with his mouth.

“I just thought that having a baby might have changed you in

certain ways,” laughed Kishgilli, holding his arms out to Ösman, whose bewilderment deepened.

“Doesn’t matter,” he continued, waving the subject away.

“Let me hold the boy. I’ve been waiting two years to see him.” “Your mother must have been pleased to see you,” Ösman

said, shuffling forward, holding his son in his outstretched arms before depositing him with Kishgilli.


44

“Careful! He’s not a sack of potatoes” Kishgilli exclaimed, losing his balance for a moment as he bent a knee to gently bounce the child into the crook of his arm. “Of course she was pleased to see me,” he continued, scraping Suleiman’s hair from his forehead, “In fact, I’ve never seen her happier.”

“That’s good,” reflected Ösman, nodding as he furtively

admired the ease with which Kishgilli handled his son. “It’s important for us to get along with our parents.”

“When did Chibli’s daughter have her baby?” Kishgilli asked.

“I asked Chibli about it last night but he wouldn’t say anything.” Kishgilli had gently removed Suleiman’s hand from his mouth and was holding it lightly in his own as the little boy squealed.

Ösman rubbed his eyes and then swept a broad palm over his thicket of white hair before mumbling a few words to himself.

“What?” Kishgilli asked, straining to make sense of Ösman’s

words. Before Ösman could reply, two villagers leaving the mosque

interrupted their conversation to offer greetings and quiz Kishgilli about his time in Konya.

“Chibli said that only bad things would come of it if you

found out,” Ösman continued after the men had departed, focussing on his son’s head which he patted mechanically.

“Did something bad happen?” Kishgilli asked, gripping

Suleiman more tightly. “Tell me, for the sake of Allah!”

The young boy, who had been attempting to peel his father’s heavy hand off his head one finger at a time, looked around with


45

astonishment as Kishgilli raised his voice, and after a few preparatory snivels he began to cry.

“Hey, hey!” Kishgilli said, smoothing Suleiman’s curly hair.

The boy began to squirm and flung his arms out towards Ösman. “I should take him home,” Ösman said, relieving Kishgilli of

his son. “He needs his mother.” “Who’s going to tell me then?” Kishgilli asked, his

exasperation raising his voice. “This is a joke!” He stamped a foot on the ground and twisted away from Ösman.

Ösman was already several paces away from his friend but

something made him turn back towards Kishgilli. “She lost the baby,” he said looking directly at his friend. “It

happened in Kestep. She went into labour whilst she was there but they wouldn’t help her. Don’t tell Chibli I told you.” After a moment’s silence, he placed his hand on his friend’s arm and Suleiman, with his pudgy hand, followed suit.

“She…his daughter died there too,” he added flatly.

Kishgilli stared at the two hands resting on his forearm; one large and calloused with cracked nails; the other smooth, dark and plump. He watched too as the larger hand gently coaxed the smaller hand into loosening its grip, leaving Kishgilli alone in the morning sun.

A Measure of my Love

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