Captain Charles Brindley is leaning back in his desk chair, contemplating the ornate ceiling. Since he learned that Muslim artisans leave a deliberate flaw in everything they create – because only Allah is perfect – he has been looking for the errant brushstroke or misplaced tile in the intricate dome above. It has been three months, but he is determined to find the chink.
Brindley’s aide-de-camp appears in the doorway with another man, a civilian, behind him. ‘Sir, there is a Mr Connor to see you. From Australia.’
Curious, Brindley lowers his gaze and beckons Connor into the princely reception room that is now his office. The desk and a pair of generic filing cabinets do little to fill this expansive space or subdue the exuberant decoration. Brindley imagines himself as a khaki smudge on a background of gilded architrave, mirrored arches and niches detailed in the signature blue and white tiles from Iznik. A rich green and burgundy runner leads Connor towards the captain’s desk.
During the war Brindley had been a military censor for the Gallipoli Peninsula, fighting his battles with a blue stamp on the Greek island of Imbros. From a hexagonal tent, nicknamed ‘the big top’ because what went on in there was a circus, he would paw through the mail leaving the trenches. His job was to excise sensitive information from the soldiers’ letters, to put a thick black line through anything that might give away front-line locations, reveal details of an upcoming offensive or damage morale by being overly graphic. The last thing the army needed was to discourage men from enlisting.
For the men who wrote frequently, Brindley followed what happened in the lives of their families back home. If he ever did the mail run to the peninsula or bumped into men on leave on Mudros he had to stop himself asking after their wives by name, or querying whether they had heard from their brother in France or had decided on a name yet, for a newborn.
Many times he would be reading the last letter a soldier sent home, not knowing they were already dead. The last missive their families would receive from a missing father or son was a tissue-thin piece of paper filled with half-sentences, folded in an envelope stamped with the blue censor’s mark. Only Brindley had seen into their hearts as they faced oblivion, and when necessary had put the sword to their last well-wishes and desires, killing them over again.
Brindley is not impervious to the beauty that can sometimes come from catastrophe. If ever he needs reminding he opens the pages of Homer’s The Iliad. With the letters, as in life, Brindley was generally efficient and unsentimental. Every once in while, though, a line would jump off a page and its honesty and poetry would leave him gutted. Against his better judgement he would let it go through to its intended recipient. Who was he to tamper with perfection, God-given or otherwise?
As Connor approaches, Brindley rises, smiling, and leans over the desk to shake his hand. ‘Charles Brindley. You’re a long way from home, sir.’
‘Joshua Connor. So are you.’
‘Indeed.’ Brindley is amused at the older man’s directness and offers him a chair. ‘What can I do for you?’
The two men drop into seats either side of the desk. ‘I want to go to Gallipoli, to find my sons,’ says Connor, in no mood for idle talk. ‘They didn’t come home.’
Brindley runs his fingers over his well-groomed moustache, taking a moment to choose his words. ‘The Dardanelles remain a very sensitive military zone, as I am certain you understand.’ He straightens his tailored tunic. ‘I regret to say, Mr Connor, we do not issue civilians with travel permits to Gallipoli.’
As he speaks a young Turkish tea boy skips down the rug and places two cups of tea, a creamer and a sugar bowl on the desk.
‘Tea?’ Brindley asks Connor. ‘Not much chop I’m afraid.’
The boy hovers and Brindley waves him away, waiting until the boy has exited before continuing.
‘Don’t be deceived, Mr Connor – this is still enemy territory. We might hold the city, but it will be some time before we bring order to the chaos.’
Connor reaches into his jacket pocket and slips a photograph across the desk.
He speaks slowly and firmly. ‘Arthur, Henry and Edward Connor. From Rainbow, Victoria, southwest of Swan Hill. All three of them were in the 7th Battalion, A.I.F. They enlisted together on 7 July 1914 – thinking they were heading off to fight the Hun in Europe. I suppose we all thought that. Instead, they went to Gallipoli. They were all killed at Lone Pine on the same day – August the 6th – a year later . . .’
