by Vincent Czyz
That was how Drew found him—looking like a strange bird with wings too heavy to flap.
“Yaaaa,” Kadir moaned. “Look what has been done with my shop.” His arms sank to his sides.
“They did the same thing to my apartment.” Drew was standing in the doorway of Kadir’s ruined livelihood. “And for what?” He pulled the box Kadir had given him out of his knapsack and turned it over. A faded paperback fell out and slapped the tiny Turkish rug at his feet. “Bastard Prince of T’orrh?”
Kadir stepped around Drew. Dappled with sun and splotched with shade, the dwarf looked almost like he was wearing military camouflage. He held up his hands, stubby fingers splayed, and addressed the other dealers in Turkish. “My friends, thank you for your kind wishes, but please … return to your shops. My friend and I will clean up.”
Reluctantly, the other dealers retreated.
“Salak!” Kadir lowered his black eyebrows. “Some of these men are knowing English.”
“So what? All you gave me was …” Drew looked down and read from the cover: “The tempestuous saga of a man, wrongfully dispossessed, battling to regain the throne of an alien planet. I thought you gave me a—I don’t know—hieroglyphics or something.”
“To you I gave nothing. To them I gave an idea of you are given something.”
“What did they think I had, Kadir? And who are they?”
Kadir tapped his head. “If a few amount of people are knowing a secret, the chances are increase that no one will learn this secret.”
“Kadir, they were in my apartment. I could’ve been hospitalized. Or killed. I have a right to know why.”
Kadir ambled into the shop and took a Turkish newspaper from his desk. He handed it to Drew.
Drew translated a page three headline—Egyptian Tourist Killed in Traffic Accident. The photograph didn’t show much more than police pushing back a small crowd of onlookers, but the man who’d been killed was identified as Tariq Soufanati. Police had ruled the death an accident, but they were looking for two men who witnesses said had been chasing him just before he’d been hit by a truck. They were believed to be foreigners.
“I’m sorry, Kadir. I didn’t know.”
“Tariq and I we are like brothers. Why else does he give so much trust to me?” Kadir shook his oversized head, stuck three fingers in a vest pocket, and pulled out a box of Marlboros. From another pocket he fished out an antique lighter. He liked to call the tattered vest—its black leather worn gray where it had suffered the most—his flak jacket, a term he’d picked up from some pulp novel about the Vietnam War. He lit his cigarette and exhaled. “You have nothing. They understand this. It is I who is dangerous now. But they cannot kill me like Tariq.”
“Why not?”
“Because of Tariq gave me something they are wanting.”
“If you give it back, they won’t want to kill you.”
“If it is given back, there is nothing for bargaining.”
“What exactly did Tariq give you?”
“Are you want to become like Tariq? If you forget about this, they will forget about you.”
“C’mon, Kadir. I have to see what Tariq got killed for.”
Kadir shook his head. “I am thinking it is a bad idea.”
“Then you shouldn’t have given me that goddamn package in the first place,” Drew hissed. “You owe me.”
Somebody behind Drew whistled loudly. Drew whirled around.
“What a mess!” Zafer shook his head.
Kadir gestured to Zafer. “Bana yardim etsene.” Why don’t you help me out?
The dwarf and the much larger man stood a piece of shelving shaped like a section of bleachers on end and blocked the shop doorway with it.
“You’re going to leave your place like that?” Drew jerked his thumb at the makeshift barricade.
“My friends will be watch.” Kadir dropped the cigarette on the ground and crushed it under a sneaker. “I want something more strong for smoking. Let’s go narghile café. There we are able to talk.”
As Drew followed the Turks, he noticed a leather satchel resting against Zafer’s hip and realized it probably held what Tariq’s killers had been looking for.
2: 5
THE SCROLLS
THE NARGHILE CAFÉ was tucked inside a sixteenth century courtyard behind a thoroughfare along which the tram rumbled. An untended graveyard—its slim tombstones leaning or fallen—would have spilled out onto the sidewalk were it not for a stone wall pitted with age and streaked with soot. The wall’s unglazed windows were gridded by iron bars. Through this Cartesian space they could see a man with a hefty paunch rearranging tables and chairs on a patio behind the tiny cemetery.
