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  Abode his destined Hour, and went his way.

  Do let me know, when you return, what you have seen; I take great pleasure in seeing Istanbul again through your eyes—

  Arsalan

  I could see the Yeni Mosque from Dr. Mostarshed’s window. I set out down the hill to find the market and its European coffee, for, as I had complained to Arsalan, Turkish coffee had proved a bitter disappointment. Before the wide steps of the mosque, men were bathing their feet in a fountain at the center of a courtyard surrounded by a forest of domes. Behind, in the bazaar, the alleys burst with restaurants and tea houses, covered in vines and open to the street, tables stuck outdoors along the alleys at odd angles. Men in the tea shops threw backgammon dice; televisions played in the background, all tuned to different stations, all blaring at top volume, the radio thrown in for good measure, all drowned out from time to time by wails of prayer from the loudspeakers of the mosques. Each intersection branched into more alleys bursting with shops. Come in, lady, yes, good price!—silver, turquoise, tea sets, silks, jeweled cushions, glazed Turkish pottery in azure and crimson—Where you from, lady? Where you from?—dates, figs, dried apricots, baklava with walnuts, small cakes of batter fried and soaked in syrup, semolina, helva—Come drink some tea with me my friend!—Vizier’s fingers, rose jam, almonds, pistachios, pine nuts—Please taste, just one taste!—tins of caviar, scoops of spiced eggplant, vine leaves—Lady, just come in one moment!—spangled cushions, beaded curtains, lanterns, hookahs, candle holders—Just to look, lady, please, no pressure!—pyramids of flame-colored spices, of currants and cumin—Come in, yes, you drink some tea!—Lady, come in—LADY, YOU COME IN NOW!

  I realized after purchasing my coffee that I was on the street Arsalan had mentioned. As I climbed the hill the neighborhood swiftly changed. The shops thinned out, replaced by gutted, collapsing wooden houses. Idle groups of loitering men stared at me in silence. Unwashed children played outside. I climbed up the narrow, winding street until I reached what seemed to be the highest block. The neighborhood was in a state of shambling ruin. There were buildings in something like a Victorian style, topped by onion domes, decorated with ornate iron gratings and metalwork, but they sagged in ruined weariness as if exhausted from carrying the weight of history—paint flaking, ironwork rusted and twisted and mad. They looked as if they’d gratefully finish collapsing if given so much as a gentle nudge.

  Women in headscarves squatted over camp stoves, grilling corn and meat, sending plumes of charcoal smoke into the air. A young girl of perhaps nine with a hooked nose and wild staring eyes was beating a carpet in front of a lavender-gray house. I cast a glance down the staircase behind her. The interior of the house was filthy and wretched, a dank cave, poorly ventilated, with half a dozen dirty mattresses on the floor. It was lit only by a naked light bulb swinging from the ceiling.

  “Hossein?” I said to her, and then added, uselessly, “a baker?”

  She looked at me fearfully, then dashed inside.

  • • •

  From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Date: October 4, 2003 08:15 PM

  To: Arsalan [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Turkish

  Oh yes, I’ve been trying. I bought a copy of Teach Yourself Turkish and I’ve been reading it, but the grammar is quite intimidating. I do like the way it sounds, but it might as well be Vulcan for all I understand. Can you recommend a better book, maybe? I so hate having to point at things in the shops.

  From: Arsalan [email protected]

  Date: October 4, 2003 08:30 PM

  To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Re: Turkish

  Surely I can recommend to you a book. I taught myself when I lived there from the very fine Langenscheidt, 30 Stunden Türkisch: Ein Kurzlehrbuch für Anfänger. I have a copy here; would you like me to send it to you? But don’t worry, Claire. Turkish grammar is exceedingly regular. The difficult vocabulary and constructions were eliminated during Atatürk’s Öztürkçe (“Pure Turkish”) reform—along, alas, with the language’s lexical depth. I am sure with your fine intelligence you will be speaking very well in no time. What is Vulcan?

