The Miracle of Yousef: Historical and political thriller

by Gonçalo Coelho

  A heavy silence reigned, only to be interrupted by Argun himself.

  “Or perhaps not. Perhaps my memory will never come back. Who knows? It’s all very confusing right now, and I don’t want to take up the dinner with my ruminations. Your affection, by that I mean, the way that all of you took me in here in this house, has helped me so much to adjust to my current condition, and for that I shall be eternally grateful to you.” Argun gazed with deep feeling at Okan and then at his two daughters.

  “I trust that all will come back to you in due course,” said Okan. “However, the truth is that it’s not worth worrying too much about these things, it’s best to take life as it comes day by day, with the grace of God.”

  “It must be a complicated situation,” said Burak, beside Nefise, persisting in the same subject. And turning to her: “Don’t you think it must be terrible to have no memory? To have no past? Not to know where we come from?”

  “How should I know?” retorted Nefise, leaving everyone astonished at her answer. “I don’t wish to belittle the bad things that happened to you, Argun, but the truth is that, apart from the dreadful situation that this amnesia surely must be for you, I also see it as something profoundly liberating. A unique opportunity to be reborn, to be completely free of the weight of the past. Because amnesia is that, too, the death of the past.”

  “Be reborn?” asked Mehmet right away. “Without knowing who his parents are? If by now they haven’t given him up for dead? And his wife? And his children, if he has any?”

  Argun looked crestfallen. He was plainly saddened to hear these last words. They made him imagine that he had a life and a family somewhere, people who missed him, who were terribly worried because he hadn’t been in touch and – if his memory didn’t return – people he might never see again. People who loved him and would certainly be missing him. Taking all this in, Meliha prompted her husband.

  “Mehmet, can’t you see you’re being inappropriate? You’re making him sad. Let’s drop the subject. Argun, do you know what we usually talk about a lot in Turkey? Inflation. The price of things is always changing. Has Okan told you about this?”

  Mehmet decided to cut in to save face.

  “Argun, it wasn’t my intention to make you sad, please forgive me. What’s more, it could be that your amnesia is a salvation. Or even a liberation, as Nefise says. It could be a way to for you to discover a better life than you had before.”

  “Apology accepted,” Argun put in quickly.

  “There is no reason for you to be sad, we’ll do all we can for you to feel good here until you fully recover your memory,” said Okan. “Until then, there’s no point in our going on wondering who he might be or where he came from. If God so wishes, his memory will return. Everything happens by the will of God.”

  “In any case, you’re no Greek, because I can see you don’t speak Greek, and surely that’s a good thing,” kidded Mehmet. Instantly, Meliha kicked him under the table and he yelped.

  “What is it?”

  “Nothing, nothing, just a cramp in my leg.”

  “Are you all right, Mehmet?”

  “Yes, yes, don’t worry.” .

  “How are things at the hotel, Nefise?”

  “Lots of work. We’ve just received two excursions with lots of people. Besides that there’s the construction we’re doing to expand the hotel…”

  “Why, that’s a great idea,” said Okan abruptly, wide-eyed, laying his fork on the edge of his plate. “Why didn’t I think of it sooner? As long as he’s here, Argun can give us a hand with the hotel construction. It’s always better to be occupied, and I’m sure this would also make it easier to get through the days. What do you think, Nefise?”

  Now it was the turn of the entire Topal family to look crestfallen.

  “Well, I don’t know if that would be quite proper... considering that...” Mehmet stammered. But Okan ignored him completely and cut him off at once.

  “What do you think, Argun?”

  “Of course I’d be delighted to make myself useful and have a chance to repay all you’ve done for me, though I can only accept if Nefise thinks it’s appropriate. Otherwise I couldn’t consider it.”

  “Nefise?” asked Okan simply. The others stared at her in suspense at this sudden turn of events. Burak gazed at her anxiously as well.

  “As far as I’m concerned, it’s fine” she said finally. “I see no reason to quibble.”

  The rest of the dinner elapsed in banal conversation on matters of slight importance, and at the end, Argun saw Burak and Nefise go out for a walk alone on the beach. They came back in a jolly mood about an hour later and joined the others who were engaged in conversation on the terrace. The Topal family was the first to withdraw, and as they were going, Argun saw Burak give Nefise a lingering kiss on the face, and watched her hand linger affectionately between his hands before he left with his parents. Argun had trouble sleeping that night, and he lay at length into the small hours with his eyes wide open in the solitary darkness of his new room.

