Bozuk Read online

  Mr. Gudewill had a daughter, Sandra. He called her “Princess.” She was not pleased with his new wife, a card shark from Vegas. He told me honestly that he wanted sex and she wanted money, which he had a lot of, having been a successful stockbroker.

  Before his bride turned up to argue with the child of his earlier marriage about who got which antique or valuable painting, he handed me an envelope and told me not to open it until he was with the angels.

  Inside was a letter in shaky handwriting, thanking me for my companionship and a stack of life-changing thousand-dollar bills. One hundred thousand dollars! I might have been obliged to inform his wife if she had behaved decently, but, to the best of my knowledge, she had never shown him a shred of respect before I’d called to inform her he was on his way out. She only phoned to ask for money.

  Since I inherited my parents’ house, debt free, my income allows for a comfortable life without frills. My needs are simple: books, food, and a bottle of wine that lasts a week because I am still the adult child of an alcoholic, and I only drink the one or two glasses of daily red that is recommended for heart health. That is good wine though. I don’t drink plonk. The wine in Turkey is ordinary. I prefer rakı, the anise-flavoured aperitif they mix with water and drink with the mezzes that start their meals.

  Poor Mr. Gudewill, who had been wise in business and had great taste in literature, was helpless in lust. “I am not a real gambler,” he said. “I’ve seen the Northern Lights and I’ve seen Paris at night. I wanted to witness Sodom lit up. In one weekend, I met and married a girl who worked in a casino. I took Viagra. The sex was great. I bought her a house. She said she was going to follow me home to Victoria as soon as her immigration papers were straightened out. We’d spend summers here and winters in Vegas.”

  It turned out she had a boyfriend and a teenaged son. “As soon as I left Vegas, they all moved into the house I’d bought for us.”

  Mr. Gudewill told me he didn’t mind so much about the other man swimming in his pool. Since there was an age difference, he understood; but he wished she would visit from time to time. “I miss the sex.” If I didn’t know better, I would have asked, “At your age, Mr. Gudewill?” Just as young soldiers lie dying on the battleground, calling for their mothers, I know from experience that old men often die with the name of the last woman they’ve slept with on their lips.

  Not Mr. Gudewill, who called out to the mother of his child on his way out. The next day, I bought my ticket to Istanbul with cash.

  On the second leg of the flight, from Frankfurt to Istanbul, I sat near the members of a Canadian blues band who were about to play clubs and resorts on the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, Sweet Papa Lowdown and family, two daughters and two wives. This band – Jeff, a guitarist; Rick, a mandolinist; Doug, a tenor sax player and Kris, on trombone – was joining Turkish musicians, more new friends. “How appropriate,” I said, “A fusion band in a fusion country.” They liked that I had done my political homework and offered me comps for any concert I could find, which turned out to be harder than we thought because directions are Byzantine in Turkey. I didn’t say I was fusion too, because I have come to simplify, just as the Turks have been doing for almost a century, only they call it, “secularization.”

  “I sometimes work with a band,” I said after we made introductions, which is sort of a lie and almost true. When I am seeing clients who prefer the anonymity at the storage locker, a habit I haven’t changed even after my mother declined, clearing a room in our house, I like the background music. It helps my work.

  “I came to hear snow and witness the rescue of Iman al-Obeidi,” I said, leaving out the part about my father, my full agenda, “but I like the blues.”

  “Same key,” Kris said.

  THE HAREM

  The moment I arrived in Istanbul, I understood why Pamuk would hear his God as opposed to seeing him.

  I have discovered that Istanbul is a city of unique music, from the first cry of the muezzin calling the faithful to morning prayer, the mating of feral cats, the cuckoo coo of the ubiquitous doves and the elegant crow doves, with grey breasts and black heads and wings, to the soulful groove of the saz player who makes magic with his Turkish stringed instrument in a doorway on the empty İstiklal Caddesi after all the nightlife on Beyoğlu’s lit-up street of dreams has vanished. I understood right away that Turks speak softly, their gently percussive language borrowed from the sounds around them. They don’t attempt to dominate like we do. They dissemble and adapt, the grumbling mostly apparent in their humour, seismic activity.

