A Recipe for Daphne Nektaria Anastasiadou (the rosie project .TXT) đ
- Author: Nektaria Anastasiadou
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âWhere are you going with this?â Rea asked.
âItâs unsettling,â said Fanis, âbut it seems that when we call them âOttomans,â weâre not really talking about an entirely different race. Just a different religion.â
âBut that different religion makes all the difference in the world in their eyes, Fanis. You of all people should know that.â
Fanis ignored Reaâs reference to Kalypso. He had to stay focused. âAnd if the religion doesnât differ at all?â he asked.
Gavriela, who had, until then, followed the conversation with her lips pressed tightly together, now snapped her gloves on her lap and said, âAnd if the religion is the same? Whatâs the problem then, Rea?â
âThe problem,â said Rea, her whole body trembling like Dimitrisâs hands, âis that weâre second-class citizens. I donât know where you found those charts Fanis, but you canât wipe away all thatâs happened to us!â
âÎ understand your feelings, Madame Rea,â said Selin. âDuring World War Two one of my great uncles was hit hard by the Capitol Tax against non-Muslims and sent to a labor camp in the east. He got very sick and almost died. Itâs not easy for my parents to forget that.â
âThey shouldnât,â said Rea.
âBut,â said Selin, ânobody under sixty participated in that stuffâneither the Capitol Tax, nor the pogrom of âfifty-five, nor even in the expulsions and nationalistic pressures of the sixties and seventies. And not everybody over sixty participated, either. Many of them supported us.â
âSheâs right,â said Fanis. âWhat it really comes down to is this, dear Rea. Daphneâs father had nothing to do with what happened. He wouldnât have married a Rum if he had. So why are you holding Daphne responsible?â
âPlease. Stop,â Rea pleaded. âI donât want to lose my son.â
Fanis put his hand on her shoulder and said, âIf you keep going like this, you will.â
26
The Tomb of a Goddess
A week before daphneâs arrival, Fanis realized he was out of drinking water. He placed an order, but he knew that the service could take all day, so he put on his coat and went down to the minimart. Its Anatolian proprietress was sitting on her doorstep with her chin in her palm, probably waiting for her grandchildren, who came every afternoon to play with the balls kept in a net pinned to the shopâs exterior wall.
âWelcome, Uncle,â she said.
Fanis gritted his teeth at the respectful title, mumbled a âWell we find you,â and scanned the crates of onions, tomatoes, lemons, and potatoes lying on the sidewalk. He asked for a half-liter bottle of water.
After finishing his errand, he should have gone straight home. Instead he moved on toward the inevitable. He looked frequently over his shoulder to make sure that the next truck did not flatten him like roadkill. He turned into AÄa Hamamı Street and continued walking until he arrived at the dreaded cul-de-sac. For years his heart had been breaking whenever he unwittingly caught sight of the satellite dishes, crumbling stairs, corrugated plastic sheets installed as awnings, and other signs that the mansions of Kalypsoâs street had become poor tenements. On that day, however, he received an even greater shock: the exterior of the wooden house where she had lived had been completely renovated. Its front stairs had been redone with new marble, its corroding door replaced with a steel security door painted bright green, and its shingles varnished to a shine he had not seen in over fifty years. Fanis ascended the alley. Two little girls sitting in the doorway of another house giggled. They were probably laughing at him, a short old man turning in circles and looking up at those houses as if he were lost not in space, but in time.
Fanis returned home and went straight to his motherâs room, which he maintained exactly as it had been during her lifetime. He sat down on the violet-embroidered coverlet that his mother had made before she was married. Above the headboard, in a heavy, gold-painted frame was a vista of the Bosporus lined with pine trees. On the nightstand was his parentsâ wedding photograph, taken on the steps of the Panagia. He knew that if he looked into the armoire, he would find all his motherâs clothes protected by prodigious amounts of naphthalene and lavender. Since her death he had not dared open it even once.
He did not pull back the lace curtains that shielded his view of the street. Instead, he imagined his neighborhood of vines hanging from wires between the houses. He saw AÄa Hamamı Street torn up for repaving, as it had been the previous summer. He envisioned the men who had set up their plastic chairs to watch the bulldozers as if they were at a sporting event. He saw his mother and wife step out of a beauty parlor that had closed decades ago. They were whispering as they walked, and he was sure that they were talking about him.
âMother,â he said out loud. âWhy did you tell me not to go?â
Fanis took off the two wedding bands he had worn on the same finger since his wifeâs death. He placed them on his motherâs pillow, took Kalypsoâs photo from the side table on which he had left it after Muratâs visit, and exited the building. He climbed TurnacıbaĆı Street, merged into the pedestrian traffic in the Grand Avenue, and turned off into the byway leading to the Panagia church. There he found the bishop half asleep in an office chair.
Fanis cleared his voice to wake him gently. When that didnât work, he said, âYour Eminence.â
âLeave off with the fancy title,ââ said the bishop, pulling himself up straight. âYou know Iâm not fond of protocol.â
Fanis stuck his nose into the narcissus flowers on the bishopâs desk and inhaled spring. âDo you remember, Elder,â he said, âwhen we were not alone?â
âOf course,â said the bishop.
âAnd do you remember when Pera was full of churches?â
âIt still is. But more than
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