“Mama,” you say, picking up the gold-embossed envelope and placing the spoon on the plastic-covered dining table. “Who’s getting married?”
Your mother pinches her collar, glances at your father who watches the news, another report on Schröder’s labor reforms, and then turns to you: “Elif.”
“Which Elif?”
“How many Elifs do you know?” she snaps.
“It’s Evren’s cousin Elif,” you say to yourself, and before you can push the half-eaten bowl of mercimek soup aside, your mother snatches it from in front of you.
“Is Evren back?” you ask, following her to the kitchen but stopping in the doorway.
Your mother looks over your shoulder into the living room to where your father is spread out on the couch and then puts a stern finger to her pressed lips.
It’s not the question, but Evren’s name, that triggers memories entwined with hot coils of shame and danger that make your mother sick. She didn’t hide the invitation because it’s easier for her to predict your actions once she witnesses your reaction. This is how you know her. This is how she knows you.
“Is she here?” you ask. “Just tell me for Allah’s sake.”
In a single movement, your mother closes the distance from sink to doorway, and through her teeth says, “Don’t talk so loudly.” The air from her nostrils blows warm onto your lips. There’s the same desperation in her eyes from years ago. “Yes, she came from Türkiye for the wedding. Are you happy now?”
You pull your shoes from the rack in the hallway. You have the night shift at the call center this week.
“I don’t think we’ll go to the wedding,” your mother continues, leaning against the wall as you tie your sneakers. “Your father’s covering for a coworker that Saturday.”
You leave earlier than usual. She knows why.
You’re sixteen. On weekends, families gather, taking turns visiting each other. Women cook, laugh, and gossip in the kitchen while the men sit in the living room and drink lukewarm whiskey cola and watch soccer games or Islamic debates on TRT. Children and teens are all caged up in a kid’s room that barely measures a hundred square feet. The boys play soccer with a tennis ball and the girls lounge on the bed, run fingers through each other’s hair, pop a blackhead here and there, wonder if the tiniest tampon could break a hymen, and whether to close your lips around your tongue during a French kiss — if it ever happens.
On those nights, you look to Evren with rapt attention as she tells her stories.
“And then,” Evren says, exposing the underside of her tongue, which you can see because you are resting your head in her lap — the blue veins thick with blood, “he pushed me against the wall and gripped my shoulders. Gosh, they still hurt,” she rubs her left arm. “And slowly pressed his tongue into my mouth and wiggled it.”
“You tongue-kissed like in the movies?” Beyza asks, rising to her knees and pressing a pillow to her stomach. She is the only one among you wearing a hijab and going to Quran lessons.
“No,” Evren says. “Different.”
“How?” you ask. She looks down, her long brown hair closing around the two of you like a grand drape. You look at the crescent-shaped scar on her chin. You’ve never asked her how she got it because asking would mean admitting how many times you’ve looked.
“Like, he sucked my tongue.”
You must look like a fool because Evren goes on to explain, “Okay, Havva, imagine me sucking on your tongue up and down like an ice pop, right? Yes? That’s how he did it.”
No, you try not to imagine Evren sucking your tongue, your bodies pressing into one another, sinking and sinking till unspoken sin fills both your lungs. You and Evren aren’t close friends — she lives in a different neighborhood, goes to a different school — but on these nights, the distinction means nothing. And when the tennis ball lands on the bed, you shout and curse because the boys have disturbed your efforts of suppression.
“She is going to be a lawyer,” Evren’s mother brags to the women in the pot-boiling, pan-frying kitchen. She goes to the Hardenberg-Gymnasium — the only Turk in her class and in the community to go to prep school. You attend the Hauptschule, like the rest of the Kanaks in your neighborhood. But you admire her, want to be like her. You want her silky hair, her big olive eyes, her thick lower lip, her strawberry cheeks. Her.
You’re two hours into your shift. The plastic clip of your headset digs into your left temple. You’re sandwiched between Beyza and Banu, the three of you sitting in the same row of cubicles. Although you insist on switching seats so they can chat in Turkish without getting in trouble, they refuse.
“She lives in Ankara now,” Beyza says to Banu, leaning back in her chair.
