Read Online Bitter Remedy by Conor Fitzgerald - Free Book Online Page A

watching land glide by, with people out and about walking with their children, climbing up to round towers as if this were perfectly normal. Nor had she been expecting to see quite so many ships. At one point, they were sailing so close to the land that she considered jumping and swimming what seemed like a few metres, where she could join the picnickers and dog walkers. They rounded a point and suddenly the water stretched far and wide, and there was no question of jumping. The shrubby land and excursionists had gone and now it was all coastal city, to the left and right and straight ahead.
    Alina, who had been lying with her head on Nadia’s lap, apparently asleep, sensed the movement and excited hubbub of ship passengers nearing the end of their journey, opened her eyes, and sat up. She pointed leftwards across the water at the jumble of white and grey apartment blocks and dark green trees. ‘Is that Istanbul?’
    Nadia was not entirely sure, but said it was.
    Alina was interested now, she stood up and looked westwards towards Europe. ‘Also on the other side?’
    ‘Sure.’
    ‘I didn’t know Istanbul was so big.’
    Neither did Nadia. The buildings looked prosperous from here, the sun was bright, and the water sparkled. As the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge came into sight, hope and happiness rushed into her lungs, pushing out the dread she had felt in the cabin below deck.
    They passed under the bridge, and another one came into sight. It was as they passed below, Alina looking solemnly and reverentially up at it, that the anxiety returned with redoubled force. Nadia had never been so far from home. She was in a boat sailing down a sea in the middle of a vast city. It seemed impossible that she should ever return. She went over and embraced Alina, who had fallen silent in the presence of the bridges, and tried to play the adult soothing a child. But when Alina returned the embrace, Nadia found herself burying her face into her friend’s shoulder and seeking as much comfort as she was giving.
    Olga had disembarked with the other six girls and was waiting for them. Nadia felt so much like a recalcitrant student on a day trip that she had to fight the urge to apologize. They breezed through customs and were divided into two taxis. Five of the girls were bundled into one, and Olga leaned over and gave the driver instructions. The taxi drove off and was immediately lost amidst the chaos of other taxis and vehicles of every description, from sleek German saloons to Russian trucks that smelled of home-heating oil. Then Alina, Nadia, and another girl, a wisp of a thing who seemed to be below the school-leaving age, squeezed into the back of a second taxi, sick with anticipation, longing, and dread. Olga sat in front, and, amazingly, started talking Turkish to the driver. She turned round and beamed at them.
    ‘You all look a bit tired from the journey, but I am sure I look much worse!’ She laughed, and said something to the taxi driver, perhaps a translation of her remark. The driver merely grunted.
    Fatigue and sensory overload from the sights and smells of Istanbul, now twinkling as the evening drew in, and, more than anything else, the constant unremitting noise of the place caused Nadia to become detached from and almost indifferent to all the many things that happened next.
    A man with fingers that smelled like rotten potatoes forced open her mouth at one point and stared down her throat, then fingered her teeth. An old man with a wet moustache weighed her breasts in his hands, his whole demeanour more medical than lustful, though he was clearly saying something disgusting in Turkish, a language she already hated, to his table companions. All the time Olga stood there, nodding her approval, chatting in Turkish, and, right in front of them, counting out euro banknotes.
    When they had walked into the bar, Olga had sat the girls down at a table, mysteriously empty in such a crowded, small place, and ordered them sweetened