by Selcuk Altun
After his last duty to his favourite cousin, he would set out on a safari to the ten most outrageous striptease clubs in Europe, the playground of male beauties. İz, meanwhile, had postponed her comic novel project when she was offered a job as journalist-editor for a weekly magazine. In her first article for them, which she wrote under the pseudonym Baltazar Satırbaşı, she satirized those mediocre writers who considered themselves great authors when their superficial books became bestsellers.
I was trying to decipher the book of miscellaneous collages called Suicide Bridge by Iain Sinclair. I had bought the book because of these lines:
I understand now your passion to face the West. It is the passion for the extinction of yourself and the knowledge of the triumph of your own will in your body’s extinction. But in the great periods, when man was great, he faced East.
As I walked past the Constantine Column, a casualty of restoration, erected in the fourth century by the Emperor Constantine, I deeply lamented Kıztaşı, the Maiden Stone. Surrounded by walls, the mosque’s cemetery consisted of a plain tomb and artistic worn-out gravestones covered with wire mesh. I had seen similar precautions taken in zoos to protect the wild animals from human harassment. As soon as I passed through the main gate with a silent prayer, I seemed to have slipped down a time tunnel into the sixteenth century. I felt at ease in the calm and harmonious environment, half-closing my eyes in the midst of the five domes of the Atik Ali Paşa Mosque and all that belonged to it. The way people were wrapped in immediate silence as they entered the three gates into the spacious courtyard was impressive. I couldn’t help hearing the inviting sound of the fountain opposite the mosque entrance. I walked respectfully across the courtyard to the fountain and saw the notice above, ‘Please Do Not Take Large Canfuls of Water.’ (But my stomach turned when I saw the label stuck where it was most visible, ‘Pest Extermination Service’.) Reading the sign over the workshop door by the fountain, ‘Apprentice Diamond-setter Wanted’, I wondered what qualifications were required and how the surrounding studios of silver-workers could operate without making a sound.
As I viewed the mosque’s façade of cut sandstone, I noticed four attached buildings to the left of the courtyard. It was interesting to see cobblers and grocery-stores creating income for the mosque complex under the old buildings rented out to silver wholesalers. Were the construction date and the architect of this geometrically simple and architecturally attractive monument deliberately kept unclear? A notice was stuck to the giant cylindrical columns in front of the main gate, ‘Please Do Not Touch The Columns.’ I remained poking my head through the door of the monumental building. Feeling subconsciously guilty because I knew only one basic prayer, I was startled too by an atmosphere of sublimity that was 500 years old. As one who doesn’t evade his property tax and is incapable of planning anything wicked, I wondered why I should feel such a spiritual pressure. ‘I doubt the therapeutic value of praying five times a day,’ my sceptical father used to grumble.
I moved to a mound of earth as big as a child’s grave in the centre of the courtyard. With my index finger I pulled out a tiny roll of paper from a tube connected to a sapling as thick as my thumb. On it was written:
The Lecturer and Judge
Gave His Own Name to the Fountain He Built
To Give Joy to the Soul of His Daughter
Who Died Eighteen Years Before Him.
I bought two books on Istanbul’s public fountains. Su Güzeli (Water Beauty), illustrated with colour photographs, was published by the Municipality of Istanbul. I was sure that reading through the life-stories of 143 public fountains and discovering the last rendezvous would give me emotional indigestion. Instead of struggling with too many clues, some of them insoluble, I had to come to terms with these journeys. A few steps down any street could reveal different worlds; a journey of ten minutes could go back 1,000 years. I was finding serenity in these unique worlds, reluctant to share my dreams with my real life. If the last clue could find my father’s vulgar psychopath killer, I knew I must deliver him to the police by means of Adil Kasnak. But the real problem was to trap paranoid Selçuk Altun, who was enjoying directing the whole drama from behind the scenes. My only chance to checkmate this repulsive chess-player who was moving me back and forth through the city was to find an unexpected weak point in his last clue. I was eager to see İz’s face when I caught him redhanded, and figured out his rôle in the plot and just how much it was to his advantage. I knew that if I failed, that secretive man would abuse me in one of his hastily scribbled novels (if my mother were in my place, wouldn’t she first convince my father’s killer to get rid of Altun, then have the killer gunned down by her new hitman?).
