Bliss: A Novel Page 2

  Meryem picked up a coil of rope that lay in one corner. The plaited cord, old and worn, unraveled in her hand. She looked at the sooty, cracked beams above, black as the deed itself. She had heard talk of how it should be done: Throw the rope over the beam and fasten one end of it with a knot, climb up on a log, make a noose in the other end, and slip it over the head. All that remained to do then was to kick the log away. Her neck might hurt a little at first, but in a couple of minutes everything would be over. Death must be like the sleep she had awoken from a little while before, but a sleep in which she would never see that terrifying phoenix.

  “Do the dead dream?” Meryem wondered. No one had ever returned from the dead, so no one could know the answer to this question. Perhaps her mother was dreaming of her now, watching reproachfully as she prepared to kill herself. Of course, what mother could bear to watch her daughter commit suicide?

  Meryem fingered the rope for a while before flinging it to the ground as if it were a poisonous snake.

  “Go away!” she shouted.

  At once she felt relieved. Something soothed her fears, and her reaction was to giggle at herself for talking to the rope.

  “Don’t cry, Mother,” she said softly. “See, I didn’t kill myself.”

  Then Meryem realized what it was that had changed her mind—Istanbul. According to Döne, the girls who did not hang themselves were sent to Istanbul. In that case, Meryem, like those others, would simply go over the hill to that magnificent city. “If they’d let me, I’d walk there now, all by myself,” she thought. She could probably reach the city by the end of the day, but she could not go at all unless her uncle commanded it. She would not think of running away, because he was all-knowing and had demons that told him everything, down to the smallest detail.

  According to Meryem’s uncle, all human beings were sinners but women were especially accursed. To be born a woman was punishment enough in itself. Women were devils, dirty and dangerous. Like their forerunner, Eve, all of them got men into trouble. Get them constantly with child and regularly give them a good hiding, for they are a disgrace to mankind. Meryem had heard this continually as she was growing up, and so she hated being a woman. She would cry out bitterly, “Dear God, why did you make me a woman?” and constantly question it—until she was up to her neck in sin.

  Life used to be easier when she was a little girl, thin as a beanpole with scrawny arms and legs. She played with the other children from dawn to dusk, running through the streets of the dusty township of stone and mud-brick houses, through the middle of which ran a polluted stream, and where broken wagons with wheels leaned against garden walls. With her cousin Cemal, who was four years older, his best friend Memo, and the other girls and boys, they even went to the lake, where they ran along the shore and splashed each other as they stood knee-deep in the water. She splattered the sides of buildings with handfuls of mud, squabbled over the skeleton cars they made from old pieces of wire, or climbed up precipitous walls to demolish bird’s nests.

  When her chest sprouted twin buds and her body found its curves, when the bleeding started between her legs, she knew she was different from Cemal and Memo. They were human, and she was a transgressor. It was considered proper for her to cover herself and hide away, to serve others, and to be punished. This was the way things were. She was now one of those creatures called women, for whose transgression the world was doomed.

  So Meryem’s head was covered. With a scarf on her head and every inch of her body enveloped in thick clothes, none of which she was allowed to remove, she sweated out her punishment in the heat of the sun, which in summer sometimes reached a temperature of 120. On the day she stepped into womanhood, she also understood why she had no mother. Her mother must have received her punishment by dying in childbirth. God would not have punished her if he had created her a man, because then she could not have given birth and died.

  Now Meryem herself was enduring the punishment of being a woman. It must be that place of sin that was responsible for all the trouble women had to go through and all that happened to them. Meryem knew this must be true. It was that which caused sin. It was for this that punishment was given. She had prayed to God so many times to take that aperture away, hoping to find on waking up one morning that it was closed shut and gone forever. Yet, every morning, her hopes were dashed when she realized that the ugly hole was still there.

  When Meryem was little and wet her bed, her aunt would always threaten to burn that part of her. Once she even lit a match and brought it close to Meryem’s legs but changed her mind at the last moment. Later, Meryem regretted that her aunt had pulled the flame away.

