Enlightenment

by Maureen Freely

  Then İsmet pulled up a chair to sit next to me. He fixed his eyes onto my lap. Put his hand on my testicles. Squeezed them hard and said, ‘Do you know what they say about you and Haluk? They say you share your balls. This is what they say. This is what they say you do for each other.’ So he began. He said, ‘Ah! What kind of man are you?’ But then, later. After he removed his hand. I was my father’s son. This is what he told me. His vices were my vices. Our fates were the same. He pushed me into the corner. And made his prophecy come true.

  But I did not let him hear my pain. This must have bothered him. He must have known he’d have to do more than this to destroy me. And so he sat me down on the chair again and continued talking. He told me lies.”

  “What lies?” I asked.

  “Lies about my father – who he really was, what he’d done to my mother.”

  “Like what?”

  “I can’t remember. I can’t! Oh, Jeannie – please! Don’t stay up all night dreaming up wild guesses! You asked why I picked a fight with İsmet. Now I’ve told you. Can we leave it at that?”

  Of course – I couldn’t, any more than if I’d been raped myself.

  But after he had turned his back on me, after he had extracted himself from my poor attempt at an embrace and asked me to stop asking him if he was okay – I made myself a promise – to close the door on this, to kill every question that tempted me to do otherwise. To see him through this, help him put it behind us and move on.

  And it was just as well that I had made this resolution, for when we picked up the paper the next morning, we were to discover what İsmet had been up to with his bumblebee hovercrafts. He was splashed across the front page, standing in front of the speedboat that a crane had just lifted from the depths of the Bosphorus, less than fifty metres from where we’d been eating. Kitten II.

  Sinan became ashen-faced when I passed him the paper, but for once I knew better than to press for details. When he asked, “Is that all they found?” I just told him what I knew. According to the paper, at least, all they’d found was the shell of an old boat. But still he seemed unconvinced. “There may be more to this story. There might be something they’re holding back.”

  For once I made a sensible suggestion. Why didn’t he ring Haluk? He was sure to find a way to the inside track. “Good idea,” Sinan said. But he remained tense all day. Every time the phone rang, he jumped. There were long conversations with Suna as well as Haluk. Each left him gloomier than the one before. When the phone rang again that night at half past eleven, I expected the worst. But I was wrong, thank God. For Haluk had indeed found his way to the inside track. They’d found nothing inside Kitten II. We were safe. We were in the clear.’

  47

  So once again, the secret is safe. The invisible hand binding them to the unspeakable past begins to wither. Sinan and Jeannie live happily ever after with little Emre, whose joy in the here and now so confounds his grandfather that even he stops chasing ghosts.

  İsmet drifts into retirement, Chloe into the arms of another saintly husband. Suna carries on with her fine works. Haluk and Lüset write the cheques.

  Sinan’s films lose their edge. He does not become a terror suspect, and his wife does not come to me for help. She does not go missing. I do not set out to find her.

  This is how the story ought to have ended. Could have ended. Would have ended, if a certain someone hadn’t decided it should not.

  Who was this person?

  Was it Jordan, refusing to let anything get in the way of a good story?

  Was it William, stirring for revenge?

  Was it İsmet, sensing danger?

  Or was it his shadow?

  The time has come to tell you where I am.

  I am sitting on the balcony of an apartment in Bebek, in a building near the top of the steep steps, and as I’ve been writing, dawn has come and gone.

  I can see all of Bebek Bay stretched out before me. From the southernmost towers of Rumeli Hisar to the fishermen huddled outside Arnavutköy. There must be a hundred yachts and rowboats moored in the still waters before me. The Asian shore looks close enough to touch. Were it not for the steady stream of tankers, the speed with which they cut across the bay, the swirl marks that mark off its still waters from the churning currents, I could be at the edge of a lake.

  This is the apartment that Dutch Harding shared with Billie Broome from September 1968 to June 1971.

  William Wakefield lived here, too. From 2000 to 2005.

  Though he has been gone for several months now, the furnishings remain the same. I am sitting in what I’m told he called his watching post. It’s a creaky but comfortable garden chair with floral cushions. This was where he was meant to have been sitting when an unknown assailant crept up behind him on the evening of October 16th 2005 and shot him in the head.

  The story is not corroborated in any autopsy report. There is no autopsy report. No blood, even, on the cushions of his favourite chair.

  After weeks of searching, I have not been able to find a single piece of paper, faked or authentic, attesting to his death.

  When his daughter made enquiries, only days before she herself disappeared, she was informed by a State Department apparatchik (or someone who identified himself as such) that his body had been ‘repatriated.’

  I know differently, though it remains to be seen if my evidence will stand in court.

  But here, for what it’s worth, is my eyewitness report.

  A fortnight after William Wakefield’s murder and repatriation, he paid me a visit at my home in North London. He was a good twenty pounds thinner than when I’d last seen him, and his complexion had a grey tinge to it. He looked hunted and desperate but (perhaps naïvely) I took those as signs of life.

  He wanted to know if I’d heard from Jeannie. When I told him I hadn’t, he caved into a sigh.