“That’s what my mother said, too,” Banu replies, pulling her headset down. “Apparently she divorced the guy her parents made her marry within a year and has been living by herself all this time.”
You think of the detour you took on the way to work this evening. You drove by the Hardenberg-Gymnasium — it hasn’t changed since Evren left five years ago. The four-story sandstone building still has its copper-clad tower and lattice fence. You continued down main street and took a left turn onto the cobblestone side street where Elif and her parents live. Cars snugly lined the entire street, the neck of the rearview mirrors adorned with Turkish soccer team flags, evil eye amulets, and prayer beads. You stopped the car and rolled down the window to look up to the second floor. The curtains were drawn but flashes of blue and white from the television came through. You heard laughter, music, chatter. It’s the home of a bride-to-be and until the wedding, every day is a celebration, especially when relatives from Türkiye arrive, like Evren.
You thought you could hear her — the rolling of her r, the vocal fry at the end of each Turkish sentence. But you weren’t sure. It’s been years, after all. You got out of the car and walked to the intercom. Elif’s family name written on a piece of fabric band-aid. You had no intention of ringing the bell, acting as if nothing had happened, as if five years were enough time to fill the emptiness she left behind. You realized you were no longer angry. You just wanted to stand right there for a bit, leave a piece of your spirit as a reminder to her that you still exist, that you didn’t forget, that you’re here, waiting.
“Havva?” Banu’s voice pulls you back. “Weren’t the two of you like best friends?”
“Me and Evren? No,” you say, perhaps too quickly. “I just, you know, saw her whenever the families got together. We were all friends back then.”
“Yeah, but you and Evren seemed to have a special connection. Am I right, Beyza?”
Beyza nods, her mouth full of sesame simit.
“You know what they say,” Banu says, her eyes widening just enough, a smirk forming, “about Evren?”
You sense what is coming and turn back to your computer screen.
“Half of the girls in our neighborhood marry some idiot and get a divorce to live on their own. Evren probably did the same, though for other reasons.”
“We don’t know that for sure,” Beyza says and opens her palms. “Allah, may you protect us and our loved ones from such sickness.”
The next day, you and your mother take the twenty-minute bus ride to the city center. Your father has decided the family is going to Elif’s wedding after all. “They came to Volkan’s wedding two years ago and pinned two hundred marks at the takı. I won’t let people say Hasan knows how to take but not how to give,” he said. It was always marks for him, as if the euro had never happened, as if anything could change in this family.
Your mother sits down in the single seat behind the bus driver while you walk to the rear. You know why she sits alone. She doesn’t know how to form the words, how to approach the unapproachable — the thing she meticulously folded and tucked away five years ago. You imagine her saying, “Don’t go fucking around at the wedding,” and this makes you giggle. She would eat pork before saying such a thing.
A woman who surrenders to desire even in thought is a whore, and a woman who holds back is respectable, honorable, pure, worthy. A woman whose sexual desire takes a perverse turn must be removed from the community. And the mother of such a monster must mourn and lament her fate, beating her chest and thighs, crying, “Seni doğuracağıma taş doğursaydım.”
To give birth to a stone. Sometimes you feel like your mother did exactly that.
Together, you walk into the discount store — it smells of cardboard, vinegar, and naphthalene. The family that runs the oldest Döner Kebab shop in the city has opened an import-export store, selling everything from luggage sets and prayer rugs to bedlahs, sünnet outfits, and cheap deadstock for any occasion: brittle faux-leather jackets already peeling at the cuffs, scratchy polyester blouses with machine-cut lace collars, velour track pants with misaligned pockets and shedding rhinestones.
“Are you sure these clothes haven’t been worn before?” you ask your mother, sniffing a sleeve that smells like stale detergent and trapped mustiness.
“Here,” she says, pressing a hanger against your collarbone. “Wear your long cardigan with it.”
The long black dress with quarter sleeves looks more like a parachute. Unlike your two other dresses — one with a generous open back and the other skin-hugging and mid-length — this piece will hide every feminine line you possess, and your long cardigan will cover the movement of your ass and hips.
