Levon's Time

by Chuck Dixon

  “So, what do we do?” Buey called.

  “We find the car.”

  19

  The clouds parted, allowing the sun to shine on the camp.

  Levon stood on a patch of grass in back of the shower building to soak in the sun. His face was to the sky, eyes closed. Someone was crossing the grass behind him. He turned, hands fisted.

  “I come in peace,” Klaus said, hands open before him.

  Levon turned back to the sun. The German joined him, lighting a cigarette and taking a long pull. The scent of the smoke was strong.

  “You had a nice talk?” he asked.

  “You saw?” Levon said.

  “Everyone saw.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to associate with me.”

  “Was kann ich sagen? There is no television here, and I have read all my books. Twice.”

  “They have books in German here?”

  “I had a friend outside sending me reading material and cigarettes.”

  “You had a falling out?”

  “I have not heard from her, so I am left to smoke this Turkish kacke and seek my entertainment by speaking to you.”

  Levon said nothing, eyes still closed and face still to the sun.

  “You do not have a story to tell?” Klaus asked.

  “Nothing very interesting has ever happened to me,” Levon said.

  “Now who is the liar?”

  Levon basked.

  “Then I will tell you my story, if only to pass the time, ja?”

  “Go crazy, mein freund,” Levon said.

  Klaus took another long drag.

  “You have heard of phishing? Emails sent to unwary recipients asking for money or perhaps credit card numbers?”

  “I don’t do a lot of internet,” Levon told him.

  “Well, someone hacked my email account and sent pleas to everyone on my list. They claimed to be me, and said I was traveling in Turkey and had run into trouble with the police. They said my wallet and passport had been stolen, and I could not pay my hotel bill, and so was being held prisoner in my own room. The sad truth was, I actually was in Turkey at the time. I was running a little export scheme out of a travel agency in Izmir. Well, my mother receives this email in her inbox and panics a bit. She panics a lot. Her poor boy was in trouble. But rather than send money to the phishers, she calls the German embassy in Istanbul and the consulate in Izmar, and even the Turkish embassy in Berlin. She raises the hell all over the place. I guess she loves me that much, yes? In the end, the Turkish police make it their mission to find me, and I am not in a hotel in Ankara. I am in my travel agency in Izmar, where I was preparing lovely chalk replicas of the Cathedral of Sofia as gifts for my clients. However, they are only about seventy-five percent chalk; the rest is uncut Afghan white. And the police arrive at a most unfortunate time in the process. And so, because of a mother’s love, I am here.”

  Levon smiled, then hissed a suppressed laugh through his teeth.

  “So, you find this tragedy humorous? My misfortune? Perhaps you are part German, my friend,” said Klaus. He said it through a smile.

  “Your outside contact sending you goodies is your mom.”

  “She felt bad at first for causing my arrest, but over time, she decided it was all my fault in the first place.”

  “No books. No cigarettes.”

  “And none of the chocolate biscuits I like. Sad to say, even a mother’s love has its limits. Do you find this so?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to know my mom,” Levon said. Clouds scudded west to hide the sun. He rebuttoned his shirt and turned back toward the barracks. Klaus walked with him down the broad avenue where other men walked in groups of two and three.

  Ball Boy, the Chechen’s man, crossed the gravel toward them. He had a folded bundle in his arms that he handed to Levon before walking away.

  A denim coat with a quilted felt lining and a fresh blood stain on the breast. It was the coat of the big man Levon had brought down at the football pitch. Under it was a woolen blanket with red and blue stripes. Levon slid his arms into the sleeves of the coat. The fit was good. Klaus handed back the blanket. From its folds, a piece of paper fell to the gravel. Levon picked it up.

  Kadir Tiryaki

  11

  “A name and a hut number,” Klaus said.

  “You know this guy?”

  “We don’t mingle with the Turks. We’re unclean infidels, remember?”

  “A common name.”