Kadir rattled the gate. “Tolga, you son of a whore, let us in! We want to smoke.”
“Why don’t you fuck off, Kadir? I only serve tourists these days, and they haven’t even eaten breakfast yet.”
“Here’s a tourist.” Kadir slapped Drew’s thigh. “He asked me to take him to the shittiest narghile café in Istanbul. Where else could I bring him?”
Tolga, his wavy, gray hair speckled with black, grinned and unlocked the gate. He bent down so he and Kadir could exchange a kiss on each cheek. When Tolga straightened up, the belly of his shirt puckered around its buttons. He turned to Drew. “Welcome,” he said.
Judging from his pronunciation, Drew guessed that was the extent of his English. “Hosh bulduk,” he replied. Nice to be here.
The courtyard proper, a marble fountain at its center, was hidden behind a procession of stone columns supporting a vaulted ceiling made of the wide, flat bricks used by the Byzantines and Ottomans. Stained with age and smoke, the bricks were almost black, while the walls had been plastered smooth and whitewashed.
The three men sat at a low table. The tiny stools—relics of centuries past—were made of twine and wood.
Kadir grinned. “You see? Many years ago, Turks are my size.”
Drew’s knees were almost up to his chin.
Zafer and Kadir shared a narghile, but Drew had one to himself. The glass of his was blue; theirs was green.
Hookah in Arabic, a narghile always reminded Drew of a genie’s bottle except that its mouth was plugged with a clay stem that ended in a small brass bowl with a brim to catch ashes. Perforated tin foil separated the tobacco from the hot embers Tolga placed on top with a pair of tongs.
“You’re lucky. A few are still hot from last night.” Tolga was standing under an iron chandelier that hung down from a vault. Although it had once held wax candles in upside-down glass bells, the candles were now electric.
“And a Turkish coffee,” Kadir said.
“Right away. At double the usual price, of course, since I don’t feel like being open.” Tolga winked at Drew.
“This is just what we would expect from a man with no honor.”
Drew smiled. The insult would have lost all its zing in English. A man without honor was usually a pimp, and that implied your mother was among the women who worked for you.
Tolga walked off, shaking his head. “Son of a donkey.”
Drew inhaled deeply; the narghile bubbled. He didn’t smoke cigarettes, but the apple tobacco was mild enough that it didn’t make him cough. What he exhaled was as white as winter breath. “So, tell me about Tariq.”
“Tariq was a … ne demek? A runner. This means he is also a thief of graves.”
“A grave-robber.”
Kadir’s dark face emerged from swirling white. “He sells antique things to dealers. Dealers sell to collectors. A collector who is called Abu Kobisy was paying very much money for these things, but one month earlier, he died. After Abu was died, a servant stole a manuscript of Abu. He gave to Tariq. Tariq brought this scroll to Istanbul.”
“A scroll?”
Kadir held up a stubby finger. “Wait, please, for whole story. There is another manuscript. Tariq did not have.”
“Another scroll? Who has it?”
“A farmer maybe.”
Kadir shook his head. “So little you are knowing, infidel. Sixty years before, an Arab shepherd discovered many scrolls of Dead Sea.” Kadir wagged a finger. “You think I am only a seller of antique prayer books and shitty novels? Listen, a Norwegian rich man bought very tiny pieces of Dead Sea Scrolls. Each piece was written with only one letter. For five letters he gave 25,000 US dollars. You see how much valuable these old writings are? Twenty pieces and you are getting 100,000 dollars US.” Kadir’s eyes widened. “Think of a whole scroll!”
“Jesus.”
Zafer inhaled and the narghile bubbled.
“You see the why I am studying so much English? I make searches on the Internet. I am reading New York Times online. My speaking isn’t so well, but I am understand everything.”
