Young Turk E-Book

Moris Farhi

• Herausgeber: Telegram Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Beschreibung

Against the backdrop of Nazism, in a multi-racial Turkey giving sanctuary to many of Europe's fleeing Jews, a group of teenage friends struggles to understand events while reeling from (and relishing) the sexual and emotional discoveries of adolescence. An alluring woman initiates Mustafa and his classmates in the carnal delights of rose petal jam; Musa discovers the hard facts of reaching manhood when he is expelled from the women's baths; Bilal, a 14-year-old Jewish boy, sets off for Greece to rescue his mother's sister; and a circus orphan known only as 'Girl' falls head over heels for the new trapeze artist ... Young Turk is a novel in thirteen positions. Reminiscent of Julio Cortazar and Italo Calvino, this is a wise, craftily spun and spine-tinglingly erotic tale of love, courage and the forging of conscience.

Leseprobe

MORIS FARHI

YOUNG TURK

TELEGRAM

eISBN: 978-1-84659-115-0

First published in 2004 by Saqi Books This eBook edition published 2012

Copyright © Moris Farhi 2004 and 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A full CIP record for this book is available from the British Library.

TELEGRAM

26 Westbourne Grove, London W2 5RH

www.telegrambooks.com

For NINA

who was with me before I met her

and to my beloved friend

ASHER FRED MAYER

9 May 1934–8 May 2004

In memory of:

Anthony Masters (14 December 1940–4 April 2003)

Tomasz Mirkowicz (9 July 1953–7 May 2003)

Acknowledgments

With gratitude to my family for their love: Ceki, Viviane, Deborah, Yael Farhi; Marcelle Farhi; Nicole Farhi; Rachel Sievers and Hamish MacGillivray; Eric, Danièle, Sara, Nathaniel Gould; Phil, Rachel, Samuel, Joshua, Kezia, Joseph Gould; Jessica Gould; Emmanuel, Yael & Noam Gould; Guy and Rebecca Granot; Silvio (Jacques) Hull.

With gratitude to Barry Proner whose insights into the mysteries still sustain me.

With gratitude to my friends and mentors for their guidance: Ian Davidson; Peter Day; Anthony Dinner; Tamar Fox; Mai Ghoussoub; Saime Göksu-Timms; Robin Lloyd-Jones; David Mayall; Christopher New; Saliha Paker; Maureen Rissik; Bernice Rubens; Anthony Rudolf; Hazem Saghie; Evelyn Toynton; Vedat Türkali; Enis Üser.

With gratitude to my kindred spirits for their unflinching support: Tricia Barnett; Selim and Nadia Baruh; Erol, Eti, David Baruh; Anthea Davidson; Rio, Karen and Liam Fanning; Kağan, Yaprak and Temmuz Güner; Jennifer Kavanagh; Michael and Diana Lazarus; Julian and Karen Lewis; Robina Masters; Elizabeth Mayer; Faith Miles; Richard and Ceinwen Morgan; Christa New; Adem and Pιrιl Öner; Kerim Paker; Lucy Popescu; Paul and Gabriele Preston; Nick, Maggie and Rosa Rankin; Paula Rego; Christopher and Bridget Robbie; Hazel Robinson; Elon Salmon; Nick, Jeanine, Isabella and William Sawyer; Edward Timms; Diana Tyler; Paul and Cindy Williams.

With gratitude to my alter egos in distant lands for their solidarity: Ergun and Rengin Avunduk; Attila Çelikiz; Ayşem Çelikiz; José Çiprut; Rajko Djuric; Ahmad Ebrahimi; Bensiyon Eskenazi; Agop and Brigitte Hacikyan; Bracha Hadar; Ziv Lewis; Bill and Sue Mansill; Julita Mirkowicz; Barιş Pirhasan; Donné Raffat; Ilan Stavans; Martin Tucker; Deniz Türkali; Andrew Graham-Yooll.

With gratitude to new comrades for their faith: Petra Eggers; Nina Kossman; Semra Eren-Nijar, Indirjit and Ilayda Nijar; Zbigniew and Maria Kanski; Sharon Olinka; Ros Schwartz; Osman Streater; Ateş Wise; Jessica Woollard.

With gratitude to my guardian angels at Saqi Books for their dedication: Mitch Albert; Sarah al-Hamad; André and Salwa Gaspard; Jana Gough; Anna Wilson.

