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Akram is nearly two hours late to pick up his daughters from their flight home from their summer holidays. He has failed to appease the airport gods somehow, and is detained, this time, for an extensive security screening. Akram prays Dhuhr in his head during the interminable wait, and carefully schools his expression. He's nearly indifferent by now to the process itself, which is clearly designed to irritate its subjects to the snapping point; he tells himself that he doesn't really mind the humiliating patdown or the impertinent scrutiny of his few personal effects, the suspicious and repetitive questionings.
Being made to wait around for ages for said patdown and scrutiny is the real insult. He's frustrated on the girls' behalf, and wonders what they're doing to pass the time in whatever holding area they're being kept in, weary and probably hungry, perhaps frightened even though they, too, are used to such delays.
It's a good thing that he wasn't able to prevail upon Carl to accompany him on this trip. Carl would have lost his mind. It's possible that he could have waved his lanyard and made threats in just the right tone to shorten Akram's visit to the grim inner sanctum of the CAA, but it's more likely that he would have landed himself in a holding cell of his own and lengthened the whole process by half a day.
When he's finally released and reunited with his children, Akram sees at once that his fears were not unfounded. They are glassy-eyed and listless with travel exhaustion and boredom. Mina gives him a limp one-armed hug, but Nour stalks past him and won't make eye contact.
"I'm starving to death," she says shortly. She is wearing a sky-blue hijab. One of her cousins must have given it to her, or her aunt. It makes her look so much older. Akram's daughters own headscarves, but they usually only wear them on religious holidays, and not always even then.
"Of course you are," he tells her. "I'm so sorry. There is a Burger King, here in the airport, if you don't want to wait until we get home."
Mina's eyes light up at the mention of fast food, but then she glances at her older sister and sighs. "Burger King is very bad, Baba," she tells him gravely. "There's a whole thing about it on YouTube. I'll show you on the tram ride home if you let me use your phone."
"Oh," he says. "What about Pret a Manger? Are they also bad? Nora?" he tries, touching her on the shoulder to try and slow her pace.
His older daughter huffs and twitches away from him. "I want to be called Nour," says Nour, still striding ahead of him without looking back, but after a few more moments she slows. "Pret is okay," she allows, grudgingly, and so they go in and order sandwiches.
*
Posh cheddar and pickle baguettes restore them all to a reasonable facsimile of good humour, and soon Mina is telling him about the funny little dog in a carrier who sat next to them on their flight, and Nour has to jump in and correct her about the animal's breed. Before long they are giggling and murmuring rude commentary to one another in Arabic about the outfits of the people queueing to order their own overpriced pre- or post-travel meals.
"That's impolite, Nour," Akram admonishes. "And you don't know that they can't understand you."
"As if," Nour flashes back. "Dinnae care if they can, anyhow," but she lowers her eyes at his sorrowful expression. The scowl is back.
Akram wishes he hadn't said anything. "The hijab is very nice," he says, reaching across the table to brush the blue chiffon with one finger. "It's new?"
Nour leans sharply away from him. "Dad! You've got mayonnaise on your hands!" He doesn't, but he puts his hands up in apology and sits back to give her space. "It's only a hand-me-down from Yasmeen," she says, touching her headscarf self-consciously. "I like it," she goes on, sounding defensive. "She gave me some other ones, too. I want to…is it…I think I might wear them, like, to school and everything. Maybe." She glances briefly up at Akram again and then back down at the table. "Is that all right?" Her eyes are so like his own. He wonders when she learned to weaponise them in this way, but then she's always been a quick study.
"Yes, of course it's all right," Akram assures her. "We can talk about it, if you wish. But of course you can wear hijabs if you want to. It's entirely your own decision."
Nour glances up again, visibly assessing his response. "Mum didn't," she says, with a question in her voice.
"No," Akram agrees. "Not usually. But that doesn't mean you can't." Nour nods and goes back to her sandwich. Mina, who's been watching them like a tennis match, picks up her baguette again as well.
In the chewing silence that follows, Akram's mind strays back to the thing he's been worrying at in his mind all day, all week, the thing that had occupied ninety percent of his thoughts during the long wait in security as he'd mentally rehearsed nine hundred different ways of bringing it up. It would be better, perhaps, to wait until they're home and settled and rested, but the waiting is torture, and he finally decides it would be best to rip off the bandage before he can overthink it any more.
