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In all the years with my grandfather I saw him weep twice, the first time on the day he found me, the last when my training was finished, and he saw a demonstration of the work he had taught me. This time his tears were for joy.
I was born from a pile of rubbish.
Grandfather found me on the refuse heap outside Constantinople, rags full of blood, genitals cut away. He brought me to life. He said I was five or six. I never understood how Grandfather could love a piece of refuse, but I knew that he did. He named me Careen so I would remember his care for me, and I called him my grandfather, because he was so grand. He was a storyteller. He would put his hands between a lamp and the wall and make animals, people, marketplaces, whole caravans from the shadows, late into night, until the pictures he made on the wall began to fade with the dawning of day. I would wake with the sun high and find him in the courtyard tending the fruits and flowers that grew there.
Grandfather spoke of the seas, but even he could not show the sea in a shadow on the wall. So we traveled there. We walked beside the sea by day while he told me of the creatures who live beneath the waters. At night we listened to its voice. We took a boat with a fisherman who brought up a fish in a net. It looked at me and I realized I could not live under the water and the fish could not live on land. So I told the fisherman I had learned enough and he smiled as the fish swam off. Wherever we went Grandfather showed me animals and birds of the place, rocks, mountains, rivers.