Harem

by Barbara Nadel

  ‘Well, if you won’t go to a doctor, you’d better let me see. Take your shirt off,’ he said.

  Her tear-stained face whipped round in shock. ‘No!’

  ‘That’s an order!’ İkmen barked. ‘Lose your job or take your shirt off, it’s up to you. I won’t move round to look at your chest, I just want to see your back.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Do it!’ He placed a warning hand on her collar and applied just a little light pressure. ‘Please.’

  Her sobs came even harder. With every button she undid, her distress and humiliation grew. And by the time she had slipped the shirt off her shoulders, she was bent almost double, shielding her chest with her hands.

  İkmen looked at the stripes and gouges on her back and felt sick. He’d come across men who liked to do this sort of thing before, men he had wanted to beat senseless. But that would make him just like them and so he had always stayed his hand – he was famous for it. Now, however, the urge was very strong. He clasped his hands tightly behind his back.

  ‘Did Orhan Tepe do this to you?’ he asked quietly.

  She turned and looked at him, saying nothing, but he knew.

  ‘Oh, Ayşe,’ he said sadly. ‘You silly girl.’

  Orhan Tepe, like İkmen’s half-written report, wasn’t going anywhere. Both he and it would wait. And besides, İkmen thought, he could hardly confront Tepe in front of his wife. Maybe he whipped her too? Who was to know? Old Ottoman mores died hard, İkmen knew that. So many lives were ‘walled’. Smart-suited government ministers could fulminate all they wanted about the evils of wife-beating and how it had no place in a modern society, but some men would always do it; men in even the most ‘advanced’ cultures did it. He just hoped that Ayşe Farsakoǧlu would do as she had said and keep away from Tepe in the future. Give him back all the expensive baubles he had somehow acquired for her, forgo the meals in smart restaurants and go back to what she was before, a sad young woman in love with Süleyman who only had eyes for his newborn son. A real Ottoman patriarch at last, to Zelfa Halman Süleyman’s dismay and incomprehension, or so it seemed.

  What a mess.

  İkmen looked up from the tip of his glowing cigarette and into the liquid eyes of Yümniye Heper.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ he said. ‘I’m helpless without the truth.’

  The elderly woman seemed crushed. What a terrible day this had been for her. Not only had she lost the only relative she still possessed, she had also lost her soulmate, the reason for her existence. Yümniye and Muazzez – the names were as one, they were always spoken in the same breath, like a never changing phrase or formulaic spell. Neither worked on its own. Even this wakefulness in the darkness of the hot miserable night was an abomination – because she was alone.

  Yümniye Heper dabbed her eyes with her handkerchief and leaned back into the large brown chair that had once been her father the General’s favourite seat.

  ‘By nineteen sixty Father’s illness had taken a terrible toll on our finances,’ she said sadly. ‘The landlord was threatening to evict us. I was paralysed with fear. But Muazzez was made of sterner stuff than myself and she continued to pursue her life as she always had.’ She sighed. ‘It seemed like a miracle when she came home after being away all of that strange night, clutching enough money to buy this house.’

  ‘How did she get this money?’ İkmen asked. ‘What happened?’

  Yümniye smiled sadly. ‘Sex is what happened, Çetin,’ she said. ‘She met a man at the cinema. To this day I still don’t know who he was – is. But he paid Muazzez that money to have sex with another man, a foreigner.’

  ‘Did she know the foreigner?’

  ‘No. But then she said very little about it. I mean I know that you know the General raised us to be independent, liberal-minded women, but Muazzez was ashamed. To be used by men like that . . . They wanted her to dress like an Ottoman princess. In that gown, the very one you brought to show us. The one that girl died in. I knew I’d seen it before. I know I’m vague now, but . . . Muazzez made it. At first, after the meeting at the cinema, she believed that the commission was just for the dress, but then the man said that he wanted Muazzez to wear it and . . . do things. Afterwards there was no sex ever again. Muazzez was only asked to make dresses for other girls. And so we made several gowns every year from then on, for other girls to wear while they pleasured men. Given the amount of money my sister was paid, the men had to be wealthy, and again foreign, I think. Muazzez always arranged for their delivery. We were very well paid for them.’ She paused briefly to sip her tea. ‘Muazzez was chosen to go with that man because Father was an Ottoman general. The man knew of us, the high-born Heper sisters who liked to dress like boys.’

