Enlightenment

by Maureen Freely

It was while Jeannie was in Rumania that she became involved in another exchange programme funded by the EU. It was this work that took her to England, to a temporary position at University College London that became permanent in 1995. She was part of a new study centre looking at European integration and although she was drained by the strains of fund-raising and the endless round of committees, she enjoyed the common sense of purpose.

  ‘There were times when I saw a grand design in their work, even in their composition. No two were the same nationality. Each had roots in at least two countries, and for many it was three or four. Convinced that this congregation of displaced souls must be my new home, I began to look at houses.

  The day I made an offer on a garden flat in Stoke Newington, I walked over to Dalston and found myself, without warning, back in Istanbul.

  It was not just the kebab restaurants and the Turkish signs. It was the beautiful bounty of the produce spilling out onto the pavements, the smell of soap inside the shops, the gentle, sombre faces behind the counters, the soft ribbons of music, the whispered commands and the cries of conventional anguish: “She wants two kilos of tomatoes. May Allah release me from my sorrows. What’s the time, big sister? I’m bored, my soul is being squeezed. Give her the pistachios that came in yesterday. Allah save me from my son. He should have been back an hour ago. What did we do to bring this trouble on our heads?” No matter how sombre the subject, each word was a gift.’

  When her father came to visit, she took him to her favourite kebab restaurant. They’d given up on the sparring matches, because what was the point? The Cold War was over. They were back with the older conflicts it had only temporarily suppressed, and because of the work Jeannie did, she knew more about these than her father. But he was eager to catch up.

  Now he was retired, William Wakefield spent his time reading, and his favourite reading was anything that suggested America had, at any point in its history, taken a wrong turning. This made for some overlap of interests, though William seemed happiest if he could find a book Jeannie had not yet heard of.

  The night she took him to her favourite kebab restaurant, it was The Peace to End All Peace. He was only too pleased to tell his erudite daughter how the Allies had stitched up the Eastern Mediterranean after the First World War. He’d pause from time to time to speak to the waiters in his clipped, affectless Turkish. They obeyed without question.

  Suddenly Jeannie asked him, ‘Do you ever regret doing the work you did?’

  His answer was immediate. ‘Every living day.’

  ‘In what way?’ Jeannie asked. She was hoping for a mea culpa: the regrets he had about the way ‘our side’ had conducted itself during the Cold War; the arrogant pursuit of American strategic interests everywhere, the fanning of mass paranoia; the propping up of any fat cat or dictator willing to tow the line; the covert subversion of any group that questioned it; the sustained effort to keep the American people from knowing what their government did in their name; the need to find a new way of comporting ourselves now that there was no longer a Soviet ‘threat’; the understanding that, though democracy was something you could foster and encourage, it was not something you could impose from above.

  But what her father said was, ‘I regret it because the people I did it for were drooling idiots. Boxes for brains. They couldn’t see further than their own one-horse town. Damn it, we were a resource. We knew the ground. They refused to listen to us. They punished us for speaking. For this they expected us to put our lives on the line? They didn’t let us have a life. As you saw for yourself.’

  He sat back and eyed his daughter beadily. ‘Not once, not twice, but four times unlucky. First your mother, then your stepmothers. Then Amy. They couldn’t stand for it. Not just the danger, but the subterfuge. You can’t build a life on that. You can’t even be a father. Though God knows I tried.’

  Another beady stare. Jeannie knew what she wanted to say but stopped herself. He was a lonely, broken seventy-three year-old man. Instead she pointed to the kilim on the wall and asked him which part of Turkey he thought the family running the restaurant came from. The next time the waiter came to the table, her father addressed him in a language Jeannie couldn’t understand. ‘Mardin,’ he announced, when the smiling waiter had retreated. The language they’d been speaking was Kurdish.

  ‘And that’s another problem that’s not going away any time soon,’ he said. ‘But you can count on our old friends the Washington Box-Heads to pay no attention until it’s too late.’ There followed a lecture. He went to bed with his dignity restored. His daughter went to bed with a headache, and for the first time in many years, had a dream about Sinan.

