The Dervish House (68 page)
Authors: Ian Mcdonald
Şekure and Osman only leave the room to eat or go to the toilet or talk to the newspapers. They’re drowsy now, dozing off in their chairs. A magazine falls from Şekure’s hand and flops to the floor. You watch them. You’ve been watching them a lot. It’s easy to fool them that you’re asleep. Not so the nurse. Nurses are canny. Nurses know everything.
Şekure and Osman had been out talking to the news when she came into the room. You didn’t need anything, she came in because she knew you would be awake.
‘Is that your grandfather outside?’
You had to think a moment.
‘Yes.’
‘He says he has something for you.’
‘What?’
‘It’s in a bag.’
‘Can he come in?’
‘Not today. Immediate family only.’
‘But he’s my grandfather.’
The nurse smiled.
Then you did sleep, but not for very long because you were woken by the feeling of something moving against you, something long and very smooth and very soft but with a cat-tongue prickle at the same time. It moved along your upper arm, under your armpit, which almost made you laugh from ticklishness, down your side to slide over your hip on to your belly. Something presses against your navel. You carefully carefully lifted the sheet that is all that covers you and there, beyond the plastic scar of the heart-spider, Snake raised his jewelled head.
You are the Boy Detective and you have just solved your first and greatest case. Nothing will ever be quite as exciting and important. That’s all right. This case almost killed you. But that’s all right too, because the hospital will make it better than it ever was. And here is Snake, your faithful sidekick with Monkey and Rat and Bird, curled on your stomach. It’s almost dark now. The nurse tells you that Mr Ferentinou has gone home. You hope he’s all right. Şekure and Osman are asleep, leaning against each other like birds in a cage. Even the machines are quiet and in that quiet you push down, push down like you did at the shore at Üsküdar when you had the attack. You push down and listen to your heart. Bu-duh. Bu-duh. Bu-duh. It is good. It is very good.
‘Yah!’ Adnan Sarioğlu roars as he knocks out the autodrive, floors the gas and launches the howling Audi into the drive-time traffic streaming sedate and orderly Asia-wards over the Bosphorus Bridge. The cars scurry, the cars scamper.
Coming through
.
Coming through
.
Ayşe puts her hand on the wheel.
‘Don’t go back to Ferhatpaşa. I can’t abide that apartment. Sell it, get rid of it. I don’t need a yalı, I don’t need a Bosphorus view and mooring for my speedboat; I just need to be back in Europe again. We can afford somewhere decent; run the money through my family, or through the gallery. Just, not Ferhatpaşa, not tonight. Let’s get a hotel; somewhere good. Somewhere we can look like a couple of millionaires. By the water.’
‘Hell yes. Hell yes. I think I know somewhere.’ Adnan taps into the drive AI . ‘When I was in Özer . . .’ Adnan pauses. ‘It’s odd saying that. It’s like missing a tooth. When I was in Özer with the boys, we used to call ourselves the Ultralords of the Universe, you know, after that kids’ TV series, Draksor, Ultror, Terrak, Hydror: Ultralorrrrds . . . That’s the kind of thing you did in Özer. There was another cartoon I used to love, I think it was a remake of an old American thing from way back. There were these two kids, a boy and girl, and they each had half of a magic ring. Usual thing, they fight crime, they battle demons, all that, but when they got in trouble, they could join the two halves of the ring together, shout
Shazzan!
and this big fat djinni in harem pants would appear and kick animated ass. Of course, you realised pretty quick that the show was only interesting if the bad guy had stolen one of the rings or the djinni was trapped somewhere and the kids had to rely on their own ingenuity.’
Shazzan!
and this big fat djinni in harem pants would appear and kick animated ass. Of course, you realised pretty quick that the show was only interesting if the bad guy had stolen one of the rings or the djinni was trapped somewhere and the kids had to rely on their own ingenuity.’
Adnan takes out his half of the Gültaşli Koran and holds it in his hand. Ayşe matches it with hers.
‘Shazzan!’ Adnan shouts. Ayşe completes the book.
‘Shazzan!’
