Arabesk

by Barbara Nadel

  Ìkmen leaned forward. 'But?'

  'But first I need to know why you are interested in this subject,' she said. 'I mean, I know that you're a dreadful old sinner but membership of the Yezidi is only open to Kurds.'

  Hearing the front door open and then close behind what sounded like a multitude of feet and voices, Ìkmen moved to shut the door to the balcony. 'Now, Zelfa,' he said as he walked back towards the table and sat down, 'you know that I can't disclose police business.'

  'Yes, all right,' she said with a smile, 'but am I right m assuming that you won't use anything I tell you for the wrong reasons?'

  'If you mean will I use your knowledge to do harm, then the answer is no. I merely wish to understand something that you who I know has studied our culture more extensively than most might be able to tell me.'

  The balcony door swung open to admit a younger version of Ìkmen.

  'We're back,' Sinan said with a grin and then seeing Dr Halman sitting beside his father he added, 'Oh, I'm sorry, Dad. I—'

  'This is Dr Halman,' his father said as Zelfa rose to take the young man's hand. 'Dr Halman, this is my eldest son Dr Sinan Ìkmen.'

  'Oh,' she said with interest as she took his warm hand in hers. 'A doctor of what, may I ask?'

  'He's a dermatologist,' Ìkmen said with obvious pride in his voice. 'We're very proud of him.' Turning to his son, he said, 'Dr Halman is one of our leading psychiatrists, Sinan.'

  ‘Sinan's eyes shone. 'Oh, how interesting.' He moved to sit at the table with his father. 'May I?'

  'Perhaps later,' Ìkmen said. 'Dr Halman and I are discussing—'

  'Oh, right, it's work,' Sinan sighed. 'Although not too much work, I hope, Dad. You know what Dr Akkale—'

  'Yes, yes, yes,' Ìkmen said wearily. 'Just give us a few minutes, will you, son?'

  'As long as you don't wear yourself out'

  'I promise I will control him,' Zelfa said with a smile, and as the young man moved towards the door she added, 'It was nice to meet you, Dr Ìkmen.'

  'And you.' He shut the door behind him.

  'You know that he could be part of your problem in relation to Bulent?' Zelfa said. She put her cigarette out in the ashtray and then lit up another.

  Ìkmen frowned.

  'Well, Sinan is bright, caring, obviously approved by yourself and your wife.'

  'You mean Bulent might be jealous of Sinan?'

  'I mean he might feel that because his brother is so successful, competing is pointless. It would explain at least some of his behaviour. Think about it'

  'Mmm.'

  'And I suppose that what with Orhan being at medical school too, and Cicek . . .'

  'You have another son training to be a doctor also?' Zelfa Halman said, surprised.

  'Yes.'

  'If you don't mind my saying,' the doctor continued, 'I think that's quite an achievement for a humble police officer.'

  Ìkmen laughed. 'If you mean am I on the take or. . .'

  'No! No, no! I didn't mean to imply . . .' Instead of completing her sentence Zelfa Halman shrugged. 'No, I know you didn't mean to cause offence,' Ìkmen said with a conciliatory wave’ of his hand. 'And none is taken. But your point is a good one’ He sighed. 'And if I didn't have the admittedly small amount of money I inherited from my late father plus the considerable support I receive from my brother, well. .. Well, then perhaps I would be looking at, shall we say, other options. But...' He smiled, the doctor thought a little sadly and then suddenly and far more cheerfully changed tack. 'So, Zelfa, Yezidis . . .'

  She took in a deep lungful of smoke and then let it out slowly as she spoke. 'In order to understand the Yezidis you have to throw out any Christeo-Islamic notions about Shaitan. According to the Yezidi credo, Shaitan did indeed fall from the grace of God, but unlike in our religions he was restored to favour. And, once elevated, he became and remains God's right-hand angel. I've heard that contrary to popular belief they are very peaceful and do not make human sacrifice, but quite how they do worship I don't know. But I'm aware of the fact that they are misunderstood, persecuted and that they sometimes go to great lengths to conceal their true identities.'

  'I know they have-dietary laws,' Ìkmen said. 'Is it true they don't eat chicken?'

  Zelfa Halman made a wry face. 'Not entirely. They refrain from eating the cock bird out of respect for the peacock angel.'

