Land of the Blind

by Barbara Nadel

By four p.m. Nurettin and the Rat Boy had enough money for their various entertainments and the kid had scooted off to see his dealer. Nurettin, at a rather more leisurely pace, made for the bars on Nevezade Sokak, a small but lively alleyway branching off from the ancient Beyoğlu fish market on İstiklal Caddesi. Hidden in even smaller courts and alleys in the twisted streets round about, Nurettin occasionally caught sight of a church, Greek or Armenian, silent reminders of the communities who had once lived in that area.

  If he’d wanted to, he could have had something to eat. There were some nice small restaurants in the area. But that wasn’t the mission for Nurettin. He found a bar that was a bit more down at heel than the others, sat outside on a stool and when the waiter came, he ordered a bottle of rakı. The slightly harsh aniseed spirit, mixed with just enough water to make it cloudy, went down like silk. He’d bought a packet of cigarettes on the way up İstiklal too and so Nurettin was entirely at peace with himself and his fellow man for many happy hours.

  However, at some point a sort of time shift happened and Nurettin went from being contented on his stool in the late afternoon sunshine to being in a puddle of his own vomit in neon-punctuated darkness. The bar had gone and all he could smell, apart from vomit, was fish. As he attempted to sit up, his hand slid about on slime and scales which seemed to be all over the rough pavement beneath him. Then a cat came along and sniffed his feet. He told it to ‘Fuck off!’

  A man, a fish vendor by the look of his apron, said, ‘You’d best move along, brother. The police’ll be here in a minute picking up people like you.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Nurettin said. ‘People like what?’

  ‘People who’ve had too much to drink,’ the fish vendor said.

  ‘I haven’t had too—’

  ‘Brother, you were brawling with a man, which was why they threw you out of the Afrodite Bar.’

  Nurettin didn’t remember any brawling. He didn’t remember leaving the bar or even what its name had been. Had any of that happened? Or was this man just delighting in obliquely calling him an alcoholic?

  Nurettin got up shakily. ‘I’m no alcoholic,’ he said. ‘I’m a true believer. I just have problems.’

  ‘We all have those,’ the man said. ‘Not all of us try to solve them by drinking a bottle of rakı and then trying to smash glasses in people’s faces.’

  ‘What do you mean? I didn’t do that.’

  ‘Yes, you did,’ the man said. ‘Luckily the man you ended up fighting was even drunker than you were and so he just reeled away. Now you need to go home.’

  Nurettin flared. ‘Don’t tell lies!’ he said. ‘You’re only picking on me because I’m poor. It’s all right for you with your own business and your nice home to go to and your wife and—’

  ‘Will you just leave?’ the fish man said. ‘I mean you no ill will.’

  He put a hand on Nurettin’s shoulder.

  It proved to be a mistake.

  ‘Don’t you touch me, you bastard!’ Nurettin pushed the man’s hand away from him and then slapped his face. ‘Don’t you dare, you little shit!’

  For a moment the fish man just stood and looked at him. Had Nurettin not followed through with a punch to the man’s mouth, he would probably have let the slap go. But the punch was too much. The fish man hit back and Nurettin socked him in the stomach.

  Equally matched, one small and weak, while the other was as drunk as a sailor, they fought in almost silence, sometimes not even making contact with each other. But it was enough to alert the fish man’s neighbours, who went and got the police who were standing at the bottom of the market.

  When an officer finally pulled Nurettin off the fish man, the rubbish picker hardly knew what his own name was, let alone what he’d done or where he was.

  Chapter 14

  Pembe Hanım had been insistent.

  ‘Come on,’ she’d said to Sinem when she’d got her out of bed that morning. ‘I’ve cleared it with Kerim, we’re going to Gezi.’

  Sinem had looked confused. She’d had a lot of pain in the night and had only managed to get through it by reading the book, by Josephine Tey as requested, that Kerim had bought her. Consequently the skin underneath her eyes was black and her face was as pale as the moon.

  ‘Our glorious leader has gone on his foreign trip and so nothing will happen until he gets back,’ Pembe said. ‘The police won’t make a move without his say-so and there are rumours that the President is ready to make concessions. If you don’t come now, you’ll regret it.’