  ‘Everybody knew you,’ İkmen said with a smile. ‘You were always the finest seamstresses in İstanbul.’

  ‘Yes.’ She looked over at the portrait of a stern-looking military man wearing a fez, which hung over the empty fireplace. ‘They wanted real Ottoman girls for their harem – that’s the term this man and his customers used. Muazzez was perfect. Later, any girl would do, provided she wore the right clothes. Things changed recently, don’t know how, but Muazzez became frightened. She went to meet her man this morning, he’d called her.’

  ‘Did you speak to him?’

  ‘No. Never.’ She looked from the portrait back to İkmen. ‘Muazzez made sure I was always kept away from this business. She loved me . . .’

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen leaned forward, frowning. ‘So this harem, Miss Yümniye—’

  ‘I don’t know where this activity took place, Çetin,’ she said as she wiped the tears once again from her eyes. ‘I asked Muazzez once, at the beginning, but she said only that she was taken to the place blindfolded. She had no idea herself. The only detail she ever offered was that it was reached through a wood or park of some sort. She did this thing only once, in a room full of silk, crystal and gold.’

  ‘Like a palace.’

  ‘Well, yes, where else would one take an Ottoman princess?’

  İkmen looked down at the floor and shook his head. ‘And yet it could be anywhere, couldn’t it, Miss Yümniye? It could be a secret room in the vastness of Topkapı or it could be a mock-up at the back of some ghastly gecekondu.’

  ‘Given the money she was paid, I would think the former more likely,’ Yümniye said. ‘It was a great deal of money, Çetin.’

  ‘For a Turk, yes, but not necessarily for a foreigner. This place was very cheap to Europeans in those days.’

  ‘I don’t know if he was European,’ Yümniye replied. ‘Muazzez only alluded to his foreignness.’

  ‘But this harem persists to this day.’

  ‘Yes. With new girls and new dresses. Although as I said before, Muazzez wasn’t as comfortable with it as she had been. And when you told us that that poor girl had died wearing one of our dresses . . . I wanted to tell you, but Muazzez was adamant. It was far too dangerous, she said. This harem thing was big.’

  ‘Big?’ İkmen put his cigarette out in the ashtray and lit another. ‘What do you mean?’

  Yümniye shrugged. ‘I don’t know, Çetin. I’m using Muazzez’s words. All I do know is that although both of us were aware that what we were doing, making the dresses, was wrong, Muazzez only became scared this year. She was, as you know, always very brave and anyway she and I were both grateful to that man she met outside the Alkazar cinema all those years ago. He gave us this house, a decent living and he almost single-handedly enabled the General to have some dignity in his final years. I always wanted to meet him.’

  ‘You don’t think he killed your sister then?’ İkmen asked.

  Miss Yümniye looked shocked. ‘Oh, no,’ she said, ‘I don’t think so. I mean, why would he after all this time?’

  ‘Maybe he or one of his people saw me come to this house. I’m a well-known officer, Miss Yümniye.’

  ‘Yes, you are,’ she said. ‘You’ve done very well, Çetin. But how would Muazzez’s man know you came
here to ask about the harem? You had that dress in a bag and anyway he knew Muazzez would never have told you anything. Even after we knew the girl had died in that dress, Muazzez was still adamant. We argued about it. She said that it was utterly impossible for her man and his customers to have killed that girl. I asked her how she knew but she said that she just did and not to ask. Others, she said, must have done it.’

  ‘But she didn’t say who?’

  ‘No.’

  İkmen leaned back into the slack softness of the sofa and sighed. So Rat had been right all along about the odalisques. They had been ‘sold’ in modern İstanbul for many years. A Turkish ‘delight’ of sorts for curious, rich and probably sated foreigners. Silly old Europeans who, for the price of a whole Turkish house, could play at being sultan for an hour with a ‘genuine’ Ottoman princess. But then perhaps not. Perhaps those involved hadn’t been so silly, perhaps they’d been better than that, more important. After all, it had been a great and well-kept secret. And if, as Rat had said, families were now involved, they must feel the harem’s customers were wealthy and powerful enough to justify their time.