  She’d heard from Chloe – this would have been the last conversation they’d had before one or the other had moved again and forgotten to forward their new address – that Sinan had returned to Denmark following his release from prison.

  In Jeannie’s dream he was thinking about having a haircut and wanted her opinion. Before she could tell him, he disappeared.

  A week or two later she was having a coffee just off Dalston High Street, in the café of the Arcola Theatre. She looked across the room and thought she saw Lüset. The cold terror she felt at that moment took her by surprise, and by the time her heart had slowed enough for her to dare to look again, she was gone.

  A month or so later – in April 1996 – an opportunity arose for Jeannie to spend a year in The Hague working alongside the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. One year turned into two, and then her mother’s health failed. She spent the next year commuting between the Netherlands and Northampton, a decision she would never regret, because she was with her mother when she passed away. Though still she would ask herself. Was her mother at peace when she died? By the end, had Jeannie become a good daughter?

  It was while she was packing up her mother’s house that Jeannie found her old postcards, and then her old journals (though the most important one remained under the floorboards at the Pasha’s Library: even as she went through her mother’s papers, Istanbul interrupted her thoughts).

  She had only just returned to her flat in Stoke Newington when she turned on the television one evening to see a picture of the Istanbul skyline.

  Another date to remember: August 17th 1999.

  38

  ‘I watched, (she wrote) but I did not feel. I went back and forth, back and forth, flipping between CNN and the BBC, watching the piles of rubble and the relatives who were clawing at them. The houses missing fronts, or hanging over the street or half collapsed into the wreck next door. The house that was still standing but minus the ground floor. The head half-visible under the slab of concrete, the child’s hand, the doll, the shoe, the corpse. The aerial views. The chaos at the hospitals. The bodies floating next to the half-submerged fun fair mermaid. The burning refinery that was about to explode, the naval base that was no longer, the ever rising death toll.

  At first they thought the earthquake measured 6.9 on the Richter scale. Then they said it measured 7.2. The next morning they said 7.4. Now the death toll was just under a thousand. Now it had doubled, now it had tripled and the digging for bodies had hardly begun. The rescue teams had started flying in. But where were the co-ordinators to tell them where to go, and where was the army? Temperatures were rising. Those still living under the rubble were dying of thirst. The official death toll had risen to 18,000 and still there were buildings everywhere that no rescue team had even touched. Look at the abominable building materials. No wonder so many buildings had come down. No mercy for the corrupt developers who had cut every corner for profit. Sympathy for the angry hordes who had chased them into hiding. But now there was a cholera scare. Torrential rains that were hampering the rescue effort. At long last the army had arrived. Now the papers were claiming between 30 and 40,000 dead, even though the official figure was still fixed at eighteen…’

  Her father had called her by now, and she had not picked up. In his message, he’d said that as far as
he knew, ‘everyone we know’ was ‘safe’. But now came the aftershocks. Some were over five on the Richter Scale, and she dreamt she was standing on a pile of rubble. She was stepping over the broken slabs of concrete, searching for a sign of life. And there it was – a hand. She reached out to touch it. It was Sinan’s.

  She screamed, but no sound came out. She woke up and made herself a cup of camomile tea. A wave of drowsiness came over her. She closed her eyes. She was walking along the Bosphorus. The pavement was shaking, the lampposts swaying, the cars were swerving and falling into the sea. She opened her eyes to chase the scene away. When she closed them again she was in the Pasha’s Library, watching the walls around her expand and contract, expand and crack. Then she was in Amy’s house, then she was standing outside Gould Hall, watching the columns crumble. Or on the college terrace, as the fissures snaked their way across the ground. She thought of the houses she’d spent time in. How many were still standing? She thought of all the people. How many were dead?

  She was in the bathroom, brushing her teeth, when she heard a very familiar voice coming from the television in her bedroom.

