A few seconds later a small, soot-stained man appeared. Of indeterminate age, he wore a thick canvas apron over what looked like one of the oldest brown suits in the world. When he saw Edibe Taner, his large mouth split open into a smile revealing teeth the colour of black treacle.
‘Edibe!’ He walked forward with his arms outstretched. The normally upright and stately Edibe Taner crouched down into her father’s embrace and then bent down even lower to kiss both his hands. Just as she had done with Musa Saatçi, Edibe Taner was apparently putting aside her detached, professional persona once again
‘Edibe.’ The coppersmith went on to speak to his daughter in one of those languages that were completely unknown to Süleyman. Whether it was Arabic or Aramaic he couldn’t even begin to know. When they had finished, the Mardin policewoman introduced Süleyman to her father.
‘Inspector Süleyman, this is my father, Seçkin Taner,’ she said. ‘Papa, this gentleman is the policeman from İstanbul I have been working with.’
No handshakes were exchanged. Just the polite bow of one eastern gentleman to another. Süleyman was not entirely comfortable with this, but he smiled anyway and said, ‘Sir, it is a pleasure. It is an honour to work with your daughter.’
Seçkin Taner took these compliments with a straight but contented face and then invited his daughter and Süleyman to join him in his shop. To Süleyman’s relief, he appeared to speak fluent Turkish, even if what he said next filled the İstanbullu with horror.
‘You must take mirra, Inspector,’ he said.
‘Papa’s mirra is the finest on the Ocean!’ his daughter enthused. ‘You will like
this
, Inspector. I know you will.’
‘Oh. That’s nice. Thank you,’ he replied without enthusiasm.
The coppersmith pushed several plates along the bench at the back of his shop to make space for them to sit. Now that he was closer, Süleyman could see that the fire was enclosed by a low, dark wall whose top was cluttered with what looked like branding irons of various sorts.
‘The smith’s forge,’ Seçkin Taner said by way of explanation. Then, smiling to reveal those heavily stained teeth yet again, he added, ‘Copper like any metal must always be coaxed into position by fire. Please sit down, Inspector.’
With one eye on Edibe Taner, who appeared to be doing something worrying with the mirra pot and a handful of not such small cups, Süleyman sat. Seçkin Taner sat down next to him and said, ‘Now, my daughter tells me you want to know about the Sharmeran.’
‘Yes, although to be truthful, sir, it is your role as what your daughter describes as a Master of Sharmeran that really interests me,’ Süleyman replied. ‘Unless I am mistaken, this would seem to be some sort of social duty?’
Seçkin Taner put a restraining hand on Süleyman’s thigh. ‘I will come to that. First things first.’ He picked up a large plate with the serpent image on it and said, ‘This here is the Sharmeran, my mistress. Queen of snakes and protectress of Mardin. Back in the dark times before the Prophet Muhammed, blessings and peace be upon him, before even the Prophet Isa of the Christians, there was a young boy who was tricked by his friends into getting lost in the caves that cover the mountains around here. In trying to find his way out the boy only succeeded in getting himself deeper and deeper inside the mountains until eventually . . .’
‘He found himself in a cave full of poisonous snakes,’ Edibe Taner said as she passed a slightly reddening Süleyman a cup of steaming mirra. ‘He called upon his god to help him but still the snakes writhed at his feet and snapped at his ankles. Just as the boy had given up all hope a strange figure came into view . . .’
‘The Sharmeran!’ Seçkin Taner clapped his small hands in delight. ‘Queen of the snakes! She ordered her children to leave the boy alone and then, because she is a good and tender-hearted goddess, she told the boy she would show him how to get out of the caves and find his way home.’
His daughter took a large gulp of mirra from her cup before continuing the story. ‘Of course the Sharmeran in her great wisdom made this conditional on the boy’s promising not to reveal her location to anyone. A goddess can have only certain human visitors, you understand.’
Süleyman smiled in what he hoped was not a hugely embarrassed fashion.
‘The boy promised. But he was faithless!’ Seçkin Taner said with regret in his voice. ‘The sultan of the city as it was then was dying. On the advice of his vizier he had offered the hand of his daughter as well as half the kingdom to anyone who could tell him where the Sharmeran lived.’ He leaned towards Süleyman suddenly, and whispered, ‘The meat of the Sharmeran can give eternal life! The sultan wanted to catch her and eat her!’
