From the Devil's Farm

by Leta Serafim

  “Why?”

  “To mislead us into thinking Chrisi Avgi was responsible for the killing. They didn’t mention the group by name. All they said was there were plenty of Greeks who hate the migrants and they wanted us to think one of them did it.”

  “And Svenson?”

  “Him, too, sir. Everything.”

  “So the case is closed.” Stathis folded his hands over his chest, an evil Buddha. “Well done, Patronas.”

  Patronas took a deep breath. Might as well get it said. “Before I left, I asked the officials at the prison to release them into my custody so I could take them back to Greece for trial, but they refused.”

  “You did what?” Stathis choked on his coffee.

  Leaping to his feet, he approached Patronas. “I told you there would be no extradition, none, even if those boys confessed,” he said, jabbing him in the chest with a finger. “The order I gave you was very clear: talk to them, but leave things as they are.”

  Patronas addressed him in a controlled manner. “With all due respect, sir, I didn’t think it was right what happened at the airport. I wanted to get justice for Sami Alnasseri, not to avenge him. I am a cop. That’s not my job.”

  Nor yours, he wanted to add, but didn’t, convinced his boss would fire him on the spot.

  Stathis eyed him coldly. “After what happened with Achilles Kourelas, you have the nerve to criticize me? What right do you have to tell me how to do my job?”

  “Planting the heroin, sir. It was wrong.”

  “Not as wrong as shooting an innocent man.”

  They argued for a few more minutes, Patronas refusing to back down. It wasn’t the fate of the students—they could rot in hell as far as he was concerned—it was the cavalier way Stathis had set them up. First, you do something like that to them, and then you do it to someone else—maybe someone innocent this time. Before you know it, you’re finished, not just as a cop, but as a human being. It was a bad road to start down.

  “The Embassy has been notified and their parents are coming tonight,” he said. “All hell’s going to break loose.”

  “Let it. The Turks will never release them. They know those kids killed a ten-year-old Muslim boy. And they’ll prosecute them for that if they have to. There’s no longer a death penalty in Turkey, but at the very least they are looking at life imprisonment.”

  Patronas continued to berate his boss. Worried, Tembelos signaled him with his eyes to stop. Even the priest, the arbitrator of all things moral, was shaking his head.

  Eventually Stathis returned to his coffee, taking a prissy little sip. Frowning, he set his cup down on the table in front of him. “You are a stubborn man, Patronas, insubordinate and full of yourself. I’ll let it pass this time, but see that you don’t do it again.”

  Tembelos pulled Patronas away before he could respond. “Don’t ruin your career over this,” he whispered. “Those kids got what they deserved.”

  “They’ll die in that prison.”

  “Let it go, Yiannis. For God’s sake, just let it go.”

  Eager to return home, Stathis and Tembelos were planning to return to Greece the next morning. Papa Michalis wanted to stay on in Istanbul for a few more days and visit the Patriarchate, the seat of the Greek Orthodox Church, and search for his mother’s childhood home.

  Worried, Patronas insisted on accompanying him. They’d spend twenty-four hours sightseeing and then head back to Chios. Patronas was very clear on that point—twenty-four hours, not a single minute more. The old man couldn’t be permitted to roam the streets of Istanbul by himself, not dressed as a priest and most likely seeking to convert the natives. Athyrostomos—a mouth without a door—Father was. No good would come of it.

  They gathered for a farewell dinner that night at Asitane, a restaurant famous for serving traditional Ottoman fare. Pleased with the tidy outcome of the case, Stathis had offered to treat.

  The restaurant was located off a cobbled square not far from the Church of the Holy Savior, which had been deconsecrated by the Turks some time ago and renamed the Kariye Museum. “It is renowned for its frescoes and mosaics,” Papa Michalis said, “some of the most beautiful in the world.” He insisted they visit it before the meal.

  The mosaics were indeed spectacular, virtually indistinguishable from oil paintings, the one of the Christ and the Virgin Mary especially compelling. Sadly, the people who had once worshipped there were all gone, the majority expelled by the Turks in 1922, the remainder in 1956. There were Greeks in the church, but they, too, were tourists.

