Enlightenment

by Maureen Freely

  Perhaps (she thought later, as she sat in her lonely bedroom, staring at the reflection of the Left Nostril) perhaps she had seen the tragedy lurking under every surface because she’d wanted to see it. Perhaps because she had reached the point where she had no idea how to judge anything she saw. But there was something else going on here. If she were to be totally honest, she’d stayed on because when her eyes met Sinan’s, she’d thought… She’d seen – what? A promise, or a mirage?

  She didn’t know her own mind any more. That’s what it had come to. But perhaps, if she retraced the road to her final humiliation, she’d find her way back. But she had to be vigilant. She had to guard against the strategic omission of details that didn’t fit into the picture she so desperately desired.

  So the facts were these: she’d had a happy afternoon, sitting there, fooled and foolish in her lounge chair, waiting for her future to unfold.

  ‘I was bewitched, I’m sure, by the slow unfurling splendour of the evening, as the harsh heat of the afternoon dissolved into a golden light, and the sea turned from turquoise to azure to pink and silver. The ferries hissed as they slipped past the pier, the glass windows vibrated with every passing tanker, and the speedboat rocked back and forth, back and forth in the waves every ship and boat, large and small, left in its wake. A breeze started up, bringing with it the smell of fish and roasting corn and chestnuts. The windows of the houses on the Asian shore turned gold with the setting sun.

  As the sun disappeared behind the house, and the grandparents returned to the terrace, their stilted ceremonial English soon gave way to the mellifluous Turkish of the boys.

  In the middle of all this, the phone rang again. “Ah, and not a moment too soon,” said the grandmother, as Haluk rushed inside. His grandfather soon followed. “Well, my boy,” he said when they came out again. “It seems you have won.” Minutes later, we were waving the grandparents goodbye as we sped off on Kitten II.’

  And if she were to tell the truth, she’d have to admit she’d suffered not one moment of hesitation. It was only now she had to ask herself why these overprotective grandparents had no qualms about their speeding off in the exact replica of a boat that had killed Haluk’s brother – or why she hadn’t either. Though she didn’t dare say the word. Speak of love and be struck dead, for all to laugh around her grave!

  Where had they gone? Later, when her father had asked her, she’d had to admit she had no idea. The first discotheque was almost certainly on the Asian side, and the next had definitely been in Europe, on the Marmara, somewhere near the airport. Both were the brainchildren of the same deranged decorator. Lots of plastic garden furniture and shrubs decorated with fairy lights. Light fixtures that looked like toadstools, dance floors the size of serving trays. Tom Jones and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Jose Feliciano and Petula Clark and Adamo. Jane Birkin singing ‘Je T’Aime’ with Serge Gainsbourg. Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot singing ‘Bonny and Clyde’. In the first club, they were the only ones there who weren’t waiters. In the second, Jeannie was the only one in jeans. All the Turkish women were wearing things that suggested pricetags in the thousands, with elaborate hairstyles and jewellery to match.

  When Haluk led Chloe off to dance, and Sinan asked Jeannie if she’d like to dance, too, she said, ‘Listen, if you don’t mind, I’ll hide here in the shadows.’

  ‘Don’t be so self-conscious,’ he said, ‘There’s no point, anyway. They’ve already seen you. And now they’re talking about you, too.’

  ‘Because I’m wearing jeans?’

  ‘Yes, this is terrible,’ he said, propping his elbows on the table and leaning forward to stare into her eyes. Darkly. Dangerously. What could he be thinking? ‘I’ve promised myself not to tease you any more, because if you fall for one more joke you’ll break my heart. So I’ll tell you the truth. I hate this place. I hate the way they look at you. Do you know why they look at you like that? It’s not just because you’re tall, and blonde, and American.’ His eyes were shimmering like two black wells now. His voice was beginning to race. ‘It’s because you’re with me. This is very interesting to them because they all know who I am and how bad. And worst of all, they can see I’ve fallen in love.’

  She could feel his sigh, piercing right into her. ‘You have?’

