Three Daughters of Eve Page 4

  ‘They’re hiding it. Search the rest of the house,’ ordered the police chief. He was smoking one cigarette after another, flicking the ashes on the floor.

  ‘Excuse me … hiding what exactly?’ Mensur ventured – his thinning hair tousled, his striped pyjamas rumpled, slippers on his feet – from the opposite corner of the room where the rest of the family had been made to wait.

  ‘I’ll shove it up your arse when we find it,’ the police chief replied. ‘As if you don’t know.’

  Wincing at the harshness of the words, Peri held her father’s hand. But her eyes were fixed on her brother. She worried for Umut, whose face had turned as pale as a waning moon.

  The police riffled through the other bedrooms, the bathroom, the toilet, the pantry where they kept the okras they had dried and the cucumbers they had pickled. From inside the kitchen came the sounds of drawers being opened, boxes grubbed about in, cutlery tossed around. Where once had been neatly ordered shelves with lace trim, now there was disarray. An hour passed, maybe more. Outside, the faintest strip of light broke through the leaden sky, like a baby tooth cutting through raw flesh.

  ‘What about the girl?’ asked the police chief. He flicked the cigarette butt on to the carpet and crushed it with the heel of his shoe. ‘Did you check her toys?’

  Selma, her gaze fixed on the carpet she had cleaned earlier in the day, interjected, ‘There must be a misunderstanding, efendim.* Ours is a decent family. We are all God-fearing people.’

  Ignoring the comment, the man turned to Peri. ‘Where are your things, child? Show us.’

  Peri’s eyes widened. Why was everyone interested in her toys – not that she had too many – the revolutionaries, the police? ‘I’m not telling you.’

  Mensur, still holding Peri’s hand, pulled his daughter back and murmured, ‘Hush. Let them look, we have nothing to worry about.’ Then, directing his words at no one in particular, he said, ‘She keeps them in a trunk under her bed.’

  A few minutes later, when the police chief re-emerged with his men behind him, it was the expression on his face more than the object he held between his fingertips that alarmed Peri.

  ‘Well, well … what do we have here?’

  Peri had never seen a gun before. In contrast to those on TV this one seemed so small and cute that for a moment she wondered if it were made of chocolate.

  ‘Hidden inside a cradle. Under a dolly! How convenient!’

  ‘I swear on the Holy Quran, we know nothing about this,’ said Selma, her voice brittle.

  ‘Of course you don’t, woman, but your son does.’

  ‘It’s not mine,’ Umut said, his cheeks flushed. ‘They asked me to keep it for a few days. I was going to return it tomorrow.’

  ‘Who are they?’ asked the police chief. He sounded happy.

  Umut took a ragged breath, sinking into silence.

  Outside rose the incantation of the muezzin calling from a nearby mosque, ‘There is no God but God. Prayer is better than sleep.’

  ‘All right, off we go,’ ordered the police chief. ‘Take him in.’

  Mensur, whose face had frozen at the sight of the gun, said, ‘Please, there must be an explanation. My son is a good boy. He’d never hurt anyone.’

  The police chief, who had taken a few steps towards the door, turned back on his heels. ‘Always the same crap. You don’t keep an eye on your children; they mingle with godless communist bastards, they get themselves into all sorts of shit. When it’s too late, you wail and beg. Wah-wah. Why do you make babies if you won’t take care of them, you fucking morons? Can’t control your dicks?’

  With an abrupt move the police chief grabbed Mensur’s pyjama bottoms and pulled them down to his knees, revealing crisp white, though slightly worn, underwear. A couple of policemen chuckled at the sight. Others feigned indifference.

  Peri felt the energy in her father’s hand ebb; his fingers grew light and bloodless, the hand of a cadaver waiting to be dissected. Her father’s silence, her father’s shame, her father whom she had adored, revered, loved and idolized since the day she had uttered her first word. By the time Mensur, trembling, had pulled up his pyjama bottoms, the police officers were through the door, taking Umut with them.

