turned and fixed his eyes on mine, his face darkening and the muscles in his jaw contracting. Then suddenly the features softened, changed, and a grisly smile emerged.
‘But you’re happy,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t you.’
‘It could have been me?’
‘It could have been anyone.’
‘Even you?’
‘Possibly, but my blood would cover this entire town.’
This time his smile was for real.
‘You’re lucky,’ he said. ‘How many novelists get the chance to witness something like that? I’m sure you’ll capture the scene beautifully in your next book. Come on then, people are dying to meet you.’
‘To meet me?’
‘Certainly … You’ll be the first writer they’ve ever met.’
He led me through the crowd.
Some of the guests had actually ordered my books from the city, but most of them confessed they hadn’t read them yet.
Most of the young guests had studied at universities in America but they reintegrated into the town’s social fabric. It was like the education they had received abroad had been washed out by what they’d learned in childhood. As for the older generation, few had finished secondary school. They were in good spirits, laughing and joking with each other in various groups, as comfortable as their gym clothes, and their local accent had a light and lovely lilt.
Raci Bey was a short and portly fellow who had a monopoly on wine production in the district; he also owned several olive oil factories. ‘Cooking lamb is no walk in the park. Mustafa will have us dying of hunger soon enough and then he’ll get his hands on our land,’ he said and burst out laughing.
Raci’s wife was different. At first I wasn’t sure what it was. She had a sharp face and there was a faintly ironic smile that lingered at the corners of her mouth. Something about that and the angles on her face was strangely arousing. I couldn’t quite work out why.
Her name was Kamile Hanım and she was an honest, shrewd, authoritarian woman; I suppose the authority came from her quick wit and loquacity.
‘Are you the writer?’ she said, as if asking a vet if this was the ailing cow.
I laughed and said that I was.
‘Can you make enough money as a writer?’
‘Some do, but I don’t.’
‘You drive an RV. How is that if you don’t make any money?’
Her daughter interrupted: ‘Come on, mother, why in the world do you care about his RV?’ She was a tall blonde.
‘It’s all right,’ I said, calmly. ‘I came across some buried treasure.’
‘Listen to that,’ said Kamile Hanım, laughing. ‘Quick on his feet.’
Everyone in the town said they had come into their money the same way; whenever I asked it was always the same answer, ‘The guy’s dad found buried treasure.’
Kamile Hanım had got my drift.
‘Well, you should at least register your treasure at our Chamber of Commerce,’ she countered. ‘That’s where the people who find treasure go. Are you married?’
Embarrassed again, her daughter said, ‘Mother, please.’
‘It’s all right,’ I said, again in a conciliatory tone.
‘I was married … But I lost my wife in a car accident.’
‘How terrible. I’m sorry to hear that … And you never married again? I’m sure she would have wanted you to remarry.’
‘She would have, but it hasn’t happened.’
‘I can find you someone here … I arrange most of the marriages around here.’
‘Oh, mother,’ her daughter said again.
Kamile Hanım was quick to respond: ‘She’s the only one I couldn’t find a match for. Her husband left her because she’s a whiner and now no one wants her. Enough of this Oh mother, oh mother, leave me alone.’
Her daughter blushed bright red and said, ‘Don’t pay any attention to her. She can be so rude sometimes.’
As she stomped away, Kamile turned to me and said, ‘The little minx is ashamed of me. She’s busy trying to fix my life when she should be busy fixing her own. So what do you write about? Love and romance and all that? Someone said you depict women well.’
‘Love and romance and all that,’ I said and smiled.
‘I was a big reader when I was a kid. Reşat Nuri and Kerime Nadir’s books. They always made me cry. Why do you writers have to make people cry? You should make us laugh too. Then when the kids came, and with all the problems at home, I wasn’t able to read any more.’
She glanced around the garden then conspiratorially flashed me a womanly smile and said: ‘Now, tell me. Have you been with many women? Is that how you know them so well?’
Beneath her authoritative confidence there was a flirtatiously mocking tone. Most of the other women in town spoke the same way. Hamiyet spoke this way, in a tone of voice steeped in sexuality. The unseen world I had discovered online was in fact run by women and, like water running underground, it was never clear when their sexuality would suddenly emerge, usually when they felt safe in the presence of a ‘stranger’.
Above ground the men were engaged in disputes over land, power struggles and murder while women ruled the town with their urgent, uncontrollable sexual desires.
‘I’ve known many women,’ I said.
‘Did they love you?’
‘They did.’
‘Did you love them?’
‘I did.’
She lowered her eyes and then looked at me.
I could swear that she was thinking about how I made love, how it would be if we made love.
In that moment she was far from everyone in the garden, looking off in the distance, her eyes now fixed on the horizon, her irises darkening.
‘You’re lucky,’ she said.
‘I was lucky,’ I said.
‘And were they lucky?’ she asked.
‘They were.’
Lightly touching my arm, she said, ‘I can imagine.’
I looked up to see a tall young man in his thirties standing beside us. ‘And this here is my son, Rahmi,’ Kamile Hanım grumbled. ‘Did Gülten
