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Authors: Ian Mcdonald

BOOK: The Dervish House
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Georgios studies his smoking friend. Cynical, manipulative, gossipy as a widow and vindictive when wronged, opaque of motives and closed of heart, Constantin is far from the kind of man Georgios would choose for a friend. Constantin’s family claimed to be as old as the city of the delta’s name; sons and daughters of Alexander himself. He speaks seven languages, including Classical Greek, and nods to five religions while believing none of them, has studied at three universities in the capitals of three former empires. Nationalism, then Islamism, both twentieth-century political inventions, destroyed the Greek civilization in Egypt that had endured for three thousand years; in Cairo first, ever the political crucible. But cosmopolitan, decaying Alexandria could not remain aloof to the forces surging through the Islamic world. The Pig Riots, the Alexandrians called them: a government health purge to eliminate potential vectors for the H1N1 Swine Flu virus had led to a mass swine cull and, by implication, a purge of the non-Muslim communities. In Alexandria the Copts were still strong so the religious fervour had turned on the small, weak Greek community. In ten days they were erased from history. Constantin had seen the flames leap from the broken dome of St Athanasios and taken the next flight out. He still owns properties in the city, managed through shell companies, trickling rent through middle men and civil servants on the take; enough to keep him in Istanbul. From one dying Greek community to another. Decay; the slow drawing in of the world; hüzün, that uniquely Istanbulu sense of melancholic nostalgia.
‘I saw Ariana,’ Georgios says.
‘Did you talk to her?’
‘No’
‘Well, you need to buck yourself up, Ferentinou. She leaves on Friday.’
‘How do you know this?’
‘We are not the only Greeks in Beyoğlu. I can give you her number.’
‘Call her?’
‘You have business that has gone unfinished for over forty years.’
‘Long before you ever landed in Eskiköy,’ Georgios suddenly snaps. ‘You think you know everything, you know nothing; a gossiping fool is what you are.’ He rises from the table, throws down a scatter of euro coins. There is business forty-seven years unfinished, but Constantin, cosy as a flea on a dog in his own self-exile, thinks it must be something as simple as love unrequited. Love it was, but time and politics have turned it into a need for absolution: Georgios Ferentinou fears that Ariana Sinanidis blames him for the death of Meryem Tasi.
 
Necdet can’t remember the last time he set foot in a mosque but the body never forgets. Wash the feet, the hands, the face and the neck, the ears. Wash with water from the heart of Hızır. The Green Saint has taken himself away and the djinn have withdrawn to the edge of their world but he hears their whispers like wind turning leaves on a tree. They have always been drawn to mosques, mescids, shrines, sacred stones. He leaves his sneakers in the alcove. From the beauty of the tile work to the solid brass lamps Necdet can see that Tulip Mosque was once richly endowed but its fortunes have faded with its neighbourhood and can no longer afford a pensioner to watch the shoes. The carpet beneath his soles is thick and soft, he curls his toes into it. The djinn hang back at the mosque door, fluttering and rustling. By God’s law they are not permitted to enter.
The tarikat has gathered under the loge, the raised platform where the aristocracy would pray, a few metres closer to God, but Necdet does not join them yet. He remembers other, engrained responses. Necdet places himself on the carpet facing the mihrab. He kneels, performs the prostrations. The body never forgets the moves; the tongue never forgets the Arabic. The ritual works him, stretches his muscles. He kneels, hands on thighs. The peace is immense. He looks up into the tiled dome. There are words up there, stretched and concealed by the geometric patterns of the tiles, hidden words. If he concentrates he can make them out. The ninety-nine beautiful names of God, intertwined with stems and leaves and flowers. A Paradise garden blooms in tile across the dome. What kind of flowers are those? Tulips. This is the Tulip Mosque. Necdet realizes that this is a beautiful building and that he knows nothing about it. How old is it, who built it, why? It’s glorious and he’s ignorant. The place he lives, the dervish house; he never thought about it as more than a place to sleep, smoke, escape but it has a history, it has lives woven through it, it has holy men. He understands suddenly that it is very old. Which came first, mosque or tekke? Who were those dervishes, what decided them to build their house there? What brought Ismet and his new dervishes; the building, the history, God, something else?