  8

  The next day, immediately after breakfast together, Argun got a ride with Okan and Nefise to the hotel that she was managing at the beach in Kaleköy, unattended by her father. On foot, the trip from home to the hotel took about twenty minutes to a half hour, depending on the pace of the walk, though usually they would go by car. On that morning Argun scarcely noticed the countryside passing before his eyes, so little had he slept the night before, but nonetheless, with the window down he felt the sea air on his face, damp and mild, slowly waking him up. When they got to the hotel, Okan said goodbye and, claiming a lack of time, asked Nefise to take Argun to become familiar with the plans and the construction work under way to expand the facilities. She complied, but in a tour that she conducted very quickly and formally. At the end of what seemed to Argun a visit of no more than five minutes, Nefise also claimed a lack of time and ended up leaving him in the hands of the maintenance manager. By the time he realized what had happened, the maintenance manager was sounding off in what was practically a monologue. He was saying that he needed more people to tackle all the pending work in time for the various deadlines. He alone had to coordinate the different construction sites at several hotel units on the island, as well as several in Bozcaada, and with the personnel at his disposal, it was becoming practically impossible to meet the deadlines Okan kept imposing on him.

  “Look here,” he complained, “we’ll do what’s possible, but what the boss is asking for is completely impossible. The men I have under me are mere mortals...” He was a middle-aged man, quite bald, with a heavy greying mustache, holding a beret in his right hand that he used to point to this or that place he was showing to Argun, or else, with the same hand, scratching his head from time to time.

  “So I see that you really do need more workers.”

  “Indeed we do. At least for now while there’s so much to do, any help is welcome. But tell me something: the boss said you have amnesia, that you’ve really lost all your memory?”

  “That’s right. I can’t remember anything at all about my past.”

  The manager raised the hand holding the beret and scratched his head.

  “That must really be frightening. But at the same time, amazing.”

  Argun remembered Nefise’s words at dinner, and consequently, recalled the fact at the base of his mind that most bothered him: she had made up with Burak the day before. They were engaged. In answering the question of the man addressing him, however, these thoughts dissipated for the time being.

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I heard. I’m lucky that the first one to find me was our boss.”

  “Perhaps he wasn’t the first one to find you, but just the first one who actually cared after he saw you.”

  “Maybe that’s true, too…”

  “Well then, let’s get to work. If you can’t remember anything, it makes no difference whether you were a doctor or a bricklayer’s assistant in real life. In this particular instance,
it would be even better if you had been a bricklayer’s assistant. You’d have more of a feel for the work happening here. Ah yes, but I’m forgetting that the boss said you speak several languages. So it’s unlikely you’re a bricklayer’s assistant. Look, let’s do it this way, come up here with me and I’ll show you the plan for the expansion of this hotel on the south side. Basically what’s involved is the construction of a new fitness center, or spa, which is what they call it here at the hotel. In fact, it’s a gym with two rooms, a thermal pool plus a sauna and several dressing rooms. There’s a huge amount to do, but the project has been stalled due to the lack of manpower, and also because other projects have been given priority. We’ll have to choose something we can go forward with there. Then, I’ll see how it all adds up and send some men to form a team with you. I seem to recall the doors arrived a few days back. At least they can be hung right away. The deck must also be ready for installation. Then there’s the electrical hookup that still needs to be taken care of, but it’s more than likely you don’t have a clue about that.” The foreman walked along beside Argun as he talked.

  Argun spent all the rest of that day busy working on the new pavilion adjacent to the hotel, built to be a fitness center, or spa, and little by little he realized he enjoyed doing this kind of work. It was as though he had a son there whom he was watching grow up, and was taking care of. He also discovered that he was one of those people who enjoys manual labor, putting his back into the work and not caring if he got dirty. At a certain point late in the afternoon, he found himself continuously tying up the electrical wires coming out of the walls and the ceiling. Something about it enchanted him, exercising a powerful attraction, but he couldn’t figure out what it was. What was going on? He reached for one of the wires, grabbed it, and suddenly it was as though he had traveled through a portal to another dimension. He saw stray images of a laboratory bench, and there he was in a white lab coat, like the other people around him, all young men. They were about to hook up some circuit board to a power source. He predicted a short-circuit and vigorously warned his colleagues, but they disagreed with him just as vehemently. Evidently they were working on some sort of group project. Argun saw himself arguing about a particular equation, explaining to the others how certain variables required a particular position for a particular electronic component on a circuit board, otherwise there would be as short-circuit. An older man walked by them at that point, also in a lab coat, but this one was blue, and he wore round glasses with very thick lenses. He asked them, “So, any questions? Let me see what you’re doing here.” He was a professor, there was no longer any doubt, but beyond this, there was no way to ascertain why that obscure piece of film without beginning or end stopped just there, abruptly, hanging by such a tenuous thread of memory that made no sense at all. When Argun awoke, Okan was by his side fanning him briskly.

  “Wake up! What happened to you?”

  Argun let out a moan of pain raising his hand to his temple.

  “I think the first echoes of your past are beginning to arrive.”

  9

  Argun spent the following days helping to build the fitness center with genuine passion. However, the fact that he was always working far from Nefise troubled him, and if he saw her at all during the day, his relationship with her was distant, formal and merely circumstantial. Some of these barriers came down at night when they shared family moments together, chiefly around the dinner table, but even then, in the heart of this family setting there was never much warmth between them. Burak did not appear during these days, and Argun soon found out why. He had gone to Istanbul and would soon be back – so he was told by Nefise herself.