  ‘Of course I have,’ he said. There was a trace of impatience in his voice, as if I’d asked, are you wearing shoes? ‘Of course I’m madly in love with you. I’d be stupid not to be.’ Reaching across the table, taking her hand, he looked straight into her eyes again. She couldn’t hold his gaze.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said. Squeaked. ‘No one’s ever said anything like this to me before.’ She had not added that no boy she knew would ever dare be so forward. The closest she’d ever got was, ‘Your hands are warm…’ during the last slow dance and (at the senior prom), ‘Your hair is your crowning glory.’

  When she found the courage to look up again, she caught the tail end of a smile. ‘Is this another one of your jokes?’

  He shook his head. He bit his lip, squeezed her hand, and if she were to tell the truth, she caved in a little more. ‘Don’t you like me at all?’ he asked. ‘Not even a tiny bit?’

  She thought she did, but she wasn’t sure (wasn’t sure!) it was a good idea to say so. He squeezed her hand again, and then, after glancing quickly over his shoulder, he winced. ‘Here we go,’ he said.

  ‘We’d been sitting at this discotheque for some time, not dancing, just chatting at a table in the corner, when I saw two girls crossing the dance floor. When they arrived at our table, at first they just stood there.

  But then the taller of the two prodded Sinan on the back. He jumped to his feet. “What a surprise!” he said breathlessly. “I had no idea you were here! Jeannie, this is Lüset,” he said, gesturing at the smaller of the two, a neat, slender creature with long brown hair, large black eyes and china-white skin. “Lüset, this is Jeannie. And Jeannie, this is…” His voice trailed away.

  The taller girl had smouldering blue eyes and a fine aquiline nose with distended nostrils; her hair was pulled back, leaving two long black ringlets that shook as she settled herself into a chair.

  Sinan cleared his throat. “Jeannie, this is Suna.”

  “So pleased to make your acquaintance,” Suna said. She jerked her chair over the gravel. “Yes, my name is Suna, and I am so, so, very, very pleased to make the acquaintance of yet another half-witted stewardess.”

  In an even voice, Sinan corrected her. “Actually, she’s not a stewardess.”

  “Oh?” said Suna, as she removed a cigarette from her beaded purse. Sinan reached over to light it. She gazed into the night as she inhaled. As she exhaled, she flashed Jeannie a poisonous smile and asked, “So, then. What is it that you are intending to do in our country? Work as a go-go girl? I was hearing of just such a vacancy at Hidromel.”

  “As it happens,” said Sinan evenly, “Jeannie is here only to study. And to visit to her father. He works at the US Consulate.”

  “The US Consulate. Hah! How fitting!” Suna knocked her cigarette sharply against the ashtray. “In all honesty, I cannot for the life of me understand why I didn’t guess this ironic travesty in the first place.”

  Lüset put her hand on Suna’s arm and said something supplicating in Turkish. Suna waved her away. “So!” she said, turning back to Jeannie “Let us become acquainted. How old are you? Where do you live? What are your plans and aspirations? I want to know all this and so much more. But first things first. My dear boy, can you give me the whereabouts of Haluk, our fair-weather friend?”

  Sinan waved his arm in the direction of the dance floor.

  “Yes, you are right, I see him now. And who is that on his arm?” Suna asked, leaning forward. “Ah!” she said. Inhaling furiously.

  I decided to take matters into my own hands. “I take it you and Chloe know each other?”

  “We attend the same school,” Suna said.

  “And is Haluk really your boyf
riend?”

  “Haluk is my friend, yes, but he can do as he likes. As indeed I can. If I like, I can throw him into the sea. The fact of the matter is that neither of us believes that love can be discussed in terms of private property. What we have between us exists on a higher plane.”

  This provoked a groan from Lüset. There followed an altercation in Turkish. Sinan joined in, and after a lot of shouting and gesticulating, Suna rearranged herself into a pose of calmness. Turning back to me, she said, “I am sorry for my temper. I hope you will permit me to move on to more civilised subjects. Allow me now to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Yes, tell me. Tell me first and foremost how you justify your country. Let us begin with the hegemonic rationalisations of the army that is as we are speaking invading the virgin soils of North Vietnam.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of justifying them,” I said. “I happen to think the war is wrong!”

  “You think the war is wrong,” she said, sucking in the smoke so hard I thought she might swallow the cigarette. “Well, that is very interesting. What an exceptional mind you must have, to grow up in the fountainhead of imperialist ideology and still to know this war is wrong!”

