The Dervish House (60 page)

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Authors: Ian Mcdonald

BOOK: The Dervish House
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‘If I may be so bold, what brings you back to the Queen of Cities?’ Georgios is fascinated by her fine fingers around the heavy glass. He wonders how he seems to her; does anything remain of the lean, shy, inadvertent revolutionary, or is he just a scarcely recognizable bulb of tired flesh?
‘Business. My family still owns a number of properties in Beyoğlu and I’m trying to tie them together into a trust fund.’
‘Do you have children?’
A flicker of a shadow. ‘No. Mine wasn’t that kind of life. But I have grand-nieces and -nephews I’m very fond of and I think they should have something. We’re not getting any younger. But I have hopes for them. Did you?’
‘No, no. Nothing like that. An academic, bachelor life for me. I live alone. I moved down to Eskiköy about ten years ago when I lost my position at the university - there are almost no Greeks left in Beyoğlu now, and those there are are old and tired like me. I’ve an apartment in an old dervish house; it’s rather lovely in its way. It suits me. I don’t need much excitement. There’s a neighbour’s lad, I’m very fond of him, he’s like a grandson. An only child. He has a health problem. I worry about him, but you can’t be too careful, people accuse first and ask questions later these days. Everyone is guilty until proved innocent. But you’ve been very successful.’
Ariana takes the compliment without self-effacement or affectation.
‘I think what you mean is that I manage compromise. Success would be reducing the number of dead children. I’m sorry, that’s crass, and arch. I’m doing less fieldwork these days; it’s mostly seminars and lectures. What you can’t say when you’re up there on the podium is that NGOs are the world’s worst to work with. They all have their own specialisms, they all have their own agendas, they all hate each other. Give me governments or warlords any time. At least you know where you are with them. Small groups are the natural social organizational level of humans and the hardest to work with. Politics doesn’t understand groups.’
The menus arrive. The dishes are sophisticated and sumptuous and illustrate how meagre and monastic Georgios’ life has been; if not ever at the level of eating out of a tin with a spoon, content with sparseness and monotony. This is dizzying, he wants everything, he can’t choose. Choose he must, choose he does and after the order has been taken Ariana talks more about her work in international peacemaking, It has taken her around the world to different countries all with the same core problem, males killing each other. Ariana’s achievements are immense, but Georgios gains the impression that she is no longer certain it was a life well-spent. There can never be an end to violence as long as there are young males.
‘I’m afraid I was never very good at caring about other people,’ Georgios says. Over the first course there is no talk at all. It would be a dishonour to the chef.
‘And on all your travels, did you ever come back to Istanbul?’ Georgios asks as the plates are lifted.
‘No. Never. Not until I had to. I’ve been away from Istanbul much longer than I ever lived here. Athens is my home.’
‘You are remembered here.’
Ariana scoops up her scarf and pulls it around her.
‘I’m not sure I want to be. It makes me feel like a ghost, one that’s not dead.’
‘Did you go to the old house?’ Ariana shakes her head. ‘It’s long gone, it’s been a backpackers’ hostel for about twenty years.’
‘Good,’ she says.
The main courses arrive; lamb for Georgios, fish for Ariana. She orders rakı with the barbounia, which is correct. Georgios has always thought fish too simple, too unrefined for the best restaurants. A thing dead on a plate. His lamb is glorious, full, mouth-rewarding. On what thin fare has he been wasting himself? He wants it to go on forever but the pleasure of food is its finitude so he eats around the lamb, leaving the flesh to the last. The main course is finished, the evening is slipping past like lighted ships and he has not said what he must.
‘Did you keep in contact any of the old group?’
The shadow again crosses Ariana Sinanidis’ face.
‘I didn’t dare. I knew they had agents in Athens.’
‘That was wise. Do you know what happened to them?’
‘I know that Arif Hikmet died five years ago.’
‘He refused to take their deal.’
‘Inform on others.’
‘Yes. And they needed to make an example. When the government changed he was let out but he never got the post at the newspaper back. He went into politics: he formed a minor party on the left that was eventually rolled into the People’s Party of Toil and eventually the Turkish Workers Party.’
