From the Devil's Farm

by Leta Serafim

  “Look at it this way, Father. It couldn’t be any worse.”

  After leaving the bazaar, they took a taxi to the Patriarchate, located in the Church of St. George, a surprisingly modest building in the Phanar district, after which they visited the Panagia ton Vlachernon, one of the most cherished churches in the Orthodox world. It was here that the Greek residents of Istanbul had taken shelter during foreign invasions. The famous Akathistos Hymnos, recited the first five Fridays of Lent, was first chanted here in 626 AD by the Greek residents in gratitude to the Theotokos, Mary, the Mother of God, who had miraculously repelled the Persian fleet, thus saving them.

  Patronas had often attended those Lenten services and sung that hymn with his mother. Remembering her, he began to chant its most famous stanza. The priest joined in a moment later, and together they sang the words in the empty church, their voices echoing off the stone walls:

  Unto the Defender General the dues of victory,

  and for the deliverance from woes, the thanksgiving

  I, Thy city, ascribe Thee, O Virgin

  And having your might unassailable,

  deliver me from all danger

  so that I may cry unto Thee:

  Rejoice, O Bride unwedded.

  A shiver ran down Patronas’ spine. He imagined the people, cowering behind these walls in the fifteenth century, praying for salvation as the Ottomans laid siege to the city, praying to the Virgin to protect them.

  Remembering Sami, he wondered who the boy had called out to in his final minutes, if there was the equivalent of the Holy Mother in his faith.

  And if there was, why she hadn’t answered.

  The priest said his mother had lived in Balat, an old Greek and Jewish neighborhood not far from the Patriarchate. Built on a steep hill, the area, although shabby, was picturesque with cobbled streets and old buildings painted a myriad of bright colors. The upper floors of many jutted out over the pavement, a feature dating from the time of the Ottomans, when Muslim women, in virtual hiding, had watched the world go by from second-story windows.

  They passed one house that was literally falling down, its wooden staircase eaten away and almost entirely gone. In spite of this, people were living inside. Patronas saw pots of well cared-for geraniums sitting on the windowsills and heard a radio playing from somewhere deep within.

  Stathis had warned them to be careful, saying some of the people living in Phanar and Balat were hostile to Greeks and it might be unsafe for them there. Patronas’ experience bore this out. Many of the windows and doors were heavily barred, and signs advertising security systems were in evidence on nearly every building. The people he passed all kept their heads down. A few, upon encountering the priest, even went so far as to cross the street in order to avoid him.

  Although they searched for over two hours, address in hand, the two never found the house where Papa Michalis’ mother had come of age. The street names had all changed. Istanbul was a different place than it had been in 1922, the year she and her family fled Turkey. The old quarter of Balat felt haunted now, melancholic and full of shadows, and Patronas was glad when Papa Michalis suggested they abandon the search and leave.

  After dinner—a mackerel sandwich, one of the famed delicacies of Istanbul—they took a one-hour cruise on the Bosphorus. The boat was small and packed with Turkish twenty-year olds. Patronas and Papa Michalis were the only foreigners. To Patronas’ surprise, the young people fell silent when the muezzin made his call at sunset and sat there respectfully without saying a word. The only sound was the water lapping against the wooden hull of the boat.

  Youngsters on an outing, the girls had taken great care with their appearance. Their eyes were beautifully made up, and the fabric of their scarves matched that of the summer dresses they wore under their long jackets. The work of a female relative, he guessed, a mother or a grandmother. Although lovely, the garments were obviously homemade.

  A co-ed group, they were all talking and laughing together in a way Patronas hadn’t seen in years. There was a kind of purity in their conduct, male and female alike, an innocence he remembered from his own boyhood, when just saying hello to a girl in his class had been a major adventure.

  Maybe there was something to Islam, after all.

  When he proposed this to Papa Michalis, the old man nodded. “I know it is a blasphemy, but I was thinking the exact same thing.”