  'The peacock angel?'

  'It's what they call Shaitan. I have no idea why.

  They have a thing about beans, lettuce and the colour blue for similar reasons. They prefer to avoid them.'

  'Mmm.' Ìkmen's face achieved a new gravity as he spoke. 'And so this avoiding cock flesh, would they go to some lengths to prevent, say, their children from eating it? Would they perhaps risk disclosure in order to do so?'

  'They might. If they were very religious.' 'Mmm.'

  Zelfa Halman leaned back in her chair and looked hard at Ìkmen. 'You intimated that this might have some sort of connection to Suleyman's case. And knowing that Erol Urfa and Tansu Hanim are both Kurdish

  ‘I wouldn't even start that particular theoretical journey if I were you,’ Ìkmen said sternly. 'We are, as I trust you can appreciate, not having this conversation.’

  She shrugged. 'OK.'

  The noise of bickering children floated through from the living room, Ìkmen banged hard on the window before continuing.

  'So do you know anything else about these people?'

  'As you are probably aware, those unwise enough to declare themselves Yezidi receive an X in the space where their religion should be stated on their ID cards. Consequently I don't suppose your lot see many of them.'

  'I don't think I ever have,' Ìkmen said.

  Zelfa smiled knowingly. 'Precisely,' she said. 'Not that so many of them live here in the city. They come from the east, as you probably know. The headquarters of the religion is actually in Iraq.' 'Oh?'

  'Yes. Some shrine which is guarded, apparently, by a eunuch.' She smiled. 'How exotic can you get, eh?'

  But Ìkmen did not immediately answer her. His mind, which had until now been filled with the images of small children refusing chicken was now flooded with the words that Ìsak Çöktin had uttered to him only a few hours before. Words about eunuchs - words the young Kurd appeared to have quickly regretted. Despite the heat of the evening, Ìkmen started to experience a cold feeling in his guts. Whether all of this Yezidi stuff had any direct bearing upon Ruya Urfa's death, he didn't know. But little things, like Erol's fear that his daughter might be exposed to chicken, like the rather timely departure of one of his friends in the wake of an identity card request, like Çöktin's reported concern for Urfa, did seem to be at least pointing towards some sort of concealment. But was it, especially in light of the fact that Cengiz Temiz was still very much on the scene, pertinent? To open up such a contentious issue without pertinence was surely an act of madness. And anyway, hadn't Suleyman been totally satisfied with what was written on Urfa's ID card?

  Perhaps prompted to movement by Ìkmen's frozen position, Zelfa Halman stood up.

  'There is one thing you can be sure about though, Ìkmen,' she said as she retrieved her bag from the back of the chair.

  Surfacing from his reverie, he said, 'What?'

  'If Erol Urfa is a Yezidi, then so was Ruya. They don't marry out'

  'So Tansu...'

  'The only way he could marry her, although for the love of God I can't imagine why he would want to, is if she is one of them too. Assuming, of course’ she added as she moved towards the door, 'that he gives a damn about it'

  Ìkmen stood up to see his guest out. 'You won't tell Suleyman that, er . . .'

  'And why should I do that?' she answered challengingly.

  'Well...'

  'I think you assume that I will be seeing the inspector, Inspector,' she laughed, 'which might not necessarily be so.'

  Ìkmen sighed. 'You know you shouldn't be too hard on him, Zelfa. Although he seems to have so much, in many wa
ys he's very adrift in this world.'

  'Aren't we all,' she replied with some bitterness.

  'Yes, but . . .' Not knowing how much she knew about his colleague's past finally put paid to any further discussion of this topic apart from Ìkmen adding, 'He must succeed with this case, you know.'

  She smiled. 'Why? Because you like him? Or because you say so?'

  'Because he deserves to,' he said a little sternly. 'And because whoever killed Ruya Urfa should be locked away before they can do any more harm.'

  'Insallah that will happen’ she said with more than a littie irony in her voice.

  Ìkmen simply lifted his eyes to heaven.

  'So what are you going to do now then?' she asked as he opened the door to the living room.

  The onslaught of light, colour, noise and odour was stunning as children, adolescents and adults all vied for attention, television time or food and drink.

