Page 48 of The Book of Heartbreak

The pain of a heartbreak is immune to the passage of time. No matter how many years drift by, or how many souls one seeks to heal it with, the ache resides deep within, ever enduring.

Excerpt from The Book of Heartbreak, Müneccimbasi Sufi Chelebi’s Journals of Mystical Phenomena

I find Muzaffer in his library, seated in the leather chair behind the mahogany desk, as pale as a sheet of paper. His hair hangs loose over his shoulders, unkempt. A wooden box sits before him, alongside a bottle of raki and a glass.

Has he been drinking already? It’s not even noon.

‘Why did you run away, Sare?’ His breath whistles, as if he’s having difficulty breathing.

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ I can’t believe he’s genuinely asking me. ‘You locked me in my room!’

He sniffs. ‘I was trying to protect you.’

‘From what?’ I scoff.

Muzaffer fidgets, pushing some papers away instead of responding, veins green and visible under his skin. ‘Have you found your answers, wherever you were?’

‘I did.’ I pin him down with my gaze.

‘And what have you learned?’ He pours himself a drink. I wish he wouldn’t.

‘You let Iris marry Daphne’s boyfriend.’ I clench my fists. ‘How could you do that to her?’

‘You have brought more questions, then.’ He sips his drink. Then again. It sickens me how much he resembles Daphne. Numbing himself with alcohol.

‘The past is made of regret,’ he says. ‘I wouldn’t call myself a wise old man, but still, I suggest you heed my advice. You are young. You have a future ahead of you. There’s no point in haunting yourself.’ He shakes his head. ‘Don’t look back.’

He has no idea how much I need to look back, to understand, to fit the pieces together, to break the curse. It’s easy for him to dismiss everything. But not for me.

‘Why drag me to Istanbul if you don’t want to talk to me?’ I challenge him.

‘You’re only a child.’ He frowns. ‘I can’t expect you to carry these . . . burdens.’

‘I’m not a child.’ I barely stop myself from stomping my foot.

‘You are the only one I have left,’ he mutters. ‘You are all that’s left, Sare. You are important.’

‘Am I?’ I let out a nervous laugh. ‘Then tell me what happened to my mother. Or I’ll go and find Ozan, Mum’s old flame. Or should I say Iris’s husband? I’m sure he knows something.’

At the mention of Ozan, Muzaffer’s head snaps to attention. ‘Please,’ he begs. ‘Don’t speak of him.’

That hit a nerve, didn’t it?

I take a step towards him. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’

Muzaffer pours himself another glass. Then downs it in one shot.

‘What did you do to Daphne?’ I’m burning with anger, I don’t even worry about the fluttering. ‘Did you throw her out because she was pregnant? Did you lock her in a room like you did to me?’

The air conditioning whirrs, filling the silence between us. Muzaffer’s face slackens.

‘Look at yourself.’ My voice trembles. ‘Shunning the mere mention of your own daughter for God knows how many years.’

He reaches for the bottle again and, before I can stop myself, I charge forward and snatch it from him. ‘Haven’t you had enough?’

The bottle is almost empty, but the smell of raki bites me, releasing a flood of memories. Empty bottles on the floor, on the counter, stuck between the cushions on the sofa, inside the bathtub. The smell of vomit. ‘You shouldn’t drink.’

‘I’m already dying.’ His eyes are glassy. ‘Does it matter if I suffer one day less or more?’

I knew it, since Azmi revealed how sick he was, but still, hearing it from his mouth shakes me to my core.

There’s something familiar in the way he’s ready to give up on himself to stop the pain.

It makes me remember how I died last time.

How I almost died last week. How Death is always one step away from me.

The fluttering soars within my ribs.

‘What is wrong with you?’ I clench my fists, unable to contain my emotions any more.

‘What is wrong with me?’ Muzaffer mirrors my words as he leans back, seeming to be genuinely thinking of an answer. ‘You lost your mother and became an orphan. I lost two children at once and became empty. I’ve been empty for so long, child.’

‘You didn’t lose Daphne when you lost Iris.’ My voice trembles as the intensity of the fluttering increases. ‘My mother was alive. She needed you.’

‘She wrote to me.’ His head sways as he taps on the wooden box. ‘She kept writing.’

‘She wrote to you?’ I gasp, unable to believe my mother reached out to him.

‘I couldn’t read them. I was afraid. I still am.’ Muzaffer speaks with the queasiness of a benign drunk. ‘But I couldn’t get rid of them either. What do you do with it? They kept coming.’

My knuckles turn white on the empty bottle I’m still clutching. I drop my gaze to the box. Dark wood, engraved with Turkish motifs. A key sits in its lock.

‘I wish I could rip them apart.’ Muzaffer’s cheeks are flushed, his aniseed breath unsteady. ‘I couldn’t forgive her.’

