CHAPTER
21
I
STANBUL,
T
URKEY
The avant-garde bookstore on Istiklal Avenue, the street the French were referring to when they spoke of Istanbul as “the Paris of the Orient”, would have made the father of modern-day Turkey proud. Gary looked down on the crowds of people below. The energy was an invisible pulsation he could feel in his spirit. He wanted to be down there mixing with the crowds instead of proctoring an English grammar test. He looked at his watch.
Ten more minutes.
His eyes ran over the silent group of nine students with their heads bent in concentration on another practice TOEFL test, and then he went back to the window.
The avenue ran down from the lofty Taksim Square to Galata Tower. It was closed to traffic except for a single tram that ran every fifteen minutes for those pedestrians who didn’t have the time or energy required to duck and dodge their way to the other end of the street, weaving through raucous groups of students, gawking tourists, amorous lovers and the occasional focused businessman. A favorite hangout for both locals and tourists, the avenue was a constant stream of humanity. It was the best place for people-watching in the whole country. One could sit in a Turkish coffeehouse surrounded by authentic Ottoman furnishings complete with the
nargile
water-pipes, or in a modern café like Gloria Jeans Coffee. Somewhere along the nearly three-kilometer avenue there was sure to be a gypsy musician playing a violin or harmonica and occasionally there was an
oud
as well.
It epitomized everything about the Republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk had envisioned when he proclaimed the foundation of a secular state in 1923, thus ending over six-hundred years of Ottoman rule. It also left the Muslim world without a Caliph for the first time since the Prophet’s first converts had stormed out of the Arabian furnace with fiery swords, carving out an empire for themselves and branding a crescent moon across the religious landscape of the Middle East. For this, Atatürk was, of course, reviled by pious Muslims. Many believed that every century a proto-type of the Anti-Christ or
Deccal
was born, and no small number believed that Atatürk was the twentieth-century version. He had liberated women and allowed them to study, encouraged science and the arts, and insisted that government authority not be based on religion. Some said that he was also a spiritual man, but so many myths had grown up around this legendary political and military leader that it was hard to separate fact from fiction. Spiritual or not, the man’s fondness of spirits, particularly
raki
, was unquestioned.
The fruit of the revolution was everywhere on the street below. After being the de facto leader of the Islamic world for four hundred years, the Turkish people had set a new course, one that was diametrically opposed to that taken by their Ottoman forefathers. They had been the protectors of the faith and the holy sites of Mecca. They had led the jihad against the infidel for six hundred years and had come to the aid of Muslims from Spain to India. Now, they seemed to have been molded into a civil society with democratic elections, freedom of the press, co-ed universities, a rapidly growing industrial manufacturing base and telecommunications infrastructure, civil society organizations, free capital markets and even a pornographic film industry. In other words, Turkey had all the trappings of a modern society, all of which would have been unthinkable under the Islamic rule that existed a mere one hundred years ago.
Gary had devoted all of his spare time in the last six months to studying the history of these enigmatic people. Atatürk had somehow managed to transform the warrior Turks into a country which, at least superficially, resembled a secular democracy, and he had summarized the foreign policy of the new republic with his famous slogan
Yurtta Sulh Cihanda Sulh
, which was translated in the West as “Peace at home and peace in the world.” His stellar leadership had not gone unnoticed and in Time magazine’s “Man of the Century” competition, westerners were shocked to see Atatürk come in second after Winston Churchill. The surprise felt by ordinary western citizens confronted with this fact was only evidence of their ignorance and naivety. After all, his abolishment of the Caliphate, which had served to rally the armies of Muslims to the banner of Islam for centuries, was considered by many intellectuals in the Middle East to have truly been one of the great achievements of the twentieth century. After centuries of uninterrupted warfare, the Turks had gone almost eighty years without issuing a declaration of war or invading a neighboring country.
Well, almost . . . But then, the invasion of Northern Cyprus on July 20, 1974 could almost be forgiven, provoked as it was by a coup executed for the purpose of annexing the island to Greece and suppressing the Turkish minority. The resulting massacres and clashes between the Greek and Turkish populations on the island had to be stopped and the Turkish Armed Forces accomplished this quite surgically.
It was also difficult to view the operations of the Turkish Armed Forces against PKK guerillas as a declaration of war since they were directed at domestic insurgents. There were, however, several million Kurds who would take issue with this point of view. Three thousand Kurdish villages had been deserted, close to half a million people displaced and tens of thousands killed. The only other operation by the Turkish military in the twentieth century that could be defined as “war” was the Turkish participation in the multi-national United Nations force in the Korean War. Indeed, the Turkish units performed very well and their tenacity and courage were commended by many American officers. Just two years later, Turkey became the first and only Muslim country to join NATO. With the eighth largest army in the world, modern-day Turkey still evidenced the heart of a warrior. No slogan of Atatürk could ever erase that.
Atatürk would have been proud of the bookstore and what it represented. He would have been proud that the country was moving towards full membership in the EU, and the Turks were, as a whole, proud of him as well. But somewhere deep down in his soul, the Turk seemed to be conflicted. On the surface, there was convincing proof, like this bookstore, that a paradigm shift had been made, but the Turkish soul had an alter-ego and some said Mr. Hyde was starting to put in more regular appearances. Acts of violence against foreigners, the murder of Catholic priests, Armenians and Protestant missionaries, as well as the resurgence of Islamist political parties once every twenty years, were all positive proof of the conflicted soul, the alter-ego, the split personality of a culture torn between East and West.
