A Deceit to Die For (57 page)

“Holy smoke. That explains the empty streets and solemn faces,” he said

“No, it just explains the empty streets. A smile is a rarity in this city at any time.”

There was no arguing with that observation, one he had made himself on several occasions. Outside of the tourist centers, Turks were quiet and somber in public. The elevator stopped, and the doors opened. He had expected to step out into the restaurant, but saw only a sign pointing up another flight of stairs. They began ascending the stairs.

“Has anyone claimed responsibility?” he asked.

“Apparently, it was a radical Muslim group called Hizbullah, not the one in Lebanon but a separate Turkish group. The newscasts gave very little information. It was mostly images of buildings reduced to rubble with first responders looking for survivors. CNN was speculating that it was retaliation for some skin-head attacks in Germany almost two months ago.”

“I remember reading about that,” he said.

They had arrived at the door to the restaurant. A waiter greeted them at the door. Except for a group of what looked like tourists from Northern Europe, the place was empty. Gary pointed to the empty side of the room and the waiter took them to a table beside one of the small arched windows. He handed them each a menu and left them to look it over.

“What a view,” exclaimed Angela, looking out the window.

It was a beautiful, cloudless day. The sea looked like brilliant diamonds had been strewn on the surface. Across the water, they could see the magnificent Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia and then the Sea of Marmara beyond that.

“Wow! This is magnificent. No wonder emperors and sultans chose this piece of real estate as the capital of government. Are you hungry? A friend told me that the kebab and the
kokoreç
were both very good.”

“
Kokoreç
? What is that?” she asked.

“It probably doesn’t sound appetizing, but it is surprisingly good. It’s roasted sheep intestines.”

“I’ll have the kebab,” she replied, wrinkling her nose, “with maybe one of those yogurt drinks.”

“
Ayran
?” he asked.

“Yeah,
ayran
.”

He waved for the waiter. “We’d like two of the lamb kebabs, a salad and two
ayrans
.”

The waiter took the menus, and Gary looked across the table at Angela.

“Have you learned anything about your sister?”

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When she opened them again, they were steely with resolve and smoldering with anger.

“Yes, I won’t bore you with all of the details. I found a hotel, don’t ask me how, filled with women from Eastern Europe and a couple of Romanians. I showed them the picture of my sister and asked if they had seen her. They hadn’t. However, when I told them the story of how she had come to Istanbul in response to an Internet ad for a nanny with a Turkish family, one of the ladies, who looked to be about thirty-five, though for all I know and everything she’s gone through, might be twenty-five, said this was one of the most common ways to get fresh girls.

“She said she knew the man who ran the outfit. I asked if she could take me to him and she looked at me like I was out of my mind. You won’t believe what she told me. She said, ‘If you don’t want to end up working with your sister, you better get on the next flight out of this country. If they even hear that you are asking around, they’ll come after you. Consider her dead. You’ll never find her and even if you do, she’ll never recover from the shame.’ And then with the saddest, most cynical, most broken look I’ve ever seen, she said, ‘Take it from someone with experience. She doesn’t even want to be found anymore.’ I told her I would go to the police. She burst out laughing like I had just told the funniest joke in the world.”

Angela’s eyes became teary. She fought to keep her emotions in check.

“I’m not giving up, Gary. I don’t care if they kill me. I’m not going to give up on my sister.”

Now the tears were streaming down her face. She turned to the window in an attempt to hide them. Gary sat there for a minute, unsure of how to proceed and overwhelmed by the sense of tragedy.
Is that what life is, one long complicated tragedy with a few moments of comic relief thrown in to keep it from getting too monotonous?
He had just gone through a time in his own life when he had thought the same. He was over it now, but it didn’t mean there weren’t moments that made him think that maybe Job had been justified in wishing that he had been stillborn.
But, it’s not just pain,
he thought.
Many have experienced pain and borne it gladly. No, this is the voice of senseless pain. A pain that has no apparent purpose, this is what drives people to despair.

“Angela, I’ve got a friend who may be able to help you,” said Gary.

“I did manage to get the man’s name from the lady. I just don’t know what to do now. I’m determined to find her, but . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Give me the name and a picture of your sister. I’ll see what I can do,” said Gary reassuringly.

“Sure,” she said rummaging in her purse. “The man’s name is Elvir Zubak. That’s all I know. Here is a picture of Bianca and I taken a year before she disappeared. She is a natural brunette but had her hair dyed blonde in this picture.”

Gary took it from her hand and looked it at carefully. Except for the hair, she looked exactly like Angela. They could have been twins.

“So, where have you been since we talked last? You didn’t answer my messages for days. Esra says you haven’t showed up for class. You just disappeared.”

“It’s a long story, and I’m not sure how much of it I can share right now. Can we talk about it later?”

“Sure,” she shrugged her shoulders. “I was just curious. I didn’t mean to pry.”

Gary saw the waiter coming with the food and smiled at him. They both sat in silence while the kebab, salad and drinks were set before them.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” asked the waiter.