Brindley interrupts. ‘I’m truly sorry. Truly. We do have the Imperial War Graves Commission working on the peninsula as we speak. They have a formidable task ahead of them. But when they find your sons, as I’m sure they will, I promise we will notify you.’
Brindley reaches for the photo, meaning to file it in the folder in front of him. Lightning fast, Connor leans across and pins it firmly to the desk with his hand.
‘I have waited four years. I cannot wait any longer.’
‘You must understand, these men on Gallipoli are experts,’ Brindley replies. He can see that it falls on deaf ears.
‘I intend to find my sons. All I need from you is a piece of paper and a stamp saying I can go there.’
Brindley cannot help but admire the man’s devotion to his sons but his reply is blunt. ‘I couldn’t, Mr Connor, even if that was my inclination. Regulations do not allow it.’
‘I can find them,’ says Connor, fixing the captain with a hawk like glare.
‘Oh yes?’ says Brindley, his patience fast evaporating. ‘How do you imagine you are going to do that? Along with your three there are sixty thousand sons of the Empire out there.’
He points his manicured finger over Connor’s shoulder. The entire rear wall is devoted to a bank of primitive shelving that houses a colossal pile of service records and field reports, arranged by country. Already a light dust has settled on the top files in each pile. Brindley expects that the enormity of the task will sink in as Connor registers the signs that read United Kingdom, British India, Newfoundland, Australia, New Zealand and France.
Brindley is on a roll. ‘Do you know what the army used to do with the rank and file dead after Crimea, Khartoum, the Boer War? A Yorkshire company called Thompson and Sons would come in and throw the lot in a hopper and turn them into blood and bone. You should see the gardens in Sebastopol. Best fertilised flowerbeds you’ll ever find. This is the first war in which anyone has given a damn.’
Connor looks unmoved. ‘My boys should be buried at home, beside their mother.’
Brindley picks up the photograph of the boys and studies it for a moment. He speaks softly as he hands the image back to Connor.
‘Fine lads. That’s the way you should remember them.’ Brindley stands; the meeting is over. ‘Go home, Mr Connor.’
CHAPTER TEN
Connor walks angrily through the white poplar-tree floss that blows in drifts across the street like a late spring snowstorm. Orhan falls into stride behind him. Connor nods to the boy but says nothing, still smarting from the frustrating exchange with Brindley.
Too late, Connor hears the unmistakable sound of strife. Rounding a corner, he and Orhan are swept up in a mass of angry protesters. Fists clenched and raised to the sky, the men shout in unison, marching away from Topkapi. Jostled, shoved and buffeted every which way, Connor has no choice but to go in the same direction as the mob. He begins to panic. The crowd is surging into an enormous square – it has to be more than four hundred feet wide and at least a thousand feet long – dominated by a central massive obelisk that seems to be a rallying point.
Deeply furrowed brows and gaping, spitting mouths turn towards him, sensing and now seeing an unwanted alien in their midst. It is Connor’s turn to be the enemy. Jabs in his side become sharper, deliberate, no longer accidental. The smell of the crowd envelops him: rank and sour sweat; the stench of fear and fury. A man confronts him, his pointed finger spearing Connor’s chest, his turgid face flushing with impotent rage. He is babbling, screaming, in words that are com
pletely foreign to Connor. But there’s no mistaking their meaning. Connor knows he is in grave peril.
He feels a small hand on his wrist, tugging at him.
‘Connor Bey! This way!’
Orhan pulls Connor’s distinctly foreign hat off his head and pushes it under his jacket. Miraculously finding a way through the rampaging mob as only a child can, Orhan leads Connor towards the edge of the pack. He finds himself pressed up against a long marble wall punctuated with arched windows. He is bumped and dragged along, his hip slamming painfully into the wall’s hard stone lip. The press of the crowd pounds his shoulder into the metal grille that fills each arch. Orhan clings tightly to Connor, pulling him forwards towards an immense ceremonial entrance. He darts through it, leading Connor behind him.
In the courtyard beyond the gateway Connor is confronted by the most remarkable building he has ever seen. Sweeping domes trace delicate and airy crescents against the cornflower-blue spring sky. Six pointed towers, impossibly thin and unfeasibly tall, ascend to the heavens. He gazes up at one, head spinning.
