Temptation in Istanbul, page 7
The hashtags she’d been using were new to her but popular in travelers’ circles: #istanbul, #travelbug, #travelgram, #travelwithme.
One of her favorite photos had the most buzz.
It was a photo of her and Faisal atop Galata Tower. They went to the popular tourist spot yesterday. The line into the tower at sundown snaked so long she hadn’t thought they’d ever make it to the top. Though after waiting half an hour—and following Faisal’s teasing suggestion of using his company’s helicopter to see both Galata Bridge and Tower from above—they were admitted inside.
Maryan tapped the photo for a closer look...again. She’d looked at it enough when she had been alone last night.
Faisal kept his arms at his sides, but his posture was relaxed. He leaned on the stone railing at the top of the tower and pulled into her right before Zara snapped the photo. She couldn’t help noting they looked cozy. And she wasn’t alone in thinking so. All she had to do was scroll down to see her friends echoing the same thought.
It seemed everyone in her life wanted to know whether Faisal was her rebound after Hassan.
Her aunt and uncle weren’t hooked on social media as most people were these days. A blessing in this instance, as they still hadn’t caught wind of the online speculation of her love life. And the only reason she was 100 percent certain of that was that they’d have texted or called about it by now.
She’d have to burst everyone’s bubbles eventually. Crush her friends from hoping that there was anything happening between her and Faisal.
Nothing has and nothing ever will.
She posted a new picture. A photo of the snaking garden footpath on Çamlıca Hill. Adding the appropriate tags, she tapped to post. No sooner had she when her notification bell alerted her to new activity. Maryan sighed. Apparently even a safe, Faisal-free photo like the one she posted warranted curiosity from friends.
Maybe I should clear the air and tag him.
Faisal had suggested it on the first day. Now it wasn’t looking like a bad idea.
Before Maryan could give it any more thought, Zara pulled her out of her thinking with a question.
“When you leave, will it just be Daddy and me?”
Her heart thumping a little faster, Maryan hummed softly, tucked her phone away, and scooted closer to where Zara sat by her father. She squeezed both of Zara’s small shoulders before pulling her back into her open arms. Zara fell gently and willingly into the comforting embrace.
With Zara’s head tucked under her chin, Maryan sought to calm any doubt in the young girl.
“Unfortunately, I can’t stay forever.” In fact, she was due to leave in a little more than a week. She gulped at the reality. Somehow her time in Istanbul was coming to a speedier close than she’d hoped it would.
When she spoke next it seemed as though she were convincing herself of her encroaching departure as much as Zara. “It’s going to take some getting used to. But I hope you try for your dad’s sake.”
“Will you miss me?”
Maryan rocked her side to side, her voice a hoarse but emphatic whisper when she answered, “Yes. Of course I will.”
“Do you think Nadia and Simone miss me?”
Nadia and Simone were her school friends. The trio were inseparable. Maryan had spent countless days planning playdates for Zara and her friends, minding the children when the other girls’ parents couldn’t spare time away from their jobs.
“I’m sure they do. But you have their numbers. You can call them on your phone.” She hadn’t approved of Salma giving Zara a phone, but now it would come in handy. “And you can always call me, too.”
In the smallest voice, Zara glumly stated, “That’s not true. I tried calling them today, and they didn’t answer me.”
“When did you call?”
“Don’t be angry.” Zara turned in her arms, her bottom lip protruding and her wide brown eyes begging Maryan’s forgiveness. “I stayed up last night to call them.”
“Oh, honey,” Maryan began, tamping down the instinct to scold her. Sleep was important, but Zara was clearly hurt that her friends hadn’t answered her call even when she’d phoned them at an appropriate time. Maryan had explained the eleven-hour time difference from Istanbul to Los Angeles, and Zara had been listening well. Still, despite her effort, she was disappointed by her friends.
“Why didn’t they answer, Maryan?”
She chose to ignore that Zara had stayed up past her bedtime. There was a time and place to chastise her behavior later. Now wasn’t it.
“I don’t know, sweetheart.” She stroked Zara’s cheek and smiled to soften the blow. “Sometimes people can disappoint us.”
Zara sniffed and burrowed her face into Maryan’s shirt. Her quiet sobs shuddered through her small body. The anvil pressing down onto Maryan’s chest crushed her heart as she held Zara through her tearful display.
It wasn’t fair that she should be feeling this way.
Worse, it felt so familiar to her. She wasn’t much older than Zara when she’d been sent away to live in America. The confusion of assimilating into a new culture, of making new friends and adapting to a whole new life apart from everything and everyone she’d known in Somalia, had been the toughest part.
No, she corrected sharply. Because eventually she did adapt. With the help and support of her aunt and uncle, Maryan had survived. What she hadn’t recovered from was the painful knowledge that her parents could live without her.
She couldn’t quiet the idea that they’d used her.
Like Hassan had used her for a job and then after their breakup didn’t have the shred of decency to walk away but robbed her and her family instead.
Now here was Zara feeling lonely and adrift. And she was leaving her, too, so it wasn’t like she had a leg to stand on. But she’d meant it about never forgetting her. Trouble was, Maryan wasn’t certain her promise made any impact.
