Embarrassed by the exaggeration, Orhan adds, “I mean, I am fine speaking English.”
After an uncomfortable silence, he grabs an empty chair. “May I sit?” he asks, then before she can respond, he sits down. He waits for her to say something, about the letter or its contents, but the old woman picks up the embroidery in her lap, arranging it just so.
“As you know, my grandfather, Kemal Türko?lu, has passed.” The words cut through him, forming fresh wounds. Orhan looks for a hint of sadness in her eyes at the news and, finding none, continues, “And he’s left our family home in Karod to you.”
The old woman lowers her head so that her silver hair falls forward, masking the sides of her eyes.
“Do you have any idea why he did that?” he asks suddenly.
She does not answer.
“Are you a distant relative? A friend maybe?” The question seems idiotic as soon as it leaves him.
Orhan looks around for someone with authority, only to find Betty staring at him suspiciously. He has every right to be here. So why are his hands sweaty?
“Excuse me,” he says to Betty, lifting a finger in the air.
Betty continues looking at him, but does not move. “Yes?” she says.
“Does she speak?”
“Pardon?” says the orderly, her southern twang lingering on the first syllable in a way that makes Orhan feel even more foreign.
“Mrs. Melkonian—does she speak?”
“When she wants to,” says Betty, arching one penciled eyebrow at him.
Orhan sighs. Will that be soon? he wants to ask.
He turns his attention back to Seda, who’s making small loops with her needles. Her gnarled fingers move slow and steady in circular motions. Orhan wills himself to be patient, trying to remember that all this may be too much for her. But as a hexagon emerges in the needlework, he feels himself growing more and more angry. Say something, he wants to shout at her. He stretches a hand out and places it on top of the needlework, stalling her hands.
“Do you know who I am?” he asks her.
The old woman looks into his face for a long defiant moment. “Evet, yes.”
Orhan is silenced by her answer, spoken in the familiar language of his mother tongue. There is no mistaking the disdain in her voice. Her eyes bore into him, offering up a challenge he can’t quite comprehend.
“You want the house,” she says in English, looking away from him again.
“That’s right,” he says, recovering. “It’s been in my family for almost a century.”
The old woman does not respond to this.
“Can you imagine how we must feel? No, of course you can’t,” he says, answering his own question. He presses his lips together in an effort to contain the emotions. This is when he remembers the photo.
“I wanted to show you this,” he says, pulling out the last photo he took of the house before leaving Karod. He looks at it again before handing it to her. He had hoped that the barren tree and the crumbling facade of the house would discourage this Seda woman from seizing the property, but the intense chiaroscuro makes it a powerful image. The tree and the house have never looked more exotic. He hands it to her anyway.
“You see, the house he’s left you is not in very good condition. Barely standing, really. It’s in the middle of nowhere, but it’s got a lot of sentimental value for my family. My father and aunt live there now.”
The old woman exhales audibly when she’s confronted with the photograph. She recoils back from it when Orhan holds it out toward her.
“I am prepared to offer you more than what the property is worth,” he says. “All you have to do is sign this agreement stating you will take payment in exchange for the property. It’s incredibly generous, given that the house rightfully belongs to my family.”
“I don’t want your money,” she says, her eyebrows knitted together with scorn. “If I sign, you’ll leave and never come back?” she asks.
Orhan nods. “You have my word,” he says.
“Give me your pen,” she says, without looking at him.
Orhan exhales, letting all the air trapped in his chest out. He extends the legal papers and a plastic pen in her direction and waits for her to sign.
CHAPTER 5
The Staff of Moses
IT IS A nothing pen, the kind of pen people discard without thinking, but he holds it out to Seda like the staff of Moses. If a wooden staff could part the Red Sea, then surely a plastic one could do the same. And the sea of her past is red indeed. She’s managed to stay away from its shores all her life, to ignore its gurgling sounds, its demand for more sacrifice.
Mrs. Vartanian points a finger at the young man’s back, yelling,“Turk eh.” A few residents look him up and down, then turn away. Betty was right. He is handsome in a rugged sort of way, with insistent eyes set deep in his square skull. He smells of cinnamon and cigarettes.
“What’s going on here?” Betty is standing above their hunched figures.