The Sultan of Byzantium

by Selcuk Altun

  A.A: Instead of an oriental aristocrat, I married an oriental witch.

  My Son: On my father’s account I suffered much. So that he won’t suffer much on his own father’s account, I entrust him to E.G.

  Everything began with doubting the names.

  I needed to take my indemnity.

  — My grandfather, whom Nomo did not regard as belonging to the Elect, lacked the respect also of his wife and daughter. But the Galata locals remembered Yahya Asil, who went bankrupt in all areas of his life, with a great deal of affection. I think that all he wanted, by marrying his daughter to a qualified man, was to obtain a promising heir to his exiled throne. His American tenant was a good candidate. Now, beyond the question whether Nomo had a hand in all this, there was another problem for me to deal with: if I could not achieve the status of the Elect myself, and learn what I needed to learn, I would fade into the twilight zone.

  — The friendship between my father and Eugenio Geniale didn’t surprise me. I wanted to get the Paul Hackett story from him, as well as a third-party interpretation of my father and mother’s relationship.

  — After discovering that I was Constantine XV, I figured out that my grandfather’s and mother’s names were Turkish rearrangements of ‘Joannes’ and ‘Sophia’. If my father had solved the essence of these names without the help of clues, I should be able to get to the end of this road too.

  — ‘I needed to take the indemnity.’ More than resolution, this sentence seemed to indicate the desire to fabricate an excuse. If my mother thought that my father had taken anything from the house on his expulsion from it, she would have reminded us of the fact repeatedly and with plenty of elaboration. So she probably knew nothing about this ‘indemnity’ of Paul Hackett’s. If such was the case, it meant that my father wanted me to be aware of his point of view in the matter, if it ever came up.

  I stood up from my desk and went to the balcony as the late afternoon ezan started at the Bereketzade Ali Efendi Mosque, the first mosque to be built in the neighborhood after the Conquest. I looked across the Golden Horn to Stamboul, the heart of old Constantinople, and waited for an inspiration. I saw a curtain of fog wiggling and winking like an augur of glad tidings. Then a flock of loud cackling seagulls destroyed it. The nicknames of the members of my supporting team came to mind.

  SIGMA

  Not only did I get myself invited to dinner at Eugenio’s, I imposed a menu on him. ‘Do you want a belly-dancer too?’ he said. ‘No,’ I replied. ‘I prefer dancing with wolves.’

  When I asked him to tell me about the relationship between my mother and father, ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I thought they’d gotten you to erase Paul from your book.’

  I was glad to note that his tone grew more serious when he said, ‘I knew your mother from her university days.’ It meant he wouldn’t be prejudiced. ‘She was flirtatious and pretentious and used to hang out with the rich non-Muslim girls. Her nickname was “Princess”. Unlike her father, she had business ambitions and was a go-getter. Yahya Bey probably spoiled his daughter because he saw this and liked it. I asked her once whether she wanted to be an MP from a right-wing party. “No,” she said, “they can’t guarantee a ministry for me.”

  ‘The Doğan Apartments were the preference of bohemian foreigners thirty years ago. When a British journalist I knew who was living there packed up and moved back to London, your father moved in. He was a sympathetic guy and knew enough Turkish to get by. The neighborhood put Paul down as a secret agent, but didn’t mind because they figured he was fighting against the same enemy they were. He was intelligent and went on a lot of mysterious trips. He met your grandfather in a backgammon tournament. They took to smoking hookahs and playing backgammon at every opportunity. When a flat with a view in your grandfather’s apartment building came up, Paul moved in and paid a symbolic rent. I was surprised to hear that he was flirting with your mother but didn’t say anything, since he never asked my opinion. I knew the relationship wouldn’t survive marriage. Your father tired of his job. He wanted to be a university professor of international relations. Yahya Asil’s son-in-law believed that would stave off financial trouble and allow him to remain in the city he loved.

  ‘Princess Akile took off the carnival mask after the honeymoon and began oppressing her husband. In the sixth month of his marriage your father left his house and took refuge in mine. He’d decided to divorce her. Your grandfather acted as a go-between and they patched it up for a while, but the egg was broken. They lived like two strangers in the same house. Then you were born. Your mother tried to turn the job of caring for you over to the maid, but your father put his foot down. At the cost of his job, he became both father and mother to you. When your grandfather died, the relationship collapsed totally. Your father once said, “When her father was alive, Akile looked on me as the butler, but now she thinks I’m the maid.”

