Fire & Wind

by Leo Gher

“You don’t have to do anything, just talk to Natia.” It wasn’t only his daughters; Sam Mansour was reticent in most social situations. He got worse after Tom Moynihan died; felt lost, and had a hard time making new friends.

  “What happened to Bobby… what’s his name?”

  “You mean Bobby Hiller,” Iza said. “That’s done. At their age they get into a fight, then it’s over as quick as it started.”

  “What’s his name, this new boyfriend?”

  “Nathan Shrock. Professor’s Shrock’s son. You know, the English Department chair.”

  “Should I send her a congratulatory note?”

  “Don’t be a smartass.”

  “What about Elene?”

  “There you go again. You’ve got to get closer to both girls,” Iza said, then, “All the 14-year-olds just go out together, boys and girls.”

  “They’re pulling away from me, you know,” Sam complained.

  “Welcome to the club.” Now that they had reached cruising altitude, the clouds were gone, and the sky was an enveloping pale blue from western horizon to deep indigo at the zenith above. It would take the travelers a little more than three hours to complete the journey from Warsaw to Tbilisi.

  Changing the subject, Sam asked, “So what does your mother say these days?”

  Iza replied, “She tells me that she is dying.”

  “A little exaggeration, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Don’t be dismissive, Sam. She’s an old woman, and to her people, she’s a saint.” Chira Beggs had just turned 80, and Iza was getting more and more concerned about her health, so Sam and Iza had moved up their annual visit to spring break.

  A moment later, the flight attendant interrupted, “Hard roll or bran muffin?”

  “I’ll have the muffin.”

  “Me too, and coffee with cream.”

  Sam looked across Iza’s shoulder and out the window. Off in the far distant east, Sam could see an occluded front appearing on the horizon. “Bad weather over there,” he said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “An old friend, JK Burke. You remember him?”

  “Of course, Tom’s old boss.”

  “Yeah, he used to school me about the weather when we traveled. He was a nervous flyer, and wanted to know everything that might bring down a plane, especially the weather.”

  “An omen, then, this gathering storm in the east?”

  Sam wondered about it, “Just weather.” And then he changed the subject again. “Never understood this business of saints your mother is always talking about.”

  Iza offered a reason, “Most of her people were either Sufi or Alevi… you know, mysticism, the blending of religion, mythology, and culture.”

  “Not theologians, then?”

  “In the wild country that was the Kars Province of her youth, mullahs and imams were few and far between. She grew up with a simple belief in Haji Veli, the most famous of the Alevi saints.”

  Alevi Muslims stand apart from most others of the Islamic faith. Alevi men and women are treated as equals in all ways, even worshiping together. Alevi women have no dress conventions, and, more often than not, wear modern clothes. Alevi parents encourage their daughters to get the best educations they can, and that they are free to go into any profession they choose.

  “A sacred person, then?”

  “Not exactly sacred; that’s a Western notion,” Iza replied. “As you know, I’m not an expert when it comes to religion, Islam or otherwise.” She was trying to find the right words. “Custodian, helper, friend… a person chosen by God – supposedly – who is endowed with special gifts. Chira can heal, you know.”

  “Your mother, a doctor?”

  “A faith healer.”

  Sam Mansour was dumbfounded by this revelation. “Why have we never talked about this?”

  “Communication, Sam, communication,” Iza nagged once more. “But no, it’s never been part of our lives. Don’t forget the worlds from which we came. Growing up in the United States is very different from growing up in the Caucasus. It makes a difference.”

  “You don’t consider it real, do you?”

  “For many Kurdish people belief is more important than facts.”

  “You don’t believe that!”

  “I don’t, but her people do. You should ask her about her skills to cure when you see her. She’ll talk your ear off.”

  “I’d like to hear what she has to say,” Sam replied, “I just might do that.”

  Chira Beggs lived in Kojori, a small village 20 miles west of Tbilisi. It was not by choice that she lived in Georgia, but because her old homestead near Kars, Turkey, had been subjected to Turk-Armenian skirmishes for more than 40 years. Tbilisi was easier these days, and Chira made a modest living as an Alevi saint—a minor saint, of course.

