Gardens of Water (75 page)

They crowded into a bus packed with covered women heading to the open market in Fatih, and
smail squeezed in among a crowd of soft hips and long skirts. Every few hundred feet the bus stopped to let someone off or take someone on or both. The broad street ran beside the Golden Horn where the waterfront was lined with hulls of rusting ships, and, this morning, even before the heat of the day, the water stank of rotting fish, leaking oil. It took the bus forty minutes to cover the four-kilometer trip, and by the time they reached Eyüp it was nearly eleven
A.M
.

They passed the wooden stands of trinket sellers and pushed through a large group of tourists standing in the middle of the street. And then, suddenly, there it was, the gleaming white marble of the mosque, the place where the Prophet’s friend, Eyüp Ensari, was buried.

Since arriving in Gölcük from Ye
illi years ago, when
smail was just barely walking, Sinan had wanted to visit Eyüp Camii, but it was a long way to come, and being at the store from seven in the morning until ten in the evening every day had not allowed it. He had decided it would wait until a day worthy of a sort of pilgrimage and this was that day. He wasn’t sure if he would ever make it to Mecca; he would if he ever had the means to do so, and it would be a profound disappointment in his life if he didn’t, but now such a trip seemed impossible. This was probably as close to the Prophet as he would ever come.

“Look at how tall the dome is,
smail.” He touched the back of
smail’s neck, right where the hair met the soft skin. “Do you know why they make it so tall?”

smail looked at him, but his lips didn’t part and he didn’t shake his head. He just looked and that was enough for now.

“So God can fit inside.” He tickled the boy’s neck, but
smail stepped aside and looked back at the mosque, his eyes squinting against the yellow sun.

The white bricks of the mosque glowed in the midday light, rising above the courtyard in a series of domes and windows that was like light itself being created. The courtyard was busy with people—women dressed in full hijab, their bodies like black apparitions against the white building; men in skullcaps rolling up their sleeves to wash at the ablutions fountain; still other men seated at a café beneath the shade of a huge plane tree, smoking cigarettes and drinking tea from tulip-shaped glasses cupped in the palms of their hands. But for all the people, the place was quiet, and the din of car-laden streets, the horns of ships, and the yelling of merchants was lost in a distant hum that was like the murmur of rushing water.

Of all his failures as a father, not teaching
smail the suras was among the worst. He should have taken him before the
sünnet.
He should have made him read the Qur’an at night before going to bed. But he hadn’t, and now all he could do was make up for lost time and hope the beauty of this place touched
smail in the same way it moved him.

In the center of the courtyard stood a marble ablutions fountain.

“Watch me,” Sinan said to
smail. “And do what I do.”

The boy nodded. A small sign, a thread of hope in that nod.

Sinan found an empty spigot. “
Allahu Akbar,
” he said. “God is great.” He dipped his palms in the cold water, using his thumbs to clean the webbed skin between fingers. He drank from the spigot until his mouth was cold and fresh with the taste, and then spat the water into the drain at his feet. “God is great,” he chanted in his head as he filled his palms again, and sniffed the water into his nostrils. He washed his face, starting at the top of his forehead down to the bottom of his bearded chin, leaning forward to keep his pants from getting wet. He splashed the water across his forearms and it was so cool on his skin, that he thanked God for it. Then he pulled off his shoes and laid them perfectly side by side. He folded his socks neatly atop his shoes and scrubbed the calluses on his right foot and massaged the sore stump of his left. All of this he did three times each, and when he was done his head felt clear and focused on God.

He lifted
smail onto the worn marble stool in front of the spigot. Helping his son and explaining as they went, he cleansed his body for prayer. He helped
smail get the spaces between his toes, removed the crust of sleep from his eyelashes, scrubbed the dirt from the cartilage of the boy’s ears, and prayed to God that the water might wash away his fears, flush away everything dark inside him.