A Mind at Peace (2 page)

On the Island of İhsan, whatever one did was tolerated; each phantasy, each curiosity was met, if not with a chuckle then with a smirk. The lord of the island wanted it so; he believed if things were this way, everyone would be content. Brick by brick, he’d built this happiness over long years. Now, however, fate was testing him a second time. İhsan was infirm.
Today’s the eighth day,
thought Mümtaz. They’d come to believe that even-numbered days would pass quietly.

Shrugging off the daze brought on by poor sleep, Mümtaz plodded downstairs. Little Sabiha had put on his slippers and was sitting resentfully in the open hall.

Mümtaz couldn’t bear the way the wild sylph sat silently so. Granted, Ahmet was reserved too. But he was this way by nature. He felt forever blameworthy. Especially since he’d learned the heartrending circumstances of his birth – from whom? How? A mystery. Perhaps one of the neighbors had told him – he was always in a corner and always felt awkward at home. Were he indulged overly much, he’d assume they were patronizing him and tears would well in his eyes. Misfortune of this sort was rife. Some were condemned from birth – the reed stalk snapped off on its own. Not Sabiha, who was their enchanted fairy tale. She wandered about, spun yarns, and sang songs. Her jubilation, the riot and ruckus she made, often reverberated over the Island of İhsan.

She’d hardly slept at all for three days. Feigning sleep on the broad divan in the oriel window, she’d watched over her father with the others.

With delight, Mümtaz regarded the nymph’s wan countenance and sunken eyes as much as he possibly could. Her hair had been missing its bow now for days.

“I won’t wear the red ribbon now. When father gets better, I’ll dress up!” she’d said three days ago with her usual coquetry and through the grin and charm that appeared when she wanted to be friendly. When Mümtaz showed her some affection, however, she began to weep. Sabiha wept in two ways. The first was a childish cry, the forced cry of one playing the brat: Her face contorted, her voice hit an odd pitch, and she kicked and stomped; all told, like every child swathed in selfishness, she became a petite afreet.

Then there was the way she cried when confronted by genuine sorrow, to the extent that her young mind was able to grasp, a suppressed and halting cry. At least she’d withhold her tears for a while. Her expression changed, her lips trembled, and she averted her wet eyes. She wouldn’t square her shoulders as with the other, but virtually let them droop. These were tears she shed when she felt ignored, belittled, or treated unfairly. When she did shut off the rest of the family from her child’s
âlem,
a world she so wanted to make decent and cordial, an eternally vibrant realm embellished with coral branches and mother-of-pearl flowers, Mümtaz sensed that even her red velvet ribbon had lost its luster.

Sabiha had chanced upon the bow herself a few months after her second birthday. She’d simply handed her mother a dark red ribbon that she’d found on the ground and demanded, “Tie it in my hair.” Thereafter she wouldn’t stand to have it removed. Over the years, the ribbon had grown from a fashion accessory into a signature item. A red ribbon marked everything of Sabiha’s, and she handed them out like a queen bestowing knighthood. Kittens, dolls, objects of which she was fond – particularly her new bedstead – everyone and everything that was the object of her affections received one. Not to mention that the honor might even be revoked by special proclamation. On one occasion, the cook had scolded her for acting spoiled and, not satisfied with that, complained to her mother, sending Sabiha into a tantrum; later the girl politely requested that the cook remove the bow she’d given her. The truth of the matter was that Sabiha’s dainty girlhood warranted such rewards and punishments. At any rate, she was the one who had established the sole sultanate of the house before the onset of the disease. Even Ahmet found his little sister’s dominion, which had begun to take root in everyone’s heart, natural. For Sabiha had arrived after a tragedy that had shaken the house to its foundations. Certainly, Macide was still unstable when she’d given birth to her. And Macide’s return to life and sanity coincided with Sabiha’s birth. Macide’s affliction hadn’t passed completely. She suffered small episodes: concocting stories as before, giving her voice the cadence of a sweet little girl’s, or for hours on end waiting at the window – or wherever she happened to be – for the return of Zeynep, the oldest daughter about whom she never spoke.

The accident was a misfortune of epic proportions. İhsan and the doctors had done everything within their power to keep news of the tragedy from Macide, but no one could conceal the distress and anguish from this woman yet writhing through her first contractions. In the end Macide learned of what had befallen her daughter from the nurses. From where she lay, she dragged herself with difficulty to the body, saw the corpse laid out, and stood petrified before it. After that she wasn’t herself again.