‘Peace be with all here,’ he says and sits down on the carpet among the brothers. The dervishes mumble greetings in reply. Many of the faces he knows from their visits to the tekke, some better than others, but there are men here he has never seen before. Necdet looks at each in turn; details, distinctions, personalities. These are people, individuals.
‘In God’s name you are very welcome to the Adem Dede group,’ Ismet says. ‘You know many of us already, but this is your first proper induction to the tarikat. We’ve seen things that can’t be rationally explained, we’ve seen you do and say and see things that seem like prophecies from God. What we want to do here is test those, gently, in the spirit of brothers, to discover if they are Islamic or not.’
The big man across the circle in the striped shirt speaks now. Necdet knows he is a garage mechanic in the everyday life. His name is Yusuf and he is second in the order.
‘God willed that we set up this group to explore how God’s justice worked out in a modern, urban society. God’s will is timeless and there can be no division of it, but like a diamond, changing light can cast changing reflections from its facets. While we revere the lives and example of the Hadith, we’ve gone back to the Koran as an unshakeable foundation. In the Holy Koran the light shines brightest. In every word we’re shown the right society - God’s society - the true shariat. Our divine task, thanks be to God and his prophet Mohammed - is to apply that perfect law at the level where people need it. On the street; between families, between people, between small businesses. People need justice. Our judges are aloof at best, corrupt at worst. They are distant and they judge by man’s values, not God’s.’
‘Immoral values,’ big Yusuf murmurs.
‘Always it costs. The law is a rich man’s game. Lawyers get fat on writs and contracts and divorces. They spin cases out and out and out so they can wring every last cent in fees. Why should the law cost? Why should it only be available to those with deep pockets, or influential friends? This is corruption. God’s justice is pure and God’s justice is free. This tarikat, God willing, is about training holy men to be judges in a system of community justice. There are examples all over the world of community micro-credit schemes, why not community micro-justice? We offer a new shariat to those who agree to be bound by its judgements. We seek to judge quickly, fairly, transparently, and in accordance with the Holy Koran.
‘Now we have a case that will really test our faith and abilities: your visions and prophecies can give us an enormous foothold in this community, but first we have to judge, are they Islamic or are they not? Now, what is it you claim you see?’
‘I see beings, creatures, living things that aren’t from this world. I’ve seen things made from living fire, I’ve seen people’s doubles, their exact doubles, upside down inside the earth.’
‘Do you see any here now?’ Yusuf asks.
‘Not now.’
‘Djinn are forbidden entry to mosques,’ Ismet says. ‘Djinn are Koranic. Sura 6, the whole of sura 72 . . .’
Yusuf raises a finger. ‘Brother, we haven’t established that these visions are even djinn.’
Ismet sits back, fidgeting. Necdet feels an immense still calm rise up through him, anchoring him to the marble.
‘I had a vision of a burning baby,’ Necdet says. ‘In the toilets at work. I saw spirits inside the computers.’
‘My brother works at the Levent Business Rescue Centre,’ Ismet interjects.
‘I saw streets filled with them,’ Necdet says and hears again their rustling, rattling, clattering fistle; flocking over and around and through each other. ‘I saw them on every car, every street, I saw them on people’s shoulders, I saw them in the earth . . .’
‘We have to allow for contemporary interpretations,’ says Armağan, an older dervish, grey-haired, with glasses and a peering, inquiring air.
‘Of course,’ Yusuf says. ‘Go on.’
‘And I saw the one who masters them.’
Involuntary straightenings, stiffenings, small intakes of breath.
‘Could you tell us more about this vision?’ Yusuf asks.
‘Yes,’ Necdet says, and knows this is the time to tell because he can smell green verdure blowing through this Tulip Mosque, a perfume of flowers, a scent of deep waters. ‘Something led me out of the office, through a service door. There were corridors, tunnels that went down deep, way way deeper than anyone knows, down deep right under Levent. There’s a fountain down there, an old old fountain, from the old pagan days. But there was still water in it. That’s where he was sitting, by the fountain.’
‘Who?’ asks Ismet.
‘The green man,’ Necdet says.
Hızır, Hızır;
the name runs around the circle.
