Fishing Line
Above the bridge the crescent moon hangs, thin as a nail paring. Rose tints the east, the stars are fading and the morning call to prayer pricks my conscience. Ignoring the pain in his eighty year old knees my father will be unrolling his prayer mat towards Mecca. My wife will be preparing the breakfast soup for him and my son. But today is my day off and I, Abdi Dursun, sous chef at the Sultan Hotel, am going fishing. The smell of yesterday’s fish haunts the still empty market. Today I will catch my own fish and I will cook it not for some foolish tourist but for my family.
My cousin Serkan is waiting in his rusting, yellow motorboat. Already he is chewing gum. Like me he is wearing smart Nike trainers but unlike mine his jogging bottoms are oil-stained. We both have the Dursun thick black hair and broad nose.
“No time to shave cousin?” His young teeth flash white. “Too early for you perhaps?”
“Less insolence to your elders please,” I laugh. “I will wake up when we see the first fish.”
Sliding onto the open water of the Bosphorus we glimpse the minarets of Sulamaniye. The smaller mosques nearby are less magnificent but their wooden domes and tiled minarets gleam, lovely in the strengthening light. A morning smell of warm bread and lentils floats from the shore. Vivid orange of firethorn glows in the green of a garden. A huge oil tanker passes, tossing us violently. Calm returns as its wake fades. We cast our lines but after an hour have only a pound or two of wriggling silver in the basket.
“So few and so small,” Serkan mutters just as my line tautens, then, “It’s a big one. Careful. Let me take it.”
“No, no.” I nudge him off with my shoulder. “Am I not also the son of seven generations of fishermen? I will catch it.”
A blue-finned back cuts through the water and we both gasp. I break into a cold sweat at its size.
“Let me, please. I know what I’m doing.”
“No. Leave me. Steer us away from the bank.” He shakes his head but obeys.
Lufer is the most cunning of fish but I am my father’s son. For ten minutes I let it play its tricks, back and forth, up and down till it is exhausted. I haul it in, nineteen inches, truly a sultan among fish. Then I turn to Serkan.
“You will join us tonight. My wife is preparing kunefe and samsa but I will dress this monster myself.”
“I will be honoured cousin.”
Tonight we will feast. Tomorrow my son begins his studies at the university. One day he will be a marine biologist. Perhaps he will study the ways of lufer.
Isabel Miles lives, writes and walks in the North Yorkshire Moors. She has published short stories in WTD Magazine (p.33) and The View from Here, and one of her poems was shortlisted for this year’s Keats-Shelley prize.