Black Day at the Bosphorus Café

by M. H. Baylis

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘No,’ Sajadi replied, meaningfully. ‘At school, they didn’t teach about the promises the British made to the Kurds in 1926, and in 1946, the lies about ensuring them a safe homeland before leaving them to be slaughtered. The meetings, suddenly cancelled. The diplomatic correspondence, where your statesmen talk about the barbarous, feudal Kurds, who must be placated but never given real power.’ He took a deep breath, seeming to master his anger. ‘“No friends but the mountains”, that’s our Kurdish saying. But even the mountains are not our friends! My mother died in the mountains, waiting for help. People are still dying on the mountains. Now can you see why I like money? You don’t have to believe in it. Money just is.’

  ‘Money only does its job because people believe in it.’

  Sajadi shot him a short, shocked look and laughed. ‘Horse shit. You’re saying gold only exists because people believe in it?’

  ‘I’m saying gold only matters because people believe it matters.’

  ‘You’re fucking crazy,’ Sajadi said, shaking his head. Rex didn’t reply. ‘Money is real and it does real things. Like building towns for the refugees – bringing them down from the mountains of Syria and Iraq, out of the camps where you would leave them to rot, into the new Kurdistan. That’s what money does. And the Turkish government calls me a trafficker, a people trafficker. I am not. I am the father of the Kurds.’

  He made this, outwardly preposterous statement in such a calm, assured voice, that Rex didn’t even smile. The man might, in some awful sense, be right.

  ‘You don’t seem to be on such good terms with your own people, though, Mr Sajadi.’

  Sajadi gave him a long appraising look, as if behind those glittering eyes he was working out whether Rex was worthy of an explanation.

  ‘In 1992, they welcomed me like a hero when I crossed into Turkey. The PKK. Sweets and flowers and photographs.’ Actorly hands mimed the tributes flying in. ‘Everywhere I went. Every tiny, poor, desperate village from Urfa to Kars. That’s the story Keko and Mina believed. “Rostam – the lion of Kore”.’ He spat. ‘You know why every Kurdish village gave the sweets and the flowers? Because they were terrified. Terrified of Abdullah Öcalan – ‘Apo’, they call him, ‘The Uncle’ – and of the PKK thugs he controls. If the villages gave food and shelter to the guerrillas, the Turks bombed them. If they didn’t give to the PKK, then the PKK set fire to them. There was no honour in what the PKK were doing.’ Sajadi shook his head. Then, abruptly, slammed his hand on the table, making Rex jump. ‘I decided to leave them. But before I could go, I was caught by MIT – Turkish intelligence. Sent to the prison in Van. A very bad place.’ He held up the damaged hand. ‘To make me talk, they beat me with wires, they burnt me, they slammed a metal door on my hand. The door of the hospital wing. And then they left me there, with my finger trapped in the door, the doctors and the nurses in the prison moving past me, around me, doing nothing, until my finger just came away like a dog’s tail. Three days. Three days, during which I didn’t make a sound. They got nothing. In the end, the Turks let me go and I went back to my unit in the mountains. It was snowing. My hand was very bad. I went to bed. For Mina and Keko, the story is like this: I couldn’t fight any more so I left the mountains, with all the blessings of the PKK and some money, and I came to Germany to find my sister.’ Sajadi laughed bitterly. ‘A lovely bedtime story. In truth Öcalan’s monkeys took me from my bed at the end of a gun, and said, first you tell us what you told to the Turks. I said – why would I do that, tell things to the Turks? I thought I was a hero to you. The Lion of Kore. They said, “You are not a Kurdish Lion. You are a Yezidi dog.” See? See why I hate them?’

  ‘But you never let your family know that?’ Rex remembered his first meeting with Sajadi – the ornate chairs, the stuffy room, the elegant man waiting until his family had left before confiding his thoughts in a low, conspiratorial voice.