"I have also been thinking about some changes, while you were away," he tells his daughters, and they look at one another quickly, and then up at him with such open, expectant faces that he nearly loses courage. He has to stare down at the table, picking up a few baguette crumbs with his fingertip and depositing them onto his sandwich wrapper. "How would you both feel about my beginning to…to go out on dates, to date someone, I mean, from time to time?"
The ensuing silence is terrible. When Akram dares to look up, his heart plummets. Mina's eyes are full of tears, and Nour's stricken glare chills him to the marrow. "Baba, you can't," Mina starts to say, and then chokes on a sob and breaks down noisily over the remnants of her lunch.
*
He gets them and their luggage home somehow, splurging on a taxi rather than the tram; it was enough for one day to make a public scene in the airport, and Mina's tears continue to flow, joined by some ominous sniffles from Nour. Even once they're back in the flat, neither of his daughters will look directly at him or respond to his apologies or his assurances that he's not rushing into anything, he only wanted to see how they felt about it, they can talk about it later on, they should forget for now that he ever brought it up. Nour stalks to the bathroom and takes an hour-long shower. Mina commandeers his laptop and barricades herself in his bedroom to watch, from the sounds of it, endless TikTok dance demonstrations.
Akram remains in the kitchen and phones Carl. "I tried to tell them and made a mess of it," he confesses in a rush. "I can't believe how stupid I was. They are exhausted, they just got home, they weren't ready. They won't even speak to me now. It's a disaster."
"All right, all right, calm down," Carl tells him, taking evident pleasure in being the non-catastrophising one for a change. "Breathe, Akram. At their age, everything's a disaster. Do you still want me to come over?"
The plan had been that Carl would join them for dinner, after Akram had had a chance to talk to the girls. It would probably be a terrible idea now.
"Please," Akram says. It would be a ridiculous exaggeration to say that he has never needed anything more. He has needed many, many more things in his life with infinitely more urgency than he's needed the complicated and destabilising presence of a restless reedy Englishman with sea-storm eyes in his kitchen. He can't remember why, at the moment. "Yes. Please come."
*
Carl brings his customary ginger beer, in addition to a large can of regular beer for himself. "Is it okay?" he asks Akram before opening it. "Felt like I could kind of use it tonight, but I don't have to."
"Of course it's okay." Akram can hear the touch of irritation in his own voice. All this permission-asking today has been beyond wearisome. He busies himself in the kitchen cabinets, locating a vase for Carl's other offering: a good-sized bouquet of colourful flowers, sunflowers and orangey-yellow roses like flames and something lacy and purple that he can't put a name to. He'd felt something ignite with a warm glow in his chest as he'd accepted them, even though they were probably more for the girls than for him.
As he rinses out the dusty vase and fills it with fresh water, he feels the warmth of Carl's presence at his shoulder, the quick press of a kiss against his nape. "It's going to be all right, you know," Carl murmurs. "They'll come around eventually. Is it…me specifically that they object to, do you think, or…men…?"
"I didn't even get that far," Akram admits, feeling ill again. "I just asked how they would feel about my dating. It isn't something that's come up before. I suppose they thought I wouldn't ever. And it was terrible timing—we had just been speaking about their mother. For me it was just a segue that made sense in my mind, but for them it must have been a shock. And they have just come home, they are tired, overstimulated from all the travel…I couldn't have done it more badly."
"It'll be all right," Carl says again, sneaking in another stealthy kiss. He takes the flowers from Akram's unsteady hands and arranges them deftly in the vase. "Maybe not right away, but give them some time to think it over. If they've never known you to date anyone before, they probably need to wrap their heads around it. And yeah, maybe they just need to be pissed off for a while. Jasper was a little shit to everyone Vic or I brought home for years. He looks up at Akram's extremely un-reassured expression. "I'm sure it won't take years," he adds quickly. "Anyway, let's get dinner on for them. What can I do?"
Akram is less sure, thinking of Nour's black scowl, Mina's tears. He isn't even certain that his daughters will agree to come to the table. They do appear when called, though, seemingly powerless to resist the siren scent of spag bol and garlic bread. Mina, first to arrive, stops in the kitchen doorway at the sight of Carl, her eyes widening. "I didn't know you were coming over."