‘Devlet Sezer?’
‘Devlet Sezer died ten years back. Cancer. Smoked himself to death. He couldn’t get published so he wrote an anonymous column in
Hürriyet
about the hidden history of the city and old Istanbul characters. He became a minor celebrity.’
‘Recep Gül?’
‘He went to Germany and became an Islamist. Well, as Islamist as anyone gets in Turkey. Guest-worker discrimination was his issue. He worked through the mosque network. He was killed in an arson attack on a hostel in Dresden, the former East Germany. They were very bigoted against Turks in the former East.’
‘And Merve Tüzün?’
‘She got three months for agitation and when she came out she couldn’t get a teaching job. She became a poet. She writes under the name of Tansu. She’s well regarded, she has quite a lot in print.’
‘Tansu. I think I’ve heard that name. She always used to read at those sessions in the Karakuş Café. It was dreadful, adolescent stuff.’
‘Seemingly she’s improved.’
Ariana sits forward now.
‘Arif Kezman, what about him?’ As she says each name, Georgios sees them in the crowd at the Karakuş Café, slowed by time and remembering, faces impossibly young, hair impossibly full and long, clothes just impossible; slowing with the act of recall until they freeze, each one, mouths open, fists in the air, feet off the ground, arms around each other, jacket flaps flying; or on the picket line at Taksim Square, mouths contorted in a yell, a chant, hands slapping away the muzzles of army rifles; or blinking, posing in the sun, arms around each other like brothers, champagne flutes in hand, against the blue and white of Meryem Tasi’s pool. The Revolutionaries of 1980.
‘Arif you won’t believe. He’s a TV presenter.’
‘No!’ exclaims Ariana Sinanidis, captivated now.
‘Oh yes. A huge star. He’s old now and pretty much retired. He used to host a show called
Brother Mehmet
where they would put soldiers on national service together with their families. It was incredibly popular.’
‘The army?’ Ariana shakes her head. The lights of Istanbul are caught in her hair. ‘Arif?’
‘They still haul him out every year for the New Year show. Made up to the eyeballs, he is. He can hardly move from botox.’
Ariana laughs. She tosses her head back, shows her fine teeth, wrinkles her eyes. It’s a young woman’s laugh. Then she covers her mouth and kills the laugh as she remembers those lives wrecked on the hard rock of 1980.
‘Ariana,’ Georgios Ferentinou says, ‘there is something you must know, something that has gone unsaid for forty-seven years.’
They came for the Kurds and they came for the Armenians. They came for the Jews. Then they came for the Greeks.
Tobacco smoke, year upon year, had permeated the glossy paint of the room in Üsküdar so deeply that the walls smelled of diseased lung. It was not a smoky, burning smell; it was vile and metallic but clearly human and unclean. It stank of phlegm.
‘Do you know Ariana Sinanidis?’ the lead inquisitor asked.
‘Yes,’ Georgios Ferentinou said very simply. ‘Yes, I do.’
The third intelligence man, the one who was not making notes, took photographs from a large manilla envelope and laid them out one at a time on the desk. Georgios and Ariana in the front line at Taksim. Georgios and Ariana with a loud-hailer. Georgios and Ariana handing out leaflets. Georgios and Ariana running down Istiklal Cadessi. Georgios and Ariana huddling in a doorway, glancing up at unseasonal rain.
‘You are, ah, involved with Miss Sinanidis?’ the inquisitor asked.
‘I am,’ Georgios said. ‘We are a couple. I am her . . .’ he hesitated over the word, ‘ . . . lover.’ He saw ballpoint-pen man write carefully,
fucking her?
and circle the question mark twice.
‘You’re an economist,’ the inquisitor said casually, squinting at a sheet in his folder. ‘That’s a good subject, a useful subject. You can get a good job with a qualification in economics. The big banks give top jobs to economists. Turkey needs economists. The government can use economists.’
‘I want to stay in research.’
‘Oh, do you now?’
