Enlightenment

by Maureen Freely

  On the front page were the usual student council exposés. On page two I found, amid more cryptic cartoons, three painfully earnest pieces by my replacement. One was a short biography of the little White Russian who’d made us coffee. Another was an appreciation of ayran, the yoghurt drink. The third was an essay entitled ‘What is Education For?’

  Looking more closely at the cartoons running alongside these pieces, I saw that they were not by Lüset, and not at all cryptic. They featured grimacing young women with thought balloons. The thoughts were in Turkish, so most of our teachers wouldn’t have understood them. They ranged from ‘What is this drivel?’ to ‘If the dogs of capitalism can really run, let them run home to where they belong.’ None of this really surprised me. The Suna I had known in 1970 had fierce views about who belonged where, and she would not have been happy to share her sacred space with anyone, least of all Jeannie; it would only have happened, I guessed, under duress. ‘So tell me,’ I asked Suna. ‘How exactly did she win you over?’

  ‘I hated her – that goes without saying,’ Suna explained. ‘Not Jeannie in the flesh, of course, but everything she stood for. And of course Jeannie was going everywhere with Chloe in those days. Bearing in mind that Chloe and I were still competing for that ingrate, Haluk, it was all very painful. And yes, I was terrible. Yes, I lived up to my name. Especially when this Jeannie upstart complained to her father that I was refusing to give her space in my paper. He complained to Chloe’s mother! Who complained to our advisor! You remember her, don’t you? The saintly Miss Broome. That was why I was forced to make room for Jeannie. But as you can well imagine, I made her pay.’

  ‘Yes, it was a very terrible price I extracted from her,’ Suna recalled with some pride. ‘When she came to the next meeting, first I dared her to denounce us for expressing ourselves in our native tongue inside the school walls, in direct contravention of school regulations. Of course, she told us very haughtily that she was not a sneak or a spy. She used this very word, spy. She was, she told us, an ordinary student insisting on her “ordinary’ rights”. So of course, when the rest of us went into Turkish, I peppered my sentences with jokes at her expense that soon had everyone except Jeannie herself laughing. However! This did not scare her away. I had no choice but to become less cryptic. I now began to pepper my Turkish with little phrases in English. Phrases like “human microbe” and “foreign sirens who suck on the flower of our youth.” Of course I made long critiques of her own offerings, and as you can see, it would not have cost me much effort.’ Again, Suna smiled.

  ‘But then Jeannie surprised me. She stood up for me!’ Suna turned the page. It was the last page of the scrapbook. ‘You are looking at the final issue of our brave little school newspaper, and the piece that shut it down.’

  The offending article, by ‘L.A. Internationale’, was headlined: ‘Miss Markham Linked with Running Dogs of Capitalism.’ Miss Markham was our old principal. The ‘link’ was her brother, a US pilot serving in Vietnam. She had, said L.A. Internationale, brought fresh colour to this villain’s cheeks by allowing her school to be infiltrated by the daughter of a ‘well-known CIA operative.’

  ‘Our worthy principal hauled us in, of course,’ Suna told me. ‘Of course Miss Markham instructed me to apologise to Jeannie. But then, to my surprise, Jeannie stepped forward to insist that she was not offended: it was a practical joke! And what was a joke between friends? Miss Markham was not convinced. “It’s a strange friend who slanders your father in the school newspaper.” These were her words. Still Jeannie insisted. She told Miss Markham that I, Suna the Terrible, could never hurt her. She had no fear of me, because we were in all ways equals.

  And the moment she said that, I thought, “Yes, that’s the truth”. So we became friends. Though I am sure I do not need to remind you that this word means something different to me than it does to most people.’

  An understatement if ever there was one. But it made me think. As I made my way down the steep and winding path to the Bosphorus, pausing from time to time to look up at the gnarled and curving branches of the Judas trees, and (in deference to a long lost habit) stopping on the 138th step to catch the first glimpse of the sea, I asked myself: had Suna and I ever been friends? Had I risen to her challenge as Jeannie had – refusing Suna’s ill will, appealing to her better nature – might we have resolved our differences, too? On balance, I thought not. Suna had good reasons to mistrust me. But on the most important point she was wrong.

