STRIPES

FIRST WRITING PRIZE WINNER – 

WINTER 2022 – 2023

is Defne Suman

of Athens – GREECE

 

STRIPES

By Defne Suman

The morning after I’d had the same old nightmare with the whirlpools, I decided to go and see Great-Aunt Berin. Mum was very happy.

‘She’s old now, and she’s been asking after you for quite a while. Tulin will be glad to see you too.’

I hadn’t realized that Tulin still lived with Great-Aunt Berin. The dream came to my mind again. The nightmare with the whirlpools wasn’t exactly a dream; it was something I’d experienced when I was younger when I was seven or eight years old. We’d gone to Kilyos Beach on the Black Sea – Mum, Granddad, Great-Aunt Berin, Great-Uncle Mansur, Tulin, and maybe some others who I don’t recall. The beach was busy, packed from end to end with families sitting under umbrellas, with girls playing in the water in T-shirts and skirts and boys burying their dads in the sand, with hawkers wandering up and down carrying their round trays of mixed nuts, breadsticks, bagels and bottles of water.

Because Mum had seen patches of oil on the surface of the sea, she’d forbidden me from going into the water. But I loved that beach: the water never got deep, so you could walk and walk and never have the sea come up any higher than your waist. I wanted to stick my finger into one of the multi-coloured blobs of oil.

‘It’s a disgrace that the fishermen discharge the diesel from their boats here,’ Granddad grumbled. ‘And because it’s oil it doesn’t even disperse and disappear, it just moves around.’

‘It shouldn’t be allowed. So many families come to swim here. Aren’t there any safety inspectors?’

‘Could the diesel be leaking out from a crack in the seabed?’ Great-Aunt Berin murmured, so softly that only I could hear.

When I stamped and yelled, Mum said, ‘Put on your swimsuit and play in the sand. If you dig deep enough, water will come. Tulin can help you,’ she added.

I looked over at Tulin. She was sitting all by herself on Great-Aunt Berin’s towel, wearing a layered pink skirt and glasses as thick as the bottom of a bottle. As soon as she heard her name, she jumped up and came and plonked herself down beside me. She said something, but I just stayed where I was without raising my head and kept my eyes fixed on her rough hands. If she tried to take my yellow plastic spade, I’d attack her. She smelled of onions, just like she did whenever we went to Great-Aunt Berin’s for afternoon tea and I was sent to the back room to play with her. I felt sick. Mum took some cream crackers from her bag, handed them to Tulin, and threw me a ‘Shame on you!’ glare.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Nehir. Tulin is like Great-Aunt Berin and Great-Uncle Mansur’s child.’

No, she was not like their child. If she were, Mum wouldn’t have said ‘like’. And how could a fifteen-year-old girl be the daughter of those old people? Wasn’t Great-Uncle Mansur Granddad’s brother? He was my grandfather’s age. Back then, I wasn’t capable of making that sort of calculation, but I got the feeling that Tulin was not my relative, not my equal. Still, that day my curiosity was piqued by other things. I became engrossed in the hole Tulin was scooping out with her thick, knobbly fingers and began to help her, using my spade. After a while, the water started seeping up from under the sand, just as Mum had said it would.

‘Let’s dig another hole on this side,’ said Tulin. ‘We can make a channel between the two holes, and then water will flow from one to the other.’

‘We should go deeper this time. Maybe some oil will come out.’

Tulin and I were absorbed in excavating our fifth hole when we heard screams coming from the sea. We had built a little city of sand, linked by canals, and we were sailing a toy boat I’d brought along them. I’d launch the boat from one hole, and Tulin would pick it up from the next one. Our hands would touch underneath.

‘Help! Someone’s drowning – a man’s drowning! Help! Is there a doctor anywhere? Where’s the lifeguard?’

As people began racing down to the sea, they trampled our canal city underfoot and demolished our dams in an instant. I started to cry, but no one paid me any attention. Then I saw that Great-Aunt Berin, Granddad, and Mum had all run to the shore. It was just Tulin and me left under our umbrella.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ Tulin said. She’d stood up as well now and her thick white hairy ankles were right in front of my eyes. I felt sick again.