Contents

A Note on Pronunciation

1. Rιfat: In the Beginning

2. Musa: Lentils in Paradise

3. Robbie: A Tale of Two Cities

4. Selma: Half-Turk

5. Bilâl: The Sky-Blue Monkey

6. Yusuf: And His Fruit Was Sweet to My Taste

7. Havva: A Wrestling Man

8. Mustafa: Rose-Petal Jam

9. Attila: Cracked Vessels from the Same Ruin

10. Zeki: When a Writer Is Killed

11. Aslan: Madam Ruj

12. Davut: He Who Returns Never Left

13. Âşιk Ahmet: Go Like Water, Come Like Water

References

A Note on Pronunciation

All Turkish letters are pronounced as in English except for the following:

c pronounced j as in jam

ç pronounced ch as in child

ğ not pronounced; lengthens the preceding vowel

ι akin to the pronunciation of u in radium

ö pronounced ö as in the German König

ş akin to the sh in shark

ü pronounced u as in the French tu

1: Rιfat

In the Beginning

In the beginning, there is Death.

All creatures meet it at birth. Animals never forget the encounter. With very few exceptions, we humans always do, even though we haggle with it several times a day. This commerce is never conducted with the brain or the heart, as we might expect, but with the genitals. The tinglings we feel between our legs are not always caused by sexual desire or fear. Mostly, they document our negotiations with the Clattering Skeleton.

These are facts. Straight from the mouth of Mahmut the Simurg. He is the Türkmen teller of tales from the circus who, true to his nickname, looks like a bird as large and dark as a rain-cloud. And though he accompanies himself on a kemençe that has only two strings instead of the usual four, he creates sounds that seem to come from other worlds. Those who have heard him sing the history of mankind in one thousand and one episodes will affirm that he is, as he avows, the only man of truth on this earth.

Sometimes transactions between Death and its prey get violent. When Alexander the Great, emerging from Olympias’ womb, saw Death hovering about, he immediately unsheathed his sword and hurled himself at him. Death barely escaped. And he did not dare go near Alexander for thirty-three years; not until he had succeeded in bribing a Babylonian mosquito to poison the noble king.

The phenomenal and often overlooked aspect of that story, Mahmut the Simurg stresses – overlooked even in the İskendernâme, Nizâmi’s incomparable paean to Alexander – is not that a newly born infant should have the courage to attack Death – after all, one expects such qualities from godlike heroes – but that every generation produces many ordinary individuals who are able to perceive the Keeper of the Dust. Those deathsayers with seven eyes, seven brains and the mettle to rescue Death’s victims – like Hercules, Atatürk and Churchill, to name but a few – are known as Pîr.

(An elaboration: Death, as we all know, is an agent of Allah. But unlike Allah’s other servants, he is also a fiend. Thus, whenever he can, instead of garnering souls who have lived full lives and need to transfer to a better realm, instead of choosing miscreants who deserve to die, he grabs the young, the good, the gifted, even whole races. Often he snatches, long before their rightful time, people who are heartily loved by Allah Himself. In so doing, he humiliates the Almighty. And that is iniquity beyond iniquity. Does a garden let its plants perish? Sorry, Efendi, the roses have all died today; apologies, Hanιm, tulips will be extinct by tomorrow; alas, Ağa, lilacs were exterminated yesterday! Naturally, Allah had to intervene. So He created the Pîr.)

As I said, Mahmut the Simurg knows all the truths. Thus when he sang his revelations about the Pîr, I realized our neighbour, Gül de Taranto, was one such.

Gül, approaching thirteen, was four years older than I was. Her brother Naim, leader of the neighbourhood gang, was my age. Both Gül and I were shunned by this gang as being ‘of a different species’. Gül not just for being a girl, but also for being virtually an adult – she had started her bleeding. Even more unforgivably, unlike her delicate name which means ‘rose’, she was a tomboy: the song ‘There Are No Roses without Fire’ could well have been composed for her. She outshone every youngster in the district at every sport, including boxing. Her gym teacher believed that if she put her mind to it, she could make the following year’s Olympics in Berlin. I, on the other hand, was fat – I had nearly died after contracting diphtheria a second time, and my mother, in an effort to build up my strength, had force-fed me as if I were a goose. Fat boys could never be gang material.

As Mahmut the Simurg would say: misfits must live, too. So Gül and I ended up doing things together.

It all started on the day of my circumcision.

I was sitting in my room, dressed in the ceremonial white satin camise and hat, fighting my fear of the impending cut and wondering whether I would survive the assault on my ‘key to heaven’, as Mahmut the Simurg describes the penis. Suddenly, to my surprise, Gül – not her brother Naim, as I might have expected – popped in to wish me well. Then, after the briefest of pleasantries, she asked me, very businesslike, if I would show her my still-capped organ. In return, she was prepared to show me her mysterious crevice – a sight no one, apart from her brother Naim, some members of her family and Naim’s lieutenant, Bilâl, had seen. She wanted to compare my ‘thing’ with those of Naim and Bilâl, both of which, in accordance with Jewish custom, had been decapitated eight days after birth.

Naturally, I agreed enthusiastically – ignoring, wisely I think, Mahmut the Simurg’s warning that the vagina has enslaved more men than all the tyrants of history put together.

So I pulled up my camise and she lowered her panties.

