by Jay Amberg
He nods. His cigarette has burned down to his fingers and so he drops it in the can. “He…Dede… I told you before at the hospital that he kept saying the land was for Mehmet…” His eyes fill again. “For Mehmet to go to university.”
Boroğlu reaches out and puts her hand on his arm. Even through his shirt, she can feel the nervous energy, the exhaustion.
“I thought…we…me and Hafize thought that he was just talking about the farm…pastures…trees with pine nuts.”
She pats his arm, something she did with Serkan when he was upset.
“I found a bigger box…hidden… It has old things…things I need you to explain… I have no one else.” He pulls his arm away from her and takes from his pants pocket a crumpled red cigarette pack. “You will not tell…”
Again, it could be a question or a demand. She looks into his eyes, at once sad and angry, exhausted and excited. “I will tell no one,” she says. He is trusting her, and there is no one other than perhaps her mother and daughter to whom she would speak. And both of them are, at this moment, furious at her. And at this point, she would not tell Serkan anything. Or anyone in her old office. Not Recep Ateş. Certainly not Tuğçe Iskan. No one.
He looks over his shoulder back toward the house, but nobody is watching them. “These,” he says, “these were in the box.” He opens the cigarette pack and shakes two coins into his left palm. Even in the shade of the herb garden’s wall, the gold is brilliant. He reaches out his hand as though he is offering the coins to her.
Her breath catches, but she does not touch the two Hadrian Aureus coins similar to the one Iskan showed her. She looks around also and then folds his fingers over the coins. Both of their hands are shivering.
“They are old?”
“Yes,” she answers. “And very, very valuable.” She takes a deep breath. “And there will be more, others, wherever these came from.” Her voice takes on a sense of urgency. “Put them away now. Hide them. Not with the other things.” Her mouth has gone dry, and she is suddenly very thirsty. “I will come to see the other things tomorrow. Later. In the afternoon. After a meeting. But hide these separately!” As he slides the coins back into the cigarette pack and stuffs it into his pants pocket, she asks, “You have the land deeds?”
“At Dede’s.”
“Bring them here and put them somewhere safe.” She takes his arm again and turns her head toward his. In a whisper, she asks, “Has anyone approached you about selling Dede’s land?”
“Yes,” he says, “two men last week.”
“Who?”
“I did not know them. Younger men.”
“From here?”
“Not from this village. And not from around here. Or Kozak. One had a fancy watch. And fancy shoes.”
She nods. “What did you tell them?”
He brushes his hand through his beard again. “That Mehmet was very sick, and I could not think about it.”
“When they come back, and they will, tell them you will sell, but it’s too soon. You are still—”
He pulls himself away from her. “I will not sell!” His voice is irate. “I will never sell!”
She holds his gaze. “No,” she says. “No, you won’t.” As his eyes cloud, she adds, “But do not tell them that. Do not make them angry.”
“I am angry!”
“I know. You should be.” She takes another long breath. “But don’t let them know that.”
44
BERGAMA
Özlem Boroğlu walks up the Sacred Way toward the ruins of the Aesklepion, Pergamon’s once-renowned hospital and health center. A stray dog follows her along the path that was eighteen hundred years ago a colonnade, roofed and lined with busy shops and stalls that sold votive offerings. She is wearing boots and jeans and a loose, blue work shirt and her dark floppy hat—her work clothes from her years on site at Allianoi and at the local tomb rescues. She has walked all the way from her house on the hill below the acropolis because she needed to think. Though she is regularly followed when she drives the Dacia out of town, no one trailed her on foot as she took the higher, more direct route through the Alevi enclave, the Kurdish and Gypsy neighborhoods, and along the trail by the Roman amphitheater, one site she has never had any interest in excavating. Finally, she passed Elif’s studio on the way to the Aesklepion’s front gate, but she knows better than to disturb her daughter when she is working. Tricking her into going out to the area around Kapıkaya, which significantly altered the search for Galen’s family villa, was one thing; actually interrupting her work in progress is quite another.
