Chapter 1

In the rush of bodies to board the ferry leaving Istanbul for
Gölcük, Sinan lost his son.

Five minutes earlier Ismail had been tugging Sinan in the opposite
direction, back toward the city, deep into the labyrinth of arcades
and electronics stores of the Sirkeci neighborhood. Sinan suspected
it was for the exact purpose of missing the ferry home and delaying
the pain of the circumcision ceremony that evening. The boy stomped
across the bricks in his white circumcision costume, one hand
squeezing Sinan’s fingers and the other hoisting his tasseled
staff in the air like a pasha leading a parade. Sinan let himself
be pulled for a while, but the horn had already sounded, and, even
though he, too, wanted to delay the ceremony, they couldn’t
miss that ferry.

When they had reached Re¸sadiye Avenue, Sinan pulled Ismail
into the street just as the traffic broke, Sinan’s shoulders
rocking back and forth in an awkward dance on his bad foot. He
finally pushed Ismail through the metal gate to the ferry dock just
in time for them to join the throng of men and women leaving work
for the day. They ran from the shade of the dock back out into the
searing summer sun, Sinan leading Ismail this time through a sea of
elbows, shoulders, and damp backs. They climbed the thin plank of
wood used as a bridge from dock to boat, the green water beneath
them churning with translucent jellyfish, and they entered the
smoky cabin, where Ismail dropped his staff. He let go of
Sinan’s hand, and before Sinan could grab his son’s
arm, the boy disappeared, swallowed by the wave of bodies.

Now Sinan shoved through the crowd to get to the boy, but his foot
made it difficult. He pushed against the stomachs of men smoking
cigarettes, turning sideways to make himself thinner.
"Affedersiniz," he said to each person he touched, in a
voice barely concealing his rising panic. "Excuse me." But the more
he struggled forward, the more he was shoved backward by the
jostling mob, and soon he was forced all the way to the other side
of the ferry, his back leaning against a rusty chain that kept him
from tumbling into the Bosporus.

"Allah, Allah," he said out loud. A man standing next to him
glanced in his direction.

"Too many men," the man said. He lit a cigarette, the smoke flying
away from his face. "Too many men, not enough city."

"My boy’s lost," Sinan said.

The man turned around. He was taller than Sinan and he was able to
see over the heads of the crowd.

"Where?" the man said.

"At the entrance."

The man stood on his toes and yelled across the cabin in a voice so
powerful it silenced the crowd.

"Erkek çocuk nerede?"

That started a chorus of echoes. "Where’s the boy?" strangers
called, their voices rising above the sound of the engine straining
to pull away from the dock. "Where’s the boy? Where’s
the boy?" they yelled into the wind, as the ferry nosed its white
hull out into the blue water. "Ismail!" Sinan called, joining his
voice to the chorus. The men yelled "Ismail" too, and a pandemonium
of concern radiated out through the cabin.

Then thirty feet away, rising above the heads of hundreds of
people, came his son. At first Ismail seemed to be floating under
his own power, a princely ghost taken flight in the sea-whipped
wind, but as he drew nearer, Sinan saw the shoulders on which
Ismail rested. The man elbowed through the parting crowd, a
cigarette burning in his mouth, his large, hairy hands wrapped
around the boy’s stomach. Ismail’s white teeth gleamed
against his skin and his black eyes shone in the afternoon light.
The staff was clasped in his fist, and for a moment he seemed to be
a king raised high above the people of Istanbul.

"Te¸sekkür ederim," Sinan said when the stranger
handed him his son.

"Bir ¸sey de˘gil."

**

When the ferry docked in their suburb of Gölcük three
hours later, Ismail wouldn’t let go of the railing. Sinan
touched the top of

Ismail’s head, and reminded him of the gifts he would receive
after the ceremony. He tickled Ismail’s armpits and tugged on
his earlobe, which didn’t earn him the usual dimpled smile,
much less a loosening of the boy’s white-knuckled grip. A few
women, shuffling toward the exit, smiled in sympathy. The man who
had carried Ismail on his shoulders slid a one-million-lira note
into the pocket of the boy’s white satin vest.

"What’s your name?" the man said.

"Ismail."

"Ismail what?" the man said.

"Ismail Ba¸sio˘glu."

"That’s a fine name. A strong man’s name." The man
winked at Sinan. "Can’t stay a boy forever," he said.

Sinan thought the man was scolding him for Ismail’s
age—nine, at least a year too old for the
sünnet—but the man’s smile betrayed nothing
but generosity.

When the deck was cleared of people, Sinan touched his son’s
hand and felt the boy’s fingers stiffen. "We have to go," he
said. Behind Ismail, the sun collapsed in red bands along the
horizon. Sinan knelt beside Ismail and put his hands on the
boy’s shoulders.

