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everything was proceeding as planned.

I was acting intuitively in a great haste. I tossed a stone at the courtyard

gate but missed! I tossed another at the house. It landed on the roof.

Frustrated, I began pelting the house with stones. A window opened. It was

the second-story window where four days ago, on Wednesday, I’d first seen

Shekure through the branches of the pomegranate tree. Orhan appeared, and

from the gap in the shutters I could hear Shekure scolding him. Then I saw her.

For a moment, we gazed hopefully at each other, my fair lady and I. She was so

beautiful and becoming. She made a gesture that I took to mean “wait” and

shut the window.

There was still plenty of time before evening. I waited hopefully in the

empty garden, awestruck by the beauty of the world, the trees and the muddy

street. Before long, Hayriye came in, dressed and covered not like a servant, but

rather, like a lady of the house. Without nearing each other, we removed

ourselves to the cover of the fig trees.

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“Everything is progressing as planned,” I said to her. I showed her the

document I’d obtained from the proxy. “Shekure is divorced. As for the

preacher from another neighborhood…” I was going to add, “I’ll see to that,”

but instead blurted out, “He’s on his way. Shekure should be ready.”

“No matter how small, Shekure wants a bride’s procession, followed by a

neighborhood reception with a wedding repast. We’ve prepared a stewpot of

pilaf with almonds and dried apricots.”

In her excitement, she seemed prepared to tell me everything else she’d

cooked but I cut her off. “If the wedding is going to be such an elaborate

affair,” I cautioned, “Hasan and his men will hear of it; they’ll raid the house,

disgrace us, have the marriage nullified and we’ll be able to do nothing about

it. All our efforts will have been in vain. We need to protect ourselves not only

from Hasan and his father, but from the devil who murdered Enishte Effendi

as well. Aren’t you afraid?”

“How could we not be?” she said and began to cry.

“You’re not to tell anyone a thing,” I said. “Dress Enishte in his

nightclothes, spread out his mattress and lay him upon it, not as a dead man,

but as though he were sick. Arrange glasses and bottles of syrup by his head,

and draw the shutters closed. Make certain there are no lamps in his room so

that he can act as Shekure’s guardian, her sick father, during the ceremony.

There’s no place now for a bride’s procession. You can invite a handful of

neighbors at the last minute, that’s all. While you’re inviting them, say that

this was Enishte Effendi’s last wish…It won’t be a joyous wedding, but a

melancholy one. If we don’t see ourselves through this affair, they’ll destroy

us, and they’ll punish you as well. You understand, don’t you?”

She nodded as she wept. Mounting my white horse, I said I’d secure the

witnesses and return before long, that Shekure ought to be ready, that

hereafter, I would be master of the house, and that I was going to the barber. I

hadn’t thought through any of this beforehand. As I spoke, the details came to

me, and just as I’d felt during battles from time to time, I had the conviction

that I was a cherished and favored servant of God and He was protecting me;

thus, everything was going to turn out fine. When you feel this trust, do

whatever comes to mind, follow your intuition and your actions will prove

correct.

I rode four blocks toward the Golden Horn from the Yakutlar neighborhood

to find the black-bearded, radiant-faced preacher of the mosque in Yasin Pasha,

the adjacent neighborhood; broom in hand, he was shooing shameless dogs

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out of the muddy courtyard. I told him about my predicament. By the will of

God, I explained, my Enishte’s time was upon him, and according to his last

wish, I was to marry his daughter, who, by decision of the üsküdar judge, had

just been granted a divorce from a husband lost at war. The preacher objected

that by the dictates of Islamic law a divorced woman must wait a month

before remarrying, but I countered by explaining that Shekure’s former

husband had been absent for four years; and so, there was no chance she was

pregnant by him. I hastened to add that the üsküdar judge granted a divorce

this morning to allow Shekure to remarry, and I showed him the certifying

document. “My exalted Imam Effendi, you may rest assured that there’s no

obstacle to the marriage,” I said. True, she was a blood relation, but being

maternal cousins is not an obstacle; her previous marriage had been nullified;

there were no religious, social or monetary differences between us. And if he

accepted the gold pieces I offered him up front, if he performed the ceremony

at the wedding scheduled to take place before the entire neighborhood, he’d

also be accomplishing a pious act before God for the fatherless children of a

widowed woman. Did the Imam Effendi, I inquired, enjoy pilaf with almonds

and dried apricots?

He did, but he was still preoccupied with the dogs at the gate. He took the

gold coins. He said he’d don his wedding robes, straighten up his appearance,

see to his turban and arrive in time to perform the nuptials. He asked the way

to the house and I told him.

No matter how rushed a wedding might be—even one that the groom has

dreamed about for twelve years—what could be more natural than his

forgetting his worries and troubles and surrendering to the affectionate hands

and gentle banter of a barber for a prenuptial shave and haircut? The barber’s,

where my feet took me, was located near the market, on the street of the run-

down house in Aksaray, which my late Enishte, my aunt and fair Shekure had

quitted years after our childhood. This was the barber I’d faced five days ago,

my first day back. When I entered he embraced me and as any good Istanbul

barber would do, rather than asking where the last dozen years had gone,

launched into the latest neighborhood gossip, concluding the conversation

with an allusion to the place we would all go at the end of this meaningful

journey called life.