She lay in bed with a high fever for days, giving birth to Ahmet in that state.

One June morning eight years ago Zeynep had come with her grandmother Sabire to the hospital, only later to remember that she’d forgotten to bring her gift; without telling anyone, she went out to the front of the hospital to await her father, and in a moment of distraction, the girl, pondering God knows what, was spirited away by Death.

İhsan, who’d persuaded his wife to give birth in a hospital, under the sway of doctors claiming that she displayed truly severe symptoms, never forgave himself. He witnessed the devastation minutes after the fact, the body yet warm, still bloody, and he carried his daughter into the hospital only to witness the quiet passing of last hopes.

Fate had orchestrated the tragedy so that nobody bore responsibility. Not once had Macide wanted her daughter to visit the hospital. Sabire withstood the girl’s insistence and tears for two full days. İhsan hadn’t been able to find a single taxi to take him to the hospital in time and was forced to come by streetcar. Hoping against hope to locate an empty cab on the way, he’d even ridden on the trolley’s steps. Many held him responsible. But Ahmet lived with the burden of death more than the others did.

Mümtaz found Ahmet at the foot of his father’s bed, ready to scurry at the slightest gesture. Macide stood, fiddling absently with a loose strand of yarn from her wool cardigan.

On seeing Mümtaz, İhsan ws heartened, his face sanguine again. His chest rose and fell slowly. In the morning sunlight, to Mümtaz, he appeared much thinner than he actually was. His stubbled chin lent his face a strange mien. His condition seemed to imply, “I’m nearly done with being İhsan. Soon I’ll be something else or I’ll be nothing at all. I’m preparing for that eventuality!”

He made a vague sign with his infirm hand.

Mümtaz leaned toward the bed. “I haven’t read the papers yet. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” he said.

In truth, he was convinced of the approach of war. “When the world is about to slough its skin, mayhem is inevitable.” İhsan, with whom he always discussed current events, would often repeat this quote by Albert Sorel. To this warning, Mümtaz now added the bitter prediction of a poet he quite admired: “This is the end of Europe.” But he couldn’t discuss such things at present. İhsan lay ailing.

From where İhsan lay, he contemplated the situation. His hand fell to the quilt in a gesture of pleading and despair.

“How did he pass the night?”

“There’s been no change, Mümtaz,” Macide answered in her gentle voice like a dream of spring grass. “He’s always and forever the same.”

“Were you able to sleep at all?”

“I lay down here together with Sabiha. But I couldn’t sleep.”

She gestured to the divan with her hand, grinning. She might have indicated this spot where she’d slept for five days, as if pointing to a gallows with horror and a shudder. But for Macide, this astounding and exceedingly precious creature, her smile made up half her character. So much so, she was unrecognizable without it.
Thank God those days are behind us!
The days when Macide had lost her smile were over.

“Why don’t you sleep for a spell?”

“After you return ... I couldn’t sleep all night for the train whistles. I wonder if troops are being mobilized or some such thing?”

İhsan pointed to Macide. “This one – ” He stopped as if powerless to finish his words. Then he mustered his strength and continued, “Give this one a word of advice.”

Good God, his labored speech. This man, who was the most articulate of anyone Mümtaz knew, whose classroom lectures, conversations, and repartees would stay with him for days, could barely string together these few words. But he was content nevertheless. Despite everything, the “old codger” – this was his expression – had come through. He’d been able to express himself. Mümtaz would, of course, find a way to keep Macide from exhausting herself; İhsan’s eyes, fixed as they were on the young gentleman’s face, lost all focus.

Stepping outside, Mümtaz stared at the street as if he were observing it in the wake of a long absence. At the entrance to the mosque opposite the house, an urchin toying with a length of twine gazed at fig branches lolling over the low wall. Perhaps he was contemplating the assault he’d soon make on the fig tree and the pleasures it promised.
Just the way I sat and thought twenty years ago ... but back then the mosque wasn’t in this condition.
He completed his thought remorsefully,
Neither was the neighborhood.