Only two years ago, your mother helped you pick out those two other dresses at the department store. She gave you advice on what kind of dress to choose to accentuate your womanly richness — back when whatever happened with Evren had been buried deep enough to mistake for gone. To pass for hope.
You follow her around the store. She approaches a clothing table where everything is clumped together in a pyramid and squeezes herself in between two other women and begins to sort. You look at her from across the table. Her hands grip a sequined top the color of pomegranate skin — the same hands that scrub the stairwells of apartment buildings every morning before dawn, hands raw from industrial bleach. Your mother is only thirty-nine years old, but she looks as if she has lived this exact life for the fifth time.
Five years ago. The lunch bell rings, and all the students spill out into the courtyard. In the midst of cursing, popping gum, and cigarette smoke, she stands there like a dream. She gives you a brazen grin and curls her index finger, beckoning you to follow. You leave with Evren even though you have two more classes.
“Did you skip school to come here?” you ask.
“Yes,” she says as if you asked her if she, too, breathes air. “Wanna go shopping?”
“I have no money.”
“Who said you need money?”
You walk into a boutique that sells bold and loud clothes like the ones in the Bravo and Mädchen magazines. Evren already has a pile of clothes hooked inside her elbow and is making her way to the fitting room. She tells you to pick whatever you want, but before you can try anything on, she knocks on the door and tells you to meet her outside.
She has to pee bad, she says, so you walk with her the two blocks to the only McDonald’s in town. In the bathroom, she pulls you into the stall with her. Piece by piece, Evren strips layer upon layer of stolen clothes. Strings of her hair cling like seaweed to her damp throat, and the last halter-top, the one touching her skin, is saturated with large, dark patches of her sweat.
“I told you, you don’t need money,” she grins, standing in the claustrophobic stall in a black lace bra that is too mature for her breasts and white cotton briefs with black hearts.
The sharp smell of her sweat and the wafting scent of boiling grease make you lightheaded. When you reach for the door handle, she shoves the sweaty halter-top against your chest. “This one is for you,” she says. You stuff the top under your sweater — you can’t possibly stand inches away from her in your bra. You’ll try it on later.
You leave the McDonald’s and sit on the backrest of a park bench, sharing a single cigarette. Evren pulls out a little pink bottle from her jacket pocket.
“This is also for you,” she says, holding it out. “It’ll smell good on you.”
You take it. It still has the “Tester” sticker on the bottle.
“Try it,” she says.
You spritz a little on the side of your neck before Evren snatches the bottle and sprays it all over you, giggling like a goat.
“Let me smell,” she says.
You let her nose touch your neck right underneath your left earlobe — it tickles a little.
She pulls back. “It smells really good on you,” Evren says and winks. “You’re going to make the boys crazy.”
Later that night, the ER doctor tells your mother that it was just bruising and no bones were broken. When the doctor presses on and your mother’s sweaty palm holds and caresses the side of your face, her tears still silently falling, you tell the doctor that two skinheads beat you up, calling you a dirty Kanak. No need for charges — your family doesn’t want to draw attention to itself.
This was a lie, of course.
When you came home after “shopping” with Evren, your father gave out badges of disobedience. He was beating some Allah into you because he smelled the flower shop on his otherwise dull teen daughter. Your mother shouted that it was enough, that you had enough. Then she pounded her fists on his back, but he was no man to stop just because his wife told him so.
The next weekend at Beyza’s, Evren strokes your eyebrow, lays weightless kisses all over your face, kisses your hands and promises to get revenge by beating up a random German kid who would have to pay for the wrongdoing of his fellow countrymen.
“Allah teaches us forgiveness,” Beyza insists.
“Beyza is right,” says Banu, sitting up on the twin-sized mattress. “She knows because she goes to Quran lessons.”
“Shut up, Banu, or I’ll practice on you first,” Evren replies.
You’re fourteen. It’s another Saturday night in the kids’ room. The boys wrestle on the floor — one is Diesel, the other Bret Hart, and a third is a referee slapping the carpet.
Beyza had her first Quran lesson yesterday.
“Were there any cute boys?” Evren asks, braiding Banu’s hair.
“It’s not like that,” Beyza says, sitting cross-legged on the bed. “It’s serious. We learned about what happens after you die.”
“What happens?” you ask.