I concentrated on the nostalgic photographs of Su Güzeli, knowing every page would make me sad. I could almost see how these ruined fountains, neglected treasures, would illuminate their surroundings once their façades were restored. I began to absorb these miniature monuments with the grand names, paragraph by paragraph, to the music of Pat Metheny. By the time I reached the Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Paşa Fountain, I had digested the whole book.
It dawned on me that I would find the fatal clue at the end of the book in the section on the fountains in Üsküdar. The only Water Beauty engraved by the important orientalist artists, Eugene Flandin and W. H. Bartlett, was the Sadeddin Efendi Fountain, and I looked longingly at the engravings, but sadly at the warning lesson of the tragi-comic photographs. The identifying entry in the book reads as follows:
It lies on the right side of the street that leads to Tunusbağı, following the angle of the Karacaahmet tomb. It was built in 1741 (AH 1154) by Sadeddin Efendi, son of Kazasker Feyzullah Efendi, and grandson of Şeyhülislam Hodja Sadeddin Efendi – who wrote Tacü’ t-Tevarih (The Domain of Islam) – to bless the soul of his dying daughter Zübeyde. Sadeddin Efendi was a lecturer; during his post as a mullah in Egypt he acted as judge in Mecca and Istanbul and died in 1759. He lies in an open tomb behind the fountain ...
I knew my eternal headache would come back when I read it for the second time. I wondered what kind of hateful plan that treacherous man from Üsküdar had in mind when he chose a location for the clue which was almost next to my parents’ graves. I felt my hair stand on end. I hurled the laptop at the television screen in my office. My faithful secretary rushed in right away, and for the first time in my life I scolded her and threw her out. Probably it was good for me to notice I was becoming like my mother. I immediately took two aspirins. As therapy I started to count the moon-faced village children in the Oya Katoğlu painting right before me. My mother had continued to collect Elias Canetti’s books of aphorisms even after my chatterbox father’s death. In his last book I recalled him saying, ‘From pain felt at the root there is no escape, it is understood, endured and preserved, it creates a poet.’ And as I began to encourage myself, ‘Come on Arda!’, I warmed to my theme and continued, ‘Show them, old chap, what pain can do when it’s fuelled by hatred, curiosity and boredom.’
The Fountain of Sadeddin Efendi
June – the month I could never adapt to, although I utter its name with pleasure. When his safari of eroticism ended, my uncle, with his new friend, disabled Gun, would head for the foothills of the Himalyas to look for snow leopards.
‘I’ve already begun to tremble with excitement at the thought of coming eye-to-eye with the majestic cats who wrap their body-long tails around themselves to fend off the cold. I’m sure, Arda, this mystical journey is going to be a turning-point in my life,’ he had said.
During her morning walks in her comical tracksuit on the slopes of Çamlıca, İz made friends with more people in twenty-eight days than I had done in twenty-eight years. She was putting together an article, ‘The Ten Most Important Living Poets According to Poet Güven Turan’.9 I began reading Gerhard Köpf’s dilemma-ridden novel, There Is No Borges.
Before my walk along Nuhkuyu Street to the Karacaahmet Cemetery I entered the beans-and-rice canteen where I knew I would be greeted by photograp
hic landscapes of the eastern Black Sea.
I took care not to miss the attractive names of the side streets as I walked smartly between the buildings like a foreman. The insurance brokerage office, the test-tube baby unit, the hospital and the Üsküdar Courts of Justice building were lined up diagonally opposite me as though by divine providence. Random groups – kebab house, kiosk, hair salon, mobile phone outlet, coffee house – had invaded the street. The fountains of nicotine coffee houses ran the most lucrative businesses. Another element of chaos was the legion of over-elaborate name-plates for hundreds of small businesses. As I drew closer to Karacaahmet, marble workshops that looked like warehouses began to appear beneath the buildings where faded curtains were rarely opened. A gravestone supplier upstairs and a solicitor’s office downstairs were as comic in their incongruity as a caricature. The moustachioed salesman who saw me looking closely at the cruel shop display of gravestones for children and young adults invited me in to show me the rest of the range ...
