Suna nodded gravely. ‘But it’s not good news.’
‘Is this the top page?’ Jeannie asked. She plopped down on a stool and began to read. Her fists were clenched and soon she began to sob. Chloe gestured at Lüset, who answered with a silent nod.
After she had spirited Jeannie away, the others exchanged dark looks and darker murmurs. It was bad, very bad. There was something Suna had found on the Internet that she wanted the others to see. As they huddled around her laptop, I found myself a chair in the corner, where, to keep myself occupied, I surveyed the room. In the centre were two small sofas – one red, one blue – sitting on a carpet of the same colour scheme. Between them was a glass coffee table piled high with glossy magazines and newspapers, a slender brass floor lamp, and a yellow box of Duplo, tipped on its side. As I looked across the vast parquet floor, I could see assorted Star Wars action figures, a large Transformer, and an overturned train.
Next to the stairs was a large glass tank. Inside it was a large snake coiled around a tree branch. In spite of myself, I smiled. Another cobra! After all these years! Windows ran along all four walls – from where I sat I could see the full span of the new suspension bridge, and below its glittering arcs, the slow parade of night buses rolling into Anatolia. Running below the windows along three walls was a custom-made desk, long enough to accommodate five workstations. On the wall behind me was a collection of framed posters – most from Sinan’s films, and one from his beautiful mother’s brief singing career. Running above the windows were the framed photographs that told the story I could have done without: Sinan arm-in-arm with Jeannie. Sinan cradling his infant son. Emre learning to crawl, Emre taking his first step, Emre staring at the three candles on his birthday cake. Sinan holding up a silver cup, and, over the bookshelf on which someone – his adoring wife? – had arranged his trophies, a photograph of Sinan standing on a windswept hilltop, looking into the distance, smiling like a man. His frame was wider than I remembered. As was his face. But his eyes were the same – dark, sulky, and idly seeking trouble. For a moment I remembered how it had felt, to sit with him on that chaise longue, to see him lie back on the headrest, hands behind his head, smiling and archly patient, never doubting that if he looked into my eyes long enough, my resistance would crumble.
Quickly, I looked away. Chloe was sitting on the chair in front of a laptop; Suna and Haluk were reading over her shoulders. From time to time, one of them would cry out in disbelief. And Chloe would look up gravely and say, ‘Should we even be reading this garbage?’ Or: ‘Are you ready for me to scroll down?’ When they reached the end, Haluk straightened himself out, put his fingers through his thinning hair, and gazed out the window. ‘Where did you find this, Suna?’ He was speaking in English, but when Suna replied, and Chloe interrupted, they had slipped into Turkish. I only caught a phrase here and there, but this in itself was familiar, and oddly reassuring. What Turkish I’d learned, all those years ago, I’d learned from boyfriends and classmates: I’d sat there for hours, days, and months on end, struggling to fit together the words that made sense. But I could always read their emotions. Even if I did not know what they said, I knew how they felt. As I watched my three former friends whispering in their huddle, throwing their heads back from time to time to revert to English – ‘Why would the State Department release such a thing?’ ‘How can we be sure this is a genuine article?’ ‘There is, of course, only one question we must ask, and that is, Cui bono?’ – I remembered, for the first time in thirty-five years, why I’d once liked them.
Cui bono. In the old days, Suna could not go five minutes without asking ‘Cui bono?’ I must have shifted in my chair because now Chloe looked up. When she saw me, her eyes widened into a very familiar stare. ‘Crumbs!’
Suna subjected me to another of her fierce blue glares. Then she broke into the warm smile I’d arranged to forget. ‘It’s you!’ she cried. ‘It really is you!’ She ran across the room to embrace me. ‘How long have you been here, cowering like a mouse! Why so quiet? You should have said something! No, it is our fault. We should not have been so rude. Sit, sit down, tell me your news. Tell me what I can offer you. Some tea? Something to eat?’ She sat me down on the red sofa and sat herself down on the blue one, clearing the glass table between us for the tea that soon arrived. Pausing from time to time to urge me to eat more of the sweet and salty biscuits that had arrived on the same tray, she asked me about my life and work, and I asked her about hers. But whenever the conversation lagged, and she reached across the table to give my arm an affectionate squeeze, the new Suna faded to make way for the old one, calling to me across the cafeteria. ‘Sit down. Have some of my cake. Do you like it? How wonderful. How very glad I am. But now, my darling, I have a question. I was wondering if you could explain to me why the running dogs of capitalism are continuing their illegal invasion of North Vietnam…’
‘Elma yanak,’ Suna said suddenly. ‘Apple cheeks. That’s what we called you, wasn’t it?’
