Gardens of Water (17 page)

Chapter 11

N
ILÜFER WAS GOING CRAZY AND
REM COULDN’T CALM HER.
The first two days after the earthquake, while her father sat in the dirt and prayed for
smail,
rem had followed her mother through the streets, the buildings leaning like card houses above their heads. She followed her into half-collapsed buildings where bodies were being pulled from the rubble. Once, when a young boy was lifted from a pile, his head crumpled like a popped balloon, Nilüfer nearly stripped the boy out of the man’s arms before
rem could yank her away. Nilüfer spun around and slapped
rem on the cheek.

“It’s not him,”
rem said.

Her mother glared at her, her bloodied hand lifted for another strike.

“Mother, it’s not
smail.”

She lunged as if to strike
rem, but then slapped her palms to her head and ripped fistfuls of her own hair from her scalp.
rem followed behind, snatching strands of hair from the ground as though she were picking oregano at the stem. She wrapped the hair in her mother’s head scarf and clutched the nest to her chest because she was terrified to leave those pieces of her mother on the ground. They spent that night on the cement slabs of the waterfront, her mother finally passing out on her lap as
rem tried to smooth the hair over the raw spots.

They awoke in the morning to an aftershock, waves of water sloshing against the cement and wetting
rem’s skirt. One of the leaning buildings spilled over, and even though it was two blocks away, glass and metal clattered at their feet.

“Oh, God. Oh, God,” Nilüfer said, as she jumped up and ran down the broken sidewalk, holding her head.
rem caught her, calmed her, and took her mother by the arm so that it seemed they were simply out for an early morning stroll. She sang a lullaby to her mother, one her father used to sing when she was a child, as she led them down the waterfront and out through the fields where yellow chamomile swayed in the breeze and back through the alleys near the slaughterhouses and by the time they wandered into town, the police wouldn’t let them back in. Too dangerous, they said. Possibility of disease. Did they know about
smail? No, the police said. Did they know where Sinan was? No.