River of The Dead

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘My son Rafik usually takes care of me when we leave our home,’ she said. ‘But he couldn’t come today and my brother-in-law Seçkin is too busy with his daughter to be bothered with me. Not that I am complaining. Edibe is a soul in torment.’

  He had seen his Mardin colleague earlier. Veiled and dressed in black, she could barely walk, even with the support of her father on one side and Constable Selahattin on the other. Everyone looked at her and spoke behind their hands about her. Everyone, after all, did know.

  ‘She has lost the love of her life,’ Lucine continued. ‘The light has gone out in her world. Her soul is in exile and there is no way back. I know.’

  When he had first met this woman he had found her talk about times past fascinating. He had in fact been rather aggravated by Edibe Taner’s apparent desire to lend her words no credence and to keep him away from her. She’d described the old woman as ‘mad’ which hadn’t seemed fair then and didn’t now. But there was a hopelessness about her, a sorrow, that was disturbing.

  ‘Exile of the soul?’

  The old woman nodded. ‘When one is detached from something so loved, just the thought of it can bring the urge to kill oneself,’ she said. And then, reading the graveness on his face, she continued, ‘It can be a person, a place, even a time in one’s life. Sometimes, as in your case, it is a time you do not even remember.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘You are an Ottoman,’ she said. ‘Edibe told me. She heard it from someone she works with who had been in İstanbul. She’s very thorough. Remember when I told you about the Cobweb World? The Cobweb World is where exiles go. It is where I am. Where else would an Armenian be? Modern Armenia has nothing to do with me. It’s an awful place. I don’t belong there. As an Ottoman you don’t belong in modern İstanbul. You don’t even want to be there, not deep down in your soul.’

  He watched the end of the cortège pass before him and then offered his arm to Lucine Rezian as they joined the rest of the mourners following on behind the coffin.

  ‘So where do I want to be?’ he asked.

  ‘In your palace, riding out with the Sultan, doing things that Ottomans do.’

  Edibe Taner had been right after all. This woman was clearly foolish. He didn’t want to do any of those things. Did he?

  ‘Now you are poor like the rest of us and you have accepted that like a good Muslim,’ she said. ‘But in the dark of the night you think about what might have been had history been different. You don’t even know that you’re doing it.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘Why do you think that people refer to you as an Ottoman?’ she asked. ‘Because they do. I know that because just the look of you tells me that is what happens.’

  She was right. A lot of people did refer to him as an Ottoman. Some people resented him because of it.

  ‘But you cannot go back to the past any more than I can. So you do what you can. You keep your standards, you talk to the old members of your family, you live with ennui, you live in the Cobweb World.’

  Süleyman thought about someone else possibly in the Cobweb World too. An Armenian without a name who had chosen, according to Elizabeth Smith, to take money to fulfil what he saw as his destiny. Murat Lole was still at large somewhere.

  ‘Madam, do you know anything about the Lole family?’ he asked.

  ‘The family of the architect Serkis Lole?’ She smiled. ‘All gone. Years ago.’

  ‘Gone? Gone where?’

  She looked away from him. ‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘Out of the country, I think.’

  ‘So there couldn’t be any family members here or say in Van or anywhere like that?’

  She regarded him levelly for a moment and then she said a very firm and final, ‘No.’

  In spite of his reluctance to engage in any more stories of Armenians and why so many of them had emigrated from eastern Turkey, he was wary of her last answer and said, ‘Madam . . .’ But at that moment they were passed by Constable Selahattin, Edibe, and Seçkin Taner making their way to the top of the procession to walk alongside the priest of Mar Behnam, Musa Saatçi and Brother Seraphim. The dead man’s father was grey with grief, crying bitterly with every step. As she passed, Edibe Taner looked through her thin black veil into Süleyman’s eyes. The self-inflicted rents and scratches on her face aside, her eyes were so full of pain that the look of her was almost too much to bear. Behind him the many Christian women in the crowd began to ululate.