  In the Kurdish language, the name Chira meant the bringer of light, which suited Mrs. Beggs’ remarkable personality. She was much like her daughter: tall, dark-skinned, clear-eyed, stout, now a little tubby, but she had beautiful, long white tresses that fell to her waist. Outside of her home, she covered her hair, not for religious piety but because that’s what was expected of a faith healer. In the West, she would have been called a spiritualist.

  When she was 22, she married John Beggs. He was an oil worker, one of the men who helped build the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline. Chira and John had loved each other dearly, but their time together was chaotic and stressful. Mainly, Alevi elders did not approve of a marriage to an outsider, let alone to a Christian. Chira foresaw troubled times ahead… and loss. She was right. The marriage didn’t last long: not because of marital differences, but because John died in a gas explosion a month before pipeline construction was completed. Iza was a kid, just 14 when her father vanished from her life. It left a mark deep within her big, beautiful, charismatic self, an everlasting rage against feckless fate.

  At lunch the next day, Sam decided to follow up on his promise to ask Chira about her gifts. “Iza tells me that Kurdish people don’t use modern medicine?”

  Chira was surprised by the question. No one had ever questioned her about that. She responded sheepishly, “Some do, some don’t. In Kojori, a goodly number don’t trust doctors, so they come to me.” Iza was ignoring the discussion. She was happy to be home, but exhausted.

  “Why are they fearful?”

  “Because it has limits, Western medicine that is.”

  “That’s not logical, Chira.”

  Cheekily, she shot back, “I don’t believe in logic, Mr. Mansour.” Sam laughed, knowing that his mother-in-law was fearless in an argument.

  “Okay,” he reconsidered, “what’s wrong with Western medicine?

  “It has a mixed record,” said Chira. “For many, such practices often fail to examine the connection between physical illness and spiritual affliction.” Chira’s customers came to her for what they saw as a redeeming encounter.

  “Okay, what’s the connection?”

  Chira rolled her eyes and raised an index finger to indicate that she suspected sarcasm. “If you wish to understand why the cures of saints are more helpful than those of Western doctors, you will have to first rethink your unschooled attitude about folk medicine.”

  She had thrown down the gauntlet. Nonetheless, Sam countered, “I cannot refute what is not science.”

  “You see me as a shaman, a reader of tea leaves, but parlor magic is not what saints do, or how Alevi mysticism works.”

  “Go on.”

  Iza watched the jousting between her husband and mother. “You’re not going to win this argument, Sam. Not on Chira’s turf.”

  But Sam didn’t back down, “Faith healing has no….”

  She cut him off. “The ablest doctor can only put folks back into their previous physical condition. Doctors know nothing about remedies for longstandi
ng ill health, let alone the essential aim of all healing.”

  “Which is?”

  The old woman didn’t hesitate. “Redemption, of course.”

  Iza was amused, and chimed in, “There it is – a saint’s view of the Western world.”

  “We have alternative ways,” Chira said. “I am a student of history, and history is a living thing, not something dead in a book. You just have to be smart enough to read the signs, and project into the future.”

  “Iza, you didn’t tell me that your mother was both healer and soothsayer.”

  “Tell him about Aslan, mother.”

  “The lion of Derbent?”

  Iza said, “She foretold of a man rising to power in the north, but that he would be struck down by a great power, and his people would be swallowed up.”

  “Not much of a prediction, Iza,” Chira cautioned. “It has happened over and over in this accursed land.”

  “So, Chira, tell me something I don’t know.”

  Chira paused before speaking again, worried that her words might be misunderstood. She shifted uncomfortably in her chair, then looked into her daughter’s eyes and said, “Bәla is coming.” Iza was taken aback. Bәla was a word not used lightly by the Kurds.

  “Bәla?” Sam had no clue.

  Eyeing Sam impatiently, Iza said, “It means menace, peril, a great evil.” She turned back to Chira. “Seriously, mother, how do you know this?”

