Songs My Mother Never Taught Me (17 page)

My uncle, who came back empty-handed from San Francisco, announced, ‘The city was too humid even for masturbating.' (I knew he would ignore the pain İz was suffering.) The next day we took off for London with high hopes. Of her group, İz had allowed only Zuhâl to come to the airport and, wrapped in her scarf, she was tense as if all eyes were on her. We collected our boarding cards and settled in the most out-of-the-way café we could find. While she was engrossed in a feminist comic book, Zuhâl leaned over and whispered, ‘Don't let her know, but I'm convinced that lout Kutsi Serhamza is sitting three tables behind.' I turned round with a shudder of loathing as if a rattlesnake was behind me. The stocky, mongoloid-looking rascal in a Versace shirt was on his feet putting out his cigarette with clumsy fingers. The gorilla on steroids who was attentively holding his case and mobile phone must have been his personal bodyguard. He lurched away towards his hell, his waddling walk imitating ex-president Turgut Özal. I cursed this swaggering hypocrite behind his back as he strutted off. Inspired like an elephant who remembers forty years later who shot down his mate, I committed every inch of him to memory.

Following a series of delay announcements at half-hourly intervals, we eventually boarded the plane. The stewardess in business class peered at Ä°z to a most annoying degree.

As soon as Ä°z swallowed her pill, she sank into a deep sleep. I covered her entire face with the scarf, except for her nostrils and mouth, and wrapped her closely in a blanket. (I notice I'm getting used to such things.) Before I started to read Haruki Murakami's
Sputnik Sweetheart
, just like one of Selçuk Altun's odd heroes, I looked at sublime Istanbul; those who failed to win her soul have now raped her body stone by stone.

This was İz's first visit to London, and she was intently examining everything around her. We settled down in the Ritz Hotel next to Le Meridien where Dalga had staged her confessional. I had a premonition that we would be shown to the gloomy room 423, where Graham Greene and Selçuk Altun's paranoid character Sina had stayed.

Next day, around noon, we went fearfully to Dr Rohatgi's private office in Harley Street. The receptionist, who looked like a retired model, immediately ushered us into a claustrophobic room. There were eight cell-like cubicles into which the patients retreated to prevent them alarming one other. Pam almost had a fit when she realized that we had turned up without an appointment.

Apparently at that moment the doctor was phoning his assistant in Boston. I covertly slipped a £50 note into Pam's pocket. ‘I take all the responsibility, please don't try to stop me,' I said and dived into the doctor's room. I was startled when the Indian, who faced the wall behind him, and spoke on the phone with an accented but poetic English, suddenly turned round at the sound of the door opening. I don't ever recall seeing such an ugly man before in my life. (I couldn't help wondering which part of his body didn't require plastic surgery.) I prepared to be kicked out of the room when he started to scan me with his bulging eyes, but with a smile he signalled to me to sit in the armchair closest to his table and turned back to the wall to continue his conversation. According to his business card on the table, he had graduated from Oxford University Medical School in 1979. I sighed, wondering whether my mother, if she had seen the degrees after his name, BMBch, BA (Hons), FRCS (Eng), DM, FRCS (Plast) while I was in high school, would have wanted me to become a plastic surgeon. I counted the busts of fourteen sulky-faced composers standing on mahogany pedestals dotted around his office.

He finished his conversation, and a familiar piano tune gradually filled the room.

‘Are you Eidur Gudjohnsen or his twin brother?' he asked.

I wondered uncomfortably if I should feel happy to end up with a Chelsea-supporter surgeon, immediately emphasizing that I was a Harvard graduate. I summarized dramatically the events of the previous week.

‘I still can't believe that I'm looking at a Turk with the physique of a Viking prince,' he laughed, and I assured him that my grandmother was a pure Swede.

‘I've had many Turkish patients, Mr Harvard, but all of them ignorant of your world-class pianist İdil Biret. If you know who composed the piece we're listening to and who the pianist is, perhaps you can erase my negative impression of Turks.'

