THE ISTANBUL bus station, a sprawling monstrosity, seemed a hundred times the size of Bishkek’s otovakzal. Lines of buses stood parked along the three spiraling levels of the concrete building, and dense, incomprehensible timetables littered the windows. Everywhere Nazira stepped the touts circled her and bellowed names of destinations. “Bursa! Buuuursa!” “Adana! Adana! Adaaana!” It was all she could do—hurrying with her heavy black bag—to cross the roads without getting crushed by the speeding buses. They swung around blind corners and unleashed their horns at her.
It had been an exhausting journey so far, and this place offered no rest. She had ridden the village bus twelve hours into Uzbekistan and had not managed a night’s sleep since. From Tashkent she found a train to Ashgabat, and then on to Turkmenbashi, where she had to kill an entire day at the dreary port, waiting for the ferry to Baku. Another two days of buses (they were awful; one entire evening a man behind her fondled her arm) had brought her over the Caucasus into Turkey. The delays at the border crossings had been interminable, yet her old Soviet passport and quiet pleas to the officials saw her through. She took a hotel room near Trabzon’s police station, but frightened by the sirens, she had been unable to close her eyes. The nights away from Manas were punishing: she felt hobbled, only half able to give herself over to the urgency of this trip. On the final, bucking overnight bus to Istanbul, she drifted in and out of a hazy half-consciousness, which only tired her more; and late morning at last she had exited, delirious, into the riot of Istanbul.
An elderly tout found her a service van to Üsküdar. The journey through traffic and the sprawling environs of the city took her over the Bosphorus Bridge. Through the window she spotted the currents of the straits running, strangely, both north and south. From the waterfront she had no problem finding Jeff’s apartment: she simply sought help. She asked everyone she saw, “Nerede?” and pointed to the address her father had left her. Women watching from balconies directed her all the way up a street of stairs toward an orange building. She was dizzy with fatigue, and the dread she felt at seeing Jeff again was overshadowed by the thought of actually sitting down and resting.
She knocked twice, and when Jeff finally opened the carved wooden door, he looked jolted. Nazira realized only then that she was unprepared for the confrontation. He had changed. He seemed shorter than she remembered; his hair was thinner and cut to a reasonable length just above his ears. She had imagined she would faint or say something dangerously stupid, but suddenly she found herself confident, completely calm, facing the father of her child.
“Salamatsizbih,” she said.
“Salamachillik,” Jeff replied, recovering.
A ridiculous scruffy patch of beard clung to his chin. His shoulders were somewhat stooped, and lines of worry had collected at the corners of his eyes. The silence between them lasted an eternal few seconds. She tried to gauge in his expression his level of guilt at abandoning her, but saw none. Neither did she perceive the slightest smile nor sign of joy in his seeing her again. She thought of his concerned inquiries about her in the letter he had sent and, gathering her courage, broke the silence with a smile and the stock phrase “Ishter kondai, Jeff?” How are your works?
His eyes flashed in recognition of the ritual, and he answered correctly, in what seemed like a reflex. “Jakshii.”
“How is your health?”
“Jakshii.”
“Is my father with you?”
Jeff laughed and cleared his throat. “Nazira, why don’t you come in,” he told her in English, extending an arm, “and see for yourself.”
She removed her plastic sandals and stepped shyly into the hall and then the living room. There on the couch, facing the other way, hunched over an opal chessboard, was her father. He was playing against a brown-skinned man—a Kyrgyz, perhaps. Neither looked up, but she could tell from the way her father leaned into the game and stuck out his chest that he was winning. So this is what he had been doing, passing the time at games while the village suffered. She was furious.
“Shax,” he announced. Check.
“Anarbek,” Jeff called, “guess who’s arrived.”
“Bir minoot.” Anarbek held up his hand, then slammed it down on the corner of the board and let out a great roar of triumph. The young opponent sat staring at the pieces, shaking his head. In mock condolence her father patted him on the shoulder, and only then did he turn. He saw her and his smile vanished. He looked like a man guilty of some horrendous crime.
“Nazira! What are—”
“Ata.”
He stood. She could not read the emotions on his face as he stepped toward her. Fear that something had happened at home? Anger at her intrusion into his private life? Amazement that she had suddenly appeared—crossing half a continent to find him in this strange city? Once as a child she had carried an urgent message from her mother to him in the factory sauna, and he had rebuked her for the invasion. She suddenly had the same sense now, that her entrance violated sacred male ground. Her father did not embrace her but simply stood in place, passing uncomfortable glances between the other men.