Boroğlu’s meeting at the Aesklepion’s theater isn’t for another hour, so she has time to meander through the sacred grounds, but she stops first in the shade of an old conifer because she is sweating and out of breath. She used to be able to trek the area’s hills and the site at Allianoi all day, but in recent years and especially since she was fired, she has had too much coffee and too many cigarettes and too little exercise. Only in the last few days at Kapıkaya and in the DAI library has she felt her old excitement and energy returning, but her body hasn’t really caught up with her mind.
She takes off her hat, wipes her forehead with her sleeve, and slows her breath. Although a row of restored columns runs nearby and the entrance to the Aesklepion’s main tunnel is marked, the ruins here are far less impressive than those on the acropolis. Aware that the neglect of the site has in some sense saved it, she smiles. She has dedicated her life to archeology, and she feels that this place, only partly restored, is trying to speak to her. The light and the breeze are whispering but in a language she can no longer quite comprehend. She needs a staff with an entwined serpent. Or a single-edged sword.
Galen once walked in this sacred precinct, restoring people’s health. Indeed, death was officially forbidden at the Aesklepion. The terminally ill and women in the later stages of pregnancy were prohibited. Needing Galen to speak to her now, she lights a cigarette and inhales deeply. But all she hears is hammering from the military base that abuts the property, the rumble of a tractor on the hill beyond the theater, the faint breeze in the branches, and, intermittently, the call of a songbird.
Smoking her cigarette, Boroğlu passes a pool, once used for mud baths, where two turtles bask on rocks. The healing center’s sacred spring still burbles, and so she settles next to it and listens to the water coursing. The place is tranquil, unmarked by the terror in town, but she herself, scarred by what has happened in Bergama, finds little peace. The Aesklepion’s ancient treatments focused on consistent gentle exercise, massage, music, theater, and quietude. Water was integral for drinking and bathing but also for its soothing sound. Central to all else was the interpretation of dreams. In her recurring nightmares, Boroğlu is the last priestess on earth standing with a staff entwined with a snake before an immense wall of water that is about to engulf her sanctuary and drown her. Interpretation of that particular dream is obvious. She was the director of the Allianoi Archeological Excavation and Restoration when the government ordered the valley in which it lay to be flooded to make a reservoir so that wealthy landowners could become filthy rich. She was forced to look on as the ancient site—another lesser-known healing center farther outside of Pergamon—was inundated. Since the terror attack on the Bergama funicular, the dream has altered in only one detail—the liquid wall heading toward her is fiery, a lethal brew of toxic chemicals and radioactive waste killing all life along the way.
She douses her cigarette’s butt under the spring’s constantly running spigot, places the butt on a stone, and lights another cigarette. She is aware of the peace that dwells here, but she is not a part of it. In fact, the Aesklepion’s treatments other than the interpretation of dreams might well do her good, except that she doesn’t really want them or the tranquility they might bring. Agitation, she believes, is necessary in her present situation. Sh
e is again hard on the trail of an archeological discovery, likely the most culturally significant one in Anatolia in a century or more. And her need to make this discovery separates her from this holy precinct. In her mind, she must make amends for her failure to save Allianoi, and, frankly, she savors the thought of showing up the crooks and kleptocrats that destroyed her site and then later fired her for wanting to follow up on the nation’s best archeological lead. And she can’t help but be obsessed with the idea that the bombing in Bergama was anything but random.
Suddenly, two large hands cover her face from behind, blinding her. Screaming, she swiftly raises her cigarette to burn the hands. She catches only the wrist of the left hand, grazing it, not pressing the cigarette’s tip.
“Özlem!” The deep shout is one of pain and surprise. She wheels to find her old friend Recep Ateş crouched on one knee and clutching his wrist with his right hand.
“Shit!” he mutters.
She springs to her feet and yells, “Recep! What are…?”
