The Dervish House (54 page)

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Authors: Ian Mcdonald

BOOK: The Dervish House
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‘I don’t understand what you’re saying,’ Necdet says. ‘This is nonsense.’ In the other room Surly Fucker stops pacing. Necdet holds his breath. The pacing resumes.
You are fragile. These people are insane
.
Green Headscarf shakes her head in incomprehension.
‘It’s fitting, it’s right. Anatolia has always been the cradle of civilizations. New consciousnesses were born here. The Europeans have always looked down on us, they used to call us the Sick Man of Europe, but I tell you, it’s Europe that is the Sick Man. We have wisdoms from thousands of years of civilizations and empires and religions but they never listened to us because they invented the Enlightenment and the Renaissance and capitalism and democracy and technology and those are the monologues of the twenty-first century. Maybe they’ll realize that the future is going to be a dialogue. Maybe they’ll realize that ideas can come from the Islamic world — new ideas, ideas the world has never seen before, completely revolutionary ways of thinking about what it means to be human.’
‘They,’ Necdet says. ‘You’re talking about . . . whole countries.’
‘They’re ignorant, they can’t imagine anything outside their experiences so we will take them completely by surprise,’ Green Headscarf says, now rocking on her knees. Necdet notices that Big Bastard can’t look at her. He grips the gun tightly. His face is flushed. This is terrifying and dangerous. They are insane. They have done insane things. They are not amenable to reason. They will carry out their plan. ‘It’s ignorance to think that, ignorance and arrogance. We are against ignorance. We are for the perfect knowledge of God.’
They have to kill me
, Necdet thinks.
They are going to do it just before they go out on their mission. They will kill me. Surly Fucker will do it. He’s the only one here can kill. I will be dead. I can’t think about that. Oh God oh God will it be quick, what will I see, will it hurt, what is it like not-to-be, to be dead? Oh God oh God. How can I stop them?
‘We’ve enough data to know that the experiment has been a success,’ Big Hair says. Green Headscarf’ s eyes are closed. She moves her lips in silent utterances. ‘Congratulations Mr Hasgüler.’
‘All I did was take a different tram to get in to work earlier!’ Necdet shouts. ‘Who are you to decide to bomb a tram to test your theories about human consciousness? Who is your sister to blow herself up in my face and spray me with nano you designed and you engineered? Who are you to decide that I need to see djinn and green saints and know things no one could or should know, but that’s all right, it’s God-inside. Who are you to take me off my street in front of my house and bang me into the back of a van and bring me here and hold me prisoner and talk shit? It’s all shit, shit shit. Who are you, who are you bastards, who are you to decide to make me your experiment and now the experiment’s, well, we all know what happens to the rats and monkeys don’t we? Help me!’ Necdet bellows in despair. ‘Help me! Oh God please help me! Someone!’
Big Bastard lunges forward and strikes Necdet hard in the chest with the butt of the assault rifle, knocking wind and words clean from his lungs. Necdet collapses, limbs curled up like a desiccating spider, gagging for breath.
‘Please understand that there is no revenge or personal malice or religious fanaticism in this, Necdet,’ Green Headscarf says. ‘We are not Kurdish freedom fighters, we are not Islamists. We are God’s Engineers. You are confused and afraid now, but, in a very real way, you will achieve a place in the Paradise we will build.’
Necdet rolls away. In his corner, universes of knowing pour through the human-shaped green void of Hızır.
 
Can watches the Gas Bubble pull away from the yellow marked drop-off zone in front of the school and merge with the afternoon school run’s daily ruckus of hootings, veerings, swervings and silent swearings. He waits until it’s safely around the corner into Aşariye Cadessi. Inside the gates, tiny children beneath huge backpacks mill around on the concrete schoolyard. Can steps away from the gate into the cover of the wall. Eyes are sharp at Yildiz Special School. The morning shift is gone, the afternoon shift lines up on the coloured ladders painted on the concrete, one child per rung. Can slides further along the wall until he can no longer see anything of the schoolyard. For a moment the street is empty of pedestrians. Can quickly turns and walks away from Yildiz School. He walks quickly, but not so quickly as to look like a child escaping from school. The crossing on Aşariye Cadessi is a danger point; he imagines adults noticing him and his proximity to the school, maybe the heavy hand of a teacher coming back from lunch. Will the traffic ever end? Then the little crossing man is green and he is safely across into the labyrinth of soks and lanes to the south of Cihannuma. The narrow streets are choked with traffic on foot and wheel; vans push pedestrians into doorways and porches, teenagers on mopeds steer between knots of women with headscarves and men in shirt sleeves and ties. Can falls in behind a group of men in business suits, unconsciously matching his stride to theirs. Old men at tables in folded-back çayhane doors with no better way to live their lives than watching the street observe his swagger and nod and smile. Can lifts his shoulders, straightens his back. He unfolds his shades from one of the big pockets of his practical Boy Detective pants and slides them up his nose. He’s a man, out in the city. There’s purpose in his steps.
