Stork Mountain (35 page)

“God Almighty, boy,” Grandpa said in the kitchen. He soaked a kerchief in vinegar. “God Almighty.”

All night Elif tossed and turned. I, on the other hand, lay frozen. Couldn't sleep, couldn't move, couldn't breathe even. A total paralysis of the body. A complete shutdown of the mind. I must have dozed off at last, with the sky growing lighter.

I was in America, back in my apartment, in my bed. The tree outside my window was heavy with black storks. The storks watched me.

“Don't let them take it from us,
amerikanche
,” Elif said in English beside me. “Don't let them fly away.” Then the storks began to beat their wings and the world around us to rattle. They rose up, a black veil. Nothing I could do would stop them.

“I'm sorry,” I told Elif.

Her face was as hot as the fire. She rested it on my chest and we lay like this in my dream together and we watched the black storks flying.

 

FIVE

THE ULTRASOUND
let out a low hum. The gray screen—a constant whistle, which could not be denied. Flat and high-pitched, it could cross mountains, seas, whole worlds.

“I'm very sorry,” the doctor told us. She was the best in town, a specialist. Grandpa's old student had sent us to her once before and we were due for a checkup soon. But here we were now, urgently. A big line snaked outside her office, but she worked us right in.

“This is the sack,” the doctor said and showed us. “This is the fetus. Can you see it?”

We could see it. There was no heartbeat. And the doctor said the fetus measured eight or nine weeks old, that it had not developed past that. But it had taken Elif's body time to react, in stages. First her morning sickness had gone. Now all this.

“When did the spotting first start?” the doctor asked, and Elif told her. She had not told me. She had kept it a secret for two whole days. She'd hoped it would go away, that she'd feel better. Then we woke up to bright-red blood on the white sheet.

I panicked. I cried out, “We need to see the doctor.”

Elif seemed calmer. “I'll lie still,” she said. “I'll get better.” But lying still was out of the question. Her back was hurting and the blood wasn't stopping. I knew she wouldn't want me to discuss it with Grandpa, but I discussed it. “There is no bus until tomorrow. Can we wait that long?”

He threw away his cigarette. “We can't wait.” Then he was out the gate, down the road. I heard Elif calling. Saint Kosta had snuck inside, perched on the chair to watch her.

“Get him out,” she cried, and I did. He resisted. He beat his wings; his talons scratched the wood floor. By the time I'd managed to shoo him into the yard, the military jeep was pulling over. The imam was driving.

I was afraid Elif would throw a fit when she saw her father, but she said nothing. We spread a blanket on the backseat and laid her down on the blanket. I rested her head on my lap, petted her cheeks and her forehead. I dabbed the sweat away with a kerchief. I could tell she was in pain, by her eyes, by how hard her teeth were clenching, but she made no sound. Up front Grandpa and the imam too kept quiet. Only in town did they speak—Grandpa was giving directions to the doctor's office.

Now we were inside the office, cool, dark, like the mosque. An AC unit blew overhead and the drawn blinds buzzed when the air hit them. The ultrasound buzzed. The screen whistled.

The doctor was talking. “This happens to many women. You'll grieve some, then you'll feel better. And your body—no damage to it. You're young. Healthy. You'll be pregnant again before you know it.”

Then the doctor gave us an option. She could remove the fetus. Or we could wait until Elif expelled it. I thought she ought to remove it. But Elif shook her head lightly. Her face shone awash so bright with screen light—silver, perfectly calm, tender. I couldn't bear to see it. I couldn't bear to see the gray screen. I stood up. The doctor was talking. When we went home there would be more blood. Back pain. Contractions. Then Elif would start to expel blood clots, pieces of the placenta. At last she'd expel the fetus. It could be tomorrow, or in a few days. It could be next week. All in all, it could take up to six weeks.

Six weeks, I thought. Carrying the baby like this for six weeks.

 

SIX

THERE WAS MORE BLOOD
that night. There was back pain. Elif lay in bed, under a wool blanket, and her teeth chattered. She was freezing. Grandpa brought her tea, but she wouldn't look up. She kept her eyes on her hands and her hands stiff on her belly. Every now and then, when the pain got sharper, her hands made fists and her knuckles turned to snowdrops. From time to time I left my chair to open the window, to let the breeze freshen up the air. The entire mountain had sunk into silence. I'd never heard a night so quiet. No wind, no movement. Complete absence.

