The Weight of Ashes

A vendor wearing a suit in need of tailoring stops Nina and Jackson. He carries a ceramic saucer with small mounds of spices as colorful as discs of paint on an artist’s palette. “Coriander,” he says. “Fresh from Africa. You must try.”

“I’ve bought coriander.” But this vendor’s spice is a slightly different hue from what she just purchased, what she otherwise expects of coriander. Should I know these variations?

“You bought from Kagan, yes? Kagan lies. His coriander, not African but from his own back yard.” The man snorts and pulls a freshly pressed handkerchief from his breast pocket. He hands Nina his saucer, instructs her to take in the aroma of the medley of spices, imagine them in a stew or kneaded into bread dough. He wipes each of his fingers before rolling the handkerchief, now discolored, between his hands. Nina doesn’t wish to appear the novice, doesn’t admit that she never queried the first vendor for details.

“I know these things about the man. Kagan is my brother-in-law. His methods are questionable. He doesn’t have cumin. Never. Insufferable idiot!”

He dips his index finger in the smallest mound; a fine powder as black as lacquer clings to the tip. “Taste.”

Nina opens her mouth to protest, the opportunity he needs to insert his finger, its rough pad settling on her tongue. Nina’s thankful Jackson’s a few paces ahead, missing this minor assault. He can be as prickly about hygiene as her mother was.

The bitterness is followed by a burst of heat that stabs her sinuses. Cumin, an essential ingredient in Hot Spicy Hot Nuts, one of her signature recipes. Eat enough, and one’s skin takes on an organic, post-coital fragrance. But this cumin is darker than what she uses, maybe not truly cumin at all. Maybe he’s as questionable as he claims Kagan to be.

She wonders what role cumin plays in Mideast dishes, and if the fact that she doesn’t know this, another breach in her culinary knowledge, is apparent to her cable show fans.

She buys the cumin and more coriander, asks about tobacco, or a few hand-rolled cigarettes, and is offered a dismal pack of Camels. She wants to protest (when, really, she should have protested the insurgency of his finger) but sees Jackson turning around, impatient. Jackson’s less likely to endorse her smoking than her mother, who is watching from where? Heaven? She buries the disappointing cigarettes in her satchel, noticing as the packet slips from her hand that a corner of the foil is peeled back, possibly a cigarette or two gone missing. She reminds herself they’re in Istanbul, not a lawless place but indifferent to such details. She settles her bill before joining Jackson and suggesting they leave the Spice Bazaar.

“They expect you to negotiate,” he idly says.

“I can never get the hang of that. Too close to begging.”

“Think of it as commercial foreplay. You’re good with foreplay.”

“Shush.”

“Well, did you at least enjoy yourself?”

“Surprised best describes the experience.”

“Good, then, I suppose.”

“Yes, a good morning.” Nina feels Jackson’s arm snug around her shoulders.

Noon now and they still feel sluggish from the long flight but recognize the hazards of returning to their hotel so early in the day, tempting as a brief nap might be. Nina agrees to the afternoon cruise that Jackson suggests. They choose a tour boat from a dozen bobbing in the marina, drawn to the blue and green stripes of the deck chair cushions. A crewman offers fish kabob and slices of pickled cucumber as the boat works its way through the Sea of Marmara to the narrow strait of the Bosporus. They share an Efes beer. The afternoon’s sufficiently hot for Jackson to order two more.

The Sea of Marmara’s a cauldron of international mystery. Neither Jackson nor Nina is capable of identifying any of the ships’ flags. They cannot read most of the names on the hulls, cannot decipher the letters that are little more than swaths and jabs of dark paint to their Western eyes. The expanses of the Aegean Sea and beyond, the Mediterranean, are behind them, ominous and harrowing and romantic seas filled with yachts and cruise ships, a gauntlet for all the tankers and freighters waiting to port here. In front of them, unseen, is the Black Sea, less romantic to Westerners, utilitarian and unreachable on an afternoon tour.

None of this seems natural: a city large enough to claim two continents but its sky line only made impressive by the domes, level and smooth as soup bowls turned on their rims, and the spindly minarets of the mosques. A harbor narrowing, swallowing, dispensing with all this commerce, the water flattening before morphing into the marginal hush of the Bosporus. A voice, delivered from PA speakers lodged beneath the eves and heard over the din of tourists pointing and laughing, identifies the mansions clinging to the shoreline. They look like giant, gleaming lichen attached to low cliffs, peaceful in contrast to the steel docks left behind. It is hot, Nina is drowsy; the engines below grind out a lullaby. The disembodied PA voice reminds everyone that jumping from the boat is strictly forbidden.

