Chapter 1

In the rush of bodies to board the ferry leaving Istanbul for Gölcük, Sinan lost his son.
Five minutes earlier ÿIsmail had been tugging Sinan in the opposite
direction, back toward the city, deep into the labyrinth of arcades
and electronics stores of the Sirkeci neighborhood. Sinan suspected it
was for the exact purpose of missing the ferry home and delaying the
pain of the circumcision ceremony that evening. The boy stomped
across the bricks in his white circumcision costume, one hand squeezing
Sinan's fingers and the other hoisting his tasseled staff in the air
like a pasha leading a parade. Sinan let himself be pulled for a while,
but the horn had already sounded, and, even though he, too, wanted
to delay the ceremony, they couldn't miss that ferry.
When they had reached Re¸sadiye Avenue, Sinan pulled ÿIsmail
into the street just as the traffic broke, Sinan's shoulders rocking back
and forth in an awkward dance on his bad foot. He finally pushed
Ismail through the metal gate to the ferry dock just in time for them
to join the throng of men and women leaving work for the day. They
ran from the shade of the dock back out into the searing summer sun,
Sinan leading Ismail this time through a sea of elbows, shoulders, and
damp backs. They climbed the thin plank of wood used as a bridge
from dock to boat, the green water beneath them churning with
translucent jellyfish, and they entered the smoky cabin, where Ismail
dropped his staff. He let go of Sinan's hand, and before Sinan could
grab his son's arm, the boy disappeared, swallowed by the wave of
bodies.
Now Sinan shoved through the crowd to get to the boy, but his
foot made it difficult. He pushed against the stomachs of men smoking
cigarettes, turning sideways to make himself thinner. "Affedersiniz,"
he said to each person he touched, in a voice barely concealing
his rising panic. "Excuse me." But the more he struggled forward, the
more he was shoved backward by the jostling mob, and soon he was
forced all the way to the other side of the ferry, his back leaning
against a rusty chain that kept him from tumbling into the Bosporus.
"Allah, Allah," he said out loud. A man standing next to him
glanced in his direction.
"Too many men," the man said. He lit a cigarette, the smoke flying
away from his face. "Too many men, not enough city."
"My boy's lost," Sinan said.
The man turned around. He was taller than Sinan and he was able
to see over the heads of the crowd.
"Where?" the man said.
"At the entrance."
The man stood on his toes and yelled across the cabin in a voice so
powerful it silenced the crowd.
"Erkek çocuk nerede?"
That started a chorus of echoes. "Where's the boy?" strangers
called, their voices rising above the sound of the engine straining to
pull away from the dock. "Where's the boy? Where's the boy?" they
yelled into the wind, as the ferry nosed its white hull out into the blue
water. "ÿIsmail!" Sinan called, joining his voice to the chorus. The
men yelled "ÿIsmail" too, and a pandemonium of concern radiated out
through the cabin.
Then thirty feet away, rising above the heads of hundreds of people,
came his son. At first ÿIsmail seemed to be floating under his own
power, a princely ghost taken flight in the sea-whipped wind, but as
he drew nearer, Sinan saw the shoulders on which ÿIsmail rested. The
man elbowed through the parting crowd, a cigarette burning in his
mouth, his large, hairy hands wrapped around the boy's stomach.
Ismail's white teeth gleamed...

 

"Fascinating . . . a remarkable first novel [of] people struggling to define themselves in a world that seems against them."

 

"A real triumph . . . Alan Drew explores, with respect and understanding, clashes between cultures, faiths, and generations. In the end, we find ourselves feeling close to the characters and their world, as it is the very world in which we live."

 

The New York Times Book Review...

"Sensitive and thought-provoking, Gardens of Water is set in a perfectly realized Istanbul, a city where traditionalism and modernity grind together like the fragments of a collapsing building."

 

"A penetrating, tightly focused novel that balances the sweetness of youth and the brooding anxieties of parenthood with a robust understanding of the Muslim-Westerner encounter."

 

Gardens of Water by Alan Drew
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