  She put down her toothbrush and went out to look. The man from Newsnight was talking to a woman on a satellite link-up. She still thought she was seeing things. All along she’d been catching glimpses of faces in the crowd and thinking she recognised someone. But now they flashed her name across the bottom of the screen. Professor Suna Safran. Boğaziçi University, Istanbul.

  She had aged well. The edge of outrage was still there, but she spoke with the containment of a judge. She was putting into perspective the racist remarks made earlier that day by the Turkish Minister for Health. He had said he did not want blood donations from Greeks or Armenians, or indeed anyone who was not a pureblooded Turk. She was explaining that this man was a member of an ultra rightwing nationalist party, and part of the coalition government that was not expected to last much longer. She claimed that most people in the country deplored his statements, and that there was massive gratitude for all the aid that had been coming in from abroad, most especially from countries that were traditionally thought of as enemies. The new perceived enemies, she said, were the military.

  But this, too, was an oversimplification, she said, her gravitas growing with every word. The army had itself been hard hit by the earthquake. Its fatal error had been to lack a contingency plan. There had, however, been an impressive coalition of civil societies. ‘The Turkish people have learned at last that they cannot wait to be saved but must learn to take matters into their own hands.’ It was the people who had been co-ordinating whatever rescue efforts had succeeded. It was they who had set up the ad hoc voluntary associations that had introduced food and shelter and rudimentary order for the tens of thousands who had been made homeless. She recited the number of a London-based charity account for anyone who wished to make direct donations. Jeannie wrote it down.

  Along with the donation she sent to the designated bank, she included a letter to Suna in which she offered to help with any longer-term relief Suna and her colleagues might organise. She outlined her areas of expertise. She ended with an awkward sentence about how she would understand if Suna preferred not to take her up on her offer. But whenever she remembered she’d not heard from her in such a long time, she felt sad.

  In the meantime, she followed other leads. Her father was still in touch with Amy, and when Jeannie called, Amy gave her Chloe’s email. Chloe had been living in Istanbul since the late 80s and was, among other things, on the board of the international school. The pupils were collecting money to help build a school in Gölçük, a town in the area worst affected by the earthquake. When Jeannie sent a donation, she got an instant response. The only good thing about the earthquake, Chloe wrote, was to have ‘reconnected’ with so many long-lost friends. She wanted to write back and ask for news of Sinan but could not bring herself to type his name. So instead she asked if ‘everyone’ was ‘okay’. To this she got no reply other than a round robin about the progress of the charity project.

  It was in late October that she picked up the phone and heard Suna’s voice again. As serious as ever, but also arch. ‘So,’ she said, ‘You wish to help.’

  ‘If you think I can,’ Jeannie said. Her voice was hoarse.

  Suna’s was like a bell. ‘Let us try and see.’

  ‘If you can send me a few details about the projects you’re involved in, I’m sure I can raise more funds,’ Jeannie said.

  ‘That would be most generous,’ Suna replied. ‘But there is a more pressing concern. To help us you would need to come to Istanbul.’

  ‘Istanbul. Are you sure they’d let me in?’

  ‘Why should they stop you, of all people? So tell me. Can you come?’

  ‘When?’ Jeannie asked.

  ‘We were hoping for tomorrow.’

  She paused. Her heart was pounding. Now was the time to ask. But she still couldn’t say his name. Instead she asked, ‘Who is we?’

  ‘Ah!’ said Suna. ‘No, there are only the two of us. Myself and Lüset.’

  ‘I had plans,’ Jeannie said slowly. ‘But I’m sure I could change them.’

  ‘Good. That means you can come. I shall forward your name to our friend in the Turkish Airlines office. Another friend will come out to the airport to give you the items you will be kind enough to carry for us.’

  Twenty-three hours later, she was en route to Istanbul. Clouds covered most of Europe that morning but cleared just before they began their descent over the Sea of Marmara. Jeannie could see the jagged, yellow coastline and the highway that traced it. She looked inland, and where there had been empty brown hills, there were now houses as far as the horizon. Since her last visit, the city had grown from two to twelve million – eighteen if you counted the suburbs. They were flying into the wind and the landing was bumpy. But when the engines stopped roaring, a man began to clap. Now the whole plane was clapping, laughing, chatting. But she could not find it in herself to join in.