  Did I have any theories? His voice was thin and for a moment I pitied him. Then I remembered who he was and what he stood for and went to retrieve my folder on the Patriot Act.

  ‘Why are you showing me this?’ he asked, tossing the documents onto the table. Keeping my voice neutral, I explained. ‘I think she went back,’ I said. ‘Not to JFK, or any other airport, for that matter. She wouldn’t be that foolish. No, I think she went back via Canada. She was that desperate to find her son. She must have thought friends would hide her. Perhaps they did. Perhaps the authorities had been tracking her all along. Anyway, I think they nabbed her. And as you know, the Patriot Act allows them to hold her for quite some time without informing her family. Or anyone else.’

  ‘Where do you think she is right now?’

  I shrugged my shoulders. ‘On a spy plane?’

  ‘Who do you think is behind this?’

  ‘One of your old friends?’

  ‘I have lots of old friends,’ he snapped.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘And some have more to hide than others.’

  ‘Show me what you have, then.’

  ‘I will, but not until you’ve answered a few questions.’

  He clasped his hands and bowed his head. It brought out my cruel streak. ‘What I’d like you to explain is how you justify what you do.’

  ‘What – is this the International Criminal Court?’

  ‘What I want to know is why you’ve stayed silent,’ I said. ‘Even though you know.’

  ‘You think words ever put things to right? You journalists know nothing. The action is behind the scenes, my friend. Things have to happen quietly or they don’t happen at all.’

  ‘That’s rich coming from the darling of CNN.’

  ‘You of all people should never never believe what people say on CNN.’

  ‘Did you ever find time in your busy schedule to explain this to your daughter?’

  ‘Oh glory be! Don’t you know I did everything…’ But here his voice cracked. Ashamed of my venom, I reined myself in.

  ‘I’ll take a risk,’ I said. I went back into my study and returned with the other
files. The life and death of Dutch Harding. The complete works of Stephen Svabo. Manfred Berger’s glittering career.

  He went through them in silence. When he had returned the documents to their folders, he studied me instead.

  ‘So,’ he said. ‘Where do we go from here?’

  ‘You tell me,’ I said. ‘As you know, this is not my usual terrain. I just write about mothers and babies, remember? So tell me I’m over my head.’

  ‘You’re over your head,’ he said. ‘But you’re getting very warm.’

  ‘By which you mean to say that…?’

  ‘You need to go back,’ he said. ‘I mean to Turkey. Find out what he’s up to. What he doesn’t want us to know. That’s the first thing you need to do.’

  ‘And the second?’

  ‘You need to spook him. Make him show his face. And when you have…’

  ‘If I’m still alive by then.’

  ‘When you’ve caught him redhanded, you are going to write it all down.’

  ‘I thought you said words could never put things right.’

  ‘Oh they can if they stay secret.’

  ‘How the hell do I write something up for the papers and keep it secret?’

  ‘Who said anything about the papers? No, what you do is write in confidence. Write for the inside track. Win their confidence. Gain their trust. Bring this story alive for them. Give them no chance but to live and breathe it. Make them grieve. Make them cry for their country! But never let them forget that – should they treat you badly – you will take your story elsewhere.’

  He took out his wallet and extracted a card, placing it carefully on the table, so that I could read it without touching it:

  Mary Ann Widener

  CENTER FOR DEMOCRATIC CHANGE

  MAWidener@cdc.org

  ‘The Center for Democratic Change?’ I said.

  ‘That’s the one!’

  ‘I’ve never heard of it,’ I said.

  A beady grin. ‘I’m not surprised.’

  ‘Where are they located?’

  ‘If they wanted you to know that,’ said William, ‘they’d put it on the card.’

  ‘But if I assumed it was Washington, let’s say on the Beltway…’

  ‘You might not be far wrong.’

  ‘So,’ I said, picking up the card now. ‘Tell me about this Mary Ann Widener.’

  ‘You roomed with her older sister in your sophomore year. Kelsey Widener? Name ring any bells? Apparently you visited the house once or twice. Mary Ann remembers that distinctly. I take it you do, too. That’s good. It’s always better if there’s some sort of personal connection.’

  ‘So you want me to write to her,’ I said.

  ‘Tell her everything you know.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s honest. And principled. She genuinely wants to help.’

  ‘How far can I trust her?’ I asked.

  ‘Absolutely,’ he said. ‘Though I can’t say I can vouch for her friends.’

  I can’t either, Mary Ann. But you I’ve always trusted. Which is why – though I have never quite managed to forget that my letters to you are not as private as I might have liked – I have tried to write as truthfully as circumstances allow. Where there are gaps in my story, I have tried to mark them clearly. But to obfuscate now would protect no one. For I have done my master’s bidding, and the game is up.

  As I write these words, I can hear him padding down the corridor in his slippered feet. How odd this is. Shouldn’t I be shaking with fear? I’ve never felt calmer. As he crosses the balcony, holding his coffee mug close to his chest, his strange lank hair pulled back by the sea breeze, I can see he is as haunted as I am. Wherever he goes, whoever he becomes, whatever riches and secret glories he accumulates, this is the place he revisits in his dreams. Now here it is in front of him again. Could it be that he is still asleep?

