Big Sister
Tongues started wagging after Nazan Abla, our next-door neighbor’s daughter, was hospitalized for a week. I heard her mother tell my mother through the kitchen window that she had a bleeding ulcer. But the real gossip started after her hospital stay. In the year that followed, she broke up with her fiancé, took a job as a secretary, and got a license to drive her father’s car.
At twenty-one, Nazan was seven years older than me and unmarried, so I was to address her as Abla, big sister. Her name meant reluctant or coy. The exact interpretation depended on how one saw this young woman who chose a job over marriage, which was unheard of in our neighborhood in Çorlu in 1989 in Turkey. Naturally, her chosen path gave all the women, including my mother and grandmother, a lot to talk about. They expressed surprise and pity and endlessly debated the reasons why she must have broken her engagement to the kibar çocuk, as one of them put it. I had met him once at their engagement party, and yes, he was nice enough, but not good-looking enough, I thought, for her, plus she was taller than him. Anyway, the more I overheard my grandmother and mother have heated discussions with their friends about her day after day, the more invested I became, wondering what exactly had led to her rebellion.
Men weren’t supposed to hear these conversations, yet they took place around me, usually in the afternoons after I got home from school. As I was a mostly well-behaved boy of fourteen, the older women tolerated my presence, at least for now. They’d gossip for hours, until one of them would eventually sigh and say, “Çok dedikodu ettik, günaha girdik,” pointing out the sinfulness of it. Another would insist that it wasn’t gossip, that it was just an objective retelling of what had already happened. This exchange would usually signal the end of that session, but the same cycle of admission and denial, confessing and glossing over, would repeat itself day after day to my amusement.
Çorlu was a small city known for commerce and manufacturing in the northwestern part of Turkey, and most jobs were in shops or factories. Our neighborhood was on the edge of town next to vast fields of sunflowers that would be harvested for oil by a nearby factory at the end of the summer. Four-to-five-floor apartment buildings, a mosque, and a small bakkal for groceries populated the neighborhood. A road, on the side of which Nazan Abla parked her father’s Mazda, separated our building from a public playground, which had four swings, a seesaw with weathered wooden seats, a rusting slide, and a few tall ıhlamur trees surrounding it. I missed the times I spent there as a small child. After school, if the weather was good, I would find my grandmother sitting under a tree with her friends as they watched their grandchildren play.
At seventy, my grandmother referred to our neighbors in their fifties and sixties as “children,” which I always found funny. She had piercing hazel eyes that saw through everyone. She was born and lived most of her life in a village in the mountains of the Artvin province in the northeast, away from the modern urban centers of the Republic. Like most women in her village, she was never taught to read and write, and she worked in the tea fields with my grandfather, until she came to live with us after his death. Her bent back showed the hard work of her younger years. Whenever she laughed in public or a man who was not a family member passed by, she would cover her mouth with the corner of her head cover. This was the only time, I thought, the shy young woman she must have once been peeked through her tough, permanently sunburnt, and knowing facial expression. Otherwise, my grandmother ran the show wherever she was, and I loved and feared her for that.
One afternoon after school, I was reading my Barbar Conan comic book sitting on the sidewalk with my back against the fence of the playground, on the other side of which my grandmother and two of her friends were relaying to one another the neighborhood news. Nazan Abla walked out of our apartment building across the street in a short-sleeved t-shirt over tight blue jeans, with her henna-dyed hair clipped into a loose bun that glinted in the noon sun. She threw her oversize purse into the car and drove away in a rush, without greeting the elderly women. This was a big mistake. I looked over my shoulder to see how they would react.
“Look at her. She didn’t even deign to say merhaba to us. What’s more important than taking a moment to greet your elders?” said Necmiye Teyze as she adjusted her head cover printed with a pattern of spring flowers. She wasn’t my real aunt, of course, but young people like me were to add Teyze after the first name of older, married women.
Cemile Teyze screwed up her face, as if she couldn’t hold back anymore, and said,
“Ay, teyzeler, is she really an ablacı!? What a pity! She’s so young and beautiful.”
