“You kept the name Seda,” Orhan says.
“Yes, it was the only thing I kept from that life. I could not go back to being Lucine. Lucine died with Aram. And I never allowed myself to look back. Never. Not even when I was reunited with my brother Bedros.”
“So you did find him?” asks Orhan.
“Yes, in an orphanage in Beirut. My niece, Ani, is his daughter. But the Bedros I found was very different from the Bedros I’d known as a young girl. Instead of the boy, I found a man consumed by hate and revenge. My brother called himself a freedom fighter, but others would call him a fanatic. How could I tell him I had loved a Turk? How could I tell any of them? It was impossible. There was only one story. A story of hate. So I stayed quiet. Always quiet, even more so when I got your letter.”
Orhan takes a deep breath. His head is reeling with the past. He tries to picture Dede walking into that khan after all those years of pining away for this woman, only so she could walk away from him like it was nothing.
“So my father . . .” he says.
“Mustafa is Fatma’s child,” says Seda.
The blood drains from Orhan’s face and heads down to the bottom of his feet.
“All these years . . .” he begins, thinking about all the big and little ways Auntie Fatma spent her life loving all of them, the Türko?lu men. And suddenly he is saddened beyond measure.
“And the father?” he says.
“Perhaps Nabi Bey. Perhaps another. I’m sorry,” says Seda. “This must be very hard for you. You thought she was your aunt.”
“I thought he was my grandfather,” he manages before staggering to his feet. “I have to go,” he says, and leaves the room.
CHAPTER 33
Decrepit Seed
ORHAN MAKES HIS way back to the sea of mauve and green that is the reception area. Sitting down, he sinks so deep into one of the couches that he swears he can suddenly feel the weight of a century’s worth of deception and longing bearing down on his shoulders. Like the crumbling Byzantine structures all over Sivas, he is being pressed, layer upon layer, by the past.
If what the old woman says is true, then he and his father are not even related to Kemal. They have no right to his fortune. He thinks about the lawyer Celik, whose name literally translates to “steel,” an element that describes the man’s iron will. His ancestors were probably sheepherders, Orhan thinks, to make himself feel better. When Atatürk declared Turkey a republic, he forced everyone to pick a last name. Strong names like Celik, meaning “steel,” and Demir, meaning “iron,” were common.
Orhan’s own last name translates to “son of a Turk.” He hopes that Dede’s lawyer, Yilmaz, lives up to the meaning of his surname: one who never gives up. Because if his father succeeds in taking over the company, there is no telling what will become of Dede’s life’s work or the family fortune. Mustafa doesn’t know the first thing about textiles or exporting, or money, for that matter. He may build a mosque or donate it all to some extreme nationalist faction full of illiterate angry men. For years, when Dede was alive and Orhan was running the business, Mustafa kissed the hand that he could not wring. Now all that could change.
The blood pumps through his body, boiling with anger. The images of Seda’s story dance around in his head. A young and vibrant auntie Fatma. His dede, an insecure boy, in love with his employer’s daughter. He feels the tears slide down his face.
Feeling suffocated, he gets back on his feet and makes his way to a pay phone tucked inside a hallway near the restrooms. Breathing deeply, he stares into the dark narrow cavity where the money should go. Though he’s used a phone his whole life, he is stupefied. With enough money, he could speak to and hear anyone. Words travel from one person in the world to another—truth and lies and inconsequential syllables, laughter and tears too. All of human expression exchanged here for a small price. Yet no person or machine is equipped to interpret these words, give them a finite meaning. No one and nothing to explain it all.
It takes nine rings for Auntie Fatma to answer the telephone. When she does, she sounds breathless from the exertion.
“Ha? What news?” she pants.
The anger swells up in his throat, so he can’t bring himself to speak.
“Hello? Are you there? Speak up, boy.”
“Auntie,” Orhan says finally. The word, a lie, sits heavily on the telephone line. It is a stone brick in a dividing wall that stretches from Sivas to California, from World War I to now. His entire world is made of one brick, one lie, one word placed carefully on top of another.
“Grandmother,” Orhan says, whispering it in her ear.
Fatma is frozen and speechless on the other end of the telephone line.
“Would you have ever told me?” he asks.
“No,” she says finally.
“Why not?” he asks.