"It will hurt, but that pain will pass and God will know
you’re willing to endure pain for him. A man has to endure
pain, Ismail. But it will pass."

Ismail looked at the ground, his long eyelashes pressed against his
cheeks.

"Baklava soaked in honey afterward? Two, maybe?"

Finally, the boy smiled.

**

They had left home that morning, just as sunlight broke above the
bay, and took the three ferries the length of the Gulf of
˙Izmit into Istanbul. Sinan hadn’t been to Istanbul
since they had first arrived in the city from Ye¸silli, their
village in the Southeast, seven years ago, but it had been
Ismail’s special request to be paraded around the city on the
day of his circumcision. Sinan hated Istanbul—too many
people, too much cement, too little sky—but Ismail was
fascinated by it.

Even after a full day of stomping around the city that caused
Sinan’s foot to ache, his son’s fascination rubbed off
on Sinan.

People had been kinder than he had expected. A woman in a pastry
shop had offered the boy a slice of chocolate cake laced with
pistachio nuts, a bite of which Ismail promptly dropped on the
white satin of his pasha’s costume, soiling the garment that
had cost Sinan a week’s earnings. A taxi driver gave them a
free ride up to Topkapı Palace, where, like sultans of another
age, they gazed out over the shimmering waters of the Bosporus.
They marveled at Bo˘gaziçi Bridge, standing like a huge
metal suture between the hills of Asia and Europe. They counted the
boats crisscrossing the Sea of Marmara— massive tankers that
shoved the water aside, lumbering car ferries leaning into the
current, driftwood-sized fishing spits—and settled on the
number forty-six. As they passed the fish houses in Kumkapı
neighborhood, the musicians at one of the tourist restaurants left
their table and followed Ismail down the street, blowing their reed
flutes to announce his passing.

Nilüfer and ˙Irem had stayed home to cook the food for
the party tonight. If they had still lived in Ye¸silli,
Sinan’s aunts and uncles and cousins would have helped, and
the whole family would have paraded

Ismail through the unpaved streets. Sinan kept the memories of his
own sünnet celebration to himself; he didn’t want
his son to know what he was missing. But the images had flashed in
his mind throughout the day—his father hoisting him onto
their best horse, his mother walking beside him, one hand resting
on his knee, and the horse’s belly swaying against her own
pregnant bulge. It was one of his last memories of her, and even
though her face had been white and she wouldn’t smile, he
hadn’t thought to tell his father to get her home.

Three days later, his father would leave Sinan with his aunt while
he drove his mother to the good hospital in Diyarbakır. She
was bleeding, his aunt told Sinan. The doctors would make her
better and he would have a little sister or brother when they came
home. Only his father came back.

Now the call to sunset prayer echoed from dozens of speakers, the
amplified voices ricocheting off the cement walls of apartment
buildings. Sinan was nervous, too, and a knot the size of an
apricot had hardened inside his stomach. The walk home took them
past the fishmonger’s, and Sinan gave Ismail money to buy the
fish heads and severed tails for the street cats. Eren Bey, the
fish seller, wrapped the remains in paper and handed them to
Ismail.

"Wait," Eren Bey said, holding up one bloody finger. >From a
fernlined basket filled with his best palamut, he grabbed
the largest fish, wrapped it up with a sprig of oregano, and
dropped it into Ismail’s hands. "Fish will make you a strong
man." He flexed his bicep and slapped the bump of muscle. "All the
women in the world will kiss your feet."

Eren winked and Ismail smiled.

"Please," Sinan said, "he’s just a boy."

"Efendim," the fish seller said, his hands held out as if he
were mildly insulted, "just a joke."

They stopped at the rotting wooden konak where the street
cats lived, but the cats were not there. Ismail threw the fish
parts through the broken window anyway, a gift for their return.
They took maghrib prayer at mosque, and Sinan listened as
Ismail stumbled through the Arabic. Afterward, they climbed the
hill that led to their apartment, and the bright lights of the
amusement park below spun against the darkening sky. Sinan
promised, as always, to take Ismail there someday for a ride on the
Ferris wheel.

By the time they reached their apartment, the knot in Sinan’s
stomach had grown to the size of a small apple. He massaged the
spot with his fingertips and it rolled around inside his stomach.
He wondered, briefly, if he could delay the ceremony one more year.
But people were already coming, the sünnetci was
already scheduled, and he would have to make his son suffer the
pain tonight.

"Go on and see Ahmet," Sinan said to Ismail. He knew his
brother-in-law would spoil the boy, treat him like a child one last
time before Ismail had to bear the burden of trying to be a man.
"I’ll come and get you at the grocery later."