  Neither Sam nor Iza had a chance to follow up. Sam’s iPhone began its annoying ringtone. It was the Kedar Bey calling from Baku, and he had a request.

  Three days later, Sam, Iza, and Chira Beggs were traveling west on the M80 highway and were now about 75 miles west of Tbilisi in the Lesser Caucasus Mountain Range. They had crossed the top pass and could see a massive lake to the south. “That’s Lake Panavani,” Chira said, “and Mount Samsari is to the west. It has a huge caldera, but it’s hard to see because the floor is hidden by debris from the last volcanic eruption.”

  Chira sat in the front seat. Iza thought it might be a more comfortable ride for the 80-year-old. “How are you doing, mother?”

  “Fine,” she replied. “Don’t worry about me. I’m not a baby doll.”

  “In November, you said you were dying.”

  “Well, I am dying… just not today.”

  The son-in-law chimed in, “Not for a week, at least. You’re our guide. Who else could get us through the wilds?” Sam had rented a Land Rover. He knew the terrain would be challenging, and felt confident that the 4x4, turbocharged SUV would get them across any mountain and through most streams on their way to Kars Provence in Turkey.

  “When we get to the southern end of the lake,” Chira said, “we’ll need to avoid the village at Highway 11. It’s an Armenian listening station.”

  “More Alevi magic?”

  Chira took him seriously, “When I was young, our family had to flee the fighting between the Turks and Armenians. This is the way we escaped the carnage.”

  “Ninots? Is that the village?” Iza asked. She had googled a map of the region.

  “Yes,” Mother Beggs replied. “And Highway 11 is the key access road between the Black Sea and Yerevan.”

  “So, Sam, tell us again what Conor said.”

  “He was very concerned about Rufet,” Sam began. “Said he hadn’t heard from him in several months.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Very. They usually text two or three times each week if they aren’t in touch by phone.”

  “Did he check in with Rufet’s family?”

  “Conor asked Mira’s husband to search there and in the mountains, but Seyfulla found nothing. Rufet was supposed to meet Conor in London, but after the attack at Ephesus everything blew up, and he went missing.”

  “What’s going on?” Iza asked. “Why all this subterfuge?”

  “He hinted that Azerbaijan was about to explode… something big at hand,” Sam explained. “He asked us to keep everything hush-hush. Maybe you’re right, Chira. Maybe Bәla is coming our way.”

  “Not just here,” Chira said. “It’s bigger than that.”

  Two hours later, they had crossed the Georgia-Turkey border, caught the main highway south, and headed straight for Kars. If there was any possibility that Rufet was still there, they were confident that Chira’s local knowledge would be the key to finding him.

  23

  The Brothers Kos

  The educational system of Azerbaijan during Soviet times, was, by design, schizophrenic. On the one hand, all Azeri language instruction was forbidden: Azeri script was banned, textbooks were burned, and teachers could not speak their native language, not even on the playground. On the other hand, Russian instruction was encouraged: Russian schools were free, Cyrillic was the script, and Russian was the standard prose for all textbooks.

  Some Azeri citizens, nevertheless, did have a choice other than the government-run Russian system – the British school. And that’s where the vast majority of the ruling Houses of Azerbaijan sent their kids. And once they had completed their primary and secondary education, it was off to European universities for most.

  The exception was Viktor Kos. He was so steeped in Russian history and heritage that he selected the Russian schools for his sons. But it was more than tradition that persuaded the newest of the ruling elites not to follow the other Houses. Viktor was shrewd not just in politics, but in all things where he thought he could acquire an advantage. He knew that the Kos boys would dominate the vast majority of common Azeris who attended the Russian schools. “Always remember, Vanya,” Viktor would intone, “in this world, there are elites and serviles, and you must be the winner of the huggermugger game.”

  Utterly oblivious to his father’s schemes, the six-year-old Vanya reacted hostilely to what he thought was an affront to his playmates, “But I like Cid and Nico, Papa.”

