9

When his flight landed in Konya Airport, Sherif closed his book and got ready to disembark. He took a taxi and gave the driver the name of his hotel. The weather was chilly, but a golden glow of sunlight reflected off the buildings and the trees, giving them a friendly warmth. The city was historic, its buildings and mosques reflecting its prominence as a twelfth- and thirteenth-century capital, despite some modern buildings and Western-style restaurants and cafés; however, its most striking feature was the tall Islamic gravestones with sun symbols and men’s headgear carved into the tops, planted all around the city in a circle as though embracing it, casting shadows of grief and melancholy.

His Turkish wasn’t up to much, despite his repeated visits: he had not even managed to pick up a few words to help him shop and communicate with taxi drivers. It was difficult, therefore, to ask the driver about the tall turbans carved into the gravestones. He remained silent until they arrived at the hotel, its modern façade incongruous in such an ancient city. There was a line of tourists in front of a large mosque, extending all the way into the middle of the street. The driver helped him carry his bags to reception and Sherif tipped him several extra liras in thanks. “Here’s my number if you need a lift anywhere,” said the driver, handing him a business card.

Check-in was accomplished quickly, and he asked the receptionist to have a cup of Turkish coffee brought up to his room. The balcony looked directly onto the mosque, offering a grand view. He stood there, momentarily mesmerized by its arresting beauty, until the waiter arrived with the coffee. “What’s that mosque called?” he asked.

The waiter smiled proudly with the reflected glory of the magnificent building that his country boasted. “It’s the Mosque of Suleiman the Magnificent, Kanunî Sultan Süleyman.”

It was not the first time he had seen an opulent mosque in his travels to various Turkish cities, but this was by far the most marvelous and certainly lived up to the sultan’s title, ‘the Magnificent.’ Despite the fine Turkish coffee, he found himself tired and lay down on the bed, closing his eyes.

He was startled from his nap by the ringing of his phone. It was a local number, not an international one: it could only be Borhan Bey, the client from whom his company wanted to purchase a house. He spoke to the gentleman, who wanted to meet in an hour, and agreed although he was in desperate need of sleep. “Oh, well,” he said to himself, “it’s not as if there’s any nightlife in the city. Might as well avoid napping in the afternoon so as to get a good night’s rest.” Sherif had never contented himself with what meets the eye, always eager to know the story behind historical cities, so he pulled up Konya on his iPad. In a few seconds, several sites came up purporting to offer details about the city he was visiting for a scant three days.

Borhan met him in the lobby of the hotel and introduced himself, shaking his hand and greeting him warmly like an old friend as was the Turkish custom. He was a squat, portly man of just over fifty, with graying hair and a ruddy and fine-featured face. “You must be starving!” he declared. “Let’s go to lunch first.”

He then led Sherif out to the hotel garage where his BMW waited, and turned on the air conditioning despite the pleasant weather. He stopped in a commercial area outside a restaurant which, Borhan told Sherif, was the oldest in the city, and served the traditional cuisine Konya was famous for, most prominently etli bamya, dried okra soup. He would not permit Sherif to order for himself, but told the waiter, “Two etli bamya, two bread with meat, two çiğ köfte,” which turned out to be lettuce leaves stuffed with spicy raw meatballs. “All traditional Turkish dishes,” he smiled cheerfully at Sherif after the waiter had left.

The restaurant was old, high-ceilinged, and furnished in an old-fashioned style; it seemed not to have been renovated since the day it had opened. There were wooden tables covered in white plastic sheeting and rattan chairs; the overhead neon lights glared palely, and a ceiling fan rotated monotonously, circulating the air and the delicious smells of cooking throughout the interior. A window displaying the dishes on offer stretched horizontally across the wall, behind which the fat cook was working. On the walls were displayed several photographs of the restaurant owner with his most famous guests: a framed photo of Kemal Atatürk and one of a whirling dervish performing in his white skirt. Traditional Turkish music filled the restaurant.

Their orders arrived. Borhan dug in with gusto. “Turkish cuisine is the oldest in the world, you know,” he boasted between mouthfuls, “and I daresay the finest. We’ve kept to our traditional recipes.”

Sherif nodded politely.

“We Turks love a good meal. You won’t find us chasing after Italian restaurants and American-style food the way it is in other parts of the world.”

Borhan’s appetite for talking was as good as his appetite for food. Sherif just smiled, nodded at the appropriate junctures, and otherwise let his client chatter happily on.