Looking at each of you as if she has been appointed to deliver this, Beyza begins:
“After death, the Muslim soul travels to the place without name. A space that holds both — paradise and hell. Hell is below and paradise above. A thread thinner than a single strand of hair separates the two realms. The soul must walk on that thread to cross to the other, unknown side.”
The boys go quiet. Diesel still has Bret Hart in a headlock but neither moves.
“Beneath, flames of sin spurt on a lake of translucent blood and above, a star-studded indigo field shines down on the soul. The pure, sinless one will walk across that thin thread as if it were made of steel. But the corrupted soul will shake and tremble, arms flailing to keep balance. The sinner will fall deep and hit the bottom of a flaming ocean, lying paralyzed with all the other condemned souls, looking overhead through the blood and fire, wondering who will fall or ascend to paradise.”
No one speaks. You can hear the mothers laughing in the kitchen, a pot lid clanging.
“If River Phoenix is lying down there,” Evren says, inspecting her split ends. “Then I want to lie next to him.”
It only happened twice.
The first time was at a sünnet ceremony in late August. Three months after your father beats you. Your families sit at a table together, and you and Evren sit next to each other. She whispers in your ear, snickering, telling you which boy was looking at her, which one she finds cute, which one she wants to make out with.
Evren pulls you up and drags you to the dance floor. She has her own way of dancing — throwing a hip forward, her long hair back, swaying her shoulders to the piercing sound of the zurna, and curving her hips and wrists like a belly dancer to the beat of the darbuka.
Because Evren needs to retouch her makeup, she grabs your wrist and steers you toward the restrooms, turning briefly to shoot you a quick smile. It is jam-packed. The bathroom stinks of cigarette smoke and sweet body lotion. Girls press their hipbones against the sink like fans in the first row of a boy-band concert to get a glimpse at the mirror.
“I’ll wait outside,” you say to Evren, but she pulls you into an empty stall anyway.
“Fucking sluts always in front of the mirror,” Evren shouts loud enough for some girls to bang at the door.
“Havva, you’re going to be my mirror,” she says as she retrieves a kohl pencil from her clutch purse. “Go over the black lines in the inner corners of my eyes.”
“What if I mess it up?” you say, flipping the kohl pencil like a knife in your hand and pointing the tip toward Evren’s face. “Worse, what if I accidently stab your eye and you go blind?”
Evren says nothing. She just looks at you, surely contemplating such a tragic outcome, but then she bursts out laughing. You both laugh and double over, even knocking heads together only to laugh more. When the laughing comes to an end, Evren takes control of your hand and guides the movement of the pencil, her mouth slightly open in anticipation. She lets go and you feel her lips on yours. The kohl pencil drops. With her hands on your shoulders, Evren pushes you against the wall and you kiss and kiss and kiss.
She is the universe and you are Allah’s first female creation — that is the meaning of your names. And in that moment of bliss, no sin exists.
The following Monday, she shows up at your school again, after classes end. The usual mischievous smirk all over her face.
“Do you have to go home right away?” she asks.
“I can stay out for a bit,” you say.
“Let’s go to my place. My parents are at work.”
You take the bus to Evren’s neighborhood, a small, self-sustaining Turkish community with its own halal butchers, legal office, a mosque above a jewelry store, and two travel agencies that finance trips to Türkiye and Mecca.
Although you sit next to each other on the bus, your knees occasionally touching, Evren is quiet. You rest your forehead on the window — when was the last time you set foot in Evren’s apartment? You conjure up memories of her room, the things that belong to her only: a shoebox tape recorder next to a stack of cassettes labeled by dates and book titles (she told you she records herself reading), a yellow paperback titled Die Verwandlung, a colorful pile of braided bracelets with frayed tips adoring classmates made for her.
Even during the two-minute walk from the bus stop to the apartment, Evren remains silent. Did you do something wrong in the bathroom stall the other day? Maybe you should have left a gap between you and her instead of wrapping your arms around her waist and pressing yourself into her. Or worse, is she going to convince you that it was all but a dream?
