This he’d revealed some time later, after several brushes with death, when they were illegally parked in front of the Bebek police station, overlooked by a soldier who was cradling a rusty submachine gun in his arms. (No one else had found this at all alarming, or even strange.) Haluk and Chloe (who seemed to be an item, though their conspiratorial manner suggested this was somehow controversial) had gone off on some undisclosed errand, and Jeannie had taken advantage of the lull to ask this sulky cat-boy a few key questions. To which Sinan’s answers were: no, they hadn’t ever met before, though he’d heard a lot about her from her father. And yes, her father knew his father, who was currently the Ambassador to Pakistan. What’s more, her father knew his mother, who was currently trying to revive her singing career in Paris. ‘And while we’re on the subject, my name isn’t really John Reed.’
‘Actually, I sort of worked that out already,’ Jeannie said. ‘So Sinan,’ she added, when he had told her his real name. ‘It sounds like you’re all alone here.’
That was how it had all started. Though (as seemed to be the custom in the baiting game) he’d begun with the truth. ‘Alone? You are sadly, very sadly mistaken. There is the maid, always the maid breathing over me. And my father’s sister. And about a million other relatives. Right now, I’m mostly at Haluk’s. I don’t know if Chloe mentioned this, but we’re cousins.’
‘It all sounds very cosy,’ Jeannie said.
Sinan snorted. ‘Cosy. That’s good.’
‘You want the truth? Okay, then. I’ll tell you. Haluk’s father – my uncle – is a gangster.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously. Strictly speaking, he’s an arms dealer, and let me tell you. You don’t want an arms dealer making sure you do your homework.’ Sighing for effect, he’d added, ‘We can’t do anything without his knowing. Not even if he’s out of the country, like he is today. Let me put it this way. In the vast prison that is Turkey, his reach is infinite.’
‘That’s quite an indictment,’ Jeannie had said, but in a way that made it clear she was not buying it.
His eyes darkened. ‘We try to make the best of it, of course. But right now we’re under house arrest, and I mean literally. You see, we failed an exam – the same exam – and so summer was cancelled. We’re supposed to be studying. Haluk’s grandparents are supposed to be our jailers. They let us out because they feel sorry for us, but if Haluk’s father finds out, he’ll kill them. And he will. He has spies everywhere. We can’t even have an ice cream without him hearing about it.’
Losing her patience now, she’d asked, ‘Why are you telling me all this?’
‘Because it’s true,’ he’d insisted. ‘And everyone knows it.’
‘But that doesn’t mean he’d want you blabbing about it, does it?’
‘In a country like this, it makes no difference one way or the other.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s accepted. It’s just how things are.’
‘That,’ Jeannie said, ‘is what people say when they bow to defeatism.’
The faintest glitter in his eyes this time. ‘So you think I am defeatist.’
‘Not just a defeatist, but a liar.’
‘You want me to prove it? Okay, then. I will.’
So their next stop had been a swimming club called the Lido, where it was immediately clear that there were indeed a lot of people watching their every move. Mothers, anyway. One by one they ambled past to say hello to the two boys, to ask after their parents, to enquire after ‘these delightful girls’, and from time to time, to ask after another girl called Suna. Though the name meant nothing to Jeannie, it did to Chloe, who flicked her head at the very mention of it. When Jeannie asked who Suna was, Sinan explained that she was someone who thought she was going out with Haluk. ‘Well is she?’ Jeannie had then asked. She wasn’t. ‘Then why does she think so?’ The answer: ‘This is Turkey.’
Before she could ask for a fuller explanation, they were joined by a dark-haired woman Jeannie guessed to be in her forties. Though she had no sense of her face, just gold and red nail varnish, sunglasses and flashing white teeth, she’d found her gaze unnerving. She could not, of course, understand the tense exchange that ensued – only that she was its object.
Then without warning this woman threw back her head in raucous laughter. Offering her hand to Jeannie, she said, ‘How rude I’ve been. Allow me to introduce myself.’ She turned out to be ‘Suna’s mother.’