  They went, Sinem in a wheelchair pushed by Pembe which had a rainbow flag tied to the back. When they arrived they were greeted by Pembe’s very effusive American friend Rita as well as by a very heavily made up elderly woman.

  The American, whose Turkish wasn’t bad after ten years as a hostess in İstanbul, introduced her friend. ‘This is Samsun,’ she said. ‘She knows everyone. Samsun, this is Pembe and Sinem.’

  The older woman held out her hand to the younger ones as if she might want them to kiss it.

  ‘Sinem is married,’ Rita made speech marks with her fingers, ‘to a policeman and so we’re pretty safe around her. He’d call you if anything bad was going to go down, wouldn’t he, honey?’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was more noise than Sinem was used to. Loud music, people’s voices and even, when they’d first come into the park, a woman belly dancing while people clapped. She was overwhelmed and found it hard to be anything more than monosyllabic. Later, Pembe would tell her off. She’d say, ‘There’s no need for you to be like that. You need to have more confidence in yourself.’

  It wouldn’t change a thing.

  ‘My cousin is a senior police officer,’ Samsun said. ‘So I have no worries.’

  Whoever she was, she was playing the Grand Dame, which got up Pembe’s nose. Who did the old girl think she was?’

  ‘Inspector Çetin İkmen is my cousin,’ Samsun said.

  The name made Sinem look up.

  ‘What? Kerim’s boss?’ Pembe said.

  ‘Kerim?’

  ‘He’s Sinem’s husband,’ Pembe said. ‘Kerim Gürsel, İkmen’s sergeant.’

  ‘Oh,’ Samsun said. ‘Ah, so does Çetin Bey know that you are—’

  ‘No, of course he doesn’t!’ Pembe said. ‘Why would he?’

  Samsun shrugged. Her paste jewellery jingled in the sunlight. ‘Well, he and I are friends,’ Samsun said. ‘He walks with me on World Aids Day every year in memory of my late partner.’ She looked at Pembe. ‘And although he might not quite get who his sergeant’s wife really is, he’d know you, dear. As a chick with a dick myself, I can tell you that İkmen knows his way around the world of the trans.’

  ‘Is that so,’ Pembe said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, Kerim Bey would rather keep his associations outside his work to himself. Know what I mean?’ Pembe said. ‘So no telling İkmen—’

  ‘That his sergeant is married to a woman whose friends are transsexuals? Why would I?’ Samsun said.

  ‘Just make sure that you don’t,’ Pembe said.

  Samsun raised her hands in submission. ‘I won’t,’ she said. ‘But I can assure you that my cousin is not the sort of man who—’

  ‘Just do as we tell you, eh?’ Pembe said.

  Rita, who was sweating, rubbed her neck with a handkerchief and adjusted her choker to cover her Adam’s apple. She didn’t like scenes of any kind. She had thought that Pembe might like someone with so much trans life experience like Samsun, but she hadn’t reckoned on the shared connection via Pembe’s lover, Kerim. Awkward.

  ‘She’s running a temperature and she wants her father,’ Nanny Mary said in that clipped, superior English of hers.

  Ahmet Öden rubbed his thumbs together, a nervous tick left over from childhood. ‘You have called the doctor?’ he said.

  ‘Of course. He prescribed antibiotics. It’s a relatively mild infection but it’s in her intestines and Kelime is in some pain. She doe
s want you, Mr Öden.’

  The Prime Minister had left the country and there were insane rumours going about that the President might accede to some of the Gezi lunatics’ demands. He wanted to get over to Sultanahmet. He’d seen Yiannis Negroponte’s face through one of the windows and he was ready to crack. İkmen’s visit hadn’t increased his confidence one iota. If he could just be leaned on for one or two more days . . .

  ‘Mr Öden, I must—’

  ‘All right! All right!’ He stood up.

  ‘I’m sorry, but when a child is sick only her parents will do,’ Mary said.

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  He knew that. He loved Kelime with all his heart, she was his world. But spending time with her was hard. What conversation she had was about Barbie dolls and there was a limit to the amount of time he could talk about those. She also repeated herself. And sometimes there were continence issues, usually when she wasn’t well. He employed the Englishwoman to deal with these things. He wanted the best for Kelime, the girl who ate everything she wanted and loved her daddy so very, very much.

