The Sofa is a chapter extracted from a wider novel, The Eye of a Little God, an intergenerational drama spanning seven decades in the lives of three British Turkish Cypriot women – a grandmother, mother, and daughter. Set against London’s racial, cultural and historical tapestry, it interrogates the connection between motherhood and mental illness, culture and identity, and the legacies of trauma born from colonial displacement.
Fatma Gazi screamed when she saw the sofa breathing.
“What happened?” Kemal Osman asked her, having raced back inside the top floor room in the Victorian house on Hornsey Road. He flinched as hot oil from the spatula dripped down his arm.
She pointed to the threadbare sofa next to the tulip tiled fireplace. The sofa had sunken seats that were a shade lighter than its dusty blue arms.
“There’s a ghost over there.”
Kemal exhaled audibly. “Don’t be silly. Sit with me. Come.”
He reached for her arm and she recoiled. Gently, he took it and led her across the room. He sat down on the sofa and patted the empty seat next to him.
Fatma looked around the room. Against the wall beside the sofa was a mattress fit with yellowed sheets. Next to that, a single carved wooden cupboard, door hanging askew. There was a small square table with two skinny white plastic chairs under the bay window, and a dented bureau on the wall directly opposite. Besides the door, a washstand. A giant crack on the ornate, rose patterned ceiling loomed high above her, a bruise of mould shining faintly in one corner. It wasn’t much better than back home. In fact, it was worse. Thirteen days on a boat for this? She should have stayed with her sister. She had felt almost comfortable in this strange, cold country with Remziye by her side. Now she had moved to Kemal’s house, she felt unrooted once more. She settled her eyes on the tatty canvas suitcase in the middle of the splintered wooden floor.
“Is that all you have?” Kemal asked, looking at it.
Why was he asking? He had carried the bag when collecting her from her sister’s house.
“Yes. Just that,” Fatma replied, eyes forward.
A car exhaust sputtered as it choked along the road outside. Kemal scratched the side of his heart shaped face.
“Once we’ve eaten you can unpack. I’ll go collect the rent from the others.”
Beneath them the sofa rattled like a fistful of marbles rolling across an empty drawer. Fatma jumped to her feet.
“There it is! That! What is that?”
She searched Kemal’s stone brown eyes. She wanted to find a connection, to see something in his face that would justify the reason they had been brought together.
“Oh that,” Kemal said. He wiped the spatula on his soiled trousers as he walked across the creaking floorboards towards the hallway. “That’s just mice. They live in the sofa.”
Fatma followed Kemal out to the hallway’s stove leaving the door open behind her. “Excuse me?”
“Shhhh,” he replied, gesturing. “The tenants.”
Fatma looked around the barren hallway, which echoed with the faint sounds of other people living behind closed doors. It had only been an hour but she missed Remziye terribly.
“We will need a new sofa then,” Fatma said, gripping the side of her hand-me-down dress in her left hand. Kemal removed the crackling eggs and brushed passed her back into their room. Fatma watched as he returned with an unfamiliar cut of meat. He added more oil to the pan and placed the finger-like lumps where the eggs had been.
“Is that-?”
“A new sofa is too expensive,” he interrupted, scooping hot oil generously over the meat, “– and there’s nothing wrong with the one I have.” The pan spat and sputtered onto the tiny white sink next to the stove and onto the brown swirling wallpaper behind it. The clouds darkened outside the hallway’s narrow window at the front of the house.
The smell was making Fatma nauseous. Her cheeks were hot and clammy, her temple began to throb. She needed to lie down. Moving back into the room, she floated over to the mattress, crouched onto it, and pulled the cover over her head. She shivered as she closed her eyes and took herself back there, back to the dusty goats ambling around the parched fields, the bulging fig trees. She did not resist the darkness when it came.
*
Fatma woke to a gentle rocking in the same way she had for the past few days. It was 5.30am.
“I’m going to work now. See you at around midday, okay?” Kemal gave her a half smile as he shut the door to their room and closed Fatma in.
She rose from the mattress and walked across the cold floor to the washstand, as she had done every day since moving to this place. No longer fresh, she took the jug of water out into the hallway and refilled it at the food-spattered sink. Back in the privacy of the room, she splashed her face with cold water.