Jeff spoke very loudly in English. “Nazira, such a surprise. We—we didn’t know you were in Istanbul.” He repeated this attempt at a joke in Russian for Anarbek, who did not smile. “It’s been so—but what are you doing here?”
“I have come for my father.”
The brown man on the couch examined her fiercely, and like the others he did not smile in greeting. He was intense and handsome—but lacking, she could see now, any warmth, and his unrelenting gaze made her shiver. He did not seem happy about the distraction from his game. Her arrival, it seemed, had upset them all. She turned to her father, then back to Jeff, unsure whom to confront first, and then she lost all nerve.
After a few minutes of restrained conversation in which Nazira explained her long journey, Jeff took her bag and led her to a room full of books, where a mattress had been set up on the floor.
“Your father’s crashing in here,” he said.
“Crashing?”
“Staying,” Jeff said. “The apartment—well, the apartment’s kind of crowded. Will there be enough room for both of you?” He hardly looked at her when he spoke.
“Yes, in my opinion it is enough.”
“It’s good to see you again, Nazira. I’ve thought of you lately. I was worried.”
“Thank you for worrying, but everything is fine. And I have thought of you too.” The words were all wrong. She flushed.
But Jeff was staring at his fingers and had not seen her embarrassment. He shifted on his feet. “Maybe you would like to wash up? I’ll get you some towels. We’re going to have some dinner up the street in a little bit, and you can come with us . . .” His voice trailed off.
“I am not hungry, thank you. But I would very much like to rest.”
“All right. I’ll find you something to sleep on.”
Anarbek accosted Jeff as he came back into the living room. “Did you invite her? What’s she doing here?”
“I have no idea. She’s your daughter. You tell me.”
Adam couldn’t understand them, but he was smiling and clicking his tongue. “What?” Jeff snapped.
“There enough of us for you?” Adam asked. “Better find another place before the next one comes. My aunt might be dropping by soon.”
“Keep talking, Adam. See how much longer before I change the locks.”
On the ferry to Europe the next morning Anarbek directed Nazira to a scratched wooden bench.
“And how much longer will you vacation in this city?” she asked, sitting down.
“You are all wrong, Nazira. There is no vacation. It’s all for a reason, kizim,” he said. He squeezed himself down beside her. “Jeff would not put up the money he offered.”
“I told you, you had no business asking him for that! You think you were doing us a favor, Ata. But do you know what is happening in Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka since you left?” Nazira described the visit from Yuri, Baktigul’s flirtations, then her confrontation with Traktorbek.
“That man is bluffing. He’s bluffing.” Her father thought for a second. “It’s all a game, just to frighten us.”
Beneath them the boat engines groaned and the floorboards vibrated. “We must get back as soon as possible,” she said. “He’s threatened to steal Baktigul. He’s going to marry your daughter. Is that clear to you?”
“Quiet now. It is you Traktorbek wants, not Baktigul. He’s never gotten over it. If I come back with nothing to offer Bolot, it won’t make any difference who Baktigul marries. We’ll all be ruined. We’ll lose what little we have. You see, I’m worried only about our future. How will we live after that?” He explained their options as he understood them: a return home, with nothing to appease Bolot, or another week or so in Istanbul, with the possibility of making lucrative connections.
“Another week will be too late!” she warned, in her urgency switching from Russian to Kyrgyz. “Lola is watching Manas. I can’t leave her with the two boys alone so long.”
“Nonsense. We must return to the village with a plan. Something to sell.” He patted his jacket pocket. “I have a plan. You’ll see! Lola will understand.”
“Your plans! I remember your plans. Erotic films for the cows! An American in the village! This ridiculous trip! Where have your plans gotten us? I can see it. You’ve been fooled by this city, by all this”—she waved her arms at the skyline—“this foreign biznes. Your dreams will ruin us. You were never like this when Ama was alive.”
The ferry had pulled out and was picking up speed across the silver waters. Her father’s eyebrows clenched, but he ignored the rebuke, reached inside his jacket, then handed her a brochure. “Look at this,” he said. The brochure was written in Turkish and English. She began to read it:
ANTIK LEATHER LTD.
We offer low costs and high quality for shearling garments. Antik Leather is one of the oldest and biggest producers in Turkish Leather Industry. Antik Leather has been specialized at processing shearling garments. We have been established in 1982 and now have two factories. One is tannery, and the other is Shearling Ready Made Garment Factory. Our tannery which is shown above photo is been located at Turkey’s Leather Processing Center: Yeditepe Leather Industry Region. Today at our two factories, we reached 350 employees, about 9500 sqm closed factory space and US 20.000.000 turning-over yearly. Our production capacities is about 38,000 pieces of ready made garments and 500,000 pieces of processed leather.