  Meryem’s problems had all started after the visit to the tomb of eker Baba’s, a holy figure to whom the villagers prayed for their wishes to come true. They visited his tomb to pray and pour out their troubles, beg for cures, and leave votive offerings. When Meryem was a little girl, her aunts had taken her to visit the shrine. They even let her ride on a donkey so that she would not get tired. She must have been four or five years old at the time. The journey up the crooked path to the top of the arid hill where the tomb was located seemed to last forever as she swayed backward and forward in the saddle. When they finally reached the shrine, they found people sitting on the ground all around it, eyes closed and palms stretched upward. Bewildered, Meryem asked her aunt what they were doing but was hushed with the reply, “Ssshh, we’re going to sleep now.” Pointing to the women sitting with their eyes shut, her aunt had added, “Look, everyone’s sleeping. Go on, close your eyes and take a little nap.”

  Meryem sat down, held out her hands, palm upward like the others, and closed her eyes, but it was impossible to fall asleep like the others because she needed to pee. She wriggled around in a desperate effort to keep from wetting herself and tried hard to keep the pee from coming.

  Meryem opened one eye and glanced around. Everyone had her eyes shut and appeared to be in a deep trance. She could control herself no longer, and she felt the warm fluid pour out, soaking her legs. She again opened one eye and looked around to see if anyone had noticed. Thank God, they were all still sleeping and had noticed nothing. Now she could go to sleep comfortably, too. Hands opened to the sky, she closed her eyes and fell into a daydream.

  A short while later, Meryem’s aunt roused her from her reverie. “Come on,” she said, “we’re leaving.” Meryem was not sure whether she had really fallen asleep or not. But then, as Meryem was mounting the donkey, her aunt noticed what had happened. “What’s this?” she hissed. “Couldn’t you have found another place to pee?” She went on to tell Meryem at great length how those who urinated at eker Baba’s tomb were punished horribly, how the place between her legs would break out into sores. On the way back, her legs became chafed from riding on the donkey. Her aunt’s words had frightened her so much that, for a long time, she could not rid herself of the idea that evil spirits would curse her, or the red devil would come to snatch her away, or festering sores would open in the sinful place. Her eyes became swollen and bloodshot from constant weeping.

  From that day on, Meryem had no doubt that eker Baba would punish her on account of that shameless, unwished-for place of sin, and something terrible would happen to her. And, in the end, it had. The bird had ripped into her sinful body, and now she sat in the barn awaiting a more severe punishment. Where would it end? Would she be sent to Istanbul like other girls whose sinful parts had been pecked at, or was something worse in store for her? It all depended on the head of the family, her uncle.

  Even Meryem’s father, Tahsin Agha, gentle and good-tempered, always busying himself with duties on the farm, went in fear of his elder brother, who had the advantage over him in age and also in religious standing and therefore was to be respected. Tahsin Agha, a grown man, never smoked in front of his brother. If he were accidentally caught smoking a cigarette, he would quickly stick it in his trouser pocket or extinguish it in his palm.

  Meryem’s uncle devoted most of his time to
religious matters and to the followers who visited him. Thus, the burden of running the family farm fell on Meryem’s father. He had to supervise the collection of the crops gathered from the land rented out to sharecroppers and to see these got stored in the granaries, as well as manage the livestock and take care of the shepherds and day laborers.

  The old farmhouse, which was large enough to accommodate all the members of the family, had originally belonged to an Armenian named Johannes, who was remembered affectionately by the villagers for his willingness to lend a helping hand. One day soldiers had come and ordered all the Armenians to collect whatever belongings they could carry and assemble on the outskirts of the village. Frightened and weeping, the Armenians obeyed and were led off, casting backward glances as they trudged away from the village. Not one of them returned. According to rumor, the soldiers had taken them to a distant land, yet nobody dared to say this aloud. Some of the Armenians had entrusted their valuables to their Muslim neighbors, hoping to come back to retrieve them. Decades had passed, and no one had ever returned.