  • • •

  From: Arsalan [email protected]

  Date: October 5, 2003 09:16 PM

  To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Turkish

  Really, Claire, I think that you are making Turkish more complicated than it need be. You need only apply the dubitative suffix mis to imply some doubt in the sense of it seems and follow it all at the end with the verbal suffix siniz; you are—and it is simple, there you have it, Siz türklestiriverilemeyebilenlerdenmissiniz. Do you see?

  From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Date: October 5, 2003 09:18 PM

  To: Arsalan [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Turkish

  But of course. Gesundheit!

  From: Arsalan [email protected]

  Date: October 5, 2003 09:19 PM

  To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re Turkish

  No, no. It means, “I gather you are one of those people who is incapable of mastering Turkish.”

  From: Arsalan [email protected]

  Date: October 5, 2003 10:27 PM

  To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:Turkish

  Do not be offended. It is a lovely language. Suppose you were to sneeze: “Açu!” I would respond, “Çok yasayin!”—“May you live many years!” You would then say, “Sen de gör!”—“And may you be there to see it!” Or perhaps I might say, “Claire’im, çok güzelsin”—“O my Claire, you are very beautiful.” Then you must answer, “Estagfirullah!”—“I ask pardon of God (for you who praise me when all praise is due the Creator!)” Do you see?

  • • •

  As the days passed I learned to count in Turkish and order my food. I adjusted to the noise in the apartment. I worked in the mornings, then walked for miles, my imagination churning. I believed I could see conspiratorial Young Turks gathering behind the elaborate wrought-iron doorways. I could sense the spirits of the drunken Crusaders; they were smashing relics, stuffing their pockets with gold, belching, emptying their bladders against the darkened walls, vomiting, wiping their mouths with the backs of their filthy hands, then passing out, sated, in the street.

  Every night, Arsalan and I exchanged letters all throughout the evening.

  From: Arsalan [email protected]

  Date: October 14, 2003 08:16 PM

  To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Subject: (No subject)

  Dear Claire,

  I know that I have not answered your question about the earthen goblet. I have not forgotten it. But I have not known how to reply.

  This goblet you saw was five thousand years old. On it was portrayed a pattern of a goat and a leafy tree. When I unearthed it, I noticed something of very great fascination. If one were to spin the goblet, the goat would appear to jump toward the tree and eat the leaves. I realized that it was a form of prehistoric animation, the first in history. I had made an extraordinary discovery. While excavating the grave my team unearthed a skeleton. We believed that perhaps it belonged to the goblet’s maker.

  What I am about to tell you I have not told anyone else in the world. I do not quite know why I am about to tell you now. Perhaps it is because I can no longer live with this memory. I am not sure even how to tell you. You must, please, I beg, promise me that you will not tell another living being. Wrap my secrets within your soul, and hide, as Rumi said, even from myself, this state of mine.

  Something so dreadful happened, Claire. I had been carrying the goblet to my car. And then I tripped. It happened so fast! It was in my hands; then it was on the ground, in shards. It had been safe in the earth f
or five thousand years before me.

  I was stricken with horror, and I could not bring myself to tell my colleagues what I had done. I was alone, and I did a shameful thing. I took a knapsack from my car, put the broken pieces into the knapsack, and took the goblet home. It is hidden now in the bottom of my dresser drawer. When the item was discovered to be missing, I said that an investigation must be launched. Like a coward, I blamed the barbaric locals who would steal such a thing.

  At night, I dream of it over and over. I see the moment in my mind, over and over again. How can I forgive myself? I cannot just say, “How clumsy of me.” Clumsy, so clumsy, like Wollef! I cannot just say that. It makes me sick with shame.

  Perhaps you will no longer respect me. But I consider you now a friend. I could not have this secret between us. I ask your forgiveness for disappointing you.

  Arsalan

  • • •

  From: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Date: October 14, 2003 09:36 PM

  To: Arsalan [email protected]

  Subject: Re: (No subject)

  Oh, Arsalan.

  If it’s any consolation, it sounds exactly like something I would do.

