Young Turk (36 page)

This is how they died.

The fire started around 1:30 am, supposedly in the kitchen area.

Liliana, being an insomniac, had not fallen asleep and noticed smoke wafting through the floorboards of her bedroom, which was just above the kitchen. She alerted her husband and the rest of the family and they all managed to get out of the place – without mishap.

They rushed to the back, to the storeroom where Orhan, Nermin and little Çiçek slept.

By then the storeroom, which was adjacent to the kitchen, was ablaze, burning more fiercely than the
lokanta
itself.

Almost immediately, they saw Orhan emerge from the flames with Çiçek in his arms. And they saw him look back, expecting Nermin to be behind. But she wasn’t there. Then he looked around quickly, no doubt wondering whether she had come out from somewhere else. He shouted her name, desperately, several times. Then, handing Çiçek to Konstantin Efendi, he ran back into the storeroom.

Just then, there was a series of blasts – according to Konstantin Efendi, wines, spirits, oils and paraffin exploding. Moments later, the roof collapsed. Then the walls.

Eventually, when they had put out the blaze, the firemen found Orhan and Nermin’s remains. Incinerated beyond recognition, but still holding each other.

Detective Dursun took charge of the investigation. He refused to consider the possibility that the fire might have been caused by something other than a pan of oil combusting. He dismissed outright the possibility of arson, perhaps perpetrated by the gang who had paid a visit to Konstantin Efendi the previous week. In the first instance, Konstantin Efendi had not reported such a visit the night he, Detective Dursun, had come to check on the disturbance. Such an allegation now might be seen as a ruse to extract more money from the insurers – particularly as, sadly, the other key witness, Orhan, could not corroborate the story. Alternatively, and more likely, Konstantin Efendi was having delusions. A common occurrence in cases of shock.

As for the courting couple and the parked Pontiac by Lovers’ Lane, no one could take that statement seriously. For a start, like all love-smitten couples, they would have been in their own impenetrable world. More to the point, whatever they claimed to have seen – if, that is, they had seen anything – they had seen it in the middle of the night, in a place so dark that even lips eager to kiss struggled to find their partners.

Then Detective Dursun dropped his bombshell.

‘Following my encounter with Orhan last week, I thought I should check up on him. He was an arrogant fellow – and arrogance always covers up hidden dirt.

‘Well, I amassed quite a dossier. He had several aliases. Poets’ names, all of them. He wasn’t lying when he said he loved poetry.

‘Crime-wise: nothing very gory. A born drifter. Some altercations – he won most of them. Resisting arrest – always put up a fight. Petty theft – invariably, food – when on the run.

‘Then something totally unexpected. Unusual for a drifter. A ladies’ man. Bigamist. At least two wives in different places. Maybe two others, but I don’t have all the facts on those yet.

‘And some children. Not surprising, I’d say. Which makes Nermin his third or fifth wife and Çiçek his seventh child. Not bad for a man in his mid-thirties.

‘You wouldn’t believe this, all the wives still love him. Apparently, he was very good to them. Treated them tenderly ...’

That’s when I walked away.

I packed the few clothes I had. And took the little money I had saved. I left a note for my father. Told him I’d go where the bus took me and find some work. I added I would miss him. And now that I wouldn’t be around to remind him of my mother, I expected him to find some happiness. I don’t know why I wrote that last bit. Grief, I suppose. I had to take it out on someone.

Then I went back to the
lokanta
. Detective Dursun had left. But Konstantin Efendi and Liliana were there, sitting on the pavement by the charred remains, waiting for the loss assessors. Konstantin Efendi was holding Çiçek, so he couldn’t discharge his fury. Liliana did it for him.

They hadn’t believed a word Dursun had said. I was glad of that. They wouldn’t have understood that the
kabadayι
must drift, move from place to place in order to help people. That this is part of their calling. Of course, their women aren’t happy about that, but they understand it. And accept it as Allah’s will. Which is why they continue loving their
kabadayι
even after they’ve gone.

Dursun was a man with a sewer mind. The sort who shares a lamb with the wolf and laments its loss with the shepherd. His crude parting shot to Konstantin Efendi and Liliana had been that they should consider themselves lucky for being delivered from Orhan and doubly lucky for the hefty insurance they would receive. Now they could either retire or build a bigger and better place.

Dursun was also a crook. There were already rumours that the reason he had declared the fire in the
lokanta
an open-and-shut case was because his palm was being greased by Octopus.

I told Konstantin Efendi and Liliana that I was leaving. I asked whether I could take Çiçek with me. I tried to convince them that I would look after her well, give my life for her.

We argued for the rest of the day, the whole night and the whole of the next day.