‘I hear you have only just arrived in this country and have yet to acquaint yourself with our strange ways.’
So Jeannie had told her, with a sincerity that this woman seemed to find very amusing, that she was doing her best.
‘Ah, yes. I’m sure you will continue to do so, too. But I hear from these boys that you refuse to believe a thing they say.’
To which Jeannie had replied that they’d been telling her some pretty preposterous things.
‘Ah – for example – that Haluk’s father is a gangster?’
Yes, that was one thing. ‘Though I find it hard to believe.’
‘Why?’ asked Suna’s mother, leaning forward with a smile.
‘Because in America, no one ever admits to that sort of thing. They’d have to lie about it. You know, hide behind a front.’
‘Where did you find this girl? What a treasure! So innocent! So sweet!’
‘I can’t say I warmed to the Lido, though I should perhaps describe it. Strictly speaking, it is swimming club about halfway into the city proper. It has a large saltwater pool that gives the impression of spilling over into the Bosphorus, and its clientele, I’m told, is very select. However, the ivy-covered hotel overlooking the pool is, I’m told, an infamous rendezvous hotel where businessmen entertain their floozies. (Though not, I hope, the ones whose wives belong to the pool.) To add to the bizarre mix, Simon and Garfunkel were on the intercom, extolling “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme”. I can’t say I was impressed by the Lido’s fixtures. The tables and deckchairs were clunky and would not have looked out of place in a bus terminal. But the waiters sparkled white, and the women sparkled gold, and though I couldn’t see the eyes behind the dark glasses, I still felt a growing chill.
So I was not at all sorry when we suddenly had to return at breakneck speed to Haluk’s house, which is one of those big modern villas on the water, just outside Bebek. It has wall-to-wall picture windows on the side facing the water, and highly polished parquet floors dotted here and there with glass-topped tables and black naugahyde sofas. We went straight out to the seaside terrace; an expanse of white marble ending in a pier where a speedboat named Kitten II bobbed in the waves.
We had only just settled into our deckchairs when the phone rang and Haluk dashed back inside. Sinan explained it was Haluk’s father, calling to make sure he was at home studying.
They were still conversing when an owlish couple shuffled into the room. Haluk’s grandparents. They were wearing matching grey slippers, and there was fear in their eyes until Haluk told them who I was. It turns out they know my father. Is there anyone here who doesn’t?
At this point a maid appeared with a dish of baklava. Although she offered it to everyone, I was the only one to accept. Haluk’s grandmother lavished me with praise as I ate her first serving, speaking also of the despair she felt about the others. The problem with the young, she said, was that they were all too thin. It made them ill, and it was illness, she thought, that propelled them into tomfoolery. ‘But you, you are different. I can tell from your appetite and the purity of your face.’
She kept pressing more baklava on me, and I ended up eating four portions. No one else ate a thing. I was also the only one who made any effort to keep the conversation going.’
In the fifty-three page letter she left for me on her computer at the Pasha’s Library, Jeannie describes how she stopped at this point, ‘to steel myself, to prepare to stab myself with the truth. But somehow, when my pen returned to paper it refused to bend to my will, skipping instead to the next section,’ she said. This, then, is what she’d skipped over: after she had described her plans for the year, and her great and growing interest in Near East Culture, and run out of anything interesting to say, Jeannie had remarked on what a beautiful house this was. To which the grandmother replied, ‘You are very kind. Yes, we are fortunate. The Bosphorus breathes life into our souls.’ She’d then asked if she and her husband lived there alone. ‘Or does your son – Haluk’s father, I mean – live here, too?’
‘It depends on his travels and responsibilities,’ the grandmother had replied.