Hesitantly, my heart pounding, I examined her cleft, even touched it.

She, on the other hand, scrutinized me casually, as if I were a medical specimen. (She had once confided to my mother, who was a nurse, that she intended to become a doctor when she grew up.) ‘They say circumcised cocks are superior to uncircumcised ones. And that, therefore, Christian women are always disadvantaged. Is that true?’

I pretended to know. ‘Definitely.’

She studied my penis fastidiously. ‘Not as good-looking as circumcised ones.’

‘It will be. After today.’

‘But it’s bigger than Naim’s. Bigger than Bilâl’s, too.’

My spirits rose. I might have been fat and not gang material, but I was better endowed. In the male world, even at our age, that meant I was somebody. ‘Oh, yes ...’

‘Is it because you’re Muslim and they’re Jewish?’

‘Probably ...’

‘Though I’ve heard you’re not a real Muslim.’

‘Yes I am.’

‘Aren’t you Dönme?’

Dönme literally means ‘turned’. As a people, it refers to the followers of Sabetay Zevi, the seventeenth-century Jewish sage who had declared himself the awaited messiah. Zevi was arrested by Sultan Mehmet IV, the Hunter, for fomenting unrest and was asked to prove his messiahship by surviving the arrows that would be shot at him by three of the realm’s best archers. Zevi, sensibly refusing to submit to the test, had hastily converted to Islam. His followers, interpreting this conversion as a step towards the fulfilment of the messianic prophecy, had also converted en masse. However, throughout the ensuing centuries, they had remained true to their faith and practised their Jewish rites secretly.

‘Who says?’

‘Everybody who knows your family.’

‘They’ve no proof ...’

‘They put two and two together ...’

‘Meaning?’

‘You have lots of Jewish friends. Most of your relatives go away on Jewish holidays. And your grandparents never stop criticizing Jews – which is what many Dönme do to hide their Jewishness.’

I blushed. She was right. My grandparents, particularly my grandmother, appeared so intolerant of Jews that people accused them of anti-semitism. And, true enough, they were secret Jews who always went away mysteriously on High Holidays to an undisclosed location. And they painstakingly hid every trace of their Jewishness, particularly their Hebrew books, from all eyes, including mine.

But not so my parents. My parents were genuine converts – Muslim through and through. People could tell that just by their pietistic names: Kenan ‘reserved’ (my father), Mukaddes ‘sacred’ (my mother).

‘Well, they’re wrong. We may have Dönme roots, but we’re true Muslims.’

Gül shrugged and laughed. ‘Not that it matters. Atatürk says we’re all equal.’

‘Yes.’

She pointed at her vagina. ‘Seen enough?’

‘No ...’

She pulled up her panties. ‘Yes, you have!’

Ruefully I dropped my camise. I realized I had fallen in love with her. And I imagined that having seen each other’s genitals, we could consider ourselves married – well, unofficially. I became instantly jealous. ‘Why did you show yourself to Bilâl?’

She laughed. ‘Because I love him.’

‘Does that mean now you also love me?’

‘You’re too young.’

‘So is Bilâl.’

‘He’s Jewish.’

I wished I were Jewish, too. ‘Is it because I’m fat?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Just too young. I’d better go. Good luck.’

‘Thanks.’

At the door, she blew me a kiss. ‘If you’d been Jewish you’d be laughing. You’d have been done already.’

That annoyed me. I wanted to protest. But she had gone.

So I wrote to her, explaining the many reasons that made circumcision so important for a Muslim. That it is the most momentous initiation in a boy’s life and must be revered as such. That unlike Jewish boys who get chopped off when they don’t know who they are or what they are – not to mention that getting cut when only eight days old makes it all too easy for them – we Muslims experience circumcision when we approach puberty, when we already have some idea of what the world is like and what we can expect from it. That whereas Jewish boys have to wait until their bar mitzvahs, when they are thirteen, before they can be considered men, we attain manhood the moment we shed our foreskin. That undertaking circumcision when we are old enough to understand the significance of the rite impels us to attain the Prophet Muhammet’s perfection even though that objective is unattainable because the Prophet Muhammet, Blessed be His Name, was born perfect and was thus the only man born circumcised. That circumcision is one of the five cleansers that give us mental and moral probity; consequently, unless circumcised, we cannot pray in a mosque or perform the Haj or even marry.

Writing the letter eased my fears. When I set out for the park where the communal circumcisions and the ensuing festivities would take place, I strutted as if my silly camise and hat were the uniform of Mehmetcik, our indigenous soldier considered indomitable even by Tommy, his British counterpart. To keep my spirit bubbling, I envisaged Gül’s downy vagina smiling at me, like two halves of a sunny peach. And I remembered the softness of her hand on my penis. My penis which, to date, could do no more than urinate and harden always at unwanted moments was, lest I forget, bigger than both Naim’s and Bilâl’s!

