Chapter 20
There are days my pain is so elaborate...
that the salt of my tears tastes not of my own
but like that of my ancestors —
and the women who dealt
with this sorrow before me.
— Segovia Amil
My Sleepwalking started eighteen months after my child was killed.
The first time it happened, I'd fallen asleep in the minister's bedroom and woken on the staircase landing, between his floor and mine. It wasn't yet dawn when I woke up, so I'd quickly made my way to my bedroom, to make it look like I'd decided to leave him early.
The next time I wasn't as lucky, and I'd been woken by the minister's kick. I'd fallen asleep on the staircase landing again, and he'd found me on his way downstairs.
" Have you finally gone mad or something?" he'd barked. "My friend, get off the floor before the servants start to gossip. you are mad?"
I immediately scurried back to my room, where I spent the better part of the morning thinking of what could have led me to venture out of his room, not once but twice.
I immediately deduced that, since it only happened in the minister's bedroom, it was my spirit's way of rebelling against his company.
The next time he summoned me, I did everything I could not to close my eyes, for fear of embarking on another unconscious, nocturnal stroll.
But alas, sleep won in the end.
This time, I was found on the kitchen floor by one of the junior cooks, who had let out a shrill scream upon seeing me, thinking I was dead. The noise awoke me, and I guess the entire household, as they all rushed there before I had a chance to run away.
"You are what they call Bear market (it's referring to stock market decline)!" had been the minister's derisive taunt. "Why I have not sent you back to India is a mystery to me. Now your spirit people have started calling you at night. I don't want any trouble at all. Just carry your problems and stay in your room!"
After that incident, he never summoned me to his room again.
It was a huge relief to no longer subject myself to sleeping with him.
It was an act neither of us enjoyed anyway, and I often wondered why he even bothered with me.
Over time, I realised it was usually when none of his lady friends from town could make it to the house, or after I had accompanied him out and his head was over swollen with pride from all the compliments I'd received.
Yes, he took a lot of pride in that. That was why I knew he would never send me back home, not even with what I was still doing with Ibrahim.
The admiration, lust, and desire he saw in the eyes of his peers whenever he was with me more than made up for it. It was no wonder why he'd eventually discarded the ones before me.
There was no way they could have elicited a fraction of the reactions as they all grew old.
So, I knew that, until the minister found a more beautiful woman to flaunt, he was sending me nowhere.
Three weeks after the kitchen incident, and on one of the rare nights I didn't have Ibrahim for company, I woke and found myself in the corridor, right outside my door, wearing only my flimsy night slip.
I scampered back into my bedroom and made sure to keep the door locked on subsequent nights. But it didn't stop, not even in the confines of my room, as I would awake in my bathroom, the sofa or even the floor.
After a while, even in my unconscious state, I was able to circumvent my locked door and soon started venturing to different parts of the house. Soon, it was no longer novel for any member of the household to find me in any nook or cranny of the house.
Not even on the nights when Ibrahim came to my bed did this stop.
"Zeynep, this thing can't go on," madam Maria said with deep concern, after I'd been found this time in the store. "You can't continue like this. People have started talking, saying maybe you are mad."
In time, even Ibrahim's visits to my bedroom reduced, as he was too tired of having to wrestle with me when I arose unconsciously at night.
So, even though I had no cure for my sudden disorder, it at least rid me of my two predators, if only for a little while.
At the end of my second year, Ibrahim took a wife.
Nobody was more ecstatic than I was, especially as he would now be based in the UK, where he and his new bride, Tonia, were making their home.
On their wedding day, I looked at the lady with pity, wondering if she had any inkling of the kind of beast she was giving her forever to.
A lady in her mid-twenties, her father, a retired politician , was a well-respected man in the area.
Though not wealthy, their family was very well regarded. Light-skinned and painfully fat, she wasn't particularly pretty, and I couldn't help but wonder what the attraction to her had been. She had no personality at all and spoke in the most irksome monotone, unable to hold conversation for longer than a few minutes, not even with her new husband.
From the even way in which she addressed me, I couldn't tell if she'd heard any rumours about her husband and I.
To be honest, I really didn't care. I was just too happy to be finally rid of him. Thankfully, neither yusuf came for the wedding. I had seen neither of them since that unfortunate Christmas, and I wanted it to remain that way for as long as possible.
With Ibrahim out of the house and the minister having lost interest in me, I was finally able to relax.
I took to moaning and gardening, transforming a small patch of land in the compound.
As the years rolled by, it became my sanctuary, my happy place. On days when the weather was good, I would go there with a book, where I would spend my time reading and daydreaming. And on bad weather days, I would look at it from my window, admiring the scenic view of the flowers in the rain.
As for the minister, his rotation of women soon narrowed down to just one, a widow called Amanda.
She wasn't like the others that he would sneak into the house at night. This time, she would even spend several days at a stretch. They were getting serious, and everyone could tell. But I wasn't worried. Not at all.
Amanda was a mountain of a woman and even more unattractive than the ones before me. She looked like a wrestler, the kind of woman who would snuff life out of you with just one punch.
Her face was so big, it looked like it went all the way down to her chest, and there was a lingering smell of fish and sour corn that followed her anytime she came to the house.
At the age of 22, I could now understand what I was told when I'd just arrived at the mansion as a young, innocent girl. But even though I understood it, I didn't quite agree.
The minister had a type. He liked them masculine, unattractive and unrefined. If I was a betting woman, I would put a wager on Roseline, his first love, being the very same way.
"Assalam alaykum !" Amanda would often jeer, anytime she walked past me in the house.
I would often simply smile in response, uninterested in giving her any attention. I could tell that she was spoiling to engage me in a verbal, or possibly even physical, spar, but I couldn't be bothered. A sixty year old man? She was free to him.
She obviously knew I was nothing but a figurehead, a puppet of a wife. But I didn't care. Minister was free to do as he pleased. As long as it didn't disrupt my peaceful existence, I was fine.
As for my family, life could have been better for them. I was happy for them.
Truly I was, maybe mama will be too
Alas, anytime I visited them or rather called come home, I felt more and more like a stranger, so distanced from their lavish life.
It no longer felt like a place I had called home for 12 years of my life, but somewhere I was eager to quickly vacate the moment I arrived. In the expensive cars that ferried me there, and my equally expensive clothing, I no longer belonged there. And after a while, even conversation became difficult as we barely had anything to say to each other.
They didn't even regard me as their younger sister.
Sometimes I still think of my child,I was 13 when I had her and she was only a few months old when she died.
Now I'm 22.
I couldn't even mourn her properly, I couldn't even give her a burial because the minister said he won't spend his money on nonsense.
She was buried without a coffin, without a head stone, she was just thrown into the ground and covered with soil.
She didn't deserve it.
She was too innocent.
I don't even know her grave, Ibrahim asked one of the servants to dispose of her body. I only learned of how she was buried from the gossip in the kitchen.
Allah is this your plan?