“No, this looks great, thanks,” said Gilbert.

For the first couple of minutes neither of them talked. The smell of roasted tomatoes, peppers, eggplant and lamb was mouth-watering. The salad was his favorite. Plain and simple, it was made of minced green onion, fresh diced tomatoes and cucumbers, parsley, olive oil and lemon juice. He noticed that Angela seemed to have quite a healthy appetite and wondered if she were running out of money. She was the one that broke the silence.

“Did you know that Isaac Rousseau, Jean Jacques Rousseau’s father, worked for the Ottoman Sultan Ahmed III as a watchmaker from 1705 to 1711?”

“Nope, I had no idea,”

“He actually lived in this very tower,” she continued. “It’s sort of scary to think that the sperm donor who brought the advent of Socialism and eventually Communism into the world, worked here in a Muslim country as a watchmaker for the sultan.”

Gary almost coughed on his food.

“Sperm donor?” he asked. “Is that how you view fathers?”

“Not generally, but the man abandoned his son. That’s what I call a sperm donor. It probably explains why Jean Jacques did the same thing to all of his children, but from birth. Anyway, Rousseau came because he was a Protestant and the Ottomans were more tolerant of Protestants than the Catholics were. What can explain this?”

Gary was a bit taken aback by the turn the conversation had taken.

“I’m not sure what you mean or where this is going.”

“I don’t know where it will take us either,” replied Angela with a smile. “Why don’t we find out?”

Gary loved her playful attitude and intellectual curiosity. It had made their English lessons more interesting too.

“Very well,” he said. “We shall take this path you have proposed, but first you must answer me a question. Your English is already excellent. Why did you sign up for private lessons with our group?”

“I just wanted the social interaction, I guess. I figured the practice would keep me from forgetting what I worked so hard to learn. Plus, I saw that the teacher was a native English speaker. We had very few of those in Romania.”

“I see,” replied Gary. “I’m not sure I know the answer to your question, but I’ll take a stab at it.”

“Excuse me?” she said with that quizzical look and tone he had come to realize from their English class meant she didn’t understand something.

“Sorry. That’s an idiom. It means ‘I’ll give it a try.’”

“But, I thought ‘try’ was a verb. How can you ‘give a try’? That sounds ungrammatical,” she protested.

Gary chuckled. “Yeah, I see what you mean, but ‘give it a try’ is a colloquial term that simply means ‘try’. It might imply some uncertainty on the speaker’s part about the likelihood of success. It must be tough learning English with all these idioms and stuff.”

“Why is that?”

“Well, they say it’s the richest language in the world.”

She shook her head and rolled her eyes.

“You Americans are all alike. You think other languages cannot match English for richness? That is absurd. I speak fluent Russian and French, decent English and, of course, Romanian. Every language is an ocean of culture and meaning onto itself. They are all complex and profound enough to keep you learning a lifetime.”

“Listen, I . . .”

She raised her hand to cut him off.

“No, you listen to me for a second. In my first year of high school, I was given a scholarship to go to a university prep school. It was supposed to be very strong in the sciences. We were poor, so my father encouraged me to attend. The science instructors were very good, and the people were very kind. Still, it didn’t take long for me to realize that it was a school of indoctrination. I did some research and found out that the organization behind the schools was a Turkish Muslim missionary enterprise. At the time, I think they had four schools in Romania. They wooed poor students with scholarships, won their hearts with kindness and then brainwashed them with Arab imperialism. They said we had to pray in Arabic, as if God couldn’t understand my perfect Romanian.

“To be quite honest, it scared me. I finished that year and then went back to the Romanian school. My father’s an atheist, but, at that time, I was beginning to explore the idea that maybe there was an intelligent being with creativity and emotions that made the rest of us intelligent and emotional as well. It made sense to me. In fact, it still does. But, all of their religious mumbo jumbo about Arabic being the most perfect human language nauseated me. It was no different than the Catholic Church insisting that mass be said in Latin.”

“Look, I wasn’t trying to say English was absolutely the hardest or richest language.”

“But,” she teased, “That is what you said. To plagiarize and adapt a phrase from the man you call the Bard, ‘a rose by any other name will smell as sweet, but no one will know what the hell you are talking about.’ If you had said, ‘it must be tough learning another language,’ then I wouldn’t have thought you were a cultural imperialist, an exceptionalist who held the view that English was difficult to learn because it was richer than other languages.”

“
Touché
. My sincerest apologies,” said Gary feigning obeisance. “I am no cultural imperialist. One day, you will see that, I hope.”

“Make sure I do,” she rejoined with a smile. “Now, if you will get back to the original question.”

“What was it?”

“Why the Ottoman Turks were more tolerant of Protestants.”

“Hmmm,” said Gary, trying to gather his thoughts, “I suppose the Ottomans did not view Protestants as a threat because they comprised less than one percent of the population of the empire. Besides, the Protestants were at odds with the Catholics, and since the armies that marched against the Turks were almost always Catholic, they probably figured that the enemy of their enemy was their friend.”