  ‘Arabs!’ Lucine said with a shrug. ‘They are Christians and yet they are Arabs too. They live in the Cobweb World. Islam came and it moved the Arabs to a different place. These Syrians got left behind. My niece will go there too.’

  Whether she meant to the Cobweb World or into Christianity he didn’t know. But Lucine explained. ‘To the Cobweb World,’ she said, nodding gravely as she did so. ‘There is nothing for her, not now that Gabriel Saatçi is dead.’

  ‘But she would never have married Brother Gabriel. She is a Muslim, he was a Christian and he was a monk.’

  ‘Of course not. Edibe worshipped from afar. But that was enough,’ the old woman said. ‘Now he has gone, however, now he is no longer in the world, her life has no meaning. She will enter the Cobweb World with the rest of us. Her life will be one of compromise, regret and sorrow.’

  But wouldn’t Edibe Taner one day recover? People did, after all, weather the storms of bereavement and somehow come through them. He had visited the İkmen family when he had returned briefly to İstanbul. Grief there was in degrees, from not much more than an awareness of it amongst Çetin’s younger children, those who had known Bekir only briefly, right up to the black despair of Fatma İkmen. His friend, as usual, was getting on as he always did. But then Çetin, for all his deeply unfashionable traits like agnosticism and smoking, was a modern man. The fact that his mother had been a witch notwithstanding, Çetin lived in the now because with so many children to support and think about he just had to. The Cobweb World, as far as Süleyman could perceive it, was where the lonely and disjointed and only they could afford to go. And he saw himself with them. As he walked in procession towards St Sobo’s monastery and the last resting place of Gabriel Saatçi the saint, it became clear. He sprang from a past that could hardly be imagined any longer. Old people blithely called his father a prince and gave him respect because of that, but the reality was that he was an elderly man with little money who was a prince of nowhere. Like Süleyman himself. Had Mehmet Süleyman lived the life of his ancestors he would have had a harem and had lots of sons who would probably now be adults. In his head he was an honourable man of some standing but he wasn’t royal and other men were coming up in the police force behind him now, younger, fitter, more in tune with a city that wanted to be modern – something he just was not. He was a dinosaur. And yes, just as Lucine Rezian had told him, he did think about what might have been in the dark, dark watches of the night. He was there with the rest of them: the Armenian woman, the dead saint, the Master of Sharmeran and the hordes of ululating women behind him. In the Cobweb World.

  Because Ayşe Farsakoğlu knew the girl anyway there was no problem about Sophia’s gaining access to the police station.

  ‘She’s with me,’ she said to the officer on the front desk, who had been just about to shoo the dirty girl and her filthy bundle away when Ayşe came into the building.

  ‘I want to see Inspector İkmen,’ Sophia said as Ayşe ushered her through the reception area and into the station. The filthy bundle in her arms was making small snuffling and squawking noises. Given Sophia’s radically different shape, Ayşe assumed it had to be her new baby.

  ‘Where have you been, Sophia?’ she asked as she led the girl up the stairs towards her superior’s office. ‘Inspector İkmen and I have been worried about you.’

  The girl looked down at the bundle and said, ‘I have baby.’

  Ayşe both did and did not want to see the dead man’s baby, the child of a murderer. Her boss Çetin İkmen had been s
o marked by what had happened. He was going through the motions of his daily life because that was İkmen, that was what he was. But the death of a child, even a troublesome, even an ‘evil’ child, leaves whoever suffers it irreversibly changed. İkmen had aged and he was, Ayşe had noticed, just occasionally drinking brandy again.

  ‘Did you have a doctor?’ Ayşe asked as she led the girl down one of the long green-and-white-painted corridors on the top floor of the building.

  ‘I go to hospital,’ Sophia said simply. Probably one of the social security hospitals, where one didn’t pay but one did wait, sometimes until it was far and away too late.

  When Ayşe reached İkmen’s office door, she knocked on the glass before calling out, ‘Sir, someone to see you.’

  A very smoke-dried voice from within said, ‘Who?’

  ‘Sophia, sir.’

