The Sultan of Byzantium

by Selcuk Altun

  I thought I might try an academic career in economics. Haji Ulviye liked serious titles like Governor/General/Professor. She agreed to finance my sojourns outside the country so long as the process ended in a professorship. My favorite Columbia professor was Assael Farhi, the son of an Istanbul Balat family, who used to teach on a doctoral program at the London School of Economics. I applied and was accepted for the winter term, which meant my current ‘holiday’ was extended for three months. I went to Italy for two weeks. There I dropped in on Elsa, who was running an art gallery in Venice. She shared her spooky mansion with a woman artist who smelled of paint thinner.

  ‘You look like one of those antique Mediterranean gentlemen,’ the artist said, ‘the type that women would just love to exterminate.’

  Over dinner at the mansion Elsa filled me in on Alberto. He had emigrated to Australia and was now teaching chemistry at a Sydney high school. His wife worked in the human resources department of a hospital and was six years older than he. I booked a ticket to Australia, excited to see Alberto again, but things did not go well. His wife did not miss a chance to scold him. I endured their soulless house for a week, then took a train up to Adelaide. Just because its name was Ararat, I stopped off at a remote station in the outback for two days. From Sydney I flew to Alexandria, my last stop. There I wandered among the places where Cavafy had once sequestered himself reciting his last poems like a long prayer.

  It was mid-autumn when I returned to Istanbul, where I was thoroughly bored by an old high school friend’s wedding. The cheap wine they served gave me a headache in the bargain. On the way home I sank down on a bench in front of the Tower and chatted with the kids hanging out there, whose families were migrants from eastern Anatolia. They weren’t impressed when I ticked off the names of the small towns and smaller villages they’d all come from. I rose, hoping to sober up by strolling the silent and deserted streets in the pleasant evening. I began walking in the direction of the thin wind that was blowing towards me. The street, so narrow a bicycle could barely get down it, was a source of annoyance. A little way into it I saw a girl of seven or eight crying in front of a half-abandoned building with a single light burning on the third floor. She wore a one-size-too-small sweatshirt and sweatpants and no shoes. She was shivering. I couldn’t keep from thinking that her teardrops were prettier than pearls. Moved, I took off my jacket and wrapped it around her. The dark olive-eyed girl was Devran Abi’s daughter Hayal. Her father had often brought her to his café when she was a baby. She was a sweet girl. I remembered how she would run to me and wrap her arms around my leg whenever she saw me. Devran had died of cancer, may he rest in peace, when I was in New York. His widow then married an old friend of his whom Devran had considered of dubious character. Now Hayal told me that her mother had died in hospital two days earlier, and her stepfather had put her out of the house.

  I knew there would be no answer, but I rang the worthless bastard’s doorbell all the same. I turned to the shivering girl and said, ‘Come and stay with us tonight. You’ll be rid of that drunk, God willing, by tomorrow.’ With that I picked her up and hoisted her on my back. She cried until she fell asleep with her head on my shoulder. The tick-tock of her little heart and the warmth of her body were too much for me; tears came to my eyes. I was a well-regarded idle man who hadn’t yet done any good deeds for anyone. My mother received the surprise as she was watching TV.

  ‘Akile,’ I said, ‘this princess is my new sister.’

  The next day Iskender Abi and I buried Hayal’s mother. In exchange for a bit of money the stepfather turned the child over to me and left Galata for good.

  Hayal was as sturdy as her father. She overcame her trauma with a little help from a psychologist and grew into a smart and charming young girl. She’s a student now at the Austrian High School; she wants to be a doctor. She parts her hair in the middle because I like it like that. She calls my grandmother ‘Haji Grandma’, and my mother, ‘Mama Akile’, She goes with Haji Grandma to my grandfather’s grave, to the spa in Gönen, and to visit her sister in Artvin. Is it a rule that an old annoying custom should haunt you from the cradle? Since older brothers are supposed to marry first, Hayal is convinced, in view of my confirmed bachelorhood, that her turn will never come. ‘Mama Akile,’ she likes to complain, ‘I’ll never have a chance to get married.’