  My grandmother once gave me a letter to mail. It was important—something to do with the settlement she’s supposed to receive from the German government for the property the Nazis confiscated from her family. It fell out of my handbag as I was walking home. I never told her. I never told anyone. You’re the only one in the world who knows.

  I will never tell anyone your secret, I promise, and you must never tell anyone mine.

  Claire

  When I think back upon our correspondence now, I notice an odd trick of memory—it’s hard for me to remember exactly where it took place. I was in Istanbul, of course, alone in Dr. Mostarshed’s bedroom, listening to the muezzin and the flapping gulls. Almost motionless, relaxed, I propped myself up against the decorative Anatolian cushions, my computer on my lap. The screen was the only source of light in the room. Arsalan’s words swam up before me, and I replied. Time seemed almost to contract. But somehow I was with Arsalan. We were in his apartment, with its window overlooking the turquoise minarets of Isfahan, the muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. There were Persian rugs on the floor, a tea setting with a tarnished copper samovar, pomegranates on the table in a bowl of crystallized sugar. Once, as we wrote back and forth, I lost track of time completely, unaware that a whole night had passed until I heard the muezzin, looked out the window, and saw that the sky had turned pale.

  • • •

  Several weeks after my arrival, I wrote to him in the early evening, as I had every night since we began corresponding. There was no reply. As the next day passed with no response, and then the next, I became concerned, then anxious. I checked and rechecked the mail. By the next day, when there was still no response, I looked at the Persian news sites to see if something dreadful had happened in Isfahan. There was no news of note.

  That night I dreamed of seeing Arsalan’s face in the middle of one of Istanbul’s massive crowds. Elated, I called his name, but he looked at me without recognition, and when I followed him, in the odd way of dreams, I found myself chasing an agile stray cat, who slipped repeatedly from my grasp. When I woke up, distraught, I wrote to Imran to ask for his interpretation. I doubted I’d hear back from him any time soon. He had cut back on his e-mail schedule; the forty minutes he usually allotted for daily correspondence had been halved; the other twenty minutes were now devoted to listening to jazz with Larissa.

  As soon as I sent that e-mail, one from Arsalan arrived, to my great relief. “My electricity has been out for two days,” he wrote. I began composing a response. I wanted to speak honestly. As I was writing the letter, though, carefully choosing my words, revising and erasing, my own power went off.

  After that, I lost my nerve.

  • • •

  Beyond the ancient city walls on the south bank of the Golden Horn, Eyüp was flanked by massive cemeteries carved into the white hillside, cypress trees looming from the graves. I stepped off the ferry into a world of nacreous mosques, fountains, tombs, bathhouses, mansions, and pavilions, the mystical effect created by the noble architecture, the old trees, the flocks of birds, and the praying crowds only slightly diluted by the endless rows of stalls selling glow-in-the-dark clocks imprinted with verses of the Koran.

  From the lively riverfront cafés and bustling markets near the shrine, I first thought the district to be comfortably middle-class, the kind of place to which people retired. But only minutes from the mosque, Eyüp turned into a shantytown of veiled women trailing children with dirty faces along streets strewn with garbage. Oddly, almost every collapsing shack had its own satellite dish. Walking along the unpaved roads, which smelled of raw sewage, I wondered why the residents of Eyüp were so eager to watch television that they would sooner buy a satellite dish than fix their sewage systems. Were they following the news? A favorite soap opera? I wished my Turkish was good enough to ask.

  My electricity was still out; it had been out all morning. I wondered if, without a satellite dish, they felt as anxiously cut off from the world as I did without the Internet. I supposed they must, and I was hardly in a position to fault them for their priorities, for when I turned the corner, I spotted an Internet café and decided the sights of Eyüp could wait. It had been almost four hours, after all, since I had last heard from Arsalan.

  I walked in to check my e-mail. Loud Turkish pop music was playing, and everyone was smoking—the air was thick with blue haze. A pack of teenage boys idled at the cash register; one of them pointed me to a free computer. I logged on to my e-mail account. There was nothing more from Arsalan, but Imran had written back, and he had written with terrible news.

