The Debt of Tamar (16 page)

Reluctantly, Selim stepped away.

Catching a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror by the door, she tossed her hair casually, then headed away with only the slightest hint of hesitation.

When she was gone, he collapsed back onto the sofa. He sat there in what seemed to be a standoff with the journal. His eyes never wavered from its garish cover. The faint sheen of the green jacket seemed to glare back at him.

She wanted him to know, but did he? In an instant, the journal had become his home’s new center of gravity. Everything seemed to revolve around it. He got up to fix himself a cup of coffee, orbiting its perimeter as he made his way to the kitchen. On his way back into the living room, he eyed it suspiciously, considering it from his rotating vantage point. Selim placed his coffee and coaster down on the table then rose as quickly as he’d sat.

Eventually, he made his way to the dining table. He took hold of it, (or it of he?) He’d be late for work if he started reading now.

Work be damned.

He opened the journal of Ayda Turkman and this is what he learned.

Ayda was born in a tenement in Tarlabaci, a crumbling shantytown just a few miles away from some of Istanbul’s most elegant and renowned hotels. She’d attended an all-girls school at a government-funded orphanage on the fringes of the city.

Her mother lived in a bunker with a dozen other women at the toy factory where she worked long hours outside Istanbul. She’d take the bus into the city on Saturdays to visit her daughter. As gifts, she’d bring toys that she swiped from factory assembly-lines, stuffed beanies intended to be sold to European children who frequented souvenir shops around the Eiffel Tower and the piazzas of Rome.

The orphanage became Ayda’s permanent home the day of the big earthquake, when the shoddy roof of the dilapidated factory collapsed, trapping hundreds of assembly-line workers inside. No one thought to tell Ayda of this when it happened, and so, every Saturday for months, she would put on her good shoes and spend the afternoon looking out the window, waiting for her mother’s visit.

She grew up in that orphanage with dozens of other girls, sharing tears and beds and bedtime stories. When she was not studying or doing her chores, she spent her free time climbing up and down ladders, pulling dusty books from high shelves in forgotten corners of the library. Encyclopedia volumes were stacked in piles that doubled as nightstands. She’d return them all promptly, keeping only one encyclopedia volume for herself. No one would miss it, she reasoned. She was the only one at the orphanage to borrow books anyhow.

In the evenings, she would withdraw the volume and flip forward to a bookmarked entry entitled
family
. There were all types of families, as Ayda would discover. There were Eastern families and Western families, big families and small families. Conservative families and liberal families. There were mothers for daughters and fathers for sons. Brothers for sisters and sisters for brothers. It seemed that on every street in every city in every country of the world, children lived with families that loved them. “Why am I alone?” She went about trying to answer the question methodically, scouring translucent pages, pouring over encyclopedia volumes one at a time. In the end, she knew much about the world, but little more of herself.

At sixteen, Ayda discovered a stash of liquor stored under a loose floorboard at the orphanage. She waited until sundown to try the stuff. Completely intoxicated, she and a few other girls were laughing fiendishly by the time they’d finished the bottle. The girls’ laughter awoke the headmistress. After acknowledging her role as ring leader, Ayda was told to lay down on her bed, backside up, before the headmistress removed her belt and whipped her legs while the other girls looked on. The shame and embarrassment stung far worse than her wounds ever did. Alcohol was
haram
- forbidden according to the Koran.

The next morning, Ayda was called into the main office and told that her time in the orphanage was over. She was a corrupting influence on the other girls, a cancer that needed to be cut out before it spread. Hard as they’d tried, they’d failed to shape her into a respectable young woman. While they did not normally arrange marriages for girls younger than eighteen, these were special circumstances, the headmistress explained.

She was prohibited from attending classes and assigned to kitchen and cleaning duties for the next few weeks. One day, while scrubbing the communal toilet bowl, the door swung open and one of the staff members popped her head in. “Go pack up your things. Your suitor is coming to collect you in the morning.” Without waiting for a reply, she disappeared as quickly as she’d appeared.

