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‘And yet still, she is here. Where is she?’
He gestured to Amber to come closer. ‘He wants to meet you.’
‘Me?’
‘He is old,’ Kadar said softly. ‘Bear with him.’
‘I may be blind, my young friend,’ the old man said with a gappy smile, ‘but I am not deaf.’
Amber crossed the small room. It was barely big enough for a few chairs around a Turkish carpet in faded colours that was probably as old as the man sitting in the chair behind, if not older. And what light there was came from the windows lining one wall. She guessed he had no need for lamps.
He was old and shrivelled and the skin on his hands resting on his chair arms resembled parchment. Around him was wrapped a robe of maroon velvet with gold trim and over his legs sat a throw, richly embroidered in shades of orange and blue with a border of stylised tulips she was already beginning to recognise as distinctly Turkish.
‘Mehmet,’ she said, ‘my name is Amber. Amber Jones.’
His head twitched. He frowned and the lines on his face deepened. ‘Amber is an unusual name,’ he said, in halting, but very formal English.
‘A family name,’ she said.
‘But you are—Australian?’
She smiled. ‘My mother and her mother before her were English.’
‘Come closer.’ He beckoned with a crooked finger.
She glanced behind her at Kadar and he sent her a look that said I told you so, and she went. Mehmet’s hands reached out and she sensed that closer was not enough and that he needed to see her and so she knelt as the old man reached out craggy fingers and touched them to her head, patting her hair, finding her forehead. Old fingers. Their nails hard, their skin leathery, and yet their touch so sensitive as he skimmed her features, her forehead, the line of her jaw and chin, the pads of his fingers tracing the line of her nose and lips.
His fingers stilled, and he said something to Kadar over her head. Something she couldn’t understand.
Kadar barked something back, and, although she couldn’t understand the words, the meaning was plain. A denial.
Mehmet fired a response straight back and Kadar had the final word, even more emphatic this time.
She looked from one man to the other, a prickle crawling up her spine. One thing she knew for sure—they weren’t talking about the weather. ‘What is it?’
‘It’s nothing,’ said Kadar. ‘I told him it is your first visit to Istanbul, that is all.’
Was it all? Why would he have to point that out? She looked back to Mehmet, peered into his grizzled face. ‘Mehmet?’
‘Forgive an old man. It is rude to speak in a language you do not understand. Are you a thief, as Kadar says?’
‘What?’ Her head swung around to glare at the man standing behind her. ‘No. I am not a thief.’
The old man nodded. ‘I believe you. And what will you do now your tour is no more?’
‘I don’t know. I’m hoping to find something else.’
‘Have Kadar take you to the Pavilion of the Moon. I insist.’
‘I don’t want to be a problem to anyone.’
The old man snorted. ‘Kadar has businesses near there. It will not be a problem.’
‘I’m glad you think so, old man,’ Kadar said, but his voice told her he was smiling and the old man smiled and gave a wistful sigh. ‘I only wish I could come with you. It has been a long time. Now, Amber Jones, give me your hand.’
Amber placed one hand upon his upturned palm on his lap, and he covered it with his other.
‘Look after Kadar,’ he said. ‘He is a good man, but he has walked alone too long.’
‘Mehmet!’ he growled.
‘It will not be easy, of course. He will not make it easy. You will need to be strong.’
‘Mehmet,’ Kadar said again, unleashing a torrent of Turkish in its wake, with not a smile in his words in sight.
‘You see? I told you, he will not make it easy. Can you be strong?’
She smiled. ‘I love that you care for your young friend, Mehmet, but I’m just a tourist. I can’t stay. I have to go home.’
He shook his head. ‘What we have to do, and what we do, sometimes they are not the same. Sometimes the way is not so clear as we think.’
‘That’s enough, Mehmet,’ Kadar said again, his voice gruff. ‘It is time for us to leave.’
‘So soon? Ah, I think I have frightened off my young friend.’ He gave Amber’s hand a squeeze and screwed his face up with it as if deep in thought. ‘Amber. Such an uncommon name, and yet, so familiar. Thank you for coming and brightening an old man’s day. Come and visit me again, won’t you?’