  “I’m hardly the only one. I’m one of millions!”

  “Then it is all the more reprehensible that you have been content to tolerate a list of war crimes that is, quite frankly, growing every day. How do you justify a moral failure of this magnitude?” I said something about Kent State.

  “Ah Kent State. Yes, how tragic. Tell me, were you there?”

  “Of course I wasn’t. I’m not even in college yet.”

  “My point exactly. When push has come to shove, you have done absolutely nothing. You continue as before, waving your flag as you plunder our coffers and corrupt our youth.”

  “But that’s just ridiculous! I haven’t plundered anything. How could I?”

  “Then let us move on to a more promising subject. Yes, let us speak of the CIA stoolpigeon making unlawful interventions in the internal workings of my country and who is also, as I hardly need to tell you, your father.”

  “Suna!” Sinan and Lüset shouted together.

  Suna put her hand up. “Please,” she said. “Do not attempt to speak for our friend. Let us hear what she has to say.”

  But what she expected me to say, I cannot begin to imagine. I have never heard such a preposterous suggestion. They might as well tell me my father is Clark Kent. All I could think was, why are these people so negative? So that’s what I said.

  11

  Minutes later, a furious Sinan was piling her into a taxi. ‘I’ve had enough of that girl. She’s my friend but she never knows where to stop.’ He’d seethed, silent, straight-backed, all the way back to Rumeli Hisar. This leg of the journey had proved as strange as the others: they’d had to go through several army checkpoints. Jeannie now knew that these were in place in anticipation of the great trade union march that would begin only a few hours later. But from Sinan’s impassive response to the soldiers who peered in at each checkpoint, waving their submachine guns, you’d have thought it was something that happened every day.

  When they got to Hisar Meydan, Jeannie invited him inside, but Sinan refused. They ended up in Chloe’s house, for which he mysteriously had a key.

  They’d been sitting silently in the swinging chair on the porch, sharing a joint that seemed to bring him no pleasure, when he’d uttered – not to her so much as to the night sky – the words she’d so fatally understood.

  ‘How much has your father explained to you?’ was his opening sally. When she’d asked the obvious, ‘About what?’ he’d seemed both exasperated and perplexed. ‘Has he at least not warned you?’

  To which she’d again had to ask, ‘About what?’

  ‘About the rumours people circulate. About anyone who happens to live here, if they happen to have a US passport. Which, by the way, includes me.’ He paused expectantly, as if Jeannie had no choice but to make the connections now he’d laid it all out for her. When she failed to do so, he sighed tragically and took her hand. ‘These rumours about spies.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ she’d said. ‘I don’t take them seriously.’

  ‘That’s right! You shouldn’t! But at the same time, don’t underestimate the damage these rumours can do to you. To all of us! There are people who wish you ill. Wish me ill, too. If you don’t know this – if you don’t take their ill intentions seriously – you’re leaving yourself exposed. Dangerously exposed. But don’t worry. I’m making you a promise now. I’m promising to look after you. It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Jeannie said stupidly. He looked into her eyes, in disbelief. Then burst out laughing. ‘Yes, I promise. Despite everything you’ve seen so far.’

  Pressing her hands between his, he said, ‘So you have to promise me. Promise me you’ll let me know whenever someone gives you a hard time.’

  He’d gone on to apologise for ‘all the stupid games’ they’d played with her, promising never to play them again. For he knew now that she was that rare thing, a true innocent. Hearing that, she had let her head take its fatal fall against Sinan’s warm shoulder.

  But how quickly, how efficiently he had lifted it up and restored it to its former pillow! His words still rang in her head: ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘I really mean it. I was teasing you before, making up so many lies, just to see how you’d react. It was cruel of me. Immature. But that’s over now. Now I want to be friends. True friends. Am I making myself clear? But nothing more. You see, my heart is taken. You don’t mind, do you? It’s better like this, anyway. For all sorts of reasons. What you need from me is protection. What you need is a true friend. If we let something else happen…’

  ‘Like what?’ she’d asked.

  ‘If we let something else happen, sooner or later, I would betray you.’