  'I think,' Ìkmen said, eyeing the scene before him with weary familiarity, 'that I might find a quiet place in which to listen to some Arabesk.'

  For many and various reasons, sleep was not easily found by any of the actors in the Urfa saga that night. Admittedly, Cohen did, as was his custom, manage unconsciousness although the restless sounds that the wakeful Mehmet Suleyman heard from that quarter indicated that he was nowhere near peaceful. Perhaps, the younger man mused as he wandered out onto the Cohens' darkened balcony, his old friend was wondering why a once beautiful Greek had saddled herself with and then murdered a relic of the old harem system, her eunuch husband. As to why Kleopatra might have married such a person Suleyman, a relic, himself he sometimes felt, could only guess at. Eunuchs, it was said, could please women in ways other men could not. But what forces may have driven her to kill, probably no one would be able to discover. No doubt the thought that passion or jealousy may have inspired this act puzzled Cohen in a most disturbing fashion.

  But Suleyman's own thoughts were upon more contemporary events. Tansu Hamm had been in a very distressed state when he had arrived at her home earlier. Why this was, he didn't know. That she had shown him all her coats, including two blonde minks, willingly had been encouraging. She had even allowed him to remove fibres which seemed to indicate a lack of fear vis-a-vis complicity in Ruya Urfa's murder. And to be fair, she didn't really, despite her obvious unpleasantness, exhibit any overt similarity to the woman Cengiz Temiz had described. Not that Cengiz described her very well, but he had failed to identify Tansu from a photograph and so that had, surely, to be significant

  Suleyman wiped a thick swathe of sweat from his brow and looked down into the darkened street. There was not much to see out there. The occasional prostitute walking with difficulty across the deeply rutted road - a woman, or perhaps in this part of town a man in inappropriately high-heeled shoes, swinging a large, spangly handbag. Then, even rarer, the appearance of a strangely lonely, almost lost-looking man. Perhaps a simple migrant or a confused tourist - perhaps even a man pounding out his resentment in the hot midnight street. A man, Suleyman thought perhaps not unlike Ìsak Çöktin, that strange, even to Ìsak himself, contradiction in terms - the Kurdish policeman. In bed probably by now, Çöktin, Suleyman thought, was perhaps dreaming dreams that were livid- with the redness of the blood they always mourned, which spilled, so the Kurds said, so liberally upon the ground of the far eastern provinces. Whether or not Çöktin had actually ever been to the east, Suleyman didn't know. If he hadn't then perhaps the fact that Erol Urfa came from there had been the root of the attraction they obviously had for each other. Perhaps the singer had told Çöktin yet more lurid and detailed stories of the hardship and suffering they all seemed to value so highly. Not of course that an Ottoman could even begin to understand such a thing. Suleyman closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair as he contemplated the depth of his own, idiosyncratic, resentments.

  But thoughts being, as they often are, quite different to facts, Suleyman was wrong about Çöktin. Far from being home alone in his bed, he was in fact over at the surprisingly modest apartment Ibrahim Aksoy had procured for Erol Urfa in §i§li. With the baby Merih now asleep, both men sat companionably in front of the open patio doors, talking, drinking tea and, occasionally, laughing softly at each other's quietly spoken words. Not once did the name Tansu pass either of their hps. That every light in the house of that lady burned fiercely that night was unknown to either of them.

  Less comforting than any of these, admittedly restless, scenes was the one-that was currently assailing the tranquillised eyes of Cengiz Temiz. Although still incarcerated in a police cell, it was not the unpleasantness of his surroundings, or even particularly the heat, that was causing his drug-fuddled brain to remain awake. In his mind, devils and djinn lurked in corners where, in the daylight hours, housewives went about their domestic cleaning business. Red in the mouth and covered with thick white hair, the demons screamed at him with the faces of murderous women. And although they made him quiet, the drugs the woman who now wept alone in her sterile bed had given him did not expunge the hated, fearful images from his mind. Perhaps his precious love, Mina, could have done that had she been with him. But Cengiz had no idea where she might be now. Poor Mina with her frightening English boyfriend and her ruined womb.

