Enlightenment

by Maureen Freely

  I shook my head. My mother took a drag from her cigarette. ‘That’s funny,’ she said. ‘Because she wants to see you.’

  2

  We met on the terrace of the Hotel Bebek, early the next evening. Curiosity having proven more powerful than dread. A year or two earlier, I had seen a picture of her in the paper – the Turner Prize in London, or the Something Else in New York or was it Paris (and what a rude shock it had been to scan the caption and see her name – Jeannie Wakefield, of all the people for him to marry, after all he had done, it made no sense!) so I recognised her right away. But it was immediately clear that Jeannie Wakefield knew nothing about me, except that I was my parents’ daughter and a journalist. So I felt I had to say something.

  ‘You were?’ she said. I could see, from her puzzled frown, that this was news to her. ‘I mean,’ she continued. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, because it’s none of my business. But – what sort of friend?’ Before I could answer, the waiter came with our drinks, or a ship went by, or perhaps it was yet another acquaintance waving from the other end of the crowded terrace. Whatever the interruption, it was enough to stop the thought.

  How she looked that day: not as beautiful as I’d once imagined, and with her jeans and her T-shirt and her flyaway hair, not the svelte blonde of her photographs. But younger than her age, with solemn blue eyes, an intense gaze and a lop-sided smile that made me regret, if only briefly, any ill will I’d felt towards her. She leaned forward when she spoke, as if we were already best friends. And when I spoke – you’d think I was an oracle. She’d tilt her head and look straight into my eyes, nodding gravely, weighing my every word.

  Until I asked after her son, rather too abruptly. Her eyes fell to her hands, as if in shame. As she studied her nails, and the boats in the bay, and the sprig of mint in her gin and tonic, and the napkin she had wound around her finger, I thought how odd it felt, how disturbing and how utterly unsatisfying, to see her suffer.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I found the grace to say.

  She waved my words away. ‘No, no, please, there’s no need. In fact, this was what I wanted to talk to you about.’

  Her little boy’s name was Emre, and she did not know where he was. When they’d arrested his father at JFK, they’d taken Emre into care. Now he was living with some sort of foster family (‘so he’s safe – I don’t know where he is, but thank God, he’s safe.’). There was some hope they might release the boy to a relative. But they were insisting on a US resident, and the only relative who met that requirement was her eighty-year-old aunt. Jeannie was sure she’d find a way around this when she got to the US. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know the ropes. She was a lawyer – a human rights lawyer, no less. But she could do nothing without her US passport, which she had sent in for renewal two months earlier, on the assurance it would take no more than two weeks to be processed. Of course, she’d made enquiries, so now she knew why it was that her application for renewal had gone awry. She was on some kind of list – ‘the same one, I presume, that my husband’s on. So if I go back, with a valid passport or without it, I’ve been led to understand that they’ll arrest me, too.’

  Here the waiter interrupted us to ask if there was anything we needed. She looked up at him as if he were offering her a diamond ring on a cushion. How this man must look forward to her visits here (I could not help but think). How obsequious she must look to the fine ladies watching so unsmilingly from the next table. After she had thanked the waiter seven or eight times for the drinks he had yet to bring us, she turned to me with her lopsided smile and said, ‘It’s so very kind of you to see me when your parents must want to spend every second with you, but I can’t tell you how grateful I am. You see, I really do need your help.’

  What she wanted, it now emerged (was I surprised? I can’t have been, this happened all the time) was for me to publicise her plight. ‘Children’s rights – that’s one of your areas, isn’t it? That’s why I thought of you. We need someone who understands the issues.’ If I could alert the world to the case, highlighting in particular the outrage they’d perpetrated on a five-year-old boy, and by implication, his parents, she was sure there would be an outcry, and this could only help to expedite her son’s return.

  ‘As for the rest of it – the charges against my husband are, of course ridiculous. But if you agree to take this on, we’d want you to feel free to conduct your own investigations, and what’s more we’d want to help you. We can open up our office. You can read any document, go through our files, see any film – finished or otherwise. Go through our address books. Speak to our friends. Our enemies, even. We have nothing to hide,’ she said, though I sensed a note of uncertainty in her indignance.