"Yes, you did," Nour tells her, pushing past and taking her seat at the table. "Dad told us on FaceTime two nights ago, you numpty."
"Nour," Akram warns.
Mina is unbothered by her sister's insults. "You brought me flowers," she says to Carl, approvingly, and gives him a swift hug before sliding into her chair. "Sunflowers are Dad's favourite, did you know?"
"I brought them for all of you," says Carl, looking at Akram, who finds it suddenly necessary to stir the pasta again and check the doneness of the garlic bread. "How was Istanbul? I've never been. What's your favourite thing to do there?"
Mina turns to Nour, speaking in Arabic. "Do you think Carl knows that Dad plans on going out on dates and becoming a homewrecker?"
"Obviously not, as he's being so nice," Nour answers, also in Arabic.
"Girls," Akram says, as sharply as he ever speaks to them. "We speak in English when we have English-speaking guests. Not negotiable."
An awkward silence falls, and stretches out while Akram dishes out food onto plates and passes them around. "Nour's favourite thing in Istanbul," he tells Carl finally, as he pulls up his own chair to the table, "is the Grand Bazaar."
"Sounds grand," Carl says, lifting his eyebrows at Nour, who's sitting across from him. "What do you do there?"
Nour tries to maintain her wounded silence, but can't sit still. "The Grand Bazaar is horrible," she bursts out. "Dad's being a troll. We went one time when we were only wee and it was the worst day of my life."
"Well, that I need to hear about," says Carl, and Nour sighs, rolls her eyes, and launches into an aggrieved diatribe.
Mina has inhaled her garlic bread and reaches for another slice, but Akram clears his throat across the table at her and points to her full plate and salad bowl. "More bread after," he tells her in a low voice. She makes a face at him—she's taken eyerolling lessons from her sister during the holidays, it appears—but begins to nibble at her salad while Nour continues her lecture on Istanbul's badly behaved tourists and scammy vendors.
Carl takes it all in, asking Nour the most clueless questions possible in order to keep her talking. He's always at the top of his game, Akram knows, when it comes to interviewing children. Carl doesn't glance over at him, keeping his attention fixed on Nour, but does reach over under the table and rub his hand reassuringly up and down Akram's thigh. Mina silently tries to steal the untouched slab of garlic bread on Carl's plate, and Carl whips his head round and fixes her with a threatening glare, almost nose to nose. Mina squeaks in mock alarm and drops the bread, and Carl laughs and gives it to her.
Akram has to get up from the table and get himself another drink from the fridge. His throat aches, and he needs the sharp sweet sting of ginger beer to restore him to the appearance of equanimity. While he's up, he hears Carl say "Nour, you've got sauce on your…scarf thing, sorry, I don't know the right word—"
"Ah, shite!" Nour screeches, and tips over her chair as she dashes from the room before Akram can reprimand her for swearing.
"It's a hijab," Mina tells Carl. "She's trying them out. Our cousins wear them. The girl ones, I mean. Nour's been in a foul mood all week. She's sad about leaving Hasan."
"Who?" Akram demands, just as Carl says "What?"
*
"So, they don't hate me," Carl observes, helping Akram clear the table. Normally it's the girls' job, but they've been given a reprieve for their first night home. "Just the 'dad dating' bit, I suppose. Although," he says, and then doesn't go on.
Akram waits. "Although what?" he finally has to ask.
"Well," says Carl, elbowing Akram away from the sink and taking the scrubber from him, getting to work on a pot. "I just wondered if. Does the hijab mean Nour's gone extra religious now? Is she going to have moral objections to…" He gestures vaguely between Akram and himself and back again.
"Oh, I don't think so," Akram says, although it's not as though he's had a chance to discuss it with Nour, or knows what kind of influence her cousins or this Hasan character might have had on her for the past six weeks. "Her best friend from school has two mums. They all talk about…inclusivity, you know, pronouns and things. She reads those Japanese comic books with all the boys kissing each other. Or, I think they are boys. I can't always tell from the drawings."
"Might be worth a sit-down, though," Carl suggests.
