Susan Sipal
Writer

Excerpt from Foreign Wives Club:

Chapter 1

    Friday.  Thank God.

    Samantha Keskiner dropped her briefcase beside her chair and, with one nibbled fingernail, pushed the tulip-shaped glass of hot tea to the corner of her desk.

    “Zeynep,” she called to the adjacent newsroom.

    A henna-highlighted head popped through the opening of her cubby.  “You bellowed?”

    “Why do you insist on leaving tea each and every workday when you know I don’t like it?  It’s extra work for you.”

    Zeynep rolled her eyes, but they sparkled with a teasing glint.  “If you tried it once or twice, you might discover tea’s better than that vile brew you prefer.”  From behind her back she pulled a steaming mug, black bears frolicking across the front.  “You could drink both, you know.”

    “Thank you, Zeynep dear.”

    “And don’t forget the Atatürk moment of silence in five minutes,” her assistant called over her shoulder.

    “Yeah, right,” Sam muttered under her breath.  But very low under.  She well realized the danger of insulting his royal Atatürk, god-father of the Republic of Turkey, even to a hip young Turk.

    Opening the bottom drawer of her desk, she pulled out a can of Nescafe.  After dumping two heaping spoonfuls into the mug of hot water, she nudged her mouse, waking the computer from hibernation, and eyed the date and time at the bottom of the screen.

    November 10, nine o’clock.  Twenty days left in this month plus nineteen in December...thirty-nine.  Just thirty-nine more days until her annual two weeks of liberation.

    Home for the holidays.  Never before had the phrase held such meaning for her.  Two weeks of Christmas in the Tennessee Smokies.  Snow piled high on the Blue Spruce needles, her mother’s pecan pie chocked full of nuts cooling on the back porch alongside a pitcher of cinnamon-scented boiled custard.  Against closed eyelids, she gazed upon the living room full of family and friends gathered round the lighted Christmas tree nestled near the ember-popping fireplace.

    Reluctantly, Sam opened her eyes and took a sip of her coffee.  Blech.  Bitter.  Forgot the sugar.

    As she reached for the two lumps on the tea saucer, she glanced out the small, smudged window to the gray towering skyline beyond.  The bright blue Turkish sky peeked through Istanbul’s skyscrapers only here and there.  The polluted haze from thousands of coal-smoke spewing chimneys painted life dank and dreary.  And below, the city streets swarmed with people as different from her as yogurt-garlic sauce to blackstrap molasses.

    Thirty-nine more days.  She sighed.  Tomorrow wouldn’t be soon enough.

    The ticking of the wall clock drew her back to work, the noon deadline fast approaching.  She was deep in an article detailing yesterday’s national vote that had overwhelmingly approved European accession.  Which, when finally instituted, meant her husband might be able to vacation outside Turkey for once.  Somewhere nice and green, with clean orderly villages, and...back to work.

    A few minutes later, Sam rested her palms on the keyboard.  Her hands shook with silent tremors.  She dismissed a far-off dull rumble, which rippled through the respectful silence of the surrounding newsroom, more concerned with the increased trembling of her fingers.  Must be guilt for not observing the Atatürk moment of remembrance along with her co-workers.

    She clenched her hands into fists, then released them slowly and eyed the ragged tips of her still shaking fingers.  More likely, the recent stress had finally caught up to her.  She could even feel spasms traveling up her arms.

A crash sounded to her left.  She jerked her head toward the overloaded bookcase.  The picture of her husband and daughter taken on the crumbling, ancient steps of the Library of Celsus at Ephesus, which had paper-weighted a mass of haphazard reports and interviews, lay facedown on the gray tile floor.  Splinters of glass spread out around it, tinkling with the continued reverberations.

Sam jumped to her feet.  The floor shuddered with increasing violence as she raced to stop the bookshelf from crashing with all her work.

“Tremor!” shouted one of her Turkish co-workers from the adjacent office, but the word was the same whether in English or Turkish.

Earthquake.

Throughout the newsroom, the clanking of falling equipment nearly drowned the rumble of rushing feet and shrieks of fleeing people.  Her heart jamming into her throat, Sam turned back to her desk, pushed aside the toppling newspaper rack behind it, and reached for her purse with her cell phone.

Zeynep once again poked her head inside.  “Get out, Sam.  Now!”  She shouted before rushing to join the mob flying by, streaming toward the stairwell at the end of the hall.

Everyone knew better than to risk remaining in an old, derelict Turkish building during an Istanbul earthquake, including herself.  Sam popped her laptop out of its dock, grabbed the recorder filled with research notes for her article in process, then hurried to the exit as well.