  But he followed Mary to Kelime’s little pink bedroom. Usually it smelt of whatever perfume she liked but this time there was an acidic twist of sickness on the air.

  ‘Daddy!’

  She put her fat, pink arms out towards him. Her face was flushed and her long black hair was stuck to her head in thin, wet ribbons.

  Mary whispered. ‘Dr Koç also said that Kelime must have a change of diet. More roughage and—’

  ‘Yes. Yes.’

  He sat down next to his daughter’s pink bed and then kissed her.

  Kelime smiled. ‘Daddy.’

  Of course the child needed a change of diet. She lived on ice cream, sweets and little else. But what was he supposed to do? She wouldn’t eat anything else, and if he tried to make her, she became so unhappy he couldn’t bear it. Mary, he knew, tried to get her to take fruit and vegetables but the tantrums she had to put up with were epic. He didn’t want Kelime to hate him.

  ‘How are you, my princess?’ he asked.

  ‘Got a sore tummy.’

  He squeezed her hand. It was clammy. He needed to be in Sultanahmet and then he wanted to be in Moda with Gülizar for the night.

  ‘Don’t go,’ Kelime said.

  Those eyes he found so strange and almost frightening at times, stared down his soul.

  ‘Dr Koç said that Kelime can’t be left today,’ Mary said. ‘It will take twenty-four hours for the antibiotics to work.’

  Which was one of the many reasons why Ahmet Öden employed Miss Mary Cox, he thought. But that wasn’t the point. Kelime wanted him and so she was going to have him.

  He smiled at his daughter and kissed her again. ‘Well then, I’d better have a little bed made up for me in here, hadn’t I?’

  His daughter giggled and shook with excitement. He hugged her. Once she was asleep he’d leave.

  The Byzantine Empress Zoe had lived in the ninth century and had been ‘born to the purple’. This meant she had been a true daughter of a Byzantine emperor. In common with the Ottoman dynasty, the Byzantines had suffered from occasional outbreaks of pretenders to the throne as well as heirs that lacked legitimacy in some way. But Zoe was not one of them. Beautiful and clever, Zoe ruled alongside three husbands and her sister, Theodora, who she hated. Her first marriage didn’t take place until she was fifty and in her final marriage, to Constantine IX, Zoe had been part of a ménage à trois with her husband’s mistress. As she aged, so she sought to look younger, and the elderly Zoe was well known to brew up fertility potions and skin creams in order to remain beautiful. Some of her subjects called her a witch. No wonder Ariadne Savva had been fascinated by this woman.

  İkmen rubbed his eyes and looked away from his computer screen. According to her colleagues, Ariadne Savva’s greatest ambition had always been to write a book about Zoe. But as far as he could see she hadn’t even made a start. There had been copious notes on her system but no sign of any coming together of ideas. And her notebook had been silent on the subject of Zoe. That had been about this unknown building and Constantine Palaiologos. She’d been knocked off course and she hadn’t told anyone.

  ‘Breakfast! Don’t I get breakfast?’

  İkmen raised his eyes to the ceiling. By the sound of it they were dragging some drunk along the corridor outside his office.

  ‘You know that food’s the best thing to have after a lot of drink!’

  There were scuffles and something thudded against his door. He hoped it wasn’t the man’s head. Some of his colleagues could be less than gentle with drunks. He decided to check the situation.

  When he opened his office door he saw two young constables holding up a man whose feet, one real and one false, dragged uselessly on the floor. One of the officers had a fist raised, ready to hit the man.

  ‘Ah, don’t be a mindless moron!’ İkmen said to the lad. ‘Just because he’s drunk don’t use that as an excuse to—’

  ‘Çetin Bey!’

  The voice of the drunk wasn’t familiar but the face, even through the bruising and the cuts, was.

  ‘It’s me, Nurettin, from Gizlitepe!’ he said. And then he smiled, revealing more broken teeth than he’d had when İkmen had first seen him.

  ‘Ah, Nurettin Bey,’ İkmen said. ‘What are you doing here with us this fine morning?’ Then he turned back to the officers, ‘Bring him into my office.’

  ‘He’s been fighting, sir,’ one of the young men said.

  ‘Yes, alcoholics do that sometimes, and he’s homeless, so things happen,’ İkmen said.

  The constables reluctantly took him into İkmen’s office and pushed him into a chair.

