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Authors: Barbara Nadel
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only playing a part.
The stall next to the cherry cart was selling plastic bowls, brushes and mops. It stood in front of a small shop that sold Muslim religious artefacts. There were wall hangings depicting the Kaa’ba in Mecca, the most holy place in Islam, CDs and tapes of religious lectures and music by musicians such as the British convert Yusuf Islam. There were tesbih prayer beads in every colour imaginable, small prayer mats for travelling and transparent lockets containing drops of water from the sacred Zamzam well in Saudi Arabia. A woman in full black chador stood outside, looking through the window at the CDs.
‘Can I help you, brother?’ an elderly, rather querulous voice asked.
Ayşe was about to answer until she realised that of course he had been talking to Hikmet.
‘Sister and I are just looking,’ she heard Yıldız say. So now she was his sister. That was OK. Except she knew that amongst the religious people, the word ‘sister’ did not necessarily mean that one was related. People were brothers and sisters in Islam. It was a graceful and gracious form of address and she remembered hearing it from her few visits back to her father’s old village. But it was not her.
‘So am I your sister now?’ she said to Yıldız as the two of them moved through the crowds of bearded men, covered woman and lots of children.
‘Ayşe,’ he said – she’d told him that he had to naturally call her that – ‘you cannot be my actual sister.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because some people, a few admittedly, know me round here.’
He only lived at most half a kilometre away. And busy as the market and its environs were, there was always the chance that he could bump into someone that either he or his brother knew.
They looked around some more stalls, most of them selling food or household goods, and then went to a small restaurant back on Macar Kardeşler Street, where they sat in the family room upstairs. This too made Ayşe feel like a fish out of water. Going to family rooms above restaurants, which people had been doing since time immemorial, was something she had done when she was young. She’d gone with her mother and her mother’s friends, sitting with them as they gossiped away from their husbands. Men could and would enter family rooms but only as Hikmet was doing now, with a female relative or with children. They both ordered mixed vegetables with rice and chips and some cans of Coca-Cola.
‘I haven’t eaten in one of these places in years,’ Ayşe said as she leaned across the table towards Hikmet Yıldız.
He frowned. ‘So where do you normally eat?’
‘If I eat out at all, it is in Beyoğlu,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I will stray down to Karaköy.’
These were very Westernised, very secular districts of the city, where women could and did eat on their own, if they wished. This place, with its family room, its groups of almost completely covered women and thickly bearded men, was a whole other world.
‘Did you find out anything in Beşiktaş?’ Hikmet Yıldız asked his superior. Ayşe had been to the street where Gözde Seyhan had died, before coming on to Fatih.
‘People had only just heard that the body was Gözde’s,’ she said. ‘There was a sort of subdued atmosphere. People were shocked, I think. All the talk I heard consisted of expressions of sympathy for the dead girl and her family. If Gözde was having some sort of relationship with the boy across the road, then I don’t think that was general knowledge.’
‘Beşiktaş isn’t conservative.’
‘Parts of it are,’ Ayşe said. ‘The Seyhans’ neighbours were a mixed bunch.’
‘Some foreigners.’
‘Americans.’ The Ford couple. The wife ran a website for expatriates in İstanbul.
The waiter came then, bringing them their food and drink. It was simple fare but it looked good, and again it was redolent of food that Ayşe had tasted since her very early childhood. It was as she was eating that she heard
The stall next to the cherry cart was selling plastic bowls, brushes and mops. It stood in front of a small shop that sold Muslim religious artefacts. There were wall hangings depicting the Kaa’ba in Mecca, the most holy place in Islam, CDs and tapes of religious lectures and music by musicians such as the British convert Yusuf Islam. There were tesbih prayer beads in every colour imaginable, small prayer mats for travelling and transparent lockets containing drops of water from the sacred Zamzam well in Saudi Arabia. A woman in full black chador stood outside, looking through the window at the CDs.
‘Can I help you, brother?’ an elderly, rather querulous voice asked.
Ayşe was about to answer until she realised that of course he had been talking to Hikmet.
‘Sister and I are just looking,’ she heard Yıldız say. So now she was his sister. That was OK. Except she knew that amongst the religious people, the word ‘sister’ did not necessarily mean that one was related. People were brothers and sisters in Islam. It was a graceful and gracious form of address and she remembered hearing it from her few visits back to her father’s old village. But it was not her.
‘So am I your sister now?’ she said to Yıldız as the two of them moved through the crowds of bearded men, covered woman and lots of children.
‘Ayşe,’ he said – she’d told him that he had to naturally call her that – ‘you cannot be my actual sister.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because some people, a few admittedly, know me round here.’
He only lived at most half a kilometre away. And busy as the market and its environs were, there was always the chance that he could bump into someone that either he or his brother knew.
They looked around some more stalls, most of them selling food or household goods, and then went to a small restaurant back on Macar Kardeşler Street, where they sat in the family room upstairs. This too made Ayşe feel like a fish out of water. Going to family rooms above restaurants, which people had been doing since time immemorial, was something she had done when she was young. She’d gone with her mother and her mother’s friends, sitting with them as they gossiped away from their husbands. Men could and would enter family rooms but only as Hikmet was doing now, with a female relative or with children. They both ordered mixed vegetables with rice and chips and some cans of Coca-Cola.
‘I haven’t eaten in one of these places in years,’ Ayşe said as she leaned across the table towards Hikmet Yıldız.
He frowned. ‘So where do you normally eat?’
‘If I eat out at all, it is in Beyoğlu,’ she said. ‘Sometimes I will stray down to Karaköy.’
These were very Westernised, very secular districts of the city, where women could and did eat on their own, if they wished. This place, with its family room, its groups of almost completely covered women and thickly bearded men, was a whole other world.
‘Did you find out anything in Beşiktaş?’ Hikmet Yıldız asked his superior. Ayşe had been to the street where Gözde Seyhan had died, before coming on to Fatih.
‘People had only just heard that the body was Gözde’s,’ she said. ‘There was a sort of subdued atmosphere. People were shocked, I think. All the talk I heard consisted of expressions of sympathy for the dead girl and her family. If Gözde was having some sort of relationship with the boy across the road, then I don’t think that was general knowledge.’
‘Beşiktaş isn’t conservative.’
‘Parts of it are,’ Ayşe said. ‘The Seyhans’ neighbours were a mixed bunch.’
‘Some foreigners.’
‘Americans.’ The Ford couple. The wife ran a website for expatriates in İstanbul.
The waiter came then, bringing them their food and drink. It was simple fare but it looked good, and again it was redolent of food that Ayşe had tasted since her very early childhood. It was as she was eating that she heard
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