As the endless walls of Karacaahmet began, the Felliniesque plateau of Nuhkuyusu disappeared. I realized, as soon as I turned into Tunusbağı Street, that since my mother died I hadn’t been to visit my parents’ graves.
The fountain, situated on the axis of the mosque, graveyard and tomb, and now being used for ablutions, resembled a silent popular hero who had lost his appeal in exile. I had to chuckle when I saw the sentence, in the 1938 publication on Istanbul Fountains, ‘Its architecture shows the influence of Turkish rococo.’ Around the Sadeddin Efendi tomb were graves with artistic tombstones. I was looking at the mosque graveyard through the makeshift railings above the wall, when I noticed the displaced stones abandoned by a rubbish-heap.
The inscription on the dry fountain, behind which I put my hand praying for the last clue, was as follows:
This World is a Dinner-table
Desires Come and Go
If you Have Found Us
Don’t Wish for Anything Else
To Drink
1970
My right hand checked the tired stone notch by notch and found it empty, but I didn’t panic and didn’t think of searching for the last clue elsewhere. Perhaps my puppeteer had been held up and couldn’t make his appointment in time, or perhaps he was testing my determination by directing me to meeting places with the most obvious features. Next day I set out with enthusiasm, but making no progress began to feel a bit uneasy. On the third, I tried some channels unheard-of even in detective novels; I even tried without success to decipher the message on the inscription, written in hopeless Turkish. Then I took stock of the situation in the shadow of the neighbouring bins where the street garbage was dumped. If I returned empty-handed from my 5 June outing, I would have to start thinking of virtual clues.
A wedding procession of old-fashioned motor vehicles poured from İnadiye Camii Street as I walked on, determined to say goodbye to my fountain. (I’m quite fond of my personal prejudice that girls who have weddings accompanied by motorcades end up with unhappy homes.) As if taken over by a hidden force, I plunged into the street bordered by the cemetery where carpets were hung on the wall to dry. I noticed an old but still working toilet. I tried to enjoy the message on the name-plate:
Sultan N. Mehmed’s
Head cook Pervane
Mehmed Efendi was built AH 1055.
1641 M.
In 1935 it was
Abandoned and in 1993
Was Rebuilt.
I walked very slowly towards the heart of the street. I thought the old men and women who leaned out of the windows of the wooden buildings to see the wedding procession had taken up poses worthy of a ceremonial photo. Enviously I watched the ever-happy children playing alongside those Ottoman buildings beside the dimly lit grocery store, the deserted bakery and the tiny cobblers’ shops that were impervious to earthquakes, floods and ignorance. I realized I wasn’t upset by my proximity to my mother’s grave, she who had robbed me of my childhood happiness in return for unimaginable wealth.
I continued my walk down Bakırcılar Yokuşu Street. Ready to criticize people who dropped plastic bags near the cemetery, I noticed the surprising sign that permitted rubbish on the street only twice a week. The last frame that stuck in my mind from the peaceful street was of a preoccupied lady, blowing her cigarette smoke at the neighbouring cemetery from the second-floor window of a ramshackle building. She reminded me of the actress Jessica Lange.
Under a postmodern bower near the Fountain for Mihrimah Valide Sultan was a group of happy retired people. Assuming they had an average age of seventy-five, I wondered what they had left to laugh about.
I’d never have thought there could be such congestion on a Sunday in the triangle of mosque, tomb and cemetery. With shabby cars blocking the fountains, the turquoise inscription over the grilled window became more apparent. The sunny-faced caretaker who looked after the area for ablutions squinted at me, trying to remember where he’d seen me before. I thought the ancient man had dedicated himself to tending the forgotten fountain for nothing until I saw the signs, ‘Pay the Fee for the Toilet’ and ‘Turn off the Taps’. I knew that if for the last time I stuck my hand behind the mute inscription, I would pull it back empty. I stood up satisfied I had done what I could. My eyes darkened and I seemed to enjoy it.