  Like the priest, Tembelos was a reluctant visitor to Turkey, and kept referring to Istanbul by its Greek name, Constantinopolis, the City of Constantine the Great, and making poisonous remarks about Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish state who had engineered the destruction of the Greek community.

  “Why the hell is his photo everywhere?” He pointed to a picture of Ataturk at the entrance to the restaurant.

  Such displays were on walls throughout the city. Patronas had seen them on billboards and in every store they’d visited since their arrival. Sometimes Ataturk was pictured in a fez, other times, staring somberly ahead. Given that he’d engineered the destruction of the Armenians and the burning of Smyrna as well as the expulsion of over a million of their Greek countrymen, the photos made him nervous.

  “It’s like he’s looking over my shoulder,” Tembelos said, equally spooked, “waiting with a scimitar in his hand to cut off my head.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Stathis hissed. “They love him here. He’s like a father to them.”

  “I love my father, too, but I don’t have a picture of him in every fucking room of my house.”

  The food offered in the restaurant was unlike anything Patronas had ever tasted—the combinations of fruit and meat, the intricate seasonings. He ordered something called kavun dolmasi—melon stuffed with ground lamb, nuts, and currants—a recipe the menu said dated from the fifteenth century. He found it surprisingly delicious, one of the best things he’d ever eaten. The priest was working his way through mutanjene—an elaborate concoction of lamb, apricots, raisins, figs, prunes, and almonds—and Stathis was enjoying sea bass roasted with rose water. Unwilling to experiment, Tembelos and Evangelos Demos had ordered kebabs, the closest thing to Greek food they could find on the menu.

  Between mouthfuls, the priest explained there were many similarities between the cuisines of the two countries. “Take mamoulia, for example, a cookie stuffed with nuts that we make on Chios. The Turkish version is identical. Even the name is close, mamul. And then there’s barbounia—in Turkish, barboun.”

  “Who got there first?” Tembelos asked. “Us or them?”

  “With respect to food, I believe it was the Turks. As for everything else—science, philosophy, theater, democracy—it was us.”

  “It appears democracy is still giving them some trouble,” Tembelos said.

  This time Stathis lost his temper. “Scase!” he bellowed. Shut up. “You want to get us arrested?”

  After they finished eating, they sat around the table for a long time, drinking raki and reviewing the facts of the case, deeply troubled by the three kids and what they’d done to Sami Alnasseri. The crime made no sense to them. Unable to let it go, they kept going over the details, trying to process it.

  “Ritual murder in this day and age?” Stathis said. “They must be mad.”

  “A little,” Patronas said. “Mostly just young and jaded, seeking excitement anywhere they could find it.” He said he intended to hold a funeral, a proper Muslim one, and bury Sami Alnasseri in Athens. “Focus on the victim,” he told the others, “not the killers.”

  That is what a judge had told Patronas when he first joined the force. Over the years, he had found it to be good advice, a way of keeping himself grounded. “No one should enter into the mind of a murderer,” the judge had said. “Such darkness is contagious and it will eat into your soul.”

  “Since there’s no mosque
in Athens,” Patronas said, “I’ll have to organize everything myself. I’ve been reading up on Muslim ritual, funeral rites in Syria specifically. Instructions on the Internet were pretty clear and I am sure I can do it.”

  “Won’t you need a cleric to preside?” the priest asked.

  “No. Sami’s aunt can say the necessary prayers: ‘In the name of Allah and in the faith of the Messenger of Allah,’ and I’ll join in, if she wants. I’ve been working on that, too, so I can pronounce the words properly. Soil cannot touch the body, so I’ll have to buy a piece of wood and place it over him before we start to fill in the grave. After that, we throw in three handfuls of soil apiece.”

  Papa Michalis nodded. “Three of everything, a trinity of sorts.”

  “We already violated Muslim tradition by performing an autopsy on him. I’d like to get at least this much right.”

