The ease with which he deflected my insults: “You would not say such things if you were not desperate. It grieves me, of course. I am speaking now of your distress. But this was my point all along. In fact, I made this point to your father on Day One. He should never have opened the door. You and Sinan should never have met. Your child should never have been born.”
I should never have thrown that ashtray at his head.
“What did you do with him?” I screamed. “What kind of deal did you make? Don’t you think for a minute I’m going to let you get away with this!”
His assistant had me firmly by the arm and was ushering me out the door by then, but İsmet held up his hand, and said, “A word to the wise, Mrs Sinanoğlu. Your husband is hardly in a position at this moment to choose his allies. Indeed. If he could see you at this moment…”
“I’m not talking about Sinan now!” I cried. “I’m talking about my father!”
Encouraged by the tiniest lilt of surprise in his eyes, I said, “I’m not going to let this sit, you know. I’m going to find out where they took him, where you sent him. Even better, I’m going to find out why!”
What have I done? What have I done?
If Sinan and I had never met, I would have travelled through my year abroad like the tourist İsmet thinks I should have been. I would have gone home with my journals bursting with archaeological ecstasy and my American heart intact. I would have graduated from college with higher honours, the highest honours, and gone on to become…a curator. At the age of thirty, I would have married…another curator. By now I would have two wonderful children in their late teens. I’d be sitting at my kitchen table in Evanston or Boston or San Francisco, planning my first return trip to the city that has remained so vivid in my thoughts. And I’d be asking myself: how safe is it? I’d be phrasing a careful letter to Chloe, with whom I have been in warm correspondence for thirty-five years…
If Emre had never been born…I don’t have to imagine this. If Emre had never been born, I’d be as desolate, hollow, aching as I am today.
What if he was my last chance? What was the point? First I degraded myself. Then I threw an ashtray. Accused him of murder. Said I’d find proof…
In full view of his assistant. Suna says that was my biggest mistake. It’s one thing to insult someone. It’s quite another to make him lose face.
Of course – he more than rose to the occasion.
“Please – do not apologise. It is only natural. It is human nature! In the modern age, we sometimes forget the power of instinct. Had someone suggested to my mother that I should never have been born, she’d have done the same.”
The last thing he said to me: “Any word from Jordan?”
Tonight I was going around in the usual circles. What have I done? How much longer can I stand this limbo? What should I do? What can I do? And suddenly it’s so obvious: I have no choice but to “accept the job”. I’ll win Jordan’s trust, get a taste of the real world, find out how things are really done, instead of waxing poetic on how they should be done, and then, when he thinks he has me eating out of his hand, I’ll hold him to his promise. He’ll take me to Dutch Harding, dead or alive. He’ll lead me to my father’s grave.
If I can do that – if I can see what Jordan is and Jordan does and live to tell the tale – then they’ll have to relent. And repent. And set Sinan free.’
So ends the last entry in Jeannie Wakefield’s last journal.
In answer to the question that I’m sure you’ll want to ask, it is sitting here next to me, on the balcony of this beautiful Bebek apartment where so many characters in our story once lived, and where I myself first met Sinan. On this very balcony. Halfway between me and my devil. Who could have known?
When I make my next move – if I am in any position to make a next move – I shall leave the aforementioned journal for you in the safe deposit box we discussed earlier.
But now the time has come to take up the story where Jeannie was forced to drop it.
51
I have already described how I was pulled into this intrigue, sometimes against my will and always against my better judgement. I hope I’ve made it clear that I had doubts all along. The most obvious question being, ‘Why me? Why drag in a journalist best known for her pioneering work on mothers and babies?’ I’ve been over my head from the moment this started, ringed in by taciturn war correspondents, arrogant sociologists and retired spies. From the very beginning, they’ve been playing me off against each other. Feeding me stories, and hoping I’ll believe them. Hoping, perhaps, I’ll go on to convince others?
The first time that question came to me was at the Pasha’s Library. I am talking now about the last hours of my last visit, the day after Jeannie disappeared. As I sat there at Jeannie’s desk. As İsmet sat downstairs guarding the door. You may have marvelled at how easy it was for me: there on the computer, was Jeannie’s letter to me. There, on the shelves, were the journals. There, pressed between the pages, were samples of hair that I was to assume belonged to William Wakefield and Sinan. And just in case I didn’t make the necessary connections, there was İsmet himself, to jab a knowing finger at the poster for My Cold War, in which Sinan’s family is joined in one picture by William Wakefield. I was to gasp and shout ‘Eureka!’ Shout ‘incest!’ Jeannie and Sinan should never have been together because they were brother and sister. Jeannie, upon hearing that her child is the fruit of incest, had lost her mind with grief. Jordan being the agent of her destruction. The informer. The agent provocateur. She had set out from the Pasha’s Library that morning to track him down. Blow him up, if need be. Stop him before he did any more damage. Stop him to save her son. This was the story that İsmet and various others seemed to want me to tell. As I stood at the window, admiring the exalted view, I had to ask myself why.