To which Jeannie had said, ‘I hear he’s a gangster.’ At which the grandfather stopped chewing. The grandmother let out a tiny cry. Chloe let out the faintest of guffaws and the boys stayed hunched over their plates. ‘Sinan!’ the grandfather cried in a great rumbling voice. There followed a furious interrogation. By the end of it, Sinan’s tan had turned deep red. And then it was Haluk’s turn. Then the grandmother turned back to Jeannie and said, ‘Oh, what is to become of us? Oh, this dreadful malnutrition!’
‘The hunger has gone to their heads!’ she cried. This is why they have fed you such lies about Haluk’s father!’ And that was not all. For according to Haluk’s grandmother, it was hunger that had made ‘our boys’ fail their Turkish history exam. It was hunger that had made Haluk answer a question about the founding of the Republic in ‘nonsensical verse’. Sinan had been even hungrier, she said: he had answered in Chinese ideograms, copied, as Sinan himself later confessed, from a book ‘penned by none other than that nonsensical ingrate, Chairman Mao. This is clearly a case of sugar deficiency,’ she told Jeannie. It also explained why, when his Turkish History teacher had called on him to recite the passage they’d been instructed to learn by heart, Sinan had ‘made a mockery of the motherland’ by choosing instead to recite a passage from the Koran.
To which Sinan said, ‘Actually, I was making a mockery of rote learning.’
At which the grandmother turned to Jeannie and said, ‘Have you learned what is the Turkish word is for youth? It is “delikanlı”, and the true translation is “crazy blood”. I fear that the blood of these two boys is very crazy.’
With that, she and her husband shuffled off to take a nap. After a few moments of silence, Sinan put his hands on his head and let out such a wail you’d think someone had died. But no, he was laughing. Both he and Haluk were laughing so hard they were in pain. They got up and threw their arms around each other. They staggered apart and held their stomachs and doubled over and embraced each other again, and then, with tears in his eyes, Sinan came over, took Jeannie’s head in his hands and kissed her forehead. ‘Thank you, thank you.’
‘Thank you for what?’ she said. This sent them back into hysterics. ‘What?’ I said. ‘Everyone knows he’s a gangster except for his own parents?’
‘For God’s sake,’ said Chloe. ‘Don’t you get it? They set you up.’
‘I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,’ said Sinan.
‘So am I!’ Jeannie said, fighting tears. ‘You shouldn’t do that, you know!’
At which Chloe told the boys they’d ‘both been asinine.’
‘Asinine?’ said Haluk. ‘Please, madame, can you define your fine words?’
‘I’d rather eat my hat,’ Chloe said. Turning to Jeannie, she added, ‘Listen, if you’ve had enough of this, we can go home.’
But the boys fell to their knees and apologised, promised to stop playing stupid games, promised the girls that if they stayed, they’d take them out for the evening on Kitten II. ‘I thought you were under house arrest,’ Jeannie said.
‘Yes, but if we work hard…’
‘You’re not working hard, though. You’re goofing off.’
They liked this expression and repeated it and laughed.
‘Why’s it called Kitten II, anyway?’
‘If I told you,’ said Sinan, ‘you wouldn’t believe me.’
They told her anyway, and she did.
But how could she have done otherwise? Everything here seemed equally strange, so equally plausible. Was it not plausible that a speedboat named Kitten II might be a descendant of another speedboat named Kitten I? You couldn’t just disbelieve every word someone uttered. Why would anyone who didn’t have an older brother want to pretend, just for the sake of it, that he had?
What they’d told her (taking care to do so out of Chloe’s hearing) was that Haluk’s older brother had been out gallivanting in Bebek Bay one afternoon when he’d seen a group of men in dark glasses board the powerboat that the CIA kept in Bebek Bay to follow and photograph any interesting Soviet ship that happened to pass by. Upon seeing him, the boys had claimed (their eyes narrowing as they spoke), the spy boat had given chase, and in his panic Haluk’s brother had steered into the path of the Soviet vessel, and ‘crashed to his death’. Chloe had seen it happen, Sinan and Haluk told Jeannie in whispers. She still had nightmares about it, which is why they never mentioned it in her presence. Haluk, meanwhile, was being groomed to take his lost brother’s place and join the gangsterhood. In Jeannie’s fifty-three-page letter to me, she recalled feeling ‘obliged’ to believe them ‘though of course Sinan did have to take me down to the jetty by the mosque to prove to me that there was indeed a powerboat moored there that met with his description. Once I’d seen it, it seemed very important to share his sorrow. Once I’d done that, I was halfway to what I would now call falling in love.’
