Gardens of Water (24 page)

“Get a rag,” Nilüfer said to
rem.

rem found a rag hanging on the edge of a bucket they had used to wash tea glasses earlier that day. The water was murky and the rag smelled of mildew, but she dipped it and handed it to her mother, who immediately dabbed at the edge of the cut.

“Oh, my baby,” her mother said to
smail. “Oh, my baby. I’m so sorry.”

Her father pulled back
smail’s eyelids. He turned
smail’s hands over and looked at his palms.

“Do you feel sick?”

“A little,”
smail said.

rem sat down on the blankets spread across the floor of the tent and watched them, still out of breath from her run back.

“Oh,
can
m,
” her mother continued.

“A street dog followed me home,”
rem said. “He was foaming at the mouth.” “Does anything else hurt?” her father asked.

“I had to run to get away from it.” She rubbed her heel and made a face, hoping her father would notice. “I think I twisted my ankle.”

“I thought I lost you,” her mother said to
smail.

“I met a boy,” she whispered to herself, watching now the unfurling of the tents in the field below. “An American boy,” she thought.

“Oh, I thought I lost you,” her mother said again, completely lost now in the festering wound on
smail’s head.

rem briefly imagined being buried herself beneath the rubble, and the faces of her father and mother glowing with happiness and relief as they pulled her back into the world. They hugged her. They kissed her. They wouldn’t let her go.

Chapter 16

“
W
E NEED A DOCTOR,” NILÜFER SAID, DABBING AT
SMAIL’S
cut.

“I know,” Sinan said.

“Sinan—”

“I know, Nilüfer.” He pulled the knife from his pocket and stabbed it into the tendon between the ewe’s hindquarters and belly. “Stop washing it. It’s as clean as it’s going to get with that water.”

Nilüfer stopped, but she stood there holding the cloth as though ready to strike at the wound as soon as he turned his back.

“What are we going to do?”

The knife was dull, but he was able to separate the joints, carve through muscle, and peel away fat until he had quartered the animal. As he worked he felt their neighbors’ eyes on him.

“Eat,” he said.

Nilüfer lit a small fire made of gathered wood and dried weeds, and began to cut the quartered pieces into smaller sections for cooking.

“Cook it all,” he said. “It won’t last.”

She overfilled the pot, but still the pot was not big enough. At best the food she was able to cook would last for two days. He carried what remained of the animal to each of the three other families; it wasn’t much—the hide of the hooves, a chunk of the hindquarters, the white fat strips—but he was thanked profusely, an elderly grandfather kissing Sinan’s knuckles before raising the hand to his forehead. The drunk was watching now, a desperation in his eyes having returned with sobriety. Sinan remembered the way Ahmet’s hands sometimes shook in the morning before he took his first sip of
rak
,
and he felt an intruding pity for this man. He cut away the head of the ewe, stripped the remaining skin from around the eyes, and gave it to the drunk, who stood to receive it.

“I am not a beggar,” the man said.

“I know,” Sinan said. The pleading in the drunkard’s eyes forced Sinan to touch his shoulders. “It’s a gift. To help my soul get to Heaven.”

Sinan sat down in the evening shade of the tent. He was exhausted. His foot ached in rhythm with his heart, but he was anxious and it was difficult for him to be here, sitting idle, waiting for an answer to what to do next. From the hill he could just barely make out the movements at the camp, and the flashing of white material being raised in the midday light. He had no oil or butter, and the meat burned on the stove, sending up a trail of gray smoke. Still, the smell was intoxicating.

smail had gotten up and gone to play. Sinan watched as
smail kicked a ball in the air, chased it down the hill, ran back up, and repeated the process.
rem fussed with her head scarf, scratching at it, pulling and tugging until her hair broke loose from the fabric.

“Where’s the government?” Nilüfer said. “This boy’s sick.”

smail threw the ball into the air and headed it when it came down. “He seems fine now,” Sinan said.

“You saw the cut,” she said. “You felt his temperature.”

He had, and he knew a boy could recover and fall sick again soon; he saw it happen in Ye
illi, a sick child survives a fever in winter only to suddenly die feverish in spring.

“The food is done, Nilüfer?”

Nilüfer closed her mouth and spooned the meat onto chipped plates.

The mutton was tough and burned and they ate in silence. The flies were up in the evening heat and they circled around their heads, lit on the corners of their mouths.

“Is there more, Anne?”
smail said when it was done.

“Not tonight,” Sinan said. “Tomorrow.”

“We should go to the American camp,”
rem said.

He looked at his daughter. Hair poked out from her scarf and he could see the whole of her hairline above her forehead.

“Americans?” Nilüfer said.

“They’re building a camp,”
rem said. “I bet they’ll have doctors.”

A wave of anger rose in him, and he let it show in his face.

rem looked at the ground and fingered the fringe of a blanket. “Don’t you think so, Baba?”