  Strung with lights, the suspension bridge connecting Europe to Asia came to life a few minutes later. The colors changed every few minutes on the network of cables that supported it—one minute purple, the next blue. Patronas watched it for a few minutes, thoroughly enjoying himself.

  “Look, Father!”

  The priest barely looked up. He had gone quiet since leaving Balat.

  “What’s the matter?” Patronas asked. “Are you upset because we didn’t find your mother’s house?”

  Papa Michalis waved him off. “Not important,” he said. “Just an old man’s fancy.” He paused for a moment. “The truth is, I can’t get those boys out of my mind. The ones who killed him.”

  Patronas looked out at the night, seeking to hang on to the beauty of Istanbul. He would be meeting Lydia Pappas in less than twelve hours and he wanted to sit there, daydreaming about her. To write bad poems in his head about catching stars and weaving them in her hair. He didn’t want to remember Sifnos. He wanted to put the case behind him and forget about it.

  But there was no stopping the old man. When upset, Papa Michalis would talk and talk, and tonight, apparently, he was very upset.

  “Look at the bridge, Father,” Patronas said again. Red and green now, the lights might serve to distract him.

  But Papa Michalis was intent on having his say. “I know everyone says the migrants will ruin everything, overturn Western culture like a canoe and bring about the end of the world as we know it. Jihadists on every corner and so forth and so on. But I think the problem is different. I think it’s the growing amorality of the young. There was nobody like Michael Nielsen and those other two when I was growing up, not even in America. Nobody who slaughtered children. No one who killed for sport.”

  “Why do you think he did it?”

  “Well, Richard Svenson certainly played a role. One shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, but that man had no business being in a classroom. You have to take responsibility for what you teach, Yiannis. It’s imperative. I don’t know if you’re aware of this, but the Nazi party gained its first adherents, not in the streets of Germany, but in its universities. They assumed because dogs could be bred successfully—I believe the Doberman Pinscher was cited—the same could be done with people.”

  “I don’t follow. What do the Nazis have to do with Richard Svenson?”

  “It’s what he taught them, Yiannis. Don’t you see? It can’t be amoral what you instill in the young. It has to have value, be as close to the truth as possible.”

  “Christian truth?”

  “Moral truth. Whether it’s Christian or not doesn’t matter. That’s where Svenson went wrong. The reenactment of a blood rite—that’s essentially what led to this. He might have intended it as theater, but Nielsen and the other two took it to the next level. All that nonsense Nielsen said about wanting to feel the child’s life ebbing away. Playing the high priest ….” The old man snorted. “It was Satanism, pure and simple. And Svenson taught it to them.”

  Sticking his hands in the sleeves of his robe, he wrapped his arms around himself. “His ideas were toxic, a celebration of brutality and violence. The world is a fearful place and religion, be it pagan or not, can provide a bulwark against the darkness. But evil is also there in this, the possibility that we can harness and contain it—ride it, in other words. A great thrill, I imagine, opening up that portal and staring down at hell.”

  He had more to say, but Patronas tuned him out, concentrating instead on the gentle murmuring of the Bosphorus, the soft slapping of the water beneath him. He’d be sorry to leave Istanbul. It was the most
dazzling place he’d ever been. He wished his mother was still alive and he could tell her.

  “I polis,’ he whispered, looking across the strait toward Asia. The city.

  Still profoundly unsettled, the priest continued to talk. “What we teach the young will determine our future, maybe even the future of the world. And what is it they learn from us? Promiscuity, alcoholism, and drug addiction. Don’t look at me that way, Yiannis. I know what I’m talking about. I may be old, but I hear things. I get around.” His voice had risen, becoming strident.

  The Turkish kids had fallen silent and were watching him with growing alarm.

  Time to put an end to this. “I don’t know, Father. I wouldn’t blame Svenson. I think it might have just been them.”