Nazira studied the photograph of the tannery at the top of the brochure—a long one-story structure, not unlike the Lenin School, with a red brick roof and no windows. A Turkish flag flapped from a pole beside the front entrance. The grounds were surrounded by green cypresses, and a large sun hung low in the sky above the building. She turned over the brochure.
Shearling is Nature’s finest insulator for cold. And it is 100% NATURAL. It will keep you warm and cozy although there is subzero weather. Please do not be shocked by our lowest prices and high quality. Also we have important news for small entrepreneurs . . .
Her father’s large, hopeful eyes were fixed on her, awaiting a reaction.
Beneath this paragraph was a picture of a thin woman, with a tight masculine haircut and an overly serious look, modeling a long black leather jacket. One of her hands she pressed to her chin, the other she rested on the shoulder of a man, equally serious, seated beside her. He wore a brown suede jacket, and his hands were folded in his lap. At the bottom of the brochure was the company’s address.
Nazira pointed to it. “Is this where you’re taking me, then?” she asked, shaking her head.
“No, I’m taking you to their store in the Grand Bazaar, not the actual factory.”
She held out the brochure. “And what makes you think you can do business with this Antik Leather company?”
“No, no, you misunderstand, Nazira.” He pulled the brochure from her hands. “Antik produces the jackets and sells them. But they get their skins from another company. In Turkey the business is conducted between family members. This is how it is—how business is run in the world today. You must work with people you trust. This man at Antik buys the leather from his uncle, Hakan.” Anarbek reached into his left jacket pocket and removed a second glossy brochure. “It is the uncle who imports the sheepskins. Look, he gave me this, but it’s only in English. Read it for me.”
“Read it!”
She unfolded it.
HAKAN PAZARLAMA LTD.
Importing and Marketing Raw Lamb/Sheep Skins Founded 1992, in Istanbul Yeditepe Organised Leather Industry Zone, and operates now in an area of 12,000 sqm, it includes a refrigerated warehouse of 750 sqm. Which is the first and only one in the sector in Istanbul.
Products: Lamb and Sheep skins for Double Face, Lamb and Sheep skins for Nappa, Sheepskins for shoe manufacturing.
Import from: England, Spain, Australia, Norway, America, South Africa, Switzerland, Sweden, Ukraine.
Objective: Meet the customer’s requirements in a professional manner by keeping quality standard high in the sector and providing effective quick service. The company importing raw-skins the most in terms of turnover in Turkey. Hakan Pazarlama having a refrigerated warehouse in the FreeZone provide the best condition for preservation of skin from decomposition and hairslips which are highly important for such an organic material—
Nazira stopped. This technical information was too much for her to process, never mind translate. The ferry had nearly arrived at Eminönü, and as it began its U-turn along the Galata Bridge, preparing to dock, the stone palaces perched on the hills above the port loomed larger.
“Have you met with the uncle, Hakan, then?” she asked, clicking her tongue and returning the beloved documents to her father.
“He has promised to arrange a meeting soon. I will ask again today.” He waved the brochures, snapping them in the air. “I have great hope, Nazira. This would be big. Big for our entire village.”
“It will take equipment, transportation. Where will you get that?”
“We have our whole factory going unused in the village. Trucks that have not made delivery in years.”
“I don’t know, Ata.”
Anarbek had offered to bring her along on his business rounds, hoping she would share some of his excitement, but she had agreed to come only to convince him to leave Turkey. As they exited the ferry and climbed a pedestrian bridge over the busy shoreline road, he told her how, in his earlier search for a business plan, he had spent time near the Grand Bazaar. He had popped into shops to drink chai with the merchants and followed families to see what they bought, comparing prices and profit margins. Searching for the secret of effective salesmanship, he had even committed to memory the greetings of hawkers (“How can I help you spend your money?”). He wanted her to see this bustling world of commerce—the sparkling jewelers’ row, the textured carpets hanging in windows, the handmade purses dangling on lines above the shops. Only then would she understand what had delayed him.
They hurried up the Street of the Market Gate to the bazaar’s entrance, an archway outlined in colored marble and inscribed in blue Arabic calligraphy. Inside, the crenelated arches continued; the ceiling vaulted in red and white mosaics over the stores. Her father led Nazira by the arm through the crowds to a quieter section of the market, where jackets hung in dark swaths of brown and black over the cramped shops. He was taking her to meet Faruk, the leather merchant from Antik whom he had befriended. Her father warned her that Faruk had only one arm—his left—so she should try not to stare; and this warning only embittered her more.
