Young Turk (41 page)

(The details of Nâzιm Hikmet’s escape became known some twenty-five years later. In a simple but daring manoeuvre, one of his great admirers, Refik Erduran, had smuggled him in a powerful motorboat out of Istanbul into the Black Sea on Sunday 17 June 1951. There, they had intercepted a Romanian ship, the
Plekhanov
. Hikmet had promptly requested asylum. His request had been granted only after the Romanian authorities had received the USSR’s approval. Erduran, his saviour, had slipped back into Istanbul that same night.)

Haydar Koyunlu’s interment should have been symbolic; more like a memorial. There should not have been any remains to bury. Haydar had converted to Buddhism. His body should have been left on a mountainside to be consumed by vultures and wild beasts or, failing that, cremated. But in Turkey, in the early fifties, organizing such rites was as unprecedented as finding a politician who loved his country more than his own ambition. So Haydar had the conventional Muslim funeral.

But since he had prepared his suicide in true platonic spirit, as a brave and laudable deed when life turns unacceptable, we, his friends, decided to honour his death with due celebration. We considered his failure to have his body dematerialized by the elements inconsequential. After all, he had often maintained that accomplishment belonged to the gods; whereas failure measured the man.

He had known about failure more than most people. He had been an indefatigable champion of lost causes. It was even suggested that the cancer that had killed him had been spawned by the tribulations of his last campaign, the imperative to abolish borders in order to create a world government. Except for some support from such fervent democrats as Professor Ahmet Poyraz, alias Âşιk Ahmet, his efforts had met with nothing but ridicule. Not surprisingly, the precept of abandoning national interests in favour of global welfare as the path to universal peace had proved anathema to Kemalists, irredentists and Islamists. Indeed, some of these factions made sure that Haydar was regularly arrested and, sometimes, imprisoned.

The obsequies, we agreed, would be a pluralistic affair. We were a motley crowd and, like Haydar, we had declared ourselves ‘citizens of the world’.

Immediately after the burial, at the suggestion of his Jewish friends, we declared a
shivah
. However, we didn’t sit and mourn for seven days. Instead, recalling the scene in
The Iliad
where old Priam goes to Achilles and, kissing the hands that had slain his son, obtains permission to arrange funeral games in honour of Hector, we devised contests in Haydar’s memory. In deference to his adopted religion, we called these the Karma Games. We would hold them over all Istanbul so that the world’s most beautiful city would also pay homage to him. To preside over the proceedings, we hired Zahir, the Afghan rug-dealer from the Grand Bazaar who, Haydar had once informed us, had been a shaman.

Buddhism and
The Iliad
might sound a strange duality, but it summed up Haydar perfectly. He had embraced Buddhism during the Korean war while serving in the Turkish expeditionary force. Having been an atheist all his adult life – and a virulent foe of all religious institutions – his submission to a faith, let alone Buddhism, had surprised all his friends. He himself, however, had been expecting such a reversal. Having believed in God – or rather, in a god infinitely more humane than the ones preached by our monotheisms – he had known all along that sooner or later he would bump into Him somewhere. That somewhere happened to be Korea. And he did not attain enlightenment just from witnessing the daily carnage that is the fare of all wars. He also acquired a greater insight about himself and thence about humanity, as he put it, ‘simply by reading
The Iliad –
the first anti-war novel’. He understood that, individually or collectively, we always have the choice between war and peace, but that being demented admirers of Ares rather than wise followers of Aphrodite, we always choose war. For who, in his right mind, would prefer making war to making love? Even Ares, in his moments of sanity, rushed to entwine limbs with Aphrodite.

Homer, whom Haydar had discovered in a military library, had been, he would quip, the first of the three Purple Hearts he had acquired in Korea. The second had been his conversion to Buddhism. And he had received the third, the actual US military medal, after the battle of Kunuri. (Since Turkey’s sole honour for valour, the
İstiklâl Madalyasι
, had been created by a special law in 1923 for those who had fought in the War of Independence, those who had distinguished themselves fighting in Korea had ended up receiving US decorations.)

On the first day of Haydar’s funeral games we ran the cross-country course from the Upper Bosporus to Belgrad Ormanι, a forest created in commemoration of Süleyman the Magnificent’s conquest of Belgrade in 1521.

On day two, we rode our bikes, against the clock, for ten circuits of Büyükada, the biggest of the Princes’ Islands.

On the third day, we raced dinghies from Florya to Yalova, some sixty kilometres across the Sea of Marmara.

The next day, we competed in a tug of war in Üsküdar, the first village on the Asiatic side of the Bosporus and a great favourite with Eartha Kitt.

The day after that, we shot arrows from one shore of the Golden Horn to the other.

On the sixth day, we wrestled at At Meydanι, the site of the Byzantine Hippodrome, near the Blue Mosque.

And on the last day, as the games’ crowning event, we swam across the Bosporus from Anadolu Hisarι, Yιldιrιm Beyazιt’s fort on the Asian side, to Rumeli Hisarι, Mehmet the Conqueror’s fortress on the European side – at barely 700 metres, the strait’s narrowest point. (Given the currents that charge through that narrow reach, this is a tougher undertaking than swimming the wider stretches.)