Preparing coffee was her next priority. In front of the bureau, she pulled out the copper cezve her father had given to her before she left – (“Good Turkish coffee is the way to a man’s heart”) – and once ready, went back out into the hallway with it. Both hobs were occupied, so she placed the cezve on the floor beside it to indicate her place in the queue.
The pale yellow dress was hooked above the crooked cupboard door. She pulled it down and retrieved her sewing kit. Remziye had given her the offcuts and Fatma had spent most of the past week working on it. It had given her a focus, something to do while Kemal was out at work. She was still too frightened to go outside alone.
A few shimmering beads along the neckline would do it. Threading the needle and selecting her favourites, she sewed them on one by one, a meditative calm sweeping over her. She enjoyed sewing and planned to ask her sister to find a job for her at the same factory when she saw her later that day.
Returning to the stove, she found someone else had jumped the queue. Clucking her tongue, she removed one of the new saucepans and put the cezve in its place. It was Kemal’s house after all and she was marrying him today, so it would soon be her house, too.
She paced the hallway, her insides swirling around like milk working into butter. It wasn’t the getting married part that worried her; that would be over within the hour and she was looking forward to having a meal with her brothers that her sister was cooking. No, that wasn’t it. It was what came after.
Remziye had told her what to expect; it was painful but not too painful, awkward but only for a while, and usually, over within a matter of minutes. Fatma had avoided almost all physical contact with Kemal in the past week but knew she could put it off no longer once they were officially married. She wondered if her sister had talked to anyone about it before her own wedding night in the years before. Perhaps she had written to Layle. Fatma would not be doing that.
The dark liquid climbed the sides of the cezve so she removed it and took it back into their room, pouring the coffee into a small porcelain cup placed snuggly within a silver metal lattice holder. As she sipped the coffee from the edge of the skinny white chair – she wasn’t about to go near that sofa anytime soon – she thought about writing a letter to her father. She had already sent one but had no idea how long it might take to arrive. She hoped he was okay on his own.
Fatma turned the cup over onto its saucer, swirling it three times clockwise to loosen the sediment inside before placing it still on the floor. She removed the ruby ring from her index finger, placed it on top of the cup for luck, and waited for the mud-like sludge to settle. She took deep breaths, listening to the footsteps and cursing on the other side of the door (“Oo the bleedin’ ‘ell moved my pan?”).
Fatma lifted the cup slowly. A broken circle. On the inside of the cup, the velvety grounds had formed various other patterns. At the bottom she could make out a triangle. To the right of the handle the future revealed an exclamation mark: excitement or danger.
Layle had taught her how to read the leaves one afternoon while her father was napping. From then on, they read them together after every finished coffee. How strange this would all seem to her, this way of living on top of each other in these drafty tall houses with glass in all the windows. She thought about the animals in the courtyard at the centre of their house – like many of the houses in the village – and tried to conjure up the smells that crept into each and every corner of stone and wood in their four, separate rooms. She had hated cleaning the piss and shit from the goat’s matted fur but looked forward to rewarding her efforts with a breakfast of fleshy karpuz and cold hellim. By now she would already have fetched the day’s water from the town’s well. Then, as the air thickened with the chorus of cicadas, she would nap under the afternoon shade of the olive trees. Fatma sighed and pushed the memories from her mind. She rose from the bed and took the soiled cup and saucer to the washstand. The time for childish games was behind her.
After washing and dressing, she assessed herself in the mirror. What did Kemal see? Just like her sister, she had a strong, sharp jawline, tiny pebble teeth, and wispy short curls that came to her chin. She might be described as handsome, but not what anyone would call beautiful. It wasn’t her father’s face. Perhaps it was her mother’s? One thing she knew looking at the curve of her breasts and full hips: she was a woman now.
It was 11.45am. She waited patiently for Kemal to collect her, putting her fingers in her ears when the sofa began to rattle and rave. Hearing the muffled crunch of keys in the door, she jumped from the bed and smoothed her dress. Kemal went straight to the washstand without looking at her and cleaned his armpits with a bar of soap. She readied a towel. When he began to undress, she averted her eyes.
His suit was the colour of donkey shit. It was too small for his large arms and he was barely able to button up the jacket across his emerging belly.
“Where did you get that?” Fatma asked. She took hours making her dress from scratch.