Orhan is insistent. ‘This way, Connor Bey! It is not safe. Come!’
Unenthusiastically, Connor allows Orhan to lead him to a hidden open arcade along one side of the raised platform on which the mosque stands. Scores of tiny brass taps protrude in a long row from the marble foundations. Seated on low rush stools before the running water, men quietly wash their bare feet, scooping water into cupped hands to splash over their heads and faces.
‘Is this a public bathhouse?’
Orhan laughs. ‘Not bath, Connor Bey. For Allah. We wash for Allah.’ He takes a vacant stool and removes his slippers. ‘Come! You wash too.’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘For the mosque, Connor Bey. To go in mosque, you must wash.’
Connor hesitates, reluctant to participate. Up and down the row of men performing their ablutions, faces turn towards him. Water spurts loudly from the pipes, filling a channel carved in the marble floor. He sits and marvels at such an abundance of water, gushing away. Such waste. Begrudgingly, he removes his boots, peels off his socks and immerses his feet in the jarringly cold cascade spilling from the tap.
‘Head and face, Connor Bey!’
He fashions his hands into a scoop and catches some of the falling water. Mimicking Orhan, he tips it over his head and wipes his face, feels the icy chill trickle down his neck and chest. He licks his lips. The water is sweet, fresh, cold. Not at all like the water he coaxed up to the surface from artesian wells back home. This is mountain water, spring water, fed by melting snow and winter rains. It tastes of mossy forests and cool glades. It is everything that his water is not.
Weighted fabric curtains block the entrance to the mosque. Orhan moves ahead, holding them aside for Connor to pass. Ducking his head, he enters.
As his eyes adjust to the darker space, he notices something missing. Chairs. Benches. Seats. This immense space is completely devoid of furniture. There is nowhere to sit, other than upon the intricate patchwork of carpets that covers the entire floor. And then Connor looks up. The dimension, majesty and ethereal beauty of the soaring blue-tiled dome above his head are beyond anything Connor has ever imagined. He can only assume this is the Blue Mosque Ayshe beseeched him to visit. The glossy painted tiles are so vivid, the light so clear and the dome so high that it almost seems to disappear into the heavens. In one corner, a curious turreted tower stands; Connor presumes it to be something akin to a pulpit. And facing that in ranks, rows of men kneel on the floor, alternately raising their hands then lying, prostrate, face down.
Orhan has been watching him. ‘You have a place like this where you come from?’
Connor pauses, lost for words, then answers dryly, ‘Yes, but a bit bigger.’
He turns, pulls aside the curtain at the entrance.
‘Come on. Let’s go.’
Orhan and Connor slip out through the side entrance of the mosque and away from the riot. They can still hear the angry shouts and the roar of the mob that is yet to disperse.
The odd pair walks in silence. Connor is still trying to digest what he has seen.
Orhan, Connor is learning, is incapable of keeping quiet for long. The boy fills the dead air with his tour-guide patter. ‘It was built by Sultan Ahmed.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Mosque was built by Sultan Ahmed. He was very great man. It is three hundred years old. Very old.’
‘Yes, that is very old.’ Connor is distracted and in no mood for Orhan’s chattering.
They walk across a large open plaza towards another monumental building. But unlike the sublime confection they have just visited, this building has an imposing corporeality to it, like a prison or a fortress. Heavy, rose-madder buttresses support a great, grey cupola.
Connor’s unsolicited tour continues. Orhan is just beginning to warm up. He indicates the imposing edifice with a theatrical sweep of his hand.
‘Hagia Sophia. It was church for Christians like you. But it is now mosque. This building is more old. Built by Emperor Constantine. He is why city is called “Constantinople”.’
Despite himself, Connor is curious. ‘So how old is Hagia Sophia?’
‘One thousand years and five hundred years.’
‘You mean five hundred years?’
‘No – more than five hundred years. The English I do not know.’ He writes the numbers in the air with his finger. ‘One, five, nought, nought.’
‘One and a half thousand years old? That cannot be right.’
‘Yes, Connor Bey. That number.’
