Gardens of Water (21 page)

Dilek laughed out loud. “Allah, Allah,” she said. “That was a terrible bird.”

They sat down together on a slab of concrete that overlooked the water. From here, if
rem looked directly away from shore, it was almost possible to forget the chaos that was behind them. The water lulled
rem, calmed her, and she wanted to dive in and stay underwater where nothing could be broken, where nothing could crush her.

“Have you seen Dylan?” she finally asked.

“No,
rem. I heard he went back to America.”

“He’s alive?”

“Yes.”

Relief and disappointment, both, rose inside her simultaneously.

“Back to America?”

“That’s what I heard,” Dilek said. “He and his father.”

rem picked at her fingernails and watched two jellyfish push up against each other in the murky water.

“Wouldn’t you leave, too, if you could?” Dilek said.

“Of course. It’s not that. The night of the quake he tried to touch me, but I pulled away.”

“Where were you?” Dilek said, and suddenly it was just like it was before the quake. Where were you? What happened? How did it feel?”

“The kitchen.”

“The kitchen?!”

“Yes, and my parents in the next room with the guests.”

Dilek put her hand to her face, her eyebrows narrowing into a devilish grin.

“Oh, I would have let him,
rem,” Dilek said. “He’s so handsome.”

“Yes, well, your parents are different.” Dilek’s father had been a school inspector, and, being the good Western-leaning government official he was, had hated anything that even resembled a hijab, and he despised anyone in an
abaya.
He would rather see a woman walk naked down the street, Dilek had once quoted him as saying, than see her wrapped in those fundamentalist robes. He shaved three times a day, according to Dilek, so he wouldn’t be mistaken for growing a beard.

“I’ll never see him again,”
rem said.

Dilek’s smile left her face. “Oh, Dilek,”
rem said, remembering her friend’s father. “I’m sorry.” “No, no,” she said. “It’s okay. I understand. This is different. Fathers and lovers are different things.”

“He’s not my lover.”

Dilek didn’t know anything about a lover—at least
rem thought she didn’t—but she liked to say such things. “I know, I know,” Dilek said. “But it’s nice to think about, isn’t it?”

rem just smiled and the smile grew into a laugh until they were both laughing and then the laughing fell back into silence.

“Everything’s changed,”
rem said. “I’ve changed. Even before the earthquake.” “I was mad at my dad the night it happened,” Dilek said. “Usually I kiss him good night, but I caught him on his cell phone on the terrace. I think my mother is right. He had a woman. But I still wish I’d kissed him good night.”

They sat silently for a minute, watching the transparent water become opaque as the sun rose and shone down flatly on the sea. Behind them, coming down the broken road,
rem heard a rumbling. With no electricity, no open stores, with nothing to do but sit around and wait, the silence in town had become deafening, and at first she thought it was the rumbling of another aftershock. In panic, they both spun around, relieved to see a line of trucks coming down the broken road.