(Horowitz was my father's favourite pianist!) ‘With your permission I'll reply to both questions. It's Chopin's Op. 55, Nocturne No. 2, and Vladimir Horowitz is playing.'

I recall his nervous laugh as he said, ‘I must rush off to an important meal; bring your princess in right away.'

İz came in, head bent, timid as an inexperienced concubine, but when he put his hand on her shoulder and declared, ‘I will give you your face back, Turkish Delight,' I felt like kissing his hands like they do in corny Turkish films.

Ä°z could be operated on in four days. Ideally we should stay in London for five months afterwards. I was keenly aware that a long period of psychological adjustment would be inevitable. The doctor had warned us of the possibility.

The surgery, performed at the ‘Let's Face It' clinic next to Chelsea's football arena, lasted three and a half hours. The Cypriot nurse, who embellished her Turkish with ‘merci very' at every opportunity, would come with the ‘good news'. During the clinical examination I rented a furnished flat in Park Lane. I was planning to go to Istanbul once a month for board meetings. My irrepressible uncle had gone on a ‘live masturbation' tour of Egon Schiele's paintings in European galleries so I would have to supervise the daily business by telephone.

For the next four weeks Ä°z went around with a gauze-like protective mask. She was sick from the continuous medication. She would tremble when the protective cream was being applied and sob with anger as she resisted the urge to scratch her face. I hit the streets after putting her to sleep, renewing my vow for revenge. Waiting by her dimly lit bedside to give her the necessary medication at two o'clock in the morning, I read through the complete works of Thomas Bernhard and Paul Auster.

The doctor was happy with his first examination, and he ended the mask application. Decreasing her doses he began the massage period which was to last for three months. When Gediz, İz's twin brother who thinks the Beatles killed pop music, came with their mother to visit, I went back to Istanbul for four days. The first night, after the board meetings, I met with the usual crowd at Hünkâr's for a meal. I knew that the ungrateful Güfte with her Byzantine tricks had taken over İz's job, and wouldn't turn up for the meal.

Superintendent Kasnak, whom I visited on the last day, thought I should abandon this girl, who would be overwhelmed by depression even if she did recover, and find a way to marry a European princess from the Ottoman dynasty. I knew I would find Cahid Hodja in the stockroom memorizing the dictionary on his makeshift table. I wasn't surprised he looked guilty and embarrassed when he saw me, but he was moved when I conveyed in great detail what had happened to us. I began my pre-prepared spiel with a prayer:

‘... In the old days some joined religious sects to acquire “a visa for paradise” or “because of a herd mentality”. They say that the unscrupulous Kutsi's father, a phony pilgrim, joined the sect to gain influence over trade, but he has won few contract tenders and has never worked in a public department. The hypocrite who uses all the loopholes in the financial system to pay less tax than a high-school teacher aspires to cultivate the state like his own farm through the contacts he has made with key people. While his mean-spirited son enjoys a life of pleasure and squanders the money they snatched out of people's mouths, my girlfriend, whom he almost killed, cries continuously with pain. The fact that this man is not sitting in some corner of a prison cell awaiting punishment, and the fact that the publishers to whom she gave her life ignore her situation out of fear, makes my blood boil, Cahid Hodja. If he doesn't serve his sentence my conscience will never rest! I'm ready to pay a fortune to anyone who will help me ...'

I never expected him to cut me short like a Red Indian chief raising his hand.

‘Do you hear what you're saying, Arda? What American university taught you to right one wrong with another? You're young and because your pain is fresh, your reaction is over the top. It is partly because well-brought-up young people like you don't get involved in politics and don't undertake public duties that the system remains underdeveloped. God forbid I would ever abuse my God-given gift and turn a weapon against any other servant of His. I wouldn't even shoot a goldfinch after what happened to me. While you rail against the injustice of the system you should not ignore the divine justice of Almighty God. There is no escape from His justice. And finally, how can you be sure that the fugitive Kutsi is not serving his divine sentence at this very moment?'