“Sam,” the cigarette-roughened voice of her boss Rasim Bey called out behind her.  She turned to look, but didn’t stop moving.  He was checking empty offices as he brought up the rear.  “Take the count of your department when you get out.”

“Sure thing,” she yelled back.

Something tripped her, and she stumbled to her knees.  A woman in a designer business suit and modest headscarf crouched beside her, bent protectively over her protruding stomach.

“Ayşe, are you all right?”  Sam pulled herself up, then reached down to help the pregnant woman to her feet.

“Iyiyim.”  Ayşe nodded.  “I only fall.”  She grabbed Sam’s arm and propelled them both to the emptying stairwell.

“The tremors must have stopped.”  Sam’s hand, running along the cold iron rail, remained steady.   “Couldn’t have been that large of a quake.”

“Or just first wave,” Ayşe said, pulling Sam along.  “Do not to stop.”

“Wasn’t planning to.”

Bright sunlight and nippy fall air poured into the open door at the end of the stairwell.  “Remember to tell your department head to report to Rasim Bey,” Sam shouted to Ayşe’s retreating back as they separated to their designated meeting areas outside—a plan which Sam had cajoled, begged, then finally enforced on her own when a minor earthquake had struck three months after she’d started work with the Turkish Daily News.  The lack of any emergency plan had left the newsroom in chaos for the rest of the day.

Zeynep and Sam’s other two editorial assistants, already in the place she’d designated beneath a lone acacia with a few straggling brown leaves, were studying the nearby office buildings, scanning the crowded street, and talking with others to determine how much damage had been done.  Sam sent Zeynep off to report to Rasim Bey, then grabbed her cell phone, flipped it open and hit speed dial to Pili’s cell.  Gazing up at the clear blue sky, marred by one dark cloud toward the southwest, she waited for the connection.

“Please, God, please let them be ok.”  Her breathless prayer roared in her ears to the beat of the worried pounding of her heart.

Three rings.  Still no answer.  She paced, clutching the phone tighter to her ear.  Just an hour ago she’d dropped her daughter Melodi off with her friend Pili on the opposite bank of the Golden Horn, completely ignorant as to how far apart a few city blocks and a river could spread.

Finally, “Halo,” Pili’s husky voice answered in a winded rush.

“You’re ok!”

    “We fine, fine.”  The pounding of feet punctuated each of Pili’s hoarse words.  “Melodi and Gengiz by my side.  Ingrid and her twins, too.  We at Gülhane Park.”  Pili’s normally flawless English broke with anxious hurry.  “I try to reach Aziz.  Call you back later.”

The phone in Sam’s hand went silent.  She stepped around another woman, her face obscured under a traditional multi-beaded scarf, yelling frantically into her own cell.  Breathing only slightly easier, Sam dialed her husband’s office in the northern reaches of the city.

“NATO Rapid Deployable Corps, Corporal Beyaz,” her husband’s assistant answered on the first ring.  Of course NATO headquarters would be properly prepared for any emergency.

“Corporal Beyaz, this is Sam.  Are ya’ll ok?”  In her rush, the home-bred expression tripped out.  But she’d been teasingly teaching the corporal Southern.  He should understand.

“We’re fine here, Sam Hanim,” he responded with the polite address for a married woman.  “Almost no damage done.”

“Great.”  She drew in a shaky breath and stopped pacing.  “May I talk with Halit?”

“Haven’t seen him since before the tremor hit,” Corporal Beyaz answered calmly.  Too calmly.  “He must have stepped out for tea.”

Sam froze, her pulse galloping back into a race.  She knew full well the çaycı came through Halit’s office building at regular intervals selling hot tea.  But there was no use pressing the corporal for more information.  The whole unit was under tightened security measures since the recent protests.  “You tell him to call me the moment he steps foot in that building.  You hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”  He threw her Southern lessons back at her, then clicked off with what she swore was a slight chuckle.

“He’s fine, he’s fine.”  She closed her eyes, squeezed her cell, and taking a deep breath, managed to tamp down her nerves.

If only she could call Halit directly.  But that had been part of the recently tightened security measures—a new state-of-the-art satellite phone with scrambled transmission, which he’d been prohibited from giving non-cleared personnel, even her, the number.  Damned military regulations.

A blare of sirens wailed, making Sam jump.  A line of patrol cars approached, loudspeakers attached to their roofs.

“Bir şey yok!  Meraklanmayın,” a police officer droned the all-clear through his speaker as they proceeded at a leisurely we’ve-got-everything-under-control pace up the street.