The living room is as you remember. The taupe tweed sectional still stands in the same corner, the same plastic peony centerpiece is placed on the doily-covered coffee table, the China cabinet holds the same pictures: Evren with her parents on either side, her arms around their necks, Evren sticking out her tongue at the beach in Bodrum. Does she still record herself reading? Has the pile of bracelets grown? Evren turns on the television in the living room — the door to her room remains closed.
On MTV, Tracy Chapman is singing, “You got a fast car…” when Evren stands next to the sofa. She reaches into the bowl of sunflower seeds she has brought in from the kitchen and finally breaks her silence, asking, “We’re still friends, right?”
“Of course,” you say, reaching up and bringing down a handful of sunflower seeds. One by one, you crack them with your teeth.
Evren sits down. She readjusts herself on the sofa, pulling one leg up so that her knee touches your thigh. She is quiet again like on the bus. The sunflower hulls in your fist cut into your palm.
“Don’t you want to leave this place, Havva?”
“I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it,” you say. You do not take your eyes off the television.
“You should read. You learn how much is out there. You and me, we could have a piece of it and much more. They scare us into believing it’s not possible. But I’m not scared. My parents think I’ll study law here and live with them and then go on to partner up with Hikmet in his legal office. Why would I want to translate letters from banks and tax offices, figure out how to avoid exchange rates, and barely get paid because it’s my fucking communal duty?”
“So what’s your plan?”
“I’m going to attend university in Cologne. It’s far enough and I have no relatives there. I can do whatever I want with whomever I want.”
The lead singer of Republica is singing into a megaphone: “You’re strange, insane…” Evren turns up the volume and places the remote back on the coffee table. She stuffs the sunflower hulls in her hand in between the cushions and wipes her hand before laying it on your lower abdomen. When you don’t refuse her touch, she unbuttons your pants and slides her hand inside. The zipper pulls itself down. Her hand is cold and damp.
“Is this okay?” she whispers.
You nod and take two short, involuntary breaths before closing your eyes, clenching your fist till the sunflower hulls break skin.
Evren rests her arms around your hips while her head pushes against your pelvic bone. You look up to the ceiling, to a dark spot that might be a hole or the remains of a dead bug. Your lashes flutter as you feel like a seashell that listens to its own drowning music.
Evren puts her head on your naked thigh. You can’t look at her, at her wet smile, at her eyes full of anticipation. You stare at the dark spot on the ceiling, wishing it could swallow you both.
What happened afterward stitches itself into your flesh and memory in fragments. Evren’s mother enters the living room. You pull up your pants. Evren bolts up from the floor, from between your legs, her face white like her teeth. Her mother screams. Then Evren screams too, at you, her face unrecognizable like a mask. You aren’t normal. You’re sick. You’re a monster.
You don’t ride the bus or wander the neighborhood. Your black sneakers take you right back to your mother. When you reach your tenement, you have lost the feeling in your pinky toes from clenching them. You unlock the front door and find your mother already waiting for you at the dining table, her fist inside her mouth trembling. Evren’s mother has already called.
“Take off your shirt, Havva,” she orders, getting up from the table.
“Why?”
“I said take it off, or do you want me to hit you where it will show? What did you do to that girl?”
“Nothing.”
“What did you two do?” and with that she raises her fist to the heavens the way she did right before she brought it down on your father’s back that time she tried to defend you. You catch it before it can land on your body. You hold her wrist and then catch her other hand. You struggle and push each other from one wall and one piece of furniture to another in silence — the chime and trill of the porcelain cups and crystal glasses against the glass shelves of the China cabinet the only noise as you and your mother collapse on the floor exhausted.
“If your own life means anything to you,” your mother begins, resting her head on the side of the couch and gripping your feet, “you won’t say a word to a soul. You’re going to hurry up and get married, and what you do afterward is your own business. Or, you’re going to rot within these walls with us.” She is breathing heavily, her hands — forever red and swollen from industrial cleaners — now rest upturned in her lap. “My lamb, that’s the only way I can protect you.”
Elif’s wedding, like any other Turkish wedding in Germany, is held in a school gym. Folding tables covered with white paper cloths are set with stacked cups filled with plastic cutlery for the rotisserie chicken. Two-liter bottles of discount soft drinks are distributed on each table as well as bowls of mixed, roasted nuts. At the entrance, two girls in pastel yellow greet the guests with a candy basket and kolonya.
