Enlightenment

by Maureen Freely

  ‘I just met your daughter’s boyfriend,’ Jeannie heard a nondescript American woman tell her father some time later. ‘He’s a little mercurial, don’t you think?’ When William said no, he was just in a bad mood, she said, ‘Isn’t he a little old for her?’ Again William said no. His daughter was seventeen and Sinan had only just turned twenty. To which the American woman said, ‘Three years is a lot at that age. And then there’s the culture gap.’

  William said she shouldn’t worry about that too much. ‘Sinan’s lived all over the world.’ But the woman persisted. ‘I suppose what concerns me most about Jeannie is that she seems to be doing a lot of care-taking.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘If I were her mother, I’d be telling her to cool off.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dare,’ William replied. ‘Jeannie has a mind of her own. And she’s crazy about this boy. They’re inseparable.’

  ‘All the more reason to tread carefully,’ said this woman. ‘When all is said and done…’ But Jeannie was never to know what happened when all was said and done, because now Sinan was leading her to the door.

  There were fairy lights on the trees so anyone could have looked out and seen them kissing. When Jeannie pointed this out, he only held her tighter. ‘If I didn’t know you, I’d think you were doing this for show,’ Jeannie said.

  And he said, ‘Why shouldn’t I? We’re inseparable. Remember?’

  The next day he took her to the House of Shrouds to have lunch with his mother. Sibel was politeness itself when Jeannie first walked in – thanking her for the splendid party, asking after her father, asking Jeannie about her ‘passions and interests,’ plying her with food, and paying no attention to the son smouldering in the corner. Jeannie was never to know what sparked off the argument, because the first sally, like so many that followed, was in a language she didn’t know. She listened in her usual way, fishing for familiar names and words. Though Dutch Harding came up most frequently, Jeannie heard her own name, too. So rashly she interrupted. ‘What exactly do you have against me, by the way?’

  Sibel took her hand. ‘My darling, you are a delight! It is simply…’ and she took her hand away. ‘This boy of ours is young. Do you understand, my sweet? I have no wish to ruin his fun. What is life, if not for fun? But fun is all, yes?’

  Failing to secure agreement, she turned to Sinan and, in stern and cutting French, she said, ‘She does not look so pretty when she’s angry. In fact, she looks like a goat.’ This Jeannie had no trouble understanding.

  Sibel seemed to know this. For now she reached out, smiling, and flicked her finger against Jeannie’s chin. ‘There, that’s better,’ she said, in English. When you don’t puff out your lower lip, you are, as I said, simply divine.’

  Turning back to her son, she launched into what Jeannie now assumed to be Greek. Her voice, at first soft and cajoling, grew steadily louder and more urgent. Sinan kept his answers short and his voice guarded, until she said something that made him slam his fist on the table. She raised her arms, as if to beseech God, ‘Ah, mais ça suffit. Vraiment j’en ai assez!’

  After she had slammed her way out of the apartment, Sinan hurled himself into a chair to steam in silence, raising his hand in warning every time Jeannie asked what was wrong. Then he relented. Leading her into his bedroom, he said, ‘This is what’s wrong.’ Where the terrarium had been, there was a pile of ironed shirts and paired socks. ‘You remember the books on those shelves? Well, guess what? My mother threw them out. I just came home last night and Dutch’s precious books were gone. What am I going to say to him?’

  He sat down on his bed. Jeannie sat down next to him but he pushed her comforting hand away. Accustomed now to his flights of temper, she lay down on the bed next to him and waited. Was this care-taking? she wondered. She gazed into the shadows where the terrarium was no longer and thought back to the day she’d first seen it. She thought about the snake, and their trip with the snake to the islands, and the glittering waterfronts they’d passed on the night ferry. She imagined the night ferry changing its mind at the last minute, looping back to return them to the Sea of Marmara and the glittering harbours of Kınalı, Burgaz, Heybeliada and Büyükada…slipping across the dark sea to Yalova, Bandırma and the Marmara Islands, to the Dardanelles, and Çanakkale, Gallipoli, Imbros, Samothraki, Alexandroupolis, Kavala…

  A door slammed. Then another. The overhead light flicked on. There, looming over them, was Sinan’s mother. More Greek fury. But Sinan refused to budge. ‘You can say whatever you like,’ he said in French. ‘We’re not doing anything. You know why? We can’t! We’d have more privacy in a panopticon!’