But with the Istanbulites experience of earthquakes and aftershocks, there was no general rush to re-enter the buildings.  At least not the office buildings.  As Sam turned back toward the still open door, she caught sight of a couple of her co-workers nipping into the nearby pastane, snagged by the lure of its inviting window display--silver trays oozing honeyed pastries sprinkled with chopped green pistachios, and the wafting aroma of warm, yeasty börek.

She grinned.  Any excuse for tea and baklava.

“Simit, siiiimmmiiiit.”  A young boy stopped in front of her, holding out his dull and dented tray piled high with Turkish-style sesame bagels.  Business as usual for the young salesman, probably better with this crowd.

    “Two, please,” she said in her limited Turkish as she reached in her purse for some change.  Noticing the boy’s threadbare sweater and ragged pants, she added an extra lira.

    His gaze darted from the extra coin in his outstretched, dirty palm, to her yellow top and bright-flowered skirt.  If she’d only accept wearing more subdued colors, she could pass for Turkish, even with her light-brown hair.  The boy quickly pocketed the coins, probably thinking the naïve foreigner had mistakenly overpaid him, and strolled off, belting out his sales-song to the next earthquake office-refugee.

    Hurrying toward her own building, Sam bit into one of the two warm simits.  They would have to hold her over.  It would be a long day now, and she wouldn’t have a chance for a lunch break.

“Sam.”  Rasim Bey approached, one hand pressed against his forehead.  Must be another migraine.  “Have your assistants check all equipment.  I’ve assigned Maner to start this story, but he’ll need help with the calls.  Can you--?”

“Sure thing,” Sam cut him off as she hurried back to the building.  “I’ll call Katarina as soon as I get in,” she shouted over her shoulder.

Kat, one of her friends from the Foreign Wives Club, worked as a Russian translator at Turkey’s Department of the Interior in Ankara, and was always a good source of information.

As she entered the hallway upstairs, a buzz of excited voices and ringing phones greeted her.  She stepped into Maner’s cubby.  He was already in front of his computer, his phone propped on his shoulder, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.  With his free hand he waved a paper at her.  She scanned it--a note asking her to place a call to Prime Minister Erdoğan’s office as well.

“Will do,” she mouthed, and headed back to her desk.

Zeynep was already inside, picking up the piles of papers now littering the floor, her spike-cut hair dusted with debris, a tear down the back thigh of her tight Levi’s.  But that might have been inflicted before the earthquake.

Sam grinned.  “Thanks, Zeynep.  Any major damage?”

“Just your fax fell.  Haven’t had a chance to test it.”

Quickly Sam placed her two calls, leaving a message with the public relations secretary at the Prime Minister’s office, and a voicemail with Kat at the Department of the Interior.  Then she collected the paperwork scattered across her desk.

“I guess my article on the EU ratification will have to wait,” she said to Zeynep, now crouched at the base of the bookcase, sorting the papers by topic as Sam had taught her.

“For the moment at least.”

Sam picked up her latest printout and scanned the bottom line:

As Turkey prepares to join the EU, Turkish hopes rise for a revitalized economy, ease of visitation to their European neighbors, and a welcome mat to the western gates they failed to conquer over three hundred years ago at Vienna.  Or will the forces circling this ancient battlefield, vultures from both East and West, devour the accession before it becomes reality?

Still too wordy, as always.  She tossed it in the trash.  What a relief to work on something less stressful.

Rising tension spurred by divisive arguments throughout the Mid-East regarding Turkey’s EU accession had created conflict in her marriage.  With Halit’s high-level security clearance at NATO, he was surely involved in stemming the protests and threatened terrorist attacks that had bombarded the Turkish government.  Through her investigative reporting, she understood the extreme danger her husband was in and had begged him to leave Turkey before violence erupted.  But, as always, Halit wouldn’t listen to reason.  He’d offered to send her and Melodi home to Tennessee, but refused to go himself.  Work called.

Speaking of which...she reached for her cell and re-dialed his office.

“Evet,” Corporal Beyaz answered once more.  This time, however, his voice was abrupt, clipped.

“Hi, this is Sam again,” she said in a rush, not wanting to get on his bad side as he was her main pipeline to her husband.  “Any sign of Halit?”

“No.  Sorry, Sam Hanım, can’t talk now.”  He hung up.

She dropped in her chair, sending it squeaking, and watched silently as Zeynep packed the last pile of papers on her once again overflowing bookshelf.