  Right away, I felt connected in this country of bridges and ferries and buses that serve snacks and rosewater for cleaning your hands. Almost as soon as I arrived in Istanbul, I became part of a polite human grid with a Byzantine infrastructure.

  Even in the manic traffic of this bulging city, the Turks are considerate. I’ve been here three weeks, blending into the population of thirteen million plus tourists and I haven’t seen a single dented car or an incident that escalated into violence, not even shouting, so finding guns for sale in the tunnel shops under the Galata Bridge is disturbing. Because my father was a veteran and a seasonal hunter of wild meat, I got used to seeing weapons around when I was a kid, but this is an anomaly in a country that, like my own, strives to accommodate.

  “Why are there so many gun shops under the bridge?” I ask Vefa, the Kadıköy-based Sweet Papa Lowdown bassist who offered to show me the Topkapı Sarayı. “What are the weapons for?”

  I expect Vefa, wearing a hoodie and waving an elegant ebony cigarette holder in long fingers, to give me an ambiguous Turkish answer. After all, I have had to dig for personal information. He lives with his parents in an old Ottoman apartment that has belonged to his family for generations. Vefa is a musician who translates philosophical writing and his father’s poetry. I heard he was in love, but, like many young Turks, had decided that taking love a step further was too risky in his world, so he remained single.

  “We hunt women,” he quips and waits for my reaction.

  “Why do you need weapons for that?”

  “We kill them and eat them.”

  “How?”

  “Turkish women require two days of cooking. They are very tough.”

  “When is it time to eat them?”

  “When they tell the truth.”

  Ah, that is the power of Turkish women. They dissemble behind their veils and that infuriates their equally enigmatic men. It is always about power and there is no power greater than secrets. Byzantine.

  I’m a hunter too, I think, stalking myself. Will I see the person I am looking for quivering like a trapped animal in my father’s gunsight, just another confused woman circling the drain?

  On our way to the Ottoman Palace in Sultanahmet, we stop in the park and consult the fortune bunnies who choose prophetic notes for tourists.

  “Do you also punish the rabbits when they choose unpopular fortunes? ”

  “Of course.

  “There are thirteen million people to feed in Istanbul. So many souls have moved west looking for work, our country is tipping into the Aegean. Rabbits, women, pigeons: it’s all about food.”

  Having come to Turkey to feed my soul, I don’t know whether to laugh or punch Vefa’s bowing arm.

  “Let’s spare the rabbit this time,” he says, laughing.

  I am learning that politics and religion in this country are a powerful mix of mystery and beauty – so much hidden, lost in translation, so much revealed, all of it a joke until it isn’t.

  Vefa walks quickly. It’s hard keeping up with him, keeping an eye on the street life around us, and asking the right questions.

  “Why do so many people smoke?”

  “We are praying,” he answers.

  Blowing smoke signals. “Does the Ottoman God allow the dead to smoke in heaven?

  “I’ll let you know when I get there. This will do for now.”

  We have arrived at our destination. Light and colour
flow from the Topkapı gate, welcoming us to the magnificence inside. Only the intense illustrations in the Rubaiyat have prepared me for this exotic visual feast. I swallow my breath. Vefa says nothing, but I feel his smile. Turks, I am noticing, may be critical of their history, but they are proud of it.

  He takes my arm and steers me through crowds of visitors. I am amazed at every turn as we navigate the gardens and maze of exquisite buildings. Even the luxurious intimacy of practical spaces like the circumcision room and the library have a celestial glow as we step in and out of what could be medieval paintings.

  “Does this confuse you?” he asks, touching my sleeve with his cigarette holder.

  “Careful, you’ll set me on fire.”

  “That would be interesting,” he says. “A different flavour from boiling for days.”

  “I didn’t come here to be eaten. I came to find people.” Isn’t that the truth, I think, as he leads me through an arched doorway, everything visible becoming invisible. I am tired of being left behind and would like to hold on to something, somebody, just once.