I set off from the Karacaahmet wing, not knowing where I would stop. If my puppeteer’s intention was to make me acknowledge the overlooked Byzantine and Ottoman monuments and their adjacent worlds which clung so closely to life, at least he had succeeded. But suddenly I was annoyed with myself for my exaggerated view of him. I recalled the timeless journeys I had taken with my father. I would look at him with admiration and wait for the signal to head towards a kebab or pitta house.
When the noon ezan started, I bowed my head while examining the plots of land in the cemetery alongside the street, and wondered if they were deliberately set aside for those who died young. If my devil started to put pressure on me again – ‘Your father is a Balkan Georgian, your mother a Jewish–Swedish mix. Your environment has no notion of the colour of your hair and eyes, and when you have money you can’t even remember the amount, so what are you doing, lingering in this land of shadows?’– then I prayed the notes from the ezan would come to my rescue.
I walked as far as Mabeyin, to its outskirts with streams of water trickling over rocks. Eating raw meatballs in the courtyard of a kebab house converted from an Ottoman mansion in the shade of vast pine trees, I came to the conclusion that leaving no clue at the Sadeddin Efendi Fountain was a deliberate move, and that in order to track down my father’s killer I had to sort and arrange at length what was in hand. With a male voice bellowing, ‘Don’t you worry ...’ on the primitive cassette-player in the shoddy taxi I entered, I thought uneasily, ‘Am I the victim of an organized joke, or am I living through a bad dream?’
I was eager to shut myself up in my study. Before surrendering gratefully to Pat Metheny, I searched for a common characteristic among the six meeting points: Kariye and İmrahor were converted from churches to mosques / A layer of earth was dumped on top of the Executioners’ Graveyard / One of the two Nikes of Kıztaşı had gone astray / Hadım Ali became Atik Ali Paşa Mosque / and The fountain in the Karacaahmet complex (Karacaahmet who rose from being a sultan’s son to become a dervish) was intended for his deceased daughter but destined for her father, the judge.
Keeping the ‘duality’ of each one in mind and knowing they wouldn’t produce an acronym, I put my clues in the order they were presented to me:
1. The Kariye Museum
2. Cellatlar, the Executioners’ Graveyard
3. Kıztaşı, the Maiden Stone
4. The İmrahor Mosque
5. The Atik Ali Paşa Mosque
6. The Karacaahmet Cemetery (the Sadeddin Efendi Fountain)
I noticed that three of them started with the letter ‘k’. Writing down in order the ones that didn’t start with ‘k’ and concentrating on the capitals, I seemed to be trying
to bide my time. ‘C’, ‘İ’, ‘A’, I thought. I hoped to God it wasn’t ‘CAHID’ with two letters missing. With an inward prayer I grabbed an Ottoman–Turkish dictionary. Could this be my father’s killer? This idler whose surname ‘Çiftçi’, signifying both ‘a Jekyll-and-Hyde character’ and ‘farmer’, emphasized his ambiguous qualities of diligence and denial? My hair stood on end when I thought that this repressed man, who hides behind a false name which oscillated between password and confession, spoke like a philosopher but when necessary could also wield a gun like a maestro.
Didn’t he look more like a precise and mysterious serial killer than a psychopathic triggerman? When he sneaked back and amused himself at the expense of the police who couldn’t catch him, I had to admit fate had brought us together. My father would say, ‘The scientist who cannot analyse the concept of fate can never question the existence of God.’
I knew I could corner Adil Kasnak in a snug eating place where they cooked sheep’s chitterlings on a spit. Requesting him politely not to burp into his phone, I asked him if he had been at Cahid Hodja’s funeral. I wasn’t surprised when he said he had heard the news of his suicide by phone, from a grocery store owner who claimed to be a relation. I couldn’t believe that I’d shared my distress with my father’s killer, whose apathetic attitude had tricked me into confiding in him. I was apprehensive that this man might do me harm. He had seen my deep distress at the time of İz’s accident, and left the guilty runaway crippled, then went on to burn down the house and shop of his accomplice. I wanted to meet this twin-souled killer who had rescued my honour and probably my life by shooting the aggressor Seydo, even though he had said, ‘I will not use my God-given talent for using a gun on any of His servants.’
Assuming my father’s killer and my saviour really wanted to meet me, and hoping to find a final clue at the shooting range, I knew I could find the tramp Kasnak at a card table.