  Rosy-faced, Tembelos tossed down another shot of raki. “Who else is going to be there?” he asked.

  “No one. Just his aunt and me.”

  “I’ll come,” he said.

  “As will I,” Papa Michalis said. “If you think it will make her too uncomfortable to have a Christian priest present, I will stand off to the side, but I want to be there when you lay him to rest.”

  Stathis had been listening intently to the conversation. “We’ll bury him in the First Cemetery of Athens,” he announced. “I’ll have to pull some strings, but I believe it can be done. Given the extent of her injuries, the boy’s aunt will probably still be in a wheelchair, so I’ll arrange transport for her as well—get a nurse to accompany her. As a Muslim woman, she’d prefer that, I think, rather than having one of us help her.”

  A compassionate remark, sympathetic. Patronas stared at Stathis for a long moment.

  A man of many parts, his boss. He wasn’t just a pompous fool. There was kindness in him as well. Pity even.

  Tembelos volunteered to ready the grave while Patronas was in Istanbul, and all four agreed to chip in to pay for a gravestone.

  “Has to be modest,” Patronas said. “Muslim law is strict on that point.”

  After breakfast the next morning, Patronas and Papa Michalis set off to explore Istanbul, buying tickets for a hop on/hop off tourist bus, thinking it would be the best way to get an overview of the city. Stathis and Tembelos had already left, flying out on Turkish Airlines. They’d arranged to meet in two days’ time and finalize the arrangements for the funeral of Sami Alnasseri in Athens. After he buried the boy, Patronas planned to return to Chios immediately. He’d spoken to Lydia Pappas the previous day. She had already bought her plane ticket and would be arriving there in five days. He needed to figure out where to put her. Sharing a cot in the police station wouldn’t do. At the very least, she’d expect a bed.

  Patronas and the priest boarded the bus in Tacsim Square and climbed up the circular stairs to the top. They took a seat at the front and put on their headsets. It was a glorious day. The bus started out, circling the Golden Horn and then moving along the Bosphorus. They crossed the Galata Bridge a few minutes later. Long lines of men were casting off the bridge, pulling up slippery little fish and dropping them in plastic buckets. A couple of women in headscarves were standing with them, also with poles in hand, doing the same.

  The view took Patronas’ breath away. Bordered by the Bosphorus and the strait of the Golden Horn, the Sea of Marmara to the south and the Black Sea to the north, the seven hills of Istanbul were surrounded on all sides by shining water.

  The priest said there was even a word for it in Turkish, a special term to describe the way the light played across the surface of the Bosphorus, the historic border between Asia and Europe. Boats of every description were sailing back and forth between the two, leaving scythe-like wakes on the golden surface of the water. In addition to the fishing boats and tourist crafts, oil tankers were lumbering ponderously ahead, moving slowly in the direction of the Black Sea and Russia.

  The bus ride took over two hours, and by the end of it, Patronas understood why the Greeks still grieved over the loss of the city more than six hundred years before. His mother had always referred to it as i polis, the city. There was only one city in the world, she often said, and it was here.

  Sitting out in the open air, he had the same sense he’d had at the airport, that he was as far from home as he had ever been. He stared at the people in the crowded streets, the women pushing strollers. Familiar, yet somehow not. He felt like he was at the edge of the known world. Not that there was an abyss on the other side, only the unknown. The world of Allah, not of Christ.

  They spent a long time at Hagia Sophia, the crowning glory of the Byzantium Empire, and if the priest was to be believed, one of the greatest achievements in human history. Few of its precious mosaics had survived the Ottoman occupation—nothing like the walls of gold Patronas had read about in school. The priest was quiet as they walked through the church. In the process of being restored, the main room was barely visible beneath the scaffolding. There were quotations in Arabic from the Quran throughout, huge round signs in every corner. “It’s not a living church anymore,” the old man said. “It’s a relic. Do you know what Justinian, the emperor who built it, said upon entering?” He looked over at Patronas to make sure he was listening. “He said, ‘Glory to God that I have been judged worthy of such a work! Oh, Solomon, I have outdone you!’ ” He shook his head sadly. “What we lost as a people ….”