You sit with your parents and some old neighbors at the last table in the far corner. With your back to the entrance, your eyes on the wood-paneled wall, you sit next to your mother. The space begins to warm up, get louder, and the band sets the mood for the youth. You don’t look around, maybe a slight right turn to peek at the dance floor. But that’s it. Behind you, the gym fills. Chairs scrape, voices layer, children dart between tables. Somewhere in this room, Evren is breathing the same air.
Evren, see me. See me now, Evren. Come over to my table and tell me how long it has been. Pull me up to my feet and embrace me. Don’t mind our mothers. Say you have to fix your makeup and lock us in the stall. Kiss me to the beat of the davul and ask me to come with you to live in Ankara.
Beyza and Banu startle you.
“Did you see Evren? She looks gorgeous,” Beyza says, smoothing her new pink silk hijab, glancing around to see who notices.
“Well, she did gain some weight,” Banu says, hand on one hip — her usual pose when sizing up another woman’s body.
Your mother pinches your thigh under the table.
“Where is she?” you ask.
Your mother pinches harder.
“I think I saw her go outside,” Beyza says, turning to the entrance.
You try to get up, but your mother’s hand on your thigh pushes you down.
“Havva, where do you think you’re going?”
You pull yourself free and stand. The feelings you once laid to rest years ago now tickle your throat. You only wish Beyza and Banu weren’t following you.
Outside, the sky is cloudless but not dark enough to reveal blinking stars. You look around and see her. She is alone, standing farther down the street. Elbow propped on her hand, she smokes a cigarette, her red fingernails flicking the ash into the dusk. She wears a green pencil dress, her hair still long, still brown, swept over one shoulder and spilling down her chest like a shampoo model’s.
You take off your cardigan and tie it around your waist. You’re going to stand here and wait until she sees you too.
“Don’t talk to her,” Banu says, rubbing her arm. “Everyone knows about her. You don’t want anyone to assume the same of you.”
“Assume what exactly, Banu?” you ask.
You want her to say it, to call upon that word no one wants to utter.
“You know,” she says, squirming and not finishing.
Beyza rolls her eyes and hugs herself. “It’s cold. Let’s go back in, and I don’t want my mother to think I smoke or that…”
“I’m not cold,” you say.
“Come on, Banu, let’s go,” Beyza says and locks arms with her.
They leave and you take a deep breath.
Has she always smoked her cigarettes like this, blowing the smoke with her chin up, her mouth an erupting volcano? Evren stubs out her cigarette and walks toward the door, toward you. Right before she passes by you, she nods. She’s almost out of reach. One more step and the smell of her perfume will be gone forever, like your father’s bruises. You reach for her arm and when you blink, your heart begins to beat again. All she needs to say are three words.
Come. With. Me.
“How,” you begin but you must look up to the sky otherwise your tears will drown you. “How are you?”
Evren looks at your hand that still holds her arm. You’re not ready to let go, to untouch her.
“I’m fine,” she says and when she tries to take the next step, you pull her back.
“I didn’t forget. I remember everything,” you say.
“Like it was yesterday,” she replies, closing the gap between the two of you. “It was because of what we did that my parents sent me to Türkiye. Do you have any idea what I had to suffer through?”
You reach out to touch her face because you see tears welling up.
“Don’t touch me,” she catches your hand and holds it, bringing it down while interlacing it with her fingers. Neither of you speak. You look at each other, and you wonder if her eyes are holding the same tears as yours.
She lets go and walks away. You watch her go. The stars are all out now, some brighter than others.
You go back inside and take your seat next to your mother. When she puts her hand on your thigh under the table, you hold her there. You don’t release her, even when she gently yanks and struggles to get out of your grip. She eventually gives up and relaxes but you keep her with you. People eat, dance, sing along, beat their unruly children. The entire gym is vibrating beneath your feet but you keep looking at the paneled wall. The piece of spirit you had left behind for Evren comes back and floats overhead like a leaf swimming on water and whispers into your ear: The thread might be thinner than a single strand of hair, but you’re already halfway across.