  “Eleven is an isolation custody hut, Bill.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “They house special cases there. Guys who broke the rules. There’s a Greek in there who walked in front of the line at evening prayer.”

  “What other kinds of guys?”

  “Kinderschänder. Rapists. Turks aren’t like Arabs. That scheisse is not okay with them.”

  “What would the Chechen have against this one?” Levon held the paper up to Klaus. The German’s eyes widened.

  “I think I do not need to know how this book ends.” Klaus walked away between two huts.

  20

  They made chocolate chip and walnut cookies, burning half of them. They watched The Bachelor and an X-Men movie before Uncle Fern chased them upstairs so he could have the TV back. Up in Merry’s room, they lay in the dark talking. Esperanza had the bed, while Merry and Sandy camped out in sleeping bags on the floor. Moonlight came in through the sheers, casting the room in silver.

  Merry was asking Esperanza questions and translating the answers for Sandy.

  Her father worked in the oil fields while she and her mother, her grandmother, and her siblings lived in a company-owned village.

  “Papa drove a truck. He hauled pipe and dug trenches. He had no skills. The pay was low. Then he got sick and could not work so hard.”

  “What did you do then?” Merry asked.

  “We moved to Jalapa. It is nearer the capital. My father and mother and older sister got work at the maquiladoras.”

  “What’s that?”

  “A place of work where things are made. There are many machines there.”

  “Like a factory?”

  “Sí. A factory. But it is expensive in a city like Jalapa. In the country, it is cheap to live. In the city, everything costs too high. And to get a job at the factory, you must pay the gangs. If you do not pay them, they will hurt you so you cannot work. My mama and papa and hermana work very hard but make little money. Not enough for my little brothers and sister to live.”

  “Oh, my God,” Sandy exclaimed. “They sold her!”

  “Shut up, Sandy,” Merry said.

  “My sister married a man at the factory, a jefe. He is a Coreano.”

  “Hold on,” Merry said. “Corry-ano? He’s a mailman?”

  Esperanza whooped with laughter.

  “What did I miss?” Sandy asked.

  “He is a coreano. Like a Chino or a Japonés.”

  “You mean he’s Korean?”

  “¡Sí! ¡Sí! Koh-ree-ann! He works at the factory. It is owned by the koh-ree-anns.”

  “He has money?”

  “Sí. My sister moved away with him. We never see her again. I am very happy for her but sad for me.”

  “And your family was still poor.”

  “Yes. No money from my sister. My father was still very sick and lost his job.”

  Esperanza told of how she woke up one night to her mother crying. Her father came to the room she shared with her brothers and sisters with a shopping bag of her clothes. He walked her from the apartment where they lived into an alley that ran behind the stores that lined a square near the factory. He knocked and a woman answered, a woman with a cruel face who took her past a room where men smoked and played cards. Esperanza looked back. The door to the alley stood open. Her father was no longer there.

  The next day, the woman took her on a bus that drove north for days to a place in the north where there were many, many people living in shacks and tents. It was there
she was given over to a man with a Pancho Villa mustache and a big white cowboy hat. He put her and four other girls into the back of a truck and drove them north through the night and across the border into Mexico. She didn’t know this until she was told the following day on another bus traveling north. This one was filled with men and women from Guatemala and El Salvador and Honduras. A few were sick, with racking coughs or yellow skin. Some of the men were actually boys, not much older than her. They scared her with their black tattoos and shaved heads. They said things to her she could not repeat but could never forget.

  Esperanza lost track of how many days she rode buses and trains and walked on roads northward as part of one group or another, always overseen by one Mexican or another who helped them with water and food along the way. After many, many days, they came to a river. They told Esperanza that the USA was on the other side, her new home. They told her how lucky she was to be going there. She did not feel lucky. She felt alone. Lost. Always frightened.