‘You know what we called you, don’t you?’ I said.
‘What?’
‘Suna the Terrible.’
Suna laughed, as if reminded of happier days. ‘And I was terrible. Wasn’t I? But now you’ve forgiven me. That’s good. So I forgive you, too. No matter what your crime.’ Lighting a cigarette, her lips still curved, she turned to me and asked, ‘Do you happen to remember what your crime was, by the way?’
‘Cultural imperialism,’ I said.
‘Such a broad term. Can’t you be more specific?’
‘If I’m not mistaken, I was polluting the country by my very presence.’
‘Hah!’ she said, throwing back her head in laughter. ‘And my crime?’
‘I never really worked that out,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you could tell me.’
I was surprised by my own words, but more surprised to see how little they affected her. Still smiling, she rattled off something in Turkish that made Chloe roll her eyes and Haluk laugh heartily. But when Suna turned back to me, her face was serious again. ‘You’re going to help us. Am I right?’
‘I can’t make any promises,’ I said. ‘But of course I’ll try.’
‘We’re very worried.’ She looked up anxiously at the others and they confirmed her words with dark nods. ‘It’s far worse than Jeannie knows.’
‘There are some new and virulent rumours circulating,’ Chloe explained. ‘We think we know where they’re coming from, but we can’t be sure.’
‘But if you ask the most obvious question,’ said Suna, ‘in other words, “Cui bono?”, it is clear that the rumourmongers’ aim is to discredit Sinan, do whatever necessary to make him look like the terrorist they so fear. But now there’s a new twist. Our enemies are seeking to weaken Sinan’s links with those who love him – make his own wife doubt him! Let me show you.’ Walking over to the newspapers and picking up the one on the top, she pointed to the loud red advertisement running along the left hand side of the page – a sleek and smiling middle aged man, speaking on a cell phone, smiling in profile at a young girl on another mobile phone who was gazing up at him in abject admiration, and beneath this tableau, a single word: ‘ŞENLİK.’ ‘Does this man’s face ring any bells?’
Here Haluk put a hand on Suna’s shoulder. He said something in Turkish that sounded like a warning. ‘You’re right,’ Suna said. Turning back to me, she said, ‘We’ll speak about this later. Tomorrow, perhaps? In the meantime, tell me. You need to begin your research, and we need to help you.’
‘Jeannie had some papers she thought I should see.’
‘Did she mention anything in particular?’
‘It was something of an open invitation,’ I said. ‘I think she wants to make it clear that she has nothing to hide.’
‘Ah! Yes! We forget at our peril that we ourselves are under suspicion.’
‘That’s not what I meant,’ I said.
‘Oh really? Then what did you mean? Let me think. Ah. Now I see it. To prove to the world that we’re not terr
orists, you must first pretend you wish to prove it to yourself…’
‘Crudely speaking, yes.’
‘And to prove it to yourself, you must go way, way, back – if not to our prehistory, like this rumourmonger who has come back to re-infest our lives, then to those other rumours. I take it you know which ones.’
She turned to the window, puffing ominously on her cigarette, and as I watched her, I felt the sour pit of fear in my stomach. I had forgotten what it was like with her – how a friendly exchange could slide into a war of words from which there was no escape.
‘I’m not sure I know what rumours you’re talking about,’ I said carefully.
