Now she hunches over herself, carefully cleaning the folds of delicate skin that make men weep and quiver, and keep her alive and well. She pays it its proper respects but knows that like everything else it mustn’t be overused. When the ritual is over, Fatma remains seated on the floor, contemplating her trip to the Armenian Quarter, or what is left of it. Those who left with nothing more than an oxcart are said to have buried their gold in courtyards and orchards. There, in the abandoned homes of her former neighbors, she might find some hidden treasure that will help her escape this life.
Given the climate in the village, Fatma has left the inn only twice in the past year, once to the mosque and once to the hamam. Both times she took care to cover herself and was accompanied by her mother-in-law. At the hamam, the village women had taken pleasure in taunting her. A few refused to share the bathhouse with that orospu, dirty whore.
Her husband had been the only son of the town butcher. When his father died, the mothers and aunties of the village paraded their daughters around him expectantly, but it was far too late. By then Ibrahim had fallen under the spell of his youngest and toughest customer. He liked to say it was Fatma’s haggling tongue that did him in, but Fatma suspected it was the way she let her head scarf drop every time she smiled at him. His mother’s illness gave Fatma a rare opportunity to rule the house. Where other young brides bowed their heads in submission to their husbands and mothers-in-law, Fatma made decisions and gave her opinion freely. Outside the house, she shrugged off the insults. Ignoring the jeers and hisses from the villagers, she laughed her loud laugh and spat at those who dared cross her. When confronted about his wife’s behavior, Ibrahim only smiled and encouraged anyone who disapproved to take their oxcart to the only other butcher in the region, located some twenty kilometers to the east.
It has been two years since Ibrahim left for the Balkan front and two months since Fatma buried her mother-in-law. If Ibrahim appeared to her now, she would beg his forgiveness. She pulls her veil down, making sure the dark wool covers her entire face and body. She extends her hand, pretending to reach for something and notices that this exposes a sliver of skin where her hand meets her wrist. The fabric, concealing everything but her kohl-rimmed eyes, is meant to provide a measure of modesty but covering herself always gives Fatma a surge of power. Under its folds, her past is erased and her sins absolved. Besides, these days there is nothing modest about her. Like the veil, which separates her body from the world, she exists now only in the in-between places. Between modesty and seduction, damnation and deliverance.
Once on the street, Fatma keeps her eyes lowered and her steps quick. Using her sense of smell to guide her, she strides past the scent of dead skin and soap outside the hamam and through the back alleys of the spice market where the smell of mint and garlic almost makes her stop. When she reaches the merchant’s stalls that mark the beginning of the Armenian Quarter, Fatma thinks that perhaps her trusty nose has finally betrayed her. Where once the blacksmiths, cobblers, and tinsmiths released clouds of copper, sulfur, and leather dye into the dusty air of Malatya, Fatma now smells something entirely different. She is sure the devil himself has vomited onto the earth’s crust, producing an odor so vile and permeable that it burns her eyes and throat.
Gone too are the sounds of clanging metal, the scraping of soft bristles on leather, and the excitement of human voices straining above the clamor of the once-bustling market. Fruit flies swarm past her, swooping up before her eyes, daring her to look up. The shock is not in what she sees but what she doesn’t see. The merchants are all gone, their overturned stalls and broken windows offering silent testimony of hasty departures. The door of the Armenian Church is splintered, as though some demonic animal with large horns has pummeled through it. Someone must have tried to take shelter here. She says a silent prayer even though she is quite convinced by now that there is no god, not in heaven and certainly not here in Anatolia.
She places an acid-soaked handkerchief to her nose and quickens her steps, veering as far away from the river as possible, thinking only of survival. A sea of twinkling stars, blasphemous in their majesty, illuminates the dark night. How dare they shine on so much suffering? And then it occurs to her that these stars have borne witness.
“What have you seen?” she whispers, looking up. She is half waiting for an answer when her foot collides with something and her body falls to the ground. It is a body, sickly smelling but not yet ripe with death. Fatma rolls away at once. The body groans. It turns on its side, away from her, clutching what looks like an infant’s swaddling cloth. From the long wild mane, she knows it is a girl.
CHAPTER 25
Rebirth