  ‘Then go to a panopticon, why don’t you?’

  ‘You don’t even know what a panopticon is.’

  ‘Of course I do! What do you take me for?’

  ‘A follower of Bentham – what else?’

  ‘Ah! And who might this Monsieur Bentham be?’

  ‘The author of one of the books you threw away.’

  ‘One day you’ll thank me! And perhaps you’ll then explain to me why, with all the girls in the world, you had to choose this one!’

  ‘I “chose” her because the moment I saw her, I knew you’d hate her!’

  ‘Ah! Mais vraiment, c’est insupportable. Vraiment ça suffit!’

  Jeannie knew now what she wanted to ask Sinan, but she had no idea how.

  ‘So I got up and turned off the light, lay down again next to him, and resumed my travels. I went back to Büyükada, retracing our lost, happy steps, except that this time, after we’d visited the prison-guard-turned-prison-artist, and waved at the elderly couple speaking Ladino on the porch next door, the couple had waved back, and invited us to stroll around their garden. And over supper, because of course we stayed for supper, they talked of their ancestors, who’d come to Istanbul to escape the Spanish Inquisition. We lost all sense of time, and suddenly there was only just enough time to make the last ferry…but along the way we met a man with an Albanian grandfather, a Circassian grandmother, and an Armenian wife. They all had stories to tell, and though the stories looped back on themselves, swirled out of orbit, careened around blind corners, the chain never broke. Each story led on to another story, and the last returned us to our starting point. When we reached the waterfront, the night ferry was still waiting, and I was as far from the real world as if I’d been riding on the tail of a comet.’

  ‘Jeannie? Are you asleep?’

  ‘No. Just thinking.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘About a trip I wish we’d taken.’

  ‘Where to?’

  She told him.

  ‘You could go to jail for that, you know.’ he said.

  ‘For a daydream?’

  ‘You’d be surprised.’ He propped himself on his pillows. She put her head on his chest. ‘I’m angry with my mother. But also, I understand her reasons. You’ve heard about my aunt, yes? I mean Emine. The one who had to defect. One day, perhaps, I’ll tell you the story. All I’ll say now is that İsmet had his hand in it. And İsmet is not done. He will not be done until he has purified me. So naturally, he suspects my mother. She isn’t pure, you see. İsmet believes Turks must be pure. Dutch, on the other hand, says there’s no such thing as a Turk.’

  ‘But that’s nonsense,’ Jeannie said.

  ‘What he meant,’ Sinan explained, ‘is that the “Turk” is not a historical reality but an ideological construct. This construct was designed by our founding father, to legitimise his nationalist project. Do you have any idea what my father would do to me if he heard me say that?’

  ‘Laugh?’

  He punched the wall. ‘They’re all such hypocrites! So I read a few books! Do they think a gun is going to jump out from the pages and take up arms against the state? Just because I read a book, it doesn’t mean I agree with it! Whatever happened to critical thinking?’ His voice was racing. ‘Dutch says that the entire Western tradition is based on critical thinking. Did you know t
hat? He says you can’t get anywhere unless there’s part of you standing outside, asking questions.’

  ‘Why don’t you ever question him, then?’

  ‘Oh, I do! Of course I do! You still don’t understand! Dutch has never pretended to be right about everything. In class, when he got something wrong, and we told him, you know what he’d do? He’d just laugh. Do you know how rare that is in Turkey?’

  ‘You still let him dictate your thoughts,’ Jeannie dared to say.

  ‘Oh you think so, do you? Well, then let me ask you this then. If I let him dictate my thoughts, if I let anyone dictate my thoughts, do you think we’d be lying together on this bed?’

  15

  What exactly did he mean? She did not dare ask. Just to think of asking made her mind go blank. But she began to notice things. They refused to organise themselves into a picture, and for the same reason, they plagued her.

