about the author

Defne Cizakca is working on an odd historical novel about the end of the Ottoman Empire. She is also working on beautifying unstructured forms of life and completing a PhD at the University of Glasgow’s creative writing program. Defne dwells in Scotland at winter time and in Turkey at summer time. She likes puddles and muddles too.


Bookmark and Share
 

 


font size

A Promise Kept

Defne Cizakca



Alternative content

You came to me on the wings of a crow whose mother had hanky-panky with a seagull. Its wings were shimmering black but its body was a milky brown, not like coffee brown but like puddle brown. You were small and meagre and I had no pocket money for you, nobody had told me you would be coming round.

You came to me from one of those planes I kept pointing at when I was smaller than you. You were dropped like the sewage that lands on cows in green fields in forms of KLM ice. You came to me unwanted, disfigured, marinated and a little upheavaled. I was not one to like a package of surprise. My home was not a home for the stinky or the abandoned.

It was a day of spring in the month of Ramadan and you came to me in a handwoven sack in which the new rich put their poodles and you were branded by holy water and a cross of ash on your sweetly plumb forehead. There were just two churches where I lived and I had always thought they were empty. And if they weren’t empty they must have been filled with the doddering ones and I didn’t know from which belly you could possibly have come out.

You left as soon as you came, I was all worn out and dimpled and sagging from the arms. I had lost faith in extramarital affairs and I took no pride in premarital ones. I rang the neighbour’s bell and I put a tag on you: let there be praise, here is a guest from one God or another.

Nowadays you are all grown up and shiny in the eyes. You tuck her in, you give her smiles. She was always one to like a muddle, always one up for a surprise.





HTML Comment Box is loading comments...