‘You don’t? Oh, please. My friend! Are you as wide-eyed as all that? But never mind. I have lived with this for a long time. And am used to seeing it in people’s eyes, as I can see it in yours… So please. Dear friend. Come with me. As it happens, we do not have to go too far.’ Taking my hand, she led me to the window and pointed down at the glittering houses and apartments spilling down the hill beneath us. ‘Do you see that window, the third floor up, in the building just down there? It has red curtains, and behind them a chandelier is burning. Do you know what happened in that very room – how long has it been – thirty-three years ago last June? No, of course you don’t. But of course – you’ve heard so many things. Such horrors! Guns and kidnappings and kangaroo trials and informers and cold-blooded murders and bleeding trunks – but tell me, did anyone ever…’
‘Suna! Allah aşkına.’
This was Lüset, who had come upstairs to join us at the window. Had she done nothing in her life, other than rush into rooms to plead with her reckless friend? She took my hand. ‘Welcome back,’ she said. After a pause, she said, ‘It is a very difficult time, so I hope you can be patient with us.’
‘I never…’
She raised a hand to silence me. ‘The past is the past. But that’s why we need you. We need someone who understands our situation, but who also has a voice abroad. I’m afraid that our own journalists, who do not have the high standards of other countries, have only made matters worse. They do nothing but circulate old and discredited rumours. They still can’t mention us without also mentioning this murder that never happened.’
I turned around, and looked at each of them in turn.
I must have gasped. ‘The Trunk Murder never happened?’
‘You didn’t know?’ Chloe said.
‘Do you mean to say that…’
‘No – wait a minute,’ said Chloe. ‘I need to get this straight. Are you saying no one ever told you? That all this time, you’ve thought…?’
I turned to Suna. ‘So what actually happened?’
‘Nothing happened.’ This was William Wakefield, who was standing at the top of the stairs. ‘Nothing at all!’ But there was something about the way he stood there, grinning at me with his arms akimbo, that told me he was lying.
I did keep my promise and dropped by Suna’s office at the university the next day. But she was on the phone and late for a faculty meeting so I found myself sitting there across the desk, trying to compose myself, and the questions swirling about my mind. Of all the things I needed her to explain to me, the first was this: even assuming that this murder had never happened, how could it be that a person of her political complexion could be on such friendly, such intimate, terms with a man she knew to have been a spy? As I watched her bent over her phone, her arms going back and forth – was she doodling? Underlining? Taking notes? – it suddenly hit me. She was erasing the past.
In the end she didn’t have time for the promised chat. She had, however, gathered up some papers for me. I went back to London laden down with documents and DVDs and a huge folder of photographs and news cuttings.
I laid them out on my study floor as soon as I got home and for many weeks, that was where they stayed. Every time I mustered up enough resolve to look at them, a wave of nausea came over me. I felt sorry for Jeannie, and my conscience told me I should help her find her son. But my heart clouded over when I thought about the others, and our strange reunion at the Pasha’s Library, and my shameful response to it.
You’d think I’d be glad to hear that a murder involving so many people I knew so well had never happened. That even if I still had doubts, I’d want to lose them – hope, at least, that these people were telling me the truth. Instead I felt bereft, as if they had robbed me of my own past.
What did it mean to say nothing had happened? Where did the erasure begin and where did it end? How much of my past was fiction not fact? These were the questions that ate into me, every time I tried to do the right thing. And I did try, if only in half-hearted spurts. I left a few messages with editors, though I didn’t chase them up. I answered Jeannie’s many falsely cheerful and desperately undemanding emails with falsely worded excuses. I wrote to Sinan’s lawyers, asking for information they did not forward to me. I kept track of the case through the website set up on his behalf by a student organisation somewhere in New York State, but only to confirm that there had been no progress. I unpacked the DVDs. Resolved, every night for many weeks running, to watch at least one of his films. But the only one I saw was the one I saw by accident – a documentary on BBC2 about a neighbourhood in the hills above my parents’ house.
I tuned in just at the end: four men, unmistakeably Turkish, watching a traffic altercation from a coffeehouse. An uppity lady in a Mercedes shaking her fist at the man unloading the lorry that was blocking the road as her chauffeur called him the son of a donkey. The men from the coffeehouse listening impassively, the camera slipping down the street, down the hill, to the Bosphorus.
In the credits rolling over it, I saw his name, and though I knew I had no cause, I still felt duped.
