“The past is full of sorrow and the future laden with worry,” he continues. “They are two weights that will surely drown us. I don’t want to drown. Do you?”
That is another question entirely. Which should she answer, the first or the second? Seda chooses to answer the first and ignore the second. Drowning would be too good for her anyway. She looks into his eyes, the same warm chestnut brown orbs he once accused her of stealing, and shakes her head.
“Good,” Kemal says. “Let us strip ourselves from time.”
With that, he begins to speak. He speaks to her of the souks in Baghdad, the spice market where one could find spices of every color imaginable, plus four or five more. He talks to her of the rug merchant who taught him the principles of perspective. He tells her about Tekin and Mehmet and eventually Hüsnü, who is just now fondling Fatma above their heads. Gaining her confidence inch by inch with every word until her hand no longer trembles and her lips form themselves into a forgotten line of a smile.
HE COMES TO her nightly, and always when the moon appears in her window. On that first night, the moon was nothing but a curved line, bent and thin, like a fingernail, on the verge of disappearing. But every night since, Seda listens as Kemal feeds the moon with his words until it is swollen and round. It burns bright, penetrating the dullness inside her chest where her heart used to be.
“Are you even listening?” he asks her now in the third week of their visits.
She gives him a slight smile. He has changed too. He looks less like a soldier and more like the boy she once knew. Last week, she held the mirror as he shaved his beard, leaving a neat little mustache behind. He wiped his newly shaven face with her pale blue kerchief. He asked if he could keep it and she acquiesced. The truth is his words are all she longs for throughout the endless days. If only she could give him a few in return. A syllable or two. But her tongue has forgotten what her mind clings to.
I dream of dark things, she wants to tell him.
“Hüsnü wants to leave,” Kemal says suddenly. “I can’t ask him to stay any longer. I’m afraid he tired of your friend days ago.”
Seda isn’t surprised. Fatma tired of Hüsnü before he even bedded her. She will be happy to be rid of him before her bey returns.
“He’s going to Istanbul, where his father’s a merchant.”
He is blabbering. Giving her needless details. Is he going with his friend or not?
“Don’t scowl,” he says, holding her chin in his hand. “Why are you scowling?” He laughs. “I didn’t say I was going with him. Do you want me to stay? All you have to do is ask me to stay, Lucine.”
There it is again. The name he called her when he first returned. The name he refuses to forget. She says nothing.
“You are a stubborn girl, Lucine Melkonian,” he says, his eyes shining.
Seda gives him a sharp look. Call me Seda, she wants to scream.
“Before we came here, our plan was to go to Istanbul and start a kilim or rug business. With my understanding of the artistry and Hüsnü’s father’s support, we could set up a stall, maybe even a small factory. Remember the rug merchant I told you about, the one in Baghdad?”
Seda nods.
“Well, he gave me a name. A contact, who will help me get started. Istanbul is teeming with foreigners. The money will be good. A fresh start for all of us. You too, maybe.” He hesitates, then says, “If you’ll wait for me.”
There is a long silence, in which Seda remembers the last time he asked her to go away with him. The sight of his slumped shoulders when she refused him. There was so much else to consider back then. Now there is nothing. Not a single thing.
She fixes her eyes upon his face and nods her head just once.
“No. No more nodding. Tell me yes or tell me no, but tell me.”
Seda rolls her tongue to the roof of her mouth, but it remains dormant in its cave. Evet, yes. Her tongue refuses to release the two little syllables so powerful, they could whisk her away from here, to the majestic city where her parents first met.
But Seda can be no one’s wife or mother. She is a ghost, a remnant of the sword. She shifts her weight on the cot, where they are both nestled. She leans into him. His eyes are darting from one feature of her face to another. She gets close enough to lose them and, shutting her own, places her lips on his. They lie there, two pairs of lips heaped on top of one another like a collection of pillows. Neither one moves. Then, slowly, gently, Kemal takes her lower lip into his own. She hears her father’s voice then. A sin against God.