  There was another strange rumor connected with this. It was whispered that some of the older village women were, in fact, Armenian. During those languid, soporific afternoons when Meryem’s aunts would chat together, this was a frequent topic of discussion. They would tell how, on that ominous day so many years ago, having no idea of what fate held in store for them, some Armenian families had left their daughters in the care of their Muslim neighbors. Such names as Ani or Anush were changed to Turkish names like Saliha or Fatma, and their adoptive families raised these girls as their own, eventually marrying them off. The gossip in the village was that, as they had never converted to Islam, it was questionable whether it was right for them to be married according to Islamic practice. Even more disputed was their right to a funeral and a final resting place alongside Muslims.

  At a funeral, the imam asks those who gather to pay their last respects, “How did you regard the deceased?” The mourners reply in unison, “We considered her a good person,” invoking God’s favor upon her. The imam then pronounces, “In favor of the deceased woman,” and starts the namaz. Perhaps the Muslim men of the village who followed their imam in the ritual prayers for one of these dead women were performing it for a Christian—that would, indeed, be going too far!

  After the Armenians had been taken away, Muslims took over their houses, fields, and workplaces. The house now belonging to Meryem’s family was one of the largest of these properties in the village. Meryem had for a long time believed that her great-grandfather, Ahmet the Wrestler, had won it for himself through the strength of his arms. In that area his splendid physique was still talked about and had become the subject of legendary stories. These were still some of Meryem’s favorites, especially the one about the cream.

  According to the tale, when her great-grandfather was small, his mother would always give his brother the cream off the milk. Although he resented this, Ahmet never uttered a word. One day when his mother was out, he led their donkey out of the barn, lifted it, and put it on the flat roof of their two-story house. His parents returned home from the fields to find the donkey on the roof. They could not find a way of getting it down from there. Knowing her son’s strength, Ahmet’s mother begged him to take the animal off the roof. Grinning, he responded that whoever ate the cream should bring it down.

  The story would stop there and up until a few years ago, Meryem would recall great-grandfather’s exploit whenever she gazed up at the roof of the family home, wondering if the donkey was still up there. But when she grew older, she realized that their house could not be the one in the story—there was no donkey on top of it.

  When Meryem asked if any of the villagers’ tales were true, her aunt assured her that those about the forced departure of the Armenians were certainly false. Instead, she declared, a miracle had caused them all to disappear in a single stroke. The wind had blown so fiercely one stormy February day that the minaret of the mosque toppled down, trees were uprooted, and roofs flew off houses. At the same time, the storm must have swept up all the Armenians in the village and blown them away into the sky. One could not question God’s mercies. The divine wind had not touched a single Muslim, but every Armenian man, woman, and child had been taken up into the heavens. Maybe the Armenians were actually God’s favorites and had ascended to heaven like Jesus, may his name be praised.

  Meryem preferred to think that they were up in the sky. She would close her eyes and try to imagine the Armenian girls flying across the sky. Their parents would call out to their children flying joyfully here and there, “It’s getting late, children. Come back to your clouds!”

  Although most of the family members lived in Johannes’s former house, Meryem was glad her uncle was hardly ever at home during the day. He usually went to the hut in the distant vineyard, where he would welcome visitors with their offerings or pray by himself in deep solitude. The children of the family would take him baskets of food. Even Meryem’s father saw his brother only in the mosque at the hour of prayer.