  ‘Miss Yümniye,’ he said slowly, ‘have you ever heard of a family by the name of Müren?’

  Yümniye looked blank. ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Oh, no reason.’ İkmen shrugged. ‘Just a thought.’

  They both sat quietly for a few moments until Yümniye, frowning as if she were making an effort to remember something, said, ‘You could speak to Sofia, I suppose. If you want to know more about the harem.’

  ‘Sofia?’

  ‘Yes, Sofia Vanezis. You know, about your age. Very pretty girl she was, a little slow.’

  ‘Was that the girl who came to live at Panos the shoe-mender’s?’ İkmen inquired.

  Yümniye smiled. ‘Yes. She and her mother moved here from Fener when Sofia’s father died. Panos was, I think, his brother.’

  ‘Yes.’ İkmen nodded. ‘They were very poor. But her mother was a proud woman, always well-dressed.’

  ‘Maria Vanezis was a Phanariote, old Byzantine aristocracy,’ Yümniye said. ‘One of the last. But, as you say, living in very reduced circumstances when she came here. Like all of us.’ She sighed, her face sad again at yet another mournful memory. And then for a few moments she just sat, lost in some small corner of the past. But then İkmen cleared his throat and the sound brought her back to him.

  ‘Well, anyway,’ Yümniye continued, ‘the point is that when Maria was dying, Sofia needed money. She was quite young and she was afraid. She couldn’t work because she was slow and Panos wanted her out. Muazzez felt sorry for her and so she arranged for her to, er, work at the harem. Muazzez always liked to believe that I didn’t know, but I heard them talking. Sofia still comes – came – to see Muazzez from time to time. She’s grateful, you see. Through Muazzez she got treatment for her mother and bought that little boarding house she lives in now.’

  ‘So Sofia had sex for money.’

  ‘Yes. The poor thing had been letting men touch her for several years because she knew no better. Muazzez must have felt that this was the only way she’d ever have any money and she was probably right.’

  İkmen lit up another cigarette. ‘The attraction, I presume, was Sofia’s Phanariote background.’

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘But you think she might talk to me about the harem, do you, Miss Yümniye?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Yümniye replied. ‘If she did talk to you, she could probably tell you quite a lot. She has a remarkable and very precise memory. It’s the way she is. I can talk to her, try to persuade her. But she never actually utters a word to me. She just stands gawping with all that mad red hair of hers.’

  So that was the woman who had stared at him when he’d visited the Hepers with Hatice’s dress. Weird Sofia. It all came back now – İkmen’s guilty secret. The first female breast he’d ever seen in the flesh had belonged to weird Sofia. She’d been very pretty then and he’d had fantasies about her. He was twelve at the time. She’d aged frighteningly badly. He wondered whether she’d recognised him.

  Upbringing can be a wonderful indicator with regard to what a person can tolerate. The Yıldız family were a case in point. Mustafa and Arın Yıldız, although village born and bred, had lived in the livelier quarters of the city for nearly thirty years. First in a gecekondu shack in Gaziosmanpaşa where their three sons, İsmet, Hikmet and Süleyman, had been born and then later in the three-roomed apartment they lived in now. Almost as small and noisy as the gecekondu, the Yıldız high-rise apartment overlooked the Londra Asfaltı highway and was situated, together with numerous similar blocks, about four kilometres from Atatürk Airport. Packed with noisy adults, screamingly loud adolescents and hordes of children, the blocks resounded day and night to the sound of television, Arabesk music and frayed tempers. Not that any of this had any effect upon Constable Hikmet Yıldız and his brothers as they slept soundly upon the hard divans that had always been their beds. Even when the telephone rang just after midnight, none of the boys stirred. It was up to Arın to get Hikmet up to answer it.

  ‘It’s somebody from the police,’ she said nervously as her son staggered, sleep-sodden, into the tiny grey-painted hall. Even with a son in the police force, Arın still felt cold every time they contacted the Yıldız home. Back in the village all those years ago, the police had been both feared and appeased in equal measure. They had never been liked.