Finally, they convinced me. I was a good lad, but still very young – only fifteen. A baby needed special care all the time. Try as I would, I would never be able to provide that.

Then they made me a promise. They would not abandon her to an orphanage. They would take care of her themselves. In fact, adopt her. But, of course, they would raise her as a Muslim.

Then one day, when I returned, there she would be. A young woman. Old enough to marry. Maybe my bride – why not?

I am thirty-three now.

Çiçek must be eighteen. I imagine she is still with Konstantin Efendi and Liliana.

I often fantasize about going back. We recognize each other immediately. And join our lives as if we had not spent all these years apart.

But I won’t go back. I made sure of that by destroying Konstantin Efendi’s new address after he sold the site of the
lokanta
to an elderly Armenian who had returned after many years in Canada and decided to build a new restaurant there. The Armenian is dead now, but his wife still runs the place, and I am often tempted to go and ask her for Konstantin Efendi’s address. But only tempted. As I said, I won’t go back.

I am a
kabadayι
now – have been for some ten years. A good one. Orhan would be proud of me. I am emulating his life. Except I don’t set up house with women. Not because they don’t like me. I have had several proposals through matchmakers. In this respect, I am also mimicking my father. A man paralysed by too many deaths. (I heard that my father had died a few years back. Cirrhosis. Nothing had changed in his life.)

Now and again, I visit prostitutes.

I have come to cherish prostitutes. They understand pain. They give you the courage to go on a bit more, round another corner.

I really wish I could go back.

But no sense in that.

I won’t leave orphans behind me.

I’ll stay a
kabadayι
. As Orhan could see, we are a dying breed – that appeals to me. Maybe we are also a breed that wishes to die. That’s appealing, too.

I’ll go on until someone torches my room. Or shoots me in the back. Or runs me down with a car.

And if, in the next world, there is a place for the
kabadayι
, Orhan will be there. And I’ll join him.

My exile started when I was twelve, seven years before my actual expatriation.

On 31 December 1947 we – the academy’s first-year students – had been offered the traditional end-of-semester treat: a jovial afternoon in the Emirgân
çayhane,
for centuries one of Istanbul’s favourite tea-houses by the Bosporus, as guests of our quixotic professor of literature, Âşιk Ahmet.

One objective of this outing was to welcome the New Year with readings of sublime poetry; another was to obtain from us, students on the threshold of adulthood, the pledge to pursue Atatürk’s cherished dream of transforming Turkey into one of the world’s most advanced nations. For, as we had been instructed often enough, the Father of the Turks, having restored a terminally sick country to resurgent health, had spawned us, in the last years of his life, as his successors; it was our duty to consolidate his miracle.

The third objective was Âşιk Ahmet’s improvisation on the second. On this day, every student would select his future profession, then take an oath that he would never renege on his decision. Moreover, he would make his choice not in the expectation of financial rewards but because that particular career would provide one of the many skills the country needed for its development. Only through such unselfish dedication would we be able to reclaim the paradise the latter Ottoman sultans had so heinously despoiled.

It was one of those translucent winter days when Istanbul unseals her occult colours. Snow and sun either conjoined passionately or chased each other flirtatiously; and the windows of the ancient wooden mansions along the Bosporus turned into mirrors to reflect them. The breeze wore the city’s unique fragrance of sea, pine, honey and rose-water. The giant plane tree that canopied the tables of the tea-house susurrated its timeless wisdom. And Âşιk Ahmet, zestfully smoking a chain of cigarettes, strutted at his charming best.

The tea flowed like a stream, as tea always does everywhere in Turkey.
Mezes
and the speciality of the house, aubergines prepared in ninety-nine different ways, arrived on a succession of vast copper trays. (According to Turkish folklore, mankind’s limit for aubergine recipes is ninety-nine; it is presumed that there are at least another ninety-nine, but these are only known to Allah.) Important subjects such as sport, girls, puberty, masturbation, wet dreams and the myriad mysteries of the vagina that awaited us were freely aired.

When we were all happily languid and looked upon Âşιk Ahmet as to a prophet, he rose and addressed us. It was time, he said, that we – the chrysalises of the greatest nation on earth – emerged from the pupal stage and entered the future. Here and now, each one of us had to stand up, in alphabetical order, and declare the career he would pursue. There would be five minutes allowed for deliberation. Except for such professions as medicine, engineering and business administration, of which there was a great shortage in the country, nobody was allowed to pick an occupation that had already been chosen by one of his peers. Swapping, being the indulgence of irresolute people, was prohibited. No doubt, some boys at the tail end of the alphabetical order would be disappointed because the career they would have wanted would not be available to them. But that in itself would be an invaluable lesson, an introduction to life’s first axiom that human existence, even for the luckiest, is persistently unjust.