  *

  I spent my four years in London as a postgraduate living in an apartment near to the British Museum. I could walk from there to the university in fifteen minutes. From the front the brick building looked like it was built by Lego. Only after I moved in did I notice a plaque in the lobby commemorating the fact that the Nobelist Bertrand Russell had lived there. During one of her religious holidays my mother came with Hayal to visit. I took Hayal to the London Zoo, since she wanted to go – before that I hadn’t even gone to circuses, believing they were a symbol of enslavement. But at the lions’ cage – was I awake or dreaming? – my eyes locked with those of a young lioness. We gazed at each other a long time, then she came to the edge of the cage and bowed her head as if she wanted me to pat it. The rest of her family stood gazing sympathetically at me, like they were waiting for my signal to attack. The other big cats, the tigers and panthers, said hello to me from a distance by wagging their tails. The next month I went again to the zoo and again enjoyed the same rites of hospitality. It occurred to me that these noble cats perhaps recognized a real friend at first sight. I thought of Tristan with great longing. Thanks to Tristan I’d learned the Latin names of hundreds of bird species. When my grandmother refused to buy me an aquarium, I bombarded her with the names of the twenty-seven kinds of shark that lived in our seas. The better I got to know people, the more I respected animals. I always loved children, especially mischievous little girls with runny noses. I used to go to Tünel Square just to hand out change to the child beggars there. My grandmother said, ‘If I don’t will my fortune to the Children’s Charity Foundation I’m afraid you’ll do it for me.’

  For the last six years I’ve been teaching two days a week at Bosphorus University. Last year, when I was promoted to associate professor, my grandmother asked, ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘Well, if professors are generals, then I’m a colonel,’ I said.

  ‘All right,’ she said. ‘In that case, congratulations.’

  I started teaching one day a week at Kadir Has University too, simply because I never felt bored on my walks to that nostalgic building on the Golden Horn. The students, who lose their innocence as soon as they start making money, all call me ‘Hocam’, which means ‘my professor’ and it warms my heart. In my free time I read poetry, study semiology or play chess, and compose Sudoku puzzles. If I happen to go out into the city, I’m appalled at the colossal new skyscrapers. And I feel truly sorry for all those people running around like robots in blue jeans. As I confessed to Tristan, I’m more than ready to work for any honest political leader who could save the country from turning into Boorishstan. Other than that I find no reason to be acquitted of Galata.

  During my first summer vacation while I was at Columbia, I became my grandmother’s neighbor by moving into my mother’s perpetually empty apartment. I furnished it with antiques from old Galata mansions: my desk, my weary armchair, my end tables and the busts on them of my family members. Eugenio, hearing that I’d already introduced the busts to Tristan, said, ‘You’re a one-of-a-kind animist.’ I hung some old maps on the living-room wall in the places vacated by my mother’s library shelves. One of the maps was a 1559 engraving by Sebastian Münster. It was the most exciting object among a treasure trove that one of my grandfathers – not even my grandmother could remember which one – had left behind. The map, which Hayal described as a graphic novel squeezed onto a single sheet of paper, pictured Galata before the Conquest. Everything was in a jumble behind the ancient citadel walls, with our Tower standing erect and powerful beside an aqueduct.

  I collected quite a few old map books with money I squeezed out of my gra
ndmother for school expenses. I took courses in Latin to examine them more thoroughly. All the city names on those maps never failed to be poetic. The ones I focused on, letter by letter, drew me inside their walls. I was taken on exemplary tours; I supposed I was expected to experience what had happened to humanity because of individual mistakes.

  Alberto, whose mother forced him to listen to classical music for half an hour every night because she thought it sharpened the mind, used to cheat off me in school every chance he got. To me, classical music was like an insistent lullaby, and pop music assorted canned vegetables. In Istanbul a great many musical-instrument shops were to be found on Galip Dede Street, which connects the Galata district to Istiklal Avenue. Hayal once asked, ‘Abi, are you trying to make people think and laugh at the same time?’ I told her I hurried down that street to keep the instruments hanging in the shop windows from squirting anti-musical notes at me. My own musical notes were, and are, the sound of the wind rustling through the labyrinths of our neighborhood, the screams of seagulls, the foghorns, the train whistles, the prayer calls and church bells and giggles of little girls – natural and free of expectation. If I’m in the mood for a symphony, I take a very long journey.