“You have a daughter!” the squat, oily-haired man said in rough Russian as they entered his store. “She’s your daughter?”
“Yes,” Anarbek said, “my daughter.”
Her father, she saw, had never even mentioned his family.
The merchant squinted at her as they shook hands. He had a nervous manner—twitching lips and a bobbing Adam’s apple. He sat them down on wooden stools, and a boy brought chai. Faruk handed the glass to Nazira himself, saying, in English, “You are a princess.”
“Thank you,” Nazira said, blushing.
“And she speaks English, Anarbek! You should take a lesson or two from your daughter. She is smarter than you!”
Her father pretended to laugh.
Looking around, she discovered why, of over four thousand shops in the bazaar, Anarbek had chosen this one. On a column in the center of the store hung a poster-size photograph of Hillary Clinton. She seemed to be purchasing a leather jacket. The one-armed merchant, following her gaze, told Nazira how the previous fall Mrs. Clinton had come to the bazaar. Faruk had spotted her and complimented her beautiful hair, and she had bought jackets, from this very store, for Bill, Chelsea, and herself. Nazira wondered if this could be true. But photographs did not lie: there she was in color, shaking Faruk’s left hand in an awkward gesture, the famous First Lady with a strikingly white grin, the owner laughing at some joke it looked like he had not understood.
Her father elbowed her and raised his chin. “What a businessman Faruk must be! No? To have sold merchandise to such people!” He turned to the shop owner. “How much did the wife of the president of the United States pay for her jacket?”
“It is between me and the First Lady,” Faruk said.
“Of course! Of course!” Anarbek gazed at the man in dreamy admiration.
They discussed details of their potential partnership. From Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka Anarbek would ship high-quality skins of Kyrgyz sheep to Hakan Pazarlama—the factory owned by Faruk’s uncle—which Faruk would then buy for his tannery and use in the production of leather jackets. Nazira could see they were having difficulty communicating and agreeing on general prices, and Anarbek had yet to visit the factory—sixty kilometers outside the city, on the northern shore of the sea.
After discussing business, they chatted awhile, slurping the strong tea. Nazira did not drink hers. She wanted to leave; she wanted only to ask when her father could visit the uncle’s factory and get it over with. She knew her father was stalling, enjoying Faruk’s company, safe from her questioning. At last the dealer looked at her and said, “I have an idea!” He pronounced the words slowly, the same plastic smile on his face that Nazira had noticed in the photograph. “Why wait for Kyrgyzstan? We can start the dealing now. You can see how well our jackets sell, Nazira. The quality. Quality!” The last word he spoke at her ear, leaning close, with breath that smelled like rotten cabbage.
“Come!” Faruk said, and led them from the store out of the bazaar, across Yeniçeriler Caddesi and into the swirling heart of the Laleli trading quarter. Cars plied the congested streets, people rushed in and out of tiny shops, boxes were taped and hauled off on hand carts, and arguments in ten languages poured from dimly lit alleyways. They followed Faruk to a corner where a tall, blond, heavily made-up woman stood, holding a black leather jacket by a coat hanger. Her painted eyes darted left at the inching traffic on the road, then right at the passing pedestrians. If someone on the street made eye contact, she lifted the jacket and took a suggestive step in his or her direction, a movement that seemed to Nazira some kind of secret signal.
Faruk stopped in front of her, felt the tough leather between his fingers, and said, “Kak dyela sevodnya, Sashenka?”
The woman eyed Anarbek and Nazira and swept her curly bangs out of her face. In the histrionic manner of a Russian actress she smiled and pronounced, “Very good today! Och-yen!”
“This woman sells jackets for me. There’s a large trade here on the street. People look for deals. They know they’ll find prices they can’t get in the shops, and I give Sashenka a quarter of the profit. If she sells two, three jackets a day, she can make some good money, no? What, fifty or one hundred dollars?”
Nazira pictured that kind of money: fifty dollars a day, three hundred a week, a thousand a month. It was unthinkable. She imagined the new clothes she could buy for Manas and Oolan, a rug for the cold wooden floor in her house, an electric oven now that there was no gas in the village. She could stop brewing samogan. But no, they didn’t have the time for this.
Faruk stretched his plastic smile. “I give Sashenka a quarter of the profit. I shall give you”—he paused a dramatic second before whispering—“half.”
Half? The offer was tempting. What would it hurt to try, two or three days at the most, until her father was ready to leave? She searched Anarbek’s face for approval, but he was staring at the tall blond woman’s bare knees and nodding, only half listening.
