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down on the broken industrial buildings of 0zmit and made them look
horribly small, like the whole city was cast in miniature. Sunlight
glanced off the water in blinding sparkles and the horizon stretched
on into the sky until the two met and seemed to become one. It
seemed to her that the sun was terribly large, as though it grew in
force and size by the moment and would eventually burn everything
to the ground. And riding high up on the freeway she couldn t escape
it. Its heat beat onto her arms and shoulders no matter how many
Gar de ns of Wat e r 249
towns they passed, no matter how many kilometers they rolled away
from Gölcük. Already she was farther away from her home and her
family than she had ever been, and she suddenly felt hopeless. She
wanted to go back, she wanted to turn the bus around, and when she
heard the brakes squeal she thought, for a moment, the bus driver had
read her mind.
But the bus stopped on the side of the highway and a _i_man teyze
climbed on, waddling like a flightless bird, pulling a cart full of rotten
eggplant behind her. She sat in the empty seat in front of them and
turned her head just enough to be heard as she tsk-tsked her tongue at
them.
She s my sister, teyze, Dylan said. That man over there kept
staring at her. He pointed his thumb toward the father. I thought he
might be dangerous.
0rem laughed into her hand. No one believed it, of course, but it
shut the woman up. She calmed down immediately. She wasn t
alone; Dylan would take care of her. His weight pressed on her shoul-
ders, the heat of his body radiated through her skirt to tingle her skin.
She imagined her father here on the bus, staring at them, and in her
mind she said to him, Look, Baba, this boy loves me! A boy a
man! loves me. She imagined the look on his face, the hopeless
pain in his eyes, the water pooling there as he realized he was losing
her forever. You didn t love me, she imagined saying to him. But I
do, can1m, he said back. I love you best, more than you can know,
more than anything. She felt a brief imagined joy and realized, com-
ing back to the world, that she was staring at the side of the father s
face across the aisle. He had a hooked nose and a flap of skin that
sagged from his jaw like a chicken s and he looked nothing like her fa-
ther.
Here, Dylan said. You look nervous.
I m fine, she said.
Listen to this.
He took his headphones, severed the wire down the middle, and
pulled the earpieces apart.
250 Al an Dr e w
I understand, he said. It s shitty the way your parents treated
you.
But he didn t understand. It was her parents right. She had defied
them.
He placed one earphone in her right ear and the other in his left.
Lean back, he said. It ll be all right. Everything ll be just fine.
He pushed the button that started the music. It was Radiohead
again the music that was like floating, like dying, but dying beauti-
fully. Dylan had told her the lyrics and she sang them in Turkish in
her mind while the singer sang them in English in her head.
I m not here. This isn t happening. I m not here.
Below the raised highway, an apartment building lay accordioned
in the street. A chair hung from a telephone pole.
In a little while, I ll be gone.
She wondered why he would play such sad music for her now.
Why couldn t they listen to Tarkan or Cher? But she loved the music.
She loved the sadness. It hurt so wonderfully, hurt in a way that made
her realize she had never really felt anything before.
The bus turned inland and the sea receded into the sky so that
soon it was just a distant streak of silver. The city replaced the sea on
the horizon, all jumbled honeycomb blocks of apartment buildings.
She had never in her life seen so many buildings in one place and it
was difficult to imagine all the people squished together here. As far
as she could see, red-tiled rooftops and satellite dishes spread before
her like a sea of cement.
Here it comes, Dylan said, his voice full of excitement. He jig-
gled his knees up and down. These are just the suburbs.
They drove on for another twenty minutes and the traffic got heav-
ier and the sun began to drop in the sky and an orange haze settled
over the city. Dolmu_es stopped to pick up passengers on the side of
the highway and then swung back out into traffic. Men sold fruit from
wooden stands propped up by the highway guardrails, and dust smat-
tered their faces as the buses passed. She saw a man carrying three sil-
ver birdcages, the beaks of doves poking between the bars like living
Gar de ns of Wat e r 251
thorns. She saw a turned-over donkey cart and a dented taxi. A Gypsy
woman screamed at the taxi driver, her open palm gesturing toward
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