The timer on Gary’s watch beeped, eliciting groans of disapproval from the students.
“Okay, class. Test is over. Please pass your papers to the front.”
He collected the papers and the students began gathering their books. The tallest boy in the class raised his hand.
“Yes, Murat?”
“Will we have the results tomorrow,
hocam
?”
“Yes, Murat.”
“Thank you,
hocam
.”
“Make sure you all do your homework. Tomorrow’s lesson depends on it.” He turned to go, but then stopped and said, “If any of you have Angela’s number, give her a call. She’s missed the last two lessons.”
Murat turned to the attractive brunette standing beside him.
“Do you have her number, Esra?”
“Yes, I will call her for the
hocam
.”
“Thanks, Esra. See you guys later.”
Gary made his way to the small back office and knocked on the door. There was no answer. He turned the handle. It was locked. He put his head in his hand and sighed. Then he knocked again and waited. He heard what sounded like a book fall on the floor, then, a stifled moan.
“Eray. I need to get my stuff out of there. Let me know when you’re finished.”
He sat down at the nearest table with his back to the door. He was beginning to worry about Angela, and after their last conversation, he had reason to. Twice, they had gone out for tea after the lesson, and the last time she had really opened up. In some ways, they were like oil and water. A chemical engineering graduate from the University of Bucharest, she was five years his junior. She came from a poor family, and only managed to get an education through a competitive state scholarship based on university entrance exam scores. After graduation, she had landed a good job at a petrochemical factory making plastic.
Her older sister Bianca, however, had been less fortunate. After three attempts, she finally gave up on the university exam. Determined to help her younger brother get the education she had missed, Bianca had taken a job as an
au pair
in Istanbul three months ago. Her father had protested, but there was no work in Romania. She loved children and the salary was decent, so she had pestered her father until he consented, packed her bags and left. Except for a small note hastily scribbled on a postcard they received last month, they had heard nothing from her.
The note had been a call for help and her father had hopped the first bus to Istanbul in the hopes of finding her. Every night, he called home with no news. He said he had found a lot of girls trapped there, deceived by promises of employment and then forced into prostitution. Their lives were miserable, often seeing ten or more customers a day. Then, one night, he didn’t call. Nor did he call the next day. It was a week before they heard from him. The phone call had been short. He simply said he was he was on a bus heading back home. What he didn’t tell them was that he had been beaten to within an inch of his life for asking questions and passing out pictures of his daughter in the wrong part of town. They had broken both of his wrists, his nose and his collar bone, warning him never to come back. So Angela had quit her job and come to Istanbul to find her sister. Now, she hadn’t shown up for class in two days.
He grabbed a copy of the
Turkish Daily News
someone had left lying there. His Turkish was decent, but reading the newspaper was still a time-consuming chore. So, he limited himself to news from the Internet or small English daily papers like this one. They were little more than propaganda for the outside world, as opposed to the Turkish papers, which were propaganda for the Turkish citizens. Either way, news in every country was what somebody wanted the public to know, not what it needed to know. He skimmed the headlines and tossed it back on the table. He folded both arms on the table and laid his head down exhausted. Almost six straight hours of lessons had left him exhausted.
The door behind him squeaked. He lifted his head and turned around to see Melike come out of the office. Her hair was a mess, but other than that she looked better than he had seen her after some of her other sessions with Eray. Gary headed for the office and found it messier than usual. Piles of paper and books had been pushed off into the floor. Eray was looking in the mirror that hung above a couch that stretched along an entire wall of the tiny office. The couch had seemed out of place when he had interviewed here. Now, it didn’t. He walked across the room to retrieve his backpack.
“Sorry to cause you to wait, Gary. Melike had some trouble with her accounts, and so I had to go over with her the numbers.”
Gary didn’t doubt the veracity of the story for a minute. Melike was a drug addict. He had seen her take money from the cash register on several occasions. This was how they settled accounts.
“No problem. I just wanted to get my stuff. I have a few quizzes to grade for tomorrow.”
“Well, I’m taking off. I promised my girlfriend I would meet her in front of Marmara Hotel at 9:30. Will you lock office when you go and tell Tuncay not to close before midnight?”
“Sure.”
Eray grabbed the bouquet of flowers sitting in the corner and left the room. Gary watched the door close behind him in disbelief. Eray treated him decently. He had been managing this posh little bookstore on the busiest street between Rome and Karachi for almost two years. They struck up a conversation while Gary was browsing books one day. It had been his idea to let Gary use the room in the back for private lessons. He took a small cut, and Gary was able to make enough to live on. The owner of the store probably knew nothing about the arrangement, but he hadn’t asked questions.
Gary decided to take advantage of having the office to himself. He put the backpack on the floor and sat down at the computer to check his email. Melike stuck her head through the door.
“Hi Gary. I put the tea on. Would you like me to bring you some?” She was a graduate of Bogaziçi University and her English was virtually flawless.