  She noticed, for example, that she and her father didn’t really have a relationship. At least, not the sort of relationship that she then thought ought to come naturally to fathers and their daughters. So while he was glad, even proud, to have her living with him, and eager, almost too eager, to sit down with a bourbon and a pile of books to ruminate on what he insisted on calling the burning issues of our time, she could feel no real bond. No – it was worse than that. She felt as if she was more an idea to him than a real person.

  ‘This hurt me. Possibly because he, too, had always been more of an idea to me than a real person. It could hardly have been any other way, seeing as we had, until now, seen so little of each other. The problem was that I could not bear the cracks now forming in the image of Father I had always carried around with me. With every crack, it was harder for me to avoid seeing the man he really was. Or the father he wasn’t.

  For example: Thanksgiving, which we celebrated at Chloe’s. When Sinan turned up two hours late and glowering, I asked if he was okay. But it was my father who took him outside for a chat.

  Though Sinan was looking more cheerful when they returned, there was still an edge to his voice as he downed three bourbon sours too quickly. “That’s more like it!” said my father, pouring him a fourth. “Let the good times roll. Let’s party!” I can still hear his reckless laugh. The others laughing with him. I can even see how everyone was sitting, what they were wearing, and whether their glasses were half empty or half full. Which is not so surprising if you think of it. Keep a daughter in the dark, and she has no recourse but to develop a photographic memory.

  So here’s the scene: it’s six in the evening, but due to a dip in the gas supply, the turkey won’t be done until nine. Amy is dashing to and fro looking elegant and otherworldly in her mauve velvet bell-sleeved blouse and palazzo trousers. We’re playing the truth game. My father has just told three tales against himself and now he wants us to cross-examine him, to decide which one we believe. One involves a hitman, another a stolen baby. The third concerns a foiled assassination attempt, and when Sinan presses him for details, Chloe’s brother Neil (the family patriot) tells my father not to answer. “You’d be endangering national security!”

  Then Amy steps in. “Can’t you find something more edifying to talk about, on this day of all days? I’ve never heard anything so silly.”

  My father sighs. “Women! They always spoil the fun.”

  He is joking, of course. But at the same time, he means it.

  This is a man who is tiring of his mask, who, in spite of his better judgement, wishes someone would just reach out and tear it off. He is tired of keeping secrets, tired of slaving over reports that no one but his hated superiors will ever see, tired of always knowing better than the misinformed masses, tired of the Suits back home misinforming the higher-ups whenever his information does not suit their political agendas.

  He’s tired of consulates and diplomatic parties and trips to the Covered Bazaar with this year’s batch of new arrivals who’ve been sent to Turkey even though they are experts on Latin America because that is how the people in Washington make sure their diplomats stay loyal.

  He wants out. Forget politics. Make a new life with Amy, put down roots here, really get to grips with the history of the city. Write a book, perhaps. Do a little travelling. Teach a course or two. Have fun. Most of all, he longs to pick up the phone and dial a certain office outside Washington and “tell them to shove it.”

  But for now, it’s consolation enough to fret about someone else who is hemmed in on all sides, who deserves a bigger, better life and still has the chance to find it – given the right sort of guidance.

  “Come in for a nightcap, why don’t you,” my father says to Sinan as we make our way home. He sends me upstairs. “This won’t be long,” he says.

  But when I come downstairs at four in the morning, they are still deep in conversation. The air is stale – smoke flavoured with bourbon. Sinan is sitting, perched forward in his chair, frowning but also nodding as my father gently chides him for “avoiding the issue”, for playing into the problem, for “sneaking around” and “making dubious friends” instead of standing up to his father “like a man”, for letting “fashionable rebels” dictate his thoughts, instead of asking what he has to give to the world, what he has that is special. Sinan’s shoulders sag with every new reproach, and then there is the searing shock of recognition.

  This is what it looks like.

  This is what a good father can do.

  This is how my father might have talked to me, if I’d been a boy.’