If they were encouraging me to look where they were pointing, was there something behind me that they were hoping that a journalist best known for her pioneering work on mothers and babies might overlook?
I cannot say that I knew at once what to look for, or where I was most likely to find it. But I will concede that I was keyed up by the adverse responses to the piece I wrote three days later. It is rare to get such attention in ‘motherandbabyland’. I can see that it went to my head. I was also, I am ready to admit this, terrified. But there was vanity there, too. The truth, Mary Ann, is that, perhaps for the first time in my life, I felt important.
A story had chosen me. Pulled me back thirty-five years, to a place only I could see. To the castle on its wooded hillside; the Bosphorus with its endless parade of tankers, ferries, and fishing boats, the Asian shore with its palaces and villas, the brown and rolling hills that must, I thought, stretch as far as China. The golden destination! The first of many! But now I’ve come full circle. There’s someone behind me, erasing my tracks.
He’s been listening in on us, Mary Ann. He’s been pelting me with his unsigned threats since the day you and I began our correspondence. That he was passing my every communication onto others was clear from the outset. And yes, this caused me to speculate. Or rather, it sent me into that spiral of second guessing that forestalls clear thought.
I should have known what he would do when crude intimidation failed to silence me. And perhaps there were moments when I foresaw this – his last and most insidious refinement. But when you are taking risks with words, when you are out on a swaying limb, you can’t afford to step out of yourself to ask how your words might sound to others. To keep your balance, you must remain in the here and now, cling to the truth and blind yourself to its possible consequences.
Until last night, when I picked up my messages, and heard his voice. I am not speaking about our tormentor now, but his number one pawn. Though it has been thirty-five years since I last heard from him, he saw no need to name himself. He got straight to the point.
It hurts too much to recall his exact words. Let alone quote them. Suffice it to say that our correspondence has been made avai
lable to him. While I understand why he might question my motives – scorn my sources – label me as Jeannie’s executioner and İsmet’s pawn – I still burn at the injustice.
Open your eyes, Sinan! For once in your life, look the messenger in the face. This is the last time you’ll hear from me. I am too angry for words.
So tomorrow the theatre goes dark again. Tomorrow the bell will ring, and my devil will step inside. He thinks he’s won. Will he take me to her, as promised? Or will I have to find my own way?
So many unknowns. It’s hard to know what to pack. But there is one thing I’d be ill-advised to take with me. Mary Ann, the time has come for me to name names.
I have enjoyed our correspondence. I have enjoyed it so much, in fact, that I dread the prospect of it ending. But if I am to be truthful, Mary Ann, I’ll have to admit that what I have enjoyed most has been holding back this secret. Have you ever wondered why it was arranged that we should write to each other? Have you guessed what I am yet to tell you?
During the past four weeks, I have taken the trouble to acquaint myself with your many accomplishments, most notably at your present place of work. I have done background checks on a number of your illustrious colleagues at the Center for Democratic Change, with a view to seeing who amongst them has an interest in this part of the world. There are several, but the most interesting is a man named Stephen Svabo. Born in Hungary in 1948 to academic parents who managed to relocate to Princeton, New Jersey after the 1956 uprising. Degrees from Columbia and Harvard. Active in human rights since the 70s, and (by his own account) a frequent visitor to Turkish prisons. Links with several think tanks like yours, but no university affiliation. No public profile, and no photograph on Google, but, in print at least, a vocal critic of recent erosions of civil liberties in the US, including those eroded in the prosecution of Sinan Sinanoğlu. His most recent ‘abbreviated’ list of publications goes on for six pages.
In an earlier, less abbreviated list, he mentions an introduction he wrote for a 1980 anthology of ‘silenced voices’. One such voice is an abstruse East German poet called Manfred Berger. Having heard that name in other unlikely places, I’ve investigated further. I’ve discovered that a Manfred Berger did indeed have a small reputation as a poet in East Berlin during the 70s and 80s, and that he has done rather well for himself since reunification, albeit under his ‘real’ name, Dieter Dammer. After several years in Schroeder’s party, he moved out of politics and now works for a cultural foundation that has funded many sterling ventures in Eastern Europe and Turkey. It is in that capacity that he has accompanied several EU delegations to Turkey in recent years. He has appeared, unsmilingly, in several group photographs. A beaknosed man whose jet black hair is longer than normal for a bureaucrat, he is not to be confused with the Manfred Berger who has been writing so brilliantly for the US press in recent years on the crisis in US intelligence.
Or the Manfred Berger who sits on the board of a new Eastern European telecommunications venture in which İsmet Şen was a major investor.
Or the Manfred Berger whose name has been linked to a weapons manufacturer with whom İsmet Şen’s company also has links.
Or the Manfred Berger whose monograph Sinan showed to Jeannie in Dutch Harding’s office in the spring of 1971.
It was a penname, of course. A private joke. One alias amongst many.
Dutch Harding never existed either. At least, there was no one enrolled at Columbia during the years he was meant to be there. But a Stephen Svabo does appear in the 1968 yearbook. Or rather, his name does. There is no photograph. No proof.