His reply, which was more terse than I expected, made me even angrier. ‘You were the only one left who didn't talk in God's name, Cahid Çiftçi,' I said. ‘This country, supposedly in His name, has suffered enough from those who take advantage of the people's innocence. I will not rest in peace until Kutsi is buried in pain as deep as İz's. Besides, who can say that my attempt to punish him is not divine fate?'

I left without a farewell. We both knew that we probably wouldn't be seeing each other again.

I bought Ä°z's favourite comics and offbeat magazines, chocolate-covered chestnuts and Sezen Aksu's two latest CDs before boarding the delayed plane.

İz's good spirits partially came back when her face healed faster than Dr Rohatgi had expected. Zuhâl and Zafer came for a surprise visit, and the second time I came back from a visit to Istanbul I brought back İfakat for a week. My uncle, on a vigorous masturbation tour of the pre-Christian nude sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum and the Louvre, stayed with us while in London. From October İz started to socialize with ease. We had pleasant trips as far as Inverness with Nurse Serap and her computer expert husband. On my third trip to Istanbul I wrote a note to Kutsi Serhamza, immediately regretting it and beginning to fear my lack of self-confidence:

YOU WILL PAY YOUR PENALTY IN EXCESS!
YOURS PERMANENTLY
DEMON ...

İz's face had completely healed by mid-December. We chose to disregard the side-effects (partial loss of vision in her left eye and lack of movement of her eyebrows and forehead). On our last visit I invited Dr Rohatgi to Istanbul and gave him a silver cigarette-holder bearing the seal of Sultan Abdülhamit II. As he wished us goodbye he said, ‘I know that you're wondering why I reject plastic surgery for my own ugly face. My dear Harvardite, it's because I dreamt that if a surgeon's hand touched my face I'd lose my gift.' I was reminded of Cahid Hodja's maxim that he would refuse to make use of his sharpshooting talent on any other human.

I wanted to embarrass Selçuk Altun as soon as I returned. I purchased a rare signed copy of a Graham Greene book,
A Gun for Sale
, from his favourite secondhand bookseller. (First I was going to whet his appetite by showing him the book, then I'd decide whether to give it to him or not.) Three days before our reunion with Istanbul, I took all the one and two pence coins collected in a kitchen jar to the slovenly girl who was breastfeeding her baby in Piccadilly Circus tube station.

‘How many bottles of milk do you think I can get with these?' she chided.

It was clear from Zuhâl's tone of voice when she phoned in the early hours of the following morning that she had some shocking news.

‘While I was wondering how to tell you one piece of news, I heard another I must tell you,' she said. ‘The day before yesterday, while the treacherous shop owner and his family were picnicking in the Belgrade Forest, their shop and home above it were completely burned down. Yesterday evening when Kutsi was on his way to the Black Sea coast in his Mercedes, a lorry without a licence-plate smashed into him from the side and rolled him into a ditch. The poor bastard broke his neck and is now in a wheelchair! Arda, I thought such coincidences could only happen in films and novels ...'

In a panic, not knowing what to say, I called the shooting range. When I told Kasnak that I must speak to my Hodja, he said, ‘You're going to have to commit suicide, my boy.' (Cahid Çiftçi had killed himself two weeks before.) Realizing we were returning to Istanbul at the weekend, he politely requested a bottle of Napoleon cognac.

Feeling as if I had been punched twice on the chin, I went to see Ä°z packing her suitcase to the accompaniment of Sezen Aksu songs. I dramatically delivered Zuhâl's news. She bowed her head, perhaps to avoid seeing me lie, and asked, ‘Were these things done under your orders, Arda?' (I realized her tone of voice was not accusing.) As I delicately caressed her face, fresher than a baby's, I'll never forget saying, ‘If Cahid Hodja hadn't passed away two weeks ago, my answer might not have been “no''.'