“Shit! Shit! Shit!” Grimacing, he lets go of his wrist. A small white crescent-shaped blister is already rising.
“I’m so sorry!” Upright she isn’t much taller than he is kneeling. She drops the crumpled cigarette and grinds it into the stone. “Here,” she adds, reaching for his hand.
He smiles through the pain. “I should’ve known better than to try to sneak up on you!” His hand, roughly twice the size of hers, trembles.
“Here,” she repeats.
Still holding his hand, she turns and guides it toward the water flowing from the spring’s spigot. He leans forward, his right hand on the ground, and stretches so she can guide his left hand into the water. He flinches when the swelling blister reaches the cool water. Then, almost immediately his shoulders relax and his face softens. He shifts so that he can sit cross-legged near the fountain and keep the water running over his wrist. She sits back, her rear on her heels, folds her hands in her lap, and watches his face, the frown slowly melting.
“Stupid man!” she says with some affection.
Shaking his head, he gazes at her. “I do know better,” he says. “Even lost in thought, you’re a lioness.”
“Keep your hand in the water!”
This is the first time they have seen each other since the morning after the bombing. Their meeting at the Aesklepion’s theater is a walk-through for the upcoming National Psychotherapy Convention meeting during which she is a featured speaker. Her topic, “The Past, Our Future,” is supposed to present the significance of the Aesklepion’s treatments in light of recent findings about the nature of wellness.
Boroğlu and Ateş sit quietly for a couple of minutes before, to take his mind off the pain, she asks, “How are the twins?”
“Studying for their university entrance exams. Which is to say, not in very good moods. How about Elif?”
“She’s burying herself in her work.”
“I wonder where she gets that from?” When Boroğlu doesn’t answer, he sighs. “I heard about the boy…”
Boroğlu looks away at the Aesklepion’s ruins. “Yes,” she says. “The last of the bombing victims to die.” She doesn’t add that the families and friends of those killed, here in Bergama and elsewhere, are victims as well. The ill effects will ripple through the town for a long time. Certainly young Mehmet’s parents and a lot of other people have lost both the measure and purpose of their lives. She has thought a lot about it, and she doesn’t want to pursue the point at the moment. “Let’s look at that,” she says, waving at his wrist.
He keeps his hand under the flowing water. “It’s okay,” he says. “At least you didn’t go for my eyes.”
“I didn’t mean…,” she says but doesn’t finish her sentence. She has since she was a girl reacted fast and only later tried to piece together what she did.
He smiles ironically. “I came early because I was hoping to find you.”
She cocks her head.
“Tuğçe Iskan paid me a visit at the office. She wanted to review the records of our tumuli rescues. Communications with Ankara. Other stuff. Everything.”
“She is by nature and practice a pain in the ass.”
He nods. “She was also asking about you.”
“Me?”
He inspects his wrist and then shoves his hand back into the water. “For some Ankara investigation.”
Boroğlu thinks of the photos of Serkan with Mustafa Hamit. Her mind leaps ahead. Does Iskan believe that she is involved with the Hamits, too? Iskan must know better! Or is that stubborn ass building a case against the Hamits for raiding the Bergama area’s tumuli? Does she think that Serkan has been feeding those crooks information about grave rescues for a long time? It’s absurd, but Iskan is too obsessive to notice the inherent absurdity of what she’s doing. “That bitch!” Boroğlu says.
“She is,” Ateş says. “She’s also tenacious.”
“She told me—” Boroğlu stops, aware that continuing the conversation might lead Ateş to suspect Serkan’s involvement with the Hamits. “That bitch!”