  “And this is where your family might have left you.” Vefa leads me through a stone corridor from full Ottoman glory into a morose courtyard. “We are in the harem, where girls waited to be chosen to join the sultan.” When he speaks, a gathering of black and grey crows gather their skirts and disappear with a whisper. I have thought, and think again, that these unusual crows, whose dingy headscarves have slipped, are a symbol of assimilation in this diverse culture.

  “My father left me with something worse.”

  “What was that?” he asks.

  “My mother.”

  The harem courtyard could be a prison compound. I shiver, wondering who on earth would consider it a privilege to be selected for the Sultan’s pleasure? Who would send a daughter to live in a jail surrounded by so much inaccessible beauty?

  We sit down on a stone bench and I think while Vefa, the Byzantine aristocrat who sleeps by himself, puts a cigarette in his holder and just holds it. I reflect about all the little girls who grow up and marry up, attaching their destinies to powerful men. And what happens to them when power turns evil? Are they just innocent passengers on the train to infamy? I think of men who do the same thing fucking with the devil, men like Faust, and Robert Johnson who wanted to sing himself out of the chains of slavery. Iman was so brave to leave her proxy husband behind. I want to carve her name in stone, in this place or, failing that, in my thigh.

  “Did the girls in the harem even get to see the gardens?” I ask Vefa, who should be feeling badly about his little jokes. “Only when invited,” he laughs, predictably. I suspect the leftover Ottoman princes, to the best of my knowledge all remittance poets, philosophers and musicians disempowered by Ataturk, cultivate their cynicism. Sophistication is their manhood. I’m not fooled. I’ve seen too many vulnerable men. The ones I’ve been meeting here are the cultural progeny of the infamous harem eunuchs.

  “Do you think they slept with the eunuchs?” I ask, hoping to startle him, and because I have read that Vatican castrati kept neglected Roman noblewomen content; but Vefa is prepared.

  “It was all about protecting bloodlines. Why should any slave, man or woman, be cut off from pleasure?”

  I am tempted to tell him about my clients, but hold my tongue. This culture is still new to me. “No reason at all. Sex without issue is very modern.”

  “And necessary,” he adds enigmatically and stands up. “Your people know what to do. Arm everyone and shoot people who believe in birth control. That is population control.”

  “I am not an American. Why does everyone think Canadians are American?”

  “Now,” he says, ignoring my question, “we will go to the holy of holies.”

  The Palace could be an encampment, tents rendered in stone. There is nothing grand about the architecture. It is practical, but sumptuous in its appointments, a warehouse for plunder at the end of the Silk Road.

  We cross another garden and he leads me to the Sultan’s apartment. The rooms are splendid, but I am most impressed by the balcony looking over the Bosphorus. Its stone walls frame stunning tableaux of the water and the ancient city connected by ships.

  This is exactly what the potentate saw, I think, realizing once again that the rich do have certain advantages: no fighting over limited access to beautiful views for one thing, immortality for another, or at least as long as their monuments endure. Vefa tells me one sultan had his entire harem sewn up in sacks and thrown in the Golden Horn. Did he watch from this window as his bagged concubines sank with a thousand sighs?

  “Not every story has a happy ending.”

  “What is a happy ending, Vefa?”

  “Not suffering too much.”

  KADIKÖY

  When Vefa and I part ways, I am relieved to be free, even though striking out on my own and starting up conversations with men is tricky, and the women are even more guarded. Because I am staying in Kadıköy on the Asian side, there are fewer English speakers.

  This is where I meet the stranger.

  Our first encounter is on the last ferry from Eminonu to Kadıköy. Anxious to get home after a long day working in the markets and tourist restaurants in Sultanahmet, the Turks press together and surge to fill every available seat on the feribot.

  They’ve earned their rest and I am a walking impropriety. That is obvious in the refusal of either men or women to smile back at the infidel with uncovered head and bare arms. Even the secular Turks appear to be shocked by the open, apparently guileless way I look into their eyes when I speak to them.