We reserved the evenings for prayers. Following Haydar’s conviction that every place of worship – provided that it did not have a minister officiating – revered Creation because it expressed man’s yearnings for the original, tender, motherly deity – the deity that phallus-oriented religions never understood – we shuttled between mosque, church and synagogue. Since, in those days, Istanbul lacked a stupa, we improvised a Buddhist ritual by burning oil and incense beneath the great architect Sinan’s aqueduct in Kâğιthane and chanting, under Zahir’s guidance, the mantra
Om-Mani-Padme-Hum
.

The nights were a mystical interlude. This is the time, a dervish had told us, when a being communes with his deity and, in so doing, recreates beauty. Beauty that is sometimes ephemeral, like the sudden nearness of the Milky Way, or solid, like the body of a loved one.

And at night I became Orpheus. I picked up my saz and mesmerized both the first and the second coterie. No mean achievement, this. The first coterie was reserved for Haydar’s peers, men and women he had gathered, like a latter-day Socrates, from school, army and work. The second, to which I belonged, comprised the
talebe
, ‘students’, the initiates from whom no contribution other than blind loyalty was expected. Naturally, the paternalism in the Turkish character imposed strict boundaries between the coteries; but my virtuosity with stringed instruments had elevated me, a callow eighteen-year-old, to the company of adults twice my age.

Thus while the first coterie, recounting Haydar’s countless deeds, declared that he would most certainly reincarnate in some glorious form, I put the sentiments into words and music.

Then we wept.

The morning of the last game dawned ...

I had been at my most inspired throughout the night. I was also quite drunk. And I found myself straggling into Haydar’s cemetery, high above Rumeli Hisarι. I think I wanted to thank him with a special song I had written for him. For Haydar had not only repaired my saz when I had damaged it at a party, but had also imbued it with such mellifluous tones that he might well have been Stradivari reincarnated. (Repairing things – anything, from broken hearts to broken vessels, from mechanical failures to minds confounded by maths – had been yet another of Haydar’s miraculous gifts.)

As I approached his grave, I saw a woman kneeling by it ...

I thought I had taken a wrong path. Then I recognized her; she had been at the funeral: Mazal Levi, known as ‘Madam Ruj’, the famous – and, for someone in her profession, surprisingly young – matchmaker. (At the time, she had just turned thirty.)

Seeing me, she jumped up.

I mumbled. ‘I’m – sorry ... I’ve ... intruded ...’

She regained her composure. ‘It’s all right.’

‘I’m ... a friend of ... Haydar ...’

She wiped her tears with a handkerchief. ‘Me, too ...’

‘Great man. The perfect man.’

She shook her head vehemently. ‘No. Not perfect.’

I grew indignant. ‘How can you say that? He was a man who gave meaning to existence.’

She faced me, eyes blazing. ‘If he was so perfect, why did he die?’

Her beauty, particularly her incandescent sable hair, captivated me. ‘He ... was ... ill ...’

‘He should have recovered!’

‘How? Who can beat cancer? But the way he died – so brave ... Proof of his perfection ...’

‘Only those who defeat death are perfect!’

I turned away. I didn’t want her to see me cry. ‘He was a hero ... unique ...’

She touched my arm. ‘I’m sorry ... Forgive me ... Grief makes one say all sorts of things ... He was unique, yes ...’ Gently, she caressed my cheek. ‘I’ll leave you with him ...’

I wanted to hold on to her and weep my heart out. Instead, clumsily, I held up my saz. ‘I wrote a song for him ... I was going to play it ...’

She smiled. ‘He’d love that. He played the saz, too ...’

‘I know.’

She started walking away, then stopped. ‘Do you think ...? Could I stay ... and listen? I’ll keep my distance ...’

I shook my head. ‘Don’t! I mean, yes. I mean don’t keep your distance ... Stay ...’

‘Thank you.’ She moved to the other side of the grave.

I tuned up, then sang:

in Rumeli’s shadow

death

voluptuous

waylaid me

she held me by the hand

my eyes scared lambkins

I pleaded

she whispered in my ear

my heart a humming-bird

I consented

she rubbed her breasts on my face

my mouth insatiable

I suckled

she opened her legs

my manhood a dolphin

I plunged

there in her well

I found

the only true water

I ended up weeping uncontrollably and, surprisingly, didn’t feel embarrassed.

She came across and kissed my hand. ‘May your heart be always full of love.’

I couldn’t speak. Afraid of becoming hysterical, I staggered away.

At the top of the slope, I composed myself and looked back.

The sun was rising over the Anatolian shore; a roseate tide was engulfing the cemetery.

Madam Ruj had sat down again. She was bathed in a glow that could have emanated only from Haydar’s soul. She had taken out her lipstick and was putting it on.

The constant application of lipstick, I remembered, was one of her idiosyncrasies. All Istanbul knew that. Her cigarette case and lighter and her lipstick were part of her accoutrements. Wherever she sat down, she lined them up in front of her with the intensity of a chess-master setting up his pieces.

I watched her.

She looked like a somnambulist: uncontrolled yet constrained. She didn’t seem to need a mirror. And the way she applied the lipstick, she could have been painting a portrait. Or obliterating it.