Ayda looked down into the toilet bowl, while the door swung shut behind. She examined the reflection staring up at her, a face drowning in piss and shit and misery. She flushed the toilet frantically, once, twice, three times in vain, but the face was still there. Those eyes, big and black and miserable, were wide with fear and loathing. She collapsed over the toilet and cried a cry that held no tears.

In the afternoon, she was given a Koran as a parting gift, along with an empty orange crate in which to store her belongings. They weren’t much anyhow, an oversized pair of two-toned shoes, three or four grey uniforms, and a few stuffed beanies from a lifetime away...

Ayda took one look at her future husband, a man three inches shorter than she, with an oily head and a big round belly. She decided right then and there that she would never marry him.

As he looked her over, he flashed a creepy grin exposing a gold-capped front tooth. “Her hair always this wild?” he asked. His eyes were draped over Ayda but his words were directed to the headmistress.

“I’m afraid so, and I should warn you, Mr. Dogmaci, she refuses to cover it.”

With his wrinkled sleeve, he wiped the sweat dripping down his forehead, grunted, then licked his lips. “I’ll take care of that.” He reached for the ends of her tangled ringlets before taking her crate away from her. “Meet me at the car,” he instructed, before turning around and heading towards the lot.

She was bid farewell by friends who hugged her one last time. They stood in their uniforms, huddled in the doorway of the building’s entrance, their lanky arms waving goodbye as the rusty hatchback pulled away from the only home she’d ever known.

All throughout the car-ride, Mr. Dogmaci chatted on his cell phone while Ayda watched the world slip away like a river running in the wrong direction. They passed presidential palaces and old crumbling mosques. Streetcars bustled by and deliverymen on rusty bikes went about their business. Gypsy children threw themselves on the windshield begging for change at each traffic light, while Mr. Dogmaci barked out the window and threatened them with his fat, clenched fists.

The car, stuck in the afternoon traffic, stopped beside an old lady with an ancient face and silver hair cascading about eyes as big and black as the gentlest giant sea creature. While Mr. Dogmaci was laughing on his cell phone, Ayda rolled down the window.

The old lady approached and extended her hand. In it, she held a single red rose. Ayda accepted this gift without a word, the only true gift she’d received in the decade since her mother’s passing. Then, the old woman retreated to her rickety curbside stand, to eke out a living as her lifetime neared its dusk.

A half hour passed before the car stopped outside a concrete building surrounded by a patch of dry dirt. The grimy structure rose from the ground like an upturned brick left at an abandoned construction site.

He led her up the dusty path toward a dilapidated, ground-floor studio. Once inside, Ayda looked around the place. There was a bare mattress on the floor and a toilet (but no sink) separated from the rest of the room by a curtain stapled to the ceiling.

“Let’s eat!” Mr. Dogmaci announced. He prepared a single piece of broiled chicken. “You’ll be the one cooking the meals from now on,” he explained. When he was done eating, he offered up the remnants of his meal to Ayda. “There’s nutrition in the marrow,” he said as he passed her a plate of bones.

After clearing away the dishes, she retreated to the mattress. Exhausted and hungry, she dozed off into a fitful sleep while Mr. Dogmaci watched foreign videos on the faulty television set.

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed before she woke up to find him unzipping her jeans. She struggled to get to her feet, but quickly realized she didn’t stand a chance against his two hundred plus pounds. “Stop fidgeting! You know I didn’t get a penny for you.”

She pleaded for him to stop, but he just kept on rationalizing.

“No one would have taken you in,” he explained as he yanked the jeans from around her ankles. “I’m a charitable man, you understand?”

Ayda thought to scream, but when she turned toward the window and saw nothing but an abandoned parking lot, she blotted away her tears, grit her teeth, and forced herself to succumb to his touch. When he was done, he pushed her from the bed and told her to sleep on the floor.

Ayda waited until she could hear him wheezing in his sleep. Then she gathered her clothes and headed towards the door, snatching Mr. Dogmaci’s long overcoat on her way out. She slipped away from that drab apartment and on towards her unknown fate, running for half a mile before stopping to dress herself properly.