  As she well knows. As she would be forced to admit if I had the time, courage and stamina to press the point. My family did not move to Turkey to colonise it. My father came here to teach. He was not an employee of the US government, nor was he here to further its ambitions. He did not report to a desk in Washington. He was not a spy.

  So when Suna sat me down next to me all those years ago in the ACG cafeteria, and insisted that my father was a spy, or in all but name a spy, or in some sense, even worse than a spy, I could indulge in the burning anger that is the preserve of the unjustly accused. I could stamp my feet. Point my finger. Scream!

  Jeannie could do none of these things. For her there were only two options. Either she made excuses – for Suna, for Sinan, for herself, her father, everyone – and ‘ventured on.’ Or she faced the truth, the whole truth, and let her life unravel, until there was nothing but truth left.

  14

  But not yet. Please God, not yet. Does anyone face a choice like that unless it’s forced on them? I can read her journal and see her unvoiced anxieties seeping into every sentence. No description is neutral. Even the city is doomed.

  By October 1970, cholera had come to Istanbul. Although all reported cases were in the shanty towns on its western edge, there were draconian measures to keep it from spreading. Every restaurant and cafeteria in the city shut down.

  ‘So now the city, with its locked and inward looking shutters, has become my metaphor. For every day, there are fewer places I’m allowed to go. Every day, there is either an anti-American demonstration in Taksim or rumours of an unauthorised march that could turn into a riot. The universities downtown have turned into war zones. Robert College is still relatively peaceful, but there is still boycott after boycott, and, every few days, a noisy forum in Albert Long Hall to argue about the boycotts. It is not unusual to see a pair of students begin to push and shove each other, even kick each other’s shins as their friends struggle to pull them off.

  But when I reach the terrace, I find Sinan alone, aloof and reading a book. It is never a textbook. This is a point of honour – even when we study in the library. He hates engineering in practice more than he had hates it in theory. He is still attending class, although he finds it hard, in his foot-dragging misery, to concentrate. He finds it harder still to bear the adults who threaten, chide and cajole him and police our every move. I find this unconscionable. Sinan shrugs it off – perhaps he can’t afford not to. But there is so much anger in his eyes sometimes, I think they might catch fire.’

  The date for that entry is October 23rd 1970. The next entry is dated January 7th 1971, and it offers only the most cursory references to the months in between. But in the letter she left me on her computer, just before she disappeared, Jeannie described them to me in bitter, jagged detail.

  Each detail serves the moral of her self-lacerating story: people who can’t face up to the truth need scapegoats. The best scapegoats were the ones you never got to know as people. ‘So inevitably (she wrote) Dutch Harding was doomed to become mine.’

  It happened slowly, and in stages. It would be many months before their orbits intersected. Was this deliberate on Sinan’s part? If so, why? In her letter, she still wasn’t sure.

  Certainly he made no effort to hide him from her, or her from him. As she wandered about the campus on Sinan’s arm that autumn, he would occasionally point out a long-haired man in a sheepskin coat dashing into the Robert College library or snaking his way though a crowd at the opposite end of the playing field and sa
y, ‘That’s Dutch over there. Can you see him?’ Although he was always too far away for Jeannie to see him properly, she felt she knew him, for she and Sinan could not have a serious conversation without Dutch coming into it. ‘Well, you know what Dutch says about this, don’t you?’ Sinan would say. Or ‘Dutch has an interesting take on this.’ Or ‘I used to think that, too, until Dutch reminded me that…’ But never once did he say: ‘It’s about time that you met.’

  At first, this really bothered her:

  ‘I did not yet understand how important it was for Sinan to have one person in his life who did not have perfect knowledge of his movements. Nor did I know how far his elders and betters would go to oversee his studies, his social life and even his future. All that changed when Sinan’s father swooped into town in mid-November, brandishing that shameful report.’

