The Landing
The plane tilts east, then south, then east again. Outside the window the Marmara is a blue surface with container ships laid flat on top of it. Your hand is on the envelope under your shirt. The envelope is warm.
The city below is a shape with hills and water and a separation between two sides. The shape is not what you thought.
You put the window shade down.
You put it back up.
Customs
The passport officer is a woman. Mid-thirties. Tired. Her uniform is too warm for the booth. Her nails are bitten to the quick.
"Hoş geldiniz."
"Thank you."
"Purpose."
"Tourism."
"How long."
"A week."
"Where staying."
"A friend."
The woman looks at her screen. The screen does something you do not see. Her face does not change. She stamps.
A second line inside the first line takes you to a second desk. A man in a different uniform asks three questions the first woman did not ask. He writes nothing down. He stamps a second stamp. He says nothing and returns the passport and you go.
The hall after is wider than the hall before.
Arrivals
A cathedral of glass. You walk forward with your canvas bag on your shoulder and nothing in your hand.
A man is holding a sign with a symbol on it — a small circle with a line through it. Nina told you about this sign in the voicemail.
"Vera."
"Yes."
"I am Deniz. I drive. Come."
The Drive
The car is a Renault. Not new. The back seat has a faint smell of cigarettes that are not Deniz's.
"Yelena is at home. She is waiting. She made soup."
"Thank you."
"Thirty-two kilometers. Forty minutes. There is traffic."
Deniz drives. Deniz does not talk.
Outside, the road is new — the asphalt still black. Apartment blocks, ten stories high. A child on a balcony watching the road.
The highway rises and the city opens to your left. The Bosphorus is far out, long and grey. A container ship is on it, moving north, small as a thumbprint from here. The minarets are grey too. Not the famous ones. The ones in neighborhoods you will not walk.
You do not have words yet for what the city does to your chest.
Deniz looks at you in the mirror once.
"It is a lot, the first time."
"Yes."
"It will still be a lot the tenth time."
Beyoğlu.
The streets are steeper than you expected. Cars are parked with two wheels on the sidewalk. Cats are on the cars. Men are sitting on plastic chairs outside tea shops, watching the cars.
Deniz parks on a street so narrow the mirrors almost touch the buildings.
"Kameriye Sokak. Fourteen. Third floor."
"Thank you."
"I am not coming in."
"Okay."
"You did not see me tonight."
"Okay."
The Door
The building is four stories. The door beside the shuttered shop is heavy wood. The number is fourteen, painted black on a small white tile.
You ring three.
A voice: "Kim."
You say the name Joe wrote in pencil.
The door buzzes.
The stairs are marble, worn in the middle of each step into a curve by a century of feet. The building is older than the country.
Third floor. A door opens before you knock.
The woman who opens it is about sixty. Silver hair cut short. Blue shirt. No makeup. Thin.
"You are Vera."
"Yes."
"I am Yelena. Come in. You smell like an airport. There is a shower. I made soup."
Inside
The living room has a window that opens onto another building and, between the two buildings, a sliver of the Bosphorus like a line drawn with a pencil. There is a piano in the living room. The piano is closed. There is dust on the piano.
"My mother's."
"It is beautiful."
"It is out of tune. Shower first."
The bathroom is small. The tile is green. You stand under the water and wash the five days off your skin. The water goes brown, then clear.
When you come out, Yelena has put clean clothes on the bed. They are hers. They are your size.
The Soup
Red lentil. Hot. Lemon.
You eat.
Yelena watches you eat. She has a cigarette she is not smoking.
"I knew your grandmother."
"Nina said."
"Nina was wrong about which years. But I knew her. Not in Ukraine. In Moscow. One winter. I was seven."
You stop eating.
"What did she do in Moscow."
"She was a student. She was not a student. Eat."
"What does not a student mean."
"Eat your soup, Vera. I do not guess. I want you to know that about me in advance."
You eat.
"You look like her," she says. "In the way around the eyes."
The Small Room
The sheets smell of lavender and something older.
The photograph is on the nightstand. You put it there. The envelope from the Port Authority is in the drawer of the nightstand. Joe's pencil note is in the envelope now. The two documents are in one place for the first time since your grandmother's hand and Joe's hand began to share a side of your body.
You close your eyes.
Through the bolted window, Istanbul makes the sound a city makes — the soft overlap of six thousand small sounds, none of them louder than any other.
The mother is on your bed in East Seventh, east of here, west of here, depending on which map.
You sleep.
You do not dream.
You wake at first light and the light is not like New York light. The light is older and does not move the same way across a wall.
You lie still.
You are in Istanbul.
You are in someone's apartment.
You reach for the photograph on the nightstand. Your fingers will not close around it. You leave your hand on the photograph. The room is still. The fingers close.
I am alive.
That is the count for today.
⁂