He begins to quiver, then drops his head, cradling his face in his hands.

I will not forgive you, the writing on Defne’s room whispers.

‘Why?’ I’m overwhelmed by pity, not sure whether it’s for myself, for him, or everyone who ever had the misfortune to live in this house. What use is there in asking him? Muzaffer isn’t going to talk.

‘You’re headstrong like her, aren’t you? You won’t listen. Like she never listened.’ Muzaffer lifts his head. ‘I will tell you everything. But first you must promise me something.’

‘What?’ I take a deep breath.

Focus on him and ignore the fluttering. Distract yourself with his misery and your anger, I tell myself.

‘You will not seek him,’ he mutters.

‘Who do you mean?’

‘Ozan,’ he says. ‘Promise me, no matter what happens, you won’t go looking for him.’

‘Why?’

‘Because . . .’ He sways. ‘B-because—’

‘For the love of God,’ I say, wishing I could lunge forward and grab his shoulders to shake the truth out of him. ‘Say something!’

He stares at me, glassy eyed, dishevelled.

‘Because he’s your father,’ he says at last. ‘Ozan is your father.’

When I was little, I used to ask Daphne about my father.

‘You don’t need a father,’ she’d say. ‘We have each other. Isn’t that enough?’

‘But everyone else has a dad,’ I would protest.

She would deflect the question. She would hug and kiss me until I forgot.

I was fourteen when I fully confronted her – when I wouldn’t let it go. I was angry with the way she’d begun to neglect me, the way her eyes slipped past me as if I was a ghost.

‘I must have a father somewhere,’ I begged. ‘I just want to know his name. You must know his name.’

Daphne stared at me with her doe eyes. She always looked frightened of me when she was sober.

‘He doesn’t have a name,’ she said firmly.

The strap of her vest dangled on her arm, right above the scar she’d got from falling out of a window when she was little.

‘A father is not a necessity, Sare. Look at me, I don’t have one.

You’re not losing out. Call him Jack. Or George. What does it matter?’

No tears shall fall, I recited silently.

But my mother didn’t stop. ‘Some people don’t have mums and some don’t have dads and some, like me, have no one.’ I wanted to ask her why she didn’t count me as someone, but she beat me to it, cold and sharp. ‘It’s called life. This is your reality – get used to it.’

And, just like that, I did.

Ozan.

The name fills the library.

Shock yanks me away from Muzaffer.

‘Liar!’ I scream. ‘She had a boyfriend. I saw the letters – he signed them as A. His name wasn’t Ozan.’

‘He had a middle name –’ Muzaffer says. ‘Azlan. That’s what your mother called that sick bastard. As if a different name would make him a different man.’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I don’t believe you.’

A.

Azlan, Azlan, Azlan.

When we’re apart, Daphne murmurs from her letter. I’m drowning in guilt and longing. Only when we’re alone together do I feel alive.

Mum, what have you done?

Perhaps they used the copy of Doctor Zhivago as a postbox, exchanging notes while they lived under the same roof. What a fool I was, treasuring it as a keepsake.

Defne , sweet muse of my cravings .

I hear my own laughter as I recall Azlan’s words and press my hand to my mouth. Perhaps I’m losing it.

Suddenly, I feel uncertain about hearing the rest. I hadn’t bargained for this. It’s too fucked up. It’s too much.

‘What’s wrong with you?’ Muzaffer growls. ‘Weren’t you begging me a minute ago to tell you everything?’

‘I was,’ I reply, my hand above my heart. Perhaps I’m so used to shock now, so used to feeling numb, or perhaps my heart has given up on emotions already without waiting for me to turn eighteen, because now it feels insensate, frozen. Not even fluttering. ‘I want to know everything.’

‘Sit, then.’ Muzaffer nods his head, groggy, and I lower myself on the nearest armchair. ‘Where do I begin, though? How could one begin to explain his daughters’ fight over a man? Are there words to describe how one sister destroys the other?’

I think of Eudokia’s beddua creeping through the centuries as an unforgiving curse. How the writing on the wall triggered it again.

I will not forgive you. A voice buzzes in my head. I will not forgive you.

‘Who wrote on the wall upstairs?’ My voice is a croak.

Muzaffer lifts his head to the ceiling as if it’s transparent.

‘I remember finding the room in that state,’ he mutters.

‘I wish I could erase my memory of that night. No matter how many years pass or how old I grow, it remains at the centre of everything. The dread of knowing something terrible happened.’ He pauses.

‘She’d told me only a day before that she was pregnant.

I was angry, Sare. Do you blame me? She was out of her mind.

She was going to confront Iris. She wanted her sister’s husband for herself.

I pleaded with her to stop. Iris wasn’t well enough to deal with it. She couldn’t deal with it.’

Run, a voice hisses. Save yourself. But I cannot move.