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He made her smile and she was happy to let him drift along behind her, trying to pretend he wasn’t there.
She found a handicrafts shop, selling local crafts, and she noticed an embroidered throw in the window like the one she’d seen around Mehmet’s legs. Like his, it had a border of stylised tulips surrounding a richly coloured pattern of shapes and crooked trees. Her mother would love it. And now that Kadar had so generously picked up all her expenses, she knew her money would last and she could afford to buy a few souvenirs for her family.
Five minutes later she emerged from the shop with the throw in a gift bag, surprised at the price the man in the shop had charged, but he’d insisted the ridiculously tiny amount was correct. She would check with Kadar later but for some reason she felt she’d been given a huge discount. So she very happily bought an evil eye keyring for her brother and a coffee table book of Turkish landscape photographs for her father into the deal.
She smiled and said hello when she saw her shadow waiting patiently for her outside, but he just looked around as if he didn’t know who she was talking to.
She bought a simple cup of pomegranate juice from a man with a cart who sliced the fat red fruit and spun a lever to press the fruit juice and let the juice run free. And when she tried to pay him, he waved the payment away. ‘Please,’ she insisted, pointing to a painted sign that clearly displayed the price in Turkish lire, but he insisted.
So instead she held out the money for the small boy who was waiting a little distance away. He blinked at her uncertainly and so she nodded and he grinned and came running up, laughing when he held the coins in his hand.
He ran off shouting and she looked up to see the man at the juice cart smiling widely himself.
She shrugged and wandered away, sipping on the red juice, both sweet and tart and refreshing, when she heard a commotion behind her and she turned and saw a group of children running, headed by the boy she’d given the few coins to. She caught the eye of the juice cart man who was laughing and it was his turn to shrug as the children surrounded her.
‘Okay,’ she said, ‘you can have lire too, but give me a guided tour around the town first.’
Between her clumsy hand signals and the assistance of the juice seller, the children shouted their agreement, shepherding her around the sights of the town, past the baker’s shop, and the spice shop that sold sweets and fruit and the school where they went. All the sights that were important to them. And as they went her little group of tour guides grew.
She loved it, as amused by them as they were by her, until she found a small girl trailing behind them, a small girl who walked with a limp, and a lump came to her throat as she was reminded of her tiny cousin, Tash, born with more problems than any child deserved, and how still she’d seemed to have a heart as big as a lion as she’d struggled to keep up with big sisters and her cousins as they’d played. Although as it turned out, her heart had never been that big or that strong...
She swallowed.
Amber had been fifteen years old when Tash’s frail body had given up.
And for the first time, Amber felt a little homesick, missing her class of children at the school where she worked in Melbourne’s suburbs, and their unconditional love and hugs. On an impulse, she scooped the blinking child up into her arms and carried her the rest of the way.
When Kadar found her, she was sitting in a café near a brazier peeling oranges for a clutch of children, a little girl sitting in her lap, busily watching Amber’s nimble fingers work. An orange in her own hands, she was trying to copy her movements. And he was surprised, despite the various reports he’d been hearing.
‘I heard we had a new pied piper in the town.’ She looked up, blinking, before she grinned. The little girl in her lap looked up at him, her eyes wide. He smiled at the scene before him. ‘Had a good afternoon with your new friends?’
‘The best. Who told you?’
‘Just about everyone I spoke to. News travels fast here. You’re quite a hit with the locals.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘I suspect that may have something to do with you. Everywhere I went, I seemed to score a bargain. Even the bag of oranges—surely they must have been flown in this time of year?’
Kadar shrugged and gave nothing away as silently the children watched them, their expressions uncertain as the adults spoke in a language they understood only a word or two of as yet. Until he said something to them and they nodded and smiled and ran away, pieces of orange clutched in their hands. The little girl in her lap gave Amber a hug and clambered down. She had a twisted leg, Kadar realised, as he watched her hobble away, trying to catch up with the others, the orange Amber she’d been working on held precious to her chest.