‘Which of course, with the boy’s help, he did,’ Edibe said. ‘Or rather he ate some of her flesh. The sultan’s men only managed to cut a small amount of flesh from her because she fought them off. The Sharmeran was wounded, but she recovered. She escaped and lives still, unlike the sultan.’
Süleyman frowned. ‘Yes, but you . . .’
‘Young man.’ Seçkin Taner smiled and patted the policeman’s knee once again. ‘Do you not think that if the Sharmeran can bestow life, she can also take it away? The Sharmeran may offer a man her flesh to give him life. But if he takes it for himself, he will be doomed. The sultan died as did the faithless boy, as do all who abuse our Sharmeran. She, however, lives still both in the mountains and in our hearts.’
‘My father makes representations of the Sharmeran,’ Edibe Taner said, smiling at her father. ‘She allows certain people to do this. My father is a Master of Sharmeran because my grandfather also had that honour and his father before him. Father knows and loves his Sharmeran with all his heart.’
There were some parts of this story that could be interpreted as pure examples of faith, of love in the heart of something divine and yet unseen. But Süleyman had the distinct impression that nice smart Inspector Taner and her father were talking about a being that actually existed in the flesh. That, clearly, had to be a misunderstanding on his part.
Seçkin Taner leaned towards Süleyman once again and said, ‘I also, alone but for one other, know where my mistress lives. That is why I am the Master of Sharmeran. That is why people respect a mere coppersmith whose father could not either read or write.’
So there was no misunderstanding after all. Süleyman felt quite cold. Edibe Taner, seeing the slightly chilled pallor on his features, fetched him a fresh, hot cup of mirra to help revive his colour.
‘Only Gabriel Saatçi knows the secret too, but he is the Sharmeran’s own true child,’ Seçkin Taner continued. ‘The Sharmeran’s children are bound to protect her from faithless humanity. Thirty-five years ago, by accident he says, Gabriel walked into the Sharmeran’s cave and was bitten on every part of his body. But he didn’t die because the Sharmeran and the Prophet Isa together ordained that Gabriel should be a beacon for mankind. A living saint.’
‘Ah, Gabriel, whose father—’
‘Papa, I took Inspector Süleyman to meet Uncle Musa. I thought, because he is an outsider, he might encourage Musa to talk. But nothing happened.’
‘Nothing would,’ Seçkin Taner said. ‘Musa has no control over Gabriel. The boy will return when God and the Sharmeran will it and not before.’
Süleyman frowned. It was a mild expression of what he was feeling within. This conversation was, he thought, rather like several he had had over the years with various wilder members of Çetin İkmen’s family. In the realm of the unseen he was, he knew, out of his depth. The only way forward was to attach as much of this fantasy as possible to something that might be provable and observable.
‘Was Gabriel Saatçi treated by a doctor?’
‘Of course,’ Seçkin Taner said. ‘The doctor said that he should have died.’
‘So if Gabriel is missing, could it not be that he is with the . . . in the cave where you believe the Sharmeran—’
‘You think I haven’t looked?’ the coppersmith interrupted. ‘I am the only other human who knows the location of that cave, and I can tell you that unless my mistress is hiding Gabriel for some reason, he is not there.’
‘So where do you think he might be?’
‘I don’t know.’
Süleyman turned to the coppersmith’s daughter. If any progress was to be made these people needed some reality imposed upon them. ‘Musa Saatçi is of the opinion that everything will be all right when his son returns.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘When Gabriel comes back there will be a resolution.’
‘But what if Gabriel doesn’t return?’ Süleyman said. ‘What if Musa or Gabriel or both of them
are
terrorists? What—’
‘Gabriel cannot be a terrorist. He is a living saint,’ Seçkin Taner said. He was beginning, Süleyman could tell, to grow agitated with the man from İstanbul’s seeming lack of understanding about his world. ‘That just isn’t possible!’
‘But what if it were possible?’
‘It isn’t!’
There was a pause. While Seçkin Taner inwardly railed, Süleyman looked into the face of his daughter Edibe and thought that he saw just a very little seed of confusion on her features. Not that she said anything apart from simply reiterating, softly, her father’s beliefs and position.