  She waited for him to come and answer the door, which he did with alacrity. Stinking of cigarettes and with eyes red from weeping and lack of sleep, Çetin İkmen was not a pretty sight. As soon as he saw the girl he looked down at the bundle in her arms and said, ‘Is that . . .’

  ‘I call him Aslan,’ the girl said. ‘For his father.’

  İkmen looked across at Ayşe and said, ‘Does she . . .’

  ‘I know your son is dead, Inspector İkmen,’ Sophia said. Her eyes were quite dry and she showed no emotion. ‘I come to show baby.’

  He ushered her into his office and Ayşe Farsakoğlu, even without a sign from her boss, left. She had no place in whatever conversation was to pass between them. She went back to Süleyman’s office where she and İzzet Melik were following up on possible sightings of the nurse Murat Lole.

  ‘I will see the rest of the year out and then I will retire,’ Edibe Taner said to Mehmet Süleyman.

  The man from İstanbul took a sip from the glass full of sweet red wine Brother Seraphim had given him and said, ‘Why? Inspector, I know that Brother Gabriel’s death has upset you, but I would urge you not to act too hastily. You’re a really good officer. It’s been . . .’

  She put a hand on his arm and smiled. ‘I have been honoured to work with you, Inspector Süleyman,’ she said. ‘I would not have survived the interrogation of Elizabeth Smith had you not been there. I might have killed her. But . . . Gabriel’s death is only part of the story.’

  ‘Part of the story?’

  They were standing outside the huge main entrance to the monastery, smoking. In front of them the vineyards and olive groves belonging to St Sobo’s disappeared into the misty distance that was the border with Syria.

  ‘Did you notice Lütfü Güneş, the Kurd, back there in the monastery garden?’ Taner said.

  ‘I noticed he was there,’ Süleyman replied.

  ‘Talking to clans once powerless in the face of the Kayas,’ she said. ‘He gave us, or rather you, Elizabeth Smith.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘His friend İbrahim Keser was sleeping with the American and he passed the information to you so that he could destroy her plans.’

  ‘You really believe Keser told Güneş about the Wormwood Route?’

  ‘I believe it’s possible,’ she said. ‘Lütfü is an ambitious man. He has a big family. Lütfü Güneş was not one of those who would have profited from the Wormwood Route had the Kayas or even the American controlled it.’

  ‘You think that he spoke to us behind İbrahim Keser’s back?’ Süleyman said. ‘That he really did in effect use us?’

  ‘Possibly. I think that Güneş would eventually have killed Keser, as I believe Elizabeth Smith would have done in the end.’

  Süleyman, though horrified, knew it could easily be true.

  ‘All the surviving men who worked for Elizabeth Smith would seem to be abroad,’ he said.

  ‘With little or no money, not to mention direction,’ Taner said. ‘New masters will, I believe, piece together the elements of the Wormwood Route. Lütfü Güneş the Kurd talks to the clan leaders at Gabriel Saatçi’s funeral and maybe he even talks to men he once knew who now reside abroad, on his mobile telephone.’

  ‘You really do think he told us about Miss Smith so he could ultimately displace her?’

  ‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Here in Mardin we are on the route westwards from Afghanistan, a country bulging with heroin that is now almost completely out of control. Miss Smith was right: billions of dollars are at stake here. Not, thankfully, that we will have to endure her “empire” here in the city. Someone else will control and organise our lives now. The new owner of the Route.’

  ‘Mardin will need someone to fight that,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘Yes, it will.’ She sighed. ‘Just not me.’

  ‘Why not?’

  She looked up at him and smiled. ‘Because I’m tired,’ she said. ‘Because my heart is broken and because my poor father must teach someone to beat copper and speak to the Sharmeran before he dies.’

  He didn’t know how to respond to that and so he just stayed quiet. The reality or otherwise of the snake goddess was not something he felt able to discuss with her or any other Mardin native.

