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his eyes, and exhaustion, like heavy blankets being folded around his
limbs, took possession of his body.
He dropped the eggs on the floor of the tent and placed his fingers
on the exposed skin of his wife s leg. He pushed the pantaloons up her
calf, enough so that the whole palm of his hand could touch her skin.
He dropped his head and kissed the skin there, rested his cheek
against the ridge of her shinbone, and collapsed in her lap.
Shh, she said. Shh. Everything will be all right.
Chapt er 24
She stripped the headphones from her ears and jumped
out of the water, shaking the skirt back down around her ankles.
She glanced up at the beach and saw a man carrying a fishing pole
and cresting the hill. She recognized the man from her father s store,
but she couldn t remember his name. He was looking the other way
on the beach, his hand shaded against the sun and it seemed he had
not seen them.
Dylan went left and she went right, hoping she didn t run into any-
one else with her shoes in her hands. When she was out of sight of the
fisherman, she sat down on the beach and scraped the black pebbles
from her wet toes. She started to put her shoes back on, but suddenly
felt stupid. She hadn t done anything wrong just listened to some
music and talked with a boy. Women were lying naked on beaches
somewhere. Turkish women in 0stanbul went dancing in clubs, drank
and smoked with men they slept with. She had only had a conversa-
tion.
The ground was rough beneath her feet, but she carried her shoes,
swaying from her fingers like two trophies to defiance. She walked up
the path where bushes crowded the sand and thorns stuck between
her toes, but she bit her lip and walked on anyway. The sun was lower
than she expected and she thought she might have missed dinner, but
124 Al an Dr e w
she didn t care. She walked through the camp barefoot, watching to
see if anyone noticed her bare toes, trying to get another look at Dylan
but he was nowhere to be found and no one seemed to care about her
feet. She found Dilek and Ay_e still swinging the rope for the little
girl. People sat around outside, smoking and drinking and watching
the girls jump, but she didn t care about that, either.
I ve found him, she said to Dilek and jumped into the rope.
The rope came around and she jumped just as she heard it hit the
ground.
Faster, Ay_e said to Dilek, and 0rem watched the rope circle over-
head.
She jumped and felt the rope pick up speed. She jumped and peb-
bles pressed into the raw skin of her heels and the soft balls of her feet.
She jumped and jumped again, her heart beating faster, the blood
rushing through her veins, her head spinning with the speed of the
arc.
Chapt er 25
That evening after dinner, marcus arrived at the tent
with bandages and antiseptic. Nilüfer and the children were out in
the camp, doing what he didn t know, but, for once, their where-
abouts did not worry him. Sinan had felt, for much of his adult life, as
though he were the last barrier at the edge of town, a wall between the
soldiers and his family, and should he fall asleep or look the other
way, however briefly, the hostile forces would carry his family away.
Even after moving to Gölcük, where there was no fear of attacks from
the Special Teams, he couldn t shake himself loose of this fear. Now,
though, the military was gone. Even the tanks that rumbled down the
streets of Gölcük each day were crushed under the cement of col-
lapsed barracks, and the relief he felt was palpable in the leaden
weight of his body. He thought about refusing Marcus s help, but he
was exhausted, and, besides, he liked the idea of an American doing
something as base as washing his foot.
Marcus removed the sock and Sinan could smell the stench of
sweat and blood and dirt. The discolored skin had stretched and sepa-
rated like a seam and bled from chapped tears in the skin. He
watched the American, thinking he would cringe or hold his nose or
put on latex gloves, but the American did none of those things. He
126 Al an Dr e w
held Sinan s foot in his hand and washed the blood away with a cot-
ton swab his blood staining the man s skin.
Do you know what your government did to us in the South?
Sinan said.
I know what the American government allows the Turkish mili-
tary to do, Marcus said, never removing his eyes from the foot.
The village next to mine was burned to the ground, Sinan con-
tinued. Women and children were killed.
I know.
And for what? Sinan said. Because
Because you want to speak your own language, because you want
your land, because the U.S. and NATO want Russia out of the
Mediterranean.
Oil, Sinan said.
There was silence for a moment while Marcus wrapped Sinan s
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