And as I lined up with my brothers-in-rite outside the circumciser’s tent and received the blessing of Cemil Ağa, the rich man of the neighbourhood who was defraying the cost of the festivity as his charitable duty for the year, I shamed myself by producing an erection that no youngster of my age was supposed to have.

Gül, as I have already mentioned, was a Pîr.

I discovered this the following summer.

We were playing football on the beach in Suadiye. (Gül was not allowed to swim. Her eyes were allergic to the iodine in the sea.)

Bilâl’s mother, Ester, was swimming on her own; she was far out, halfway to Burgaz, the second of the Princes’ Islands. Gül’s mother Lisa, Ester’s close friend, was stretched out under a parasol, reading a book. (My mother, Mukaddes, the third member of this set of Graces, had won a bursary for a midwifery course and was away in Ankara.)

Normally, Ester, Lisa and my mother swam together. Before marriage and children, they had swum to all four Princes’ Islands. On a number of occasions, they had even tried to swim the length of the Bosporus, but had had to give up each time because of the shipping to and from the Black Sea. But Lisa, having been vaccinated against smallpox, had been told not to swim for a few days. (Bilâl was God knows where. Naim and he were too independent to be seen with their mothers.)

Gül was running circles round me with the ball when she suddenly stopped and pointed to the horizon. ‘Ester’s in trouble!’

I looked at where she was pointing. Ester – or rather her red swimming cap – was a dot on the sea.

Gül ran to the edge of the water. ‘It’s pulling her down!’

‘What’s pulling her down?’

Gül waded in and, gesticulating wildly, screeched high-pitched sounds like a dog being tortured. ‘Somebody save her!’

As Lisa jumped up, I threw off my sandals. ‘I’ll go! I’m a fast swimmer!’

I dived in. Ester was too far out and I had no chance of saving her, but I had to try. I swam furiously.

Then I saw another swimmer in the distance change course and strike out towards Ester.

I heard Gül shout. ‘Someone’s gone to help. She’ll be safe now.’

The other swimmer reached Ester.

After a while, I joined them.

The other swimmer turned out to be Deniz, a relative on my father’s side. One of my dream women. When she got married – I was barely four at the time – I had thrown a monstrous tantrum, calling her husband a donkey and begging her to divorce him and marry me. Deniz, sweet and good-hearted, had gently fended me off. Thereafter, I had locked her in my mind and imagined enjoying untold things with her.

Ester was suffering from stomach cramps. Women’s problems, Gül told me later.

Deniz and I took turns to drag her back. It was hard work, but it had its rewards. As we toiled to control Ester, who kept flailing as if determined to drown us all, I frequently brushed against Deniz’s big breasts.

On the beach, Ester, still contorted, hugged us. ‘How did you know I was in trouble?’

Lisa pointed at Gül, who had picked up the ball and was practising some fancy footwork. ‘She saw you.’

Deniz nodded. ‘Yes, I heard Gül shout! That’s what made me turn round and see Ester.’

I was amazed. ‘How could you have heard her? You were too far out.’

‘I don’t know how. I just did.’

Gül dragged me away. ‘Come on – let’s play!’

Later, at siesta time, Gül and I took to our bikes. Defying the afternoon heat with strenuous activity was our way of demonstrating our toughness. We went across to the Golden Horn and, pretending we were competing in the Tour de France and climbing mountains like the Tourmalet, the Aubisque and the Izoard, rode furiously up and down the hills. Gül, being the faster rider, had long designated herself the maillot jaune and always wore a yellow jersey.

When we stopped to pick some figs from the trees lining the lane to the Greek patriarchate, I asked her. ‘How could Deniz have heard you? You weren’t even shouting!’

Gül thought for a long time. ‘Strange, isn’t it?’

‘Telepathic, I’d say.’

‘Maybe.’

‘What else?’

Gül pulled me closer to her. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

‘You know I can.’

‘Nobody must know.’

‘What is it?’

‘It is like telepathy, only stronger. I sense – see – things. Dangerous things. Just as they’re about to happen ...’

‘You’re kidding me ...’

‘I can see Death ... When he gets too near ...’

‘That’s impossible ...’

She looked annoyed. ‘I can! I’ve chased Death away many times. I chased him when he came for you ...’

‘For me?’

‘When you had diphtheria the second time.’

‘I had diphtheria the second time because they inoculated me at school before I’d recovered from the first!’

‘Well, he came for you – Death ... Stood around for three nights ...’

I remembered those nights. My windpipe was so blocked I could barely breathe. My mother had managed to procure an oxygen cylinder from the hospital – probably the only one in Istanbul in those days – but even that hadn’t helped. They had had to do a tracheotomy.

‘It was the tracheotomy that saved me.’

Gül smiled smugly. ‘That was my doing.’