Drew glanced at Zafer. The stem of the narghile poked out of the corner of Zafer’s mouth. He drew on the pipe deeply, held his breath for a second, then let a leisurely cloud of white curl toward the ceiling. Zafer’s eyes, which looked almost sleepy behind the intermittent smoke, were on Drew.
Drew turned to Kadir. “What did Tariq need you for?”
“In Cairo he couldn’t sell the robbed scroll. Cairo is the most big black market in the world for antique things, but in Cairo, everyone is knowing Tariq. Everyone is knowing Abu Kobisy. And there is another problem. This scroll was already sold.”
“Sold? What do you mean?”
“Abu made a promise. He would not sell it until he was dead.”
“He left it in his will?”
“No. The purchaser did not want his name in Abu’s will. Wills are bringing lawyers. Abu was a very rich man, a very big man in Cairo. Abu gave his promise—”
“Ahhh … now I see. The manuscript was supposed to go to the anonymous buyer after Abu’s death, but one of Abu’s servants stole it before it could go to the new owner.”
Kadir nodded. “Oyle.”
“So when the scroll wasn’t delivered to the anonymous buyer, the buyer sent a couple of goons to find out what happened and get his manuscript.”
Tolga returned with Kadir’s Turkish coffee in one hand and smoldering coals in a long-handled pot with breathing holes in the other. After placing a tiny coffee cup in front of Kadir, he used a pair of tongs to knock white ash onto the brass narghile brims. He then put embers with a healthy orange glow on the tin foil.
“You forgot my water.”
“Yes, yes, Kadir, I only have two hands.”
“And half a brain.”
“Go back to the brothel you were born in and smoke there.” Tolga walked off, pretending to be offended.
“So why don’t you give this guy his scroll?” Drew asked. “It’s his.”
“Do you make joke? Are you think Abu bought this scroll in a legal way? Antique things belong to the government of the place where they are found. This is the law everywhere.”
“What about those fragments the Norwegian bought?”
“These are just little pieces scholars are not able to use, and they were bought in a legal way.” Kadir laughed. “If all collectors added their unlegal manuscripts together, they will have very many more than all the museums.”
Drew frowned. “Come on …”
“Believe me, my friend. The black market is very much bigger than the legal market.”
Tolga put down Kadir’s water glass. “Okay?”
Kadir sipped his coffee and shooed Tolga away with a fluttering hand. “Do you know what kind of scroll you have?”
Kadir shrugged. “A Qumran writing.”
“One of the Dead Sea Scrolls?” Drew’s voice went up an octave. “That’s … that’s impossible.”
“Yes, of course impossible. Tariq is dead because Bastard Prince of T’orrh is so valuable book.”
“You have this scroll?”
Kadir nodded.
“Where?” Drew looked at the leather satchel at Zafer’s feet. “You know you have to keep it somewhere dry—very dry.”
Kadir rolled his eyes. “Tariq taught me the ways for the keeping of such things many years ago.”
“Do you know which scroll you have?”
Kadir shook his head.
Smoke wreathed Zafer’s face, clung like fog hugging the ground. When it lifted, the bull-necked Turk was still watching Drew.
“I want to see it.” Drew didn’t just want to see the scroll, he wanted a say in what happened to it. It was as though his whole unmotivated life he’d been waiting for something to fall into his lap—only it had fallen into Kadir’s. Drew had never identified with the van Goghs of the world, the Mozarts, the Hemingways, who went to their graves wrapped in their canvases, sheets of music, pages of writing. For them, there was nothing else. Their lives were pure pursuit. The urge Drew felt now wasn’t the same—couldn’t be—but it was probably next of kin.
Kadir shook his head. “It is in a safety place. Even Zafer doesn’t know where.”
Drew glanced at Zafer. “Who the hell is he anyway?”
A hint of a smile crept into Zafer’s features. “Soldier of fortune.” Drew lifted his chin to indicate the bike-messenger’s bag in Zafer’s lap. “What’s in there?”
“Photographs.”