Kemal grabbed his keys, a tattered leather wallet, and the paper bag filled with his morning’s work clothes. “It’s my brother’s.” He beckoned Fatma towards the door.
She bet the suit looked better on Yusuf.
At Islington Town Hall they waited for twenty minutes. Fatma counted each time Kemal checked his watch throughout the fifteen-minute process. The registrar took their filled-in paperwork and Fatma did her best to repeat the sounds he told her to make.
Seven. Kemal checked his watch seven times.
“By the power vested in me, I now pronounce you husband and wife. Congratulations, Mr and Mrs Osman.”
“Tenk yu,” Kemal replied in his heavily accented English.
He looked at Fatma and used his head to motion towards the man, so she smiled at him. She faced Kemal again and they made eye contact momentarily. Meekly, Kemal leaned in, resting his right cheek against her left and vice versa. Fatma’s stomach fluttered. It was the most they had ever touched.
Outside the building, Kemal exhaled. “Okay I will meet you at your sister’s at 6pm.”
“What do you mean?”
“Fatma,” Kemal tutted. “I have to go back to work now. I only got permission to take two hours off.” He squeezed her arm. “See you later.”
She grabbed him. “But what will I do? How will I get there?” The neckline of her dress was strangling her.
“Don’t worry,” Kemal replied. He removed her hand gently. “My brother is coming. Just wait here. Okay? I really do have to go now.”
She nodded in silence. He nodded in return, and she watched him disappear around the corner.
As other married couples emerged, Fatma walked up and down the small stretch of the street in front of the Islington Town Hall wishing she had a cigarette. She missed smoking, hadn’t gone this long without since before she started. How could Kemal just leave her like this? Maybe the coffee remnants were warning her about him. Her face felt hot and flushed despite the chill in the air. A rope tightened around her neck. Twenty-five minutes passed. Rice was thrown over more of the newlyweds.
When Yusuf came into focus at the end of the street, the rope loosened itself.
“My sister.” He pulled Fatma into his arms. “I’m sorry for being late, what a donkey I am. You look radiant.”
Fatma laughed at the insult, blushed at the compliment. “You’re here now,” she said.
Yusuf grinned broadly. “And my brother went back to work, yes? Come, Mrs Osman,” he winked. “We have a far while to walk.”
Fatma felt her shoulders return to their natural position. Her breathing deepened. Mrs Osman. She was just getting used to having a surname only to be given another so soon but she felt safe that she now shared the same name as the man in front of her.
“You know, I think I still feel seasick.” Yusuf wobbled theatrically and she laughed. “I’m serious, sister. I will not forget that journey in all my life, I promise you. You are lucky you didn’t feel it, my God. If I had known how bad it was, I wouldn’t have volunteered to escort you.” He laughed his high-pitch, childish rasp, like bare feet squeaking against the morning sand.
Fatma swiped him playfully with her hand. “Then I am glad you didn’t know beforehand.”
At her sister’s home on Elmfield Avenue, Fatma looked at the mid-terraced house with renewed interest. The top half had a flat white face and three separate single windows in a row. It was cut in half by a sloping roof of red tiles that sat above a bay window with brown beams. It was finished with orange brickwork. The front door was yellow. On the whole, Fatma reasoned Kemal’s house was bigger and grander, but Remziye didn’t share hers with strangers. Fatma pulled the head of a flower clean from its stem as her sister opened the door and held out her arms.
“Congratulations, little beetle.”
Remziye was wearing a thin blue neck scarf and a hint of pink lipstick on her thin lips. The dress was new, or at least Fatma hadn’t seen it before; a navy floral cotton button up pulled in at the waist and puffed up at the shoulders. Her hazel eyes glinted with gold as she pulled Fatma by the hands and kissed her cheeks. Fatma stifled a laugh at what her big sister had done with her curly hair, knotted tightly on top of her head like Blackie, their scruffy sheep dog back home. Remziye had filled out in their years apart but the softness suited her. Fatma vowed to remain slender all the same.
Remziye nudged the small of Fatma’s back inside the house.
“Hello Yusuf,” she said. They kissed each other’s cheeks. “Come, welcome.”