  The family would not see Umut for seven weeks, during which he remained in solitary confinement. Charged with membership of an illegal communist organization, he had confessed to owning the gun – after he was stripped naked, blindfolded, strapped on to a metal bedframe and given electric shocks. When the electrodes were attached to his testicles and the voltage was doubled, he admitted to being the leader of a cell that was plotting a series of assassinations of state officials. The acrid smell of charred flesh, the coppery smell of blood, the tart smell of urine and the cinnamon smell of the chewing gum of his chief torturer – an officer named ‘Hose’ Hassan, so called because of his inventive torture techniques with a garden hose.

  Each time Umut passed out he was revived with cold water and soaked with buckets of salt water to increase the conductivity. In the mornings, the same police officers would apply medicinal ointment to his injuries so that they could continue the abuse in the afternoon. As he rubbed the balm into Umut’s wounds, Hose Hassan would complain about his low salary and lengthy working hours, and how his daughter had eloped with an older man who was a father to a child and a husband to another woman. The lovebirds had returned, six months later, stone broke and scared. He could have killed them there and then; instead, he had spared their lives. Like many professional torturers, he was kind to his relatives, respectful to his superiors and cruel to everyone else.

  In between sessions, Umut was made to listen to the screams of other prisoners, just as they were made to listen to his own. Again and again, the national anthem would blare out over loudspeakers. Once, during an electric shock, they forgot to put a towel in his mouth, a simple oversight, and he bit through his tongue, almost severing it in two. For a long, long time eating was a wretched experience; he could taste food only when he swallowed it.

  Torture, widely practised in prisons, detention centres and young offender institutions across the country in the aftermath of the 1980 coup d’état, was said to have slowed down by then, but it carried on just the same. Old habits died hard. Not that there were no changes. Falaka, the beating of the soles of feet, was, for the most part, replaced by suspension by the arms for hours – a cleaner method that left fewer marks. Burning with cigarettes and the extraction of nails or healthy teeth were also outdated. Shocks were quick, efficient and left almost no traces. So was forcing prisoners to eat their own excrement, drink each other’s urine or spend hours in septic tanks. No visible signs of maltreatment. Nothing for nosy journalists or Western human rights activists to detect, should they appear without warning.

  Eventually, Umut was sentenced to eight years and four months without parole.

  After the verdict was announced, the Nalbantoğlus paid regular visits to the prison on the outskirts of Istanbul. They arrived in varying combinations, depending on the day – Mensur with his younger son, Selma with her daughter, Mensur with his daughter, but never Mensur and Selma together. With dozens of other people they would sit at a wide, plastic table, whose surface bore the marks of hundreds of anxious, painful encounters. They would keep their hands visible, as instructed, to make sure nothing was exchanged. In this state, they would try to mend the hole of silence with smiles that did not reach their eyes and words that snapped and slipped out of their grasp.

  On one occasion, when Umut stood up to leave, Mensur noticed a stain of blood on the lower back of his son’s prison uniform. A blot the size and shape of a willow leaf. It had a name, the torture method that had caused it – ‘Bloody Coke’. Beaten and stripped, the inmates were forced to sit on a Coca-Cola bottle. It was said to be a ‘cocktail’ served to a select few: political prisoners, suspected gays and transsexuals rounded up from the streets.

  Mensur stared at the stain, dazed. He let out a gulping cry, gasping f
or breath, despite a desperate effort to keep himself composed. Fortunately, Umut, already back in his ward, had not heard him. But Peri, whose turn it had been to accompany her father on that day, certainly had. She witnessed the entire scene, though for some reason it was only images – as if she were watching a silent film – that would stay with her. After that day, Mensur forbade Peri to visit prison. She should sit at home instead and write letters to her brother. She should tell him heart-warming, touching stories, small details of joy to give him faith in the human spirit. This Peri did for as long as she could. She composed letters with a delight she did not feel, about people she had barely met and incidents that had not quite happened in the way she described. Umut, as if he could see through the deceit, never responded.

  He would often appear in her dreams, however, from which she would wake up in the middle of the night, screaming. Sometimes she would manage to go back to sleep. Other times, she would slip out of bed, climb into her wardrobe and close the door from inside, trying to imagine what a prison cell must feel like. As she listened to her heart beating in that dark, confined space, and fearful that the oxygen was slowly running out, she would pretend her brother was beside her, breathing, breathing.