The master barber had aged. The straight-edged razor he held in his freckled

hand trembled as he made it dance across my cheek. He’d given himself over

to drinking and had taken on a pink-complexioned, full-lipped, green-eyed

boy-apprentice—who looked upon his master with awe. Compared with

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twelve years ago, the shop was cleaner and more orderly. After filling the

hanging basin, which hung from the ceiling on a new chain, with boiling

water, he carefully washed my hair and face with water from the brass faucet

at the bottom of the basin. The old broad basins were newly tinned with no

signs of rust, the heating braziers were clean, and the agate-handled razors

were sharp. He wore an immaculate silk waistcoat, something he was loath to

wear twelve years ago. I assumed that the elegant apprentice, tall for his age

and of slender build, had helped bring some order to the shop and its owner,

and surrendering myself to the soapy, rose-scented and steamy pleasures of a

shave, I couldn’t help thinking how marriage not only brought new vitality

and prosperity to a bachelor’s home, but to his work and his shop as well.

I’m not certain how much time had passed. I melted into the warmth of

the brazier that gently heated the small shop and the barber’s adept fingers.

With life having suddenly presented me the greatest of gifts today, as if for

free, and after so much suffering, I felt a profound thanks toward exalted

Allah. I felt an intense curiosity, wondering out of what mysterious balance

this world of His had emerged, and I felt sadness and pity for Enishte, who lay

dead in the house where, a while later, I would become master. I was readying

myself to spring into action when there was a commotion at the always-open

door of the barbershop: Shevket!

Flustered, but with his usual self-confidence, he held out a piece of paper.

Unable to speak and expecting the worst, my insides were chilled as if by an icy

draft as I read:

If there isn’t going to be a bride’s procession, I’m not getting married—Shekure.

Grabbing Shevket by the arm, I lifted him onto my lap. I would’ve liked to

have responded to my dear Shekure by writing, “As you wish, my love!” but

what would pen and ink be doing in the shop of an illiterate barber? So, with

a calculated reserve, I whispered my response into the boy’s ear: “All right.”

Still whispering, I asked him how his grandfather was doing.

“He’s sleeping.”

I now sense that Shevket, the barber and even you are suspicious about me

and my Enishte’s death (Shevket, of course, suspects other things as well).

What a pity! I forced a kiss upon him, and he quickly left, displeased. During

the wedding, dressed in his holiday clothes, he glared at me with hostility from

a distance.

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Since Shekure wouldn’t be leaving her father’s house for mine, and I would

be moving into the paternal home as bridegroom, the bridal procession was

only fitting. Naturally, I was in no position to bedeck my wealthy friends and

relatives and have them wait at Shekure’s front gate mounted on their horses

as others might have done. Even so, I invited two of my childhood friends

whom I’d run into during my six days back in Istanbul (one had become a

clerk like myself and the other was running a bath house) as well as my dear

barber, whose eyes had watered as he wished me happiness during my shave

and haircut. Mounted upon my white horse, which I’d been riding that first

day, I knocked at my beloved Shekure’s gate as if poised to take her to another

house and another life.

To Hayriye, who opened the gate, I presented a generous tip. Shekure,

dressed in a bright-red wedding gown with pink bridal streamers flowing from

her hair to her feet, emerged amid cries, sobs, sighs (a woman scolded the

children), outbursts, and shouts of “May God protect her,” and gracefully

mounted a second white horse which we’d brought with us. As a hand-

drummer and shrill zurna piper, kindly arranged by the barber for me at the

last minute, began to play a slow bride’s melody, our poor, melancholy, yet

proud procession set out on its way.

As our horses began to saunter, I understood that Shekure, with her usual

cunning, had arranged this spectacle for the sake of safeguarding the nuptials.

Our procession, having announced our wedding to the entire neighborhood,

even if only at the last moment, had essentially secured everyone’s approval,

thereby neutralizing any future objections to our marriage. Nevertheless,

announcing that we were on the verge of marriage, and having a public

wedding—as if to challenge our enemies, Shekure’s former husband and his

family—further endangered the whole affair. Had it been left to me, I’d have

held the ceremony in secret, without telling a soul, without a wedding

celebration; I’d have preferred becoming her husband first and defending the

marriage afterward.

I led the parade astride my fickle white fairy-tale horse, and as we moved

through the neighborhood, I nervously watched for Hasan and his men, whom

I expected to ambush us from an alleyway or a shadowy courtyard gate. I

noticed how young men, the elders of the neighborhood and strangers

stopped and waved from door fronts, without completely understanding all

that was transpiring. In the small market area we’d unintentionally entered, I

figured out that Shekure had masterfully activated her grapevine, and that her

divorce and marriage to me was quickly winning acceptance in the

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neighborhood. This was evident from the excitement of the fruit-and-vegetable

seller, who without leaving his colorful quinces, carrots and apples for too

long, joined us for a few strides shouting “Praise be to God, may He protect

you both,” and from the smile of the woeful shopkeeper and from the

approving glances of the baker, who was having his apprentice scrape away the

burnt residue in his pans. Still, I was anxious, maintaining my vigil against a

sudden raid, or even a word of vulgar heckling. For this reason, I wasn’t at all

disturbed by the commotion of the crowd of money-seeking children that had

formed behind us as we left the bazaar. I understood from the smiles of

women I glimpsed behind windows, bars and shutters that the enthusiasm of

this noisy throng of children protected and supported us.

As I gazed at the road along which we’d advanced and were now, thank

God, finally winding our way back toward the house, my heart was with

Shekure and her sorrow. Actually, it wasn’t her misfortune in having to wed

within a day of her father’s murder that saddened me, it was that the wedding

was so unadorned and meager. My dear Shekure was worthy of horses with

silver reins and ornamented saddles, mounted riders outfitted in sable and silk

with gold embroidery, and hundreds of carriages laden with gifts and dowry;

she deserved to lead an endless procession of pasha’s daughters, sultans and

carriages full of elderly harem women chattering about the extravagances of

days bygone. But Shekure’s wedding lacked even the four pole bearers to hold

aloft the red silk canopy that ordinarily protected rich maidens from prying

eyes; for that matter, there wasn’t even one servant to lead the procession

bearing large wedding candles and tree-shaped decorations ornamented with