A Twist of Orchids (5 page)

“Oh, damn and blast!” she yelled and punched the exhaust fan button. Who said you couldn’t go wrong with milk and potatoes?

The Ismets’ Turkish food shop was situated between an ironmonger’s and a
tabac
on the main street of the town of Brames. The front was painted green, and the word
Lokum
, Turkish for the gummy, sugared confection known in English as Turkish delight, was lettered in flowing script on the display window. Julian, with his sweet tooth, was a valued customer of Lokum. Whenever he was out that way, he always dropped in to buy squares of Betul Ismet’s baklava, which oozed honey beneath the tooth and left telltale shards of pastry on his beard. He treated himself to little tubs of
mulhallebi
, a cold, fragrant milk pudding dusted with ground pistachios, or savory, multi-layered
borek
stuffed with red peppers or eggplant. The latter were sprinkled with sesame seeds that he liked to pop between his teeth. Some of the seeds lodged there, affording (although he would be ashamed to admit this publicly) a delightful reserve for popping later.

That morning he had another reason for stopping by the store. He had heard that the Ismets were selling a drink at their market stall that they promoted as a “health and sexual stimulant.” They called it Elan, the Aphrodisiac of Sultans, and claimed it contained a secret ingredient. He had a horrible suspicion the ingredient was salep.

For centuries, Turks had used salep, a starchy powder, to make a popular drink of the same name. It was reputed to be a powerful love potion. Julian had heard that there was some scientific
evidence for this, although he did not believe it. Still, at three euros a cup for the ready-made drink or twelve for a packet of the powder, the Ismets’ concoction was a lot cheaper than Viagra.

Julian’s problem was not truth in advertising. His real concern was that salep was made from orchids. For centuries the Turks had dug up wild orchid tubers, which they dried, ground up, and mixed with hot milk, honey, and cinnamon to make salep drink. Salep was also used in other foods, like Turkish ice cream. The traditional practice had not changed, but demand had increased. He had read that between thirty and fifty million orchids of numerous genera were harvested every year to make salep. Julian was all for tradition, but the relentless collection of tubers in the wild had put many of the source plants on the endangered list. Consequently, the Turkish government had banned the export of all forms of native orchids, whole or in part, chopped up or pulverized. However, large amounts of the product were still consumed domestically. Salep also continued to be internationally traded. Unlike illicit drugs, it was a minor blip that did not register on a customs officer’s radar screen.

The long and short of it was that Julian took any threat to orchids almost as a personal attack. By trade he was a landscape gardener, a profession that he practiced in the Dordogne with varying financial success. But his real love was wild terrestrial orchids, wherever they grew. And the last thing he wanted to see was the popularization in his corner of France of a product that encouraged their destruction.

That was what he planned to talk to the Ismets about that morning. He had been debating for a couple of weeks how to put his case: directly (please stop importing the stuff); or edging into it sideways (look, your specialty is Turkish foods, not so-called “health” products. Why not stick to what you do best?). He wasn’t sure how either approach would be received. Osman and his wife,
Betul, were hard-working people who had probably never thought about the ecological impact of their commerce. That was the trouble with the world in general, he thought. Too busy. Too unconcerned. As he parked his car and hurried against a biting wind toward the shop, Julian decided to try a blend of direct and indirect. He was disappointed to find Lokum’s front door locked and the
Fermé
sign hanging crookedly in the window.

Surprised, too, because he could see lights and activity inside. Osman appeared to be having an energetic conversation with a tall, fair-haired gendarme whom Julian recognized: Sergeant Laurent Naudet. Julian had met the gangling young policeman the previous spring. He knocked on the glass. Osman’s arm waved him away peremptorily, but Betul, seeing who it was, came to open the door.

“
Mon Dieu, qu’est-il arrivé?
” Julian stared about him as he stepped inside. Had the place been hit by an earthquake? Everything was off the shelves. Plastic bins of homemade foodstuffs had been overturned, their contents strewn across the floor where they had been stepped on, making a slippery mess. It also seemed unusually cold in the shop.

“It’s terrible.” Betul shut the door and relocked it. She was a comfortably built woman whose face in youth might have been full and cheerful but with age had taken on the loose-fleshed droop of a bloodhound. Today her large, sad eyes were red and swollen with crying. She wore a coat as well as ankle-high, fleece-lined boots. As usual, a kerchief was tied over her hair. Julian had never seen her without some kind of head covering.