  She was taken over the river on a raft of plastic drums and wooden planks. Once on the other side, she joined a column of people walking across the desert to a road where trucks waited for them. More trucks and vans and cars. More sleeping while moving. More meals that were cold and greasy and never enough. She knew they were taking her north since the nights, and then the days, got colder. For the last leg of her journey, she traveled with four other girls a few years older than her. They were dropped off at what looked like an apartment building. She sat alone in the back of the truck for an hour’s drive on a highway and a short trip along a surface road. Days riding blind had taught her the difference.

  It was in an empty parking lot near railroad tracks that she was handed over to the two men Merry and Sandy saw at the mall. They taught her what to steal and how to steal it. She was good at reading, so it was easy for her to recognize the stores and the brands they wanted. They gave her special bags lined with shiny foil. They said it was magic to keep the machines from knowing that she was stealing. She knew it was science, although she did not know how it worked.

  She thought she had been stealing for them for a week and a couple of days when Merry took her away. This last was spoken through tears.

  “Was she raped?” Sandy asked.

  “I’m not going to ask her that,” Merry said.

  Esperanza wanted to know what they were saying.

  “Sandy wants to know if she can have those American Eagle jeans you stole,” Merry said, her eyes narrowed at Sandy with shoulders raised, head tilted, and mouth slack in a “duh” gesture.

  “I prayed and prayed, and Jesus saved me. He sent you, Merry. Gracias, mi amiga.” Esperanza’s voice was moist with tears.

  “Would you like us to pray with you?” Merry asked.

  “Sí.”

  They prayed together, Sandy in English, then fell silent and finally to sleep.

  21

  Gunny Leffertz said:

  “It’s the man, not the weapon.”

  The midday meal was stale flatbread, cheese, and a mash of peas laced heavily with garlic. Levon made a burrito and took up a place against the wall of a hut to watch the building numbered 11.

  That hut remained locked until all the other men had been called to lunch. Guards, led by Clipboard, aka the Prick, came to unlock the door and escort the thirty or so men inside to the dining hall. Levon studied them, committing them to memory. Most were dark-skinned, except for a beefy Euro with a shaved scalp and a heavy ginger beard. They didn’t look in either direction, only straight ahead, with the guards flanking them all the way to the chow line.

  Someone called in Arabic, “Murtad!” Apostate. Someone, or all of them, had turned their back on Allah.

  The Prick stopped in his march to look along the lane for the shouter. No one met his gaze. Levon backed farther into the shadows between the two huts. The Prick slapped his rattan flail against his leg once and rejoined the parade of pariahs now entering the dining hall.

  There was a crunch of gravel behind Levon. It was the ball boy. He spoke in Turkish to Levon, who shook his head. They tried a few more languages and finally settled on French. Ball Boy’s French was worse than Levon’s.

  “You not kill,” Ball Boy said, nodding toward the dining hall.

  “I do not know what he looks like, this Kadir Tiryaki.”

  “Is Turk. Has tavşan dudak. It is…” Busboy brushed his fingers down his upper lip in a chopping motion.

  “Le bec-de-lièvre? A harelip?”

  “Air-leep. Yes. Like the tavşan.” Rabbit.

  “Height? How tall?”

  Ball Boy held his hand flat at Levon’s shoulder.

  “Beard? Mustache?” Levon gestured to indicate facial hair. Ball Boy tilted his chin and clicked his tongue. Turk body language for the negative.

  “He wear ceket. Red. Türkiye football team. You know?”

  Levon searched his memory of the column of men who had exited hut 11. There had been a man in a red team jacket. Cleanshaven. He hadn’t seen the man’s face clearly.

  “What did he do?” Levon said.

  Ball Boy blinked at him, uncomprehending.

  “Why does your boss want him dead?”

  “What matters? Dead is dead. You do.”

  “I need to know the reason. I am not your idiot friend.”

  “Zampara not my friend. You hurt. Me happy enough.” Ball Boy spat.

