Gardens of Water (51 page)

“Have the Americans come into your tent yet?”

“What?”

“They read the Bible to his wife and kids before the boy got sick.” He lit a cigarette, took a puff, and pulled a thread of tobacco from between his teeth. “He says they tried to convert them. He thinks they made the boy ill.”

Sinan looked back at the man who was now being helped to walk to the old cemetery. He remembered the stories in the villages—the government poisoned the water, the Coca-Cola was laced with pesticides, nerve gas was encased in mortar shells.

“Have they—the Americans—visited your family when you’re at work, when your wife and children are alone?”

“No,” Sinan said.

“They will, Sinan Bey. They will.”

When Kemal left, Sinan sat the boy down on a rock and looked him in the eyes.

“It’s okay,” Sinan said. “The man is upset. He lost his son and he doesn’t understand why. Sometimes people need someone to blame. Do you understand?”

“No, Baba.”

He said nothing and simply hugged his son because there was nothing to say. He didn’t understand it, either.

SINAN WAS EXHAUSTED WHEN
they returned to the tent. The sun fell behind a wall of fog sitting just off the coast, and the light inside the tent was gray and diffuse like light caught beneath the suffocating weight of dirt.

He sat on one of the pillows and watched his family—
smail sitting in the corner of the tent and drawing pictures on a pad of paper, Nilüfer mending one of his Carrefour shirts where he caught it on a sharp box edge, and
rem stirring sugar into his tea. She put the cup to her lips and sipped the tea, checking it, he knew, to make sure it wasn’t too hot.

The gesture brought tears to his eyes. He had never asked her to do that. She began testing the water years before, after he burned his tongue on a cup she had served him, and the kindness stuck, became a habit she wouldn’t break despite blistering her own lips many times. Even now, when she was angry with him, she couldn’t quash this bit of care she had learned out of love for him.

He watched her as she brought him his tea and thought how beautiful she was and what a wife she would one day make a husband, how proud he would be of her when he gave her away knowing the man would be blessed with such a woman. He wanted to tell her this as she knelt to hand him the cup, but, as always, the words he thought to say sounded nothing like the feeling. So, he simply took her hand and held it in his. She tugged at her blouse cuff, pulling it down so that the lace fell over the heel of her palm. He smiled at her, surprised and encouraged by her sudden modesty.

“I do love you,
can
m.
”

She smiled but pulled her hand away and held it to her waist as she walked away.

He took a sip of the tea. It was perfect.

THE NEXT DAY, AFTER
his morning shift, Sinan visited Derin Anbar’s family. There was a line of people to see the family, and he had to wait behind the mayor, who had placed a flowered wreath on a tripod in front of the tent. The wreath read,
IN LOVING MEMORY OF DERIN ANBAR, A BEAUTIFUL SON.
Like bank sponsors at special events, the mayor had his name printed at the bottom of the wreath as a representative of the Faith and Justice Party. It was a tasteless political advertisement on a wreath that should have arrived the day before at the funeral. The mayor probably didn’t even know where the grave was and would have to carry it over there later.

Sinan hadn’t seen the mayor since the day of the mass burial and he wondered what the man had been doing in the month and a half that had passed. The man wore a pressed suit, and he kept rocking forward on the balls of his feet while he smoothed away a cowlick on the back of his head, and when he entered the tent—the tails of his coat still sticking out of the entrance—his voice boomed as though he wanted everyone to know that he was there.

The tent smelled of ripe fruit and rank sweat. It was clear to Sinan that Malik, the boy’s father, hadn’t taken a shower in a couple of days—the neck of his shirt was wet with sweat and blood, from what, Sinan didn’t know, until he saw the man’s neck and the scratch marks raised on the skin. Either the man had done it himself or the wife—who lay curled in the corner of the tent—had torn at his skin in her anguish. She was dressed in the colorful pantaloons of village women, her lined face turned toward the door so that her moans, like strange, rhythmic music, could be plainly heard.

“May your pain pass quickly,” Sinan said, taking the man’s hand and touching it to his chest and forehead. Sinan gave him the pastries he had purchased at the Carrefour bakery. The man didn’t look at them and set them aside with the other food.

“You’re Kurdish,” the man said. “What village?”

“Ye
illi.”

He nodded, but Sinan thought he hadn’t heard of the village.