  The showdown took place at Süreyya’s – then the most expensive restaurant in the city, although it was situated over a BP station. It was the only time Jeannie ever met Sinan’s father: she remembered him as a ‘grey, grim eminence, with grave, appraising eyes.’ She remembered, too, that Sinan was wearing a navy blue sports jacket she’d never seen and never saw again. He sat as if he had a board up his shirt and peeled an orange with his knife and fork.

  Whatever Jeannie said, the father’s reply was, ‘Aha! How fascinating!’ He was all smiles, even when the conversation turned to Sinan’s studies. Sinan was all deference. ‘Yes, Father.’ ‘Of course, Father.’ ‘Certainly, Father.’ His answers were truthful, if strained and rehearsed. He was attending his classes, keeping up with his work, not enjoying it, but keeping an open mind.

  Then his father reached into his pocket, took out an envelope, and passed it across the table. Inside was what looked like a typed letter. After Sinan had read it, he threw it down, folded his arms, and glared through the filmy green curtains at the Bosphorus. ‘So,’ said his father. ‘I await your explanation.’

  ‘There is no explanation,’ said Sinan. ‘I’ll see who I want.’

  ‘In a free country, this might be possible. In ours, alas…’

  ‘I have a right to my own life,’ Sinan retorted.

  ‘You are forgetting who you are,’ his father replied.

  ‘Who am I then?’

  ‘A Turk.’

  At which Sinan picked up the piece of paper, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it across the table. Startled by his bad manners, Jeannie picked it up and smoothed it out. Though the report was in Turkish, she could see the name Dutch Harding. When she asked Sinan why, he snorted, and said, ‘My father has been spying on me. Or rather, he has hired a scum to do it for him. You see, he doesn’t like the company I keep. He thinks they’re leading me astray.’

  At which Sinan’s father put up a protesting hand, and said, ‘Please! Don’t exaggerate! This has nothing to do with you, my dear Miss Wakefield. Nothing at all!’ But he said it in such a way that left her wondering.

  What did this man have against her? That evening, after supper, after her father had opened the subject (‘I hear you met my old golfing buddy’), she tried to find the words to ask. But the words rebelled, forming themselves into another question: ‘What does this man have against his son?’

  ‘Nothing,’ her father answered. ‘As strange as it may seem, he loves his boy to death.’

  ‘So why the snooping? Why the intimidation?’

  ‘Ah,’ said her father. ‘To answer that, I need to give you some of the history.’ As he rocked his chair and locked his arms behind his head, he studied her carefully. ‘Sinan’s told you none of this, I take it?’

  He went on to explain that there had been a war going on between Sinan’s parents since long before the divorce. ‘You could even say it started before the poor boy was even born.’ Sinan’s father’s uncle was a general who had fought alongside Atatürk (and against the Greeks) in the War of Independence. He had gone on to help found a narrowly nationalist political party that later became overtly fascist. Sinan’s father had never been a member of that party, but he had stern views about national honour and patriotic duty. No son of his was going to fritter his life away in the arts: so Sinan had three options: the army, the foreign service or engineering.

  Sinan’s mother, on the other hand, came from a famously bohemian and artistic Ottoman family that had (‘like Atatürk himself’) been based in Salonica until the end of the Ottoman Empire. They had moved to Istanbul in the 1920s, and though they were enthusiastic supporters of Atatürk’s republic, they refused to give up their love of things Greek. They had even sent Sibel and her siblings to one of Istanbul’s Greek schools. There was, my father said, no link between this eccentricity and ‘a later political scandal’ that had resulted in one of Sinan’s maternal aunts defecting with her husband to the Soviet Union, ‘though various scandalmongers seem to think otherwise.’

  ‘So the two sides of Sinan’s family have always fought over him. As families do. But in this case there’s a twist.’ As much as Sinan’s mother might have wished her son to follow her into the world of art, she was as fearful of Communism as her ex-husband. ‘Hence this brouhaha over his friendship with Dutch Harding. Hence this report.’

  ‘So you know about it,’ Jeannie said.

  ‘Not only do I know about it. I’ve read it,’ he was proud to say.

  ‘Why?’ Jeannie asked. ‘How?’