  In contrast to all mis soporific restlessness, there were some whose thoughts were rather more focused. Tansu's ex-servant was one of these. As she sat alone waiting for the arrival of the laboriously slow Dogu Ekspresi to take her, via Ankara, back to her parents' home in Sivas, her thoughts were not of her relatives. To be dismissed by one's employer for what amounted to no good reason was bad enough, but to be shunned by a woman she had once idolised was intolerable. There had been a time when Belkis would have cheerfully died for her mistress - foolish, foolish girl! The woman obviously loathed the sight of her and, in sharp contrast to one of Bellas's more extravagant dreams which involved being on stage and singing with Tansu, the woman had both abused her and rendered her unemployed. Had Miss Latife not given her a little money just before she left, Bellas wouldn't have even had enough cash to buy her ticket home. But then Miss Latife did most things that Tansu didn't want to or couldn't. She even lied for her. Yes, she did, didn't she . . . Slowly at first, but then with increasing power, Bellas' s heart started to thump as something extremely interesting came back to her. Something perhaps even those investigating Erol's wife's death might find useful. As the train pulled into the station, Bellas worked hard to remember the name of the policeman she had seen that afternoon, just before she was asked to leave. But search her mind as she did, for the moment she couldn't recall it. When the train stopped and the passengers got out, Bellas looked up at the station clock. Ten minutes to go. Ten minutes to remember the tall, good-looking inspector's name. Ten minutes that would decide where she went and for what reason.

  Tansu was very much in Çetin Ìkmen's thoughts too at that moment. Once again he had been listening to both her songs and those of Erol Urfa. And though it had to be said that in the case of the latter, there was nothing unusual in the lyrics, those supposedly written by Tansu were another matter. He looked down at the pad upon which he had jotted the words and frowned. Surely these references to the beloved object as 'my peacock', 'hated, adored peacock', 'peacock of my heart' and 'resplendent bird of blue and green' could not be coincidental? Loving, killing, dying for the peacock . . . Excessive, like her overblown affection for Erol, but at the same time, if Erol or even Tansu were of the Yezidi faith, surely unwise also. As Dr Halman had said, people just didn't understand them and, as the X in the space for religion on their identity cards proved, things people did not understand they frequently chose to both fear and despise. Not that Erol, or even the strangely knowledgeable Çöktin, had Xs on their cards. But then perhaps Ìkmen was just seeing devil worshippers everywhere now in the early, lonely watches of the night It would not be the first time he had seen the shadow of something that did not, conventionally, exist Ìkmen smiled at the thought and then put his pad d
own on the floor, the word 'conventional' resounding loudly in his brain.

  'Conventionally' all this musing on songs and slightly off-key occurrences was a total waste of time. There was no evidence for any of this and besides, even if Erol Urfa did belong to some sort of odd sect, that didn't necessarily have any bearing upon his wife's death. No. However, just the inkling that there might be a secret of some sort here bothered Ìkmen. He didn't like secrets. Secrets could cause damage or even, in his own case, an unhealthy curiosity now over forty years old. But were the unknown circumstances surrounding his mother's death on the same level as wondering whether people might or might not belong to a minority religion? Yes and no.

  If someone, as yet unknown, had killed because of it then it was even more important than his own personal demons.

  As the night ravelled up around them, black and thick with closed-in heat, those who saw, in their waking or sleeping dreams, the body of Ruya Urfa lying small and alone in the mortuary stopped for a pause where real sleep should be. All waiting for the unrefreshing and already exhausting dawn.

  Chapter 11

  When Suleyman entered his office the following morning, he found Arto Sarkissian's full report on the corpse of Ruya Urfa on his desk. Although not personally wounding as Zelfa Halman's statement regarding the treatment of Cengiz Temiz had been, it did, nevertheless, make grim reading. Poisoned, as they already knew, by cyanide, Ruya Urfa had been in the early stages of pregnancy when she died. Although her husband was certainly unaware of this, whether Ruya herself knew of her condition could only be guessed at. Her husband, Suleyman recognised, would have to be made aware of this fact He also knew that he would have to be the one to tell him. He put the report to one side with a sigh just as Çöktin first knocked and then entered his office.

  'Good morning, sir,' the younger man said as he slipped lightly into the chair in front of Suleyman's desk

  "The report on Ruya Urfa,' Suleyman said as he retrieved the paper and then pushed it across at his deputy. 'Some would say,' he continued as he