Benjamin Gareh

Prologue

I don’t like heights. It’s not vertigo exactly. It’s just I can’t help but think dark thoughts when I acknowledge the space between me and the ground. Staring over an edge is the worst, when you can see all the little people below swarming like ants. Perhaps it is not so much a fear of heights but a fear of the edge, a border from this world to the next, the end of what I know and understand. It makes my stomach churn but I don’t feel dizzy, I’m still in control and I can step back, which is what I do if there is a pleasant view.

There are plenty of pleasant views in Turkey where my family is from. There is a mountain near my parent’s village which we have all walked up together in the summer. I always felt safe at the top of that mountain, taking in the green fields below, the forests, the infinite pastel blue sky, following it to the horizon where it meets the dark blue of the sea. It is majestic and peaceful. There are no sheer edges on the mountain pass where we stop and have a picnic. The air is light and fresh.

This was the opposite of that. This was cold, wet air on my cheeks, stale pollution filling my nostrils and sharp edges everywhere, which dropped to the grey concrete void below. There was no peace here, even the sounds were sharp city sounds. Sirens, engines, car horns.

‘Stop there, Kemal.’

I almost laughed at the command. Tariq knew about my fear of edges. I had no intention of going any closer.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I can’t do this anymore.’

‘Do what?’

‘Live like this.’

I closed my eyes, stole a breath. ‘He’s dead, Tariq. It’s over.’ Me, of all people, knew that this wasn’t exactly true, but I had to find something for Tariq to hold on to. ‘You can move on with your life. I will help you.’ I reached out a hand, but this movement was a mistake. His reaction was to place a foot on the parapet wall and take a cursory glance over the side, his eyes wide with fear.

‘No, Tariq. Please? Think of your mother, your sister?’

‘What about them?’

‘They love you, I love you.’

He shook his head. His face was all creased and red, tears streamed down his cheeks. ‘That is why I can’t do this. I can’t give them what they want.’

I wanted to move forward. I knew that if I could just get hold of him somehow, bring him to my chest, hug him, then it would be over, he would be safe, but he hadn’t moved and I froze.

‘Who called you?’

‘Yasmin. She said that you were at work, on the roof, that they had called the police.’ The police officer who I had encountered when I had first arrived wasn’t much older than me, a rookie, as the American cop shows would say. Short mousey coloured hair, the fringe stuck to his milky white forehead with perspiration, wide terrified eyes. He had actually looked more frightened than Tariq when I found him at the same spot I was at now, waving his gangly arms, straining his pleading voice. I suspected he had a fear of edges, too. He was behind me now, listening, praying that I could to succeed where he had failed. I wasn’t so sure.

The irony was that out of the three of us, Tariq was the only one who wasn’t afraid of edges. If anything, he was probably comforted by them. They gave things form and structure. They were the product of calculations, equations and formulas. It was Tariq’s love of mathematics that got him a job in this building, one of the tallest in this city full of edges.

‘All we want is for you to come home, to live your life.’

‘What life? He ruined my life. He took everything away from me before I even had anything. I know that now.’ His foot slid slightly, and he wobbled, stuck out his arms to regain his balance. It stopped my heart, caused me to leak a little pee, forced an involuntary sound from the police officer behind me, a short, high-pitched squeal.

‘Tariq, please God, just stop, wait. Sit down for a second. Talk to me. There is more to it than you think. You know better than anyone that I know this.’

‘You were lucky you escaped.’

‘You know that’s not true, Tariq. You were there, always by my side. You know how hard it was for me.’

I could see something shifting behind the fear, an almost imperceptible parting of his lips, his mind going back to that time, accessing memories and in that moment on the roof of one of the tallest skyscrapers in the city our eyes met, and we both accessed those memories together.

Chapter 1

The first thing I heard was my heartbeat, a slow rhythmical pounding that sent vibrations throughout my body. Even before I tried to open my eyes, I could hear voices, muffled shouts as though I was inside a vacuum. When I eventually opened my eyes, the blinding light was painful, but when I tried to close them again, to return to the cocoon, the voices got louder, surrounding me. Images rushed in. Heads floating like balloons, creased foreheads, mouths open so I could see their teeth, faces I didn’t recognise but then I saw my mother, her cheeks red raw, her dark eyes crazy, wild and behind her my Baba who was the only one who I could feel looking through me. In his hand, I saw he was holding the pocket watch. I closed my eyes.