  The stranger, however, looks up, and, putting his hand over his heart and bowing his head slightly, refuses to hear my insincere protests. I do want to sit down, and gladly take his seat as he stands for the twenty-minute passage across the Golden Horn, his legs braced against the rocking waves in waters rolling over drowned sailors and gold thrown into the channel to frustrate pillaging Ottoman soldiers.

  I wonder if, when our eyes meet, he thinks he recognizes me from somewhere else. People my age have collected so many “might have beens.” It is what we have. “İnşallah,” my stranger passes on a blessing. “Teşekkurler,” I respond as he steadies himself, grasping the rail. Twenty minutes later, the boat lands at the Kadıköy pier on the Asian side with a bump, and he vanishes into the crowds swarming around food vendors.

  There is food for sale everywhere in Turkey: mussels and cobs of tough corn on the feribot wharves, and markets filled with fresh produce on every street. I am hungry, on my way to the Ciya Sofrası, a buffet-style restaurant in the fish market where Sweet Papa, who has been here before, brought us straight from the airport. To get there, I pass the fish stands and shops selling Turkish delight, spices and evil eyes for tourists.

  I consider all the beautiful dishes laid out on the Ciya buffet and choose a plate of eggplant stuffed dolmas, a pomegranate and seaweed salad and, two desserts – glazed pumpkin and a bowl of fig and milk pudding that I know from my last visit will taste like my mother before she fell from grace.

  Absorbed by my feast, I don’t notice him until he interrupts. “Merhaba.”

  I lower my sunglasses. Feribotman has found me at the sacred place where food is religion, every flavour balanced in God’s kitchen. This is beyond coincidence.

  Is he my deliverance or a carpet salesman looking for lonely women to seduce and fleece while the sun sets over the beautiful silhouettes of Sutanahmet, a phenomenon I’ve already assimilated in my chamber of souvenirs, a suite with a balcony overlooking the Bosphorus, my window on Istanbul despite the grime on the glass.

  “Merhaba,” I answer, impaling a piece of glazed pumpkin in walnut sauce on my fork, and then, after touching his heart again, he dissolves into the crowd like sugar in tea. My mutable stranger is gone. Never mind, I have a city to embrace.

  Lemons. The next time, a day later, I smell him before I see him. “Bozuk,” my recurring dream, standing beside me in front of a painting of two
children riding a Turkish carpet at Sukran Sahin’s art show at the Tünel Sanat Galerisi in old Istanbul, speaks again.

  “Bozuk.”

  I feel his tartar vitality, his coiled intelligence. I smell the wind moving through lemon groves. Turning slightly, I see he is just a little taller than I am. His head is shaved.

  “Broken,” he translates.

  “What?” I am confused.

  “The dreams of children.”

  I hear the sound of belly dancers with coins sewn in their skirts and headdresses. I hear change falling from hand to hand in the Grand Bazaar. The Turks call their coins “bozuk para.”

  “How?” I ask, and the stranger, who tells me his name is Güzel, sighs. He is going to tell me. Is my angel, Mr. Gudewill, smiling in heaven, his mission accomplished? And what about mine? After years of giving pleasure to others, I think I might find my own with this Turkish man who appears to be following me.

  “We seem to be destined to meet. Would you like to have a glass of çay and talk about my country?” We walk out of the gallery onto the busy Istiklal Cadessi, and he leans a little closer because the noise of the vendors, pedestrians and the clattering trolley car make conversation almost impossible. We duck into one of the side streets in the flower market, where it is less noisy.

  “I do have a question,” I say, keeping up with his confident strides by dance-walking over the treacherous cobblestones and pavement cracks. If I try to stay in the air, I might not stumble. I would like to take his arm, but he hasn’t offered it.

  Since I am asking everyone I meet, “Why do Turks dislike Pamuk?” I go for the question. Mr. Gudewill would approve of a literary opening.

  “Perhaps, after I have explained about my country, you will know.”

  “Perhaps?”

  He doesn’t answer. İnşallah, I keep up as he makes his way through the crowd.