  Zampara. Levon knew that one. Motherfucker. Insults and profanity were the richest chapter in his foreign language lexicon.

  “What did Tiryaki do?”

  “He kill woman. Woman chef does not want dead.”

  “His wife? A relative?”

  Ball Boy’s face turned sour.

  “A whore. She make chef much money. The pig kill her with hammer.”

  Levon searched Ball Boy’s face. The contempt in the man’s eyes was real, no guile there. The target was a woman-killer.

  “I will do it. Tonight. Tomorrow. First opportunity.”

  “You need bıçak?” Ball Boy made a motion with his fingers joined. A blade.

  “No.”

  The call to afternoon prayer sounded tinnily from the speaker on the admin building’s roof. Ball Boy nodded once and turned away. Levon stayed to watch the men of Hut 11 leave the dining hall and return to their lockdown. He found his man this time. Red satin jacket. Dark, close-cropped hair. His upper lip showed a congenital split under a misshaped nose that looked like a lump of putty. His close-set eyes were fixed on the back of the man before him.

  Someone else would see a man. Levon saw a blanket, a coat, and a way out of this place.

  22

  Gunny Leffertz said:

  “Sometimes a show of force is enough.”

  Levon walked down the broad lane to the latrine and shower building.

  A guard stood smoking before the entrance. Levon pointed to his gut and pantomimed gastric distress. The guard snickered. Levon did have an urgent need to go inside; a reaction to the greasy lamb he’d had for breakfast. He needed more time to accustom his digestion to the menu here. The water, too.

  New place. New bugs.

  The low building was divided between the latrine and the showers. The latrines consisted of a long wooden bench with nine holes cut in the top. The bench was suspended over a concrete trench with a constant stream of water running through it toward an open drain. The system was not ideal, and the building was rank with a fecal and urine stink. The ceiling was open to the joists that supported the roof above. A steel trough sink with three faucets was mounted on the opposite wall. A stack of newspapers sat on the cracked tile floor for those who ran through the single roll of paper given to them each month.

  A wall separated the shitter from the shower area. The open entryway was hung with plastic strips. When he was done with what he had gone there to do, Levon parted the strips to inspect the showers.

  Unlike the latrine, the shower room had a drop ceiling of painted fiberboard, each panel crusted
at the edges with mold. There was a double row of shower stalls in the center of the room, twenty in all. A shower head was suspended above each one from a network of exposed pipes. The stalls were three-sided, with chest-high stainless steel partition walls set to either side in a shared block wall that reached to the ceiling. The place was musky from the smell of stagnant water down in the drains and the sharp pine odor of tar soap. A rolling canvas cart piled high with damp towels rested in a corner.

  The door to the latrines squeaked on its hinges. A man grabbed a swatch of newspaper before heading to the nine-holer. Levon exited to the sounds of the man noisily beginning his business.

  He’d seen what he needed to see.

  Dinner was an oily fish stew served lukewarm with even staler flatbread. The evening call to prayer brayed from the loudspeaker. The occupants of hut 14 were ordered back to their building to be locked in for the night. Levon lagged at the back of the row to watch men who removed their shoes before arranging prayer mats on a concrete pad set for that purpose in front of the dining hall. Bricks arranged in a pattern on the pad’s surface formed an arrow pointing to the west/southwest, in the direction of Mecca. A standing basin with running water allowed the men to wash before prayer.

  There were fewer than fifty men kneeling to pray. The camp population was primarily Muslim, but most were not observant. The other prisoners respected the praying men by remaining silent and not walking between the supplicants and the city of the Haj. Turkey was still largely secular, although that was changing over time. The era of Ataturk was bowing to the rise of Sharia.

  The Prick stood watching the kneeling men, tapping his flail against his leg as though in time to the keening prayer coming from a portable radio. He looked up to see Levon watching him. The men held one another’s gaze across the yard until a guard growled at Levon to get inside his hut.