Land of the Blind

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘İkmen.’

  She relaxed. ‘Come in, Inspector. Shut the door behind you.’

  He entered, saw what she was doing and said, ‘Oh.’

  ‘Join me,’ she said. ‘I’ve had three smokers at this window in the past and neither of us is a giant.’

  He smiled, walked over to the window and lit up. Outside the air was thick with heat. It was almost June and summer was once again threatening to stifle the golden city on the Bosphorus.

  ‘I’ve just had a call from the Greek consul,’ İkmen said. ‘He’s spoken to the Savva family, the father’s on his way.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘They want the child,’ he continued.

  ‘I can understand that. Do you think it’s alive, Inspector?’

  ‘I don’t know. I hope so.’ He paused. ‘I also hope that the victim’s nationality isn’t a significant feature of this crime.’

  ‘Because she’s Greek?’

  ‘Greek and a specialist in Byzantine art,’ he said. ‘Madam, if I may speak frankly I don’t think that those who are at this moment protesting in Gezi Park are as much of a threat to state security as some of those who claim to be acting solely in the interests of the nation.’

  She narrowed her eyes. She knew he knew she was secular, just like him, but she wondered what he was going to say.

  ‘For example,’ he said, ‘believing it would be a good idea to turn Aya Sofya, the greatest Byzantine building in the world, back into a mosque.’

  ‘Not a good idea,’ she said. ‘In my opinion. But I don’t think there is a lot of anti-Greek sentiment here any more. Last time we scrapped, over Cyprus, was back in the 1970s. Look into it, İkmen, by all means, but I’d be surprised if it was a factor.’

  İkmen finished his cigarette and put it out on the window ledge. ‘I can see that, but with respect, madam,’ he said, ‘you are too young to remember the events of September 1955. I do.’

  And then he left. Hürrem suddenly felt cold. Although she hadn’t been born in 1955, she knew what had happened in İstanbul in the September of that year. Turkish mobs enraged by a supposed attack on the house of Ataturk in Thessaloniki had attacked the local Greek population over the course of a nine-hour rampage. Thirty-seven İstanbul Greeks had been killed while the police just stood back and let it happen. Of course the real reason had been because of the bitterness that still remained over the ethnically split island of Cyprus. But by recalling 1955 İkmen had made Hürrem think. The people of İstanbul were in turmoil. Those who wanted a more pious government and those who wanted more secular governance could not find any common ground. And one group, or so it appeared, were riding roughshod over the wishes of the other.

  Ariadne Savva’s small apartment in Kadıköy was in a slightly crumbling apartment block with very distant views of the Sea of Marmara. She certainly had a lot of books, mostly in Greek, which Kerim Gürsel couldn’t understand. But the place was neat and clean and, more significantly, entirely child free.

  Weirdly there weren’t even any baby clothes or equipment anywhere. Had Ariadne Savva known she was pregnant? Kerim shook his head. She must have done. She had a doctorate, she was no fool. But if that was the case then why hadn’t she made any preparations?

  If she hadn’t wanted the child it made sense. But if she hadn’t wanted it then why hadn’t she had an abortion? As far as Kerim knew, just as in Turkey, abortion was legal in Greece. Maybe Ariadne had possessed personal objections to the practice? Then again possibly she had decided to have the child with the intention of giving it away. Some childless couples even paid pregnant women for their babies. Usually poor women, not educated doctors. And besides, if it had just been business then why hadn’t Ariadne given birth in a nice discreet private hospital? But then maybe she had. There had been very little post-partum blood in those collapsed rooms under the Hippodrome.

  Kerim’s father had been born and brought up in Sultanahmet and liked to tell spooky stories about the old Hippodrome, Aya Sofya and water cisterns under the streets. He claimed that one night he’d even seen chariots racing around the circus, driven by Byzantine princes in full armour. Kerim reckoned that his dad’s vision had rather more to do with too much rakı than ghosts. But Pembe Hanım had seen the ghost of the Empress Theodora in Aya Sofya and she was no fool. Kerim didn’t know what to think.

  His mobile rang. He looked at the screen. It was Sinem.

  ‘Hi, honey,’ he said.