In this way, on just her second afternoon in the city, Nazira found herself employed. The following morning she rolled up the sleeping bag Jeff had given her and ate breakfast with her father and Adam in uncomfortable silence. They had yogurt and last night’s bread, and her father made her try, for the first time, a banana. It was soft and sweet, and she had never tasted anything so delicious, but when she told this to Adam, he looked at her as if she were a child. The dark American had little patience. She asked him politely about his family and his work, but he responded only with scornful, curt, one-word answers, and she wondered what she had done to insult him.
Anarbek walked her to the ferry. Alone on the European side, unsure of herself, the traffic swirling around her, she made her way uphill, past the university arch, into the Grand Bazaar and to the leather store, where Faruk greeted her with a kiss on both cheeks, his lips hanging a second too long. He then unfolded a short black leather jacket on a table before her.
“Start at one hundred fifty dollars. Don’t take less than eighty,” he said in Russian.
She returned to the street where they had met Sashenka. After nine, as the bustle began, Nazira attempted to attract customers: the tourists exiting the hotels, the restaurant owners opening shop, the drivers of boxy Tempra SX’s, the Russian shapka traders. It made her nervous, standing alone on such a busy street, holding up an expensive leather jacket. She worried someone might just steal it from her and that she would be held responsible. But watching the other saleswomen on the sidewalk eventually calmed her, and she tried to imitate their subtle movements. If eye contact was established with a pedestrian or driver, she took two gentle steps forward, slightly raising the leather coat to signal the potential customer, welcoming him to approach.
Three hours passed without a sale. Nazira daydreamed of Manas sitting on Lola’s lap, or petting the neighbor’s dog, or chasing sheep in the garden. She missed him with a pain that was almost physical, and as the morning wore on, her daydreams turned into fears. She saw Traktorbek chasing Manas, lifting him roughly, shaking him, tossing him into the air higher and higher and threatening not to catch him.
By late morning Nazira had given up hope of making a sale and was considering dropping this mad game and demanding her father’s absolute immediate return home, when a stocky man with a strange Turkish accent surprised her by asking the price of the jacket. She forgot the troubles of home, and with an instinct absorbed from the village bazaar, named a price higher than she had been instructed to: two hundred dollars. The give and take commenced. She bargained carefully, remembering that $80 was the lower limit, and sold the jacket for $120—a huge sum. All the way back to the Grand Bazaar she fingered the bills in her sweater pocket. It was that simple.
Faruk seemed both pleased and surprised when she handed over the money. “Terrific. You are a natural businesswoman,” he said. “That jacket was worth only fifty.”
He was as good as his word and gave Nazira half the profit on the spot: thirty-five dollars.
She sold two more pieces early that afternoon, an addictive sense of triumph building with each sale. She counted what she had earned again and again. Last year, when teacher salaries had been delayed, the Kyrgyz government had paid her in UNICEF emergency food rations—crumbled bars of inedible dry oats. Now here she was, thick wads of clean U.S. bills rolled in her pocket, almost one hundred dollars in a single day.
Throughout the afternoon she continued to see the mysterious Sashenka, who appeared off and on among the street hawkers of leather coats, fur jackets, and pillbox hats. The woman had a stately air about her, an attitude of experience. She spoke Russian and English and greeted Nazira in both languages, but she bargained with customers in Turkish and in German. While Nazira stood her ground, turning all afternoon on the same sidewalk corner, Sashenka changed sides of the street impatiently, strutting up and down its length, keeping a distance between herself and the other sellers. Strangely, Nazira never saw her make a sale, and she wondered about her own good luck. Was she actually a better dealer? She tried to assuage the unstated rivalry between them with frequent waves and smiles. Late in the afternoon, she had just sold a miniskirt and was passing Sashenka on her way to the shop when the woman stopped her.
“You are getting good at this game,” Sashenka said with a forced laugh. “And you are making a lot of money. I have not sold a jacket all week. Why not take me to lunch?”
Nazira said she would love to. In the bright sunlight they ate at a sidewalk café under a red awning that bubbled in the breeze. They chatted for nearly an hour, picking through pieces of chicken shish and roasted eggplant in olive oil. Sashenka’s good humor and harsh accents amused Nazira. It turned out she was not Russian, but Romanian. They discussed the underground leather-peddling industry. Sashenka gave her advice: the busiest streets at the best times, the kind of person who will stop to flirt but is not interested in buying, the tricks of knowing if someone is walking away as a bargaining ploy or because you have played too hard. Over chai, Nazira explained how she had come to the city, her attempt to get her father to return to Kyrgyzstan, and his misguided obsession with figuring out a business arrangement between companies in the two nations.