  The horror of having Umut behind walls, instead of uniting the Nalbantoğlus, distanced them from each other to the point of mutual enmity. Mensur blamed his wife. He was at work all day long, he argued; it was Selma who was supposed to have kept an eye on their son. Had she spent less time with fanatical preachers who promised her the scent of paradise and been more attentive to what went on under her nose, she might have prevented the calamity that had befallen them. Reticent, sullen, resentful, Selma, meanwhile, held her husband responsible. It was Mensur who had sowed seeds of godlessness into the mind of their son. All his soliloquies on materialism and freethinking had led to this disaster.

  Over the years, Mensur and Selma’s marriage had hardened into a hollow husk. Now the shell cracked wide open and they found themselves on separate sides of the rift. The air inside the house turned stifling, heavy, as if it had absorbed the sadness of its inhabitants. It seemed to young Peri that no sooner had the bees and the moths entered through the open windows, than they rushed in panic to fly out. Even those insatiable mosquitoes no longer sucked the Nalbantoğlus’ blood, for fear of ingesting their unhappiness. In the cartoons and movies that Peri watched, ordinary mortals were bitten by spiders, stung by hornets, after which they would transform into superheroes and lead exciting lives. In their case it was the other way round. Fleas and bugs, after coming into contact with the Nalbantoğlus, metamorphosed into the ways of humans, crushed by the weight of feelings for which they had no use.

  It was around those days that Peri began to reframe her relationship with Allah. She stopped praying before going to sleep, contrary to the way her mother taught her, but she also refused to remain indifferent towards the Almighty, contrary to her father’s advice. Instead, all the anguish and hurt she dared not to voice within earshot of her parents, she turned into a cannonball of words and hurled headlong at the skies.

  She began to quarrel with God.

  Peri argued with Him about everything, asking questions to which she knew there were no easy answers, asking all the same, in a lowered voice, so that no one could hear. How irresponsible of Him to allow terrible things to happen to those who didn’t deserve it. Could God see and hear through prison walls and across cell bars? If He could not, He was not all-powerful. If He could, and still did nothing to help those in need, He was not merciful. Either way, He was not what He claimed to be. He was an impostor.

  The anger Peri couldn’t direct at her mother and her master Üzümbaz Efendi, the frustration she couldn’t hold against her father and his drinking habits, the sorrow she couldn’t convey to her elder brother and the weariness she felt towards her other brother, she mixed them all into a gooey batter and poured it into her thoughts on God. There it baked, in the furnace of her mind, rising slowly, cracking in the middle, burning around the edges. While her friends seemed as uncomplicated and light as the kites they flew, playing in the streets, joking around at school and taking every day as it came, Nazperi Nalbantoğlu, an unusually intense and introverted child, was busily searching for God.

  God, a simple word with an obscure meaning. God, close enough to know everything you did – or even considered doing – yet impossible to reach. But Peri was determined to find a way. For she had come to believe through some twisted logic of her own that if she were to bring together her mother’s Creator and her father’s Creator, she might be able to restore harmony between her parents. With some kind of agreement as to what God was or was not, there would be less tension in the Nalbantoğlu household, even across the world.

  God was a maze without a map, a circle without a centre; the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle that never seemed to fit together. If only she could solve this mystery, she could bring meaning to senselessness, reason to madness, order to chaos, and perhaps, too, she could learn to be happy.

  The Notebook

  Istanbul, 1980s

  ‘Come and sit with me, love,’ Mensur said to his daughter one rare evening when he was alone at the dinner table.

  Peri immediately did as told. She had missed him terribly. Although in the same house, he had been distant, absorbed in his own thoughts, a mere shell of the man he used to be ever since the day Umut was arrested.