I forced a laugh. ‘Oh, sure!’

‘I kept shouting at all the doctors I could think of! Inwardly – the way I shouted at Deniz this morning: Do something! Do something! Finally they performed the tracheotomy.’

I stared at her, expecting her to giggle and tell me she’d been teasing me.

She stared back defiantly. ‘You don’t believe me?’

I did. And I didn’t. I nodded uncertainly.

‘You’ll keep it a secret – you promised!’

I nodded again.

She rubbed her hands. ‘Right. Now, don’t think Death’s forgotten you. He’s around somewhere. So, time to get you really strong. Turn all that fat into muscle. Do you wrestle?’

‘No ...’

‘Best way. Let’s go!’

I gaped at her. ‘Wrestle with you?’

‘Why – scared I’d beat you?’

‘You’re a girl ...’

‘I won’t tell, don’t worry!’ We were near a plot of land awaiting builders. She dragged me there and drew a square on the earth. ‘This is the mat ...’

And as we grappled, as I locked my arms around her muscular thighs and felt her buttocks, firm like flexed biceps, I decided I would definitely marry her, too young or not. I even swore I would stop being unfaithful to her in my fantasies and no longer lust after dream women like Deniz – an impossibility, as I soon found out.

Much as I loved tumbling with her, I didn’t like losing to Gül every time we wrestled. So I joined the Fenerbahçe Youth Club and began some serious training after school.

I surprised everybody, most of all myself, by showing an aptitude for sport. After about a year’s weight training, I had converted most of my fat into muscle and was noticeably stronger, so much so, in fact, that I thought I might be asked to join Naim’s gang. I wasn’t. Prejudices die hard. Moreover, because of my association with Gül, I was seen as a girl’s man.

Another year on, I finally defeated Gül. After that, I never lost to her again.

Looking back, I should confess I felt I had triumphed far too soon and too easily. With hindsight, I attribute this to the fact that, getting more and more enmeshed in her deathsayer’s world, Gül was losing interest in ours.

I should also confess that, somewhere in my soul, I was aware of this dislocation. But I chose to think her detachment simply meant she no longer needed to worry about my health. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I also ignored Mahmut the Simurg’s cautionary tales about such oracles as Pythia and Cassandra, the Sibyl and the Sphinx. These seers, the teller of truths explained, succumbed sooner or later to a condition known as ‘Pîr’s palsy’, which is a darkening of the mind that afflicts the Pîr after too many sightings of Death. Gül, whom I had introduced to him, was an exceptional Pîr, he warned me, and might yield to this palsy sooner than most.

Even more unforgivably, I didn’t perceive the depth of Gül’s anguish when she first confided her fears to me.

It was a national holiday, 19 May, the day celebrating Atatürk’s arrival in Samsun in 1919 to launch the War of Independence. We had gone to the park where the fairground had set up shop. Though on that occasion we could have joined the gang – Naim was in bed with jaundice and Bilâl, his deputy, quite obviously had as soft a spot for Gül as she had for him – we didn’t. This time Gül, stuck even deeper in her inner world, insisted that we should be on our own.

So we went round the shooting galleries, chairoplanes, carousels, acrobats, jugglers and the rest. My efforts to brighten her mood failed dismally.

But when we reached the Gypsies, she became animated. Leading me by the hand, she started surveying the booths. Then she stopped in front of one and stared at its placard. Beneath a painting of herbs and crystal balls, the legend read:

* FATMA * HEALER * MEDIUM *

‘I need to go in there, Rιfat.’

I dragged her away. ‘Later.’

My attention had been drawn to the enclave of a bear-leader who was challenging the onlookers for a ‘brave heart’ who would have the mettle to wrestle with his mammoth bear called Yavru, ‘nursling’. Ten kuruş only – refundable if the challenger stayed on his feet for a minute.

I nudged Gül. ‘Shall I?’

‘Waste of money.’

‘What’s ten kuruş?’

‘It’s a tenth of a lira. And with a lira we can both go to the cinema.’

‘But this is a challenge ...’

‘Oh, all right. As long as I get to see Fatma, the medium, later.’

‘Sure.’

She grimaced. ‘The bear stinks!’

‘So? Shall I? I’m very tempted ...’

‘Go on, then – do it!’

I took off my shirt and paid my ten kuruş.

As soon as I moved into the circle, Yavru rose on his hind legs. He looked twice his huge size.

The bear-leader shook Yavru’s chain.

The bear growled.

I stood transfixed, suddenly terrified.

The bear launched himself. He moved so fast that I could neither back away nor run. Seconds later, I was on the ground with his front paws triumphantly pressing on my chest.

The bear-leader whistled.

Yavru sauntered away.

I hauled myself off the ground, ashamed at having failed so pathetically.

The bear-leader shook my hand. ‘At least you’ve got balls.’ He pointed at the crowd. ‘They’re all chicken-hearted!’

