The Island of Missing Trees(69)

Kostas shifted on his feet.

‘Hey. Let me buy you a drink,’ Defne said when she realized he was not going to say anything. ‘Let’s get gorgeously drunk! I’ve all this money we didn’t pay the psychic.’

Kostas surveyed her face, his concentration absolute. ‘Don’t you think you should tell me?’

‘What?’

‘That woman talked about a little boy – Yusuf Yiorgos. I can never imagine a child on this island baptized with a Greek and Turkish name. Impossible. Unless it was you who gave birth to that baby …’

She averted her eyes, but only for a second.

‘When I learned about the pregnancy, I assumed there had been an abortion. But now I realize maybe I was wrong. Was there or wasn’t there? Talk to me, Defne.’

‘Why are you asking these things?’ she said as she opened her handbag and fished out a cigarette but did not light it. ‘Don’t tell me you believe in that psychic crap. You are a scientist! How can you take any of this seriously?’

‘I don’t care about the psychic, I care about what happened to our baby.’

She flinched when he said that, as if she had touched a hot iron.

Kostas said, ‘You had no right to hide the pregnancy from me.’

‘I had no right? Really?’ Defne’s stare hardened. ‘I was eighteen years old. On my own. Scared out of my wits. I had nowhere to go. If my parents found out, I had no idea what would have happened. I was ashamed. Do you know how it feels to find out you’re pregnant and you can’t even go out and ask for help? There were soldiers everywhere. In a divided city, at the worst time, the radio blaring, day and night, “Stay at home!”, and there are new emergency measures every hour, and you don’t know what tomorrow will bring, and there is panic everywhere, people are attacking each other and dying out there, do you know what it’s like to try to hide a pregnancy when the world feels like it’s collapsing and you have no one to talk to? Where were you? If you weren’t there then, you have no right to judge me now.’

‘I’m not judging you.’

But she had already walked away.

In the harsh neon light from the store, Kostas stood still, seized by a sense of helplessness so profound that, for a second, he couldn’t breathe. Absently, his gaze fell on the window he was standing by, raking the gold and the silver neatly arrayed on glass shelves: rings, bracelets, necklaces bought to mark weddings, birthdays, happy anniversaries – all that they had missed out on this whole time.

She didn’t want to talk to him but he needed to learn the truth. Tomorrow morning, first thing, he would call Dr Norman and ask him what had happened in the summer of 1974 when he was miles away.





Not Your Djinni


London, late 2010s


The storm now over, the sky had faded to a pale grey, though still tarnished around the edges like an unwanted photograph tossed into a fire. In the afternoon, Ada and her aunt left the house on the pretext of going shopping, but in reality to visit the exorcist.

‘I still can’t believe I’ve agreed to this,’ Ada murmured as they headed towards the tube station.

‘We’re extremely lucky he’s agreed to see us,’ said Meryem, her wedged heels clacking behind her.

‘Well, it’s not like the guy had a waiting list.’

‘As a matter of fact, he did. The earliest appointment was two and a half months away! I had to use all my charms over the phone.’

They got off at Aldgate East, where they had a brief stopover at a coffee shop and ordered two drinks – a chai latte for Ada, a white chocolate mocha with double cream for Meryem.

‘Remember, not a whisper to your father. He’ll never forgive me. Promise?’

‘Don’t worry, I wouldn’t tell him about this! Dad will be disappointed in me if he finds out I’m wasting my energy on hocus-pocus. We are bound in shame and secrecy!’

By the time they reached the address it was almost three o’clock, the sun not even a possibility in the leaden sky.

The bustling street was lined with leafless plane trees. There were new-build flats, curry houses, pizza chains, halal restaurants, pashmina and sari stalls, shops that had been owned by successive waves of immigrants, from French Huguenots and Eastern European Jews to Bangladeshi and Pakistani communities. In the kebab shops slabs of meat slowly revolved in the windows, lost in a trance of their own, like the last guests at a party that had gone on for too long. Meryem studied her surroundings with fascination, both puzzled and delighted by this London that she had never known existed.

Walking in the opposite direction to the traffic, they arrived at a semi-detached red-brick house. There was no bell, only a brass knocker in the shape of a scorpion with a raised tail, which they rapped firmly.

‘Someone likes to show off,’ said Ada, inspecting the fancy knocker with faint distaste.

‘Shush, watch your words,’ whispered Meryem. ‘There is no joking around holy men.’

Before Ada could reply, the door opened. A young woman greeted them. She wore a lime-green headscarf and a dress in a similar shade that reached her ankles.

‘Assalamu alaikum,’ said Meryem.

‘Walaikum salaam,’ said the woman with a curt nod. ‘Come on in. We were expecting you earlier.’