It was the middle of July, when mothers piled plates high with Greek salads drenched in the bitterest olive oils and vinegars made from sun-ripened grapes. Meryem always liked hers with fries, thick-cut, glistening golden, and only just out of the saucepan, the oil still sizzling on them. As she sat on the armchair, she felt her eyes closing uncontrollably to the sound of the frying in the kitchen, the oil angry and bubbling; the occasional clanging of the ladle as her mother gave the potatoes a gentle stir. The setting sun draped itself along her forehead and she wished someone would come and draw the curtains. She scurried her fingers back and forth across the rough fabric of her dress, trying to ease the throbbing which set in every day after spending nine hours yanking out the loose bits of string her mother’s old sewing machine left in the clothes she made for the village women. It was always flowy dresses which helped the village women stay cool and lively when watering and pruning and picking their summer harvest of crunchy cucumbers and purple plump aubergines.

In the distance, Meryem heard a dog barking and a donkey neighing, and she smiled happy to hear such familiar sounds. She heard Fatma abla, their next-door neighbour, shooing away the dogs that had gathered around her chicken coup as they did every evening. Meryem listened and took pleasure in the soft rise and fall of her chest, as she breathed, content that another day of hard work was finally over. A few minutes later, she heard the ladle tingling against the plate as her mother spooned the fries out and she knew that she should go help, to carry the salad and the chips and the drinks to the table in the sitting room, where they would eat staring out at the sun disappearing behind the green mountains. But her body was heavy, her arms weighed a thousand tonnes, and her legs were numb with exhaustion.  Her eyes closed, she listened as her mother poured Coke into the cups, the liquid fizzing, carbonated bubbles popping one by one.

And then she didn’t hear anything else but felt instead. Her warm thighs were now exposed to the cool that settled into their sitting room after the sun had partially sunk behind the mountains. The thin hairs on her legs stood on end one at a time, as if excited by something. Her back which touched the suede of the embroidered sofa seemed ablaze, the sweat stagnant against her skin. Her arms dangled by her side, her fingertips stretched out touching the ground, obeying gravity, pulled down as if filled by sand. Something tickled at her thighs, a coarseness scratching at her soft skin, leaving white trails. She murmured and let her head fall back, her mouth opened, letting in the sour-smell of the chicken coup the wind blew through the shutters. Something in her mouth. The coarseness absorbing the wet of her tongue. She tried to close her mouth but her jaw joints were rigid, rusty, as if unused for years. The coarseness glided back and forth and Meryem thought it was a fingernail, uncut, torn off with teeth, its edges sharp and dangerous. Her mother called from the kitchen, and she wanted to say that she was here, hungry and desperate for her fries. She’d been waiting for them all day, thinking about them, whilst picking out the loose threads. “Mum,” she thought, but no words escaped her mouth. A hot steamy wind blew into the room, caressing her cheeks. Then, she felt a bristliness against her nose.

A moustache. Newly cut. It was one, two, three seconds later when she heard again. A plate falling, a sound like a rolling light-bulb, a crash, a million cracks. She moved her feet, slid them out of her slippers and let them rest on the cold floor. “Mum,” she said finally audibly. She heard a skirmish. The patter of feet, then something made of glass fell. The ashtray, she thought. The sofas were being moved, the wood dragging along the marble floors. She opened her eyes and saw Mustafa Pasha, her auntie’s husband, with  a chair above his head, his arms shaking.

“No, no” he was saying, looking towards the arch that separated the sitting room from the kitchen. “I didn’t do it.” His moustache twitched over his lips and he let his head fall back. “Please. Please,” he shouted.

Outside their door a red tractor was passing by, its engine sputtering. And then golden liquid was thrown across the room. Frizzling, it landed on the table in chaotic spatters. Some landed on her Mustafa Pasha’s face and he yelled, a pained “aaaahh” before dropping the chair to the floor. A single leg detached itself and landed near Meryem’s feet. He held his face, gripped it like it was about to fall out.

“This is too much for what I did,” he said. “You whore.”

Her mother stepped out from behind the arch and Meryem noticed her bulging eyes and the vein on her neck throbbing. She heaved, then let out air in one strong puff.

“Get out,” her mother said between clenched teeth.

And he ran. And he was gone. And all Meryem could see were her fries on the floor, golden and thick, covered in tiny dots of porcelain plate where olive oil and vinegar should have been.

Ayshe Dengtash was born to immigrant parents from North Cyprus. She spent the formative years of her childhood on a council estate in Southeast London, in the United Kingdom, and her teenage years in Cyprus. She is a graduate of the University of Birmingham where she completed a PhD in Creative Writing. Her short stories and flash fiction have previously been published in Sunspot Literary Journal, Cleaning Up Glitter, Newfound, and The Journal. Her novel 'The Grieving Mothers of the Departed Children' was published by Alden, Allegory Ridge in 2020. She has previously worked as a prose reader for Black Lawrence Press and currently works as one for the Walled City Journal.  She currently lives in Cyprus with her partner and three cats.