The corners of her head cover secured around her jaw fell open as she shook her head in disapproval, revealing her jowl above a string necklace weighed down by small gold Republic coins with the head of Atatürk on one side and “Türkiye Cumhuriyeti 1923” on the other. She was younger than Necmiye Teyze and my grandmother, therefore falling into the category of “children.”
Ablacı? One who is fond of big sisters? I didn’t understand why being an ablacı was such a big deal. My curiosity overcame my manners. I stood up and interrupted their conversation, like Barbar Conan would take on a menacing horde all by himself.
“I like my sisters, at least sometimes. Does that make me an ablacı?”
Necmiye Teyze sucked her teeth, as if she had seen a ghost, and Cemile Teyze laughed loudly, forgetting to cover her mouth.
My grandmother raised her hand like a judge presiding over a trial, and they quieted down. She said, “No, you are not. You are a man. Men can’t be ablacı. And don’t you ever use that word! Go home and do your homework and stop reading that fotoroman.”
There was nothing I could do. Having interrupted women’s conversation, I couldn’t be trusted with the rest of it. I kissed each teyze’s hand and touched them to my forehead one by one. As I walked across the street, I looked back and saw that they had resumed their heated discussion. Even if I didn’t exactly understand what being an ablacı meant, I now had sense enough to know that it would be squashed under the gavel of their judgment over and over that afternoon.
I mulled over the word as I did my homework at the kitchen table. I didn’t dare to ask anyone, but remembered my father using another word, nonoş, for male celebrities like Zeki Müren and Bülent Ersoy who wore dresses and makeup and acted like women on television. As far as I could tell, a nonoş was a man who was less than a man and therefore deserving of ridicule. That is when it struck me that ablacı might be an insult the old used for women who weren’t womanly. I bit into a slice of bread spread with margarine and tomato paste, my favorite after-school snack. I watched my reflection on the metal tray in the kitchen: my face a blurry watercolor combination of black bangs over tan forehead, my eyes two dark holes, and my mouth a slit of peach skin smeared here and there with blood-red tomato paste.
The next morning, I pretended I was sick so I could stay home and listen to my mother gossip about Nazan Abla. I felt like I had to get to the bottom of this not only for her but also for myself. Neighbors often came by for coffee after their husbands left for work and their children for school. “Tiny” Ayşe showed up this morning. Her nickname was funny, and she knew it. She was actually as big as, if not bigger than, that fat pop singer who was known for stepping on her little dog.
As I flipped through Tommiks in the living room across from the kitchen, I saw her waddle in. She smiled and waved at me. I waved back. My mother had already made coffee. A pair of matching demitasses and their saucers, decorated with an elaborate pattern of red tulips, waited on the breakfast table.
“Have you heard it, abla?” Just like that, tiny Ayşe skipped the usual civilities and dove into the gossip. It must be important.
“Heard what?” my mother said as she adjusted the collar of her robe and sipped her coffee from the tiny cup across from the not so tiny Ayşe. I couldn’t help but smirk.
“Nazan was seen with an unknown woman downtown the other day.” She lowered her voice. “She must be her…you know. I can’t even say it—Allah help us!”
My mother glanced my way. I was pretty sure she was debating closing the kitchen door. I looked down and pretended to pore over my comic book and prayed she wouldn’t shut the door.
“Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a sevici,” my mother sighed, “Maybe she’s just her coworker?”
Sevici. Literally, one who pets.
Tiny Ayşe looked deflated for a moment. She protested, “Ay abla, you always think the best of everyone!” and eagerly continued, “Don’t you wonder what they do in bed? I wonder which is the woman and which is the man?”
My mother almost coughed up her coffee. “No, I don’t. Neither should you!”
“I wonder if Melahat Teyze knows?” tiny Ayşe said.
“How would I know? We can’t ask her. It’s a family matter, and none of our business.”