“It seems you may be stuck here for a while,” Sashenka said. “I know what that feels like.”
“No, I will give my father—and this biznes,” Nazira gestured to the busy street, “a week at the most.”
“Yes,” the Romanian said, smiling. “I know what that is like.”
A truck crashed by, spewing exhaust behind it.
Emboldened by her success on the streets, Nazira had built up the courage to tell Jeff about Manas. But in the apartment that evening Jeff refused to remain alone in the same room with her. He refused to acknowledge anything had ever happened between them. He never mentioned receiving the letters she had sent, never elaborated on the concern he had expressed in his own letter to her, and when she approached, as quickly as possible he sought the company of Adam or her father, so she could talk no more.
Near midnight, though, she cornered him accidentally. Her father had asked her to fetch him a glass of water before he went to sleep. Passing the living room, she saw Adam sprawled on the couch, reading. He glanced up from his book and quickly looked away. Self-conscious, distracted, she turned into the kitchen and found herself face to face with Jeff. He nearly jumped at her sudden entrance, then laughed uncomfortably. “Nazira, we haven’t been alone in many years,” he said, and sat down at the round wooden table. He offered her a chair.
She swallowed. “Jeff, I have not forgotten,” she said, seating herself.
“I didn’t mean you had.” His clear voice grew foggy. “I haven’t forgotten you either.”
She had been caught off guard and tried to figure out how to broach the vital subject at this inopportune time. She bounced back up. “I promised my father to bring water. May I use a glass?”
“You have been here three days. You are no longer my guest, you are family.”
“Ah, yes. You are a good host.” She managed a smile, opened a cabinet with a shaking hand, and pulled from it two tall glasses. She was about to fill them at the sink, but Jeff came up behind her.
“Don’t use the tap. You should drink bottled water. It’s safer. Here.”
He opened the refrigerator and offered her a plastic liter labeled Hayat. Fancy, expensive water, she thought, like something out of a soap opera. Jeff took another glass from the cabinet for himself. She watched him fill them and asked quietly, “I have wondered, Jeff. Why have you not married yet?”
He spilled some of the water on the counter. “Try some of this,” he said, offering her a glass. “See how much better it tastes.”
She took the glass and pressed the back of one hand against it. “It is too cold. You should not drink such cold water! Your throat will become ill.” She met his glance. Jeff returned to the table and sat down slowly. “I’m not sure marriage is in the cards for me, Nazira. I have a girlfriend now, here in Turkey. Her name’s Melodi. I’d like to be married one day, but—”
Nazira felt her cheeks coloring. “Yes?”
“I’m not sure she does.” He sipped his water, smacked his lips, and said in Kyrgyz, “Eshteke emes.” It’s not important.
“Does she know of us?” Nazira approached the table, slid the chair a bit away from Jeff, and sat down. “Is that why?”
“No, not that.” He swallowed. “I think she likes her freedom, her independence. She’s not like other women here. She’s adventurous. She doesn’t want to be married young, with children and everything—a normal, quiet life, you know?”
“Yes, a normal life. Children. And you do not want such things?”
Jeff fidgeted in his seat. “What I’m saying is, if it’s not going to work out with me and Melodi, it’s time for me to move on again, see more of the world.”
“I do not understand you, Jeff. The world is everywhere! You have seen too much of it, I think.”
“Listen, someone like me gets bored if I stay in one place too long. I’m not really settled.”
“How can you be bored in such a big city? Here you do everything you want. You have money. You take the holidays. Go to films. Eat in restaurants.”
“No, it’s a different kind of boredom.”
“I think you have forgotten Kyzyl Adyr-Kirovka. There it is very boring.”
Jeff tapped the table nervously with his thumb. “I think I was happy there.”
Nazira considered this a moment, then said, “You were happy because you could come and go. We cannot do that.”
“What do you mean? You’ve done that now. Look where you are!” He waved his arm at the window. Across the straits the mosques shone white through the veil of the misty evening.
“But Jeff, do you know what this is costing me?” She wanted to explain how this trip was tearing at her, how it was keeping her from her son, from their son. She sought the words she had prepared countless times in her head but found herself for the first time questioning them. Why did he never ask about her life back in Kyrgyzstan? Could he have used her and then left her to suffer the results, like that Eden in Santa Barbara? Had he simply played with her? Was he capable of that? Clearly he had never felt anything serious for her. Her body grew stiff, and she thought she was losing all feeling in her chest and her legs. Before she could say anything, Jeff surprised her, reaching across the table and touching her arm.