  ‘Kerim.’ Her voice was weak and exhausted. ‘Can you pick my medication up from the pharmacy on your way home?’

  He’d thought she had enough.

  ‘I called Dr Sorak,’ she said. ‘I had to. Kerim?’

  He shook his head. ‘Sorry. Just a bit – surprised.’

  ‘Can you do it?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘Over in Kadıköy,’ he said.

  ‘Oh God. You know there are people in Taksim and all down İstiklal.’

  They lived above an electrical shop on Tarlabaşı Bulvarı. The pharmacy she wanted him to go to was about ten minutes away from their flat, on İstiklal Caddesi. He’d heard that people were protesting in and around Taksim Square about the proposed destruction of Gezi Park.

  ‘Are there more protesters?’ he asked her.

  ‘I can see them out of the window,’ she said. ‘They seem to be coming from everywhere. Not that I don’t applaud what they’re doing—’

  ‘I’ll leave as quickly as I can.’ He ended the call.

  Kerim sat on Ariadne Savva’s one kitchen chair and indulged in a moment of self-pity. Getting back to Beyoğlu when the streets were even more heaving with humanity than usual was going to be tough. Witnessing his colleagues dealing with the protesters was going to be harder. He’d heard what orders had been given. Gezi Park’s new incarnation as a shopping mall wasn’t up for debate; it was happening. Kerim didn’t want to see the park go. He certainly didn’t want another shopping mall put up in its place. And then there were other, wider considerations to be taken into account too. His country was changing and in ways that could further limit his personal freedom. He was boxed in as it was.

  He looked out of the window. The sky was still blue and the air remained thick with heat but he knew that night would fall before he got back to Beyoğlu. With any luck Rafik Bey the pharmacist would take Sinem’s medication to her when he closed his shop. It wouldn’t be the first time. But then maybe the crowds would put him off . . .

  Kerim looked through Ariadne Savva’s wardrobe and chest of drawers and then left. Beyond her clothes and a few lightweight novels she kept very few personal things in her apartment. According to her boss Professor Bozdağ, she lived almost entirely at her place of work. It was there that she kept all her academic research, her source books and photographs, and it was there that she socialised. Her baby wasn’t at her apartment and neither was her soul. Kerim left and ran downstairs to his car.

  ‘I thought that Gizlitepe was reduced to rubble months ago,’ İkmen said. Although he very rarely ventured across the Bosphorus to the Asian side of town, so what did he know?

  ‘In large part, yes,’ the small, timid looking woman in front of him said. Called Meltem Doğan, she had been Ariadne Savva’s assistant. ‘Much of it is just – rubble. But people still live there, Inspector. Rubbish pickers, mainly. Unlike a lot of Gizlitepe people they didn’t own their homes, and so when the developers moved into the area they didn’t get any compensation. That went to their landlords. Now many of them are destitute. Ariadne wanted to help them. She told me she used to see them walking past our apartment block with their little carts full of empty plastic bottles and she felt so sorry for them. One day she spoke to one of them. It went from there.’

  ‘What did?’

  İkmen didn’t know whether marble had a smell but if it did, it was like the odour in Professor Bozdağ’s office. The archaeologist had lent it to him so he could interview Ariadne Savva’s colleagues
in peace. Also one of the first things he’d noticed when he’d entered had been a portion of a brown skull on a shelf above his head. Ignoring it wasn’t easy.

  Meltem Doğan cleared her throat. ‘Dr Savva, Ariadne, became friendly with them. Where I live, where she lived, is only a short walk from Gizlitepe. At first she took them food.’

  İkmen looked down at the notes he’d taken from another of Ariadne Savva’s colleagues, Ali Pamuk. He, so he’d said, had joined Ariadne when she’d made representation to the local authority and the developers on behalf of the rubbish pickers. He, like her, had been laughed at.

  ‘Then she began to spend a lot of time away from her apartment,’ Meltem said.

  ‘With the rubbish pickers?’

  ‘I think so. She was always talking about them.’ She shook her head. ‘The people at the local authority were horrible to her. They said that as a foreigner she had no right to criticise what they did. But the developers were worse.’