  Our rental income is deposited into my grandmother’s bank account. After expenses, what’s left is divided half into dollars, half into Turkish lira and put into three interest-bearing accounts, one for each of us. But my mother and I aren’t allowed to touch our accounts. My grandmother puts $7500 into mine every month; this amount is adjusted periodically on the basis of parity with the prime minister’s salary. I’m sure, incidentally, that my mother’s is indexed to that of the president. Hayal has to kiss her grandmother’s hand to get her allowance.

  I collected watches and took theme trips. Having no reason to save money was the source of my freedom. In my student years I wandered across Anatolia to see its castles, ancient bridges and lighthouses. I went to Geneva to admire the watches in the shop windows, to Tarifa for the killer whales, to Druridge Bay for the bird sanctuary, to Umman for the stingrays, to Odessa to play chess with a master who was a transvestite. People were surprised at my not knowing the silent woman in the group on a picnic with Marieta and Schalk in Namibia’s Harnas Nature Park. Marieta and Schalk were two tame lions; the woman with violet eyes was a Hollywood star named Angelina Jolie.

  Hayal loves watching the fishermen on the Galata Bridge. I go there with her if she’s not on good terms with her boyfriend. According to some banners hung on the bridge on orders of the mayor, today, May 29, 2008 is the 555th anniversary of the Conquest of Istanbul from the Byzantines. That means I’ll be thirty-three tomorrow. Those banners remind me of all my uncelebrated birthdays. But then, as Oscar Wilde said, ‘After twenty-five everybody is the same age.’ On my birthdays I grow tired of never getting tired.

  I ought to call Madam Olga, who knows me as Engin Galatali, from a phone booth. Not because I make love to two girls at the same time but because I started reading the poems of her countryman Joseph Brodsky, Olga the retired teacher calls me, ‘My Sultan’.

  BETA

  At the beginning of my teaching career Eugenio told me, ‘Each of your students is like a candle given to you for safekeeping. Don’t forget.’

  I did more than my share; I warmed my heart with their flickering light. Creating a stress-free atmosphere in my classes, I succeeded in becoming their confidant. Once a year I took them to Galata and guided them through the labyrinthine neighborhood. Female students wrote me love letters. Male students, owing to my love of poetry, tried lining me up with women in the department of literature. I was well aware that they respected me for my unusual journeys.

  I proposed to fly to the capital of Eritrea on June 15, 2008. I wanted to acquaint myself with the minimalist architecture of Asmara and at the same time meet up with Leo Punto, who had settled in the city for its beautiful name, for a game of chess or two. After that I planned to meet my old grad-school friend James Hill in Dar es Salaam. We intended to conquer Kilimanjaro, above the Serengeti Plain.

  On the morning of June 5, I opened a courier-delivered envelope and it became clear that I would have to cancel my plans for Asmara. On the purple sheet of paper that fell out of it was a mysterious invitation:

  Distinguished Sir:

  I was a friend of your grandfather, may he rest in peace. I would be pleased to see you at the Four Seasons Hotel in Sultanahmet tomorrow at 14:00. Please bring with you that Christophoro de Bondelmontibus map you have at home, but don’t take it from its frame. I have no interest in the Constantinople map. The other item is much more important, and I have excellent news for you.

  One of my assistants will meet you in the lobby.

  With the hope that our meeting will remain confidential between us, and

  My deepest respect,

  Nikos Askaris

  It was handwritten in black ink; I read it twice. The first irritating point was the exaggeratedly respectful final sentence of this friend of my grandfather. It seemed forced to me and perhaps an early warning of an oncoming burden. As I dusted off the framed map drawn in 1422 by the Florentine priest Bondelmontibus and laid it on my desk, I wondered about this Askaris, who had not omitted the diacritical mark in my name. On the engraving under the glass my eye took in Galata. The walls that besieged the city from the north and the west seemed to be dancing the halay in a circle around the Tower. The Byzantine remnants inside the city walls appeared as timid as pawns on a chessboard. I phoned the hotel and asked for Nikos Askaris. To the man who answered in a high-pitched voice I said, ‘I’m calling to hear you say that you’re not making an illegal proposal.’ When Askaris replied in accent-free Turkish and pronounced the second syllable of my name correctly as well I felt somewhat relieved. I wrapped up the little map with care and prepared for the meeting. Suddenly, I was wondering about the nature of a potential burden. I changed my mind and decided not to call Madame Olga. All of a sudden I had a craving for George Seferis. I took The Complete Works from the shelf and opened it at random:

  What are you hunting, old friend?

  After so many years

  Under foreign skies

  Far from your own land

  You’ve come home from exile

  Hanging on to all those memories.

  *

  Whenever I go to Sultanahmet Square I seem to step back into different eras from the past. This time I found myself in the festive atmosphere of the Byzantine hippodrome. The shouts of the fanatical spectators followed me all the way to Sultanahmet Mosque …

  At the other end of the square the Four Seasons Hotel stood like a sentinel. Constructed originally as a government building to house public services, the building had a dark history as a prison for so-called thought criminals. As I entered the calm lobby, a large man with a beard materialized before me.

  In almost perfect Turkish he said, ‘Welcome, sir, I’m Theo Pappas and I’m here to take you to Mr Askaris, if you will allow.’ As I fell in behind this apple-cheeked man who appeared no older than forty, I was thinking how he looked simultaneously like a priest and the head of security. The prim and proper courtyard we were crossing must once have been the prison’s exercise area.

  ‘Mr Askaris’s suite was once the prison warden’s office,’ said Theo with a smile.

  Nikos Askaris was a small ugly man in his sixties, with a thin beard; he wore his face like a mask. I wondered what sort of plusses he owned to offset this outlook. Another man in the spacious room with a red beard and glasses was Askaris’s other assistant, Kalligas. The three had two features in common: they were all bearded and wore suits. I would have bet they worked for a church or a charity organization. On the table lay two packages. I laid the bag with the map requested in the letter next to them and asked for white wine from the minibar. Askaris took mineral water for himself and beckoned me to the table. Papas and Kalligas seated themselves on chairs immediately behind him. Kalligas, who looked about thirty-five, also spoke very fluent Turki
sh. I was almost getting used to their determination not to fail to show absolute respect toward me.

  ‘Before we broach the main subject, sir, I’d like to ask a question, if I may. In two sentences, how would you define Byzantium?’ said Askaris.

  ‘Once upon a time Byzantium was synonymous with intrigue, but this image has gradually changed. For me Byzantium mingled East and West and became the most prominent civilization of its own time, and then it triggered the Renaissance.’

  ‘What a wonderful summary! It might be added that no other empire ever stayed alive and active for over eleven hundred years. In Byzantium sovereignty did not always pass from father to the eldest son. In order to allow the most deserving person to ascend the throne, there was a flexible selection process, and because of that there were occasional periods of bloody conflict. But didn’t Rome and Hellenistic Greece have similar problems? Since in those ages communications were not as advanced as in Byzantium, their recorded history is incomplete.

  ‘The greatness of Byzantium begins with her will to continue the legacy of Greece and Rome, to which she was the natural heir. As you said, that heritage was enriched by a touch of the East.

  ‘Byzantium laid the foundations of modernism. She initiated state social institutions. She disciplined the military, educational, financial, legal and technological sectors. She made sports and entertainment an integral part of life. To raise the quality of life she formed organizations for the improvement of health care, city planning, the crafts, fashion, jewellery-making, and social manners. As a role model she influenced her neighbors in science, culture, and the arts. You also noted that the Byzantine scholars who fanned out into Europe after the fall of Constantinople paved the way for the Renaissance.

  ‘During the Middle Ages the East was generally superior to the West, military-wise. The Byzantines saved the future of Europe by blocking the path of the Eastern armies to the unprepared continent. In short, Byzantium was the most significant civilization in history, and if humans ever offer prayers of gratitude for the gifts they’ve received, the name of Byzantium ought to come after God and before Jesus.’