“Me?”
“You and the rest of the world.”
Orhan nods. “About my grandfather’s will,” he begins.
“That’s between you and my aunt,” Ani says, lifting a palm to stop his words.
Orhan fidgets with the camera in his hands.
“I thought you said you weren’t a photographer,” she says.
“I thought I had to be one thing or another,” he says. “Not everything is black-and-white.”
He brings the camera back up to his eye, clicking the shutter every time that life, in all its lovely and miserable guises, shows up in the frame. He takes picture after picture of the residents as they share their stories. Though he cannot understand their words, Orhan is able to capture the emotion in their faces, the vibrations of their sorrow, and their need for solace. All of life, Orhan realizes, is a story within a story; how we choose to listen and which words we choose to speak makes all the difference.
He zooms in for a close-up of an old man covering his face, when someone grabs his forearm. He looks down to see Seda in her wheelchair, with Betty gripping the handles behind her.
“You’re here,” he says. “I thought you said you wanted no part of this.”
Seda looks at the camera, then back at him and smiles. She lifts a bundle of papers up toward him and presses them to his chest. They are his legal papers, signed and dated.
“You keep the house,” Seda whispers.
Orhan’s chin drops with the weight of her words. This is why he came. What he wanted, but instead of relief he feels shame. “What about you?” he asks.
“I’ll keep my story,” she says.
“I don’t know what to say,” he says. “Except I’m very sorry.”
“We are all sorry for something. It’s what makes us human,” says Seda. “But sometimes empathy is not enough. Sometimes empathy needs to be followed by action.”
She turns away from him then and with some assistance by Betty, approaches the podium, where she begins to tell her tale all over again.
She begins with, “My story is very different from all of yours.”
CHAPTER 37
Fatma Forgiven
CELIK’S OFFICE IS exactly how Orhan imagined it. His father’s lawyer has chosen the corner suite in one of the tallest buildings in Istanbul. The place is all black lacquer and gold. Orhan guesses that the color scheme is designed to communicate modernity and wealth. And if those two things fail to intimidate, splashes of red in the abstract art remind one that, if necessary, Celik could draw blood.
Orhan and Fatma are alone in the empty conference room. Seated at a glossy black table as vast and vapid as the room itself, they wait in silence for Mustafa and his lawyer, the man named after steel. Orhan’s own lawyer is notably absent. The only one he wanted was Fatma, and she is here, sitting to his left. At least he hopes it is her. She arrived this morning, sporting a dramatic black burka that covered everything from her head to her feet. Today’s costume, unlike the head scarf she sported at the funeral weeks ago, is more of a shroud. Even her eyes are hidden behind a small square of black mesh embedded in the headpiece. Getting her out of the car and into the elevator had been an almost-fatal experience. Orhan hasn’t asked her why she is dressed like a Saudi housewife, but everyone is entitled to their prebattle rituals.
“You look ridiculous,” he whispers to her, thinking her black burka and head full of gold teeth actually match Celik’s decor.
“Nothing scares these Kemalists more than a devout Muslim,” she says. “I’d whip out my prayer rug in the middle of this meeting if I were you.”
Orhan snorts. “You know I don’t own one, Buyukanne.”
It is their little game now. He calls her grandmother whenever they are alone, which is often, since his father refuses to speak to him. It never fails to make her smile.
“Where is that bastard Celik? I’m boiling under this black curtain,” she says.
At that moment, Mustafa appears at the door, a cloud of cigarette smoke floating above him. There was a time Orhan would stand out of respect for his father, but today he remains seated. Mustafa limps into the room with the help of his cane. Ignoring Fatma, he goes straight to Orhan’s chair.
“What the hell is she doing here?” he says.
Fatma plays dead under her burka.
“This affects her as much as it does us,” Orhan says.
“What’s this?” he asks, turning to Fatma and fingering the black cloth. “Finally found God?”
“Something like that,” says Fatma.