  Throughout their conversation, a series of young, hard-looking lads had been coming in with cellophane-wrapped bales, the sort of thing that reminded Rex of Customs hauls on the news. They seemed to suggest the same thing to Sajadi, because he looked at them for a long time, and then cleared his throat and said: ‘Behind the Marxist horse-shit, PKK were selling Afghan heroin through Turkey into Europe. So I took my war pension, Mister Tracey. One finger equals two kilograms of their pure heroin. I took from their beards, we say! I went to Germany, I sold it, I bought my shops, everything. No, I never told Keko and Mina that. They never knew.’

  ‘And you’re still selling it.’

  Sajadi laughed, drily. ‘Yeah? You want some? You like that shit, I’ve heard. Here…’

  Before Rex could stop him, Sajadi had gone over to the table, removed a keyring and slashed open one of the bales. Instead of brown powder, though, it was pale blue pills that Sajadi brought back in his palm.

  ‘Nootropics! Cognitive enhancers. The students love them. Doctors doing double shifts, restaurant workers…. Girls trying to lose some kilos. They aren’t even illegal. People give them to their grandmothers, you know. Really.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘Helps with the memory. At some stage, of course, a stupid kid will take fifty of them with a bottle of vodka and die. His parents will make a fuss. A doctor will write a letter, maybe to a newspaper like yours, and the government will have to look busy, and make them illegal. But by the time that happens, we will be making a new kind, that is a little bit different, so it can’t be illegal yet!’

  Rex, who suddenly realised he hadn’t taken any of his own pills for almost a day – and not missed them – picked out one of the pills and looked at it. He put it back on the table, remembering the reference to ‘study aids’ in the student newsletter. And Eric Miles saying he’d found some new wonder drug for his Mum.

  It was remarkable, really. The old drug lords, the heroin-importing Bombacılar, had sent whole neighbourhoods to sleep, but here was this new kingpin, Rostam Sajadi, flooding the borough with things that made people work more efficiently. A manqué capitalist with a missing finger. Then he remembered something else. Sajadi interrupted him before he could bring it up.

  ‘See? Changing. Kurdish businessmen are not moving heroin through the back of the fruit shops now. Your newspapers like to say that, but that is gone. Or laundering money. If you wanted to clean your money, you don’t need a shop with one can of okra on the shelves, there is bitcoin, poker machines, money mules… Everyone is getting smarter, even the criminals. I just provide the smart pills.’

  ‘Now you do. But you built your empire on the back of the drugs you stole. And that’s why the PKK came after your sister, isn’t it? In the accident that wasn’t an accident?’

  Sajadi nodded, his self-delight ebbing away and turning into anger. ‘Just as she had started to find happiness, Meda was destroyed. Keko could never know about that side of my life, or what killed Meda. Nor Mina. So I could never tell them why I’d left the mountains, what I really knew about Öcalan and his dogs.’

  ‘And Aran?’

  Another long pause. Sajadi ordered someone to re-wrap the opened parcel. When this had been done, he abruptly rose to his feet and asked all the men to leave. They did so, swiftly but without panic, leaving their unplayed hands of cards and their smoking cigarettes in place until Rex and Sajadi sat alone – a flashing sign from across the road bouncing regularly off John Major on the wall.

  ‘How did you know it was him?’

  ‘Because Aran bumped into someone that day. A friend of mine. In Sky City. That friend told me how a short, Kurdish-looking man had struggled with them in the moments after Mina died, and grabbed… my friend by the throat with his hand.’ Rex was trying to reveal nothing of Peter’s identity, not even his gender. ‘That’s what my friend said. His hand. I only had to ask what the hand was like to know it wasn’t you. You still use your bad hand for everything – you’d have put it round my friend’s throat if it had been you. And I knew Aran resented his sister. He certainly seemed to resent
his life, and to envy hers. That’s all I had to go on, really. A sense. So I sent him that message. And he passed it you, I guess.’

  The flashing sign switched off, and in the same moment Sajadi seemed to change again. The Father of the Kurds left the stage, leaving a sad, bitter little man in a London café. ‘Idiot. A stupid fucking idiot. When I found out where she was, in Sky City, I sent him. I told him: just do you what you have to do to stop her. Burn her passport if you have to.’

  ‘So he tries to burn her.’