‘Oh, no! It can’t be! Mansur Bey!’

Tulin ran down to the sea. I followed her. A group of men were carrying someone to the shore. Water was streaming off his old-fashioned bathing suit, his flaccid, shrivelled belly, and the few strands of hair plastered to his head. I found Mum in the crowd and clung to her legs. She closed my eyes with her hands so that I couldn’t see what was happening.

Great-Uncle Mansur didn’t drown; he was saved. I heard Mum telling Dad at the dinner table that evening that he’d fallen into a deep hole.

‘What deep hole? What kind of hole, Dad?’

‘That beach is dangerous, my daughter. You think it’s shallow, but it has whirlpools deep enough to swallow a person. Every summer dozens of people who don’t know how to swim drown at that beach. Thank goodness someone spotted Great-Uncle Mansur and rescued him.’

In my nightmare of deep holes, it’s that morning again. Everything is the same. Tulin’s layered skirt, the patches of oil on the sea, our canals, the hot sand burning my skin, the screams. But Great-Uncle Mansur is not saved. The whirlpool consumes him. The body brought out from the water by the group of soaking-wet men is purple. There’s a leather belt around the waist of his bathing suit and his eyes are open and white. There’s no one to cover my eyes and I can’t tear my gaze away from Great-Uncle Mansur’s corpse.

I used to have that nightmare a lot when I was a child, but these days it’s rare, perhaps because I sleep deeply and dreamlessly now.

While I was waiting for the lift, Mum stuck her head through our front door.

‘Nehir, darling, you won’t mention adoption or raising a servant girl around Great-Aunt Berin, will you? They’re our close relatives and Tulin is like Great-Aunt Berin’s child. She’s been with her so long now.’

‘God, Mum!’

We used to go to Great-Aunt Berin’s apartment when I was a child, but I never paid any attention to its location. We stopped going there after Granddad died. It was on the top floor of an old five-storey building which I now noted had the name of its Italian architect engraved on the facade. Signs outside the building announced that the neighbourhood was short to be completely demolished and rebuilt. The street door was open so I pushed it and went inside. I could hear the sound of a hairdryer coming from somewhere. The automatic light was broken, but the hexagonal fanlight lit up the tiled floor. Although the tiles were dirty from having been stepped on over and over and their colours had faded, you could see that they had once been a lovely red, blue, and white mosaic.

I didn’t even glance at the cage lift. In the dim light filtering down from the top floor, I began to climb the worn treads of the stained marble stairs. On the first floor the tiles had been covered by brown diamonds and the door to its apartment was half open; it was a hair salon. Inside, a hairdresser with a bald head and long sideburns was colouring the roots of a skinny middle-aged woman’s hair bright yellow. Strands of cut hair mingled with cigarette butts on the resin floor. When the hairdresser saw me standing there, he gestured at me with his cigarette, beckoning me in. I raced up the stairs and almost tripped over the piles of shoes with worn-down heels outside the apartment on the next floor.

When I reached the fifth floor, light was pouring in through the glass roof. The tiles beneath my feet shone magnificently as if they’d just been laid, and the plants beside the door were vibrant and luxuriant. Tulin answered the door. For a moment I was stunned. She was no longer wearing her Coke-bottle glasses. She quickly wiped her floury white hands on her apron, pulled me inside, shut the door, and locked it.

‘Welcome, dear Nehir. Come in. Please don’t worry about taking off your shoes. How was your journey? You weren’t too unnerved by the neighbourhood, I hope? Do come into the living room. Berin Hanim has been waiting for you all morning. I’ll bring your tea right away. I made some mille-feuille because I remembered you liked it. Am I right?’

As she chattered on, Tulin led me down the dark corridor to the living room at the back of the apartment. There were so many rooms opening off the passageway. Tulin and I used to play in some of them. I vaguely remembered a trunk filled with layers of net, high-heeled shoes, and lots of velvet and chiffon. Tulin would have to keep shuttling back and forth to the kitchen, preparing trays for Great-Aunt Berin’s guests. Meanwhile, I would try on the dresses and stilettos in the trunk and strut up and down the corridor in them.