  It was while she was waiting for her bags that she saw the first poster – a sleek-looking white-haired man in profile, smiling at a bright-eyed girl of about twelve. Both were holding mobile phones to their ears, and it was, Jeannie thought, the loud red background that made her chest feel so tight.

  Suna was waiting outside customs. She was alone, of course. And so was Jeannie. How old she felt. Did Suna notice? She embraced Jeannie warmly, assuring her, with a broad smile, that she hadn’t aged at all.

  ‘Neither have you,’ Jeannie lied.

  And Suna said, ‘Ah! The object is not to nurture false youth, but to mature!’ The pretence lasted as far as the car. As she lifted the aluminium suitcase that Jeannie had brought for them, Suna asked if they’d given her any trouble over it. Jeannie said no, though they’d sent it off for a special inspection.

  ‘Ah! Then let us see how special this inspection proved to be.’ She opened the suitcase. ‘Ah! It was very special indeed! Yes, they have even taken it out of its box for us! How kind! Would you like to see what you have brought?’

  She reached inside. When her hand came out, it was holding a foot.

  Jeannie screamed and jumped back. Suna whooped with laughter.

  ‘You silly girl, it is only plastic. It is a prosthetic limb for a ten-year-old girl in Yalova whose leg had to be amputated following three days under the rubble. Also her kidneys have failed. The things you’ve brought will keep her alive.’ She gave Jeannie a sharp and searching look. ‘Surely you are pleased! As you know, we have a fascist xenophobe for a health minister. It’s been difficult getting supplies. But still. Jeannie, think. Who could have imagined, that in 1999 we two would be standing here, looking at this?’ Having tried but failed to close the suitcase, she took the prosthetic limb out of the suitcase and threw it into the back seat.

  During their trip into the city, down new highways that flew them over hill after hill of mud and raw concrete and half-built mosques, Jeannie saw no obvious signs of earthquake
damage. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Suna. ‘You will soon enough.’ She mapped out their programme. They would drop Jeannie’s things off at her apartment. ‘You don’t mind, do you? Of course, if you prefer a faceless hotel…’

  Suna’s apartment was at the top floor of a tall, narrow building in Cihangir. Jeannie went straight to the window to look at the Bosphorus. From here the sea looked the same as she remembered it. But there were no longer empty hills behind Üsküdar. Just concrete apartment buildings as far as the eye could see.

  As she stood there, lost in the view, she wondered about Sinan. How to ask, and when? Best to wait until they were on their way to Yalova. That way Suna wouldn’t see her face. She didn’t want the details. She couldn’t bear too much about his wife or his children or the happy life they had together. She just wanted to know if he was safe. She was brought back to herself when the building shook. The chandelier above her head seemed to be swinging, but not enough for her to be sure she was not imagining it.

  She opened her suitcase and tried to figure out what you wore to an earthquake zone. When Suna saw what she’d chosen, she burst out laughing. ‘Did I say anything about a funeral in Antarctica?’ She hummed to herself as went through Jeannie’s things, pulling out her long black cashmere dress and high-heeled boots. ‘For an earthquake zone? Suna, are you sure?’ Suna puffed out her lips. ‘Even in an earthquake zone, there are standards.’

  There was a taxi waiting outside. It took them to a terrace of handsome mustard coloured buildings – these Jeannie recognised, though in her time they’d been derelict. They alighted in front of a café whose entrance was flanked by potted trees. Suna marched over to the next door along and punched in a security code. They walked up two flights to a large, bright pop art sign featuring a traffic light – and in large neon letters, the Turkish words for ‘Enlightenment Radio.’ Inside, it was all polished oak and leather and dark green carpet. Lou Reed was singing about the wild side. The receptionist ushered them to a waiting room that was separated from a recording studio by a plate glass wall.