SEDA WAITS FOR Kemal in the dark. It has been so long since she’s waited for anything. Waiting is a luxury only those with desires and expectations can indulge in. When he whispered her name, the dead crow inside her awakened. Black feathers fluttering, sharp beak pecking painfully at her organs. There is a part of her that wants that bird dead and gone. Then there is the her waiting in this room in the dark.
She is standing when Kemal pushes the door open. He is still wearing the dreaded uniform, coat and all. The soldier’s hat is perched on his head, his beard is combed clean and his boots polished. He stares at her awkwardly before taking a seat on her cot. His stare is unwavering and full of intention. It makes her feel as though she is made out of liquid. She must sit, but there is nothing to sit on besides the cot, so she remains standing. Then the black crow takes over her body. She places her hands on her hips the way she used to, as if to ask him what he wants, why he is here. A kind of protest against this clandestine courting ritual.
He smiles at her. “Everything and nothing has changed,” he says.
She thinks about this, resisting the comfort the words give her.
“Have you got any tea?” he asks.
She turns to boil the water.
“You were always the one who spoke while I listened,” he says to her back. This is a lie. She spoke but never to him. She spoke to Uncle Nazareth, Anush and Bedros, to all of them, but hardly ever to him. When she turns around, his hat is no longer on his head. He turns it around and around in his hands nervously. He bites his lower lip so that there is only a line in his beard where his mouth should be. She keeps her eyes on his soldier’s hat. It disturbs and distracts her, reminding her of all the cruelty that comes with it. She removes it from his fidgeting hands, placing it on the table for kneading dough.
“We are not all monsters, you know,” he says.
Her mind fixes on the word we.
“I have nothing else to wear,” he says.
She lowers her eyes in sympathy.
Kemal extends his hand out to her. His index finger slides down from her knuckle to the tip of her finger, gently hooking it with his.
“Sit with me,” he says, and he is that other Kemal, the quiet boy with the shy glances. Only in that other life, he would never have dared to hold her hand.
His skin is dry and cool to the touch. His fingers do not tremble the way hers do. Outside, an emaciated crescent moon dips into the frame of her tiny window, the only other witness to his presence.
“I don’t really believe in God anymore,” he says. “I’m not sure I ever did. But finding you here is a blessing from God. You are a blessing from God.” He is still holding her hand.
Seda turns her head away from him and shuts her eyes tight. I am no blessing. I am hateful and selfish.
“You are everything that is good in the world,” he is saying now, and she can’t bear his words any longer. No, no. Seda is shaking her head. Her palm, the one he’s not holding, comes down hard on her forehead, then again onto the crown of her head. Once. Then twice. Harder now.
“Stop.” Kemal grabs her other hand. “Stop it.” He is holding them both in a tight grip on her lap.
Seda can hear her own whimpering like a riverbank running below his words. But she doesn’t stop it. She lets her tears pour out in place of words. The muffled sounds escape her like the first steams of a teakettle.
“I don’t care what’s happened. Whatever happened to them, Nazareth, Anush, your mother, your brothers. It wasn’t our fault. Not yours and not mine.” Kemal’s voice is desperate and pleading. “They were lucky. Did you hear? Lucky.”
Seda has heard stories about Der Zor, the Syrian Desert where the surviving deportees ended up. The people are described as diseased animals forgotten by man and God. Left to die. They say there is an entire desert littered with the bones of her people.
“They didn’t have to live like you, Lucine,” Kemal continues. “Carrying all their deaths around on your shoulders.”
Maybe he is right. Maybe they were spared and she is left here to suffer their loss. This is her cross to bear. It is all their crosses really. Kemal’s and Fatma’s and every neighbor and gendarme that did or did not have a cruel word or thought or deed. They would bear this cross eternally, together with their children and their children’s children.
“I have learned not to ask any questions,” Kemal says. “In this war, the answers are never pleasant. I will not ask you any more questions. But there is one thing I need you to do for me.
“Will you look at me with fresh eyes? Not with the eyes of the past or of the future. Just stay with me in the present, here and now. And I will do the same.”
It is such a strange request. If she could only oblige him, she would never have to think about the questions that plague her every breath. She will never be asked why she didn’t go back for Mairig, why she no longer had Aram.