Great-Aunt Berin was in the living room, standing so close to a mirror with gilded legs that it was as if she was about to step right into it. She was applying eyeliner. I glanced over at Tulin. I hadn’t realized her eyes were green. Now that she’d gotten rid of her glasses, her forehead appeared broader. She had a scar on her left cheek that began almost at her temple and ran all the way to her mouth. It looked like a knife wound.

‘Berin Hanim, Nehir is here.’

With the black eyeliner pencil still in her hand, Great-Aunt Berin turned round. Where once she had been tall and slim, she was now much reduced. Great-Aunt Berin had been old when I was a child, or at least that’s how it had seemed to me, but she was now all shrivelled up and so thin she was almost two-dimensional. Without saying anything, she walked across to the velvet armchair with inlaid wooden sides, folded herself over like a sheet of paper, and sat down. As I followed her, I remembered how large the living room was. It was just as vast as it had seemed in my childhood, with its sideboards and sofa suites, some of which were covered with dust sheets, its desk and bookcase, and, in the corner, a piano.

Tulin opened the net curtains, the blind, and then the window. I was astonished at the expansive sea view. The clamour of the city filled the room along with the breeze. From Leander’s Tower to Topkapi Palace and the Golden Horn, the entire old city lay at our feet. In the background, you could see specks of sailboats that had set out from the Princes’ Islands or the marina at Kalamish. The sun was stroking the surface of the sea, leaving sparkles in its wake. Like it or not, the matter of inheritance came to my mind. Were we the legal heirs of Great-Aunt Berin? As she had no children, would this apartment come to us, or to Tulin? How much was it worth? How desirable this area would be in a few years, now that it was being gentrified. I was ashamed of myself for thinking such things and glanced over at Tulin, wondering if she could tell what was going through my mind. She was chattering happily as she put the gold-rimmed cake plates on the coffee table between us.

‘Nehir, my dear, I found this recipe for apple mille-feuille on the internet. It’s the first time I’ve tried it. I spread cinnamon-flavoured apple sauce between each layer. Do you take sugar in your tea? I spent ages trying to think what savoury snack to make, but then I said to myself, you don’t need to stress about it, Tulin. It’s our Nehir. The bakery downstairs bakes fresh sesame breadsticks every morning, so I bought some of those. Try one! They’re to die for – they melt in your mouth. Take more.’

Great-Aunt Berin was sitting up straight in her armchair, staring out the window. She hadn’t said a word to me. I wasn’t even sure she recognized me. Was she senile? When Mum had called to say I was coming for a visit, it was Tulin she’d spoken to.

From behind the gilt-legged mirror, a cat materialized, a tabby with a short tail and a huge head. It sniffed my shoes, but when I put out my hand to pet its head, it raced away. As it ran off, it caught its own reflection, approached with curiosity, and then shot behind the mirror in search of the other cat.

‘She’s three years old and still doesn’t realize that the image in the mirror is herself.’ Great-Aunt Berin’s voice was scratchy. Her vocal cords needed tuning.

Tulin brought our tea. She placed the breadsticks and the mille-feuille in front of me. The nausea of my childhood threatened to return. Tulin served Great-Aunt Berin Turkish coffee on a silver tray. Then she sat down opposite me and crossed her legs. She had put on weight. In her short-sleeved dress, her arms were already flabby, and her hair had gone grey. She could only be eight or nine years older than me. She’d let herself go.

My ear caught the sound of music playing somewhere in the living room.

‘Isn’t that “Makam Ferahfeza”?’

Great-Aunt Berin moved her head in time with it.

‘Granddad used to listen to that a lot. Traditional Sufi music. That’s why I recognize it,’ I said, surprising myself with the sudden memory of how he used to play this at his gatherings and how he and his friends would go into deep meditation as they listened to the variations of the flautist playing the ney.

Now, finally, Great-Aunt Berin turned towards me. ‘Your grandfather was a real gentleman.’

I nodded for her to continue. She was silent. So be it. At least she seemed to know who I was. A layer of anxiety was lifted.