“Thugs! Racist thugs!” Osman exclaimed, turning to Julian with a gesture of despair. His face, with its horse’s mane mustache, was both outraged and tragic. Unlike his wife, he wore only a baggy cardigan by way of extra clothing. His big stomach hung over his belt like a sandbag.

Another gendarme, chubby, dark-haired, rosy-cheeked, emerged from the back of the store. Julian recognized him as Albert Batailler, Laurent’s partner. Julian exchanged greetings with both men.

“What the hell happened?”

“They broke in through the back,” said Albert, pushing his kepi off his forehead.

Osman shouted in his imperfect French, “Is all you can say? I know that! Who do you think sweep glass? Who fix window?”

“Well, you shouldn’t have,” Albert said severely. “You might have disturbed evidence.”

“Evidence? Evidence? Is everywhere. How long you take to come? Meanwhile, is great hole for wind to blow in. My wife, she freeze. Anyway, you think these thugs are nice to leave fingerprints? DNA maybe?”

“We came as soon as you called.” Albert was not backing down before the near-hysterical shopkeeper. “And the perp might well have cut himself.”

“Cut? I give him cut he remember,
pis haydut!
”

“Was anything taken?” Laurent asked, trying to calm things down.

“Who can tell?” Osman moaned. “They destroy, only destroy. Food they smash. Everything on floor.” He turned about him, surveying his devastated shop.

“Any money missing?”

“Money? Maybe.”

“How much?”

“I don’t know.”

Laurent went to the old-fashioned till on the counter and released the cash drawer. It popped open with a clang, revealing perhaps a hundred euros in bills and coins. Not robbery, then, but sheer vandalism.

“You live over the shop?” Laurent asked.

Betul and Osman nodded.

“And yet you heard nothing?”

“I sleep good,” said Osman defensively.

“He sleeps like a dead man,” said Betul softly. “Our bedroom is two floors up, monsieur. The living room and kitchen are in between. It’s impossible to hear.” Her French was considerably more fluent than Osman’s, and more idiomatic. Although she deferred to her husband in most things, Julian had the impression that Betul was more attuned to the realities around her and was the shrewder of the two.

Julian went to have a look at the rear of the store. A glass pane in the back door had been smashed. An attempt had been made to block it with cardboard, but the cardboard had been pulled away, no doubt by Albert in his search for evidence, and now hung by a strip of masking tape. A fearsome gale blew through the jagged gap. Bags of spices had been slashed open. The air smelled of aniseed and pepper. Pistachio nuts, coffee beans, and dried apricots were scattered all over. A big sack of flour had been upended, its contents driven into little drifts, like snow, by the draft from the broken window. His foot slipped in an oily magma of crushed tomatoes and black olives. The damage was vicious and thorough. Julian understood the Turk’s anger.

When he returned to the front, Laurent was asking the Ismets if they had any enemies, anyone who wished them ill, or whom they might have offended. Betul, who had been hovering at the edge of the circle of men, was now openly sobbing. Osman ignored her.

“Racist thugs at market in Beaumont,” he answered bitterly. “Three of them, one with pimples. Call bad names. Was big fight. Smash stall. Beat Kazim up for no reason.”

Beaumont was outside Laurent and Albert’s jurisdiction, but they had heard about the brawl. The gendarme who had received the full force of Kazim’s pompommed shoe in his stomach six days earlier might not have agreed with the Turk’s account of events. Kazim had given as good as he got, perhaps had even provoked the incident, according to a pig farmer from Saint-Avit-Sénieur. Kazim and one of the youths had been hauled off to the local gendarmerie, where they had been held for a time to cool off. They were later released with a stern warning to stay out of trouble.

“You think they were the ones who did this?” Laurent tugged at one of his oversized ears. His bony wrists stuck well beyond the cuffs of his navy jacket.

“Of course. Is persecution. Because we are Turks. Always we are made to suffer.”

“Okay. We’ll check it out.” Laurent shot a questioning look at his partner. “Although it’s funny they didn’t touch the cash.”

The gendarmes left.