  ‘Your mother was a thin-skinned and jealous woman. I was considered your father’s friend, but I had no idea that he was seeing a pretty Canadian secretary. Somebody sent a picture to the Princess of the two of them at a dinner party, and the expected result came to pass. He tried to see you several times, but your mother’s devotees drove him away. Every year I sent him a photo of you that I took on the sly, plus a report on how you were getting along.

  ‘To you I gave the message that I was always there if you ever needed my help, but a fragile orphanhood was never a part of your personality. You had fortitude. I always thought you were lucky to have inherited the best sides of your parents and grandparents.’

  ‘What’s the good side I got from my mother?’

  ‘You’re not full of ambition like her, thank God, but you’re determined to reach whatever goal you set your mind to.’

  So here was another question for the list I was going to present to Nomo, if I was ever admitted into their presence: why did you send my mother the picture of my father with his lover?

  TAU

  ‘Hello, big brother, where were you?’

  ‘I was with Lady Jane, Mina, Yasemin, Priscilla II, Nevbahar and two dozen noble ladies whose names I can’t remember, Hayal.’

  ‘So you were at the race track.’

  ‘If humans paid me enough attention, I wouldn’t have to go to the horses.’

  ‘I hope you won enough to buy me a Bulgari ring.’

  ‘Iskender saved his skin, but just barely. I’ve been royally robbed.’

  ‘That’s odd, you’ve been royally robbed here too.’

  ‘Little sister, can you explain that last sentence a bit?’

  ‘Well, some dumb thief broke into your house and took a few silver picture frames, a silk rug, and your radio. Unfortunately he left behind that stupid bird named Tristan.’

  ‘If anything happened to Tristan, I’d blame it on your evil eye, Miss Jealousy.’

  ‘You better hurry home and do something about it, son of a worthless American.’

  I stepped into the elevator, praying that this was not another insidious event in the form of a simple theft. Hayal popped out of the door, saying, ‘I forgot my glasses,’ as I opened it. I went into the living room, and thought I was going to have a heart attack. There, in the armchair next to the balcony, sat Mistral. She stood up.

  ‘Stay where you are, Mr White Knight. I’ll give you a four-sentence explanation and a nine-line poem.

  ‘When you ran off from Stockholm, I waited for you to get back to Istanbul because I had more to tell you than “Thank you”. Hayal let me know you were back in town, so I came here with a poem. I hope you won’t run away to Patagonia while I’m reading it:

  When someone says “Istanbul,”

  More mysterious than Byzantium,

  Prouder than an Ottoman,

  As friendly as Anatolia,

  Erudite but polite,

  Funny and shy,

  Handsome as a kingfisher,

  When somebody says “Istanbul,”

  I think of my beloved, Halâs.’

  I stood sto
ck still, frozen like a cat in the headlights. I thought of Wendy Sade, who was always right.

  ‘Should I read the poem again, Mr Knight, or explain to you the lines you didn’t get?’

  ‘I’m busy counting to ten, Mistral. If in that time I don’t hear another line turning this into a joke, I’m going to embrace you now and never let you go.’

  *

  My name is Halâs. In Arabic it means ‘Salvation’. If you reverse it, ‘Salâh’ in the same language means peace, comfort, and devotion. This doubleness is like the symbol and soul of Byzantium, the double-headed eagle. Now if my grandmother doesn’t find out that the Greeks call their country Hellas, I’ll be thankful.

  UPSILON

  Mistral believed I was on a year’s sabbatical. We would have time to spend together until autumn after I wrapped up my work at that investment firm she’d never heard of in July. I sent her to Stockholm and locked myself in my room. I was bothered by a possibility I’d been suppressing for two days: it could hardly be coincidence that the last purple square, which I found with no difficulty at all, was clutched in the traitor Judas’s hand. Nomo would never be content just to say, ‘Be careful, there’s a traitor in your midst.’ But now what? Were they pushing me into a test within a test, or informing me about a situation beyond their control? There was one and only one precaution I could take, other than being suspicious of every sound and sight in my vicinity. I had to research the trio whose resumés were beyond me yet who were responsible for my safety. Maybe I was more fortunate than my father, who said, after all, ‘Everything began with suspecting the names.’ The reward for pulling a clue out of a bunch of nicknames might be even more surprising.

