The niece, who looks to be in her fifties, digs in her purse, locates a bevy of keys, and heads toward the exit. She walks with hurried steps toward the dining room. Orhan stands there a long while, following her with his gaze, wondering if she already knows about the inheritance. God knows how this Ani woman, who clings to her people’s grief, who dwells in loss and mourning—embodies it even—will react to the news. She’ll get a lawyer, that’s for sure. She might even tell the governor of California, for all he knows.
When he enters her room, Seda is seated in a wheelchair near a window facing the garden. He can see only the back of her head, damp, he assumes, from a morning bath. She is wearing the same dark blue cardigan, this time with a canary-colored silk scarf at her neck. The pale cream walls of the room are made yellow by the fluorescent lighting. And this saddens him; there are few things worse than bad lighting. Her single bed is pushed up against a wall. Next to it is a chest of drawers whose surface is almost entirely covered in a beige needlepoint, reminding him of the doilies of Karod. An old framed photo of the niece is displayed prominently in the center. In it she is much younger, wearing a blue cap and gown and holding a diploma. A golden sash draped across her chest hints of special honors. Above the chest of drawers is a generic landscape scene framed in dark wood. The only other furniture in the room is a tall bookcase whose shelves are crammed with books, both vertically and horizontally until there isn’t an unoccupied inch. He is about to approach the bookcase to take a glimpse at the titles, when Seda turns her wheelchair around and faces him.
“Good morning,” he says.
The old woman clears her throat but remains silent.
“I hope you don’t mind me visiting so early in the day,” he says, speaking into the silence that still hangs between them. “I was here earlier, but you had a visitor. I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“My niece,” she says.
“Does she know about the will?” The question, out before he can restrain himself, embarrasses him. The fact that he asks it while still standing is somehow even more embarrassing.
Seda shakes her head. “No,” she says.
“It’s so sunny here,” he says, trying to change the subject. “Back home, it is raining. I live in Istanbul now, but I was in Berlin for several years. September can be a very cold month, not like here,” he says, settling into a chair next to her.
The old woman’s eyes follow him into the chair. Orhan knows she wants to be rid of him, but he goes on anyway. “I moved to Germany in 1981. I had some trouble in Turkey.” It’s more than he’s told his closest friends in Istanbul about that time. And he wonders why he finds it so easy to allude to it here, in front of this woman. “Anyway,” he continues, “I moved back home a few years ago and have lived in Istanbul ever since.” The one-sided conversation makes him feel silly, reminding him of a chatty blind date he once had. Now this old woman knows more about him than all his friends in Istanbul put together.
“I wish you would talk to me,” he says suddenly.
“There’s nothing to say,” she says, turning away from him.
Orhan follows her gaze back out the window where a bright bougainvillea bush is the star of the show. Its pink flowers are so vibrant they seem artificial, like the California sun. The composition reminds him of a photograph he once took.
“I’m not such a bastard, you know,” he says.
“I never said you were a bastard,” she says. “You’re a businessman, aren’t you?”
“I am,” he says.
“Businessmen care about results. They don’t ask why.”
He pauses, not knowing what to say to that. He starts reaching for the legal papers he’s brought for her to sign and glimpses his portfolio in the satchel.
“I was a photographer once,” he says on impulse. There is something unconvincing in the way he says the words, like he is trying to make them true.
“Oh?” she says, not sounding the least bit interested.
“I was exiled.” It is a simple declaration, consisting of just three relatively simple words, but Orhan feels as though he’s just given birth to a hairy mammal through his mouth. I was exiled. How many times had he tried and failed to say those words to Hülya?
Orhan was only nineteen when he photographed a group of Kurdish villagers in traditional dress. It was the sharp contrast of colors and textures that interested him. He had no idea that the stout bearded fellow standing in the back corner of the frame was a notorious insurgent. How could he know that a group of Kurdish villagers in traditional dress would be so offensive to the Turkish state?
The photograph was exhibited in a gallery in Istanbul, where it attracted the attention of the new government, which made all sorts of connections between his motley crew of creative acquaintances and the national security of the state. Within days, he was proclaimed a communist and imprisoned. That photograph earned him twenty-three days of “interrogation” by the Turkish police. They beat the light out of his eyes in that cold, soot-covered cell. He said good-bye to his youth and to all its dreaming then. There were no more photographs after that.
“Exile? Exiled for what?” she asks, coughing into a handkerchief.
“For ‘denigrating Turkishness and insulting the state.’”
“With your photos,” she says, one eyebrow cocked.
“Yes.”
“And were you?”