Once, however, the full moon came, and Idelba did not organize an expedition to the roof terrace. She had spent many hours that month on the telephone, and after each conversation had been uncharacteristically subdued. She hadn't described to the girls the contents of these calls, or said who she had been talking to, though from her manner of talk Budur assumed it was her nephew, as usual. But no discussion of them at all.
Perhaps it was this that made Budur sensitive and wary of some change. On the night of the full moon she scarcely slept, waking every watch to see the moving shadows on the floor, waking from dreams of anxious flight through the alleys of the old town, escaping something behind her she never quite saw. Near dawn she woke to a noise from the terrace, and looked out of her little window to see Idelba carrying the laundry poles down from the terrace into the stairwell. Then the olive jars as well.
Budur slipped out into the hall and down to the window at the carrel overlooking the yard in front. Idelba was constructing their ladder against the side of the household wall, just around the corner of the house from Ahmet's locked gate. She would top the wall next to a big elm tree that stood in the alley running between the walls of their house and the al Dins' next door, who were from Neshapur.
Without a moment's hesitation, without any thought at all, Budur ran back to her room and dressed quickly, then ran downstairs and back out into the yard, around the corner of the house, glancing around the corner to be sure Idelba had gone.
She had. The way was clear; Budur could follow without impediment.
This time she did hesitate; and it would be difficult to describe her thoughts in that crucial moment of her life. No particular train of thought occupied her mind, but rather a kind of balancing of her whole existence: the harem, her mother's moods, her father's indifference to her, Ahab's simple face always behind her like an idiot animus, Yasmina's weeping; all of Turi at once, balanced on its two hills on each side of the River Limat, and in her head; beyond all that, huge cloudy masses of feeling, like the clouds one saw boiling up over the Alps. All inside her chest; and outside her a sensation as if clusters of eyes were trained on her, the ghost audience to her life, perhaps, out there always whether she saw them or not, like the stars. Something like that. It is always thus at the moment of change, when we rise up out of the everyday and get clear of the blinkers of habit, and stand naked to existence, to the moment of choice, vast, dark, windy. The world is huge in these moments, huge. Too big to bear. Visible to all the ghosts of the world. The centre of the universe.
She lurched forwards. She ran to the ladder, climbed swiftly; it was no different to when it was set upstairs between terrace and roof. The branches of the elm were big and solid, it was easy to climb down far enough in them to make a final jump to the ground, jarring her fully awake, after which she rolled to her feet as smoothly as if she had been in on the plan from the start.
She tiptoed to the street and looked towards the tram stop. Her heart was thumping hard now, and she was hot in the chill air. She could take the tram or walk straight down the narrow streets, so steep that in several places they were staired. She was sure Idelba was off to the railway station, and if she was wrong, she could give up the chase.
Even wearing a veil it was too early for a girl from a good family to be on the tram alone; indeed, it was always too early for a respectable girl to be out alone. So she hustled over to the top of the first stair alley, and began hurrying down the weaving course, through courtyard, park, alley, the stair of the roses, the tunnel made by Japanese fire maples, down and down the familiar way to the old town and the bridge crossing the river to the railway station. Onto the bridge, where she looked upstream to the patch of sky between old stone buildings, its blue arched over the pink hem of the little bit of mountains visible, an embroidery dropped into the far end of the lake.
She was losing her resolve when she saw Idelba in the station, reading the schedule for track listings. Budur ducked behind a streetlight post, ran around the building into the doors on the other side, and likewise read a schedule. The first train for Nsara was on Track 16, at the far side of the station, leaving at five sharp, which had to be close. She checked the clock hanging over the row of trains, under the roof of the big shed; five minutes to spare. She slipped onto the last car of the train.
The train jerked slightly and was off. Budur moved forwards up the train, car to car, holding onto the seat backs, her heart knocking faster and faster. What was she going to say to Idelba? And what if Idelba was not on the train, and Budur off to Nsara on her own, with no money?
But there Idelba sat, hunched over, looking forwards out of the window. Budur steeled herself and burst through the compartment door and rushed to her weeping, threw herself on her, 'I'm sorry, Aunt Idelba, I didn't know you were going this far, I only followed to keep you company, I hope you have money to pay for my ticket too?'
'Oh name of Allah!' Idelba was shocked; then furious; mostly at herself, Budur judged through her tears, though she took it out for a little while on Budur, saying, 'This is important business I'm on, this is no girl's prank! Oh, what will happen? What will happen? I should send you right back on the next train!'
Budur only shook her head and wept some more.
The train clicked quickly over the tracks, through country that was rather bland; hill and farm, hill and farm, flat woods and pastures, all clicking by at an enormous speed, it almost made ber sick to look out of the window, though she had ridden in trains all her life, and had looked out before at the view without feeling anything.
At the end of a long day the train entered the bleak outskirts of a city, like Downbrook only bigger, li after li of apartment blocks and close set houses behind their walls, bazaars full of people, neighbourhood mosques and bigger buildings of various kinds; then really big buildings, a whole knot of them flanking the many bridged river, just before it opened out into the estuary, now a giant harbour, protected by a jetty that was broad enough to hold a street on it, with businesses on both sides.
The train took them right to the heart of this district of tall buildings, where a station, glass roofed and grimy, let them out onto a broad treelined street, a two-parted street divided by huge oaks planted in a line down a centre island. They were a few blocks from the docks and the jetty. It smelled fishy.
A broad esplanade ran along the riverbank, backed by a row of redleaved trees. Idelba walked quickly down this corniche, like Turi's lakeside corniche only much grander, until she turned onto a narrow street lined with three storey apartment blocks, their first floors occupied by restaurants and shops. Up some stairs into one of these buildings, then into a doorway with three doors. Idelba rang the bell for the middle one, and the door opened and they were welcomed into an apartment like an old palace fallen apart.