5. Signs
By Ewan
- 602 reads
The boy's hands moved rapidly.
Adel-hold-container-hold-bottle-green-glass-prize-value-reverence.
His grandfather's were twisted and clumsy. The signs would have been hard to follow, but Adel had learned the language from his Grandfather.
Bottle-sacred-not-4-boys.
His grandfather raised his eyebrows. Then he shook his head, and pointed at the boy.
Not-for-you.
The boy turned to face the wall. His cot occupied one wall of the small building. Ferhat sat cross-legged on a pallet of straw. The crude bowls lay empty on the floor. Ferhat struggled to his feet, picked the dirty dishes up. The boy was difficult. Ferhat tapped his back, held up the bowls. The boy snatched them and ran out of the room. Ferhat hoped the street was deserted. The world and his wife owned a horse nowadays. Even the meanest tradesman hooked some rattling contraption to a horse and drove it about the streets as if they were Mehmed the Great himself.
Ferhat remembered coming to Constantinopolis with his own grandfather. From Astera to Constantinopolis, overland, an old man and a down-cheeked boy. It had proved too much for the donkey and they had arrived in the city with the clothes on their backs, the treasures in their sacks and the luck of the foolish. It had been good luck in the beginning. Before they had sold the kilim. They had eked out rubies, sapphires and several black pearls, before approaching a Pasha at the marble gateway to as old a house as stood in Constantinopolis.
Ferhat had become a young man by this time. Grandfather Sirhan had begun to allow him to do the selling. His voice was light and persuaded the widow and her daughter, the blade and the bugger, to buy at a better than stiff price. Besides, Ferhat had learned the Turkish much better than Sirhan.
The Pasha took the old carpet, sniffed at it and dropped it on the floor at Sirhan, not Ferhat's feet.
'I will not buy such tawdry goods, Pedlar.'
Sirhan stuttered, but the Pasha went on.
'I will buy... no! I shall lease the youth.'
Ferhat's grandfather lifted an arm and the Pasha gutted him with a sword which flashed in the sun. Ferhat remained three years with the Turk. He left behind his tongue and Pasha Ertegun, dead of an apoplexy.
Such memories came easier to an old man, Ferhat reflected. His grandson bowled into the hut as though he had been thrown, perhaps he had.
What-happen-you? The old man's hands signed.
City-guard-son-of-whores, the boy replied and he spat on the floor.
The old man made the sign for bowls. The boy shrugged. His grandfather sighed.
No-can-trust-boy-bowl-loser-with-holy-bottle.
When his hands stopped he touched the boy on the shoulder. Then he lifted his chin with one finger. Looking him in the eye he spelled out
O-N-E D-A-Y.
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