Her mother took such a tour. She wrote in her journal about her deliberate but solo introductions to new cities, quiet orientations to determine landmarks and distances and thus not rely on locals for suggestions or directions.

She was a walker. “You are judged by how you walk. An erect posture, one foot in front of the other,” she always coached her daughters when they lagged. “Pick ‘em up, put ‘em down.”

But boats are the obvious solution for getting one’s bearings in Istanbul. Nina thinks, her mother’s hands could have touched this railing. This boat, maybe decades old, whose deck acquired its patina from the tread of thousands of serviceable shoes, for all that Nina knows about boats. In a place like Istanbul, nothing much changes in the quarter century since her mother’s first visit.

A fitting place to spread her ashes. Nina’s anxious to get started.

She reaches into her satchel, her thumb grazing the triangle of foil loosened from the cigarette pack, and locates the baggie of ashes, yielding, pillowy, like a miniature cushion from a doll house.

Suddenly she panics: in the rush of packing, did she fail to include a worry stone? Merced introduced her younger sister to worry stones, smooth, flat and uncompromising, comforting whenever Nina’s thumb nests in their concave centers. Now she has a dozen or so that she slips into pockets and tactically positions in utensil drawers at the studio kitchen.

She pinches the baggie, is content in its calming resistance, not unlike the soothing effect of worry stones. The anxiety passes.

She looks around for Jackson, certain he’d affix some rite to the event. Forfeiting ashes deserves ceremony. That topic has never crossed Nina’s mind until now.

The disembodied voice reminds the passengers that cold drinks are available in the bar. It is hot enough for Jackson to want to cool down with another beer. He should at least be available to serve as a compatriot. Or co-conspirator. Is disposing of human remains a violation of local maritime law? She previously dismissed that idea, but now it haunts her. But this is the reason she and Jackson are here.

The baggie offers little opposition between her thumb and fingers. She realizes that just as she and Merced struggled to identify a location in California for distributing the cremains, similar challenges exist in Turkey. Istanbul itself, the first of several stops, is rich with possible final resting places. The Bosporus deserves some but not all of her mother.

To divide the baggie’s contents, she needs privacy that can only be found in a head; on this boat it’s the size of a phone booth, festooned with chipped paint revealing rust, and a dented and gaping chrome bowl. Nina can barely close the door behind her. She’s relieved she doesn’t need this room for its intended purpose.

A tablespoon or so poured in her palm, the ash forms a miniature dome. It’s the first time she’s touched them. Merced had managed the packaging, using an ice scoop that if their mother had really been there, she would have thrown out once the deed was done.

Nina brings the dull, coarse powder to her nose, careful not to inhale. There’s nothing acrid about the ash, none of the smells associated with fire: charcoal, sulfur, lingering petroleum byproducts. She’s reminded of the merchant, suited and mopping his hands with his handkerchief, and the ground cumin he offered on his fingertip, and is tempted to taste this grainy substance. She immediately dismisses the thought, horrified that she would think it. What if she retches? This head is even less suitable for retching.

Her hand curls around the ash as she fumbles to close the baggie and return it to her satchel.

Back outside, she’s protective of her prize as she edges toward the crowded lounge. Jackson is nowhere. She works her way aft, looks into the churning water and sputtering exhaust, and decides this isn’t quite right, she can do better.

The sun is maneuvering towards the horizon, tilting into the Aegean and the Mediterranean beyond, gilding those unseen cruise ships. The port side of the tour boat is shaded, and is where most of the passengers are found, where Jackson likely is. But she doesn’t have the energy to shuffle through the crowd. Her fist tightens.

The starboard side is quiet and bright, the deck cut by the shadows from life preservers, the breeze turning away from the hull. This is what her mother would want.

The voice bellows over the PA. “Passengers are reminded to remain on the boat until we reach our final destination.”

Surely Bitsy has reached hers.

Nina opens her hand, surrenders her mother to the breeze, the ash now a malleable, sparkling cloud, and feels a part of herself catching the sun before settling into the sea.

“There.” She repeats this one word, barely a whisper, a mantra, as if coaxing something from within.