Photograph man opened another envelope. Only one picture this time, a big, grainy blow-up of people standing around a truck at a border post.
‘Is your family settling in well in Greece?’ the inquisitor said.
‘I believe so.’
‘Do they not have universities in Athens? Schools of economics or whatever they are?’
‘I prefer to stay in Istanbul.’
‘For academic reasons?’
‘For academic reasons.’
‘Not personal reasons. Romantic reasons. Reasons to do with Ariana Sinanidis.’
‘I said it was for academic reasons,’ Georgios snapped. Ballpoint man tutted loudly.
‘That’s good,’ Interrogator said. ‘It’s good to have that focus and dedication. Many an academic career starts brightly - even brilliantly, then sex comes along, and it’s all scattered to the winds. It would be a shame if that were to happen to you.’
‘Are you threatening me?’
‘I’m advising you, as your own adviser at the university would. She is very good looking, isn’t she?’ Interrogator slipped a close-up of Ariana Sinanidis out of Georgios’ folder and turned it to each intelligence man in turn. Photograph-man took it and studied it closely. ‘In a classical way. A Greek nose. A real looker. We’ve all been young men, ruled by our cocks, we’ve all had that blindness, done stupid things, made poor decisions. She’s a known trouble-maker and
agente provocateuse
. You’ve just been easily led - and I don’t blame you son; young men, like I said, are ruled by their cocks but they’re also ruled by their hearts, and it’s a romantic game, politics, protest, revolution. Young men should be idealistic, they should be revolutionaries. Enjoy it before you become old, pragmatic men like us. You have a great future in front of you, lad. You won’t be an office grunt like we are. Don’t throw it away for a moment of summer madness.’
Georgios looked at his hands resting lightly and symmetrically on his thighs. He looked at the photographs of his small, romantic rebellion. He looked at his family at the check-point, moments before the truck was searched and half their valuables were confiscated. He breathed in the dying-lung odour of the interrogation room.
‘Meryem Nasi,’ he said.
‘Good lad,’ the interrogator said.
The security forces raided the Yeniköy house that night. The neighbours had been warned and took themselves discreetly elsewhere. The riot troops smashed in the front door with a small battering ram. Others went over the wall and across the terrace, past the pool, kicking over the drinks trolleys and upsetting the patio seats. They stormed across the white carpets and past the grand piano and the sculptures and the paintings. They found Meryem Nasi in her kitchen with an open bottle of wine in one hand and a telephone in the other. She went properly and politely, without screaming or violence, though she did shout ‘get Ossian’ to her friend Elif Mater visiting from Madrid. ‘He’s my lawyer.’
She turned up three days later in a dumpster at the new Metro station at Yesilyurt. Formal identification could only be made through dental records.
‘I gave Meryem Nasi’s name to the police,’ Georgios says. Ship lights shift behind him. ‘They killed her. They had me in a room, all day. They lifted me from the university and took me to a room in Üsküdar and I told them everything. I couldn’t stop. When you’re somewhere like that, when you realize they have you and can do anything they want with you, you tell them anything they ask. They asked about you. They seemed to think that you were high up in the protest movement. I told them Meryem Nasi was the main organizer of the protests, that she was running a left-wing cell, that she knew everyone. They arrested her. I didn’t think they would kill her. That was when I had to get you out of Istanbul. I gave them her name. You know that, everyone knows that, everyone’s known that for forty-seven years. Georgios Ferentinou betrayed Meryem Nasi to the security police who killed her. Forty-seven years a Judas, I’ve learned to live with that. But what no one knows, what I’ve never told anyone, is that I gave them Meryem Nasi’s name to keep you safe.’
Ariana says, ‘I know.’
Georgios doesn’t hear her, or if he does, he doesn’t register what she has said, he is about to work out more of his long expiation, then he trips over those two words.
‘What?’ Sometimes you remember that that view from your window, that chink of vista, is of another continent. Sometimes the seasonal winds remind you that that stripe of water that runs through the heart of your city is the unbounded sea. Sometimes you discover that those palisades of clouds along the horizon are mountains.

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