When I opened them again, horizontal lines of light were streaming overhead like train tracks. I could feel the air buffeting my cheeks, my head was dizzy, my mind spinning, I felt a surge from my gut, a pounding in my ears. Everything was merging into one point: the light, the shouting, the faces. I looked for my mother’s face, but she was no longer there. I turned over and threw up onto the floor, which I remember being bluish green because it made me think of the sea in Izmir. That was the last image before I passed out.

I woke up in a hospital bed. I could tell it was a hospital because there was a nurse standing over me. I knew it from her sky blue uniform. She was a black lady with short hair and warm hazel eyes that didn’t judge. She had a round face and little plump cheeks that inflated when she smiled.

‘How are you feeling, my dear?’ She said, in a voice that was soft, rhythmical and had a richness to it.

‘Please, may I have some water?’ I wanted to say something else. My mind was full of so many other questions, but at that moment all I could feel was the dryness at the back of my throat and my tongue, like sandpaper.

She helped me sit up and poured me a cup of water from a jug that was on a table in the corner. Also on that table was a plastic Sainsbury’s bag and next to the table was a chair with my mother’s black coat hanging on the back. I recognised the large buttons. The nurse, whose name was Ayesha, saw me looking at the chair. ‘Your mother has gone to get a tea, she will be back soon, she will be so happy to see that you are feeling better.’

At that moment I had to look away from her, from her caring smile because even though I could sense her goodness, could feel her genuine concern for me, I suddenly remembered why I was lying in a hospital bed and I couldn’t help but judge myself.

I sipped the water and stared towards the window at the perpetual pale greyness of the sky.

‘Ok, well if you need anything else just press the call button.’

I heard the door opening, the gasp of breath and then my mother was on top of me, squeezing me, kissing my cheeks and I was unable to stop my tears which shuddered through me, tears that were born out of the shame of what I had done or tried to do because I had failed and now I had to answer to Allah for the sin I had committed.

‘Oğlum!’ She said and repeated over again. My Son.

And the shame of it wasn’t even the worst bit. The worst bit was how would I cope now that I was still alive, how would I face all those things that I had tried to escape?

‘Where’s Baba?’

‘He’s had to go to the cafe to check on everything. He is coming straight back, Canim.’

My mother had extricated herself and was sitting on the side of the bed holding my hand. Ayesha had slipped out unnoticed and I wondered what it was like to be a person with so much love for all these strangers that came in and out of the hospital. I thought it must be an incredible thing and she must feel so light without the weight of judgement on her shoulders. There was no way she could do her job if she judged people all the time and then I wondered how Allah could love everyone if he was constantly judging. How could he possibly love me after what I had done?

‘How are you feeling?’

‘I’m ok.’

My mother paused, glanced at her hands, small, firm hands, well worn from helping my father in the cafe, preparing food, cleaning up, always busy. I knew what she was thinking, what she wanted to ask, but perhaps she thought it too early, perhaps deep down she was questioning whether she even wanted the answer.

‘Are you hungry?’

‘A little.’

‘The nurse said that you should be careful with what you eat for the first couple of days. Your stomach might be sensitive.’ She turned and reached over to the Sainsbury’s bag. ‘I bought you a change of clothes.’

I wiped my cheeks with the heel of my hand and tried to lift myself up a little higher. Everything ached, from the tips of my fingers to my toes, a deep, ubiquitous aching from which I imagined I could never get comfortable.

‘Are you alright?’ She stood and helped haul me up and I remembered how she had done the same thing with my grandmother a few years ago in the same hospital just after she’d had her hip operation and it filled me with shame again at what I was putting her through.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said in a voice that was barely my own, a voice that shivered weakly above the surface of my lips.