The last email I received from Jeannie was an apology. She was writing to ask if I would mind putting a hold on the story until we had a chance to speak. New information had come to light, she said. She would be truly grateful if I could help her ‘process the ramifications.’ But since there were leads to follow before she could honestly say she had the whole picture, it could wait until I was next in Istanbul. In the meantime, had I had a chance to see Sinan’s films? There was one in particular – My Cold War – that ‘might be good to review’.
I bounced back an evasive reply, giving her the dates of my next visit.
A few days later, I sat down on my study floor and went through my DVDs until I had found the one marked My Cold War. It was, as my mother had said, only half the story, but it was not, strictly speaking, the story of his childhood. Although it was told in an artful, playful way, interspersing its talking heads with footage from home movies, and news reels, old photographs, and ironic clips from old Turkish films, it had a menacing momentum that left me feeling as if I was trapped in the passenger seat of a car speeding towards a cliff. It began with Sinan’s birth in Washington DC in 1950, and his early childhood in an assortment of embassies around the world – the ‘innocent years,’ when he had believed Turkey ‘to be a great world power, as great as the United States and the Soviet Union put together’, and his father to be ‘the hero who had stood between these two towering giants, and kept the Cold War cold.’ He then moved on to his troubled teenage years in Istanbul, by which time he had, in his words, ‘discovered where Turkey was in the scheme of things’, and that his father, ‘far from being a hero, was a lackey, pleased to do whatever his American masters commanded.’ His disillusionment was compounded, he said, by the fact that he himself was ‘being prepared for the same fate.’ He went on to describe his years at Robert Academy, when he was ‘told to be a Turk at home, and an American in the classroom, until all I wanted was to blow the whole place up, and me with it.’ He went on to imply that, without the steadying hand of a trusted mentor – he did not mention Dutch Harding by name – he might well have done so.
Cut to the student protests of the late 60s – the demonstrations, the riots, the bombs, the pitched battles, the day the workers marched on the
city – and Suna, analysing the anti-American mood. ‘Of course, there were political elements. There was Korea, Cyprus, Vietnam. But for us, all children of the rich, the privileged, the carefully educated, the ruling elite – the beneficiaries of the best our American allies had to offer – there was a more personal problem. Our fathers were the collaborators. The Turks who made sure Turkey did as it was told.’
As pictures from our yearbooks filled the screen, Suna added, ‘Perversely, this only added to the glamour of the Americans who presided over us. Even as we ridiculed the shortness of their trousers, we envied their confidence, their freedom, their loose-limbed children. They were the untouchables!’
My heart froze when I heard those words, as I anticipated the cold slap of my own name. But the face that now flashed on the screen was not mine. It was Jeannie’s.
‘And of all the lovely American girls who passed through this boy’s hands,’ Suna’s cruel voice continued, ‘the most untouchable would be the daughter of the spy who watched over us.’
As Jeannie faded from view, questions flashed across the screen:
‘What happened next?
Who was the true mastermind?
Where is he now?
What does he have to say about himself?
Who are his new paymasters?
Cui bono?’
5
It was less than a week later that I ran into a colleague of mine named Jordan Frick. I say colleague in the looser sense of the word. He was a feared and respected war reporter, while I wrote on and off in the same paper about mothers and babies. But we’d known each other for decades.
We had, in fact, first met in Istanbul, in 1970. And if you’re beginning to wonder how there can be so many people wandering around the edges of my life who share a connection to Istanbul – let me just say that there are a lot of us, and that we seem to favour work that keeps us wandering. Jordan had first gone to Turkey with the Peace Corps, and had stayed on, supporting himself as a stringer for various papers in the US. But when our paths first crossed in June 1970 – at a party, at the house Dutch Harding shared with my mentor, the saintly Miss Broome – Jordan Frick was on his way back to the US: to make his parents happy, he had agreed to a masters at Harvard. When I told him I would be attending college in the area, he gave me his number. The following winter, after Sinan dropped me, I called him. He took me out to the Café Pamplona, where I had cried for two hours, and he had listened, and understood. Not once did he tell me I was better off without the bastard, or that I’d meet someone else tomorrow, or that these things happened to everyone, or that time would ease the pain.
Enlightenment Page 4