The Bastard of Istanbul (42 page)

Languidly, Zeliha walked across the room and put a cassette into the tape player. It was an
alla turca
album by one of her favorite singers, a transsexual with a divine voice. The singer had started her career as a man, playing the hero in melodramatic movies; eventually he had undergone surgery to become a woman. She always wore flamboyant costumes topped with glittery accessories and lots of jewels, and so would Zeliha, if she had that much money. Zeliha adored her and had all of her albums. It was time the singer made a new album but she had recently been banned by the military, which was still controlling the country although it had been three years since the coup d’état. As to why the generals didn’t like the idea of a transsexual singer on stage, Zeliha had a theory.

“It’s because they feel threatened by her presence.” She winked at Pasha the Third, who was curled on the bed like a heavy cushion of pure white fur, watching her with two narrow slits of brilliant green eyes. “Her voice is so celestial and her costumes so ostentatious, I am sure they are worried that when she appears on TV, nobody will listen to the generals with their husky voices and frog green uniforms. Can you imagine? What could be worse than a military takeover? A military takeover that goes unnoticed!”

It was then that there was a knock on the door.

“Are you talking to yourself, silly?” Mustafa exclaimed, poking his head inside. “Turn that awful music down!”

His hazel eyes glittering with the fervor of youth, his dark hair overly brilliantined and combed back, he could be called handsome if it weren’t for the tic he had developed Allah knows when. He had the habit of tilting his head to the right when speaking, a brusque, mechanical movement that intensified when he was especially nervous or around strangers. Sometimes others mistook this tic for shyness, but Zeliha thought it was nothing but a sign of sheer insecurity.

Propping herself up on one elbow, she shrugged. “I can listen to whatever I want, the way I want.”

But instead of quarreling with her or slamming the door shut behind him, as he had done numerous times before, he paused, as if distracted by a thought. “Why do you wear these short skirts?”

The question was so unexpected Zeliha looked at him stunned, only now detecting the hazy veil in his stare.
This year more than ever,
she thought,
he has been working himself into a jerk.
She uttered the last word aloud: “Jerk!”

Pretending not to hear that, Mustafa scanned the room. “Is that my razor blade over there?”

“Yes,” Zeliha confessed. “I was going to put it back.”

“What did you do with my razor blade?”

“That’s none of your business,” she said, although with some hesitation.

“None of my business?” his brow deepened further. “You sneak into my room, steal my razor, shave your legs so that you can show them to all the men in the neighborhood, and then tell me it’s none of my business. Well, I’ll tell you what. You are damn wrong, miss! It is my business to make sure that you behave.”

Zeliha’s eyes brightened a little. “Why don’t you go and busy yourself with something else? Go and masturbate!” she snapped.

Mustafa blushed. He looked at his sister with venom in his eyes.

It had become clear recently that he had trouble relating to women. Even though he had grown up among women of all age groups and was used to being the center of their attention, his experience with the opposite sex still lagged dramatically behind his male peers. Though twenty by now, Mustafa felt like he was still stuck in that dangerous threshold between boyhood and manhood. He could neither return to the former nor leap into the latter. All he knew about the threshold was that it unnerved him and all he knew about being unnerved was that he didn’t like it. He abhorred the carnal cravings of his body, and yet at the same time he was lured to them. In the past he had succeeded in holding his impulses back, unlike the other boys in his class, who would masturbate continually. Between the ages of thirteen and nineteen, he had managed to suppress what he named “it,” managed not to masturbate. But last year, after failing his college entrance exam, years of self-castigation and self-loathing had provoked a backlash in him and the urge had come back even stronger, in the form of IT.

IT came upon him everywhere, any time of the day. In the bathroom, in the basement, in the toilet, under the bedsheet, in the living room, and once in a while, when he sneaked into his youngest sister’s room when there was no one around, in her bed, on her chair, by her desk. . . . Like a capricious patriarch, IT demanded absolute obedience. No matter how much he obeyed, Mustafa would never use his right hand. The right hand was reserved for clean things, clean and consecrated. It was with his right hand that he’d touch the Qur’an, hold a rosary, and open closed doors. It was with his right hand that he would take the old people’s hands to kiss. As blessed as the right hand was, the left hand was reserved for the abominable. He could masturbate with his left hand only.

