But again he got bored. The days were endless. Coming up with new ideas became tiring and tiresome. Every desire he could ever think of was satisfied.
He had had enough. He walked out of his house, looked up at the glorious sky, and said, “Dear God. I thank You for Your abundance, but I cannot stand it here anymore. I would rather be anywhere else. I would rather be in hell.”
And the booming voice from above replied, “And where do you think you are?”
Fatima chuckled. Her hands touched her stomach, and suddenly she wondered if she was pregnant. She knew it was possible. History was filled with tales of half-demons. Would her child resemble Afreet-Jehanam, the ugly demon, or her lover, the most beautiful of men? And what if she was carrying a girl? An unattractive son might be one thing, but a daughter who looked like a demon? The potion. “I need my things.”
“Needs, wants, desires,” Afreet-Jehanam said. “I might as well be telling children’s tales.” He paused, looked into his beloved’s eyes. “I can dress you in royal clothing, in silks and furs, in emeralds and pearls. What need you of past belongings?”
“One can never be free from the past and its pull.”
Afreet-Jehanam waved his hand, and in a moment the red imp Ishmael came running with her clothes. “I collected everything,” he said, “except for the robe. Ezra likes it quite a bit. He thought I wanted it for myself and would not give it up.”
Fatima took the vial from the dress’s pocket. “Has it been seven hours yet?”
“No,” the grand demon said. Fatima drank the liquid. “But there was no need,” he added. “Had you not panicked, you would have realized that it is a boy. Magic potions are redundant.”
Ishmael looked stunned. “I am going to be an uncle?”
“I must leave,” Fatima said. “I must complete my mission.”
“Why?” Afreet-Jehanam asked. “You have ingested the potion you were to deliver.”
“I am not free. I will return. As to the potion, I have another plan. I must continue. I am still far from the green city. The sooner I leave the better.” Her lover opened his hand, and in his palm Fatima saw her decapitated hand. “That is my third hand,” she said.
“And in it I will place my third eye,” he said. “This will be the proof of our union. Place it upon your person and no demon will dare hurt you. Place it above the door of your house and evil will never enter.”
She took the talisman, and it transformed in her hands. It became stone, turquoise, and the eye in the palm a slightly darker blue.
“Stay the night,” the demon said. “You will be with your masters in the morning.”
Four
According to my grandfather, I owed my existence, my special place in the world, to either of two things, the slaughter of a stud pigeon or the swallowing of matches. Depending on which story he was in the mood to tell, one of those two events forced him to escape Urfa, or, as he sometimes said, provided him with the opportunity of a lifetime.
There were always Armenian orphans living in the Twinings’ household, but none stayed more than a year or so. The Twinings, being good missionaries, found homes for the various children. My grandfather, though, was a different story. Since Poor Anahid became the Twinings’ maid and he was her charge, he lasted for eleven years. My grandfather claimed, and he was probably right, that the missionary doctor harbored some feeling toward him, his bastard offspring. My grandfather was an anomaly both in his length of stay at the house and in the timing of his escape to Lebanon. One can safely assume that all the orphans he grew up with, those who were not massacred during the Great War, escaped to Lebanon during the great Armenian orphan migration. My grandfather was ahead of his time. He survived the doctor’s wife, and he didn’t have to deal with the genocide and its consequences. He was blessed; hence, so was I.
In his early years, Ismail’s father carried him everywhere, even after he learned to walk. But one day, after my grandfather’s second birthday, the doctor’s wife told her husband, “Shame on you. You treat this orphan better than you treat your own blood. Do you not love your daughters? Do they not deserve your attention?” The doctor was embarrassed. “This is Barbara,” his wife added, “and this is Joan. Maybe you’ve forgotten who they are.”
Simon Twining put my grandfather down and took his daughters for a walk.
When my grandfather was four, the doctor tried to teach him to read and write, but his wife said, “Don’t be silly, my husband. English will be of little use to him. We’ll send him to school with the other Armenians. He’ll learn his language and be able to talk to his people.”
However, when my grandfather, after services on Sundays, joined the other children for Bible study with the doctor, she did not object.
“I come from a time when ink was still liquid and lush.” My grandfather broke silence as he stoked the fire. “None of this cheap Biro shit. My father’s wife thought teaching me to write was money ill spent and time wasted.” He performed the maté ritual — poured hot water from the kettle onto the metal straw, after which he ran a lemon peel across it. He replaced the now sanitized straw in the maté gourd and passed it to me. “You might think the doctor’s wife was mean, and she was, but you’d be missing the point of the story. I wasn’t allowed to learn to read, but Bible study is more valuable for a hakawati. Look at the great one, Umm Kalthoum. She was born into the poorest of families in a remote village of the Nile Delta in Lower Egypt. Umm Kalthoum should have been married off at twelve or thirteen. She would’ve remained unschooled and mothered a dozen kids: Muslim girls weren’t allowed to be educated in that part of the world. But here’s the gift, you see. At a very young age, girls are taught to read the Koran and nothing else. It gets hammered into them every day. For a singer, that’s the greatest of gifts. She learned tone and rhythm, learned perfect enunciation and breath, voice projection, inflection — you name it. She never mumbles. One can understand every word she utters. She mastered the witchcraft of voice. When the time was right, she opened her mouth, unleashed her soul, and helped all of us get closer to God. It was a gift, I tell you. The doctor’s wife may have been spiteful, but fate was on my side.”
Poor Anahid and Zovik cared for the boy, treated him as their own, but they were servants in a house that desired constant labor. My grandfather followed them around, and the maids made sure he didn’t interfere with their work.
It was at an early age that he learned to entertain himself. Sticks became his companions, and stones his toys. His inner world redecorated the outer one. His imaginary friends proved more loyal than any real ones, if only because, unlike the latter, they existed. He ate, slept, played, learned some, and avoided the Muslim boys and their Turkish insults. By the age of five, he was expected to do minor chores around the house. When he was six, the chores were no longer minor. Two years later, the doctor’s wife decided the boy should learn a trade. “Who knows how long we’ll be here to take care of him?” she said. “Better that he figures out a way to earn enough to fill his bottomless stomach.” My grandfather was given to a pigeoneer to be trained.
That was how my grandfather got swept up in the great pigeon wars of Urfa.
Long before the one God, long before Abraham, long before the city was Muslim, before it was Ottoman or Turkish, pigeons used to carry the souls of Urfa’s dead up to the heavens. Pigeons have had a special place in Urfa’s heart ever since.