“I have something to ask you, Nazira. Your father—he mentioned a child once. A son.”
She wrenched her arm away, surprised at the strength of her own revulsion. What right did he have, did any man have, to touch her like this?
“Yes,” she said fiercely. “I have a son.”
“Is he . . . ?” He looked at her in earnest. Five years ago in Kyrgyzstan, Jeff had seemed fresh, innocent, hopeful—there had been a glow of health to this face. Here, in this city, he seemed the very opposite: selfish, dangerously childish. She thought of Traktorbek. He at least had wanted her for his wife.
“His name is Manas,” she said. She watched Jeff’s face drop, and suddenly she lost her courage. “He was an accident. A Russian man I knew from university. He came that year to teach in Talas . . .” She felt the words slip easily off her tongue, the words she had used many times in the past, explaining away Manas’s father. She could see relief softening Jeff’s eyes. He nearly smiled. She said, “I thought he loved me. But he just came and went. He was—how do you say?—coming and going always.”
“Transient? Is this the word?” She shifted in her chair to face away from him.
“Can you handle it? Your son, I mean. Without the father?” His tone had changed; suddenly he was concerned.
Nazira smiled in defiance. “I?” she said, patting her chest. “I can handle it. We Kyrgyz women are used to such things. You have seen our men. They are so lazy. What is the difference, if they stay or not?” She tasted a tiny sip of her father’s bottled water—the iciness stung her throat. Jeff Hartig, she thought. It had not been him—it had been his confidence, his foreignness, the possibilities he offered of some other life. “Durak!” she said softly in Russian. Fool.
“I know,” he said, misunderstanding.
“Durak. Durak.”
“I know.” He grinned, as if the stilted conversation had cleared the air.
Nazira stood, turned unsteadily, and leaned against the counter. She glanced through the windows at the play of light, the faint hints of stars across the sky. “My father is thirsty,” she said, lifting one cold glass from the table.
“Yes, he is,” Jeff said, smiling once more. Again that look of confidence, as if they had shared some intimate joke. A pang of hatred pushed at her stomach. Jeff did not know her father. He knew nothing about either one of them.
At the sink, with a splash, she dumped the freezing bottled water from the glass and refilled it with tepid water from the tap—the only kind her father should drink. Jeff remained silent as she strode out of the kitchen. Passing the living room, she saw Adam again, his legs raised rudely on the couch. She had completely forgotten he was there, just the next room over. He did not look up from his book; he refused to acknowledge her creaking footsteps. Americans!
Nazira had never lived in such a strange place with such unfamiliar people, and she did not know how to accomplish the simplest things. Jeff’s huge apartment was only superficially clean; she was bothered by the dust on the bookshelves, the strange red sauces that had leaked all over the refrigerator, and the smudged glasses the men had proudly washed. At night she never knew where to sit and spent much of the time alone in the small, stifling hot study, reading Jeff’s Lonely Planet travel guides. Each morning she changed her clothes in a mad sprint, afraid her father would come in and swing open the door. Jeff had a laundry machine—a luxury Anarbek showed her how to use—but she felt uneasy about hanging her clothes on the single line on the balcony, among the men’s undergarments.
This morning, passing Adam’s open room, she saw him doing pushups with his legs raised up on his bed, and she hurried by, afraid he’d catch her looking. The bathroom routine had become a source of torment: she didn’t know when was the proper time to use it, and her presence had upset a schedule in which Jeff, then Adam, then Anarbek took turns washing. So for the third morning in a row she waited for her father’s healthful clearing of the throat, and when Anarbek finally returned from his toilet, the bathroom was hers. She found that the hot water had run out, that a soaked towel lay in a puddle on the floor. All week now a plastic razor blade had remained on the sink, and though she wanted to throw it out, she imagined it might be Adam’s.
At breakfast, Jeff was in a rush to get to work, and he avoided Nazira’s eyes. Her father scowled and dismissed any talk of leaving. And Adam made her the most uncomfortable of all, with his long silences.
She found herself more at ease outside the apartment. Her good luck with the leather jackets continued through the week, and her lunches with Sashenka became a daily ritual. It was her only female companionship, and Nazira relished the company. They spoke in Russian about wild subjects, things she never would have discussed with friends in the village—past loves, strange dreams, the habits of men. They chattered as if they had known each other for years, and Nazira felt no danger relaying her secrets: whom would the Romanian tell?