  It was strange to find no Askarises on the Internet, as opposed to a multitude of Pappases and Kalligases. (I didn’t know whether to laugh or not at the fact that ‘askaris’ was the name of a parasite in medical science.) I called the polyglot book dealer Püzant to ask whether a family name, ‘Askergil’ (‘soldier’s kin’), which derived from the Turkish word ‘asker’ (‘soldier’), could be transferred to Greek as ‘Askaris.’

  ‘If it were Armenian,’ he said, ‘you would be quite right; but in Greek, definitely not.’

  In my mind a light bulb lit up. I paced up and down in my room for several minutes and downed a double shot of malt whisky. I caught the first plane to London the next day. I needed to find my savior Askaris, but could only speculate about where he lived. During my training in London, Askaris mentioned Winchester a time or two. I would not have been surprised, actually, to find him living in this southeastern district, once the capital of two kingdoms and now accommodating a population of 40,000 people. It was an hour from London by train. As a doctoral student I’d visited Winchester, which was home to Europe’s tallest cathedral, and not been all that impressed. This time, as I strolled the streets crowded with native tourists, the shape and size of the buildings caught my eye. New ones constantly went up, but with due respect paid to history. As a result Winchester had acquired the feel of a storybook town. I felt like Gulliver waking up in Lilliput. Bored by the touristy atmosphere, I took refuge in the cathedral. Somehow I was not impressed by the information that Jane Austen was buried there. My head was swimming with silly research possibilities.

  I thought I heard a voice say, ‘Good day, young man!’ I turned around with a frown. The ‘Visitors Chaplain’ – according to the tag on his chest – had perhaps singled me out as the most dejected visitor. I couldn’t help thinking that he must be paying for some kind of mistake with this assignment. When I told him I came from Istanbul, he informed me happily that his brother-in-law had worked on the construction of the first Bosphorus bridge. At the end of our geographical conversation I asked the talkative priest how I might find an old acquaintance, possibly from Winchester, whose name I’d forgotten but whose picture I had with me. Gently squeezing my right arm, he said, ‘The ageless waiter at the cathedral cafeteria, Alan Paxton, is your man,’ and turned his attention to the obese couple who had just begun quarreling in front of us.

  The heavy smell of meat emanating from the cafeteria enveloped the souvenir shop next to it. Lunch service had begun, and the early patrons all seemed to favor the same low-calorie items. The potatoes were evidently presented half-raw so as to match the color of the beef stew. The waiters were all over seventy and strutted around like wardens. Alan, as upright as an ostrich, was responsible for collecting empty glasses and trays. He surveyed the tables like a human periscope and immediately attacked the vacated ones. It was amusing to follow the action. Seizing the right moment, I thrust the picture of Askaris on my cellphone under Alan’s nose. It was another Fellini moment. Alan gave a long whistle. After this overture he said, ‘Nobody this ugly has lived in Winchester for the last seventy-four years,’ turned on one foot, and waltzed away.

  That was as much as to say that Askaris, with his perfect Oxbridge accent and sophisticated manners, was hiding in London. Back at the hotel, I called him on his personal cell phone and invited him to my favorite pizza place in Knightsbridge. I said that I’d come to London for the surprise birthday party of an old grad-school friend. I knew he would be a little apprehensive when I added, ‘I have things to tell you.’ He came into Il Pomodoro on the run. I knew he would relax when he heard that the subject I wanted to share with him was my relationship with Mistral. At that precise moment of relaxation I asked, ‘So which Greek island would you suggest I take my beloved to on her birthday?’

  ‘Rhodes,’ he answered without a moment’s thought. Then he added, stuttering, ‘Santorini, Mykonos, Paros,’ but it was no good.