"Yes," Akram sighs. "I suppose so." He feels incredibly tired. He'd hoped…the girls seemed to really enjoy Carl's company, so he'd hoped, expected, that this would all be much easier. But it is difficult, he knows, for children to see one's parents as people with rights and desires of their own, and anything new in their world could always be a potential threat.
Carl looks over at him and puts down the pot, turning aside from the sink and taking Akram's face in his damp and soapy hands. "They'll come around," he says softly, and leans in for a kiss. "In the meantime, I'm not going anywhere."
Akram kisses him back and then lets his forehead drop down onto Carl's shoulder, resting there for a moment. Only a moment, and then he'll put away the leftovers and say good night to Carl and go and have a difficult talk with his daughters.
There's a tiny squeak from the doorway to the living room.
"Fuck!" says Carl, as he and Akram quickly separate. "Oh god. Sorry, sorry, sorry Mina, sorry Akram, I was startled, I didn't mean to—" But Mina has already darted back down the hall and into the bedroom she shares with Nour, slamming the door behind her.
They stare at one another in shock. "Akram, I'm so sorry," Carl says again, looking shattered.
"No, it's all right, it was my own fault, I should have…well, anyway. I should go and talk with them." Akram wipes his face on his shirtsleeve and squares his shoulders.
"You need backup?" Carl asks, sounding only half facetious. "Should I phone the team?"
Akram gives a rueful laugh. "It's a one-man job, I think. Perhaps you should head home. I'll let you know how it goes, if I survive."
"If you're sure, yeah, okay." Carl pulls him close and wraps him in a hug. Kisses his hair. "You're a good dad, Akram, and they're great kids. You'll—oh, jesus fuck, again?" he cries, pulling away quickly as Nour stamps into the room, now wearing a scarlet hijab.
"Dad!" she shrills. "I thought Mina was making up stories just to—Dad! Is it Carl you wanted to go on dates with?"
His instinct is to deny and placate, but Carl puts a hand on his shoulder. "Yes," Carl tells Nour—and Mina, who was right behind her. "I'm sorry. I know it's a lot to take in, and we don't expect you to—" The rest of whatever he was going to fumble out before Akram took over is cut off by the tackle-hug of a small but fierce ten-year-old girl.
"We thought Dad wanted to cheat on you!" Mina cries, and then bursts into tears for the second time that day.
*
Akram makes mint tea, and they all sort it out in the living room over the very crushed and lightly picked-over box of pastries that the girls had brought back with them from their travels. "Mina ate half of them while we were waiting around for you for a million hours at the airport," Nour tattles.
"I ate three!" Mina objects, lunging out in her sister's direction, and Akram has to hold her back against the sofa with a gently restraining arm. She subsides into it, rubbing her face against his shoulder for solace. "Nour is so mean, Baba. She ate some of the pastries, too. Are you and Carl going to get married? Whose flat will we live in? Carl's is nicer."
Carl chokes on his tea, and Nour pats him kindly on the back.
Mina goes on while Akram is still tongue-tied. "Nour wants to move into Jasper's room," she says in her most needling tone, and Carl, still coughing, has to hold Nour back now from leaping up to attack.
"Not while he's still living in it," Nour grinds out through bared teeth. "I meant when he goes off to university or whatever!"
Apparently, the girls have had it all settled in their minds for weeks now.
"You were so obvious, Dad," Nour tells him. "You only mentioned Carl, like, fifty times every night when we FaceTimed you—"
"It was really cute," Mina agrees, in reluctant agreement with her sister now. "Your ears turned pink every time you said his name."
"Did they," Carl says, turning to Akram with an expression of pure smug delight.
"Just like Nour's when she says 'Hasan,' Mina goes on, and Carl isn't quick enough on the grab this time. Akram winds up having to separate them, holding them apart like squalling kittens. Or young cats, more accurately; he actually has to put a bit of effort into it, as big as they've grown.
"Mina," he says sternly. "Don't tease. Nour, you and I are going to talk about this Hasan later on. You are too young to date. Also, no one is moving anywhere. Cohabitation is not on the table yet."
"'Yet,'" Carl echoes, still looking at Akram, infinitely amused.
"Yes, just like that," Nour says, pulling on her father's ear. "We thought you were going to tell us about it when we got home, only then you started talking about dating like you were going on an app, and you wouldn't need to date Carl. You see him all the time."