‘Edibe, you should take your friend away now,’ Seçkin Taner said, getting up and turning back to face his forge once again.
Edibe Taner, obviously embarrassed now, first shrugged at Süleyman and then said to her father, ‘Papa, Inspector Süleyman has not come here to help us find Gabriel. He is here to find Yusuf Kaya. I took him to meet Uncle Musa only because I am fearful for him. To be accused of terrorist offences is such a serious thing. I thought that talking to an outsider might help him.’
Seçkin Taner turned to face his daughter with fury on his features. ‘You of all people should know that when Gabriel returns is beyond our control! No outsider or anyone else can change that!’ He turned back to his forge and murmured again, ‘You should know that.’
‘Yes, Papa.’ She lowered her eyes just for a second and then, moving out of the shop, she flicked her head towards Süleyman, indicating that he should follow her. ‘We must go now. We must work.’
As he left, Süleyman saw Seçkin Taner’s shoulders shrug. He saw hurt on Edibe Taner’s face as well as that slight suggestion of confusion he had seen earlier. Maybe, he thought, staying in the mythical past was easy for a Master of Sharmeran, maybe that was what being a Master of Sharmeran really meant. But being the daughter of one as well as a serving police officer was, he could see, far more complex. What he could only now appreciate too was why Edibe Taner had resisted his questions about the ‘Master of Sharmeran’ appellation for so long. He imagined she felt that men from İstanbul could not be expected to understand such things. In the case of this particular man, she was right.
Chapter 11
The nurse had of course been quite right to call the patient’s doctor to his bedside. Ramazan Eren, the prison guard, the only survivor from Yusuf Kaya’s bloody break from the hospital, looked as if he might be starting to regain consciousness. Dr Eldem, his physician, came immediately. The nurse stayed for a moment while the doctor looked at the various monitors that surrounded the supine body of the guard. He was as she had found him, gently murmuring, his eyelids fluttering open to reveal bruised, jaundiced eyes and then closing again just before she left. Dr Eldem was, after all, quite capable of dealing with whatever might happen next and, if he needed help, he could always ring to summon other doctors and nurses on the unit. In the meantime, as Dr Eldem himself had told her, there was another coma patient who needed turning. She didn’t need telling twice. She’d seen enough pressure sores on coma patients in her time to make her terrified at the thought of such abominations on
her
ward. The doctor also told her not to tell the police guard at the entrance to the ward about what might be going on. Ramazan Eren may or may not be waking up. There was no need to tell the world about it yet.
Once she had left the room, Dr Eldem eyed the patient Ramazan Eren and his seeming struggles to regain consciousness with some distaste. After a few seconds had passed, and totally at odds with received hospital guidance, Dr Eldem took his mobile phone out of his pocket and switched it on. He searched through the phone’s directory until he came to the number that he wanted and then selected it. Just under a minute passed before the automatic answerphone clicked in. Dr Eldem snorted impatiently.
‘Where are you? It’s Eldem,’ he said flatly. ‘He’s awake. What the hell do you want me to do about him?’
The afternoon had been spent preparing for the activities of the night to come. Edibe Taner had had to obtain permission from her superiors to search the as yet unknown Kaya house down on the plains. If the woman, Kaya’s second wife, was indeed an American citizen, she wanted to avoid any sort of diplomatic gaffe. Once permission had been given she was obliged to construct a team to carry out the operation. This she created entirely from officers not native to the area, including Mehmet Süleyman. Together in her car on their way to Dara, Süleyman finally plucked up enough courage to tackle his colleague on the subject of her father.
‘Inspector, I did not mean to cause offence to your father,’ he said, looking at her strong profile silhouetted against the fading sun as it dipped behind the mountains. As usual she was driving, fast.
Edibe Taner smiled. ‘It’s all right,’ she replied. ‘I understand. You probably find us here in Mardin very strange. I don’t imagine that personal relationships with snake goddesses are common occurrences in İstanbul.’
‘No.’
‘What you have to understand is that Mardin is one of those places where the differences between states of existence are small.’
Mehmet Süleyman didn’t comment. This could, he felt, very quickly turn into one of those conversations that he sometimes had with Çetin İkmen: worrying conversations about the nature of reality, if indeed such a thing even existed.