  ‘Let me tell you a story,’ Mensur said. ‘Once, there lived a reed-flute player in Istanbul; a Sufi but of the maverick kind. Whenever he saw a bottle of raqi or wine, he’d scold those around him. “Don’t you know a drop of this liquor is a sin?” Then he’d open the bottle, dip his finger inside, wait a few seconds, and take his finger out, dripping. “I removed that sinful drop,” he’d say. “Now we can drink in peace.” ’

  Mensur chuckled at his own words – a low, sad laugh.

  Peri studied her father, sensing in his question a lonely rebellion, but against what or whom? Tentatively, she asked, ‘Baba, may I try it?’

  ‘What? You want to drink raqi?’

  Peri nodded. She had never given it a moment’s thought before, but, now that she said she wanted it, she really did. It was a way of bonding with her father.

  Mensur shook his head. ‘You are only seven. No way!’

  ‘Eight,’ Peri corrected him. ‘I’ll be eight this month.’

  ‘Well, I’ve always said better to have your first taste of alcohol at home with your parents than secretly outside. You shouldn’t really drink before you’re eighteen,’ Mensur mused. ‘By that time, who knows if it’ll be allowed, thanks to those religious fanatics. Maybe they’ll put a bottle or two on display somewhere. The Exhibition of Degenerate Objects! Just like the Nazis and modern art, eh? Yes, maybe you should take a sip before it’s too late.’

  Thus saying, Mensur filled a glass with water and added a generous splash of raqi. While Peri watched the alcohol disperse in the water, her father watched her with a tender expression.

  ‘See these drops? That’s me and my mates. We dissolve in a sea of ignorance.’ Mensur raised his glass, and said, ‘Sherefe!’*

  Thrilled to be treated like an adult, Peri smiled. ‘Sherefe!’

  ‘If your mother sees us, she’ll skin me alive.’

  In haste, Peri took a mouthful. Her face instantly twisted in disgust. It was dreadful. It was worse than anything she had ever tried. The bite of anise, sharper even than its smell, burned her tongue, tickled her nose, brought tears to her eyes. How could her father drink this awful stuff every evening with such relish?

  ‘Promise me,’ Mensur said, paying no heed to his daughter’s reaction. ‘Never buy into old wives’ tales, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Peri said, after she had knocked back a glass of water and gulped a slice of bread to get rid of the taste in her mouth. ‘Like when they say, don’t jump over a child, he’ll stop growing. If you crack your knuckles, you’ll break an angel’s wings. Whistle in the
dark, you’ll invite Sheitan. That kind of thing.’

  ‘That’s right, all that nonsense. Listen, there’s a rule I’ve come to respect and I advise you to do the same. Never believe anything you haven’t seen with your eyes, heard with your ears, touched with your hands and grasped with your mind. Promise?’

  Eager to please her father, Peri chirped, ‘I promise, Baba.’

  Pleased, Mensur beat his index finger in the air to accentuate his words. ‘Education will save us! It’s the only way forward. You must go to the best university in the world.’ He paused as he considered which university that might be. ‘You are the only one among my children who can do this. Work hard. Save yourself from ignorance, bigger promise?’

  ‘Bigger promise.’

  ‘There is one problem, though,’ Mensur said. ‘Men don’t want women to be too clever or too educated. I wouldn’t want you to die a spinster.’

  ‘It’s okay, I’m never going to get married. I’ll stay with you.’

  Mensur burst into laughter. ‘Trust me, you don’t want to do that. Just don’t give your heart to anyone who doesn’t care about science … knowledge. Biggest promise?’

  ‘Biggest promise.’ Peri slid down in her chair as a new thought entered her mind. ‘What about God? We can’t see Him, can’t hear Him, can’t touch Him … but should we still believe in Him?’

  Mensur looked rueful. ‘I’ll let you in on a secret. When it comes to the Almighty, grown-ups are no less confused than kids.’

  ‘But is God real?’ Peri insisted.

  ‘He’d better be. When I meet Him in the next world, before He has a go at me, I’ll ask Him where He’s been all this time. He’s left us to our own devices for too long!’ Mensur popped a slice of cheese into his mouth and chewed vigorously.

  ‘Baba … Why didn’t Allah help Umut? Why did He let all this happen?’

  ‘I don’t know, my soul,’ Mensur said, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down.