It's all very disconcerting. Akram's ears do feel very hot. Part of him wishes to take all of this back and return to a time when he was just a struggling single father of young children, lonely and austere, fighting his own battles. Or, further back, to Before.
Even Before is an illusion, of course. There were always struggles. His family hadn't approved of Sara, and he'd thought bitterly that he might as well have stayed with Yusuf if he were going to be disowned anyhow. He'd always had to hide who he truly was. Had never imagined he'd have children who would accept him much more easily than he'd ever been able to accept himself.
Mina has escaped from his grasp and gone over to snuggle up against Carl now, and the sight of them together bites painfully into Akram's heart. "We were hoping you'd protect Dad and keep him out of danger more, if you were together," she explains, gazing up at him with three parts earnestness and one part guile. "Like you did when the kidnapper tried to shoot him. You will, aye?"
Carl has the wary look of a dog owner who's uncertain how to deal with a sudden cat in his lap. "Oh, your dad's much more likely to…I mean, yeah, of course, yeah," he says, catching Akram's warning expression. "Look, it's been a long day for you guys." He gives Mina a careful but affectionate-looking squeeze and stands up. "I'm gonna let you get some rest. Talk some more without the annoying Englishman listening in."
"You're not staying over?" Nour says, and Akram looks at her, startled; his elder daughter seems genuinely crestfallen. He feels like he has a moderately severe case of whiplash.
"Not tonight," says Carl, his eyes on Akram, shrewdly assessing. "Another time, maybe. You'll have to look after your dad yourselves for now."
*
The girls don't have much to say to him once Carl has departed. It really has been an exhausting day. Akram, who has deplored the silence of his solitary evenings for the last six weeks, finds himself grateful to hug his daughters goodnight and escape to the quiet sanctuary of his own room, where he washes up and changes into pyjamas and then goes to his prayer mat and stays there for a long time.
When he gets up, feeling calmer, there is a text message from Carl waiting for him.
was going to say that went well after all, but then Nour slipped this into my pocket as I was leaving. cursed?
He's attached a photo of his own hand cupping a small keychain with a nazar boncuğu attached, inexpensive but a little weightier and less flimsy than the kind sold by the dozen in every Turkish souvenir stand. Akram smiles at the sight of its wide blue eye held gingerly in Carl's palm, the familiar fingers curled around it with their ragged cuticles and bitten nails.
It's the opposite of a curse, he texts back. Evil eye. It's a protection amulet.
oh I thought evil eye = evil, Carl replies instantly. good?? since I'm your protector now apparently
Don't let it go to your head. Akram sits down on the edge of his bed, dizzy again with the wash of mixed feelings: distress that his daughters worry so for his safety, warmth at their easy acceptance of Carl, a confused and amused pleasure at the thought of Carl's taking up the charge of looking after him. He's never thought of himself as especially in need of protection, but then his heart has never felt more raw and fragile than it has just lately. He was able to be so much more careless of it when he was younger.
He startles as his mobile buzzes with an incoming call. "I hate typing with my fucking thumbs," Carl says, without a greeting, when Akram picks up. "I know you're knackered to death. I can see why. They're a lot. I really like them, though," he adds, sounding cross. "And you. Sorry if that makes your life more complicated."
Akram lies down on his pillow, stretching out, and looks over at Carl's flowers, which he's brought upstairs with him for the night. "Very complicated," he agrees, and reaches up to rub a rose petal between his thumb and forefinger, releasing its heady scent more strongly into the room. "But I am very good at dealing with complexities. I don't really know what to do with myself without them."
Carl pauses over that for a long moment. "Meaning…" he prompts, as if he's not a world-weary detective with an ingrained ability to pull meaning and nuance from the obliquest of confessions, and is instead an uncertain human craving reassurance.
"I really like you, too," Akram tells him. He is still understating his case, but his heart can't take any more for one day. "Good night, Carl. Thank you for tonight."
It's only a beginning, he thinks, staring up at the flowers until he can see them bloom behind his eyelids when he turns out the lamp. It might all still go spectacularly sideways. But he decides to emulate his daughters for now, and prepare himself for the possibility that it might very well not.