  Weeks earlier, when we were in Athens, Askaris had confided to me at the hotel bar that he’d spent an unhappy childhood on one of the Aegean islands. Immediately afterwards he apologized in panic. The event suggested something I could not put my finger on at the time. Apparently that heavenly venue was Rhodes. The time had come for me to visit the island to unearth the original name of Nikos Askaris. I didn’t want to think about what the move might drag me into after that. My one hope was that I was dreaming all this up.

  At nine the one-man orchestra at Il Pomodoro was about to begin his show. As I paid the bill I sought to put Askaris at ease. ‘I think I should choose Paros among the options you offered. I just remembered that it was the favorite of George Seferis, the poet from Izmir.’

  I sailed from Marmaris, in Turkey, to Rhodes on a tired sea bus. The Greek passengers looked like happily exhausted picnickers on their way home. When I was dragged away from Vladimir Holan’s poetry by a snore, I shifted my attention to the family seated opposite me. The old woman wearing a headscarf and raincoat in the heat of June, fixing her eyes on the floor, made my neck sweat. I had trouble believing that she was headed to the island on the same holiday as her lümpen son, flirtatious daughter-in-law, and five-year-old grandson. Whenever the boat rocked through a series of waves, she would loudly say her prayers, which in turn caused the boy to break into laughter. His name was Candancan and he probably giggled more in these two hours than I had in my thirty-four years. His young mother, chewing gum ‘like a clitoris riding a bicycle’ in Iskender Abi’s words, pointed to me and said to her unruly son, ‘That man is a circumciser, you better behave!’ The spiky-haired boy cautiously leaned toward me.

  ‘Are you really a circumciser?’

  ‘A circumciser and a king too!’

  ‘Do you know the Lion King?’

  ‘Whenever he sees me, he runs away.’

  ‘Do you have a horse that gallops on the ocean?’

  ‘I have a blue horse that gallops on the ocean, flies and turns somersaults in the air now and then. He’s waiting for me where we’re going. If you stay nice and quiet, I’ll let you ride him when we get there.’

  With Candancan glued to his seat, not to leave it again, I was quite amused to see the family peering at me with suspicion. When we arrived at the island he was in deep sleep on his grandmother’s lap. I hastily left the boat before he wo
ke up and was welcomed by Rhodes, with no magical blue horse. I was startled by my sudden assumption that I would fall in love with this island. There was a faint aroma of apricot in the air. I felt I was being pulled slowly into the scene by an octopus’s tentacle. I chose the ‘Splendid’, in the Old City, as my hotel for its name. I compared the monumental locust tree in its courtyard to a dervish raising his hands to the sky. I wanted to sit under it and read Ritsos. But it would be impossible to make an action plan without taking my customary exploratory tour as soon as I got settled. It was a fine late afternoon. According to the receptionist, who assumed that he was speaking English with an urban British accent, I could enjoy the pleasures of the Old City because all the loud tourists were on the beach.

  On the maps Rhodes looked like a giant leaf fallen on the sea. When that green mass met the blue Aegean, a bright yellow layer of earth came into being. If the castle on the hill was a shepherd and the warehouses on the waterfront the shepherd’s dogs, then the groups of buildings squeezed in-between were flocks of sheep and lambs. The residents looked like aliens tired of waiting for a message that never arrived. They had Turco-Greek physiques and elegant postures. I walked randomly along the narrow streets free of souvenir shops. When the tourists started to come down to the Old City for their evening’s entertainment, I continued moving through the avenues connected to each other by time tunnels. The urbanites leaving their offices zoomed down the streets in their cars. Every clock, inside or outside, told a different time. I would have believed it if somebody said that they’d forgotten to lift the blackout after World War II.

  The taverns and cafés outside the tourist routes were filled with locals. In every bar I dropped into I saw primitive icons. The bizarrely literal translations into English on the shop marquees were almost tragicomic. This was the Turkish approach too, of course. The owner of the restaurant recommended to me was originally from Izmir and was named Theo. He claimed that he could deduce my Turkishness from the way I sat in my chair. The Albanian waiter did not believe that I’d read a novel by their national author, Ismail Kadare. I tried to sound convincing as I said that I was combining business and pleasure when Theo posed the question, what was I doing all alone on the island? Mistral, for her part, thought I had an appointment in Rhodes with an Arab businessman.