“You see?” Osman fumed after they had gone. “You see how we are treated? Twenty years we are here. Good citizens. Not cheat taxes like everyone else. Work hard. What thanks? They beat us. Break our shop. Spoil everything. Who pays? Who pays for good food thrown on ground?” (Betul’s weeping became louder; it was her labor that had gone into all the ruined pastries and dolmas, the sugar-dusted squares of Turkish delight). “Does criminal pay? Does government pay? No. Is poor Turk pay.” Osman beat his massive chest and, like his wife, began to cry.

“Come on,” Julian said, suggesting the only helpful thing he could think of. “I’ll help you clean up.”

•

It did not take them long to clear the mess away. Everything was dumped or scooped into plastic bags. Osman taped the cardboard
over the broken pane again and closed the door leading to the back part of the building. Fortunately, there was no real damage. The floors and walls just needed a good scrubbing, but the Ismets would have to restock. Julian could see that the loss, much of it imported goods, was considerable for a small enterprise such as Lokum. He wondered if the Ismets carried vandalism insurance.

After Osman and Julian had dragged the last of the garbage bags out to the bin in the alley behind the store, the Ismets invited Julian upstairs for coffee. It was the first time Julian had been in their living quarters. The decor was overwhelmingly red. Red carpets covered the floor. There was a divan upholstered in red plush with chairs to match, a carved buffet with a red runner. They sat at a table covered in a red-fringed cloth. On the walls hung hammered brass trays and photographs of Anatolia, of the Hagia Sophia. Betul made them coffee, hot, strong and sweet, served in little glass cups with wire handles.

“We have nothing but misfortune.” Her eyes filled up once more. “First Kazim, now this.”

“You mean the fight?” Julian asked.

Osman shook his head. “Not fight. Is worse than fight. Kazim is leave home.”

Betul clarified, “After the gendarmes let him go, Kazim came back to the store. I was here alone. Osman was still at the market, cleaning up the mess those hoodlums made. Kazim said, ‘
Anne
, I have to leave.’ I said, ‘Leave where?’ He just said, ‘Don’t worry about me. I’ll be okay, but I can’t stay here.’ He’d only come back for his motorcycle, you see. We are his parents, and we are less to him than his
moto.
” She added miserably, “He’s always been stubborn, always difficult, always in trouble, ever since he was a little boy.”

“He don’t let people step him, that’s why,” said Osman, rousing himself. “He hit back. Kazim is trouble because he got
guts. Is how he should be, right?” The father struck his bulging stomach with a clenched fist in a man-to-man appeal directed at Julian.

“What good does it do?” The mother’s bloodhound face drooped even more. “A Muslim in France should go softly. It doesn’t pay to make waves.”

“Well,” consoled Julian, “I’m sure he’ll be back.”

Betul stared into her lap. “No. He’s unhappy here. We try, but happiness you cannot make for others. People reject him because we are different. In school, he always felt apart from the other children. He thinks there is no future in the store. After those toughs beat him up, I think he was very angry—with them, with us, with everyone. Maybe he believes going away from home will solve his problems. Maybe he wants to forget he’s Turkish. He is our son.” She raised her eyes to Julian. “Monsieur Wood, what should we do?”

Julian scratched his head. Up to now, he had only known the Ismets as purveyors of good food. Their private affairs had not entered into his transactions with them. Helping them clear away the vandals’ wreckage, entering their upstairs domain, seemed suddenly to have placed him in the position of confidante and counselor. Both husband and wife were looking at him expectantly. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Do you know where he is?”

“With her,” Osman said disgustedly. “With bad-influence girl.” Betul was more informative. “Her name is Nadia Beaubois. They were at school together. They went out sometimes. Osman objected because she’s not Turkish. We think maybe Kazim is staying with her. But how can he live? He has no money, no job. I’m afraid for him. He’s young still. His place is here with us. Out there, he’ll fall in with a bad crowd. Monsieur Wood”—she eyed him tentatively—“please, if only you could help us.”

“Me?” Julian was dumbfounded. “What can I do?” He had no experience with the young. Moreover, he had never met the lad. Kazim worked at the family’s market stall with one or the other of his parents, moving from town to town according to the day of the week, so it was only Betul or Osman whom Julian ever saw at the shop.