  As autumn progressed, so, too, did the arguments about safety. Which had everything to do with Jeannie not being a boy. Though her father trusted her, though his confidence in Jeannie’s ‘innate’ common sense was absolute, though he did not want to cramp her style, he couldn’t just leave her ‘to it’ as he might have done the son he’d never had. This was a tricky city for young women at the best of times, and now, with things heating up the way they were, he didn’t want her to think she could just go anywhere: ‘I’d hate to see you walk into something ugly,’ he said. ‘Even if nothing bad happened, you’d lose your nerve.’ As the bombs grew more numerous that autumn, and the little scuffles between students and the police in the downtown universities escalated into gunbattles, he kept adding new names to the list of places Jeannie had to promise to avoid.

  She’d tell him where she wanted to go and he’d shake his head and say, ‘Not on a Saturday afternoon, you’re not,’ or ‘That’s no place for a blonde pony-tail.’ His five categories of danger in descending order were: ‘absolutely not,’ ‘you must be joking,’ ‘only if you have no alternative,’ ‘that should be okay but I still want you to keep your eyes peeled,’ and ‘what a relief.’

  ‘Of course I resented this. Of course I had no way of understanding that it was not just a question of physical safety. He wanted to protect me from reality. He knew, perhaps from bitter experience, that too great a dose of reality would force the issue. As indeed it did.’

  One place she was meant to avoid at all cost was Beyazıt Square, in the Old City. But on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, something went wrong with the school heating system and they were let out early, and Lüset asked the gang to go down with her to the Covered Bazaar to help her buy a leather coat.

  Usually you had to fight your way past milling crowds, staggering porters, and darting boys with trays of tea. But today the main thoroughfare was almost empty – for every customer there were ten anxious shopkeepers trying to charm her into buying their finest necklace, carpet, copper tray. They all used the same gestures, and the same eye tricks. Jeannie could almost hear the beat they all danced to. In the beginning, when Chloe and she were walking in front, there was an effort to guess their nationality. French? Dutch? German? English? American? At the sound of Suna’s harsh, admonishing Turkish, their smirks faded into abject murmurs, obsequious nods and bowed heads.

  They visited every leather shop in the bazaar: Lüset, for whom shopping was a loathsome chore, couldn’t find a single coat s
he liked. With each new coat that Suna found, Lüset would puff out her lips, confer with her reflection, shake her head. Suna would snort and light up a cigarette. Chloe would pick out the coat of her dreams, the glacé leather monstrosity she’d have bought in a flash had she been rich like Lüset. Suna would take one look at it and say, ‘But what can you be thinking, my dear girl? This is a disaster. Look at those buttons! Those seams! And the leather! Is it even leather, or plastic for the price of leather?’

  When they had worked their fruitless way to the far end of the bazaar, Suna remembered that there was a book she needed for the talk she’d be giving at Current Affairs Club the following afternoon. It was her wish, she said, ‘to draw a line between last weekend’s bombing of the US Officer’s Club in Ankara and the forgotten atrocities of the Korean War.’ Off they went to Sahaflar, the second hand book market, to watch Suna and Lüset browse. The air was chilly and although most stalls had braziers, Jeannie still got the shivers. Was this why they noticed her? From time to time a stallkeeper asked Suna who ‘these foreigners’ were. Without looking up, she would say they were Americans. On hearing this, the other customers – all very serious customers, serious leftwing students with Che Guevara moustaches and army surplus coats – would glare at them.

  ‘I don’t know about you,’ Chloe said to Jeannie. ‘But I’m beginning to feel…hmm… What’s the word I’m looking for?’

  ‘American?’ Jeannie said.

  As another customer looked up to glare at them, they began to giggle. ‘So what do you say?’ said Chloe. ‘Time for the Americans to go home?’

  They’d meant to go straight down to the sea and catch a ferry from Eminönü but they dipped into a side street to shake off two men who seemed to be following them, and soon they were lost. The meandering alleyways of that neighbourhood were always teeming in the daytime, but this afternoon they were more crowded and agitated than ever. Turning into a main street, they were almost knocked down by a ragged cluster of men running in the opposite direction. Hearing a roar in the distance – and a muffled chant, a siren, breaking glass – Beyazıt Square, it had to be – they turned around, too. But they made the mistake of running into a cul-de-sac. When they turned around, there were upwards of twenty men blocking the way. One was holding a club.