Baksheesh by Esmahan Aykol

doesn’t get why you’re interested in this business. Poor kid, he’s not a crime-fiction reader like us,” she said, with one of her wonderful laughs. I could just visualize all those pearly teeth.
    â€œI started on one of the books you gave me last night. It’s very gory, isn’t it? I think I’d better read it after the birth, because I’m not going to be able to put it down.”
    â€œMmm, don’t read it at night, otherwise you’ll never get any sleep.”

    â€œHave you seen the papers today?”
    â€œNo.”
    â€œAfter two days, it’s made page-three headline news in three of them. I don’t know how, but they got hold of Osman’s passport photo and they also found out he’d had a fight with his uncle over money. That was all.”
    â€œYou said you spoke to Özcan.”
    â€œHah. That’s why I called you, actually. Özcan is coming to see me this afternoon. You said you wanted to ask him a few questions, didn’t you?”
    â€œWhat time shall I come?”
    â€œCome early. Come now, if you like. We could look at the tarot cards. Have you had breakfast? We can have it together.”
    â€œFine,” I said.
    Â 
    Ä°nci’s home was immaculate. Like that of every good Turkish housewife. In fact, like Istanbul in general: spotless interiors and windows, with balconies and streets too filthy to set foot in. That’s why I complied so willingly when asked to remove my shoes at the door. She gave me some high-heeled house slippers with feathers on: size thirty-six. They didn’t fit my feet of course, so I put on some men’s slippers that were there. Slippers of a dead man. As I put them on, a cold hand seemed to pass rapidly up my body, from my feet to my head. I felt as if I too might become a corpse because of those slippers. As if death was a contagious disease, like leprosy. I took them off and put them back on the hall stand before entering the sitting room.
    While I guiltily drank my second coffee of the day, Ä°nci told my fortune with the tarot cards. The chariot card appeared. It signified that I would be taking a big step forward. There would be a great change in my life. Apparently, it’s the only tarot card to forecast any change for the good.
    â€œYou’ll find a new lover and be happier than ever,” she said.

    Actually, I’d have preferred the change in my life to be a new home, rather than a new lover. Was that so strange?
    Ä°nci proudly showed me the baby’s room where everything was all ready for her son. He was to be called Osman Emir and was due in three months. I felt obliged to feign interest by making a close examination of the piles of tiny outfits.
    We talked about Habibe for a while. Ä°nci commented that the mermaid costume was the reason why her album hadn’t caught on.
    â€œMermaids have no sexuality because they have no sexual organs. What man do you think is going to fancy a woman with no legs and no whatsit between them? Women didn’t like her either, because she showed too much cleavage. Nobody’s going to find a sexless mermaid they’ve seen on TV so memorable that they have to go out and buy her album, are they? Of course not. So it didn’t sell. In that business, you’re marketing sexuality, not a song.”
    I commented that one of Hans Christian Andersen’s most beautiful and charismatic fairy-tale heroines was a mermaid.
    â€œSee, that just backs up what I said. In this world, a character without sexuality can only be a heroine in a fairy tale, not a singer trying to get her CD sold out there to real men and women,” she exclaimed.
    Maybe she was right. What do you do with a sexless singer?
    Ã–zcan rushed for my hand as he walked in. It was awful. Turks kiss the hand of anyone older then themselves and raise it to their forehead, out of respect. We ended up almost wrestling in the middle of the room while he