“That’s strange...” Sam said, half to herself.  She drummed her pen against the smooth edge of the metal desk, her stomach coiling in knots.  Something wasn’t right.

Zeynep turned her head, her plucked, pink-tinged brow arched, her nose ring catching Sam’s eye, as always.

“Halit’s not in and his corporal cut me off.”

“Maybe he’s still mad at you for pressuring Halit to leave,” Zeynep said with a grin.

Sam grimaced.  She’d wanted to leave the country almost as soon as they’d moved into their flat on the Asian side of Istanbul.  Culture shock had hit her hard, and even though she’d quickly acquired a decent job at Turkey’s only English language daily newspaper, she still pressured Halit to buy his way out of the Turkish military and move back to the US.  But he’d asked for a bit more time.  He owed his country.

If it hadn’t been for her daughter and the support of the other foreign women married to Turkish men she’d met in the Foreign Wives Club, she’d have--

Her cell rang, shrilling out the first few notes of Green Day’s Holiday, interrupting her musings.  Sam flipped it open.

“Sam, Sam,” Pili’s voice came through loud with frenzy.  “You must leave there.  Now!”

“Why, Pili?”  Sam jumped to her feet.  “Is Melodi ok?  What’s going on?”

“Can’t talk.  Not safe.  Meet me and Ingrid at my fl—”

The connection crackled and was lost.

“What now?” Zeynep asked, approaching her desk, her dark eyes deep with concern.

Before Sam could answer, a pounding of feet preceded Maner thrusting his head through her cubby opening.  “Any report from your friend with the Interior?”  His dark hair was frazzled from his fingers running through it, and a long tea stain dribbled down the front of his shirt.

She shook her head.  “No, I was just—”

“That wasn’t an earthquake.”  He shoved a paper under her nose.  “The airport—”

    A thunderous explosion rocked the building.

    Wind rushed overhead like a sonic blast.  Glass sprayed over the wall dividers from windows shattering a few cubbies away.  Zeynep, Maner, and Sam hit the floor from the force.  The newspaper rack rocked a second, then toppled down.  Sam splayed her hands behind her head as papers and magazines pelted her.  She scuttled toward the safety of her desk.

    “Get away from that bookshelf, Zeynep,” she shouted.

    Her frantic yell mingled with screams throughout the adjacent newsroom.  A file cabinet crashed on top of her desk.

“Allah, Allah.  Salağa bak yahu,” Maner let out a stream of Turkish cussing.  He inched toward her, still clutching the paper, an angry streak of blood crossing his forehead.  “Terrorists.  That was no earthquake earlier.  First blast hit Atatürk International.”

Another explosion shook the building.  This time the bookcase lurched, hurling books everywhere.

“Zeynep!” Sam cried.  A wave of fear surged through her as she struggled to move the file cabinet to get to her assistant.

“Here.”  Zeynep crawled up behind her.

“Thank God.”  Sam drew Zeynep closer, under her arm.

The file cabinet and bookcase lay perpendicular over Sam’s desk, forming a protected cave underneath, where the three huddled.  They crouched in darkness, the electricity kaput.  The acrid smell of frying electrical equipment sizzled through the air.

“That was not the airport,” Sam said.  “Too close.”

An anxious pause was filled with shouts and scrambling from the newsroom beyond.  Zeynep, Maner, and Sam stared at each other.  Sam saw her mounting fear reflected in the darkened brown eyes of the other two.

“Taksim Tünel,” Zeynep said simply.

The local borough of Taksim boasted a major hub on the city’s subway system.  One that lay in close proximity to a central bus terminal.  Both were only a couple of blocks away.

Maner nodded slowly in agreement.

“But why now?  The vote is over.  Accession is still months...years...away.”

“Atatűrk Memorial Day,” Zeynep said, her voice clipped.

“The man who initially turned Turkey’s Muslim face westward,” Maner confirmed.  “The fundamentalists and other Muslim countries despise his legacy.  He started Turkey’s drive to Europeanize...and turning her back on her Muslim neighbors.”

Zeynep nodded.  “Plus Parliament must still ratify the approved EU constitution.”

Sam caught her breath, then scrambled out.

“Sam, get back here.”

“What are you--?”

Both Maner and Zeynep barked at her, but Sam ignored them, searching for her purse, reaching for her cell, her hands shaking so that she fumbled and almost dropped it.

She gripped it firmly and thrust it in her bag.  No time for nervous mess-ups now.  She must get to Melodi.  If terrorists were attacking the city’s main transportation routes, all hell was breaking loose.

And where the hell was Halit?

Thank you for visiting!