  Smiling through pursed lips, he said, ‘It just so happens that I know the guy. The author, I mean. We don’t always work in tandem, but it’s always better when we keep each other informed. We’re on the same side, after all. Though in this case I am of the view that my friends on the Turkish side are over-reacting.’

  Because (as he now informed his daughter) it was important for youth to make up its mind about things. Treat tomorrow’s leaders with respect, and eventually they come round. Come down hard and heavy on them, and they swing the other way. ‘The more they make a fuss about Dutch Harding, the more they add to his allure. Which is tragic, and laughable, because…’

  He left the sentence hanging, and he refused to name the author of the report. But later that week, Jeannie met him. Though it would be more accurate to say they renewed their acquaintance.

  The Saturday before Thanksgiving, William Wakefield gave a party. It was an annual event, and a sought-after invitation, though possibly this had more to do with the host’s famous view than any great affection for the man himself. It was one of the few occasions when the Robert College set mingled with the consular and business people from downtown. William’s Turkish ‘friends’ were also there in force.

  Sinan came with his mother, who had by now returned from Paris to ‘watch over’ him. She was as glamorous as her pictures – svelte and sculpted, with large, heavily accented almond eyes, thick black hair chopped in the manner of Cleopatra, and a way of holding herself that suggested sorrows borne but never forgotten. Everyone was watching when she strode across the library with open arms to kiss Jeannie’s father’s cheeks.

  ‘Then it was my turn. There was a warm but thorough examination before the full embrace. I can still feel her hands: there was a warning in them. “So at last! We meet!”

  Sinan stood at her side, looking grim. Why? Because she was beautiful? Because he wanted to protect her? Because she’d cramped his style? She kept taking his hand and pulling him over to meet a “dear, dear friend” and then she’d notice a speck on his shirt collar and say something despairing as she flicked if off. She’d kiss him on his forehead and ask the dear, dear friend if she had “ever seen a boy so handsome” and then she’d see another dearer friend across the library and sail away.’

  She didn’t stay long. Sinan escorted her to the outside gate, returning very slowly, circling the trees in the garden as he smoked. On rejoining Jeannie, he nodded in the direction of a sharply dressed middle-aged man on the porch.

  İsmet smiled, as if he’d been expecting them. He gave Jeannie a crisp handshake and it was then that she recognised him as the man with
the policemen’s eyes, the man who’d been working with her father that morning back in June. When she told him so, he said, ‘Good memory!’

  Sinan spat something at him in Turkish.

  ‘Whoa, boy. Slow down,’ said İsmet. ‘That’s a pretty big mouthful.’

  This prompted another torrent.

  ‘You know?’ İsmet replied. ‘This just isn’t fair to our lovely friend here.’

  Speaking in English, Sinan said, ‘Don’t worry. She knows what I think.’

  ‘Oh to be twenty,’ said İsmet, flashing his teeth. ‘You know, this boyfriend of yours cuts quite a romantic figure. He’s quite a poet, in fact.’

  ‘You know nothing about me,’ Sinan snarled.

  ‘Oh, but I do,’ said İsmet sharply. ‘What I choose to disclose – that’s another matter entirely.’ He turned to Jeannie. ‘How long have you been here now? Three, four months? No, it’s almost six, isn’t it? The novelty must be wearing off. You must be wondering what you’ve let yourself in for!’

  He paused to light a cigarette. His lighter was large, heavy and gold. ‘For example, yours truly. You meet me through your father. You hear I am “his other half.” Then later you discover I am linked also with Sinan. You hear that his father and I did our military service together. Did he not tell you this? Oh dear. That must mean he also neglected to inform you I was married to his aunt.’

  ‘Until she died,’ said Sinan. ‘Ask him how she died.’

  This time it was İsmet who spoke in Turkish. And when Sinan responded, also in Turkish, his voice was loud enough to attract their host’s notice.

  Pressing his hand down on İsmet’s shoulder, William Wakefield told his ‘other half’ to lay off. Turning to Sinan, he added, ‘That means you, too, boy!’ And perhaps he got the tone wrong, perhaps the tone he used was only acceptable if you were speaking to your own son.