Three Women and a Boy

Three Countries and one summer…. A short story !

A true story, set in Turkiye. n

Names, places and titles have been changed to maintain privacy.

Since opening his eyes in Istanbul, he has wanted to be a futballer. Yet, like the struggles of his mother crossing into Lebanon and then Türkiye, his own life has been fraught with the danger of being snuffed out, not by snipers or war, but by the small bodily imperfection with which he was born.

While recovering from his multiple operations, as an infant he remembers the symphony of scents of the hair salon drifting into the tiny anteroom where he slept.

His mother encourages him relentlessly, haranguing him to study and make something of himself. She rants and raves about his “deadbeat” father, who has married a German woman and sends him no child support.

Does it affect him? Yes it reduces him to the size of an ant, but ants he feels are more productive than him.

He feels there is nothing wrong with him and all that was wrong has healed and there is no impediment left to prevent playing futball.

Did he miss his father?

Not at all.

His mother provided him with almost everything a thirteen-year-old boy could ask for, except, and it was a very big exception, anything that might help him fulfill his dream of becoming a futballer.

The three women were interesting, in his opinion, and could not have been more different from one another. Yet they shared spiritual moments over their deep love of the Qur’an, made amazing food, and laughed so much that he could hear them from his room upstairs while studying.

His exposure to the opposite sex was limited to women in the bazaar and infrequent visits to shops. he attended a boys’ school.

It was a summer he would always remember.

His mother had never laughed so much. He had seldom eaten such sumptuously delicious food, even though his mother herself was a gourmet cook.

And the beach! He will never forget the beach, his second love was swimming.

Arriving at the beach on the Mediterranean he dropped off the three women at the Kadin ( women’s only) beach and headed to the family beach.

The turquoise waters promised an underwater world of immense beauty and wonder. He hung his blue towel, decorated with dolphins, on the shower door and ran to the edge of the turquoise waters dove into the shimmering depths. It was one of the few times he forgot that he was an orphan with a living father, a proud, beautiful, and ambitious mother, a product of three countries and his own ambition to become a footballer despite the operations of his infancy.

He forgot about his mother fleeing her abusive husband in Syria, ( before he came into this world) remarrying a young man who doted on her, and who was approved by her parents , the war breaking out, and the two of them escaping to Lebanon, where he was born.

He knew very little about his father except that he was, according to his mother, “a dirtball.” Later, when his mother was invited to Istanbul by a friend to run a kuaför salon, she left her “dirt ball” husband behind and escaped to a new life in Türkiye.

What shocked him most were the Turkish and foreign women on the beach. Their immense nakedness; held together by little more than strings and scraps of cloth. This disturbed him greatly. He tried to look away, but they seemed entirely unaware of their near nudity in public.

The eve of this summer holiday had been a day of immense joy for his mother. At last, she had received her citizenship.

She was free.

Yet her insistence that he become either a doctor or a pilot had only intensified.

On this holiday, his job was to accompany the older woman, who sometimes struggled to breathe. He did so gladly. She seemed to share his interest in football and never objected when he watched a match while waiting for the other two women.

The third woman was kind and intensely immersed in her faith. During the ten-hour drive from Istanbul to the Mediterranean coast, Surah al-Baqarah became engraved upon his mind. He woke to it and fell asleep to it. Yet, surprisingly, he was never bored by it.

Somehow, the beauty of the waterfalls, the intense yellow of the mountain flowers, and sipping a soda by a lakeside café all seemed to be gifts from the Lord of Surah al-Baqarah.

And he was content.

So the summer unfolded. Days melted into evenings on the veranda with Qur’an recitation, delicious food, and countless du‘as.

Eventually he would be banished to his room, where he could hear dance music drifting up from downstairs. He knew the women would be dancing, and he would smile to himself. His mother was happy!

One evening, the music moved from Turkish to Arabic and then to a devotiona Pakistani song ( Lal

qalander)

The doorbell rang.

It was ten o’clock at night they had just returned from a wonderful dinner at the Marina Yatch club. He had gone upstairs to study and the three women had stayed downstairs in the verandah dancing to the language that f music tha they shared despite the different cultures they came from.

Who could be visiting at this hour? he wondered.

Later he learned why the three women were so annoyed. A British neighbor had reported a “disturbance with loud sounds” to the police, who arrived somewhat apologetically. Turkish regulations concerning excessive noise did not begin until eleven o’clock. The officers explained that they were sorry to have come early, issued a warning, and departed.

To him, it seemed that colonial habits lingered. Some Western foreigners appeared to feel entitled, even in lands that were not their own, and did not hesitate to invoke the law, even inaccurately.

He noticed, too, that Turks were generally respectful, but often even more respectful toward those who looked foreign or spoke foreign languages.

Still, he was not political.

He stayed out of such matters.

His life was entwined with the plays of football and the maze of mathematics he had to master if he hoped to enter a good school.

He also knew, at some subconscious level, that he must toe the line with all elders and authority. He was, after all, an orphan with no father and no country fully at his back.

Yet for him, life did not happen one day at a time.

It happened one hour at a time.

And thus on the final day of this idyllic summer holiday as the minibus flew along the roads carved out of rock with the waves crashing below, away from this blue heaven to the airport which will take him back to familiar Istanbul and all its struggles….. he was content to live in this hour too watching the blue haven recede wave by wave.

Right in front of his eyes the summer was receding in realtime into the realm of a cherished memory…..