The Green Saint. God is great. God is great.
Yusuf raises his hand again.
‘Brothers, please. Brother Necdet, would you mind describing this green man?’
‘He was an old man in a green robe, like he was older than everything but at the same time, the youngest thing in the world. He had a hook nose and a big beard like an old Ottoman and the greenest eyes. He smelled of water, old water, deep water, very very pure water. He could smile and be terrifying in the same look. He felt very dangerous, very old and very wild, like he could upturn the roots of the city just because he felt like it. I was very very afraid but, at the same time, how could I be afraid? Of him?’
‘God be praised,’ Bedri cries, a boy from the east who works in a Taksim hotel.
‘The Holy Koran . . .’ Ismet says quickly.
‘
The Cave
does not directly name Hızır, Al-Khidr,’ Yusuf says. ‘He is
the unknown
who met Moses, and that is all the sura says. And that he is vizier to Dulkarnain.’
‘He’s here,’ Necdet says. Consternation erupts among the brothers, praise and fear alike. ‘I see him, he’s right beside you, Hasan.’ The kid with the vague moustache tenses. The mosque lamps on their long chains sway to a sudden air. Necdet bows to the figure in green, cross-legged on the carpet. Yusuf raises his hands, stills the circle again.
‘Brothers, a saint may be among us, but God is in us. Brother Necdet, I’ve a question for you. You were caught up in the bomb on Monday morning on the Levent tram.’
‘I was, yes.’
‘Only the bomber died, I won’t say martyr as no one has claimed the martyrdom. These visions, they only began after the bomb?’
‘That’s right. I was trying to get away from the police, and I saw the head.’
‘A head? What head?’
‘Her head. The bomber woman. I saw her head, in mid-air, and there was light coming out of it.’
‘But these visions, you never had anything like them before the bomb? We need to be very clear on this.’
‘Never.’
‘Do you think it possible that these djinn, even Hızır himself, might be some kind of . . . illusion, hallucination, brought on by being too close to the bomb?’
‘I had a friend who was caught in a Kurdish IED on his service down in Gaziantep,’ says Necmettin, a skinny, bad-skinned man in his twenties who has always seemed to Necdet the closest to him in personality and temperament. ‘He was a mess. Nothing physical, all in here.’ He taps his head. ‘Horrors; thing you wouldn’t believe. Things eating him alive. He met himself going up the down stairs. Post traumatic stress disorder. They all know about it but they don’t want to admit it.’
‘I was in this place way out east called Divrican,’ says Big Şefik, a huge, docile bear of a man with a strange red beard. ‘Serving my time. There was a whole village there suddenly started seeing djinn and angels and ghosts. They were Kurds; Yazidis. Demon worshippers. ’
‘My brother saw that the girl from the Art Gallery was pregnant,’ Ismet says. ‘Necdet could tell her she was pregnant because he saw her karin inside the earth.’
‘Which we have already agreed is not Islam!’ Yusuf thunders.
The imam, an elderly, scholarly man with heavy glasses, has been moving around under the women’s balcony, checking a wall tile here, a frayed piece of carpet there, a dead light bulb elsewhere, but always with an eye on the tarikat. He looks up and glares at the raised voices.
‘Brothers, this is a prayer hall,’ Ismet says but Necdet sees him stare the imam down. The old man turns away.
‘Brother Necdet, I’d ask you now about yourself. How did you come to be with your brother in the dervish house?’
‘This is not relevant,’ Ismet says.
‘There are some of the brothers here who don’t attend your meetings in the dervish house.’
‘I set fire to my sister when I was out of my head on drugs,’ Necdet says. ‘I was not a good man. I was idle, I was rebellious, I was immoral and disobedient to my parents, and I had no respect for Islam. I used drugs, I dealt drugs, I stole cars, I stole money from my neighbours, I broke into their homes and robbed them, I started fights and beat people because I liked it, I was angry all the time.’ As he speaks Necdet holds Hızır in his eye. The Green Saint draws words out of him like water from a well. ‘I set fire to my sister because she looked at me wrong. My father would have killed me but Ismet saved me and brought me here, to look after me, get me away from the people I knew there. I was worthless. Ismet gave me a safe place and found me a job.’

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