  After the prayers at sunset, the women of the house would spread a cloth on the floor and serve dinner to the men and wait on them. Only when they had been fed and the table cleared away could the women gather in the kitchen to eat the leftovers. If any of them talked or lingered too long over their food, Meryem’s uncle would become angry. According to his understanding of religion, eating could be an act of sensuality. One ate in order to live. It was a duty to be carried out in the least possible time. So the women rapidly spooned down hot soup, stuffed their mouths with meat and pilaf, and caused the baklava to vanish in the twinkling of an eye. After the meal, it was time for the bedtime prayers. Meryem’s uncle, as imam, would lead them and Meryem’s father, and her uncle’s son, Cemal, would stand in line behind him. During the holy month of Ramadan, after breaking their fast, the men would go to the mosque for special prayers.

  Tahsin Agha’s first wife had died while giving birth to Meryem, his first child. His second wife was barren, so for many years he had had no further children until he took Döne as his wife. She had given him two children, one after the other, but both of these were still very young. Meryem’s uncle and his wife had three daughters and two sons. The older boy, Yakup, had gone to Istanbul two years before with his wife Nazik and their two children. According to Yakup’s infrequent messages, they were prospering and doing well in the “golden” city. When the younger son, Cemal, went to do his military service and was posted to the southeast, and the two daughters, Aye and Hatice, married, the large house became quite empty. Cemal’s mother, who was a miserable, lusterless woman oppressed by her tyrannical husband, was barely perceptible in the house. Whether she existed or not did not make much difference.

  Cemal was with his commando unit in the Gabar Mountains, where he was known to be fighting against the Kurds. His father made constant invocations asking that “the power of God, the Almighty, protect his son from all evil.” Since he had forbidden all “non-Muslim inventions,” including radio and television, to enter the house, the family could not learn the names of the soldiers killed daily in action, and they had little news of Cemal other than his letters, which came at rare intervals.

  THE PROFESSOR IN CRISIS

  While Meryem was lost in gloomy thoughts in that dusty village on the edge of Lake Van, more than seven hundred miles to the west, in Istanbul, where Asia and Europe meet, a man with the impressive title of Professor İrfan Kurudal cried out in his sleep and woke himself up. The forty-four-year-old professor knew he had been asleep less than half an hour; recently it had become a habit with him to wake up shortly after going to sleep.

  He had never before suffered from insomnia, nor had he changed his normal routine—going to bed as usual right after midnight and dozing off effortlessly. Yet, each night for the past two months, he had woken up in a panic, with the same horrible feeling that a black bird was flapping its wings in the middle of his chest. The ominous vision chilled his heart. He
had tried various remedies, even turning to alcohol, but there was no improvement.

  He used to sleep soundly until eight in the morning and start the new day fresh, but now he was weary and overwrought. No matter how hard he tried, he could not fall asleep once he had been jolted awake.

  From all appearances, the professor seemed to have no problems: He had a beautiful wife, was respected at his university, appeared frequently on television as a commentator, and the moderators listened reverently to his words. He had been on television before, but now that he was appearing on a weekly talk program, everyone from the owner of the grocery store to the stranger on the street began to recognize him. No one who saw this tall, well-built man could fail to recognize his face again, so striking was the contrast between his jet-black hair and his gray beard. The professor was not a man one could overlook.

  İrfan lay still in the somber bedroom dimly lit by the lights of the garden, trying to contain his fear and not awaken his wife. He knew he could not overcome the terror without pills.

  He rose, walked softly to his private bathroom, and flicked on the lights, illuminating the expensive fixtures and the bright porphyry marble floor. Sitting on the edge of the tub, he began the accustomed swaying backward and forward.

  “You’re healthy … everything’s going well,” he said to himself. “Don’t be afraid. This is your home. Your name is İrfan Kurudal. The woman in your bed is your wife, Aysel. There’s nothing to fear. You had a great time this evening at the Four Seasons Hotel with your brother-in-law, Sedat, and his wife, İclal. The sushi was excellent, don’t worry. You drank two cool bottles of beer. After dinner, Sedat brought you home in his Range Rover. You took a look at the gossip shows on television and, as always, enjoyed looking at those young models with their long legs and large breasts. You know Aysel doesn’t mind. She’s not bothered by such things. There’s no reason to be afraid.”