  Öden Holdings was owned by a man called Ahmet Öden who had become rich off the back of the government’s İstanbul building boom. He was well known and admired by many. He was also despised by even more. According to Ali Pamuk, Ahmet Öden had threatened to ‘hurt’ Ariadne if she didn’t stop helping the rubbish pickers to squat on ‘his’ land.

  ‘For a while four of us from the museum used to go to Gizlitepe with Ariadne after work and sometimes at weekends,’ Meltem continued. ‘But the developers threw things at us and then one day they chased Dr İşbilen into an alleyway and beat him.’

  ‘Did any of you report it to the police?’

  She blushed. ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Dr Savva wanted to but the rest of us were scared. I was scared,’ she said. ‘I am no political radical, Inspector İkmen, but I am not blind either. If certain developers want to knock down old city neighbourhoods they can and nobody can stop them. Dr İşbilen is one of this city’s foremost archaeologists. But put up against a rich builder . . .’ She shrugged.

  İkmen could not only hear the sadness in her voice, he could sympathise with it too. A lot of his colleagues were behind the redevelopment of the city. Some of them even said they saw it as a sacred duty to support what they called ‘regeneration’. İkmen preferred to call it ‘urban cleansing’, because when the developers moved in the traditional residents – gypsies, immigrants, prostitutes, transsexuals – moved out and he didn’t like that. And what he disliked almost as much was the destruction of his city’s history.

  ‘Meltem Hanım, I have yet to speak to Dr İşbilen, but please be reassured that when I do I will make a point of asking him whether he wishes to make a complaint against Öden Holdings.’

  ‘He won’t,’ she said. ‘No one does.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ İkmen said. ‘But if Dr İşbilen has a legitimate complaint which he can prove, I will take that to Öden Holdings. And they will have to listen to me.’

  She looked into his eyes. He could see that she didn’t believe him. But why should she? Öden was all but untouchable and they both knew it. What she didn’t know was that Çetin İkmen didn’t approve of that state of affairs.

  ‘Meltem Hanım, did you know that Ariadne Savva was pregnant?’ he asked.

  ‘No. The first I heard about it was when Professor Bozdağ told us that Ariadne had died,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe it. Still can’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘She wasn’t seeing anyone. No one ever came back to her apartment and she was always at work. And she didn’t look pregnant. In retrospect I suppose she had put a little weight on in the last year . . .’

  ‘Did she get close to any of the male rubbish pickers?’

  ‘No. She felt sorry for them and wanted to help, but that was all. They’re a poor, shabby group, Inspector. Ariadne was all for the little guy, you know? The pickers get abused by everyone – the developers, the local authority, even the local police take their little carts away from them and then charge them when they try to get them back.’ Then, realising what she’d just said, she added, ‘So I hear. I didn’t mean to speak out of turn—’

  ‘Oh I know that these things go on,’ İkmen said. ‘Sadly. I know that some of my colleagues are far from perfect. All I can do is give you my assurance that I will do what I can. Meltem Hanım, it saddens me to think that certain elements within my organisation are behaving badly and are not giving the respect they should to those who seek to preserve our great city’s history.’ He looked down at his notes. ‘Professor Bozdağ has told me that you were working more closely with Ariadne Savva than anyone else. Can you tell me about that?’

  ‘Sort of. Ariadne kept a lot of what she did to herself. She was particularly interested in the connections that existed between ancient Rome and the Byzantine Empire.’

  ‘Which it preceded.’

  ‘Yes. Byzantium was the new Rome, which was why it had a hippodrome and games even after the empire was converted to Christianity in the third century AD.’

  ‘Dr Savva had a key to the back of the Hippodrome.’

  ‘The sphendone, yes,’ she said. ‘She spent a lot of time in there, photographing and measuring. Although the Hippodrome collapsed centuries ago, what remains can tell us a lot about how the games were performed and which parts of the building served which purpose.’

  ‘Her main field of study was the Hippodrome?’

  ‘No. Her academic playground was the whole of Byzantium. Recently she spent a lot of time in the Aya Sofya.’ She frowned. ‘I expect you know that some people want it to be turned back into a mosque. Ariadne was keen to catalogue every aspect of the building before that happened.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I was just her assistant.’