  ‘Of course,’ she continued, ‘we’ve done some filming near the border with Iraq, and in cities like Diyarbakır. So it’s perfectly possible that some of our subjects had political affiliations we didn’t know about. But if you’ve seen any of our films, you’ll know they don’t engage with politics directly. They’re about people, and the worlds they make. What we try to capture is the interface – what ideas do to people and people to ideas.’

  She went on to elaborate – though I have, to my regret, no recollection of what she said. I was too annoyed by her pronouns. ‘We’ she kept saying. Did she have no thoughts of her own? His films were ‘our’ films, and he didn’t have a name. If she referred to Sinan as a separate entity, it was as ‘my husband’. But even at the time, I didn’t think she was doing this on purpose. She didn’t have a clue who I was. She genuinely liked me, and she genuinely believed I liked her back. If there is such a thing as a tragic flaw, Jeannie Wakefield’s would be her reluctance to believe that anyone she liked or trusted might be less than entirely straight with her.

  She told me it didn’t matter where I placed this article she hoped I’d write. It could be in the US or it could be in England. ‘That’s where you’re based right now, isn’t it?’ She looked at me hopefully, and my annoyance grew. There is no pleasant way of telling someone why their story might not be of interest to the general public, but in this case – even if she didn’t know who I was – she must, I thought, have some inkling as to what the problem was.

  Or did she not know what her husband got up to all those years ago, in the spring of 1971?

  ‘Look,’ I said, still struggling for a polite way out. ‘I know it sounds terrible, but what you’re asking me to do is, essentially, a human interest story. You want me to write it in such a way that people feel angry on your behalf and want to campaign for you. For that to happen, they have to believe that you and everyone else involved in this case have led blameless lives since they left their cradles. Which means I have to simplify and sentimentalise, pull every heartstring I can find, and since 9/11 and all that, they’re in very short supply. Especially when the story’s set in a predominantly Muslim country.’ I paused, to choose my words. ‘Especially if those involved have pasts that can be used against them.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘To be absolutely brutal – you can’t have a record.’

  ‘But we don’t!’ she said.

  I think I just stared at her. What sort of a marriage was it, if this was what Sinan had led her to believe? What sort of lawyer could she be, if she was blind even to the legal facts? A vengeful thought flashed through my mind. If I set her straight, it would serve him right. But there was something in her eyes – the trust, the blind, stubborn trust – that made me want to be a better person.

  So I backpeddled. ‘Look,’ I said. ‘There might be some way of placing a story in England. But in the US, which is where you really need the media attention, it won’t be so easy. Turkey is just too far away from them, and too close to Afghanistan and Iraq. There’s zero interest unless it answers one of two questions. “Is the shopping good?” “Does Turkey harbour terrorists?”’

  ‘There you are then! That’s your peg!’

  She did not seem to see me flinch. Or she read nothing into it. Gazing ou
t at the bay, she said, ‘I do understand what you’re saying, you know. They think we’re terrorists, and as long as they do, they’ll also think we’re getting what we deserve. So yes, it’s a challenge. But tell me – isn’t it the sort of challenge that makes your job worthwhile? Cutting through the prejudice…changing readers’ minds…forcing them to look at their blind spots…making the invisible visible…’ That last remark came back to haunt me, after Jeannie Wakefield disappeared.

  Right then, all I wanted was some air. So I glanced at my watch, and exclaimed when I saw the time. So desperate was I to rush off that I promised to make some phone calls, just in case – try and drum up some interest, or at least flag the story, with a view to trying again later. I offered to drop by her house in the morning, to let her know how I had got on. ‘Just tell me where you live,’ I said.

  ‘For the moment,’ she said, ‘I’m still at the Pasha’s Library.’.