Once he had a dream where he masturbated in front of his father. There was no expression on his father’s face; he just watched from his place at the dinner table.

The last time Mustafa had seen his father stare at him like that he was eight and being circumcised. He remembered that miserable boy, lying in a huge, showy satin bed with presents all around, waiting to
have it cut,
surrounded by relatives and neighbors, some chatting, some eating, some dancing, while others were busy teasing him; seventy people there to celebrate his initiation from boyhood to manhood. It was on that day, right after the circumcision, right when he had let out an awful cry, that Father approached him, kissed him on the cheek, and whispered in his ear: “Did you ever see me cry, my son?” Mustafa shook his head. No, nobody had ever seen Father cry. “Did you ever see your mom cry, my son?” Mustafa nodded heartily. Mom cried all the time. “Good.” Levent Kazancı smiled gently at his son. “Now that you are a man, behave like a man.”

Whenever he masturbated he would never dare pull his pants down fully, not only out of fear of getting caught by someone in the house, but because he was irritated by the ghost of his father still whispering in his ears that same sentence over and over again. Suddenly in the past year his body had prevailed over not only his will but also his father’s inspecting gaze. Like some contagious disease— for he was sure this
had
to be some sort of a disease—he started masturbating at all hours of the day and night. Stop it. Can’t stop it. Stop it. Can’t stop it. In dreams he would see himself caught by his parents while in the act. They would ram against the door, break it open, and bust him red-handed. Amid screams and wails, Mom would kiss and pat him on the back, while Father would spit on him and spank him hard. Where Father would leave bruises, Mom would rub in a speck of
ashure,
as if the dessert was some sort of an ointment. He woke up disgusted and shivering each time, sweat beaded on his forehead, and to calm down he would masturbate.

Zeliha knew none of this when she scoffed at him.

“You have no shame,” Mustafa said. “You don’t know how to talk to your elders. You don’t care when men whistle at you on the streets. You dress like a whore and then expect respect?”

Zeliha broke into a scornful smile. “What’s the matter? Or are you scared of whores?”

Mustafa just looked at her.

A month ago he had discovered
the
most infamous street in Istanbul. He could have gone to other places, where he could have found less inexpensive, less shoddy, and less disgraceful sex, but he deliberately went there—the cruder and the uglier the better. Dingy houses lined side by side, the smells and the stains and the lewd jokes men cracked less because they were humorous than because they needed a laugh; prostitutes in each room on every floor, prostitutes who perhaps never refused your money but all the same would disparage your performance. He had returned from there feeling filthy and weak.

“Are you spying on me?” he asked.

“What?” Zeliha guffawed, only now realizing she had made a discovery without knowing it. “You are so stupid. If you go to prostitutes, that’s your problem, I couldn’t care less.”

Affronted, Mustafa felt a sudden urge to hit her. She had to understand that she could not mock him like that.

Zeliha squinted at him as if trying to read his thoughts. “What I wear and how I live is none of your business,” she said. “Who the hell do you think you are? Father is dead and I am not gonna let you replace him like that.”

Oddly, as soon as she uttered this line, she recalled having forgotten to pick up her lace dress from the dry cleaner that morning.
Make a mental note to pick it up tomorrow.

“If Father were alive you couldn’t talk like that,” Mustafa replied. The hazy look he had a moment ago was gone, replaced by an embittered flicker. “But just because he’s gone doesn’t mean we have no rules in this house. You have responsibilities toward your family, miss. You cannot bring disgrace to this family’s good name.”

“Oh shut up. Whatever disgrace I might bring will be nothing compared to those you have caused to this day.”