“Of the Dead Sea Scroll?”
“Both scrolls.”
Drew took another hit of the apple tobacco, hoping the sweetish smoke would calm him. “Let me see the photos at least.” Howard Carter must have felt the same short-circuiting of nerves before diggers broke the seal on King Tut’s tomb. Kadir probably had no idea—nor did he care—he was holding something that could rewrite the history of Judaism or even of early Christianity. The possibility was remote—Kadir probably had a copy of a scroll scholars had already studied, translated, and published. But it what if he didn’t? What if this was a scroll no one had ever seen before? Or had seen only as fragments? “I have to see the photos.”
“What for? Can you read languages from antique times?”
“Yes,” Drew lied. He had taken a single semester of Ancient Middle Eastern Languages—not remotely enough to achieve anything like fluency in any of them. And that was better than a decade ago. “I’ll tell you what you have.”
Looking at Zafer, Kadir tipped his head toward Drew. “Show to him.”
Zafer opened the leather bag and took two eight-by-ten photographs out of an envelope.
One photograph looked professionally done. The scroll had been laid out on a surface that was smooth and flat. The source of illumination wasn’t apparent, but it could have been daylight: every letter was perfectly defined. The scroll itself was sepia—the color that gathered in the corners of old photographs like chemical twilight. Since there were no fibers visible, Drew assumed it was parchment, not papyrus.
The other photo was a black-and-white haunted by the ghostly blue of unwiped plums. It had been taken by an amateur. The lighting was uneven, and the photographer, who clearly knew nothing about scroll preservation, had used a flash. But the resolution was good enough to make out the letters.
Drew was certain of one thing: the scrolls had been written in either Hebrew or Aramaic. The neat rows didn’t have the flow of script. Closer to incisions, the strokes were short and intricate, almost machine-like. Which made sense because Hebrew wasn’t originally written; it was etched into stone or metal. Not quite as beautiful as the natural calligraphy of Arabic, the writing had a certain gravity to it, as if the words it comprised were meant to impose God’s laws on the universe.
Since he wasn’t well acquainted with Aramaic or Hebrew, and he assumed Aramaic could be written in Hebrew script, Drew couldn’t tell them apart without hitting on a familiar word—and there it was: sh’mow, the contraction for his name in Hebrew. One of the most common. In Aramaic it would have been sh’may.
“It’s Hebrew,” he announced.
Kadir nodded. “Tariq told me this already. Read more.”
“I can’t. And since y
ou’re showing the photos to me, you don’t know anyone who can.” Drew puffed on the narghile. “But I do.”
2: 6
MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED
DREW STOOD OUTSIDE his apartment building. Four narrow stories, each with a windowed alcove projecting from the façade—a jumba. Definitely End of Empire. The ocher paint had faded to an unhealthy pink where it wasn’t worn away altogether, and exposed stone had been tarnished by pollution. The marble stairs were missing sizable chunks.
Billowy clouds drifted past the strip of blue sky he could see; the afternoon couldn’t have looked less ominous.
Why would they come back now?
He pushed open a wing of the ponderous steel door. In spite of the warm September weather, the breath of the building was cool and damp. He mounted the marble steps, worn with shallow depressions made by countless feet.
At the top of the stairs, he inserted the key into the lock to his apartment and clicked it over. Pushing the door open, he peered into the hall before stepping inside.
His books were on the shelves. The furniture was where he had left it this morning. He poked his head in every room just to make sure.
Convinced he was alone, he sat down on the couch in the parlor. For the first time since he’d moved into the flat, he felt uncomfortable in his own home. Was he under surveillance? Were the men who’d broken in last night professionals or just hired thugs? They had to have been watching Kadir’s shop or they would never have known Kadir had given him anything. And they’d followed him home.
He jumped when the phone rang.
Drew lifted the receiver after the third ring. “Hello?”
“Drew? It’s your father.”
“Hi, Dad.” Were they listening to his phone calls? “Isn’t it a little early to be calling?”