  On his first day off, Argun was surprised by Leyla who invited him for a morning stroll along the beach by the house. It was now almost the height of springtime, and that morning the weather, though comfortable, did not yet allow for the short cool clothes of summer. They walked together along the coast of Kaleköy, close to the rocks and always alongside the translucent Aegean. The sun shone brightly on the water and a light breeze combed the waves here and there along the coast. After a few minutes of casual conversation, Leyla got straight to the point with a simple question:

  “You like my sister, don’t you?”

  Argun was astonished by this abrupt question, in no way connected to what they had been talking about up to that point, and he felt that the most intimate point of his soul had been invaded and exposed. Even so, because of the consideration and trust he had for Leyla at this point, he did not refuse to answer, nor did he give voice to any reproof.

  “Well, she’s very nice and generous…”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. You know very well what I mean. Do you like her or not?”

  “She’s pretty, magnificent, stunning, how could I not like her?”

  Leyla smiled.

  “Well, then, I don’t understand why you’ve given up on her.”

  “You know why. She has a boyfriend. She’s engaged to Burak. I respect that.”

  “That’s what you think?”

  “That’s what I saw at dinner there at home, before he went away. I couldn’t fail to notice that they left together after the dinner, alone, and came back later on very good terms. Then I saw the way they said goodbye. I didn’t see any sign of estrangement, quite the contrary. And that’s fine by me, I understand it, I respect it, and I can deal with it. I know very well I’m in no position to ask anything of your sister. She knows nothing about me. I myself don’t know anything. How could I ask her to walk away from her engagement to Burak on my account?”

  “Listen, Argun, first of all, as far as I know there is no engagement. All I know is that Mehmet and Meliha are determined to have their son marry Nefise.”

  “Then...”

  “Then nothing. Didn’t I tell you that she still hasn’t gotten over Hakan? Didn’t you see the scene she made at the table when father called you by his name? My sister doesn’t care for Burak and she knows it. As of now, unfortunately, she still cares only for Hakan. I don’t even think he would be pleased that she was still bound to him all this time with him dead. She’s got to free herself!”

  “And isn’t she freeing herself by becoming engaged to Burak? Trying a new relationship?”

  “I understand very well what you want to hear. I’ll tell you what I think is going on with her. She believes it’s just a matter of time for everything to happen. A matter of time until she’s free of Hakan once and for all, a matter of time until she falls in love with Burak…”

  “Just a matter of time until I move on...”

  “That I don’t know, though it may also be true. The problem is that she’s a fool to wait. When you fall in love with someone you know it here inside, it’s not something you can make happen.”

  “You seem much wiser than your years. Perhaps I should be falling in love with you.”

  “Nonsense! You are going to have to fight for her. Let me tell you something. On the day you woke up, I saw a most unusual expression on her face, somewhere between completely swept off her feet and deeply troubled. I hadn’t seen that look since the days when she first met Hakan. I am certain that strong feelings came up and touched her heart. That’s the kind of feeling that could free her from Hakan.”

  Argun’s face lit up.

  “Are you serious? You’re not imagining things?”

  “Yes, I know what I’m talking about. I know my sister. But the problem is that meanwhile, all you’ve done is to let that feeling fade away. She won’t make advances in your direction because, on one hand, she still can’t forget Hakan, and on the other, to complicate her life even more, she has Burak, and it seems the more time passes, she’s already all but married, spoken for, because of this constant insistence of Mehmet and Meliha. I don’t even know if he really cares all that much for my sister.”

  “But what can I do?”

  “Fight for her. Nefise told Burak she would give him a definitive answer about getting married a
s soon as he got back from Istanbul. I spoke to her, and she, poor thing, is convinced it could turn out to be a reasonable marriage and he could prove to be a fair and satisfactory husband. Those are the adjectives she used. So if you do nothing, she may commit to marrying him when he gets back, which will be at the end of next week. You have one week. Fight for her. I don’t at all want to see her getting married because she feels she has to, and to be unhappy for the rest of her life.”

  Argun stared at the line of the horizon.

  “And what does your father think of this?”

  “The same as I do, I swear to you. He just wants the best for her. He would hate to see her make a decision that she’d regret for the rest of her life. He wants her to make the right decision, which means marrying a real companion for life. Go on, promise me you’ll fight for her.”

  A silence hung in the air, broken only by the sound of the sea.

  “I will fight for her, but the choice will always be up to her,” Argun pronounced.

  “Splendid! Then I’m going to give you a helpful hint. She loves to ride horses. This evening at dinner, propose an excursion on horseback to get to know the other businesses my father has on the island. Strictly work-related. I promise I’ll help persuade her,” Leyla said, and winked at him.

  10