  In the end we walked up the hill together. I have no recollection of what we said along the way, or why I agreed to go to back with her to the Pasha’s Library right then, or how I managed to breathe after I did. The Pasha’s Library! Of all the places in the city I did not want to revisit, this was the one I was most desperate to avoid. I think I truly hated Sinan at that moment – on her behalf as well as mine. That he would marry this woman and not just not tell her the truth about what he’d done, but move her into that house… But of course – as she reminded me when we reached the green iron gate at Hisar Meydan – she had her own attachments to this place. It was where she’d spent her first year in Istanbul. ‘In ’70-’71. I guess we never met because you’d left by then?’ I managed a nod. ‘You know the house, though,’ she said.

  ‘Oh, yes, I know the house,’ I said.

  ‘And my father?’

  ‘Of course.’

  She pushed open the gate and we walked in.

  3

  The Pasha’s Library (for those of you who have never visited Istanbul) is a 19th century kiosk that hangs like a birdcage over the village of Rumeli Hisar. It is high enough so that you can see the undulations of the Bosphorus almost to the point where they open up to the Black Sea. It was built by a pasha who, after a lifetime of forging links between East and West and squandering his family’s fortune on Parisian women, arrived at a moment when he wanted to escape from the world without losing sight of it. But the view has the opposite effect on most people. They see it through the cypress trees the moment they walk through the garden gate and from that moment on it is as if a rope is pulling them. They stop at the ledge but their eyes keep travelling. They forget why they are there, or what they think about the people they have come to see. When they get around to speaking, it is as if they have just woken up and cannot quite remember their dream.

  In May of 1970, I spent seven secret nights here with Sinan. William Wakefield, Jeannie’s father, was away on some kind of business, and Sinan had got the key from my – our – friend Chloe, whose mother was supposed to be watering the plants. When, as the eighth night fell, we’d said our last farewells – in this very garden, on the marble bench next to the ledge – the moon was just sliding up from behind the darkened hills of Asia, and the waters of the Bosphorus looked like molten lava.

  Tonight, thirty-four years later, the Bosphorus and the hills of Asia were little more than shadows behind the great glittering arcs of the new suspension bridge. The nightingales had given way to the steady hum of traffic. The great glass porch that surrounded the old library on three sides was ablaze with light, and so, too, were the windows in the raised roof that so affronted me, if only because it did not figure in my memory. But when we went inside, every carpet, every table, every chair seemed the same. We walked through the library, and onto the glass porch. The sky beyond was the same intense blue, until I got too close to the glass, and all I could see was my face.

  I turned around. There, on the chaise longue where I’d lost my virginity, was Jeannie’s father. He stood up to greet me. But even as we shook hands, I could feel him reading my mind.

  He looked much as I remembered him – tanned, beefy and balding. Relaxed and affable, with bright, beady eyes. ‘Can I fix you a drink?’ he said. ‘You look like you need one. What will you have?’

  ‘Whatever you’re having.’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘I had to give up years ago.’ As he moved towards the drinks cabinet – Sinan and I had made good use of that, too, as I recalled – he filled in the blanks. ‘No, I haven’t been here all along, in case you wanted to ask. I went back to the States not long after you did – well, a year after you did, if you want to be precise. In June 1971. Of course, bearing in mind what was happening at the time, I never expected to come back. Then in 2000, I did, but only to see little Emre. Never quite managed to leave, though. Come to my place in Bebek and you’ll see why. The view’s not quite as good as this one here, but…’

  He handed me a bourbon and water. ‘That’s your poison, isn’t it?’

  ‘Is it?’

  ‘If my memory serves me, it certainly was once. Anyway, it’s good to see you. Of course I feel as if we’ve been in touch all along. I read that book of yours. Congratulations. And of course I see your by-line. Though I haven’t seen as much of you lately. Did you get tired of freelancing? I suppose that university job of yours keeps you pretty busy.’

  This was the William Wakefield I remembered. He couldn’t go for two minutes without letting you know how much he knew.