Inside the overly lit hallway, Fatma took her cream heels off with relief and stepped over the threshold into the front room. Her feet sank into the red carpet. She did not like this wearing shoes business. The sandals that her baba had given her before she left for London were okay but these elevated shoes were another thing altogether.
Remziye appeared behind her. “Were they okay? The shoes?”
Fatma said they were and thanked her sister again.
“Say hello to the baby, Fatma.”
Walking over to the wooden cot, Fatma peered inside at the swaddled package. She knew she was being watched, so she stroked her niece’s cheek before retiring to the carved mahogany sofa. She stared up at the dusty chandelier. Yusuf sat beside her.
“You like it?” Remziye said, following Fatma’s gaze. She flicked the light switch on and off and together they admired the dull crystals glinting like the late-afternoon sea. “It was second hand and needs cleaning but time gets away from me these days.”
“Çok güzel.”
Very beautiful.
Fatma watched as Remziye played the dutiful host, offering them coca cola’s and boasting about a bottle of sparkling wine she had purchased for the occasion. It seemed she had learned to show off in their time apart, too.
“Come now,” Remziye grabbed for Fatma’s hand. “Help me finish the boreks. Yusuf, please keep an eye on the baby.”
Familiar smells came to Fatma as they moved down the thin corridor and into the L shaped kitchen painted green with off-white plastic cupboards and silver handles. Her aching feet were soothed by the cooling touch of the black and white tiled floor. The plastic countertops were now thick with clutter – mismatched plates and cups, pots of varying sizes and heights filled with grains, sugar, salt. Olive bread was cooling on a raised rack. A wide selection of metal utensils hung from hooks mounted to the wall under the cupboards. She brushed her fingers against them and a film of grease came away. That hadn’t happened back home; theirs were wooden. Heat was coming from a stainless steel pot bubbling on the stove, and light flooded in from the windowed door leading out to the green garden only partially visibly through the frosted glass. She returned her attention to the white sheet laid flat on the countertop.
“They have yufka here?” Fatma asked as she stared at it. She felt stifled by the kitchen’s stark light, its bare bulb interrogating her.
“They call it filo but it’s the same thing. Bought it from the Dunn’s bakery I told you about, much quicker than making it. Who has the time here?”
Fatma thought about her morning making coffee, sewing beads onto her dress.
They continued preparing the food, gossiping about people they grew up with, and now, her new husband. Safe in her sister’s company, Fatma started to complain.
“What do you expect? They need to be working to make money. That is how it is for us here. You’re not afraid of hard work, are you?” Remziye rolled her pastry into a cigar shape around the cheese and herb filling, dropping clumps of it onto the floor.
“It’s our wedding day,” Fatma said.
Remziye laughed. “Well aren’t you little miss hard to please?” She nudged Fatma’s shoulder. “You have to get used to not seeing him much. Although, not all of him-”
“Don’t,” Fatma warned with widened eyes. “I’m nervous enough. What if I don’t like it?”
“What’s liking got to do with it?” She tutted. “You want babies, hah? Sometimes it’s good to do anyway. He’ll give you the things you want when you do.” Remziye chuckled to herself.
“Don’t look so terrified, Fatma. Honestly, it’s nothing.” She looked over Fatma’s borek and rolled it back out again. “Too full, here, try again.”
“He just seems so-” Fatma twirled and rested her back against the counter. “Serious.”
“Up, up,” Remziye ushered Fatma back into position. “We have lots to get done still, no laying around.” She used a tea towel to wipe the surface clear. “Being serious is good – it means he will work hard for you and your children.”
Fatma twisted her hand into the air. “You’ve already written the story of my life.”
After the food was prepared and cooked, Fatma set the table. She was just finished as her brothers and their families arrived. Remziye’s husband Ali was working and would not be joining them. She didn’t much like Ali. She thought him arrogant ever since she caught her sister and he kissing behind their house one afternoon, giggling and messing around like idiots. Before they’d even been matched too. She had confronted Remziye at the time. “Don’t be such a jealous snitch,” Remziye had shot back at her. “It’s not my fault he fell in love with me and not you.”
“Our little beetle is here,” Erol said as he came through the front door. He was broader than she remembered and had lost most of the hair at the top of his head already. His wide face was just as warm and inviting, his eyes that distinctive fair hay colour. He grabbed for Fatma’s hands, kissed both her cheeks. “She’s got taller since we saw her last, eh Deniz?”