  “It’s all of us, I tell you. Western civilization only had one mooring and that was religious faith, and in Greece at least, it has been well and truly decimated. No one listens to priests anymore. No one strives to follow the words of Christ. For centuries, the church tried to contain the kind of savagery we saw on Sifnos, tried to instill a belief in the sanctity of life. Yet somehow, it never really succeeded. Violence lives in the human heart, Yiannis, that’s all there is to it. With the least provocation, men will pick up a sword and chop their neighbors to pieces. They do it in the name of Christ. They do it in the name of Allah. But in the end, they always do it. The need to annihilate those who are different is strong in us—the ones with darker skin or who worship a different god, the heathens and the infidels. And now, sadly, the strangers in our midst—the migrants.”

  Patronas had never seen Papa Michalis so worked up. The search for his mother’s house must have upset the old man more than he realized, reminding him of the life she’d been forced to endure as a refugee, those years of poverty and alienation. Perhaps that was why Greece treated the migrants better than the rest of the Europe. There had even been talk of awarding the women on the island of Lesvos the Nobel Peace Prize, because its citizens knew how it felt to be uprooted. Their parents and grandparents had lived through a similar cataclysm, suffered as much or more than the Syrians had.

  Still, he believed the priest was wrong about the case. It hadn’t been bigotry that motivated those kids. It was something missing in their souls.

  “Those three were the ones responsible, Father,” Patronas said. “It wasn’t society or mankind. It was just them.”

  “I’m afraid they are not alone. There’s a whole army out there now, in every Western nation. Let’s pray someone like Hitler doesn’t come along and set them in motion.”

  “It was just them,” Patronas repeated. “It wasn’t Svenson. It wasn’t the rest of us. It was just them, Father: Nielsen, Gilbert, and Bowdoin. They were evil people, from the devil’s farm.”

  As they were exiting the boat, one of the Turkish girls approached Patronas. “Is he all right?” she whispered, nodding to Papa Michalis. Her friends were watching her, their faces full of concern.

  “Yes, he’s fine. Just a little tired.”

  When she reported back to her friends, they all smiled at Papa Michalis,, obviously relieved.

  “If this is Islam, I’ll take it,” Patronas said to himself. As an antidote, it would be extreme, but if, as the priest said, the alternative to religious faith was Michael Nielsen, they’d all be better off.

  But then there was ISIS and Al-Qaeda, young men as crazy and violent as any who’d ever walked the earth. They were far worse than Nielsen and they numbered in the tens of thousands.

  Sitting there that night in Istanbul, Patronas recalled the Book of Revelation, St. John’s fiery vision of the end of the world. Like Papa Michalis, he felt the world was far less safe than it had been when he was a boy, had grown dark and would grow darker still. He could almost hear the trumpets heralding the Apocalypse start to sound.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  On reaching the end, be without sorrow.

  —The Delphic Oracle

  They buried Sami Alnasseri on a Wednesday morning, three days after Patronas returned from Istanbul. Stathis had succeeded in securing a plot in the First Cemetery. He even rented a hearse to transport the body from the morgue to hospital where the boy’s aunt was staying, so that she and Patronas could prepare the child for burial, according to Muslim custom. The coroner had refused to wash the body, saying it was a religious rite and Patronas must see to it.

  Patronas had read that the body must be placed on a high table. He followed the instructions, placing Sami Alnasseri on a gurney in an empty surgical suite. Then it must be washed carefully three times in a process called ghusl. The person doing the cleansing must start at the right shoulder, move to the left, and then work their way down. Although she was still in a wheelchair, Sami’s aunt managed to raise herself up and lean against the gurney. As a woman, she was not permitted to wash the boy’s body herself, so she instructed Patronas, overseeing what he did and correcting him when he made a mistake.

  Lying there exposed, Sami Alnasseri looked small and defenseless, much younger than his actual age. Out of deference to the aunt, the coroner had bandaged the wound in the child’s throat and the y-shaped incision from the autopsy that ran down the length of his body. Patronas tried to shield the area with a cloth so that she wouldn’t see it, but she pushed his hand away.

  “You must clean,” she said. “Everywhere, clean.”