  ‘Listen, I hope you can help us,’ he now said. ‘God knows we need all the help we can get. You must be asking yourself why. I mean considering I’ve turned myself into some sort of pundit. You’ve seen me, I assume?’

  ‘I’ve heard you,’ I said. This would have been a year or two earlier, on Radio Four or the World Service, either just before the invasion of Iraq or just afterwards. ‘In fact, I was quite surprised to hear you being so critical of US policy.’

  ‘Good. That’s what I wanted. As the big guys know, I know whereof I speak. Though of course, I speak only for myself. I’m retired. Retired years ago, in fact. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to be their apologist.’

  ‘That’s fine by me,’ I said.

  ‘You grew up abroad. You can see things from the outside. Those rubes in Washington can’t see their own johnsons. If people like me don’t set them straight… So I’ve made myself a few enemies in the upper reaches, as they say. But for crying out loud, where are their hearts? We’re talking about a five-year-old boy here! An innocent five-year-old boy! They’re holding him as insurance. That much is clear.’

  ‘But Dad, it really isn’t!’ said Jeannie, clasping her hands. ‘We can’t say anything for sure yet. It’s early days.’

  Her father paused, to gaze at her with sad affection. ‘Jeannie’s right,’ he said, turning back to me. ‘For the moment, let’s just call it a hunch. But it’s pretty clear that the big guys don’t want to touch this story. Someone’s called them off the scent.’

  ‘But Dad, that makes no sense,’ Jeannie protested.

  Her father sighed. ‘One thing I’ve learned during my long and chequered career. If the play makes no sense, check out the action back stage.’ He leaned way forward, tapping on his water glass. ‘Or more to the point, look at the history. This is not Chapter One. Just look at the cast of characters!’ He paused, ostensibly to smile, but his eyes fixed on mine in a way that made me wonder if he really meant what he had just said, or if he was just testing.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s a fishy business – I’ll give you that much! It goes way back. We’ve been set up. To put it more succinctly, I’ve been set up. But believe you me…’

  Before he could elaborate, a woman called down from upstairs. I recognised her voice at once, though it took me some time to place it. I always have a hard time placing voices and faces when they’re not where I expect them to be, and never in a million years would I have expected to find this woman in this company.

  Wi
lliam Wakefield – Jeannie’s father – came to Istanbul in 1966. He worked at the US Consulate. Officially, he was the agricultural attaché, though that didn’t fool anybody. His Turkish was too good, and so were his binoculars. We all knew he was a spy. A rather unusual spy, if truth be told. Or perhaps just an ordinary spy gone native. When he first arrived, he had a wife, who had a daughter by an earlier marriage, and for a while, this girl and I were friends. Whenever I came over to the Pasha’s Library to visit, William Wakefield would be out on this porch, nursing a bourbon and counselling a troubled youth.

  Some were Turkish boys whose wealthy parents controlled their every move but spent no time with them. Most were lost Americans – ex-army or ex-peace corps, or kids who’d dropped out of college and set out for India, got as far as Turkey and run out of money. More often than not, William knew the parents. But he did things for them that their parents were never to know about. He’d helped one friend of mine get an abortion. When another friend bought a lump of hash from a police informer, he’d been able to secure her prompt release on the quiet. As fervently as William believed in freedom, he believed himself to be its watchdog. And he was always watching. And what he didn’t know, he guessed.

  But by the time I left, in 1970, he was beginning to slip. He was drinking heavily, and stepping out with my soon to be ex-best friend Chloe’s recently divorced mother, and, I suspect, already getting up people’s noses in Washington. They weren’t heeding his advice back then, either. And it can’t have been a good time to be an American spy in Turkey. Though the Turkish state had been (and would continue to be) America’s staunchest Cold War ally, by the end of the 60s, the Turkish people were overwhelmingly against us – because of Cyprus, because of Vietnam, because the 17,000 US troops stationed here, ostensibly to protect them from the Soviet threat, had begun to feel like an occupying army. It was widely believed that the military, the prime minister, and everyone beneath him were US puppets. In the popular imagination, it was CIA pulling their strings.