“He was my last son,” the man said. “My other two, twins, were taken in Diyarbak
r. The government said they were spies for the PKK, but they were just students.”

“I’m very sorry for your loss.”

“It’s shit,” the man said. “This world. It’s shit.”

Sinan didn’t know what to say. There was nothing to say to someone grieving. You just had to listen and accept what they said as truth.

“I might have killed that man,” Malik said. He looked at Sinan with a strange expression, his head cocked as though he were memorizing his face. “If you hadn’t stopped me.” Sinan couldn’t tell if he was being thanked or criticized.

“I’m out shoveling manure at a goat farm near Yalova. I think my son is playing soccer, kicking a ball around, but these people are talking to him, telling him fantasies, lying to him.”

“My brother,” Sinan said. “Wait a few days, mourn your son.”

“I’m not a very religious person,” he said. He began to scratch at his neck, and Sinan had the answer to his question. “I believe in God, I say my prayers at weddings and funerals, sometimes at night when I feel things are bad. I drink
rak
.
But these people, they want to wipe Muhammad out of history. They want us to think he was some insane goatherd, a crazy idiot scribbling worthless shit on goatskins. Have you noticed that they won’t let any Turks serve the food here?”

Sinan hadn’t.

“I asked once, and they refused my help. They only let that Armenian.”

“You’re hurting yourself, my brother,” Sinan said, but the man kept scratching and Sinan could see the skin break.

“The man with the pills wouldn’t put the book down. He had the pills but he wouldn’t put the book down. My son is at peace now, he’s in Paradise.”

“I’m sorry, my brother,” Sinan said. “But please stop.”

“I’ll see him soon. It’s better this way. I know he’s safe.”

Sinan reached across the space between them and laid his hand over the top of Malik’s to stop him.

“You’re hurting yourself,” he said.

Chapter 40

T
HE DAYS FOLLOWING THE FUNERAL,
SMAIL STAYED CLOSE
to the tent.
rem’s mother was easier on her, but only because she was too busy combing
smail’s hair, hugging him, making him dishes of food he only barely touched. He had been quiet since the funeral, and spent hours in the corner, drawing with colored crayons given to him by the teacher at the school.

“I’m worried,” her mother said, watching
smail as he scraped the crayons across the paper, his brow furrowed, his bare toes flexing and unflexing beneath his raised knees. “That boy was his friend.”

When Nilüfer tried to see
smail’s drawings, he closed the pad and pushed it beneath his sleeping bag or he told her he wasn’t done yet.

“Something’s wrong with him,” she said to
rem, and then she began biting her nails, the slivers of which
rem had to clean up before her father got home.

The next day Nilüfer sent
rem to do the laundry alone so she could stay with
smail.
rem was glad for the freedom, glad for the sunlight on her face, glad for the simple work of washing and the cool water on her hands, but how quickly her mother’s passion had passed disturbed her. Suddenly, she wasn’t worthy of concern. It was almost as though she were invisible except when a chore needed to be done. She thought briefly about leaving the laundry and finding Dylan—her blood raced with the thought of it—but three women stood watching her while wringing out clothes and hanging them on the line. She ignored the women, but she heard them whispering like a pack of crickets.

“A shame to her mother,” she heard one woman say, while the others clicked their tongues in agreement.

She wanted to slap the woman, wanted to rip her tongue out, but instead she ground the shirt she was washing into the ribs of the rack until her hand slipped and she ripped open the wounds on her wrist. The blood swirled in the water, and she stood pressing a tissue against the wound to stanch the bleeding as she watched. She would have to pour the water out and wash the shirt again.

“She can’t even do a simple chore,” she heard one woman say.

She changed her mind and hung the shirt on the line despite the taint of blood, just three feet away from the women who said nothing now, who closed their stupid mouths when she was so close. In three quick steps, she grabbed her wash tub, spun around, and tossed the dirty water at the women’s feet. The mud splashed against their pantaloons, and when she turned to leave she was so satisfied that she didn’t even care when she caught one of them, out of the corner of her eye, ripping
rem’s freshly cleaned clothes from the line.

“
THERE YOU ARE,” NILÜFER
said. “I need to go to the W.C.”

“Go then,”
rem answered back, throwing her hand in the direction of the porta-potties.