  “Like them for what they can do for you,” Viktor would discipline, “otherwise, they are just life’s losers.” After many such lessons, Vanya accepted his father’s advice and acquired his ways. It suited him. The future Bey was well-liked, at first. He was, after all, one of the privileged few, and his chums would often scramble frantically to find their place among his chosen friends.

  His mother, Aydan, encouraged the self-absorbed behavior. She would throw elaborate birthday parties for her son, the sole purpose of which was to show off Vanya’s collection of scooter cars, fancy clothes, and latest Nintendo games. In subsequent weeks, Vanya would hand out pictures of himself receiving presents, followed with, “As you can see, I’m the most popular boy in school.” In those early years at school, Vanya found intimacy difficult, realizing that he had little empathy for others. In fact, his lording over his classmates became a testing ground for his life-long egotistical behavior.

  By age nine, Vanya took to taunting others who had to work to support their families. He would often offer them the clothes he no longer wanted, and then laugh behind their back when they accepted his charity. Vanya became more and more antagonistic, particularly toward younger boys. His teachers regularly marked him as a bully. His mother, however, could not imagine that Vanya might have a character disorder and paid no attention to the school reports. Viktor, on the other hand, approved of such behavior, and even complimented his son, saying, “I see that you have learned, Vanya, how to apply the lessons of those who rule.” The boy relished the praise.

  Everyone in the family thought they knew how his personality would develop in the coming years. But Vanya was, in fact, acutely insecure about his standing outside of the family situation. His grandiosity, need for attention, and belittling others were merely cover-ups that made him feel powerful and relevant when he really was not. He was always in need of motherly encouragement, but sometimes Aydan’s affection was a muddle to the boy. An overly strict woman who suffered from neurotic tendencies, she c
ould be cold with family, friends, servants, and sometimes with Vanya himself. Viktor, on the other hand, did little to inspire the boy’s confidence. As a result of these very mixed messages, Vanya’s response to even mild criticism was to become wildly unhinged and pout for days. All this was before the arrival of a second wife six years later and her son a year after that.

  For Vanya, little Vladimir was entirely unexpected – a world-altering complication for which Vanya had limited preparation and absolutely no understanding. So, he dealt with the wrinkly pooping-peeing thing the same way he had dealt with his schoolmates. He turned to aggression, meting out taunts and tantrums on his new rival. By the time Vlad was four, Vanya’s verbal and physical abuse was unrelenting.

  As the boys grew older, they had adjoining bedrooms on the second floor, and at least twice a week, Vanya would invite Vlad to his room to play. It was odd seeing boys of such different ages taking part in make-believe. It regularly ended in some form of torment: Vanya telling Vlad how stupid he was, yelling at the boy for childish behavior until he cried, or squeezing Vlad’s ears to see if he could stand the pain like a man. Vanya would laugh, taking pleasure in the agony he caused his brother. To say the least, the boys never bonded.

  At the sound of her son squealing, Dina would rush in and unload thunderous admonishments on Vanya. Of course, such rebuke was unacceptable to Aydan, and the two women would quarrel until one or the other would walk away in sheer exhaustion. Just before Vladimir reached his teenage years, Vanya settled on harassing the boy about his appearance. The older brother would regularly convey how ugly Vlad was to everyone in the neighborhood. Once puberty arrived, such activities intensified, and Vladimir was exposed to almost daily abuses about his looks.

  Vlad, however, if not a quick study, was a cunning apprentice to his brother’s cruelties. By the time he entered high school, Vladimir had understood the nature of his brother’s behavior. He recognized that what Vanya said was nothing but bunkum, and most importantly, that his older brother was a person who was insecure and vulnerable. Vlad cleverly turned the tables. When friends began drifting away because of Vanya’s vanities, Vlad would echo the acerbities. It worked. Soon the brothers Kos were on equal footing. Eventually, they formed a non-aggression pact that suited both – Vanya continued to live in a fantasy world of self-aggrandizement, and Vlad was set free to explore a nasty track of his own.