  After he’d cleansed the body, she demonstrated how he was to place the boy’s hands on his chest, right hand on top of the left. Together, they enshrouded him in the three white cotton sheets Patronas had purchased.

  “Kafan,” she said, indicating they must start with the sheet on the right. After they finished the wrapping, she helped him secure the sheets at the child’s head and feet with ropes and tied another length of cord around the middle of his body.

  Watching her work, Patronas felt a wave of pity. She was obviously familiar with the ritual that attended death in her culture, deftly tying the ropes around the corpse and knotting them. Her hands flying, she could have done it blindfolded.

  “I know how,” she said, reading his mind. “I have many dead, many people.”

  Tembelos arrived not long after. He and Patronas carried Sami Alnasseri out to the parking lot where the hearse was waiting and laid him inside.

  Lydia Pappas, who had come from Sifnos to help with the preparations, joined them there. She’d spent the previous day with Sami’s aunt, seeking to learn what the Syrian woman wanted to wear to the service. After taking her measurements, she’d purchased the necessary garments. She’d also arranged for a hairdresser to come to the hospital that morning to wash and set the woman’s hair.

  Noor was now wearing what Lydia Pappas had bought her: a long, caftan-like dress made of a silky, expensive-looking fabric and a matching headscarf. Both were blue, so pale as to appear almost white. She also had on new shoes, white patent-leather ones, which, in spite of the heat, she wore with heavy white stockings.

  Lydia wheeled her out to the handicapped van Stathis had found, then up the ramp to where the female attendant waited inside. The two of them would ride with the Syrian woman to the cemetery and keep her company on the hour-long journey across Athens.

  Stathis had found a place for Noor to live after she was discharged from the hospital. For a small fee, a relative of his had expressed willingness to take her in and care for her. The woman had grown up in Alexandria, Egypt, and knew rudimentary Arabic. A widow, she was alone and welcomed the company.

  Patronas had rejoiced when Stathis told him this and offered to contribute. “Let me handle it,” his boss had said. “You’ll be retiring one of these days. You need to hold on to your money.”

  Perhaps a new era was dawning in their relationship, a wary friendship. Patronas couldn’t really see it. But then again, the world was full of surprises.

  Located behind the Temple of the Olympian Zeus and the old Olympic stadium in central Athens, the First Cemetery contained three churches. Hundreds of the most illustrious
people in recent Greek history were buried there—actors, poets, singers, politicians. And now, little Sami Alnasseri would join them.

  They passed many crypts as they made their way toward the gravesite. Some dated from the last century and were surrounded with towering palm trees; others were far more recent. Patronas was carrying the remains of the child in his arms, Lydia Pappas and Giorgos Tembelos taking turns pushing the boy’s aunt in the wheelchair. Stathis was behind them, walking with the two workmen who would fill in the plot once they’d finished. Papa Michalis was far behind, staying at a discreet distance.

  A few of the family tombs were actual buildings, constructed out of white marble—small replicas of the Acropolis, with columns and fanciful porticoes. Some featured life-sized sculptures—grieving women, angels triumphant. Gripping the armrests of the wheelchair, Noor looked around in wonder.

  Patronas had asked her if she wanted flowers to decorate the grave, but she shook her head. “No, no. It is not done.”

  The service itself didn’t take long. Noor quietly led the ritual, facing Mecca and chanting the Salat al-Janazah, the Islamic funeral prayer:

  O God, forgive our living and our dead, those who are present among us and those who are absent, our young and our old, our males and our females. O God, whoever You keep alive, keep him alive in Islam, and whoever You cause to die, cause him to die with faith. O God, do not deprive us of the reward and do not cause us to go astray after this. O God, forgive him and have mercy on him, keep him safe and sound and forgive him, honor his rest and ease his entrance; wash him with water and snow and hail, and cleanse him of sin as a white garment is cleansed of dirt. O God, give him a home better than his home and a family better than his family. O God, admit him to Paradise and protect him from the torment of the grave and the torment of Hell-fire. Make his grave spacious and fill it with light.