Sinan climbed the curving staircase of his apartment building.
American music blasted down the stairwell and rattled the metal
railing. He hated their apartment. From the outside it looked nice:
the cement walls were painted yellow and the stairway to the front
door was made of mediocre marble that shined when the apartment
manager bothered to polish it. But inside you could hear a man
whisper through the plywood doors, the plaster walls were chipped,
and on stormy afternoons, when the rain rolled across the bay as
though the sea had stood up and formed a wall, the wind slipped
through the cracks in the mortar and deposited saltwater and cement
dust in the corners of the living room.

In the kitchen, Nilüfer was covered in sweat and a dusting of
flour. Little balls of dough stuck to her fingertips.

"Sinan." She smiled. "Canım," she said, and purposely
pressed her doughy hands to his face.

"Stop that, Nilüfer," he said, but he let her smear the dough
across his cheeks.

She kissed him once on each doughy cheek. Sinan tucked a stray
strand of hair beneath her head scarf.

 "How long has this been going on?" he asked, motioning with
his head toward the music blasting through the ceiling.

She shrugged. "Forty-five minutes?" She looked behind Sinan.

"Where’s Ismail?"

"With Ahmet."

"Well, go get him. I need to get him ready." She squeezed loaves of
bread he had brought from the grocery that morning. "This bread is
too hard. You need a new bread man," she said. She walked into the
kitchen. "The yogurt is runny. This heat is ruining it all. The
börek won’t rise, the peppers are like
rubber."

"Nilüfer, it will be fine," he said. "I’ll go to the
store and get more bread. Stop worrying."

She leaned a fist on a hip and blew air through her teeth. "As
though you don’t worry."

He touched his stomach and made a face.

She waved her hand at him. "See."

He laughed. "All right, all right."

He looked around the corner to where his daughter sat watching
television and made sure ˙Irem could not see them before
touching Nilüfer’s hips and kissing her on the
lips—a long kiss, the kind he usually gave her only in their
bedroom.

"Quit with that," she said, but her hands rested on his chest. She
slapped him on the shoulder and whispered, "We don’t need any
more children."

"What’s this?" Sinan said. Some sort of pastry sat in a
circular tray on the kitchen table. It wasn’t a Turkish
dish.

"Pecan pie," Nilüfer said with an astonished lifting of her
eyebrows.

"Sarah Hanım brought it down for the party." She glanced
toward the ceiling.

"The American’s wife?" he said. "Pecans?"

An American family occupied the sixth floor, the one directly above
them. They spent only the summers here, just sitting around,
drinking wine on the terrace, and listening to jazz music, as far
as Sinan could tell.

 "Her name’s Sarah," Nilüfer said, glaring at him.
"Sarah Roberts, and she’s nice."

"Maybe, then, she could teach her son some manners." He pointed to
the throbbing ceiling.

"We should have invited them. I feel bad."

"You should be helping your mother," Sinan said to his daughter,
sticking his head around the corner into the living room.

"Baba, I’ve been working all day." She didn’t look at
him when she spoke. He didn’t know what it was about
fifteen-year-old girls, but he had never known a child so rude to
her parents.

He glanced at the television. It was an American show dubbed in
Turkish, and the actors’ mouths stopped moving before the
lines were finished being said. A scantily dressed blond girl
killed monsters with a stake.

He watched the show for a minute, enough to determine that it dealt
with the devil and sex.

"I don’t want you watching this. It’s not moral."

"Baba, Buffy kills the vampires, the evil ones. What’s more
moral than that?"

He snapped off the television.

"Baba!"

"Get yourself ready for tonight," he said. "It’s your
brother’s special night."

Irem ran down the hallway. "Ismail, Ismail, Ismail," she said,
"always

Ismail." She slammed the door to the room she shared with her
brother and the music upstairs stopped.

Sinan let out a frustrated breath of air. "How are we raising our
children?" he called toward the kitchen.

"You could say hello to her first," Nilüfer said, popping her
head around the corner of the kitchen.

"So she could ignore me and stare at this stupid box?"

"Sinan, it’s only a television show." He heard the oven door
squeak open. "She’s been working hard since this morning. Be
nice."

He switched on the television again and watched for a minute,
turning his head to the side to consider it. There was killing and
there was kissing, enough for him. He shut it off.

"I’m going to invite them," Nilüfer said, standing in
the hallway now.

"No." It was bad enough they lived above him, but he didn’t
want the Americans inside his house, especially on this day.

"Sinan," Nilüfer said. "It’s wrong. They’re our
neighbors."

He shook his head, but she was already coming toward him with a
smile on her face.