  Hikmet took the receiver from his mother’s hand. ‘Hello?’

  The voice on the other end sounded urgent, fevered even. ‘Hikmet, it’s Inspector İkmen.’

  ‘Oh, hello, sir.’

  ‘What time do you come off duty tomorrow, Hikmet?’

  ‘Um,’ he had to think for a moment, ‘er, three.’

  ‘Look, Hikmet,’ İkmen said, ‘do you trust me? My judgement?’

  Hikmet frowned. What was this? ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘of course.’

  ‘And so if I ask you to do something you might find strange or irregular, offering absolutely no explanation for it, you would do it for me?’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose . . .’

  ‘Good,’ İkmen replied, ‘I’ll call you tomorrow.’

  ‘Sir, is it—’

  ‘Don’t ask, Hikmet, I won’t tell you. The less you know, the better. Now you’re sure you’re OK with this?’

  He wasn’t entirely but he said yes anyway, and İkmen cut the connection.

  Hikmet replaced the receiver to the sound of his father’s snoring and a blast of garage music from the apartment across the corridor. Neither the noise nor the troubling nature of İkmen’s request would keep him awake, however. He needed his sleep. Only he and İsmet had employment at the moment and the young policeman knew that if he was late or didn’t do as he was told the consequences could be dire.

  He flopped back down onto his divan just as İsmet murmured a woman’s name and groaned.

  Chapter 17

  * * *

  Orhan Tepe rubbed his bloodshot eyes with the heel of his hand and then sipped his coffee. Sitting on the small balcony at the back of his apartment he could observe the comings and goings at the büfe opposite. The sun had only been up for just over half an hour and most of those purchasing börek and tea from the büfe were poorly dressed peasant workers – taxi drivers, simitcis, security men. One uniformed cop was amongst their number, a younger man whose clothes fitted badly. Orhan wrinkled his nose into a sneer. Allah, but this country needed something! Not that he knew what that was. He supposed it had to be an attitude more akin to that which he had witnessed when he’d taken Ayşe out amongst the smart folk at Rejans. A cleanliness, a confidence – a whole package that only money could buy. One day, he smiled, one day soon. But the thought did not make him feel better; actually it made him feel worse and the smile faded from his lips. Perhaps when he got off duty later on he would buy one of those CD players he had been hankering after for so long – perhaps that would make him feel better. Maybe he
’d get one for Ayşe too . . .

  The door from the living room opened, interrupting his thoughts. Orhan looked round and saw his wife, Aysel, smiling at him.

  ‘Çetin Bey has come to see you, Orhan,’ she said and moved aside to allow the small crumpled figure to walk out onto the balcony. ‘Would you like some coffee, Çetin Bey? It’s French and very good.’

  İkmen smiled. ‘Thank you very much, Mrs Tepe,’ he said, ‘that would be nice.’

  Aysel left. The two men heard her wittering happily to her child Cemal as she went to the kitchen.

  ‘So how goes your search for Hikmet Sivas and his brother?’ İkmen said as he eased his tired, cigarette-reeking form into the chair opposite Tepe.

  ‘I thought you were on holiday,’ his junior replied with a bluntness that İkmen would have challenged had he had any sleep the night before.

  ‘Yes, I am, Orhan.’ He took what was left of a soft packet of cigarettes from his pocket and lit up something that looked like an old piece of string. ‘But even though Ardıç denies me access to the house in Kandıllı, I can still show an interest. That he cannot prevent.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘And so?’

  Tepe shrugged. ‘We’re interviewing known associates. Had a look at the old paşa’s tunnel. Commissioner Ardıç is basing himself at the house. In case someone calls.’

  ‘Has he contacted the authorities in America?’ İkmen asked.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Poor Metin İskender must feel as if this case is going to be the one to bury his career,’ İkmen responded tartly.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can’t see that any of you are doing very much,’ İkmen said. ‘Both the sister and Ahmet Sılay have intimated that Hikmet Sivas has Mafia connections.’

  ‘Commissioner Ardıç says that’s only hearsay.’

  ‘Yes, but he should still check it out. I would! Stupid—’