Free Orhan's Inheritance by Aline Ohanesian

anyway?”
    “Since right now,” says Kemal.
    “You don’t just stop talking to people for no good reason and then change your mind. You’re either a friend or you’re not.”
    “You’re right, I’m sorry,” he says. “Now no more crying. What’s this business about quarreling with your father and running away?” he says, trying to look stern. This time her head snaps to attention, and she is looking straight at him. He braces himself for the fury she will pour into him. It’s happened before. Twice. Twice he’s been the lucky recipient of that hot fiery liquid of emotion and intellect, only they hadn’t been alone.
    “What would you have me do? He won’t go looking for Nazareth. And he forbids me to go to school. If you think I’m going to sit around and wait to be taken like Nazareth or, worse yet, cower in a corner of my room, then you’re as foolish as he is.”
    “No one is asking you to cower,” he says.
    “No? They’ve taken my uncle, your friend, and no one seems to want to do anything about it.”
    “What does that have to do with your schooling?” Kemal says.
    “The only chance I have of happiness is hidden somewhere in my books. I’m going to be a teacher, like Miss Graffam, not some woman slaving over a tonir. ”
    “But you’re only a child,” Kemal says.
    “I am not a child! There are fifteen-year-olds all over Sivas getting married, having children, and who knows what else. I am no child, Kemal. Besides, you’re only a few years older.”
    Kemal lingers on the sound of his name in her mouth, between her lips.
    “Well, if you’re not a child, I suppose you’re a woman then,” Kemal says. There is a pause, and he wonders if he’s gone too far.
    “You think you’re so clever don’t you?” she says, straightening her spine.
    “What? Something wrong with being a woman?” he asks.
    “I know your definition of a woman, and it does not interest me,” she says.
    “Really? What is my definition of a woman?” Kemal has never had a conversation so sweet.
    “Someone who bows her head and mends your socks and bears a half-dozen children.”
    He laughs as she mockingly bows her head and makes to mend an imaginary sock.
    Lucine stops quite suddenly and looks up at him, adding, “Someone who suffers silently.” She grows quiet and serious now, her eyes filling with a knowing melancholy.
    I will never make you suffer, he thinks . His hand is at her cheek, but only for a moment. The contact wakes her from her moral slumber and she jumps to her feet.
    “I better go home now,” she says.

CHAPTER 8
    The Crier
    KEMAL: THE TURKISH boy. Kemal: the weaver’s son. Kemal, her uncle’s keeper, who always stood quietly at his right. He had not only talked to her but let her cry on his shoulder, making her angry and energized all at once. Lucine blushes when she remembers burying her face in his chest. She did not know how much she missed him until he started talking to her again. Ach pazoog, my right hand, Uncle Nazareth called him. Kemal hadn’t extended a fist to the enemy but an open palm to her face.
    She whips the horse into a frenzied speed, racing away from the river and her confusion. Inside the courtyard, she hurries past bubbling cauldrons, past Hairig’s expectant eyes. She knows she should apologize for storming off—a dutiful daughter would. But looking at Hairig would mean confronting the fear in his eyes with the shame in her own.
    Once inside, she heads to the library, which is not a library at all but a set of bookshelves, carefully arranged perpendicularly against one wall of the parlor. She sinks into Hairig’s red velvet floor cushion and places her trembling hands under her thighs. Her eyes dart from one title to the next, looking for answers to questions not yet formed in her mind. But the titles offer no answers, only reprimands.
    “Daughter,” Hairig whispers from behind her. Lucine, wishing to avoid his eyes, fixes her gaze on the volumes above her. He too