I must have dozed off in the chair, until Elif's sobbing woke me. I put my hand on her stomach, but she pushed me away. It wasn't for her sake I wanted to touch her.

Her voice was hoarse, distant.

“I feel so empty,” she said. “No spite. No venom. No hatred.” She began to sob again and only then did she allow me to sit at the edge of the bed and kiss her forehead. “I'm so clean,” she said. “So new.”

“Then why are you crying?”

She took my hands and pressed her cheek against them. “Don't you understand?” she said. “It's all been emptied out. Nothing's left. Nothing.”

“But I still love you,” I said. She leaned her face on my chest and I held her.

 

SEVEN

WE COULDN'T LET THE EARTH SWALLOW IT
, those black jaws. We couldn't let the fire. So we climbed the stork tree. We pulled the black towel out of the nest and unwrapped it.

“My
kazam
,” Elif said. “My darling.” She set the skull aside and laid our baby upon the towel. It was a tiny thing, but already it had eyes, nubs for arms and legs, and where the brain would be—a dark spot.

Elif had expelled it that morning, after a series of painful contractions. Four days after we'd seen the doctor.

We wrapped the towel around it. We laid it gently into the soft hay.

“What about the skull?” I said.

“What about it?”

We left the skull as it was, in the nest, and we climbed down.

“Don't look back,” Elif told me.

 

EIGHT

IT WAS SOMETIME IN OCTOBER
when Elif said she was leaving. We were in bed, but turned away from each other. We rarely touched now and if we did, always by accident, we jumped, startled, as if we'd brushed against a furnace.

The winds had grown colder. The days shorter. And the rains had returned to the Strandja. It was raining now, very softly, and out the window the sky looked like a great sea. The clouds were its waves, driving madly away from us, away from Klisura, toward the edge of the world. That's where the sea emptied out. It had no shores. The nothing contained it.

“I have to leave,
amerikanche
,” Elif said. “I can't stay here.”

My heart understood that. But if I tried to explain it to myself I failed badly. Why couldn't we work through all that had happened and reemerge stronger together? Why couldn't we go to America, start a new life?

And what about Aysha?
I wanted to ask her.
What would she do without you?
This answer too I knew already. Elif would not allow her sister to walk down the same path she herself had once taken. She would not reward the little girl's extortions. Every night for many years Elif had begged Allah to cut the rope that tied her to Aysha. Yet Allah would not cut the rope for her, as he would not for anybody. All along, Elif understood now, she'd held a knife but had feared to use it. Now at last, she was ready. Aysha would be better off without her.

“Where will you go?” I mumbled. She took some time to think it over, though I don't think she was deciding. She was afraid to tell me.

“Turkey,” she said. “Where else?” She turned around to face me. “American, give me some of that money. Two or three thousand.”

I brought the wad from the drawer in which we kept it. “Take it all,” I insisted.

“I can't do that.”

“Sure you can. I'll feel much better.”

“
Amerikanche
,” she said. I wiped my cheeks and tried laughing, like it was a big joke. Then something turned inside me. I almost shouted, Wait. Hear me out. Listen!

There is always suffering in life. Those before us have suffered and we too must suffer. But there is also happiness, merriment, bliss. To be alive is to hurt and to laugh, not just one or the other. To laugh after you've hurt, while you're hurting, that's a great thing. Stay with me, I wanted to tell her. Let's learn to accept the world together.

All I managed was to mumble I loved her. By now she too was crying. “What am I going to do without you?” I said, and she didn't answer.

*   *   *

That afternoon she made me cut her long hair.

“I can't be Lada,” she said. “I can't carry you around in my hair.”

I spread old newspapers on the floor of our room and when we were done I wrapped the locks in the paper. “Burn them,” she said, and I promised I'd do it. She knew I was lying.

Once again, she was the way I first saw her—boyish, her cheeks sharper with the short hair. But she was not at all the same now. She bore on her face some great lightness.