45
ANTALYA PROVINCE, TURKEY
All day, the van drives fast along the highway in the stifling heat. The boy hidden under the carpets in the back of the van cramps from dehydration, but he remains silent, uncomplaining. Although he is slight for thirteen, with only wisps on his chin and the shadow of a mustache, he is the one who has been selected for veneration—and paradise! The sheikhs’ repeated kicks in the stomach and the regular thrashing with sticks have toughened him. He was not the most clever boy at the Al Farouq training camp and certainly not the biggest, but he was the most zealous, the fiercest of the lion cubs. He made up for his small size by being the first to obey every order, the first to complete every task with honor. When they beat the barren Zahidi woman until her face was pulp and her ribs and pelvis were crushed, he did not stop until she was long beyond screaming.
He was honored to be one of the chosen as executioners of the five Kurds, those abominable slaves of the Western kuffars. Given clean camouflage fatigues and a new black-and-white headband, he held the 9mm pistol proudly. The Kurdish dog knelt before him in his orange boilersuit, his head bowed in absolute submission. The boy had seen the videos of the public executions, cheered with the other cubs in the camp. The heavy gun became light in his hand as he raised the weapon above his head so that the cameras could record his supremacy.
When he pulled the Kurd’s head back for the cameras, the eyes were already dead. And when the command was given, he felt divine power surge within him. Bracing the gun with his left hand as he had been trained, he aimed carefully. He pulled the trigger, on guard not to yank it, and the 9mm recoiled. The Kurdish dog jerked forward. As the head hit the ground, blood pulsed from the skull and erupted from the cheek below the left eye. The sheikhs and the other cubs shouted praise, and the cameraman crouched close to shoot the spurting blood. As he lowered the gun, the acrid smell filled him with irreproachable pride.
Now, as he is relentlessly jolted at every bump in the road, something begins to jostle his sense of honor and duty and fealty. He sees again his mother’s eyes brimming when the sheikh came to take him to the special training camp. She said nothing as she wrung her hands and tears ran down her cheeks. He must remember that, as the sheikh said, she is only a woman and therefore unable to understand that he has become Allah’s sword of righteousness and retribution. He will make her proud. She must be proud to have both her husband and her only son martyred, both esteemed beyond measure in heaven and on earth.
At night, the van stops along a deserted side road. The driver pulls him from beneath the carpets. Too cramped to stand, he collapses at the feet of two men whose faces are covered with gray scarves. The two men laugh, but they do not kick him. When he left Al Farouq days before, his orders were clear and simple: obey whoever
is transporting him to his sacred destiny. He knows nothing of the mission itself—except that he dies for the greater glory of God.
As the driver bickers with the men in a language the boy does not understand, feeling returns to his legs. He struggles first to his hands and knees and then, wobbling, to his feet. He is dizzy, thirsty, disoriented. The two men wear work boots, dirty jeans, and dark T-shirts. He glimpses one man’s face, which has only stubble, not a full beard. The language, Turkish, the boy guesses, sounds harsh and unfriendly. As they argue, all three men ignore him. They seem nothing to him like mujahideen.
Without a word to the boy, the driver stomps to the van, turns it around, and drives away. One of the men takes the boy by the shoulder and shoves him toward an old, open-bed produce truck. The other throws baggy shorts and a T-shirt at him. They yank off his black headband and then force him to strip off his combat boots and fatigues. The shorts and the T-shirt, which are way too big, stink of cigarette smoke.
Together the men push him up and into the truck’s bed. The man who grabbed him gives him a plastic liter bottle of water and gestures for him to lie down. Flies have found the few split watermelons still on the truck. He tries to keep his focus on his glorious mission, but the buzzing and the stench of rotten fruit distract him. He downs half the water as the men return to the truck’s cab. When the truck pulls away, exhaust from a broken muffler mixes with the other smells.
The road is rough, the night air heavy; clouds cover the moon and stars. He guzzles the rest of the water before realizing he has none for his ablutions. Although he is exhausted, he remains vigilant, barely sleeping, and then waking suddenly from disjointed dreams of his childhood. He scratches his itching skin and scalp. Unable to stand, he is at least able to take off his underpants before he pisses himself. Nothing about any of this feels noble or triumphant.