Until today.
What is his particular interest in Turkey? Whose interests does he serve? I’m sure he won’t tell me, but I’m sure I can guess.
What I have to yet to understand is why, when I sat down with Suna last night, and told her what I knew, she had the gall to insist that –
Afterword by Suna Safran
September 2006
It was, perhaps, a cruel trick of fate that prompted my erstwhile friend, the intrepid investigator of mothers and babies, to send her story – which is also my story – out into the ether with its last sentence still dangling. Although we can only guess what prevented an orderly closure, it could have been a simple question of impatience. As her sometime collaborator, I have found to my cost that high emotion has a deleterious effect on her ability to spot small errors. So it is entirely possible that my dear, though fallible, friend sent out the wrong document. The message I received was dated March 16th 2006. With it came seven attachments and a truncated note:
‘Dear Suna,
In the hope that you are and I are still on speaking terms, I am writing to ask if…’
We had spent the previous evening – the Ides of March – together. We can assume this was the disagreement she was hoping to overcome.
So it is possible to conjecture a later document addressing this fracas in greater detail. Perhaps one day we shall find it stored in a discarded computer, or in the inbox of a Washington bureaucrat or floating amongst the soulless routemasters of outer cyberspace.
Of course – we could fashion our clues into more sinister shapings.
We could imagine, for example, that the lank-haired man padding down the hall in his slippers is not a phantasm, as some are claiming, but the villain in the flesh.
Or we could imagine a more treacherous scenario: he has not yet strutted onto the stage, but as she types her words, she feels as if each one is pulling him closer. How calm she feels! For once in her life, she is making the powerful quake in their boots. She is not running from her fears. She is facing them! She has joined the ranks of the righteous! But then, the ring of the doorbell. It tolls for her. Locked inside her shell of bravado, she cannot breathe. The journey from the chair to the door is the longest and most arduous she has ever taken.
But at the eleventh hour, she finds her voice. There is the short and hypocritical exchange on the intercom. The rush to the desk, the quick dispatching of the document, and perhaps she has misplaced her glasses. As she squints into the little browsing window, her wildly beating heart contrives for her to choose the almost finished document in the place of the one offering us the enlightenment we now crave.
Later that same day – and perhaps we can imagine her now in one of those Anatolian towns that rose from the dust only to serve food to Turkey’s bus-dwellers. Düzce, perhaps, if our friend and her self-styled guide have chosen to drive east via Ankara. Though the poet in me would prefer to see this wolf-in-guide’s-clothing en route to Izmir, and so obliged to use Susurluk, that truck-stop of scandal and deep state intrigue, as his point of refreshment. Gentleman that he is – gentleman that he pretends to be – he goes to pay for the food, and this, perhaps, is when my friend M reaches into her hidden pocket for her hidden phone to give the only woman she trusts the pertinent details of her itinerary, moving on to outline for this same faithful friend her proposed modes of future communication.
So, alas, it falls to me, Suna Safran, to finish the story I never chose to tell. By this I do not mean to confirm the truth of the preceding paragraph. It should be taken as offered, as pure conjecture for which there is no shred of truth. My intention is only to finish the story that M had only just begun when she was so rudely interrupted – in short, to offer a full account of the argument she was describing, at the very moment when she fell into the lion’s maw.
But before I begin, I must ask my readers to understand that – however angry my words, both on that occasion and on some if not all of the pages that follow – we are still and ever will be held together by the golden thread of friendship.
It is a thread of the highest value in this land of ours. Whatever our failings, whatever passions fire our hearts, we honour our friends. And our teachers. Perhaps foolishly, but always with an open heart, we reserve our greatest thanks for those teachers who have shown us kindness, and who, in so doing, have opened our minds.
Billie Broome. She was a parago
n of this mould. Without her books and her kind smile, where would I be now?
Dutch Harding – he was her idol, too. To Sinan, to Haluk, to Rıfat and so many others, he was more than that. He was the word of God. The shining light that gave their pain meaning.
So naturally we protected him. From the aspersions of others, and from our own doubts. Of course we were outraged – betrayed! – by the accusations of Jeannie Wakefield at the garçonniere on that fateful afternoon in June 1971. Of course it was easy for our beloved mentor to convince us that the true villain in our midst – the informer – the agent provocateur – was not the man who had opened our eyes to the world, but a green-eyed disciple who had gone over to the enemy.
Were we surprised at our bookish mentor’s skill with firearms? Why should we have been? He was American. Didn’t all Americans have guns? Were we surprised, when we reached the Pasha’s Library, that he had the key, that he knew even where to find the shovel? Perhaps, but we were also impressed at his deep and thorough knowledge of the enemy. Our enemy. Did we help him bury poor Rıfat, the informer, the betrayer, the devil in our midst? Yes, of course we did. We feared for our Dutch Harding. We knew – we believed – that his life was in danger. That İsmet was after him, and with him, William Wakefield. So yes. We helped him escape. To cover up his tracks, we jumped from windows.
Enlightenment Page 41
