The Black Tulip

The First Tulips

After Father doesn’t return, Laleena and Cengiz help Mother enlarge the vegetable and flower garden. They grow every vegetable they can manage, enough to feed the family through the year and enough besides to sell and trade at market. Mother’s hands stay full with the twins, so Laleena and Cengiz haul the produce to the nearby village markets themselves, weighing it out and bartering on their own. Laleena also keeps a small flower patch of her own, and her favorite blooms are the tulips.

One day, Cengiz teases her about the name, laughing as he explains that “tulip” really means “turban,” like the onion-shaped hats Ottomans wear. Laleena decides it is a fitting name and tells him she will never forget seeing her first tulips, the spring after Father left, when she and Cengiz set out for the hills to collect water from the mineral springs.

They lose their way and stumble into a meadow splattered with purple wildflowers. At first they mistake the blooms for irises, the ordinary wildflowers of spring, but once they crouch down for a closer look, the flowers reveal themselves as something unique, curving into slender urns before flashing their petals open toward the sky. Something tells the siblings these blooms are not meant to be picked, not yet anyway. So it becomes their habit to detour to the meadow whenever they fetch water, watching the tulips move through every stage of bloom, season after season. The flowers do not last long, and once the petals drop and the leaves wither, the siblings dig into the earth expecting to find seeds. Instead they turn up bulbs, onion-like knobs tangled in roots.

“Look, it’s growing out of an onion!” Laleena exclaims, digging one free of the dirt. Cengiz wonders aloud whether it is edible, and Laleena only offers a “maybe.” She dares him to find out, certain he cannot resist a challenge, but he turns the dare right back on her. Grinning, Cengiz tells her to go first. He’s clearly pleased to have caught her off guard for once.

Laleena scrapes the whiskery roots off the bulb with her thumbnail and bites in, then spits it out immediately. Laleena sputters that it’s bitter. Cengiz laughs at her sour face and suggests maybe it needs cooking first; Laleena decides the bulbs simply are not meant to be eaten.

Their laughter fades when Laleena asks Cengiz if he thinks Father will be coming back. He hesitates before admitting he doesn’t know. She presses him further, asking if he thinks so. She wishes he would tell her what she longs to hear, but he only shakes his head, confirming the fear they both carry. Neither of them says the unspeakable thing aloud, but they do not have to.

She asks him what they’re going to do, since Mother says there will not be enough food or money to last through the year. They are already stretched thin, though too proud to let anyone see how much they need.

Cengiz declares he’ll join the army. He’s the only man in the family. Laleena snaps that he’s just a boy. He shouldn’t be silly. Cengiz looks hurt by the words. Regretting them, she reminds him what happened to Father when he marched off with the army: he vanished, and now they have nothing, not even word of whether he is alive. She cannot bear to lose Cengiz, too.

He recovers his grin and says that they’ll have to find her a husband. Some old man with a lot of money. Laleena lunges to pinch his cheek for that, but he jumps up and dodges away laughing. She chases him down, both of them laughing too hard to run straight, and hurls the half-eaten tulip bulb at his head, but he is too quick, snatching it out of the air without breaking his stride.

Then he stops, turning the bulb over in his hand. He wonders what would happen if Laleena planted it. She has the magic touch. Laleena can get almost anything to grow. Laleena decides it wouldn’t hurt to try. So together, the siblings dig up as many bulbs as they can carry home in their arms, and Laleena plants them all in her patch. She returns to the meadow again and again for more, digging up every bulb she can find, and Cengiz helps her plant each one, both of them praying the bulbs will produce flowers by the following spring. They never speak of Father again.