Gül kissed me on the cheek. ‘I’m proud of you!’ Then she took out her handkerchief and dabbed my chest. ‘He scratched you!’

I shouted in frustration. ‘He could have killed me.’

‘I would have been forewarned.’

‘What?’

‘Had you been in danger, I’d have seen it.’

‘Oh, sure ...’

‘I see such things ... I told you once ... Don’t you remember?’

I nodded vaguely. Still smarting from my defeat, I wasn’t prepared to be convinced. I put on my shirt and started walking.

She pointed at the booth advertising Fatma, the medium. ‘Wait! I need to go in there.’

I grumbled. ‘Do you have to?’

‘Yes. I won’t be long.’

I waited, curiosity overcoming my irritation.

When she came out a few minutes later, she was smiling – for the first time that day.

That fuelled my interest. ‘What do you want a medium for?’

‘She’s not just a medium. She’s also a healer.’

‘So?’

‘For Naim.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘Let’s have an ice-cream – I’ll tell you.’

We bought our ice-creams and sat on a bench. Gül’s smile had evaporated. She stared, seemingly nowhere, with wide-open eyes.

She looked so vulnerable that my bad humour dispersed. I ruffled her hair. ‘I’m all ears.’

To my surprise, she held on to my hand. ‘I’m scared.’

‘Because of Naim’s illness? It’s only jaundice.’

‘He’s had it for over a month. He’s very weak now. It’ll get worse.’

‘Come on ...’

‘I’m never wrong about these things. I see all the possibilities – all that might happen. All the calamities. That’s what’s so scary. Naim needs a healer. Fatma can make him better.’

‘Would your parents agree?’

She sneered. ‘My parents? Trust their son to a Gypsy? Not in this world.’

‘I see.’

‘It’s got to be done secretly. I have to smuggle Fatma into the house.’

‘That’s asking for trouble!’

‘I’ll need your help ...’

‘Me? Oh, no! I mean, a healer doing things to Naim! When there are plenty of good doctors ...’

‘Please. You’ve got to help me! If Fatma doesn’t treat Naim, he’ll die!’

‘Don’t be silly!’

‘I’m telling you! I can see Death! I can see how Naim will suffer! All the horrible details!’ She started crying. ‘Naim will die unless we intervene! Believe me!’

I remembered that time at Suadiye beach when she had somehow communicated with Deniz to save Ester. I also remembered her claiming to have saved me the second time I had diphtheria by getting the doctor to perform a tracheotomy. ‘It’s difficult to make sense ...’

‘I know. But it’s true. I see these things. I see Death. That’s why I’m so scared.’

I couldn’t help it, I believed her. ‘What will the Gypsy do?’

‘What do you think? Lay hands. Give herbs. Their way ...’

‘Nothing else?’

‘What else? Will you help me?’

How could I refuse? ‘What do I have to do?’

‘Late tonight. After everybody’s gone to bed. Bring Fatma to our house. I’ll let you in. She said she only needs a few minutes ...’

I nodded, but remained apprehensive.

She kissed me. ‘You’re a true friend!’

‘One thing. Do you see things about yourself?’

‘Never, thank God. Why?’

‘What if things go wrong tonight?’

‘They won’t. You’ll be there. I haven’t seen anything happening to you.’

Gül lived in a small house by the sea at the end of a parade of taverns that catered for the staff and passengers of Haydarpaşa, the railway station that served Anatolia and the countries beyond. Thus, the neighbourhood was busy day and night, and no one – not even the night-watchman – paid any attention to Fatma and me as we made our way in the early hours of the morning.

Gül had been on the lookout at the window and opened the door the moment we arrived at the house.

Guiding us with a torch, she led us to her brother’s room.

Naim, clammy with sweat, was sleeping restlessly.

Fatma lit a match, then took out a razor blade and held it to the flame.

That made me uneasy. I whispered. ‘What are you doing?’

Fatma muttered. ‘Sterilizing.’ She directed me to the other side of the bed. ‘Hold him by the shoulders. Gül – hold his head steady.’

I stammered, aghast. ‘You’re not going to cut him?’

Fatma growled urgently. ‘Hold his shoulders!’

Gül, clutching Naim’s head with both hands, hissed angrily. ‘Trust her, Rιfat!’

Bewildered, I gripped Naim’s shoulders.

Naim woke up with a jerk. Then, seeing us – three shadows behind the torch’s faint light – he grew frightened and tried to shout.

Fatma covered his mouth with one hand. With the other, she swiftly cut three parallel lines, about half a centimetre apart and two centimetres long, on Naim’s forehead.

Naim struggled violently.

Gül tried to restrain him. ‘Ssshhh! It’s all right! Everything will be all right!’

As he felt the blood trickling down his face, Naim’s panic increased. Finding some reserves of strength, he threw us off and started screaming.

