Son of Sin by Omar Sakr

Author:Omar Sakr
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Affirm Press
Published: 2022-01-13T00:00:00+00:00

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Gold blur, blue sky, haze of houses.

Look out the window, son, see that? Cevdat shouted. That’s Ceyhan, that’s where we come from! They’d been driving for an hour. Wind buffeted them through the open windows. Mehmet was in the front seat beside his brother, his arm up, holding on to the handle above his head. Cevdat stared out, his thick head of hair ruffled, sunglasses glinting, joy stamped on his face. He was incandescent out on this road, steering wheel in hand, in control, moving, free. There was no comparing him to the man mired in the unit that Jamal had seen these past few days, or even the man he met for the first time in Leichhardt. That confident man was gone. There was something raw and resigned about him here in Turkey, but on the road, he regained a measure of his old fire. As with many of the boys from the area, driving seemed to exert an almost supernatural pull on him. Anything was possible behind the wheel. He pointed out houses he used to own, said he gave them all to his ex-wives. What would have been said bitterly on the balcony, he offered here easily and with a shrug.

You can’t hold on to these things, son, he said. When we go to the grave we take only our skin, remember that.

Jamal’s teyta appeared in the back seat beside him, smiling; she put her warm hand on his forehead, the smell of citrus blossomed, and then she was gone. Her death lived in him, ragged and awful, made all the more so by her occasional visits—her smile told him the pain he felt was entirely his own. Somehow, he’d deluded himself into thinking he was free of the past, as if it was tied to the land that made it, and here across the sea it could not hurt him. He had the feeling his grandparents had made the same mistake. This land, too, held part of him and his story. A dozen griefs pumped out and through his heart. He closed his eyes, and his uncle began to speak, his voice deep and rocky like the hills.

See those ruins, oğlum? Yilankale, it’s called. Snake Castle. They say a lizard person lived on that hill once, and who knows, maybe he still does, it’s cursed, we don’t go there. Anyway, there was a boy who fell into a well of honey. He dug beneath the honey, and found a cave full of snakes. It was a kind of garden, you know. And then she came to him, their queen, this snake woman, very beautiful, top half woman, bottom snake—

—Like every woman, Cevdat interrupted.

York, ya, shut up, I’m telling the story. Anyway, they fell in love. He lived with her for many years, but he missed the sun and the sea, and so one day he left. She told him not to give away her secret, and to be careful not to bathe with others—he was part of them now too, isn’t it? The water would show this, make his skin scaly.

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