Each day Sashenka drilled her about her progress with her father. Had Nazira convinced him to leave? Had he secured his business connections yet? Nazira would chronicle their previous afternoon’s journey around the markets of the Laleli district, into the dark shops of socks, underwear, sweaters, leather, and tobacco. She described her father’s intrepid search for someone willing to give him business capital, someone enterprising and kind, interested in helping Turkey’s Central Asian ancestors, now that their little country was independent and struggling. From the shopkeepers flowed continuous promises, evasions, and equivocations, but nothing concrete. Only the sheepskin deal with Faruk’s uncle, Hakan, looked promising.
Her father, she explained, was tireless; but she could not understand his drive. Capitalism seemed exhausting. She told Sashenka, “If I could just get him home, I’m sure things will work themselves out. We have friends and family back in Kyrgyzstan. How does he expect to get anything done here, so far away, on his own?”
Sashenka assured her that it takes striking out on your own to accomplish something big. There were opportunities in wealthier countries that could not be found in the places they had come from. Hadn’t Nazira realized this yet? Turkey was developing quickly. One day Kyrgyzstan and Romania would develop too, but the time frame was different. Every country had its own pace, but a human being had only so many years—you had to make your fortune where you could. A person had to survive. Sashenka spoke down to her as if she were a child, yet Nazira argued that she was not as simpleminded and provincial as her new friend thought.
“Let me ask you then, Nazira, who has been buying your leather jackets?”
“Customers on the street. They seem eager enough.”
“Friends of his.” Sashenka slapped the edge of the table, rattling the empty plates. “Friends of Faruk. That is who is buying your leather jackets. When Faruk has your confidence, you’re caught. You’ll start depending on him. Pretty soon you’ll sell all day for him, and take less of a cut. He’ll ask for your passport, and then you’ll be working for next to nothing. You’ll be desperate, doing him favors. I’ve been here for three years, Nazira. I too have a family at home, in Romania!”
Nazira felt foolish. “I didn’t know.”
“You have to be careful.”
“No, my father wouldn’t let him take advantage of us. We’ll leave before any of that can happen.”
Sashenka shook her head. “You’re such a simple woman! I was once simple too.”
They ate their salads, and Nazira tried changing the subject; but about Jeff, Sashenka could offer little solace. “You haven’t mentioned it?” she chided. “You are staying with the father of your child, and he says nothing of it to you?”
Nazira explained that she had not had a chance and then, having a chance, had lost her nerve. It was not important really. Manas had been an accident. A happy accident, she assured Sashenka. Jeff had not answered her letters, and she had never expected to see him again. “What can I do? Force him back to Central Asia with me?”
“But money!” cried Sashenka. “Support! He’s left you with a tremendous burden and he’s given you nothing.”
Nazira had never thought of her son as a burden. She remembered the way Manas collected his animal magazines, the delight with which he chased the dogs of Karl Marx Street. But now her friend was laughing at her. “You poor girl,” she consoled her. “He took advantage of you and just disappeared.”
“No. That is not what happened.”
Sashenka asked with an ironic smile, “What exactly happened then?”
What had happened? She had never attempted to explain it to anyone. “It was just one night,” she said. “We were carried away. He was leaving, and there was something so final. We had this friendship. We could talk to each other. He seemed so generous then. And my father—”
“Make the American pay,” Sashenka said, listening to her stumble to make sense of it all. “He owes you!”
“Does he?”
Nazira looked into her friend’s hard eyes. Sashenka assumed her actress air and drew imaginary lines on the tablecloth. “We women need to protect ourselves. We need rules that every woman must obey, if only to keep our dignity. You are breaking one of those rules, Nazira. You are allowing that man to get the upper hand and get away with it. You have to be stronger.”
“I thought I was being the strong one.”
“And braver,” she said. “You must be braver.”
“Wasn’t I being brave?”
“Neither. Where is he?” The Romanian stood up in mock seriousness and clenched her fists. “Show me where he is. I’ll tear his tiny balls out from under his fat American stomach! I’ll make him pay for this.”
Nazira raised her hand to her lips. She had never heard expressions like this from a woman’s mouth.
Sashenka exploded in laughter and sat down again. With a mischievous smile she said, “I would, you know. No man does that to a friend of mine.” She thought for a few seconds. “If your father needs money so badly, get it from the American. Make him pay some every month, for his child.”
“No,” Nazira said. “I cannot do that.”
“Why?”
It occurred to her only then that she did not want Jeff to have a part. She knew now that she had never loved that man, and she didn’t have to tell him anything. “Jeff owes me nothing,” she said. It was an astonishing thought: her son belonged to her alone.
Sashenka shook her head in frustration. They lingered over the rest of the lunch in an uncomfortable silence. It was only with some effort that Nazira broke the spell to ask for the bill.