Absorbed with comforting Zara, she forgot about Faisal.
It was an upsetting surprise then when he sat up suddenly.
“What’s the matter?” He phrased it like a question, but with his steely eyes and gruff tone, it was unmistakably a demand. She couldn’t blame him for it, either. What parent wouldn’t be annoyed to wake up to find their child distraught in the arms of their nanny?
Zara saved her from a response.
She pulled out of Maryan’s arms and turned to her dad, sniffling loudly before clutching him like she had Maryan.
He hugged her tightly. As though his arms were shield enough from her big worries.
“I’ll stretch my legs,” Maryan said, a yearning flourishing in her. For what, she couldn’t name.
At least she couldn’t until Faisal gave her the tersest of nods.
Dismissed, she rose to her feet, an epiphany dawning on her. She’d wanted him to stop her. The farther she walked from them, the more she longed for him to call her back, to ask her to stay while he took over assuaging Zara’s fears. Fears he might not fully understand or appreciate. She had the unique perspective of being dumped in America by her parents. It wasn’t so far off from Zara’s situation. Cultural shock, a loss of friends, a sense of displacement—she’d experienced all of that.
Faisal doesn’t know that, though.
Because surely if he had he wouldn’t have accepted her leaving...
Would he?
* * *
Faisal began doubting whether it had been a wise choice to let Maryan leave. It was difficult to ask her to stay when he recalled their conversation from a few days back outside the Grand Bazaar. She’d said she believed he could be there for Zara. She had also challenged him to prove it.
And that’s what I’m doing. Proving that I can be more than enough of a parent for Zara.
Letting Zara’s nanny walk away had to be done, no matter how panicked he felt in doing this alone.
Gulping, he hoped this went well and cleared his throat.
“Zara? Can you look up at me, sweetheart?”
She pulled back but kept her small hands latched onto his shoulders. She sat on his lap, looking smaller now that her bottom lip trembled and her eyes and lashes were darker for her tears.
“Why are you crying?”
He’d woken up to her sobbing in Maryan’s arms. It was a startling sight to open one’s eyes to. Naturally, he’d immediately asked for answers. But he realized snapping at Maryan wasn’t fair. She hadn’t made him sleepy. He hadn’t thought a nap would make him miss a crucial moment relating to Zara. It had, though, and now he hadn’t even had the forethought to ask Maryan to catch him up to speed.
Zara sniffed, her head lowering, eyes downcast.
“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me.” Softening his voice, he then added, “I know it’s hard, and I can’t promise that I’ll be able to fix whatever’s bothering you, but I’d like to try.”
Zara’s chin wobbled, and her sniffling grew louder.
He resisted the impatience rising. Remembering that this was a new experience for her in some ways, he tempered the need to rush her through to an explanation. After all, she was ripped away from her mom and home in LA, and she’d been too young to recall living her early life in Istanbul with him and Salma. He couldn’t assume any part of this long-distance change was easy on her.
Eventually his forbearance was rewarded with a response.
“My best friends forgot about me.”
Why hadn’t he thought of that earlier as being a problem? She’s seven! Friends were at the top of her list of values at that age. What child wanted to be pulled away from their friends?
In a whisper, she said, “I called them and they didn’t call me back.”
“Was it late for them when you called?”
Zara snapped her head up for a spirited headshake. “I know the time is different here. Maryan told me.”
He suspected her brilliant nanny would. Maryan wouldn’t have let Zara assume her friends were ignoring her for a simple fact such as time zones.
“Okay, so why do you think they didn’t answer your call?”
Zara knit her brows, her consternation carrying into her voice. “I don’t know. They don’t like me anymore?”
“Did they like you before you left?”
“Yes. They threw me a party. Maryan helped them surprise me, and Mommy brought me to the party, and everyone jumped out with confeffi.”
“Confetti,” he softly amended. “And?”
“And we had cupcakes and cookies. Then we played games like capture the flag and freeze tag, and we pinned a sparkly horn on a unicorn!” Zara regaled him for a bit, painting a picture of that afternoon in sunny Los Angeles, one of her last among friends and family.
And Maryan.
Maryan had been by her side then and she still was for now.
He’d thought he was grateful to her before, but that sensation intensified into a hot, bright point that tore open an ache inside him to see her.
Nearly breathless by the end of her story, Zara looked...happier.
That happiness dimmed when she seemed to remember why she was in his lap. Dropping her head, she muttered, “But now they hate me.”
“No one hates you,” he assured her.
“How do you know?” she shouted. One stern look from him and she sulked again, mumbling, “Sorry, Daddy. Maryan says I shouldn’t yell when I’m angry.”
“She’s right. But I also understand you’re upset right now.”
She bobbed her head and sniffled.
He embraced her for a moment, letting the sadness be what it was. His mother had taught him that life skill. Sometimes a low mood was just that and nothing more. Chemicals in the brain acting funky. A bad day spoiling a week or more. Most times it passed, and he knew with Zara that it would. But he had to help her through it, and the first step was showing her how to be proactive about her problems.
“When was the last time you spoke to your mom?”
“She left me a voice message yesterday. Maryan played it for me before bed.”