Then Adnan flicks on the autodrive and reclines his seat and goes straight back, grinning like a millionaire, and Ayşe laughs and shakes out her hair and reclines her seat and rolls on to her side to face him and the Audi arcs high over the Bosphorus through the unceasing traffic and ever-flowing river of lights.
There are many quiets in the garden. Necdet Hasgüler sits on the rim of the fountain catching different quiets like butterflies. There is the quiet of insulation; how the soft, organic woodwork of the dervish house reduces the growl of the city to a murmur. Stone and concrete reflect, wood absorbs. There is the quiet of small things; the trickle of water from the fountain, the soft pad of the lizard that lives in the fountain’s base, the bird that stoops down to perch on the gallery eaves, examines him with one eye, then the other, then flies away again. There is the quiet of being; the dark wooden pillars of the cloister, the blue and white tiles, the marble of the ablutions fountain, the smells of water and old sun-bleached wood and earth and greenery. There is the quiet of absence: no people, no voices, no words, no needings or questions. There is the quiet of presence: no one in the tiny garden but Necdet and the Green Saint.
‘Hello friend,’ Necdet whispers. Hızır nods from his seat on the stone bench where the roses grow. The army doctor who had patched up his hands and examined him after the rescue at Kayişdaği told him a story about the Mevlana, the great saint whose order built this tekke. The Mevlana had a friend, Şams of Tabriz, a spiritual friend, the other half of his soul, one spirit in two bodies. Together they explored the depth of God in ceaseless conversation. The dervishes grew jealous of the one-in-twoness and quietly killed Şams of Tabriz. When the Mevlana was unable to find his friend, the only possible conclusion was that they had merged and Şams was now part of him.
Why should I seek?
I am the same as he.
His essence speaks through me.
I have been looking for myself.
Necdet knows how long Hızır will be with him.
‘And the others?’
‘We’ll monitor them of course, but there’s no reason to hold them. They’re not sick. Like you they have passed through a delusional phase into a stable configuration. It seems to grant them extra faculties that we don’t have the concepts, much less the language, to explain. More conscious? Differently conscious?’
‘How long will it last, Doctor?’
That when the doctor had told Necdet the story of Şams of Tabriz. As God wills. These things turn. As his brother brought him to safety, helped him, cared for him, now he will help Ismet. The brotherhood is strong but men are stupid when they band together. The street shariat is strong and it can be a great good, but their work could easily spin apart through rivalry or dogmatism. If Ismet calls him a shaykh, then a true shaykh he will be. Shaykh Necdet. The whirl is in everything
You have made me real, Friend
.
.
The perfume of verdure in the little garden is suddenly heady, dizzying. Tomorrow Necdet will go back to Başibüyük, to his family, to his sister and try to put right his old wrongs. Tonight, the evening azan has broken out from the loudspeakers of the Tulip Mosque. The dervish house accepts the sound, the invocation of the call to prayer swirls in the enclosed air of the tekke garden, swells and ebbs. He might go and pray.
This is the azan calling ikindi from the minarets of the three thousand mosques of Istanbul. This is a stork spiralling up on the thermals high above the corporate towers and Levent and Maslak. This is an atom of carbon bonded to four hydrogen atoms; star-forged, hurtling through the gas pipeline beneath the Bosphorus towards Europe. This is a Mellified Man, sleeping on a bed of honey until the trumpet of Israfil wakes him. This is three men dead and cold in an army morgue. This is the Little Virgin of St Pantaleimon’s spreading her protecting veil over the twenty million souls of Europe’s greatest city. This is lovers in a rented room washed by the sound of the sea. This is the Storm of the Turning Windmills, singing in the lines of the skysails, licking the water of the Bosphorus to restless cat-tongues. This is the secret name of God, written across Istanbul in letters too great and yet too small to be comprehended. This is the stir of djinn and rememberings, which are not as different as humans think, in the twilight of Adem Dede Square, outside the old dervish house. This is the turn, this is the whirl, this is the dance that is woven into every particle of the universe. This is the laughter of Hızır the Green Saint. This is Istanbul, Queen of Cities, and she will endure as long as human hearts beat upon the earth.
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