  He had been speed-dumped.

  From: Imran Begum [email protected]

  Date: October 22, 2003 02:05 PM

  To: Claire Berlinski [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Strange dream last night . . .

  My dear friend,

  It is over with Larissa.

  I am not sure what happened, exactly. At some point last weekend, she just stopped feeling good about it. Fair enough. It means we were wrong for each other. Better to find this out after three weeks than three months or years. I thought we were right for each other, and we weren’t. It was an illusion, caused by an insufficiency of time and knowledge. As surely as the tide rolls in, reality rolls in with time, and knowledge with it, like silt.

  She was honest and decent, which helps. She even returned the gifts I gave her, not in a rejecting way but out of fair play.

  Nonetheless, I am heartbroken.

  As for your dream, you have developed a powerful romantic fantasy about this fellow. I suggest you be highly wary of transference. When you engage with a figure with no body language, tone of voice, or facial expressions, it is particularly apt to crop up. This is axiomatic in my line of work. We must be as blank a screen as possible so that our patients project onto it whatever film is playing inside their tortured minds. A computer screen is also a blank screen.

  I must rush now to my bedroom and grieve before my next patient arrives. 24 minutes left.

  Love,

  Immie

  The image of Imran heading home sadly with the pocket watches he’d given Larissa broke my heart.

  The rest of his letter unsettled me as well. His concerns about transference did not come entirely as a surprise. I’d read Freud, too. In the course of treatment, Freud observed, female patients often fell in love with their analysts. Freud’s lesser colleague Otto Breuer had observed the same phenomenon; he decided that his patients fell in love with him because he was so lovable. In Freud’s modesty lay his genius. The patient’s love, he concluded, was induced by the analytic relationship. This relationship, unlike any the patient had ever before experienced, allowed her to perceive in her analyst a transferred imago of her infantile attachments. Her vision of the analyst was a p
rojection.

  Of course, Freud remarked, this is also true of all romantic love—as Imran had discovered.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The story was compelling—mostly because the characters and situations were so believable. It almost reads like a nonfiction memoir.

  —Customer review

  of Loose Lips on Barnesandnoble.com

  The waiter was babbling at me in Turkish, but I had no idea what he was saying. I kept repeating the only phrase I knew: Coffee, please. With milk. When a big-boned, cheerful blonde walked in, I assumed she was Turkish too, despite her appearance, because she spoke to the waiter so quickly and fluently. But upon realizing I was having trouble, she spoke to me in perfect American English. “He’s trying to tell you he can’t bring you coffee.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s not the waiter. He’s a chiropractor.” I looked at the tables and wooden stools around me with puzzlement. “Don’t worry; the waiter’s coming,” she said. “Here, sit with me,” she said, gesturing at a table.

  I didn’t want to impose, but she assured me I wasn’t. I sat down, and so did she, her body dwarfing the little wooden stool. I asked her how she’d become so enviably fluent in Turkish. “Oh, I’m not! The other day my neighbor took me aside and said, ‘You know, Sally, you’re a nice woman. You’re really okay, for an American. But tell me—why do you keep calling my cat “pubic hair”?’ ” Her loud, friendly voice caused the chiropractor to laugh, even though he couldn’t understand what she was saying. At last, the waiter came and took our order. “I got us some baklava, too,” she said.

  Sally was from Wisconsin, she told me when I asked, and she’d been in Istanbul for two years. She worked at the U.S. Consulate. She asked what I was doing in Istanbul, and when I told her I was a writer who had come to Istanbul on an impulse, her face lit up. “Really? No kidding. My husband’s a writer, too.” I was about to ask what he’d written when the chiropractor pulled two brochures from his breast pocket featuring sketches of da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man before and after his spinal alignment and handed them to us. “I could probably use a chiropractor,” Sally said, looking at the brochure, then rubbing her lower back. “My back is so sore from running on these awful roads.”