On another occasion, Timur had helped out a friend who wanted to buy a field but didn’t have enough money. Why was this man buying a field when he didn’t have any money? Timur ended up paying for most of it, the field, but it belonged to his friend.
Fatma wasn’t worried; he earned well and they always had money, but she understood that he didn’t know how to manage it, and she suspected that not all of their days would be like these. But as long as he was by her side, she felt able to face each day with a smile.
On their first night in the graveyard, they lay side by side, eyes open, in silence. Timur thought to himself: Just two more minutes, just two more minutes to watch the stars and feel my wife in my arms, and then I’ll turn over and go to sleep.
‘Gül,’ Fatma said softly into the silence.
‘Hm?’
‘It’s going to be a girl, I can feel it. I want to call her Gül, rose. I want to have a little girl called Rose.’
The blacksmith placed his hand on her belly.
‘Gül,’ he said. ‘And if it’s a boy, we’ll call him Emin.’
‘It’s not going to be a boy.’
Gül was born on a warm September day. When the blacksmith came home at dusk, there was this little creature lying next to his wife in the bed.
‘Are her hands and feet normal?’ he asked first, and Fatma nodded.
He touched Gül carefully, like the weight of his big hands alone might bruise her. With tears in his eyes, Timur kissed his wife and touched his lips to his daughter’s head. Then he went out and sat on the steps outside the house. Something tingled beneath his skin, not like bubbles, more like a warm evening breeze. He felt light, as if the breeze were gently lifting his body, as if he had given over some of his weight to the earth below. He sat on the steps and forgot to smoke.
That autumn, it seemed to him that everything was working out. He bought rich harvests from the farmers and sold them at the market in town; his vineyard bore plenty of grapes; he hired a second assistant to work in the forge; and when it was spring again he bought a summer house with a big apple orchard and a stable on the edge of the town, so that he’d have a shorter journey to work, in summer at least.
Many of the townspeople had summer houses where they would escape the heat, plant a few beds with tomatoes, with cucumbers, peppers, courgettes and corn to eat. They also hoped for a little extra income when their apple trees bore fruit in the autumn. In the summer months, they’d rent out their houses in the town, mostly to rich people from Adana who wanted to escape the heat of the city.
When the heat grew stifling inside the summer house, you could always lie down outside in the shade of a walnut tree. You could listen to the leaves rustling, though it was barely half an hour on foot from the houses in town, lined up side by side with their little backyards with scarcely a tree.
They moved house in early May. Timur had found someone to take the bed and their household goods to the summer house on the back of a small lorry. Once they’d loaded it up, there wasn’t even space left in the cab. The driver suggested he take the things to the summer house, find a couple of lads to help him unload, and then come back for Timur and Fatma. Gül was at her grandmother’s house already.
‘Alright, Timur said, tucking some money in the driver’s shirt pocket to pay the lads for unloading. We’ll start walking, get a bit of a head start at least.
As man and wife were peacefully making their way along the dusty road, a car approached them from behind and the driver slowed right down. He had soot-black hair, shiny with brilliantine, and bushy eyebrows. Once he’d wound down the window, he asked: ‘Where are you heading?’
‘Into town,’ Timur answered.
‘I can give you a lift, get in,’ the man said. Fatma had never been in a car in her life. No one in their town owned a car in those days.
She’d been in lorries, in the driver’s cab or on the back, but never in a car. She sat down on the back seat and felt briefly trapped as Timur pulled the passenger door shut.
The driver’s hands didn’t look like he used them to work, but he had a stocky figure that didn’t quite match his thin, trimmed moustache.
As they drove up a slight hill the car slowed down, and suddenly it jolted forward and then stopped.
‘Damn,’ said the driver, then turned to Timur: ‘Brother, I can tell you’re a strong man. Would you mind getting out and pushing the car up the last bit? It’s bound to start again as soon as we’re going downhill.’
The blacksmith nodded and smiled, his blue eyes full of zest and pride, and he got out and braced himself against the car. It was easier than he’d thought; he hadn’t even broken a sweat by the time they were at the top. The car rolled downhill, the engine started, and the man put his foot down.
He wants to get the engine warmed up, Timur thought first, until he realised the man was simply driving away. His face flushed with heat and he broke into a run, chasing the car. He’d kill that man, he’d kill him. Even if he didn’t get his hands on him now, he’d strike him dead if he laid a finger on Fatma.
Timur doesn’t notice the car stopping and Fatma getting out; he simply runs without registering anything, and now he sees her standing by the side of the road. But he doesn’t slow down, he keeps running until he reaches her. The car is out of sight by now.
‘What happened?’ Timur asks.
‘Don’t make my husband a murderer, I told him, don’t make my husband a murderer. Stop the car and let me out, and then piss off as fast as you can. He’ll find you and kill you, I said, he’s a man of honour. I put my arm around his throat from the back seat and I said: Don’t make my husband a murderer.’
Timur is grateful. He’s grateful and he thinks life will get bigger and bigger and more and more wonderful as long as he has Fatma by his side. Just yesterday he was a little boy, and today he’s married to her and thinks they will conquer all dangers together.
Timur bought another cow, he dug the vegetable patches, hammered in the forge, and in the evenings he swept up his daughter in his arms and cuddled her. Fatma made friends with the neighbours, she milked the cows at dawn and then again at dusk when they came back from grazing. When she was alone with Gül, she talked to her daughter, told her what she was doing and who she was thinking of, told her she hadn’t had a mother of her own but her adoptive mother had taken good care of her, perhaps because she was the girl she’d always wished for and never had. Fatma hadn’t got on well with her three brothers; they’d teased and tormented her, once forcing her to eat a rotten apple, another time hiding her clothes when she was bathing in the river, but all that was long ago. Now she had Timur and she had Gül, and if God willed it, she’d have more children.
Summer passed, and when autumn was almost over they moved back to the village because it had grown too cold in the little summer house without a stove, because there wasn’t much left to do once the apples had been harvested, because the neighbours were moving back to town too, back to their homes, now vacated by the people from Adana who would spend a mild winter in the city, probably without a single glimpse of snow. Timur, Fatma and Gül moved back to the village; in the summer houses, there was no one left to talk to, no one left to lend some flour or a barrowful of manure. They moved back to the village without their bed – they had lent it, once again, to someone who had just married – they moved without their bed, but with cows and chickens in tow.
‘In a few years’ time, everyone in town will know how kings sleep,’ Timur said, acting as if he’d find it annoying.