  Oh the horror of it! To assume love – only to be repulsed with pitying kindness! She would never be able to look him in the eye again.

  Why she had not mustered what was left of her dignity and left then and there she cannot say. What a fool of herself she had made instead. Oh, how she had cried. How she had lied! The things she had said! She had told him how scared she was, how unnerving it was not to understand anything that people said to her, to walk into trap after trap, how she didn’t know how she was going to face any of them, ever again. How coming here had been a big mistake, how it was too late now to start having a father, how the time had come to accept herself as she really was, a girl who couldn’t cope with anything larger than Northampton. And he had stayed to console her, like the good, cold friend he’d become. She must have fallen asleep on his shoulder – had she been hoping against hope, even then? But no, when she awoke, it was to the gruesome sight of Chloe’s pimply younger brother. And it was morning. And her head was pounding. The next time she’d looked up, it was Amy, Chloe’s mother. She was fully made up, and the only word for her bright blonde hair was ‘coiffed’. Her lips were pursed and her brow was furrowed. But her voice was matter-of-fact. ‘Your father’s downstairs. And I have to say, he’s a little concerned.’

  Oh, the shame, when she went downstairs to Amy’s kitchen and met her father’s wounded, worried eyes.

  ‘Nice time?’ he’d asked.

  She’d nodded, carefully.

  ‘Well, I’m glad to hear it. Or not, as the case may be.’

  But after they had returned to the Pasha’s Library, after he told her about the nature of the crisis that had called him away (that workers’ march on the city) and what would happen next (tanks, raised bridges, rubber bullets and mass arrests), and why it meant that he was going to have to go back to work flat out and just hope that maybe, by the end of the summer, enough of ‘these rats’ would have gone to the beach so that they could, too, he turned to her and said, ‘I don’t want you to misunderstand me, though. I’m not upset. In fact, this is beyond my wildest dreams.’

  When she’d asked him what he meant, he’d shrugged his shoulders
‘Well – all of it. You being here. Wanting to spend a year with me. Knowing we’ll be doing all these things together, but also not having to worry when I have to be somewhere else, because you have friends. Knowing that you like it over there –’ he gestured in the direction of Amy’s house. ‘It’s all too good to be true. I suppose the fly in the ointment is Talat’s boy, what’s his name, Haluk. He’s trouble. I hope you didn’t let him take advantage of you.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

  He looked relieved. ‘So it’s Sinan, is it?’

  ‘Not really,’ she squeaked, and the horror sank in. They all thought she’d spent the night with Sinan. They all thought she was involved with a boy who in actual shaming fact was interested in her only as a friend.

  ‘You know him, too, I take it?’ she eventually managed.

  ‘Yes, of course, I do. I even know his father. We used to be golfing buddies. Starting in Caracas of all places. But mostly in Washington. Way back when. You know, before you were born. Did he tell you his mother was a singer?’

  ‘All he said was she was trying to be.’

  That made him laugh. ‘He would, wouldn’t he? I don’t know about now, but she was pretty damned good. There was even a time when…’ His voice died away. ‘So I couldn’t be happier, Jeannie. Give or take a fly or two in that ointment. I don’t think much of that cousin of his, and the two of them together have a nose for trouble but…’ He paused as his eyes travelled northwards. ‘I’m just happy you’ll be spending time with someone I trust.’

  And what was that supposed to mean? But there it was. She’d been paired up by her own father. Paired up and humiliated. If she were a serious person, she would have told him so. Asked him a few other questions while she was at it. Like, what exactly are you doing here, anyway? And if you are, why am I here, too? By the time she fell asleep, she had drafted the conversation she would have with her father at breakfast. A new understanding, she’d call it, based on truthful sharing. She would tell her father that Sinan was just a friend, and that she was happy with it that way. Very happy indeed! She would ask him, very casually, if he happened to know who this mysterious girl was with the prior claim to Sinan’s heart. She would leave it at that. They would then move on to discuss his work. She’d approach this subject in neutral and pragmatic tones, assuring her father first that whatever he did, she was sure it was serious and socially responsible and essentially patriotic, and probably no more than simple desk work, a simple and straightforward compiling of the sort of facts every government must have at its fingertips if it is to make wise decisions.