Calmly, Fatma put her blade away. ‘Let’s go!’

But before we could take a step, the light went on in the room and Naim’s parents, Lisa and Sami, rushed in.

For a moment we stared at each other in shock.

Naim, still screaming, scrambled out of bed and rushed over to them. ‘Mami! Papi!’

Noticing the blood on Naim’s forehead, Lisa started shrieking.

Sami turned to us in horror. ‘What have you done?’

Fatma patted his shoulder. ‘He’ll be all right. I took the poison out!’

Sami stared at him. ‘You did – what?’

‘The poison that turned him yellow. I drained it through the third eye. Your son will be fine in three days.’

Lisa, with Naim still hanging on to her, wailed. ‘Fetch the police! Fetch the police!’

Gül shouted. ‘No! She’s just saved Naim’s life!’

Lisa and Sami stared at her as if she were mad.

Gül pointed at Naim’s cuts. ‘Look – just three little cuts. Nothing else! The blood’s drying already!’

That set Lisa off screaming again. ‘Sami – the police! Get the police!’

Gül blocked her father’s way. ‘No, Papi! Trust me! Let me explain ...’ She turned to Fatma and me. ‘You two – go now! Thank you.’

We slunk off.

The next day, everybody talked about our diabolism. Only the fact that the family doctor, summoned post-haste, declared the cuts Fatma had inflicted on Naim as superficial and not at all infected prevented Lisa and Sami bringing charges against us.

On the third day, Naim’s jaundice disappeared, as if angels had wiped it clean during his sleep.

In another week, as his strength began to return, he became his old cocky self again.

In the ensuing months, Fatma, Gül and I – particularly Gül – came to be seen as ‘different’. People who must be treated with caution.

Fatma was hardly bothered. Gypsies had always been considered different.

But I grew resentful. For a start, when I asked whether I could now join the gang, only Bilâl backed me. I confronted Naim: not only had I played an important part in saving his life, but also, thanks to having taken up wrestling seriously, I was stronger than most of the boys, including him. He agreed with me, but contrived a sly excuse: I had wrestled with a bear; that made me as filthy as any Gypsy. (I should have punched him on his third eye, but I didn’t think of that. I’ve never been quick-witted.)

Gül fared the worst. Rather than applaud her resolve in saving Naim, people looked on her as if she had tried to murder him. Malicious tongues implied that she was a daughter of Şeytan, the Devil – even that she consorted with him. Gül ignored these rumours or laughed at them. But I could see she was much troubled by them. I could see that with each passing day the ‘Pîr’s palsy’ was increasingly possessing her.

Time passed.

We remained close, but somehow distant. I continued loving her. We met less and less. She had become a close friend of Handan Ramazan, the girl who lived next to the bakery and played the kanun, that magical instrument that Handan’s father, our greatest player, claims can produce every sound in heaven with its seventy-two strings. They were turning into teenagers and had developed a passion for dance music and films. I had found my religion: wrestling.

About two years later, on another national holiday – 30 August, Victory Day, we met again at the fair in the park. As if in homage to the previous occasion, we had made our way, separately, to the bear-leader’s enclave.

She teased me. ‘Come for a return match?’

I smiled and took my shirt off. ‘Why not?’

I went into the arena. But this time I was ready for the bear. As he attacked, I jumped aside and leaped on his back. Using every skill I possessed, I tried to unbalance him. Needless to say, he eventually threw me off. But I had stood my ground much longer than the requisite minute.

After that, still nostalgically, we went to have an ice-cream. We didn’t say much. I basked in my success with the bear. She stared at her hands – a sure sign that she was lost in her own world. Eventually, flustered by our silence – yet we must have had so much to tell each other – we got up to leave.

‘Be well, Rιfat. And be careful.’

‘Sure.’

‘Terrible things are happening. In Europe. China. Worse to come.’

‘You’ve been seeing things again?’

‘Streams of them. All the time. Death everywhere. Not just for Jews. For everybody. Even for our friend ...’

‘What friend? Who?’

‘I can’t tell yet ...’

‘If I knew, I could try and prevent it from happening ...’

She stroked my cheek. ‘You’re so sweet. It’s very vague at the moment. And I may have got it all wrong. But confusion – uncertainty – doesn’t help. Just drives me mad all the more.’

‘Can’t I do something? Help in some way?’

‘Can you make me go to sleep? And never let me wake up?’

‘If we saw each other more ...’

She kissed me on my lips. ‘Take care. Always.’

Then she ran off.

Two days later, Germany invaded Poland.

Winter set in. And it proved to be one of the coldest winters of the century. Temperatures in some parts of Anatolia dropped below minus 30 degrees centigrade.

On 26 December 1939 my mother went to Erzincan, in eastern Turkey.

