Everything inside had been prepared for my own departure early the next morning. The pots I’d used to cook our last meal were washed and hung up. My suitcase was already packed and placed on the landing. A sole peach rested on the tiled countertop to be eaten with honey and a last few spoonfuls of yoghurt for breakfast before the taxi would arrive at 6. I had only to try to sleep for a few hours in our wrinkled, unmade bed until I too would be leaving.
The thin gauzy curtain fluttered across the set of French doors that opened out onto the tiny balcony where our barbecue, bought for twelve Lira down one of the cobbled lanes in Eminönü, would soon be abandoned, along with remnants of the wooden fruit boxes we’d burned to cook a seabass over the night before. I smiled remembering how he’d waited until I’d peeked at the bright pink gills and poked gently at the flesh before bargaining the price – speaking hybrid Persian and English – with the fishmonger at Galatasaray market, and later stood over it shirtless and confident, turning it carefully over the flames to get the skin crisp while I chopped oregano and marjoram and squeezed lemons into the last of a bottle of bright green olive oil. Eating from plates in our laps, largely with our hands, we threw the bones into the wilderness of shrubs below where a dozen alley cats scurried to feast on the remains.
I reached for the cool glass of water on the table next to the bed. The pale glint of the moon outside and the soft, metallic hum of the air conditioner yielded only restlessness. I rolled over, leaning on my elbows and pulled my laptop out of my bag. I knew already I would read it again, even through I had kept it at bay for weeks. Now I was alone I needed to revisit the terrible sting of those lines. I opened up to the glare of my laptop and found the email. It started with “My Dear Jenny”.
“Vahid, just think about 10 years later and when you have a child. You won’t look the same from appearance at all. I know you Vahid. You are in love now, and can’t see these things. Just think about it. If in future these things happen, what would you do? Can anyone else accept you? You must find a widow. Vahid I know you. Even with her past you can not get along. It will make you crazy and upset all the time.
But I told him that “Jenny didn’t have any relation before.”