  ‘So,’ İkmen repeated, ‘Nurettin Bey, what have you been doing?’

  ‘Oh, I had a few drinks . . .’

  The constables left, one of them with some reluctance, İkmen noticed. Everyone was anxious about street unrest in the light of Gezi.

  İkmen closed his office door. ‘What happened?’ he said.

  Nurettin shrugged. ‘I got arrested fighting a fish seller in the Balık Pazar last night.’

  ‘Because you’d had more rakı than was good for you?’

  He shrugged again. ‘Because the fish man told lies about me,’ he said. ‘That I’d been smashing glasses into people’s faces. It wasn’t true. I didn’t do that and I’m fed up with people telling lies about me.’

  İkmen locked his office door, opened his window and offered the man a cigarette. Nurettin took it and they both lit up.

  ‘Who tells lies about you, Nurettin?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘Well, Cebrail Bey for a start,’ he said.

  ‘Cebrail Bey?’

  ‘Our landlord. Told that pig Ahmet Öden that none of us tenants had paid our rent for months and that he could just evict us whenever he wanted to. It was convenient for Öden to believe him and so we all had to go. But Cebrail Bey saved his worst spite for me. He told Öden that I was an alcoholic and an unbeliever. So every time he or his men saw me they chased me away like a mad dog.’ He shook his head. ‘I have a problem with drink from time to time, Çetin Bey. I’m human, I sin. But I am no atheist and with me, for all my faults, what you see is what you get.’

  İkmen smiled. Ariadne Savva had been fond of Nurettin and his colleagues from Gizlitepe and he could see why.

  Nurettin leaned across İkmen’s desk, flicking ash into the old, old saucer the policeman used as an ashtray. ‘Ahmet Öden has a mistress,’ he said. ‘A prostitute.’

  İkmen wasn’t surprised; he was never surprised when someone who set him- or herself up as a paragon of virtue had feet of clay, but he was very interested. ‘Really? How do you know?’

  ‘Ariadne,’ he said.

  İkmen sat up straight.

  ‘Dr Savva?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How did she know?’

  Nurettin shrugged. ‘People know. This is İstanbul. No secret can be buried here forever.’

 
‘Did Dr Savva tell you anything about Öden’s mistress? Who she is? Where she lives?’

  ‘No, she wouldn’t. Said the less we knew the better.’

  ‘So how—’

  ‘I think she was maybe trying to use what she knew about his mistress to get Öden to rehouse us,’ Nurettin said.

  ‘Blackmail him.’

  ‘Call it what you like. But that was a long time ago. Months. And she never showed me any proof, so it may be true, it may not be.’

  ‘But you believe it?’

  ‘Yes. Why not? People like him with money to burn, why not have a mistress? He gives money to all sorts of charities. He probably thinks God won’t notice. I don’t know. But Çetin Bey, I have no proof and Ariadne never showed me any. I’ve thought that maybe he killed her to silence her. But why would he do that? People like him are untouchable whatever they’ve done these days. Why take the risk of killing her? Just to call her a liar would have been enough.’

  He was right. But İkmen was still intrigued. Being as corrupt as a mass grave and treating your workmen like slaves was one thing, but getting embroiled in sexual misadventures, to many of the conservatively minded, was something else. That was ‘dirty’ and could taint Öden’s image as the sad widower and saintly father of a damaged child which he had so carefully cultivated. But could he have killed to preserve that image? And was İkmen’s own view of Öden being coloured by the cruel mind games played at the Negroponte family’s expense?

  It was hot. Midday, and the more empty than usual streets of Sultanahmet oscillated in the heat haze. Even so, the Negroponte house was locked, shuttered and had its windows closed. Behind one, hidden by a thick, dusty net curtain, Yiannis sat on a wooden chair, looking out into the street.

  For what seemed like hours, he didn’t so much as twitch. Then he said, ‘He’s not coming. Not now. Why not?’

  Hakkı, halfway through darning a sock, looked up. ‘I don’t know. Maybe he’ll come later.’

  ‘No, he always comes before midday,’ Yiannis said. ‘Has he given up?’

  ‘How should I know? Will you give it a rest?’ Men like Ahmet Öden didn’t give up. He was simply doing something else. That was the only reason he wasn’t sitting outside in his car.