At the top of Horoz Stairs Can is stopped by a dazzle of sunlit sea. It blinks, it blinds, it shimmers. Can is thrilled and appalled: this is the furthest he has ever been on his own. The plan had been to take the tram to the Marmaray and shuttle under the Bosphorus to Üsküdar Metro. But he is free in the city and far from home and no boy of Istanbul has ever resisted the sea-call. Can skips lightly down to the glimmering water between antique shops and small cafés, the sidewalk descending in long, low steps, each the width of a house front. The apartment balconies are bright with geraniums in terracotta pots. Wisteria weaves through the wrought-ironwork, dripping early blossoms. A thin cat with a twisted back leg looks up from licking to study Can but he is insufficient novelty to warrant any effort. Smells assail Can now: coffee and mint and mastic, old metal and charcoal and furniture polish. Lemon and diesel. The asthmatic tang of gas, the sour of rotting fruit. The salt of the sea, deep and clear.
Horoz Stairs delivers Can on to Çirağan Cadessi. He knows this place. There is Sinanpaşa Mosque, there is the tram stop in the middle of the street, there, beyond the Dolmabahçe Palace, is Necatibey Cadessi where Can sent Rat dodging the truck tyres and the guillotine tramwheels, chasing the white van that lifted Necdet. But that was screen-life. That was life in 2D. It is another sensation to feel the tug of slipstream and the seismic rumble of a tram passing, to see the gulls circling over the minarets of Sinanpaşa, to smell the oily bilge water lapping against the quays. This is not a game. Can crosses the road and strides along the seaward footpath, thumbs hooked into the shoulder straps of his backpack. Everyone, everything he sees has purpose. At the little garden at Cezayir he pulls out his map to check the ferry routes. It’s doable. It will work. A good detective is flexible, has information at his fingertips, thinks fast.
‘Single please,’ he says to the man in the ticket booth, half hoping that he will ask him why a nine-year-old boy asks for a single to Üsküdar, why a nine-year-old-boy is asking for a paper ticket, paid for with paper money, rather than using his ceptep, what that thing is he has wrapped around his wrist; what is that, is it a snake? The man slides him his ticket and his change. Can files on to the ferry. Clanking metal, banging ramps as cars and vans drive on, the thrum of engines and the swash of screws, all come to him as whispers and murmurs. Can climbs as high as he can to the topmost deck; only the flags of the nation and the European Union higher than he. The ferry carries him out alone into the Bosphorus. The wind is cool in his face, the first cool he can remember for a long time. Can leans forward over the rail; not Boy Detective now but Master and Commander of the Üsküdar ferry, which has become a landing craft, invasion-bound, preparing to storm the Asian shore. The ferry surges between clashing rocks of moving metal; cutting across the wake of a monster gas carrier. The Cyrillic letters on its side are each the size of a car. Now the ferry nimbly skips under the bows of a mass-transporter, its flying bridge peeping over tier upon tier of stacked containers. Rectangles of colour. A Lego ship. He knows this ship. He has seen this mosaic of containers before, a wall of colour moving past the windows of the expensive private clinic where he was fitted with the ear-inserts. This is the ship that took away all the sounds in the world. He always knew it would come back some day. Can rushes to the side rail and gazes up at the towering cliff of slow-moving metal. Slowly, painfully, he works the plugs out of his ears. He winces as adhesions tear and scabs crack. There is a lot of wax and encrustations and flakes of hardened skin. Then the plugs pop free and the audible world rushes in. It is as if every container piled ten high on the deck of the great ship has sprung open and released the sound trapped inside. Gulls are harsh and shrill and sound like summer mornings. The flags snap and belly above him, a full, satisfying noise. Engines: the diesely metallic beat of the ferry over the deeper, felt-more-than-heard pulse of the bulk carrier. Water, he can hear water. Feet clang on metal staircases, a radio crackles behind him on the bridge, girls chatter down the rail from him, men’s voices behind him, in the shade of the awning. Sounds have places; he looks up, not knowing how he knows to do that, to find the source of the drone in the sky; a big plane lowering itself down over the Sea of Marmara. Small sounds, tiny sounds. Treble whisper from earbuds nearby, the wind over the wires that stay the radio mast. Can turns slowly, identifying and locating each sound in turn. He looks at the little, waxy plugs in the palm of his hand. He throws them far out into the wash from the receding bulk carrier.
