“Take them,” she says. “It’s not good to keep a grudge, especially against one so dear.”
Orhan reaches for the camera, running his hand across the silver knobs and leather creases. His breath slows down, quelling his anxiety. There’s no harm in touching the thing. It’s only a camera, an inanimate object.
“What am I supposed to do about all this?” he asks, trying to concentrate on the problem at hand.
“You’ll do what you’ve always done,” she says. “Follow your Dede’s wishes. Just promise me you’ll get the house back.”
“Just like that. Like I’m picking up some simit on the way home from work.”
“Yes, like that,” Auntie Fatma says. She sighs, letting her shoulders drop. Never one for serious conversation, his aunt has a special talent for trivializing all of life’s little unhappinesses. But this time, for once, she seems worried.
“You don’t have to worry,” says Orhan. “I’m not going to let some stranger turn you out of your home,” says Orhan.
“Benim pa?am. My prince,” she says, patting his knee. “You’ve got her information. Go and find her. Only be careful.”
“Careful?”
“Yes, careful,” she says. “You know what the trees said when the axe came to the forest?”
“No, what?” asks Orhan.
“The handle is one of us,” she says, smiling her devious smile.
Orhan knits his brows together in confusion.
“I don’t get it. Am I the tree or the axe?” he asks.
“Who knows?” she says.
CHAPTER 2
Pilgrimage to Ararat
WHEN THE BOEING 747 finally pulls its wheels up during take off, Orhan literally feels lighter. The more space between himself and his father, and that damned house and Karod, the better. He shuts his eyes and tries to push the terrifying thought of Mustafa moving to Istanbul and taking ownership of Tarik Inc. out of his mind. He tries instead to imagine California, where Seda Melkonian lives. Sunny beaches and German-dubbed reruns of Knight Rider come to mind. He thinks of the tall American in that show, David somebody, singing “Looking for Freedom” on top of the Berlin Wall minutes before it was torn down.
Orhan’s own freedom is in the hands of a total stranger. The thought lands him right back where he’s been since Dede’s funeral: wallowing in a pool of dread. Maybe the old man really had lost his mind. Maybe Orhan was too busy with the company to notice. Reports of Dede’s growing eccentricities did sometimes reach him, but indulging the old man’s whims was a time-honored tradition in the Türko?lu house. Auntie Fatma and his father didn’t agree on much, but neither of them balked when Dede started making strange requests. As a boy, Orhan watched as his father washed all the coin money before placing it in a wooden box Dede had labeled TEMIZ, clean. His grandfather was always going on and on about the evil stench of money. One afternoon, Orhan found Auntie Fatma ironing the paper money. She placed the bills flat onto the board, then covered them with a linen pillowcase. The iron hissed as hot steam rose up from the bills, through the white linen and into the hallway. When he asked her what she was doing, she said, “I’m purging the money of all its evil.” Not questioning it, Orhan helped her hang each bill to dry on the clothing line.
Last month, the old man wrote a letter to the supervisor at the factory demanding that all the red fabric dye in the plant be the exact shade of a red mulberry he’d included in an envelope. The discreet manager had placed the letter with smudged fruit on Orhan’s desk and ignored its directives.
Orhan knew Dede’s requests were growing stranger and stranger, but he could never have predicted this. A battle begins in the pit of his stomach between the forces of anxiety and grief. Just when grief takes hold of his insides, a wave of anxiety sweeps in and coats everything with its venom.
Orhan orders a whiskey on the rocks and stares into the amber liquid, trying to make sense of what Dede has done. Is this Seda woman a relative? Even so, what would possess Dede to leave the house to her? Even if the family home is the least valuable of Dede’s assets, it encompasses four generations of Türko?lu life.