  ‘He told me at first that, on the day she died, he went to that flat she was staying in, in Sky City, and she wasn’t there. He found the place was empty and it just smelled of petrol. For a while, I wondered if he could be telling the truth.’

  ‘So when you asked me to help – you genuinely weren’t sure how she’d died?’

  He nodded, distractedly. ‘The day after you and I were on the marshes, the police handed back her personal effects, and there was that peacock that she wore, and there was a lighter in there, and Aran broke down then. Told me the truth.’

  Sajadi lit a cigarette. ‘You were right. He always hated her. From when they were kids. Mina was so quick, so alive. He was so quiet, so… locked away, with his birds and his books. To be honest she hated him, too. When he tried to talk to her, she wouldn’t listen. She goaded him, about his birds, his pathetic life, doing shifts in a supermarket, odd-jobs for his uncle, a university degree but making nothing of himself. Mina had a sharp tongue,’ Sajadi said, almost admiringly. ‘Always did. She went, maybe, too far. Even a mouse can bite, you know?’

  ‘But you still sent him to do the job.’

  ‘Yes. I sent him,’ Sajadi confirmed, seeming to miss Rex’s point, or ignoring it. ‘I had tried myself, before she ran away. She wouldn’t listen. And I had to stop her from going.’

  ‘To help the refugees, you mean?’

  Sajadi nodded, slowly.

  ‘Except Mina wasn’t planning to help the refugees, was she, Mr Sajadi? She was going out there to join the peshmerga. To go to war, like you did.’

  The Kurd sighed, nodded slowly. ‘So you found out.’

  ‘I saw the real speech Mina made. The one you deleted. Where she said she’d turned her back on politics, and the illusion of choice. I saw the kind of training she’d been doing, to prepare herself. Half in the open – pretending to her girlfriend they were just trying to get fit – half in secret. Not even her girlfriend guessed what she was really going to do.’

  Sajadi snorted. ‘Don’t use that word! That’s how it began. When I flew back from a business trip a few months back, I went to surprise my niece, and pick her up from university after her lectures and…’ He took a breath after this outburst, then seemed to relax a little, even to soften as he went on. ‘We had a tradition of our own, you know. From when she was at school. A Four Seasons pizza in Pizza Express. A strawberry milkshake in McDonalds. See? She was still a child.’

  Not a child, but an ordinary young woman. Stitched, without consent, into the extraordinary seams of Haringey and all its histories. Sajadi’s fond look had returned to something less pleasant, as he carried on.

  ‘From across the road, I saw them coming out of their lessons.’

  ‘Mina and Kyretia?’

  Sajadi frowned. ‘Her with a boy! A Turkish boy. I didn’t say anything. But after that I watched her a few times, without her knowing, and that boy was always there. So I went to visit him.’

  ‘Haluk.’ Rex remembered the black eye he’d had on their first meeting. ‘I’m guessing you didn’t share a Happy Meal with him.’

  Sajadi smiled dangerously, and Rex wondered if he’d gone too far. There was no reason to the man, after all, no logic, only sets of contradictions. He’d rejected his traditions, but been appalled to see Mina with a Turkish boy. He spoke about honour when all he honoured was money. Financed good in one corner of the world through bad in another.

  ‘He swore to me he wasn’t Mina’s boyfriend. I hit him hard enough to know he was telling me the truth,’ Sajadi said, matter-of-factly, like a plumber discussing the lagging he’d used. ‘He told me that she had a… a…’ He shook his head, replaying the initial shock. ‘That she was that way. And they were going to Turkey together. To help the refugees with their application forms! Like a man and a wife. Disgusting. But it’s like I say, she was just a kid. I understand – they try something, think it’s cool, make mistakes. They move on, their lives go on.’

  ‘But if she joined the peshmerga, you worried her life wouldn’t go on.’

  ‘I couldn’t let her go. At the best, she’d find out from the old peshmerga what I did, how I caused her mother’s death. At worst, they would take another revenge on her. I had to stop her. We had a big argument, I tried to explain to her, for the first time, how bad those people really are. But she refused to obey or listen to reason. She knew I would try everything I could, so then she went to hide in Sky City. Full of my flats, of course.’ He laughed, without mirth. ‘She was even hiding in one of them.’