  “What we continue to lose,” Patronas said.

  After leaving Hagia Sophia, they toured the Basilica Cistern, a vast subterranean water source, and the Blue Mosque.

  Built by the Romans, the cistern was a dank, cavernous place with water dripping from the ceiling. At the back was a giant sculpted head of Medusa, lying on its side. In contrast, the Blue Mosque was full of muted light, filtering down through the stained windows in the dome. The walls were made up of ceramic tiles, countless designs in every shade of blue.

  Seeing people kneeling in worship, Patronas felt like he was trespassing, and taking the priest by the arm, he led him back outside.

  Curious, they also visited the harem, part of the enormous palace complex of Topkapi, the historic home of the sultans.

  “The Ottomans were a most peculiar group of people in my opinion,” Papa Michalis said after they concluded the tour. “Did you hear what the guide said about African eunuchs guarding the entrance to the harem? And how the Sultan’s mother picked the concubine her son would sleep with, like a madam in a brothel?” The priest sniffed. “Even their entertainment was off—dwarfs in little ships sailing around the pool in the courtyard and doing acrobatic tricks.”

  “Three hundred women under one roof. Think of that, Father.” Patronas shook his head in disbelief. “And I could barely manage one.”

  “Don’t fault yourself.” The priest laid a consoling hand on his arm. “Your wife, Dimitra, was an exceedingly difficult woman. Hercules himself would not have been able to subdue her.”

  Their final stop before heading to the patriarchate was the Grand Bazaar, to be followed by a side trip to its cousin, the Spice Bazaar, a short distance away.

  The sales people were aggressive, and they talked the priest into buying a black leather satchel. Large and unwieldy, it resembled a mailman’s bag and hung almost to his knees. To prove the bag was leather, not plastic, the salesman set it on fire with his cigarette lighter, clinching the deal for the old man.

  “You’re always saying, ‘Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon this earth, which moth and dust doth corrupt,’ ” Patronas said. “And now look at you: you’re laying up purses.”

  “This is different,” the priest said primly. “As the salesman demonstrated, it is genuine leather and in case you are unaware, moths do not eat leather.”

  They both loved the Spice Bazaar, with its burlap sacks full of every imaginable spice. The smell alone was worth the trip. Patronas ended up buying a kilo of lokum, a glossy, gelatinous Turkish candy, and an herbal love potio
n/aphrodisiac in case he suffered a failure to launch with Lydia Pappas. He also bought a fez for Nikos, Evangelos Demos’ handicapped son, and an ornate Turkish sword, its scabbard encrusted with fake jewels.

  Intrigued by the idea of cherry-flavored tobacco, Patronas toyed with the idea of buying a hookah as well, but in the end decided against it. Cherry-flavored or not, it would still be tobacco. And as a policeman, he would be unwise to take up hashish.

  Lydia Pappas called him as he was leading the priest out of the bazaar. A cruise ship had just arrived and busloads of European tourists were pouring in, the smell of spices gradually being replaced by that of sunscreen.

  Seeing fresh game, the clerks in the stores perked up and began setting out fresh trays of lokum, calling for the tourists to sample some. “Very tasty, my friends. Old family recipe.”

  Taking a handful, Patronas ate the sweets one by one while he talked on the phone. He described his day in Istanbul and told her how he and his men were planning to bury Sami Alnasseri in Athens as soon as he returned to Greece.

  “I would like to be there, too,” she said. “To bear witness, if nothing else.”

  The priest was watching him. “Was that her?” he asked when Patronas hung up. “The woman you profess to love?”

  “Yes, that was Lydia Pappas, the woman I love and intend to marry.”

  “In a church?”

  “Probably not. In a civil ceremony.”

  “So … not in the eyes of God?”

  “Father, I tried that—the crowns, the candles, the priest—and you saw how it went. Years of misery.”

  “And you think it will go better this time?”