Licking the icing sugar from her fingers, Tulin interjected. ‘Yes, indeed. May Lutfi Bey rest in peace. How polite he was. What a gentleman. God bless his soul.’

Great-Aunt Berin unfurled her gnarled, arthritic fingers as she placed her coffee cup on the windowsill. Very carefully she folded the linen napkin in her lap. The old woman’s silence was making me uncomfortable.

I searched for something to say. ‘Great-Aunt Berin,’ I stammered, ‘umm… I… could you tell me some things about my grandparents? You knew them longer than anyone.’

Tulin drank her tea down to the leaves at the bottom, then put the glass on the coffee table. ‘Of course, of course, dear Nehir, ask away. Berin Hanim has so many stories. She could talk until the evening without coming to the end of them.’

‘I wonder if I could speak with Great-Aunt Berin alone?’

Why was I asking Tulin? How ridiculous! We were in Great-Aunt Berin’s home and I was a relative. What did it have to do with Tulin?

‘Tulin and I have no secrets from each other. There’s nothing I would say in private that I wouldn’t say in front of her.’

Silence. Tulin looked over at Great-Aunt Berin, breadstick in hand.

With unexpected agility, Great-Aunt Berin leaned down, picked up the cat, which was now rubbing itself against her ankles, and settled it on her lap.

I cleared my throat. ‘Great-Aunt Berin, how old was Tulin when she came here?’

I was shocked when I heard those words coming out of my mouth. This was not the question I’d had in mind, but, yes, it was what I was most curious about. Tulin’s story. Great-Aunt Berin’s relationship with the servant girl she had raised.

Great-Aunt Berin continued stroking the cat on her lap. ‘She was a little thing, seven or eight years old.’

Tulin smiled.

‘Where did she come from? How did you meet her family?’

The questions spilled out one after the other. Great-Aunt Berin didn’t seem perturbed. Her answers were short and to the point. Tulin added details she remembered. Her family had turned her over to Great-Aunt Berin. At first, she missed her brothers and sisters; it was hard being by herself and she used to cry, but eventually, she got used to it. She was indebted to Great-Aunt Berin for everything: her manners, her education, her social graces.

While Tulin was speaking, Great-Aunt Berin nodded sadly. ‘I shouldn’t have beaten you. You were just a child.’

Tulin smiled. ‘But you were right, dear Berin Hanim. For some reason, I never could wake up on time in the mornings. And how many pans got burned because of my absent-mindedness? Then I stole your pearl earrings but swore I saw them on the cleaning woman’s ears. What could you do but beat me?’

‘I should have come up with a different way of punishing you. I had my own troubles at the time.’

They were speaking candidly, as people do when they have acknowledged their guilt to each other many times, and have asked for and been granted forgiveness.

Taking courage from their frankness, I posed the question that came into my head. ‘And Great-Uncle Mansur? What was his relationship with Tulin?’

Tulin glanced at Great-Aunt Berin. The cat hurtled off behind the mirror again.

Suddenly I remembered a detail from my nightmare with the whirlpools. The dream was always full of stripes. Great-Aunt Berin’s bathing suit was stripy. Narrow, red stripes. In my dream, when Great-Uncle Mansur lay dead on the beach, Great-Aunt Berin didn’t get up from her towel but continued sitting under the straw umbrella. Its shadows fell in stripes on the sand. Great-Aunt Berin’s back was also stripy – her shoulders, neck, and waist were striped in red; stripes made by a leather belt. Stripes, stripes, stripes.

‘Mansur had no relationship with Tulin,’ said Great-Aunt Berin.

I looked at Tulin. One hand was tracing the scar on her face.

 

-30-

About the author:

I was born in Istanbul and grew up on Büyükada. I gained a Masters in sociology from Boğaziçi University and then worked as a teacher in Thailand and Laos, where I studied Hatha Yoga and stayed in Buddhist monasteries. I later continued my studies in Oregon, USA, and now live in Athens with my husband. The Silence of Scheherazade was first published in Turkey and Greece in 2016 and is my English language debut. My novels and short stories are translated into many languages and are available all around the world. My second novel, At The Breakfast Table, became available in English in September 2022.