Coming from a land that was settled by the British a whisker over one hundred years ago, this time span is almost inconceivable. Nothing Connor has ever experienced in the wide, sparse expanse of his homeland could prepare him for the scale – the consequence – of this ancient city.
Orhan leads Connor down the hill away from the Sultanahmet district and through a neighbourhood of wooden terrrace homes, keen to put as much distance between them and the mob as possible. Between the rows of houses Connor can see the reflection of sunlight off water. Gaily painted fishing caiques are moored along the shoreline of the Sea of Marmara, bobbing in the waves as fishermen on board hunch over nets, untangling, repairing and stacking them in preparation for the night ahead. Further along, a wharf extends like a finger into the channel. Fishing lines suspended from thin rods sparkle like cobwebs in a rain shower.
From a stall to their left comes the sudden clamour of a bell and the baritone cry of a street vendor. ‘Dondurrrrrmmmmaa. Dondurrrrrmmmmaa.’
Connor looks over to where a man wearing a tasselled fez and gold-embroidered velvet vest is pounding something in a tub with a great wooden paddle, intermittently clanging a bunch of cowbells hanging from his stall. He is a butterball of a man; sparkling eyes set deep in a face which has the dimensions of a pumpkin.
‘What is that man doing, Orhan?’
‘He sells dondurma, Connor Bey. Ice-cream.’
‘Real ice-cream? Do you like ice-cream?’
Orhan looks at Connor incredulously. ‘Yes, I like ice-cream. Everyone likes ice-cream. Do you like ice-cream?’
Connor thinks back to the number of times he has tried the iced confection; a handful at best. In the stinking hot backblocks of the Mallee, it is a rare luxury.
‘Yes. Yes I do. Should we try some?’
‘Yes. I would like an ice-cream. I am a bit . . . peckish?’
Connor laughs and hands the boy a handful of coins.
‘Is this enough?’
‘Yes, of course. You give me too much.’ Orhan returns most of the money. ‘This is money for two ice-creams. You wait.’
Connor watches the boy negotiate with the vendor, gesticulating, shoulders shrugging. He returns with two freshly made hot waffle cones crammed with an implausible quantity of gooey ice-cream. Orhan hands one to Connor with a look of deep satisfaction. ‘He would not give me good price, but I made him give us extra dondurma. We
have big dondurma.’
As they walk, Connor looks at his own daunting scoop and wonders how to tackle it without making a mess of his only jacket. He smiles, watching the irrepressible joy that illuminates the boy’s face. Orhan’s black eyes gleam, and his round cheeks and cleft chin are now covered in melted ice-cream. Connor can’t help but think back to enjoying his own sons’ delight in such simple things, a time before the world of men intruded on their lives. The memory is tainted with regret. He wishes he had treasured those times more. Now, Connor feels thwarted in his attempt to honour those memories, to bring his boys home.
He sets his jaw.
He has never been one to pay much mind to what other people tell him he can and can’t do, sometimes to his own detriment. Just because he is away from home, in unfamiliar territory, he is not going to start now.
Connor needs time to think. Finding his sons’ bodies isn’t going to be as straightforward as he’d imagined. He pictured the stiff-necked British officer pontificating from across his desk. ‘Go home Mr Connor.’
Damned if I will.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Connor lumbers up the hill towards the Otel Troya with Orhan darting around him like a swallow, chattering between licks of his ice-cream. As they approach the hotel entrance Connor notices Orhan’s voice trailing off and the boy falling in behind him. Connor is reminded of a sheep dog when it senses danger. As they step inside, a glowering Ayshe appears from the salon with her hands on her hips.
Connor watches a rapid-fire exchange in Turkish between the two. He doesn’t need to speak the language to know that the boy has done the wrong thing and is now trying to charm his way out of it. Ayshe is fuming and when Orhan holds out the coins he has been paid she turns and looks straight at Connor. ‘Mr Connor, I told you my son had work to do here at the hotel, that he could not help you.’
‘But Orhan said you had changed your mind and that he could . . .’ Connor looks at the chagrined boy whose eyes are boring holes into the floorboards as the ice-cream runs over his fingers and splatters on his boots. ‘I am sorry,’ Connor concedes.
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