The ferry sweeps past the Kız Kulesi tower on its tiny island. Can can hear Asia. It sounds like cars and emergency sirens. The ferry throws its engines into reverse with a great roar and swash of water. Now the ramp starts to lower, with the clank of a mechanism new to Can’s sound-scape. One by one the vehicles start their engines. How it echoes around the steel box of the car deck. Passengers push past him, he can distinguish every one of their voices as they swarm down the metal stairs. Different. Every voice is different. The world is sound.
Can falters at the top of the concrete ramp. All the sounds that have been separate and distinct now merge into an intimidating wall. Everything is big, loud and close. He doesn’t know how to pick information out of it. There’s a tightness in his chest. His breath is shallow. He threw away his plugs. Why did he do that? The tightness gets worse. But is it his heart, the Long QT, or is it what they told him about his heart, that everyone has believed all his life? A thing is different from believing a thing. Maybe what everyone believes about his heart is no longer true. He got better. People can get better. Any time he’s been to the doctor recently they’ve attached their machines to his earplugs not his chest. Can sits down on the oily, plastic-strewn rocks beside the ferry terminal and closes his eyes. He focuses his hearing, pushes it inward, down, into his chest. He listens to his body. There, small and light, fleeting at first, then, when he hooks on to its rhythm, the base of all. His heartbeat. It’s good and steady and strong. There is no click or flap or wheeze in it. This tightness, this breathlessness, maybe it’s everything new and loud and up-at-your-face and exciting. Maybe this is what adventure feels like. Can lets go of his heartbeat and opens his eyes. There is the big ship of hearing, heading up the big bridge, all the sounds in the world still spilling from its containers. This is Asia, another continent, but it is still Istanbul, still his city. Can gets his map out. Üsküdar Marmaray Station is across three big roads. That is easy for the Boy Detective.
The Marmaray Station is a concrete pit driven deep into the rock and shale and silts of Üsküdar. Can rides down through the many levels of tubes and people, ticket gripped in his fist. It was exciting to hear himself ask for a single to Kayişdaği and hear the clerk name the price. The noises here are different, the ticking whirr of the escalator, the slap of a poorly fitted handrail. Distant automated voices calling trains. It’s cool down here, the air smells of electricity and concrete and old time. These are deep tunnels. Sounds travel far and strangely through the corridors, words cling to walls, some footsteps ring like pistol shots while others are soft as rain. The arrival of the train is the most thrilling thing Can has ever heard. First there is distant, dinosaur booming in the deep tunnel that becomes a bass rattle. Hot air blows in Can’s face. Lights appear in the darkness, then all of a sudden the train is on him, bursting from the tunnel in a rush of banging metal and rattling cars and shrieking brakes. Announcements overhead. Warnings to stay clear of this, beware of that. Can steps on to the metro train. Doors whoosh and slam. The sudden acceleration sends Can reeling into a seat. He was listening to the whine of the motors. A chime, a robot voice telling him the next station.
The train is busy, every seat full, strap hangers in the doorways. Next to Can is a teenager who has been unable to take his eyes off the machine wrapped around Can’s left wrist.
‘What’s that?’
Can ignores him. It’s not in his Detective Plan to talk to people on public transport.
‘No, come on, I’m curious, what is it? Some kind of tattoo or weird ceptep or jewellery or something?’

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