Mustafa paused, looking confused. Had she found out about his gambling or was she bluffing again? He had been betting on sports games, only to screw up bigger each time. If Father were alive he would beat him, no matter his age. The russet leather belt with the brass buckle. Could there be a rationale behind one of the belts hurting more than all the others, or was it simply his imagination concentrating on one particular belt and thereby allowing himself to believe that it wouldn’t hurt as much when he chanced upon the others, feeling grateful, even lucky?

But his father was gone now and somebody needed to be reminded of who was in control.

“Now that Dad is dead,” Mustafa declared, “I am in charge of this family.”

“Are you?” Zeliha laughed. “You know what your problem is? Spoiled, you are too spoiled, precious phallus! Get out of my room.”

As if in a dream, out of the corner of her eye she saw his hand rise up in the air to smack her on the face. Still disbelieving that he could hit her, she stared at him blankly and then managed to swing aside at the last instant.

She escaped the slap but that only enraged him. The second attempt burned her cheek. So she hit him back on the cheek, just as hard.

In a minute they were fiercely grappling on the bed like two children, except they had never grappled back when they were kids. Father had never approved of such brawls. For a few seconds Zeliha felt victorious, having hit him really hard, or so she thought. She was a tall, muscular woman and was not accustomed to feeling fragile. Like a champion in the ring, she clutched both hands in the air and saluted her invisible audience, delighted at her triumph: “I gotcha!”

It was then that he twisted her arm behind her back and got on top of her. This time everything was different. He was different. Holding her chest down with one arm, with his other hand he pulled up her skirt.

The very first thing she felt was mortification, and then more mortification. The sense of disgrace was so fervent there was no room inside her for any other feeling. She was instantly debilitated, almost frozen in a bashful kind of way, a way that revealed her upbringing, the embarrassment of being exposed in her underwear prevailing over everything else.

But then, in an instant, a surge of panic washed the humiliation away. She tried to block him with one hand while with the other she attempted to pull her skirt back down, but in next to no time he had lifted it again. She fought, he fought, she slapped him, he slapped her harder, she bit him, he punched her in the face, one single blow. She heard someone shriek “Stop!” at the top of her voice, shrill and inhuman, like an animal in a slaughterhouse. She did not recognize her own voice, just as she didn’t recognize her body, as though it were alien territory, when he entered it.

It was then that Zeliha noticed the KODAK balloon in the clear sky.

She closed her eyes as if it were a childhood game, hoping that if she didn’t see, she wouldn’t be seen. There were only sounds now, sounds and smells. His breathing got heavier, his hands on her breast and around her neck tightened. Zeliha feared he would strangle her, but the fingers soon loosened and the movement stopped. He made a wounded sound as he collapsed on top of her, his chest pressed against hers. She could hear his heartbeat race. What she couldn’t hear was her own. She felt like life had been drained away from her.

She did not open her eyes until he slumped over, now soft inside her. When he stood up, Mustafa could hardly walk. Wobbling, he made it across the room and leaned against the door, gasping for breath. He took in a deep breath and caught a mixed smell—sweat and rosewater. He stood there briefly, his back turned to his sister, before he could bring himself to move again and run out of the room.

As soon as he stepped into the corridor, he heard the outer door being opened, his family now back home. He hurried to the bathroom, locked the door, turned on the shower, but instead of getting in, he collapsed to his knees and threw up.

“Hello!!! Where’s everyone?” Banu’s voice came from the front room. “Anybody home?”

Zeliha rose to her feet and attempted to smooth down her clothes. Everything had happened so swiftly, perhaps she could convince herself that it hadn’t happened at all. But the face she saw in the mirror revealed a different story. There in the frame of her reflection, her left eye looked swollen with a purplish half circle under it. The very first thing Zeliha felt upon seeing her eye was a pang of guilt at her habitual skepticism. All these years she had snickered at cheesy action movies whenever someone got a purple eye, never believing that the human eye could swell that color with one blow.

Her face yes, but her body hadn’t been damaged, she concluded. She touched herself to see if she still had feeling. How come she could feel the touch of her fingers but nothing else? If she were hurt or sad, wouldn’t her body know? Wouldn’t she know?