A street suffused in radiance. Mümtaz ever so absentmindedly studied the sunlight. Then he looked back at the urchin and at the fig branch and, above it, the dome of the mosque, whose lead sheathing had been commandeered for military supplies – slipped off like a glove from a hand or effortlessly peeled away like the skin of a fig from this very tree.
The historic Mosque of Hazel-Eyed Mehmet Efendi,
he thought.
I’ll find out who that man is yet!
The man had once endowed another mosque in Eyüp, where his tomb was located. But would Mümtaz ever be able to unearth the charter of this charitable trust to verify the fact?

II

Most of the addresses given to Mümtaz were false leads. A nurse named Fatma had never lived at the first house of his inquiry. The daughter of the family had simply begun a nursing course. The girl greeted him with a smile. “I signed up for the course so I could be of some use in case of war. But I haven’t learned anything yet.” She was solemn of voice. “My brother’s in the army ... Thinking of him.” An actual nurse had lived in the second house he visited. But three months ago she’d left for a job she’d found in an Anatolian hospital. Her mother, greeting Mümtaz, said, “Let me look into it. When I see one of my daughter’s friends, I’ll pass the word.”

With the patience of one who didn’t want to spoil a charade, Mümtaz scribbled his address on a scrap of paper. The house was old and ramshackle.
What do they do in winter? How do they keep warm?
he thought as he walked away. Anyway, these questions were moot. On this late August morning, each street seized him in its ovenlike maw, then gobbled and swallowed him whole, before passing him on to the next one. An intermittent shady patch or a pocket of cool air at an intersection seemed to ease life’s toil. “İhsan, this summer I can’t avoid the libraries. I have to finish the first volume no matter what!” he’d said. The first volume ... before his eyes Mümtaz saw pages crisscrossed with threads of writing: annotations in crimson ink, extensive marginalia, and scratched-out lines that resembled an argument with himself. Who knew, maybe the history would never be completed. Under the torment of this thought, he went from street to street, speaking to corner grocers and proprietors of coffeehouses. The only nurse he was able to locate at home said, “I’ve taken leave from work because my husband’s sick. It’s not that I’m unemployed. After admitting him to the hospital, I’ll return to my job.” The woman’s face was a veritable building on the verge of collapse.

Mümtaz, reluctantly: “What’s he have?”

“Paralysis from stroke. I wasn’t with him. They brought him home, half his body limp. If they’d had any sense, they’d have taken him to the hospital then and there. Now the doctors say we should wait ten days before moving him again. How many times I begged of that wench, ‘Let him out of your clutches, he doesn’t have a penny or a thing, he isn’t young or handsome, find someone better for yourself.’ No, it had to be him above all, and now I’m stuck with three kids.”

At the threshold of this family tragedy, Mümtaz bid farewell to the woman facing him. Three children, a paralyzed husband ... on a nurse’s wages. They lived in two rooms of a large house. Even their water vats were stored in the entryway, meaning they might not have use of a kitchen or toilet. The wooden house had been built by some wealthy Ottoman bureaucrat, finance minister, or provincial governor when marrying off his daughter. Despite its faded paint, the elegance of its construction was still evident through meticulously carved window casings, oriel windows, and eaves. Twin five-stepped staircases curved up to the entrance. On the right side stood the door to the coal cellar. But the owner had rented it to a coal merchant. Perhaps the kitchen was rented separately as well.

Loping and rumbling, the massive body of a coal-laden truck clogged the street.

Mümtaz veered into an alleyway ...

He mused about the previous summer, how perhaps on one such day, he’d wandered these very streets with his beloved Nuran, strolling through the Koca Mustafa Pasha and Hekim Ali Pasha neighborhoods. Side by side in the heat, their bodies nearly entwined, wiping sweat from their foreheads, conversing all the while, they’d entered the courtyard of this very
medrese
or deciphered the Ottoman inscription on the fountain he’d now passed. One year ago. Mümtaz cast glances about as if seeking the shortest possible route to the previous year. He’d come as far as the Seven Martyrs beyond the city’s ancient land walls. The martyrs of Sultan Mehmed’s conquest slept side by side in small stone tombs. The street was dusty and narrow. Where the martyrs rested, however, it opened into a diminutive square. From the window of a two-story house, so run-down that it almost appeared – like those tiny sports cars – made of pasteboard, came the sounds of a tango, and in the middle of the street, dusty girls played a game. Mümtaz heard their song: