Black Day at the Bosphorus Café

by M. H. Baylis

  ‘Without changing it.’

  Rex laughed again. This time, not because he found anything funny.

  ‘There’s people building all over the place. That Turkish social club on the corner’s having skylights and solar panels and god-knows-what-else… Your boss is building a flipping zoo on the marshes, isn’t he?’

  Pocock shrugged. ‘I don’t make the rules.’

  ‘So what can I do?’

  Rex’s phone rang. It was a mobile number. He’d had another call from it ten minutes ago. He went into the living room, took two deep breaths and answered.

  ‘It’s Dr Georgiadis,’ said a woman’s voice, sirens in the background. ‘I can’t find a way through to your office. They’ve blocked off the road.’

  Georgiadis. The Greek doctor. He couldn’t even remember what she wanted. Now his neck felt stiff. What was happening to him? ‘Where are you?’

  ‘At Turnpike Lane tube.’

  ‘Stay at the station,’ he said slowly, through lips that had started to feel numb. ‘I’ll meet you in five minutes.’

  As Rex put his phone away with shaking hands, he could hear the same sirens in the distance. Pocock came into the room. ‘I can drop you at the station, Mr Tracey. I have to get to another appointment.’

  Rex grabbed a card of pills on his way out and instantly popped two. Feeling slightly better in Pocock’s car, he used the three-minute ride to the tube station to complain bitterly about the absurdity of council planning practices. They reached the parade, where the road turned into a pedestrianized zone in front of the toilets and the bus station. By the scaffolding outside the Trabzonspor Social Club, Rex saw a buxom, curly-haired woman in a raincoat, resting her briefcase on top of a bollard as she looked all around her. The mere fact of her standing still announced her to be a stranger. No one stood still there, if they had a choice.

  She seemed to clock Rex as he clocked her. She gave a tentative smile. He assumed she was the Greek doctor, and smiled back. But he wasn’t finished with Pocock.

  ‘I can’t leave it like that. There must be some way round this. Isn’t there?’

  ‘You need good advice, Mr Tracey. And that’s costly, these days, isn’t it?’ Pocock gave him a long, blank look. One of the chin-spots he’d picked was bleeding. The man seemed to expect something else from him.

  ‘You’ve got all my numbers,’ Pocock said finally, springing open the locks. Dazed and frustrated by the whole encounter, Rex stepped out and watched him reverse away in his garish car.

  ‘Rex?’ said the woman. She sounded American. She held out a hand. He stared at it, wondering what he was supposed to do with it. His mouth felt dry and there was still the smell, that awful smell from the burned girl, in his nose. Singed cloth brought back older memories from childhood: standing too long in front of the fire in his pyjamas after his mother had left for work. Scalding his thighs.

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘No, I’m…’ Before he could answer, he lurched towards her. She caught him, letting the briefcase drop.

  ‘Whoa. You’re not okay, are you?’

  In the Bosphorus Café, over hot, sweet, sunset-coloured tea, Dr Georgiadis taught him something.

  ‘Do the opposite of what you’re telling yourself. Don’t shut it out. Think about it – all of it – what you saw, what you heard, what you smelt, and while you’re doing it, follow my finger with your eyes.’

  He felt self-conscious, sitting there amid the fumes from the Enfield bus and the fried breakfasts, but he did what she said. He remembered the shriek and the colours of the burning girl and the smell and the odd, white streak that he’d thought was a face. And all the while, he focussed his eyes on the doctor’s slim, honey-coloured finger as she moved it from left to right, first slowly, then with increasing speed.

  ‘How do you feel?’

  He hesitated. The appalling truth was that, alongside feeling no better, he had a hard-on. A great, unapologetic stalk. Perhaps because of the unfathomable connection between death and sex. Or more probably because it was the first time in ages that an attractive woman had been nice to him.

  ‘Still anxious,’ he said.

  She had him do it again. This time, focusing carefully on his own inner state, he realised something had changed. The tight, nauseous ball that had been lodged inside him since the Shopping Mall, now seemed less obvious. In fact, after going through the process a third time, it seemed to have gone altogether, along with the smell, or its memory. He knew something bad had happened, something bad he’d witnessed. But he wasn’t feeling it with his body any more. He took a tentative breath and smiled.

  ‘Are you a hypnotist or a witch?’

  Her eyes were brown and warm. ‘EMDR,’ she said. The accent wasn’t American, he realised, just faintly foreign. Greek-Cypriot, he supposed. ‘Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing. We use it with traumatised people in conflict zones.’

  ‘You could call this place a conflict zone.’

  ‘You could certainly call what you’ve just been through a very traumatic experience,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t be back at work.’

  ‘If I wasn’t, I’d just…’ He stopped himself. ‘I feel like I want to be busy and… well, at my age, you do know what’s good for you, don’t you?’

  At this moment, the waitress put a toasted fried egg and halloumi sandwich on the table in front of him. Dr Georgiadis looked at it and gave a chuckle. It was a rather naughty sound, Rex thought, at odds with her composed exterior.

  ‘Well, if you want to be busy, Mr Tracey, why don’t we do the interview?’

  ‘Good idea.’ He got out his notebook. Then he looked at her, reddening. ‘The problem is… I’m afraid I’ve completely forgotten why I’m interviewing you –’

  She laughed again. She seemed to find him very funny. ‘I work with a department of the United Nations which gathers medical and psychological information about war crimes, government-sanctioned torture and violence.’

  Some of it came back to him. ‘And you’re here because of some missing people in Cyprus, right?’

  ‘Over two thousand Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot individuals remain missing after the events of 1962 to 1963 and 1974. We’ve been working with archaeologists, forensic scientists and the families of the missing to identify their whereabouts and their probable fates.’ She spoke slowly, clearly, a much-practised speech. He was grateful for it – occupying him, without taxing him too much.

  And he liked looking at her. He hadn’t liked looking at a woman so much since Diana, an almost-girlfriend who’d gone away to South East Asia nearly two years ago. He liked this woman’s eyes: the colour of figs and the deadly sweet-cakes in the Larnaca bakery. He liked the way she held her head. It was almost imperial, like a woman on an ancient coin.

  ‘There have been a few discoveries. Mass graves found outside villages in both sectors of the island, also smaller finds on the Turkish mainland… So far, the remains of almost 400 Greek Cypriots and 125 Turkish have been returned to their families.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  She frowned. Clearly this was a delicate point. ‘The standard line on both sides tends to be: “We did what we had to do to defend ourselves, but the other lot, they were animals…” We can’t do much about that. Our mission is to reunite bodies with families in the hope that, one day, for the children growing up now, there can be a peaceful future.’

  ‘So you’re saying each side committed murders?’

  ‘Murders, abductions.’ She ran a finger over her lips. ‘And rapes. The main difference being that a number of the bodies of missing Greek-Cypriots have shown up in barracks and prisons – or places formerly barracks and prisons – on the Turkish mainland, suggesting –’ she paused, again rubbing her lips ‘– some more concerted form of state involvement. There was an explosion at an army base in northwest Turkey a month ago.’

  He put the sandwich down. ‘The Kurdish bomb thing. I think the girl this morning might have been
making a point about that.’

  She nodded. ‘Whatever or whoever caused the explosion, there were more bones than bodies in the aftermath. An outer wall which collapsed shortly after the blast revealed a pit, containing up to 60 male skeletons, thought to date from the early 1980s.’

  ‘Turkey has its own reasons to stuff people in mass graves, though, doesn’t it? Couldn’t they be Kurds? Or communists?’

  ‘With crucifixes? Amulets of St Barnabas, the Patron Saint of Cyprus?’

  ‘I hadn’t heard anything about this grave. Where was it?’

  ‘Trabzon, on the Black Sea coast. We’re issuing the first statements this afternoon.’

  ‘And you’re telling my paper first?’

  His boss, Susan Auerbach, was an old-school hack, a former Foreign Desk editor on the nationals. She’d get a kick from the scoop, even if they did nothing with it.

  ‘Harringay-Tottenham and Enfield-Haringey have the largest Cypriot communities in Europe. We’ll be hoping to match DNA from the remains with DNA from relatives of the missing. We’ve got a data-bank, a lot of people have co-operated, but we need more genetic information.’

  ‘s So, people can give you a DNA sample if they’ve lost someone, right?

  ‘Right. But it’s not that simple for everyone. Right from when the data bank was launched, some people were nervous about the idea. There was even a crazy rumour that the information might be used for some kind of ethnic cleansing. And then some people died, some moved away, moved on, just didn’t want to be reminded. But there’s a new generation now, the tests are more sensitive. So the discoveries at the barracks in Trabzon are just the launch-point. We’re visiting London, Munich, Montreal, Melbourne… everywhere with significant Greek and Greek Cypriot communities, to explain what we’re doing, and invite people to come forward. The message is simple. If you have someone who went missing, give us a sample.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I’ll be giving test kits to the doctors at the local health centres. Each one comes with instructions for taking cheek cells from the side of the mouth, and a postage paid envelope. In addition, I’ll be around, based here and visiting elsewhere in the UK, for the next few weeks, talking to community groups, interviewing people who might have significant information about ’63 and ’74.’

  He finished his notes, took a card, gave her his.

  ‘First time in London?’

  ‘Actually, no. I spent a few months working here as a student. At the North Middlesex.’

  ‘And you still came back? Wow. Where are you staying?’

  She frowned. ‘I think it’s called The… Brunswick?’

  ‘Christ. You need to move. Try the Royal in Muswell Hill. Or a bush in the woods. Seriously.’

  She laughed again. ‘Yes, the hotel breakfast was a little… unusual.’ She looked at his plate. ‘Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind a sandwich like yours.’ She waved at the proprietor, a grizzled old Turk with thick glasses and a grey jumper, leaning unhappily at the counter. Rex tried too.

  ‘Is he always like this?’ she asked, after they’d both gestured in vain for some time.

  ‘Actually, no,’ Rex said, peering over. The Bosphorus – known to most, due to its location, as simply The Bus Place – had been one of his favourite spots for years. It was a plain, clean, functional place, livened by bright paintwork and consistently good food. The owner, one Keko Küçüktürk, did almost everything himself, assisted by a stream of Eastern European waitresses and a pretty daughter, whom Rex had watched growing up in the corner behind a pile of schoolbooks. He hadn’t seen her for a while, he realised. Nor had he ever seen the owner looking so unhappy.

  Rex caught the eye of the latest waitress, a beefy Hungarian girl who always gave the impression of not having understood, yet always did. They ordered another sandwich. It never came.

  This was because, about a minute after the waitress had gone into the kitchen, two police officers entered the cafe. Rex recognised both: a slight, efficient Welshman named Detective Sergeant Brenard from the local CID, and with him, the black, motherly Yvonne Mackie from Family Liaison. If they saw Rex, they gave no sign of it. Their business was with the old man, who seemed in some indefinable way to have been expecting them. He slipped off his stool and went with them into the kitchen at the back, from where, after a few minutes, came a dry howl.

  A builder, a pink man in a hi-vis vest, cracked a joke about the noise, but no one laughed. The Hungarian girl came out of the kitchen and told everyone they had to leave. They could get their money back later, she said. But now the café was closing.

  ‘For how long?’ asked the builder, who was halfway through a cheeseburger.

  ‘For never,’ said the waitress. She was crying. And Rex suddenly remembered, with a sickening lurch, where he’d seen that peacock brooch before.

  CHAPTER TWO

  By five o’clock, Rex was waiting for his boss, Susan Auerbach, to give him the ok on a short web version of what they knew so far. Mina Küçüktürk, a 19-year-old Law student, had set herself on fire at Shopping City, sustaining fatal burns. A law student at London Met, and a Union committee member, she had recently posted YouTube videos and made comments on blogs condemning both the PKK and the Turkish government over the stalemate their negotiations had reached. In the last of these, under the title, I Am Dying For Peace, she had written ominously of people bickering in their kitchens while flames were lapping at the front door. She’d also posted links to web pages about two girls who’d made similar protests before.

  ‘Flames at the door… Sounds very poetic for a law student,’ Susan commented. ‘Is it a Kurdish proverb? Lawrence?’

  Lawrence Berne, arts critic, ‘Laureate of the Ladders’ verse columnist and general know-it-all, peered over his half-moon glasses. ‘Lord knows. But while we’re on the subject of poetry, someone keeps sending in…’

  Susan silenced him with a hand, swivelling back to Rex.

  ‘Did you know the kid was political?’

  ‘I didn’t even know they were Kurdish. I’d have thought Küçüktürk was a Turkish name, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Cypriots, Turks, Kurds – never understood the difference,’ Terry opined, though a mouthful of kofteh. ‘Food’s all Greek, for starters.’

  Susan cast one of her special chilly looks in the photographer’s direction.

  ‘The Kurds, Terry, are a distinct ethnic and linguistic group in the Middle East, scattered between Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq and Armenia.’

  Terry shrugged. ‘Fair dos. Where’s Kurdistan meant to be, then?’

  ‘It’s a hope. Despite promises from Western powers and repeated attempts by the Kurds, an independent and united Kurdistan has yet to appear, although there is, currently, a Kurdish autonomous region in the north of Iraq, now under assault from fundamentalist groups as it once was from Saddam Hussein.’

  Terry nodded vaguely and balled up his kebab wrapper, assuming the lecture was at an end. He was mistaken.

  ‘The southern and eastern parts of Turkey are also mainly Kurdish,’ she went on. ‘And self-rule remains out of their reach in spite of a long, bloody guerrilla campaign by the PKK, the Kurdish communist party, whose graffiti you can see all across our borough. That’s because the majority of the Kurds here in London are refugees from the conflicts in Turkey, who began arriving here in the 1980s, as well as setting up home in Sweden and Germany. Does that help, or is it still all Greek to you?’

  ‘Yes – I mean, no.’ Terry said, sheepishly. ‘Thanks for explaining.’

  Susan turned to Rex. ‘What’s the café called?’

  ‘The official name’s Bosphorus, but most people call it the Bus Place.’

  ‘Bosphorus Caff! That’s the magazines bloke isn’t it?’ Terry interrupted, wiping his mouth, eager to make up for his earlier gaffe. He started tapping away on his keyboard.

  Seven years ago, Keko Küçüktürk had repainted the exterior of his café in black and yellow, causing people to complain that h
e’d made the place look like a wasp. He’d also put a cryptic sign which said, in English, Kurdish and Turkish, that he neither bought nor sold magazines. It had featured on the photos Terry had taken of the new, contentious exterior, which, when they appeared in the paper – under the headline Buzz About Bus Place – had prompted a few keen-eyed locals to write in and query the sign’s meaning. An answer had never been found. When approached, Keko had seemed reluctant to comment. Eventually, the queries died away, and when the café was given a second, more modest makeover a couple of years later, the matter was forgotten. It remained a minor local mystery, like the Mauritian restaurant that had been promising it was ‘opening soon’ for the last eight years, or the well-dressed woman outside Halfords, who only ever asked passers-by for twenty-three pence.

  ‘No magazines… I remember that. Is the sign still there?’ Susan asked, skimming over the old photo on Terry’s screen. Rex shrugged and she flashed him an exasperated look. ‘You said you knew them.’

  ‘Well, I do,’ Rex said limply.

  It was that curious, London way of knowing people, broad and shallow. He had long known the girl who sat at the back of the café with the books was called Mina. It was Mina, in fact, who’d ushered him into the fellowship of the place as a whole, one stuffy June evening ten years ago. Crumpled and weary in a gingham school dress, she’d sat in her corner crying quietly over a piece of homework. He’d told her the right way to spell ‘badger’, that was all, but on the strength of that, become known to Mina and her father by name, earned the right to be served black tea in a tulip glass and to swap remarks about the weather, the rising costs of living and the many failings of the local borough, all of which put him on a different rung to most of the other punters.

  In later years, he’d lent Mina some battered pass-notes for Of Mice and Men – a book that seemed to have bored her as much as it had him – and self-consciously, alert to the possibility of being misconstrued, given her, via her father, some freebie tickets to a pop concert in Finsbury Park on the occasion of her twelve, A-starred GCSE results. He’d never found out whether she’d been allowed to go. The last conversation he could remember had involved Mina trying to choose between Bristol University, or a London campus and staying at home. He hadn’t seen her in the café for some time and had assumed she’d gone for Bristol. It seemed he’d been wrong. He remembered the brooch, though. The kid had worn it on everything – school blazers, kaghoules, disco tops. Had she said it was her mother’s? He realised he knew nothing about the mother.