His heart did a jig at the mention of her nanny. It had been doing that too much lately.
“Why don’t we give your mom a video call later? We can ask her about your friends.”
Zara’s shy smile told him that she was in, but he teased her.
“Is that a ‘yes’?” He tickled her sides.
She shrieked into laughter, the peals of joy floating up into the perfectly cloudless sky. He wrapped her in a bear hug and hauled her up into his arms, her legs dangling around his sides. To see her smiling again meant more to him than he’d ever thought because he had put the smile there on her face. It was a sign that he’d done the right thing by bringing her to live with him.
“Why don’t we go find Maryan?” he suggested.
Zara nodded, her enthusiasm for her nanny more innocent than the heated excitement rippling over him whenever he thought of Maryan.
* * *
Faisal had their picnic packed up in the backpack slung over his shoulders. Zara skipped by his side, more carefree after their little heart-to-heart. She spied her nanny first and tugged at his hand to get him to move faster.
Maryan was watching tourists and Turkish citizens streaming toward the Çamlıca Mosque, her back facing them.
She turned when Zara called her name.
“Hello,” she said simply, her gaze flitting from him to Zara, and he guessed as to why when her expressive dark eyebrows furrowed closer. She couldn’t mask her worry for his daughter. And given that he’d sent her away when Zara had still been upset, he realized he needed to fill her in on what happened. Though that would have to wait until they were alone.
“Is this all of the masjid, Daddy?” Zara asked, using the Arabic word he’d just taught her for the mosque. She didn’t hold a trace of sadness in her innocent expression. Only curiosity gazed up at him. Faisal was relieved to see she was back to her normal self.
“The masjid is one part. There’s an art gallery, a library and a museum.” And an unencumbered view to the Bosporus that he wanted to show them.
“It’s so big! Is it the biggest masjid ever? The biggest in the whole world?”
Zara’s barrage of questions lightened his heart as usual. Answering her calmly, he flickered glances at Maryan and found her watching them. Surprised to feel an insistent tug of attraction for her in the moment, he concentrated on Zara and decided to untangle his complicated emotions later.
But it wasn’t long before Zara pointed to the nonfigurative sculptures in the mosque’s expansive courtyard, where other children played.
“Can I go play over there?” she asked.
Faisal nodded, and she wrapped her arms around his legs for a quick hug before doing the same to Maryan and rushing off.
“Walk, please, Zara,” Maryan called after her, shading her eyes from the sun and watching Zara move farther away from them.
It left him and Maryan to stroll the courtyard of the newly built mosque.
Since it wasn’t a Friday, the holiest day of the week for Muslims, the grand mosque wasn’t packed to its capacity of sixty thousand. Still, there were enough tourists and visitors in the courtyard for Faisal to guide Maryan to a quieter section of the mosque’s grounds while they watched Zara play. They stood outside the shade of the grand mosque with its domes, half domes and six minarets. Maryan gasped pleasingly at the sight of the city below the valley. He’d shown her Istanbul from many heights now. From his home, Galata Tower and Çamlıca Hill, and now from the mosque. It was what he had promised her: a tour of Istanbul. Taking her to his favorite places in his beloved city was only one small way he could thank her for everything she’d done for Zara up to that point.
Everything she continued to do.
All that was left was to thank her in person.
“She’s feeling better as you might have noticed.” Faisal gazed around Maryan to where Zara had found a group of kids her age to play with. Smiling from a rush of fatherly pride, he reported, “She misses her friends.”
“Yes, she does,” Maryan agreed. She folded her arms, the gesture more protective than defensive. Casting a look backward at Zara as well, she said, “She’s young. It’s going to be harder for her to adjust, but she’ll make new friends soon enough. She’s more resilient than I ever was.”
That was an interesting way to put it. He cocked his head, intrigued to know what had caused the melancholy in her voice.
“What do you mean?” he asked.
Maryan snapped her head to him, her pleated brow and frown touched by bafflement. As though she were only piecing it together right then that she’d spoken aloud. And that she wasn’t alone when she had.
A shutter rattled in place over her open features. “It’s nothing.”
“It sounded like something.” He hoisted the rucksack full of their picnic essentials higher onto his back. “Does this have to do with your family?” She’d mentioned they lived apart from her. The Somali diaspora had scattered many families, rending them apart. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment that she could be a victim of this dispersion. His heart pulled out its next few beats distressingly sharp.
She stroked her tongue over her bottom lip, watching him with a wary slant to her eyes.
Seeing as he couldn’t wipe all her worries away with a flick of his wrist, Faisal tried the next best thing.
“I told you my parents left Somalia three decades ago. They were fleeing the civil war and wanted a better life for me.” He was turning thirty-eight next month, and a quick calculation reminded him he’d been Zara’s age when he’d fled their homeland. No more than seven or eight when he had lost everything he knew and had it replaced with the place he now called home. “It was hard at first. I didn’t speak Turkish and my English wasn’t good, yet my parents enrolled me in school immediately. They hadn’t wanted me to fall behind on my studies. It took some getting used to, a new life here in Istanbul. That’s why I know it’ll be challenging for Zara.”
