Bag Of Heads

It is four o'clock in the morning, but the rooster next door doesn't know it. The rooster next door doesn't understand time. If he sleeps, it can only be in short, fitful bursts. Because he crows all the time, just about every hour, rain or shine.

I know that a lot of roosters do this. And I know that roosters all over the world sound pretty much the same. Whether they're roosters in America, Japan, Northern Europe, or the Mediterranean, they all have the same staccato aah-ooh-ahh-OOOOH. It's almost always the same four syllables with the stress on the last one, there's always the same edge to it, and the cock-a-doodle-doo always vibrates with the same bravado, the same I'm the king of the castle message.

But this rooster is different.

I don't know whether he's old or was born with a deformed voice box or is just plain eccentric, but this rooster has a distinctive cockle-doodle-doo. He will start to crow and then stop as though he's misplaced his notes and is trying to find them. Then, just as you start to think he's forgotten all about crowing, he'll start up again, get half the way through the process, and stop again. I've seen him on my way to catch the bus in the morning. He looks fairly normal: the same curved, iridescent tail feathers, the same Don't-you-try-it-with-me look in his eye, the same proud strut as he patrols the mosque garden where he lives with his harem of frazzled-looking hens.

But in the morning, off he goes. Aahoohahh-- he begins, then his voice suddenly stops and there's a long silence. A silence just long enough to drift back to sleep in.

It usually drives me half wild at this time in the morning. It usually fills me with thoughts of BB guns, slingshots, and water pistols. When it's really bad, I sometimes indulge myself in cruel fantasies. I picture myself getting out of bed, creeping outside in the morning chill through the fig and pomegranate trees, past the sheep pen and hen house, finding the irritating bird and twisting his neck.

This morning, however, I find my earplugs and put them in. Why? Because just recently I saw something that something chilled me to the bone. Something I hope that rooster doesn't know about. Something that makes me think he's got a right to crow as often and as irritatingly as he likes.

It was in the deep frozen section of the supermarket. Normally, I don't go near the frozen foods in winter, but I was in quest of octopus. You'd think that a country surrounded by sea would be full to bursting with fish, but this is sadly not the case. Turks love their meat, and fish is often hard to find here, and expensive. For this reason, I am always on the lookout for things like squid and octopus and they aren't always easy to spot. So when I saw the plain, white plastic bag with its loosely tied string, I peeked.

And I wish I hadn't.

Because it was full to bursting with roosters' heads. If there were any hens' heads in there, I could not see them. Dozens of severed roosters' heads stared up at me, their gimlet eyes blank, but accusing. And never would they cock-a-doodle-doo again.

Aah-ooh--ahh-, the rooster next door begins. I roll over and find my ear plugs and put them in. I can still hear his abbreviated Aaah-hoo-hahh-OOOH, but I can take it. All I'm going to lose is a couple hours of sleep, but I know what's in store for him.

Silent Nights

Our Eldest is home for the holidays. She flew in just a week ago in the midst of a spectacular hailstorm. My husband and I watched her as she told us all about her favorite subjects in university, the classes she really enjoys, the teachers who bore her silly. She seems so different. A little more sedate, a little more mature -- and, amazingly, even more sure of herself.

And weirdest of all, she sleeps.

From the get-go, our Eldest has not slept. I'm a lifelong insomniac and I seem to have passed it on to both of my children, but our Eldest has given me some stiff competition. When she was six months old, I asked her pediatrician when she would start sleeping regularly. She was only getting half of the sleep other mothers reported their babies were getting and I felt cheated. The doctor told me it would soon straighten out -- that our baby would soon get into a sleep rhythm and get all the sleep she needed. And the good news was, she did. But the bad news was that she hardly seemed to need any sleep.

This continued straight through her childhood and adolescence. And she was a night-owl. We'd get her into bed only to find that she was up again, ready to be kept company and entertained. She made curtain call after curtain call right up past midnight until I was at the end of my wits. I began to dream of a time she would start keeping sociable hours. It never happened.

We've kept in touch, so I know for a fact that at university, she goes to bed at five in the morning to finish assignments (she is also a first-class procrastinator, another genetic trait of mine she has managed to acquire). "So what time do you get up?" I asked her recently. She rolled her eyes at me. "Don't go there, Mom."

So the other day I was astonished when I got home from work and found her sprawled on the couch, out cold. She stayed like that for six hours too. I was so alarmed, I took her pulse.

In the morning I asked her if she was okay. "Sure. Why?"

"Because you slept straight for over eight hours!"

She looked surprised. "Yeah, I guess I did."

She did it again the next day, then the next.

"Are you sure you're okay?" we asked her.

"Yeah, I'm fine."

"Have you been doing a lot of that lately?"

"Not really."

It's just amazing. In fact, it's so unprecedented, I've taken to standing and staring at her while she's sleeping. When she was a ten-year-old, I could wake her up by breathing as I walked past her room. The other day, she slept through a storm strong enough to uproot trees. She slept through the last call to prayer, searing the air at full volume. She slept through my dropping a saucepan lid on the kitchen floor and her father's ear splitting sneezes.