My mother had good sense about such matters. Unlike my grandmother, she knew how to read and write. But when she was twelve, my grandparents made her quit school. In their thinking, girls didn’t need to go to high school. She helped around the house and in the tea fields until she married my father at eighteen. Every year when school ended and my sisters and I came home waving our karneler showing our grades, she hugged and kissed us on the cheeks and told us that she dreamt about becoming a nurse when she was young. She must have wondered how her life would have turned out differently if she had continued school. Instead, she now ministered to the neighborhood gossips.
“She will burn in cehennem if she continues with this sevici business,” tiny Ayşe said matter-of-factly as she finished her coffee. An aspiring falcı, she covered her demitasse with the saucer, flipped them over, and placed them on the table.
My mother said in a hushed tone, “If she is indeed a sevici, Allah keep her away from us and our children. Watch your kids around her. We must protect them.”
Tiny Ayşe nodded with pursed lips. During the brooding silence that ensued, she fingered the bottom of the demitasse a couple of times to check whether the dregs had cooled so that she could read them and practice her fortune-telling skills. I thought about Nazan Abla’s fortune; the image of her burning in cehennem made my stomach sick. I went to my room and laid down.
Ablacı. Sevici. Now I was sure about the meaning of the first word because I was familiar with the second. Bullies at my school called girls who were athletic or stood up to them sevici. For boys like me who were bad at sports or good friends with girls, the corresponding insult was top or ibne.
I had solved the puzzle of Nazan Abla, but I didn’t feel victorious. I wondered if the downtrodden, minor characters in comic books felt a similar dread before their enemies. I was now worried about Nazan Abla—and myself.
I somehow managed to nap that afternoon. And I had a dream. I blamed tiny Ayşe for it afterward. In my dream, I saw Nazan Abla make love to her girlfriend. She caressed her smooth hair and olive skin, gave her long kisses, and touched her breasts and between her legs. She made her go wild.
I woke up from the dream, hot and sweaty, when my mother came into my room to check on me. Realizing I was excited from the dream, I rolled over to my side away from her. She placed a tray of tea and two slices of apple tart on my desk and said that my sisters were back from school. I mumbled that I’d get up soon. I wondered if my sisters knew about Nazan Abla being a sevici.
My sisters’ room was a shrine to 1980s male pop stars. We all regularly read a Turkish teen magazine with an English title, Blue Jeans, which published pop culture news from abroad. The walls of their room were covered in Blue Jeans posters of their favorite male stars—Michael Jackson, Duran Duran, Pet Shop Boys, Wham!, Don Johnson. Miami Vice was their favorite TV show.
I walked in as they were having their tea and apple tart. They both had big curly hair with so much hairspray that I had joked before that their hair would fall off one day, and that they would never need a room deodorant. They were older than me (fifteen and sixteen) and looked and acted like weird twins. They had already changed out of their school uniforms and accessorized; both had hoop earrings and neon-colored pink T-shirts, yellow tights, and baby-blue legwarmers. My first thoughts were: I have never seen them exercise; our parents will never let them go out like this; and they looked like fashion disaster twins. I knew better than to tease them though. I needed them to talk, plus they knew I was pretending to be sick. They snickered when they saw me.
“So you're feeling better already?” Buse, whose name meant “kiss” and who was the younger of the two, asked.
“We have more important things to talk about,” I said.
“Like what?” Neşe, whose name meant “joy,” asked.
“Nazan Abla,” I said.
“Oh, her,” Buse sighed and eyed Neşe as her eyebrows went up.
“What do you mean?” Neşe said.
“Well, people are talking about her, and I heard her called ablacı and sevici.”
“You mean lezbiyen,” Buse clarified. She turned to Neşe and said, “See, I told you she's strong like a man, like when she used to play volleyball with us.”
“What does that mean?”
“She likes women, that’s what it means,” Buse, the know-it-all among us, answered.
“Sus!” Neşe silenced Buse. Then, she turned to me and said, “She’s older than us, and mom told us to stay away from her, so you stay away from her too.”
“But I’m not a woman. What’s there for me to be afraid of?” I asked.
They both scowled at me in disbelief, and Buse yelled, “Because she’s a sapık!”