With nowhere to go, she lived under bridges alongside squatters and river rats. Eventually, she managed to land a job waiting tables at a sea-side café patronized by tourists wearing visors and oversized T-shirts and was taken in by the kind Armenian woman who owned the place.

She had been working long hours there for two years, when one day, something odd happened. She was told to take the week off. As it so happened, the restaurant had been rented out to a production crew who thought it a charming location to film the opening scenes of a sitcom pilot.

She headed over to the bizarre where she spent all of her savings on a cheap red dress. Then, she sat on set in her polyester frock, not being noticed for three days straight. On the fourth day, something extraordinary occurred.

It started with a sudden shriek, followed by gasps and groans. Then there was the sound of sirens in the distance. The sound grew stronger, until an ambulance with flashing lights arrived on scene. The leading lady was carted away with a fractured leg, having tripped while walking in high-heels along the old cobblestone street.

Ayda examined the director. He shook his head frantically as the ambulance pulled away. “What are we going to do now!” he shouted at his crew. “We need to finish the opening scene
today
! We’re not working on an unlimited budget, people!”

Ayda smoothed down her dress and made her way over to the director. She tapped gently on his shoulder causing him to turn abruptly.

“What!” he barked at her.

“I know all the lines. You can finish shooting today.”

The muscles in his face began to droop lamely. He stared at her blankly before his eyes narrowed and his face reddened. “Who the hell is this!”

“I know the lines,” she repeated calmly.

“Anyone know who this is!” he spun around and shouted to no one in particular.

“There’s no reason to delay production.” She swallowed a knot rising in her throat.

He blinked a few times, then shook his head. “Listen sweets, this is a professional production company. Experienced actors only. Go home.” He turned his back and walked away.

“I have experience!” She hurried after him and planted herself directly in his path. “Believe me, I have experience.”

He frowned and cursed under his breath, before spitting on the dry dirt and tossing the script in her direction. “You better not be wasting my time!” He hurried off and left Ayda standing in her cheap red dress, clutching the script in her arms and whispering thanks to Allah.

Selim was halfway through the journal when he heard footsteps down the hall. The knob squeaked as it turned. Ayda stepped in. Her hair was soaked and her mascara was running down her cheeks. At some point in the past hour, it had begun to pour. Selim hadn’t even noticed.

Her eyes moved to the journal that lay open on his lap. He studied her for a long moment. Setting the journal aside, he stood and made his way towards her. He took her face in his palms and wiped away streaks of mascara.

Beneath his blackened fingertips, her skin was soft with youth and warm with shame. The hem of her pants were discolored and muddied, and her hair—just hours before perfectly coiffed—was pulled back and soaked in a tangled bun.

The sight of her brought tears to his eyes. He took her in his arms, not sure if he was crying with her, crying for her, or perhaps, crying for himself.

His headaches were getting worse by the day. For a full year, Selim had suffered from the migraines. He drank black tea infused with jasmine, nearly overdosed on ibuprofen tablets, and stayed in bed sometimes all day. The doctors said it was stress. Selim assumed that it was the physical manifestation of guilt in his body, but after eleven months of growing pressure in his temples, Selim found out that his condition had been misdiagnosed from the very start.

It was his fourth visit to the doctor’s office in three months. Selim filled out the registration forms and returned the clipboard to Denize, the pretty nurse who took his blood pressure each time he visited. “Have a seat. We’ll let you know when the doctor is ready to see you, Mr. Osman.”

Selim took a seat in the brightly lit waiting area and leafed through a newspaper. The front page was taken up by just one article. He skimmed the story and learned that the nation’s most prominent writer would stand trial for “insulting Turkishness.” The author, a world-renowned Nobel laureate, was being punished for publicly acknowledging the Armenian Genocide. He faced up to three years in jail for his indiscretion. “You can’t stop progress,” Selim thought to himself, then went through a list in his mind of powerful individuals he could contact that might be able to aid in the man’s release.