We spent the night in each other's arms, crying from time to time, but saying nothing. With the dawn she kissed me. I drifted away and when I woke up it was past midday. Rain drummed on the windows. The wad of money lay untouched where I'd left it.

I heard the knocking of dice from the terrace. A silly hope seized me. I jumped out of bed, sprinted. Grandpa was rolling alone, smoking. Saint Kosta lay in his corner.

“My boy,” Grandpa said when he saw me.

I pulled up a chair, sat down, quiet. But in my mind I was already running. Through the yard, toward the ruins, out of Klisura. In my mind I was crossing the fence at the border. She couldn't have gotten that far. With some luck I would catch her.

Then even in my mind I knew better. One night, when she'd first moved into our house, Elif had cuddled in bed beside me. “All my life,” she'd whispered, “I thought I was a rebel. In a world of fire dancers I thought
I
was the fire. But now I see,
amerikanche
, all along it's you who's the fire. You just don't yet know it.”

At last, I too knew it. Fire did not return where it had passed once. Fire did not burn backward.

 

PART

SEVEN

 

ONE

LOOK. SEE: NAZAR AGA
, tall, terrible, rides at the head of his fifty soldiers—the new guards of the sultan, Muhammad's Victorious Army. Tucked in his red sash—his whip, his knife, his pistol. And beside them—the grand vizier's firman. “You are to go, Nazar Aga,” the firman orders, “to the Strandja Mountains, to the Hasekiya. You are to meet there with Salih Baba, its ruler. And when you do—you are to end them. Both the place and its ruler.”

Nazar Aga is now an old man. Yet still, he can't ride slowly. His blood is boiling and its vapor dyes all he sees in red—the mud, the rocks and trees, the mountain. The Hasekiya, he thinks, and spits to the left of his scarlet horse. For hundreds of years the Christians there have been spared from high taxes, allowed to worship their god freely. And Salih Baba! Nazar spits to the right side. The governor who's built for his Greek wife a Christian chapel in the middle of his
konak
; who's never erected a single mosque, but with whose permission the
raya
is constructing churches! A Bektashi dervish, and once upon a time a leader of the janissaries.

No. Spittle is not enough for such a man. The knife is not enough. Nor is the pistol.

Nazar Aga pulls out his whip and lashes—the horse, his own leg, he pays no mind to what the whip is striking. The horse flies up the narrow pathway; the soldiers struggle to keep up. Scarlet clouds are thickening the sky and scarlet rain is falling.

“Wait for me, Salih Baba. I'm coming. And with me, I'm bringing you a sweet gift. The sultan's will. Allah's judgment.”

*   *   *

It is known that Murad I, the Godlike One, established the Ottoman Empire. He brought most of the Balkans under his rule, called himself sultan for the first time, and first instituted the
devshirmeh
—the recruit, the blood tribute. Every five years the strongest Christian boys were taken away from their parents, converted into the right faith, trained harshly, and so transformed into the sultan's most faithful soldiers—the janissaries. When a janissary was ready to serve, a Bektashi dervish blessed him. It was the Bektashi order, an old and mystic brotherhood, that guided the order of the janissaries. The two entwined the way the oak and ivy do.

The centuries rolled on; the janissaries grew greedy. First they wanted more money, and when the sultan refused, they rose in arms against him. So he paid them more, and after, with each new sultan, their salary increased. As did their want—to marry, to own land, to conduct private trade. All of these privileges they were given, yet their greed remained unquenched. It turned them from servants into masters, but it also made them weak and lazy. No longer were they undefeatable in battle.

When, after a shameful military loss, Sultan Osman II vowed to disband the order, the janissaries revolted and killed him. When Salim III attempted to reform them, they had him deposed.

At last Mahmud II came to power. He tricked both the janissaries and the Bektashis; he made them think he was their ally, but secretly he plotted, surrounded himself with allies of his own. One day in June, the year 1826, he issued a fatwa—he was to form a brand-new, modern army. He knew the janissaries would revolt and when they did he torched their barracks; thousands were burned alive. Those the sultan didn't burn, he beheaded. Those he didn't behead, he exiled.