Gardens of Water: A Novel by Alan Drew

Author:Alan Drew
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Turkey, Pakistan, Families, Family, Muslim families, American First Novelists, Family Life, Fiction - General, Americans, General, Domestic fiction, Earthquakes, Fiction
ISBN: 9781400066872
Publisher: Random House, Inc.
Published: 2008-02-05T05:00:00+00:00

"Our parents don't love us," he said. "And you still want to make them happy." He threw a few bills on the table and stubbed out his cigarette. "Let's go."

He walked her through the book bazaar and showed her the tattoo rooms underground where the passageway was warm and muggy and smelled like sweat and where some of the corners glistened wet. He took her to a record shop full of posters of men with guitars and eyes like lizards. The man behind the counter had spiked hair and a nose ring and he stared at her the whole time. The passage scared her a little. Last year two boys killed a child, and all the papers said the boys were Satanists who hung out in underground passages just like this one. Outside the shop, the passageway was filled with slouching kids, their clothes hanging off their bodies as though the fabric concealed nothing but skeletons. Girls leaned on boys and shared cigarettes. She even saw one blowing smoke rings above her head so that she seemed ringed with halos. She wondered if any of these kids knew those boys.

He led her back into the light, between the stands of men selling DVDs in wooden cases, past the kebab restaurants and gozleme shops where, behind steaming windows, Kurdish women kneaded dough into pancakes, their hands white with flour, and spread the pancakes on the circular pan. The smell of brine and guts announced the fish sellers' street. Many of the men here wore beards and she noticed one man fingering prayer beads while taking a break with a simit and tea. Dylan wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her tight. His fingers rested on her hip, right where her stomach met her pelvis. A rush of heat flooded her skin. The open lightbulbs dangling above the baskets of fish reflected light against the wet cement and the men stared at them. Their hands slit open bellies of fish, they called out prices, they wrapped fillets in white oil paper and smiled as they took customers' money, but they were watching, excitement and anger in their eyes, as though a fantasy about her had bled into hatred.

"Please, Dylan," she said. "Stop."

"Jesus," he said, and let go. He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground and they walked like that until they reached Tibbiye Road and the roar of buses and taxis.

"You can't do that in public," she said.

"Your father isn't here, Irem.".

"We have to be married," she said. "How can you live here for so long and not know that?"

"I know it," he said. "It's just stupid. The other girls don't have to be married."

"I'm not those other girls," she said. "And it's not stupid!"

He spun around once with frustration. "You thought it was stupid until the other day."

People were watching them, but they were near the shoe and clothing stores now and it was a different kind of crowd, a crowd that would agree with Dylan about how stupid it all was.

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