  Leave him to it. There are still things to explain.

  There being no justice in the world, the story of the last four years goes like this:

  48

  Less than a fortnight after Jeannie came to see the point of silence, the two hijacked jets ploughed into the World Trade Center. After her father recovered from the surprise and the terror – there was the shame. He ought to have seen it coming. He ought to have warned people. He understood this part of the world. Now, as never before, it was his job to explain. So he offered his services. Not for money, not for glory. Just to do the right thing. But (as he ought to have foreseen) no one in Washington took the bait.

  As September wore on and Bush’s war on terror gained momentum, as pundits who had never ventured beyond Washington and London began to talk in broad and sweeping terms about the East, the West and the peril that was Islam, he pressed his case with ever greater insistence, to no avail. He was coming from the wrong direction, he was on the wrong side of the divide. His words made no sense because no one – or almost no one – wished to make sense of them.

  Then an opportunity came his way. In early October, Haluk invited him to speak on Radio Enlightenment to discuss and analyse the war on terror, the crisis in intelligence and what William Wakefield himself called ‘the parallel crisis in White House stupidity’. He spoke well, in Turkish, and before long, his caustic, damning but strangely cheerful reports had become a staple.

  In November of the same year, when a political crisis caused a panic that caused Turkey’s currency to halve in value overnight, he did an item for the BBC World Service, and before long, he was talking down ISDN lines to radio stations all over the world whenever there was a Turkish bomb or earthquake or political scandal big enough to warrant international interest.

  In November 2002, when an electorate tired of corruption voted out most of the political establishment, and voted in a new pro-market, pre-European Islamist AK Party, William Wakefield made his first appearance on CNN.

  He made his last in the aftermath of the four al-Qaeda-linked bombs that shattered the city centre the following year. His intemperate remarks about the world being a more dangerous place now Bush had set out to make it safer may have lost him favour at CNN but won him admirers elsewhere. The more the media used him, the more outrageous and newsworthy he became.

  When asked on Turkish networks to speak about his own country, he was gleefully rude – almost proud to be rude. If anyone called him to task on it, he said, ‘This is how I express my patriotism.’

  When asked on American, Australian or European networks to speak about Turkey, he was measured even when the questions exasperated him. ‘Never miss a chance for a history lesson,’ he’d say. ‘Not even if you’re writing in the sand.’ He would explain ‘this country’ to ‘those people’ if it was the last thing he did. ‘You can make that my epitaph,’ he’d say. If I could, I would.

  Between September 2001 and April 2005 Sinan made one stand-alone documentary and two series. They were overtly political (because William Wakefield had been stoking his fires? Or because he, too, had been swept into the zeitgeist?) and they established him on the world stage. He was now getting all his funding from Europe – he could no longer depend on Haluk’s cultural foundation – its budget having been slashed after the currency crisis. So there were questions in the press about who exactly was financing his work. In the absence of names, they were dubbed ‘enemies of Turkey’.

  He refused to be intimidated.

  The first series he put out during this period was a rather loose-knit affair entitled Turkey: an Interim Report. It began with the forced relocation of several Kurdish villages to make way for a dam, and went on to look at corrupt developers in Antalya and the underside of humanitarian aid to earthquake victims. The last segment, about the hunger strikers then dying in large numbers in prisons, was critical not just of state authorities but of the Stalinist groups to which they belonged. This did not stop a leading columnist from charging him with insulting the state – a prisonable offence.

  So in Torture without Marks he left behind the paradoxes of the m
ilitant left to focus on state-sponsored violence. Although he let his subjects tell their stories, he filmed them in their homes, returning or failing to return, to ordinary life. Some lived in Hisar Üstü, in the hills just above my parents’ house. The same families featured in his second series, which he filmed on and off between 2001 and 2003. The War became a series by accident. His original aim had been to film the ‘war’ between the Alevi Muslims on one side of Hisar Üstü and the Sunni Muslims on the other. The Alevi women did not cover their heads while their Sunni neighbours did; when the Alevi women had a political point to make they strolled through the Sunni neighbourhood bareheaded.

  On September 11th 2001, he happened to be sitting in a coffeehouse wedged between those two neighbourhoods when he glanced up at the television to see a tower collapsing. He had the presence of mind to film the commotion that followed. He went back in the run-up to the war in Afghanistan, during the invasion of Iraq in the spring of 2003, and in the aftermath of the Al-Qaeda-linked bombs in Istanbul in November of the same year. They seem to have fallen off the list we get with each new terrorist atrocity, so perhaps I should remind you that there were four massive suicide bombs that ripped through two synagogues, the British Consulate, and the headquarters of the HSBC. Not all responses to these events were informed or temperate, but no two were alike: you could never predict who would say what, or how their views might change.

  The film did well in Europe, and perhaps because it was so timely and cut through the tyrannies of East-West rhetoric to show ordinary Muslims in all their variety, it was a sensation in the US. Even as he was making the last film in the series, the first three were being shown on campuses all over the country.