The Couple

“Kamil brother! Can you come for a sec?”

Kamil looked at the door out of the corner of his eye. He was still focused on his razor blade.

-What?

-Come, check those out. 

-I am busy, my delight. Don’t you see?

He was busy with the head standing in front of him. It looked handsome with freshly trimmed hairs on the top of it. Kamil was scheming a structure in its disorderly beard now. Three fingers of his right hand kept the head totally fixed with a tender grab by the neck.

-Ya, Kamil brother, let it go for a moment, for god’s sake…

-Boss, you should really come, see this!

Hearing his apprentice changed Kamil’s final decision. He let this handsome head go for a moment, folded his blade down, and put it on the edge of the mildly wet marble sink. He cleaned his hands on his apron cut-and-dry as he slowly walked towards the door.

-Boss, come look at those.

-At what?

-The couple…

Young apprentice lifted his right hand up and down to point somewhere across the street. The cigarette smoke in between his fingers echoed his movement. 

"I swear they’ve been looking at that baby for half an hour now."

There was a couple on the pavement across. They stood in front of the tiled walls, watching the stroller near them in unusual awe. Only the couple could see whatever was inside -presumably a baby- from their angle. A rather young man -presumably the daddy- was standing behind the stroller, and he seemed to have stopped right there to talk on the phone. He was -again, presumably- a single dad.

-So, Kamil; I say they are male, but your apprentice insists that one of them is female.

-What is the use of it? Why do you care?

-Just look at them, look! Aren’t they weird?

-What is weird?

The apprentice understood that the old tea vendor wasn’t convincing enough for his master. He stole the show with another smokey echo.

-Boss, I say that this one is a female. Look at her cheek.

-Yes, what about it?

-Her sideburn goes like this, not like this; you told me that girls’ sideburns go like this, but his sideburn…

The rapid movements of his cigarette created an echo chamber. And it kept the old vendor out as it pulled Kamil in. Kamil seemed to be interested in it now, which didn’t really make the vendor as happy as he thought it would.

"Ya, Kamil. Who are those people? Where are they coming from to this neighborhood? Are they perverts or something? Are they junkies or something? Why are they looking at the baby like that?"

He swung his empty tray higher and higher with every question. His voice also got higher and higher; but the puzzled couple across the street didn’t seem bothered by it.

-Foreigners, uncle, foreigners… Tourists… They are always curious. I see them in Eminonu. I swear they go take photos of trees and stuff. It’s their culture. They are curious people.

-The baby’s father’s there. Mind your own business. You are in Istanbul, my delight; not in your village.

The apprentice’s spell turned out to be too tough to be broken by tray-shakes and rhetorical questions.

-So, boss; that one is a female, right?

-If you say so, my son… I can’t see them from here.

-Her sideburn is like this. You said that the females’ sideburns go like this, and her sideburn really goes like…

-Son, go inside. Take care of the customer.

-But, boss…

-Go, go! I will go take a closer look, I promise.

-Yees!

The apprentice marched inside with joy.

-Children, eh?

-Kamil, tell them that this is our neighbourhood. People are disturbed here. OK, they can be foreigners, they can be tourists… But they should know their place!

-My delight, go mind your own business. I will talk to them, OK?

-OK, Kamil brother. But this is no good. Everybody’s disturbed. Are they junkies? Perverts?

Kamil rolled his eyes and exhaled loudly as he walked across. The old vendor was looking around to find someone who was actually disturbed by the couple. To his surprise, nobody seemed to have been interested. When he looked back at the couple, he saw that they had started walking in direction of the park where the -presumably- baby was looking towards. Kamil was following them nonetheless. 

This was enough to call a victory for him: The horrible enemy was routed, soon to be ridden down, and the neighbourhood was saved yet another day. He did a full flip with his empty tray as he marched the other way.

Kamil followed the couple towards the park. All three of them kept walking at the same slow pace. The old willows with crooked, chunky bodies in the park caught the couple’s full attention, so they decided to make their way inside the park without saying anything.

In this first sunless noon of the late-summer, the park was as empty as it could be. The walking couple slowed down their pace more and more until they totally stopped. A cat that had seen them and been interested was approaching towards them. They watched the coming of this ordinary stray cat breathlessly. They got tenser and tenser as the cat got closer and closer. The -presumably- male one pulled his right foot a little bit behind. The cat glimpsed at his foot, then looked at the grass onward, then looked at his foot yet again, this time faster. The cat’s sudden, startled movements got them confused even more: The couple was looking at each other questioningly. 

Kamil could now see their sideburns. He kept drying his hands on his apron as he was approaching them from behind. They didn’t hear him coming until he was right there. And even then, they kept looking at each other. Yes, one of them was indeed a female.

Kamil slowly held them in their necks with both of his three fingers tenderly. They didn’t object or question it. The cat ran towards the grass ahead as the couple started to blink at each other faster and faster. Kamil was looking dully at the space in between them, blinking at the same fast pace.

A turtledove fluttered loudly from the grasses on their left and flew right above their heads. The cats here didn’t know how to hunt, but they knew how to make a good scene out of nothing.

When Kamil left his fingers from their necks -again, slowly- they looked at him and smiled gently. Kamil smiled back at them, turned back, and started walking towards where he’d come from. The couple kept walking in the park, now in a relaxed manner.

The vendor wasn’t there anymore. Sun had finally made it out from behind the clouds, and the opening noise of his door was still loud.

-Oo, Kamil brother! Mashallah your apprentice turned out to be no less than you are!

-Eh, who is his master?

-Be careful, though. The student becomes the master, they say.

-That’s even better, my delight. He is my retirement fund.

The blue cover surrounding his shoulders was gone, and the smell of orange cologne was now covering him instead. The apprentice kept treacling his hair with wax without looking at his master.

"Eh, boss? Was she a female?"

Kamil was hanging his apron on the rack. All this walk had made this old man sweat.

-How could I know, son? They got lost.

-For real?

Kamil held the customer tenderly in the neck with his right hand and turned his head slightly to both ways in turn. He inspected the shape of his sideburns carefully and nodded.

-My son, if you say female, it is female. If you say male, male it is. 

-Estagfurullah boss. You know better than me.

-No. You are young, I am old. You see things, I don’t.

The couple smiled at each other gently.