  ‘Is that how you found out she was there?’

  Sajadi shook his head. ‘I don’t go there. Nothing is connected to me. I found out because of that fat Turk.’

  ‘Bilal?’

  ‘Haluk! I had nothing to do with Bilal. Not his life, not his death. Who was he, to me? A clerk. A secretary. Nobody.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You saw the Inquest into that man. A stroke.’

  ‘Maybe. I know you didn’t hurt Mina, but Bilal knew how involved you were in the corruption at the council. He was dangerous to you. You killed him, didn’t you? Or you had him killed.’

  ‘Dangerous? When are you going to understand? Nothing will happen to me. This little fight in the chicken house will play out, some people will go to prison, you will get a fine, bright, new council, and I will still be here. Your police, your government, they cannot get rid of me because I am necessary to them.’

  ‘In what way are you necessary?’

  ‘Because of Yenişakir. Because of what I am building. You will see. In any case, I have no reason to deny something if I did it. I didn’t touch Bilal. The person I mean – who told me where Mina was – it’s the one I beat.’ He snorted in contempt. ‘Haluk is like the boys I use here. Too many gangster films on their i-Pads. He comes to me with some fantasy out of Godfather Part Two and says, you know, “Big player like you Mister Sajadi need a good lawyer-man, naamsain innit?”’ It was a fine imitation. Rex obliged it with a smile. ‘He told me the police had taken him and the girlfriend in for questioning. But he’d lied to them. To help me. To prove he was a good soul-jah or some horse shit of that sort.’

  ‘So that’s why he did it. Not for Kyretia. To impress you.’

  ‘I could have told him fuck off. But I said, okay, if you got something I can use, let me know. Why not? He’s got a key – this kid – master key, for the Security Guard job. When the black girl, Mina’s…’ Sajadi coughed, unable to say the word. ‘When that black girl is in the gym, he opened the locker, looks at her phone. Sees some texts Mina has sent to her. So we found her. I knew she wouldn’t listen to me any more, so I said to Aran – okay, you do it. He was getting tired of the work he does for me. So I said, okay, do this instead. Talk to your sister.’

  ‘I thought Arun just worked in the shop.’

  ‘He works there to repay his father. And to repay me… Well. He wasted three years at Reading University, learning what? Birds. Avian… eco… biodiversity…? Horse shit. I said, all right, now something useful. I paid for him to do another degree – biopharmacology – and he works for me.’ Sajadi waved towards the bales on the table.

  ‘He’s your chemist.’

  ‘I said to him – I’ve had enough of the girl. Do what you have to do to stop her. Burn the passport if you need to. So he brought petrol from the shop, he said, to do that, to burn it.’

  ‘Wouldn’t a match have done the job?’

  ‘Modern passports are too useful for id
entifying people, Mr Tracey. If you want to destroy one, you really need to destroy it. So he went there with petrol and Mina made him angry. So then he poured the petrol all over her, but he didn’t mean to do anything else.’ Sajadi leant across the table, stone-faced, as if he was accusing Rex himself. ‘That’s what Aran told me. He looks me in the eye, and he says that she ran away, and somehow, just out of the air, for no reason, she goes on fire. Do you believe that?’

  ‘He didn’t set light to his sister. It was a dropped cigarette.’

  The eyes narrowed. ‘Who dropped it? Your friend? Who is your friend?’

  ‘I’m not going to tell you. It’s not relevant, is it? Where’s Aran?’

  There was a long pause where Sajadi seemed to be lost in thought. Eventually, he lit a cigarette and said quietly, ‘I sent Aran away. He is taking a package for me, from Van to Hokkari. It’s a very quiet road.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘If you run into some bad people out there, or you crash your car… maybe no one will ever know what happened to you. It happens a lot.’

  The eyes bored into him. And the man’s point eventually sunk in. ‘You sent Aran away to be killed.’

  ‘I was so sure he was lying to me about setting her on fire.’ Sajadi held his head in his hands. Rex wondered if he was crying. Then, abruptly, he sat up, shook his head briefly and took a deep breath.