As I mentioned before, my mother had trained as a midwife. She had so excelled in this specialization that she had soon surpassed most of the obstetricians who had been sent to study abroad. In 1938, following glowing recommendations, the ministry of health commissioned her to structure a nationwide training programme for midwifery.

The principal recommendation for my mother had come from none other than Professor Albert Eckstein, a German Jewish paediatrician who had been given asylum from Hitler’s Germany by Atatürk himself and who, over the years, had attained the status of saint in Ankara’s Nümune Hospital – the institution that serves as a model for every hospital in the country. It was through the auspices of this professor that my mother had procured the oxygen cylinder when I had contracted diphtheria for the second time and, indeed, on his advice that my doctor had performed the tracheotomy. I know this because Gül once told me he had been one of the doctors she had telepathically begged to save me.

(Atatürk’s offer of refuge to those persecuted by the Nazis – an offer that not only saved countless European artists, academics and intellectuals from certain death, but also enabled them to pursue their careers – emulated the way Sultan Beyazιt had opened the empire’s doors, almost 500 years earlier, to vast numbers of Jews and Moors fleeing the Spanish Inquisition. Professor Eckstein, I should add, had been initially targeted by the Third Reich more for being an anti-Nazi – which in those days was equated with communism – than for being a Jew. As my father once remarked, the fact that the good professor was greatly esteemed by a Turkish administration that had outlawed its country’s own Communist Party, and imprisoned most of its members, gives an idea of the paradoxes that ruled – and still rule – Turkey.)

Inevitably, my mother had to travel a great deal. Though this was hardly to my liking, my father accepted it with equanimity. A research botanist at the Agricultural Academy in Çiftlik, on the outskirts of Ankara, he understood only too well the priorities for a nation trying to jump from the eighteenth century into the twentieth in a few decades. So the two of them turned every homecoming into a celebration and enjoyed a marriage that was the envy of their friends. (Sadly, to this day, my paternal grandparents will tell whoever chooses to listen that my mother’s all too frequent absences seriously hampered my development by diverting my interest to sport instead of good old-fashioned commerce. But then they are so determined to camouflage their Dönme origins that they would criticize any act of non-conformity. And of course they have the field to themselves. My maternal grandparents, also Dönme and said to be enlightened, were killed during the battle for Izmir in 1922.)

As I said before, my mother went to Erzincan on 26 December. She arrived there at about 9 PM – a fact my father established from the log of the bus that had brought her from Erzurum. Almost immediately, she gave a lecture at the city’s hospital. The next morning she was scheduled to address a group of middle-school graduates interested in a career in midwifery.

At roughly the time of her arrival in Erzincan, Gül rushed into our apartment screaming that my mother was in danger.

Weeping and agitated, she urged my father and grandparents to contact my mother immediately and tell her that she had to leave Erzincan and travel as far north as she could.

Of course, my father and grandfather knew about Gül’s prophetic gifts. But they could not bring themselves to accept that my mother was in mortal danger.

I did. So did my grandmother, who believed in all things occult. And together we prevailed on my father and grandfather to try and contact my mother.

They rushed out to find a telephone – not an easy task on a bitter winter’s night in Istanbul in 1939 – while we prayed that the country’s antiquated telephone system would somehow defy the elements and get through to the mountainous east.

About 11 PM, while my father and grandfather were still out, Gül quietened down. She turned to us, utterly exhausted. ‘It’s too late now. She hasn’t got time to run away.’

I tried not to believe her. But my strength drained away. I sank on to the floor and curled up.

Gül crawled to a corner and stared into the void.

After an hour of nightmarish silence, my father and grandfather returned. They had scoured all Istanbul in vain for a telephone. Finally, my grandfather had thought of going to his Masonic Lodge, which had a switchboard. They had duly woken up the night-watchman and, after what had seemed an eternity, had finally contacted my mother at her lodging. Though she had sounded fine, my father thought she had been perturbed by the call.

Gül made no comment. She withdrew further into herself.

We dragged ourselves to bed.

At about 2 AM Gül started screaming again. ‘She’s dead! Crushed! Dead! Dead!’

We jumped out of bed in panic.

My grandmother, always calm under pressure, switched on the radio.

And after many torturous hours of shuttling between hope and despair, we started hearing about the Erzincan earthquake. Eight on the Richter scale – a mere one degree less than the maximum. Striking at 1:57 AM. Lasting for fifty-two seconds – an eternity for those caught in it. One survivor described it as the Devil shaking the earth as if it were a die in a heated game of backgammon. All of Erzincan and many surrounding villages razed to the ground. Telephone and telegraph lines destroyed – hence the length of time for the news to get through. Regions stretching hundreds of kilometres from the epicentre also affected. (In Ankara, a relative’s son, aged four, squealed with joy as his cot was shunted from wall to wall, believing that the tremors were a new game.)

The death toll reached 33,000. Approximately 120,000 homes had been destroyed.