A pervert. I should have known what they would say. Nazan Abla, who was their friend a year ago, was now their enemy. Realizing how quickly everyone had deserted her made my insides simmer.
“I guess,” I said as I looked down and scuffed the carpet with my big toe. After a few seconds, I looked up and blurted out, “Maybe you two should never leave this room then, especially looking like the circus clowns you're dressed as at the moment!” I stormed out and slammed the door, ignoring their protestations.
I left the apartment quickly, ignoring my mother’s “What’s going on?” I walked around the building to the small community garden at the back, where tenants had planted a few fruit trees, vegetables, and herbs, and was startled to find Nazan Abla smoking there. She was leaning against the building wall in blue jeans shorts and a red spaghetti-strap top. Her bare feet and toes with peeling nail polish touched the garden soil, with her slippers thrown to the side. She looked sideways at me as she raised her chin and exhaled a thin plume of gray smoke. I used to say hi to her as she smoked there from time to time, and she would ask me about school and such. But this was the first time I had seen her there since her hospitalization.
I walked over hesitantly, as I didn’t want to intrude, but I couldn’t go back, either, because she had already seen me. I stood a meter or so away from her and leaned with my back and hands against the rough surface of the wall, which was warmed by the afternoon sunshine. The sudden sight of her replaced my anger with nerves, not because of what others had said—nothing seemed perverted about her—but because of my embarrassing dream. She continued smoking her almost-finished cigarette. I focused my thoughts on the things I had heard about her, but wasn’t sure if I had the courage to ask her about them.
As if she had read my thoughts, she asked, “You sure it’s OK for you to be seen around me?”
I didn’t want to get either of us into trouble, so I said, “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t.” I paused as we eyed one another. When she didn’t say anything, I added, “I’m not exactly the person the bullies at school say that I am, either. Are you OK with me being here?”
“People have been avoiding me, so it’s a welcome change,” she said and rolled her eyes. “Why do they pick on you?”
“I’m terrible at sports, but girls like me, so they call me names sometimes.”
“They’re just jealous.”
“I guess,” I said and asked, “What about you?”
“What about me?” she said, as if she didn’t know what I was talking about.
Was I crossing a line? I didn’t say anything and looked away.
“Do you like any of them?” she asked.
“Who?” I pretended not to understand what she was asking.
“The guys in your class. Is there one that you like among them? Who might even like you back? You could perhaps look out for each other.”
“I don’t know. How do you know you like someone?” I didn’t like where the conversation was headed. I felt exposed.
“You just do. It’s OK. You don’t have to tell me. Just know that sometimes the ones you like or those who say they love you are the cruelest.”
“I’m finding out,” I said as I marveled at how we thought alike.
We remained quiet for a while. Leaves rustled in the breeze, and sparrows chirped.
Our silence ended when she said, “People will say what they will, but I won’t try to harm myself again over what they might think or say. That’s for sure.” She winked as if her revelation were an inside joke.
“Harm how?” I asked.
“You don’t want to know,” she said.
I looked into her eyes. Her sadness was overwhelming. I didn’t know what to say, so I glanced down and smoothed the soil with my sneaker.
“It’s OK. I’m OK now,” she said, “Look where it got me. My parents let me be most of the time. I have a job. I’m saving money to buy my own car. And who knows, maybe I’ll move out one day. Of course, it’s not easy. We still fight about it from time to time. But I can do things that women in our neighborhood can’t, or won’t.”
She took one last drag of her cigarette, rubbed the butt against the wall, and threw it into the vegetable patch. I wished the patch would catch fire and burn down the entire garden, along with all the words people use to hurt one another.
“See you around, and don’t worry too much,” she said as she ruffled my hair.
After she left, I wondered if she meant worrying about her or myself. Replaying our conversation, I realized she meant both of us. Then I thought about the words I had pondered over the past day and a half: ablacı, nonoş, sevici, top, ibne, and lezbiyen. If a word is repeated often enough, it loses its meaning for a moment, so I whispered each of those words, one by one, over and over as I contemplated a sea of identical weathered brick apartment buildings across from the community garden.