  ‘Just?’

  She smiled and then she looked tense again. ‘I have a lot of passion for history, but my qualifications are not of the best, Inspector. But Ariadne liked me and was very good to me. Everyone liked her. In common with all academics she had an ego, but we talked about so many things—’

  ‘What didn’t you talk about, Meltem Hanım?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’m not really sure, but sometimes I’d come into the office, she’d be writing something, and then she’d stop. She’d close up the notebook she was writing in and put it away.’

  ‘She kept this notebook here at the museum?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think it’s green. Whenever I saw her with it she always put it away in the top drawer of her desk and then locked it.’

  ‘I’ll need to see it,’ İkmen said.

  Sergeant Ömer Mungun sat outside his favourite bar in Sultanahmet, the Mozaik, and drank his beer in silence. At the top of Ticarethane Sokak he saw a group of his uniformed colleagues walk past dressed in riot gear. From the direction they were travelling he assumed they were coming from Gezi Park. Peri had said that she’d seen what had looked like hundreds of them in the streets when she got on the tram at Karaköy. He looked at his watch. She should have arrived by this time. He wondered whether he should call her but then decided to leave it another five minutes.

  He looked around. His fellow drinkers were tourists plus a couple of guys he knew worked in a local carpet shop. One of them, a Kurd called Şeymus, came from the town of Midyat which was in the same south-eastern province as Mardin, Ömer’s home city. Whenever they saw each other and they were alone, Ömer and Şeymus spoke in the Aramaic they had both grown up learning. But his friend was with his boss on this occasion and so Ömer just smiled. Across the road from the bar was the back of an apartment block he’d been told was where Inspector İkmen lived. Opposite the Blue Mosque and the Hippodrome, it had to be worth a fortune, although Ömer doubted that it had been when İkmen had bought it. He’d lived there since well before Ömer was born. And İkmen was sixty, although it was hard to relate his age to his enthusiasm and passion for his job, even if he did look as lined as an old piece of leather. There were definite pluses to being a thin, ugly man with a p
olice badge. Very attractive men like Ömer’s boss Mehmet Süleyman seemed to be constantly batting away advances from both women and men. Rumour had it that he was in trouble again for his liaison with that gypsy artist up in Balat. And he’d broken Sergeant Ayşe Farsakoğlu’s heart just before she died. İkmen and Süleyman had been friends ever since Süleyman had been İkmen’s sergeant many years before, but İkmen had been close to Farsakoğlu too and word was that his relationship with Süleyman was under strain. From Ömer’s point of view the two men were cordial but he’d noticed that İkmen rarely came into Süleyman’s office just to chat any more.

  ‘That was hell!’

  Ömer looked up into Peri’s clear, slanted eyes. He stood up and kissed her on both cheeks. ‘You took your time,’ he said. ‘Drink?’

  His sister let herself fall back into the chair opposite and said, ‘Gin and tonic. And the tram was held up by great roaming ranks of policemen, if you must know.’

  He went inside the bar and returned a few minutes later with a long, tall glass decorated with ice and mint. Peri put it to her lips and drank. ‘That is marvellous,’ she said.

  Ömer sat down. ‘If you’re very good you can have another one,’ he said.

  She smiled. Her little brother had blossomed in İstanbul, as she had known he would. If only he hadn’t joined the police. She switched languages to Aramaic. ‘Your brothers in arms are kicking and beating innocent people in Gezi Park. One of our doctors went out to see what was happening and came back with two injured men.’

  ‘I can’t condone it,’ Ömer said. ‘But the protesters should go home. There’s nothing they can do. The decision is made.’

  Peri’s face reddened. ‘You say this?’ she said. ‘You who hated what the developers did in Tarlabaşı to the gypsies, the black people, our own? They moved them out, Ömer, so that they could make themselves rich. Believe me, this going in like a pack of Robocops will backfire.’ She finished her drink.

  Ömer went inside the bar and got her another. When he returned she was smoking a cigarette. Peri had been a nurse at the German Hospital in Beyoğlu for almost ten years and so she knew what cigarettes did to the human body. Her brother knew that she only smoked them when she was stressed.