“I should hope so,” Fatma said. “I was 15 when you left.”
Erol turned to his brother behind him, who had grown a thick and upwards curling moustache that made Fatma want to laugh. “She’s definitely your height now.”
Deniz merely grunted in response. “Hello sister,” he said, reaching for Fatma, pushing past Erol with his short, stocky body. He kissed both her cheeks, his moustache tickling her. “You look – nice.”
Though he appeared grouchy, Fatma knew he was really the softest of them all, observing him discretely snuffle and wipe his eyes as they parted. Erol broke into song as Fatma greeted her two sisters-in-law – Hattice and Emine – and said hello to their small children. They did not respond, acting shy and nervous, and this irritated her, so she moved away from them and back into the front room.
“Where is your husband hiding?” Erol looked around the hallway theatrically and caught as many eyes as he could to see who found his joke the funniest.
“Go into the front room with Fatma, please,” Remziye called out from the kitchen as she prepared the wine. Erol laughed.
“I see she’s still playing at being our mother.” He motioned for the others to move into the front room. “Quick before she pretends to beat us with a broom like Layle used to.”
Fatma’s head swirled at the mention of her name.
Kemal arrived half an hour after their toast. Fatma had barely touched her wine as she did not like the taste but she pretended to sip it as he greeted everyone. When he was finished, he took his seat next to her at the table. They helped themselves to generous mouthfuls of fasulye and lemon chicken, and they caught up on the time that had passed. Talk turned to the people they knew from the village.
“Ercan is in London now, too. Not many people we know live there anymore.”
“Are you surprised?” Erol said. “It’s not safe with those mad men running around with their guns.”
“What is there for us, anyway?” Remziye said. “Much better to come here.”
Hattice nodded in agreement. “We are allowed here as much as the British,” she said.
Deniz snorted. “We are not British.”
“I have a British passport,” Remziye objected.
Emine leaned across the table. “You have some food on your face, Deniz.” He batted her hand away.
“- shouting Enosis this and Enosis that,” Erol added. “Where does that leave us?”
“I would have stayed if I could,” Deniz said, quietly wiping his soiled moustache as tears filled his eyes once more.
Fatma listened attentively, soothed by their voices. She glanced at Kemal; he was quiet, ruminating as he forked the same patch of beans. Her mind returned to the moments that lay ahead. Easy for her sister to say it was nothing, she had gotten it over with years ago. Fatma placed her knife and fork down. Her appetite was lost.
Walking along the smart grey pavements after leaving at 8pm, they moved through the high street, past the J Sainsbury store, Sandy’s Furnishing, Benton Bros. The street lights were glowing orange as other people made their way here and there. They climbed the hill out of Crouch End and down along Hornsey Road, past the various tall buildings and houses. The occasional car drove past.
“Nice food,” Kemal grunted.
“Yes,” Fatma replied.
The imposing redbrick Hornsey Road Public Baths and Wash Houses came into view. Kemal opened the door to the house, and Fatma followed him through. A scruffy, middle-aged white man was mumbling as he slept on the hallway floor. He smelt strongly of a sharp odour mixed with sweat. She asked who he was when they reached their floor.
“Down there?” Kemal said as he inserted a key into their door. “That’s Mickey. Lives with his wife on the bottom floor but she kicks him out when he drinks too much.” He looked over his shoulder at her. “Irish,” he added with a raised brow.
Fatma remained silent as they went inside and retreated to separate corners to undress. Until a few weeks ago, she had not so much as ventured a couple of miles further than the village they were both born in. Besides their own, she had only ever met the other type of Cypriots.
She placed herself under the sheets and waited for what she knew was coming to finally be over. Kemal finished undressing in silence before turning out their naked bulb and shuffling over to the mattress. They did not speak as Kemal pulled Fatma’s night dress above her hips and removed her underwear. Nor did they speak when she yelped as he pushed himself awkwardly inside of her. Remziye was right; a little painful, but over quickly.
Afterwards, Fatma lay awake, listening to the scurrying life beneath the cushions of their sofa, dreaming of the day she’d have a carved mahogany one of her own.
Her sister seemed happy, her husband’s wives, too.
The sheet was lightly spotted with blood. She shuddered as she touched the wetness between her legs.