Looking up, he found himself staring again at the photograph of the dervish. He could almost see him whirling—no, it wasn’t an illusion. The man was dancing, actually whirling. Sherif blinked his eyes and stared. Borhan, noticing, asked in concern, “Something the matter?”

Suddenly, the dervish stopped whirling. Sherif must have been more tired than he realized, or else it was the man’s endless chatter that had him seeing things.

After the meal, Borhan drove Sherif into the old quarter, coming to a halt outside an imposing wooden doorway. Sherif had noticed that although most of the houses in the area were historic, the vast majority of them sported signs emblazoned with the word ‘HOTEL.’ Konya, he knew, was full of old buildings that had been restored and reopened as hotels. The new generation of tourists preferred places like this to luxury hotels. He felt uncomfortable telling Borhan that his company was one of the foremost to profit from this new tourism trend.

Borhan unlocked the door with a large, rusty wooden key that let out a piercing squeak as it turned in the ancient lock. The house they stepped into was wooden, surrounded by a large, neglected garden. It was as silent as a graveyard inside, with a cold, depressing atmosphere that made Sherif shiver. He buttoned up the top button of his woolen jacket. “This house was built hundreds of years ago,” Borhan boomed, shattering the silence, “by one of my ancestors. He built it to live in with his family. He was a teacher and also the imam of a Sufi order; later, he set a part of the house aside for a madrasa, a school for religious instruction, and a tikiya, or guest house, for his dervishes and followers. You know that was common for a lot of imams of that time.”

He guided Sherif from room to room and corridor to corridor, showing him around the house. It was divided into two: the haramlek, or women’s quarters, set aside for the imam’s family and his womenfolk, with its own staircase and entrance; and the salamlek, or men’s quarters, part of which was devoted to the guest house and its visitors. “Here we are,” the man said, pointing to the rows of rooms: classrooms, meditation rooms, and the one they walked into, the sama‘ khana, a type of auditorium or listening room. It was a spacious chamber layered with Persian carpets that seemed untouched by time and Ottoman couches set all around. Hanging from the ceiling was a chandelier composed entirely of brass candelabras. In one corner was a collection of reed flutes and tambours, clearly exactly as they had been set down by the last hand that had played them. “This is the sama‘ khana, where all the singing and dancing took place.”

The smell of incense was rising. Sherif’s ears caught the melancholy wail of a reed flute, growing gradually louder and louder. The dervish was there again, whirling and spinning all around the room. His skirt wafted a perfume that struck Sherif in the face. He turned lightly around, his speed breathtaking. Sherif’s head spun, but this time it was worse: he flung himself down on one of the couches, straining to stare harder and harder at the whirling specter. In the blink of an eye, their eyes met. The man’s eyes were sharp, powerful, piercing. They seemed to bore into Sherif’s soul. He trembled. “I need to go,” he stammered to Borhan Bey.

As they walked out, Sherif’s eyes fell upon an oil painting hanging on the wall, of a number of dervishes in costume and tall felt turbans, whirling all around a man bearing the hallmarks of dignity and grandeur. Sherif froze, staring at it. It was the dervish whom he had seen moments ago, the same one whose image he had seen on the restaurant wall. His eyes were sunken, dark around the edges as though adorned with kohl, and topped with thick, furrowed eyebrows. They were the same eyes he had just looked into. Their gaze pierced his very depths, as though the man in the picture was aiming the arrows of his glances at Sherif and only him. He stared at the picture so long that the man noticed his interest in it. “That’s my great-grandfather, the imam of the Sufi order and the owner of this guest house, with some of his followers and dervishes.”

“Tell me, Mr. Borhan,” Sherif breathed. “Why do you want to sell the house?”

Borhan chuckled. “As you see, because it’s locked up, and no one’s using it.”

“Why didn’t you try to make use of it? Turn it into a hotel perhaps, or open it up to tourists, or rent it out?”

“There are a great many of us heirs to the place,” Borhan explained, “and each of us wants to do something different with it. That’s why we settled on selling it. As you see, it’s in poor condition and will cost a lot to renovate.”

Sherif was on his way out when Borhan called out, “Wait! There’s a basement as well. My grandfather’s buried in there with his family and some of his most faithful followers. It’s a nice mausoleum down there. . . .”

Sherif stared. “You bury your dead here?”

“Yes. It’s tradition. The imam and his followers are buried in the same spot.”

Sherif shook his head. “I don’t think I need to view any mausoleums. Let’s just go.”

On the way home, Borhan took to chattering about the value of the property and its unique location, but Sherif was not really with him.