  ‘I used to have a brother,’ Taner said as she squinted into the distant vistas of the great Mesopotamian Ocean. ‘Like poor Captain Erdur he was in the Jandarma. He died. Now there is only me, and so although our Sharmeran requires a master by tradition she must now settle for a mistress.’ She looked again at Süleyman and said, ‘I want to be who I am. I will not run away and hide under a false name like Hasan Karabulut. I will not kill to be who I am like Murat Lole. I belong to the Sharmeran and I want to be with her. It is my destiny.’

  It was also lonely, old and ephemeral. The Cobweb World.

  ‘Elizabeth Smith thinks that she will be able to use her knowledge of the Wormwood Route to buy her way out of prison,’ Süleyman said.

  ‘If she does even know it, Lütfü Güneş or someone else will have taken it over by then. The Wormwood Route is just the first, I think, of such “super routes”,’ Edibe Taner said. ‘I think ultimately they will proliferate. Making those around them rich, of course. In the end they will be like leaking buckets: as soon as one hole in one route is discovered, so another one will arise to take its place. That is my prediction.’

  ‘But the Wormwood Route was foolproof.’

  ‘Nothing in the end can be perfect,’ she said. ‘Only Allah. The Wormwood Route is mythical and exciting because it is new and because Yusuf Kaya was totally intoxicated by what he had made. But nothing is for ever. It will have its day and people other than ourselves will profit from it.’

  He frowned.

  ‘Even saints die,’ she said. ‘Even if our love for them does not.’

  She made to go back into the garden where the wake was taking place, but Süleyman took hold of her wrists and held her back.

  ‘Edibe,’ he said, ‘you must not give up on the notion of finding love somewhere else some day. You are a very impressive person.’

  This was only the second time he’d ever used her first name and he had blurted what he had said because he was neither comfortable nor competent with strong emotion. She appreciated that, even if her reply was not what he had wanted to hear – just because it was so unutterably sad.

  ‘That’s very kind of you, Mehmet,’ she said, ‘but my heart died along with Gabriel and I will not be seeking to try to revive it. I am already in the Cobweb World. Let the drug men peddle their poison. My life belongs to my Sharmeran now.’

  He let her hands go then and she began to walk back through the monastery gates.

  ‘I will look out for Lütfü Güneş and his associates in the future,’ Süleyman said just before she disappeared. ‘I will not forget. I may belong to the Cobweb World, as your aunt Lucine has told me, but I’ve realised that I do not live there, Edibe, not yet. I will keep you as safe as I can from the poison, Inspector. I promise.’

  ‘You’re a good man,’ he heard her say from inside the gates. ‘The Sharmeran loves you. I know she does.’

 
; The baby was clearly undersized for his age. He was also bundled up in a really disgusting succession of rags. But he was healthy and when İkmen picked him up he smiled up into his face with such joy that the tired policeman felt himself begin to laugh.

  ‘I really, really appreciate you bringing him to see me,’ İkmen said as he sat down behind his desk and held young Aslan on his lap. Sophia had just told him that it was her intention to return, with the baby, to Bulgaria.

  ‘I have mother there,’ she said. ‘Now I no do drugs, I can go to her.’

  Like a lot of young eastern European girls, Sophia’s flight from her own country had not resulted in her becoming either wealthy or famous. Since her arrival in İstanbul she’d become a junkie, a prostitute, a thief and the girlfriend of a murderer. At least she had little Aslan, however, a child she seemed genuinely fond of.

  ‘Do you have money?’ İkmen began.

  ‘I have train ticket,’ Sophia said. ‘Some lire for food also.’

  İkmen sighed. He didn’t know what kind of environment Sophia was going back to. In all likelihood it was far and away inferior to the kind of life little Aslan would have with the İkmen family in İstanbul. Bulgaria was still a very impoverished country with huge social problems and very low levels of health care. But Aslan was half Bulgarian at least, his only surviving parent was Bulgarian and she loved him. He was her baby.

  ‘Sophia, I don’t know whether I will see you again, but . . .’

  ‘Oh, I come back sometime,’ she said. ‘For sure.’