She moved over to the chair with her coat and picked up her tea. ‘We are lucky they gave us a private room.’ She took a light sip and immediately put the polystyrene cup back on the table, the tea still being too hot for her. Baba would have finished the whole thing by now. He would only drink tea if it was scolding hot.

‘Did you bring my book?’

‘Your book? What book?’

‘It was on my bedside table.’ I was reading Lord of the Flies for school, or at least I had been before I had rudely interrupted my life with my pathetic attempt to end it.

She shook her head. ‘Hopefully you won’t have to stay here too long.’

There was silence for a while after that, me trying to look anywhere but her face, her sad brown eyes so full of confusion, watching me like a hawk as if I might disappear at any moment. I wanted to tell her that everything was all right, to appease some of my guilt by making her feel better, but I couldn’t because it was a lie and more than anything else all the lies that had already been told exhausted me. I tried to remember what had happened leading up to the hospital, but there were so many fragments, so many different pieces of broken memories that were hard to untangle. I remembered the pills; her sleeping pills and antidepressants. Her medication had been my chosen weapon, and she had left them accessible. I wondered if Baba was aware of that fact. He must have been. He had been in the room. Was that the real reason he wasn’t here watching over me with her? Was he making a statement? He had already shaken their marriage with his revelations. That was why she had been taking the pills in the first place.

I heard the click of the door handle and I braced myself for Baba to barrel his way in, to see his thick cheeks all puffy and red, announcing his presence, for although I was already as tall as him, it never really felt that way.

In his place, however, appeared a lanky, Asian doctor with curly black hair and a smile that seemed pasted on while his heavy-lidded eyes, bloodshot and watery and the furrow between his eyebrows betrayed a harassed and exhausted soul. ‘Hi, Daniel, I’m Doctor Pretash. I was the one on duty when you came in. How are you feeling?’

The one on duty. The one that saved my life. ‘I’m ok.’

‘I hope you’re drinking plenty of water.’

I nodded.

My mother fidgeted in the chair. ‘When will he be able to eat?’

The doctor turned round and squinted as though he had just noticed her sitting there. ‘He can eat, but I would suggest light meals for the next twenty-four hours. Soup would be good.’

‘Is he going to be ok?’ My mother’s voice cracked a little and Doctor Pratesh squeezed his chin while glancing between us.

‘Physically he is fine, now.’ He settled his gaze on me. ‘You’re very lucky your father found you when he did.’

I hadn’t expected that and I baulked at the idea of Baba standing at the foot of my bed, if I had indeed been on my bed for that was still uncertain, taking in the scene, my unconscious body. I felt flushed, my palms growing clammy. I looked up at the doctor with pleading eyes, as though seeking forgiveness, hoping he could see how sorry I was for all the trouble I had caused.

‘I would like you to see our resident psychiatrist before I discharge you.’

‘Psychiatrist?’ My mother’s back arched. This was a word that I had never heard uttered in our house or even within our wider family. A Psychiatrist was someone who dealt with over indulged American patients with too much time and money. Within my Turkish community, people didn’t air their mental problems in public. They kept things in the family. To hear this word presented in such a clinical environment frightened me.

‘Your son took an overdose of sleeping pills and antidepressant medication. Enough to stop his heart. I think it is important that he speak to someone so that we can properly assess him and recommend the appropriate treatment.’

Every part of my mother was stock-still, apart from the shaking hand that was resting on her knee and clutching a tissue. I couldn’t remove my gaze from the slight fluttering of her fingers that I imagined she was so desperately trying to hide.

Thankfully, the doctor didn’t stay much longer. He checked my vitals, took my blood pressure while I remained limply subservient, resisting the urge to ask any further questions, not wanting to prolong the agony. I didn’t believe he could answer any of my questions anyway and all of it was just masking the growing anxiety that was building at the thought of this psychiatrist that would open up my mind and piece together the fragments of my shattered recollections before I’d even made sense of them myself. I didn’t want this. I didn’t want this at all and when I tried to think about something else all I could do was picture Baba, standing behind my mother, after he had found me and called the ambulance, fingering the fine silver chain of the pocket watch he had presented to me on my fourteenth birthday.