The Stone Woman Read Online Free PDF Page A

followed him back.
    I’m not sure exactly when Salman left our home. I think it could not have been too long after being struck by Iskander Pasha. All I remember is the panic that gripped the whole family when Salman announced at breakfast one day that he had decided to leave his job and see the world for the next few years. Since he worked in Uncle Kemal’s shipping company there would be no real problem in returning whenever he wished.
    Zeynep and Halil’s mother had looked after Salman soon after he was born, since his own mother had died during childbirth. She was a distant cousin and had always showered me with affection. Her marriage to Iskander Pasha had been arranged in a hurry. He was desolate at the time, but had bowed to family pressure and married her to provide Salman with a mother. She looked after him, tended to all his needs and did become his mother. She loved him as if he were her own son and always defended him fiercely, even after the birth of her own children, Halil and Zeynep.
    She rarely stayed in the summer house and had not been present to witness Salman’s humiliation, but the news had been relayed to her in Istanbul and my mother was sure that Iskander Pasha would have felt the whiplash of her tongue. Perhaps she tried to persuade Salman not to go. If so, she failed. He had arrived at a decision and nothing would dissuade him. He told us he would travel for some time and let us know when he decided to settle in a particular town.
    A penitent father offered him money for his travels, but Salman refused. He had saved enough from his salary over the last four years. He embraced us all and left. We did not hear from him for many months. Then letters began to arrive, but irregularly. A year after he left a message was received from Uncle Kemal, who had just returned from Alexandria. He informed us that he had stayed with Salman, who was successfully trading in diamonds and married to a local woman. He had sent a letter for Zeynep’s mother. Its contents were never divulged to any of us. Zeynep searched every hiding place in her mother’s room but failed to uncover the letter. One day, in a state of total despair, we asked Petrossian if he knew what had been said in the letter. He shook his head sadly.
    “If too many stones are thrown at a person, he stops being frightened of them.”
    To this day I am not sure what Petrossian meant by that remark. Zeynep and I had nodded our heads sagely and burst out laughing when he left the room.
    It was strange that they had all arrived here on the same day. What memories would float through Iskander Pasha, when he saw Salman, Uncle Memed and the Baron walking into his room together? Halil later reported to me that Father had wept on seeing Salman, embraced him gently and kissed his cheeks. Salman was touched, but his eyes remained dry. The gesture had come too late. The pride exhibited by grown men is something I have noticed for a long time, but never really understood. It is something that was not completely absent in but firmly suppressed by my husband Dmitri.
    As the days passed I had occasion to observe Salman. My brother who, in his youth, had been the most lively and ambitious of us all, was now afflicted by a melancholy that made him bitter. I think it was his inability to accomplish more in his life that caused him great anxiety. It was almost as if his success as a diamond merchant lay at the root of his unhappiness. He was never satisfied. He had married an Egyptian woman in Alexandria, “a beautiful Copt” in Uncle Kemal’s words, but had kept her from meeting his family. Even now as his father lay disabled by a stroke, Salman had not brought his sons to see their grandfather at least once. Halil alone had been invited to Egypt and accorded the privilege of meeting Salman’s wife and children. On one occasion when I persisted in questioning Halil about Salman’s indifference I received a sharp and surprising reply.
    “Salman is very depressed