I'll tell you something even more shocking: she didn't bring us home any laundry. This is a kid who used to go through three or four outfits a day. Who used towels like we were a hotel. Who had a knock-down-drag-out fight with me only a few years ago because of all the laundry she generated.

"Got any clothes you want washed?" my husband asked her on the first morning she was back.

"Nope." We traded looks.

"My friends said Why don't you just take it home so your parents can wash it?" she said.

"So why didn't you?"

"Because I'm a superior being."

And so she is.

I can't help but feel a little sad. You let your kid go and before you know it, they come back like this: a calm, confident stranger.

Yesterday, I was leaving for work when she peered at my face and frowned at me. "Mom, come over here, okay?"

I did. Shaking her head, she licked a finger and wiped my chin. "You're still not putting your make-up on right! Hang on, I'll go and get my make-up brush."

I followed her into her room -- and had to avert my eyes. Dear God, the state of it!

She's still bossing me around. And her room is still -- well, I won't go there. But it's nice to know our little girl hasn't entirely changed.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

And Miles To Go Before I Sleep

It is a few hours after midnight. My eyes are hot and dry as I blink them open; I wonder fleetingly why I am awake, and then I hear it: EeerrrrzzZZm!

And now I feel it, too: that nasty, infuriating itch you get after a mosquito has dined on your blood.

Snapping the light on, my tired eyes do a quick circuit of the room as I try to find it. I spot a spider or two, the odd moth, and a few dead mosquitoes from previous late night mosquito safaris, but not the living culprit.

My husband sleeps on, blissfully unaware.

In Japan, mosquitoes weren't interested in my blood as long as I was with my husband. I could sleep straight through the night, waking up with only the odd bite. Mosquitoes were ravenous for my husband's blood; he would wake up scratching and swearing to find me unbitten and refreshed. At some point, however, they developed a taste for me. We bought mosquito nets and rigging them up every April became one of our family's rites of spring, just as taking them down towards the end of autumn got to be a preparing-for-winter ritual.

Before we left Japan, we gave those nets to neighbors. Wish we had them now.

I am forced to abandon my hunt; wherever she is, this mosquito isn't going to show herself. I flick the light off and settle back down, breathing deeply and hoping against hope that sleep may claim me again.

And then it starts: that horrible yeerRRRZZZZm buzzing near my ear. I flick the light back on and I see her, poised on the wall. I flail at her with my pillow. I miss.

After a three-minute mosquito safari and a good spray of Bug-off, I still haven't caught the nasty little creature, but I hope I've scared her off. I turn off the light and settle back into my pillows with a sigh.

And all of a sudden there is the most unearthly noise: a song that isn't a song, an eerie, heartfelt, drawn-out cry that chills my blood. It has just enough of a tune to make me think it must be a song, but then the singer lowers his voice and a whining, mournful, urgent chorus takes over.

It goes on for at least five minutes and I realize it must be the pre-dawn call to prayer from the nearby mosque. I'm usually fast asleep during the pre-dawn call to prayer. Wish I was now: it seems to go on forever, an atonal, anguished droning that sets my teeth on edge.

During the day, I love the call to prayer. My students all claim that the call to prayer in this area is nowhere near as beautiful as it is in their own hometowns. They swear that the muezzins in Istanbul -- or Konya -- or Antalya all sing out the call with a full-throated skill that is utterly dazzling. If this is true, it must be something: I find it hard to imagine anything more lilting or romantic than the one we have right here in our own town. It centers and steadies me and gives me a sense of inner peace and oneness with humanity.

It doesn't do that now.

Finally -- mercifully! -- it is over and I take a deep, steadying breath. I go through my usual sleep-inducing rituals, starting with countries that begin with A. Afghanistan, Angola, Argentina... I'm half the way to Azerbaijan when the rooster next door decides it's time to get to work, letting loose with a blood-curdling ooohAAAHuhlllOOOH.

I'm not the only one who has noticed that this rooster can't crow worth beans. You've never heard anything as pathetic. He'll start off, loud and brash and clumsy, then stop himself mid cockle-doodle-doo as though he's forgotten the lyrics. You can almost imagine him trying to remember how to do it in the quiet that follows that first abortive attempt. You lie there in the dark, wondering when he'll start up again. You don't want to get too relaxed and comfortable; you know you have to brace yourself for that sudden heart-stopping cry. And then, just as you've decided that he must have given it up as a bad job, he'll start again:aaahOOOaaaOOOuhOOOOOOH.

And, so help me God, he goes on and on and on.

I am not a cruel or violent person. I try not to quarrel with my husband and children; I put up with my colleagues' quirks and peccadilloes; I catch bees and moths and release them outside instead of swatting them; I eat a largely vegetarian diet and feel guilty for the small amount of meat I do consume. But I could happily force our local muezzin to listen to System of a Down and Rammstein, full volume. I would absolutely spread that mosquito all over the wall, and yes, at this moment I would wring that stupid rooster's neck.

Tomorrow I'm buying something stronger than citronella oil. And earplugs.