By six that afternoon, the boys had abandoned their books for a game of ping-pong. It could hardly be called a game, as their balls landed in the sea more often than on the table. Every time one of them lost a ball, the other would turn to him and say, ‘You shouldn’t do that, you know!’ – imitating Jeannie’s voice. But she could only admire them for laughing at all, for they’d stared death in the face. The only time Jeannie had ever stared death in the face was when she had buried her pet goldfish. She watched Haluk daydreaming at the water’s edge and all she could think was, no; he really doesn’t have the makings of a gangster, does he? She watched Sinan laugh as he dispatched his last ping-pong ball to the sea, and how she marvelled at his spirit. To stand and laugh, in the very place where he had seen his doomed cousin speed off to his death…she’d never have that strength, and now, as she watched Sinan put his fingers through the damp curls clinging to the base of his neck, she again shared his sorrow. The tragedy had left no mark. But she could see it now, lurking under every surface.
Perhaps (she thought later, as she sat in her lonely bedroom, staring at the reflection of the Left Nostril) perhaps she had seen the tragedy lurking under every surface because she’d wanted to see it. Perhaps because she had reached the point where she had no idea how to judge anything she saw. But there was something else going on here. If she were to be totally honest, she’d stayed on because when her eyes met Sinan’s, she’d thought… She’d seen – what? A promise, or a mirage?
She didn’t know her own mind any more. That’s what it had come to. But perhaps, if she retraced the road to her final humiliation, she’d find her way back. But she had to be vigilant. She had to guard against the strategic omission of details that didn’t fit into the picture she so desperately desired.
So the facts were these: she’d had a happy afternoon, sitting there, fooled and foolish in her lounge chair, waiting for her future to unfold.
‘I was bewitched, I’m sure, by the slow unfurling splendour of the evening, as the harsh heat of the afternoon dissolved into a golden light, and the sea turned from turquoise to azure to pink and silver. The ferries hissed as they slipped past the pier, the glass windows vibrated with every passing tanker, and the speedboat rocked back and forth, back and forth in the waves every ship and boat, large and small, left in its wake. A breeze started up, bringing with it the smell of fish and roasting corn and chestnuts. The windows of the houses on the Asian shore turned gold with the setting sun.
As the sun disappeared behind the house, and the grandparents returned to the terrace, their stilted ceremonial English soon gave way to the mellifluous Turkish of the boys.
In the middle of all this, the phone rang again. “Ah, and not a moment too soon,” said the grandmother, as Haluk rushed inside. His grandfather soon followed. “Well, my boy,” he said when they came out again. “It seems you have won.” Minutes later, we were waving the grandparents goodbye as we sped off on Kitten II.’
And if she were to tell the truth, she’d have to admit she’d suffered not one moment of hesitation. It was only now she had to ask herself why these overprotective grandparents had no qualms about their speeding off in the exact replica of a boat that had killed Haluk’s brother – or why she hadn’t either. Though she didn’t dare say the word. Speak of love and be struck dead, for all to laugh around her grave!
Where had they gone? Later, when her father had asked her, she’d had to admit she had no idea. The first discotheque was almost certainly on the Asian side, and the next had definitely been in Europe, on the Marmara, somewhere near the airport. Both were the brainchildren of the same deranged decorator. Lots of plastic garden furniture and shrubs decorated with fairy lights. Light fixtures that looked like toadstools, dance floors the size of serving trays. Tom Jones and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Jose Feliciano and Petula Clark and Adamo. Jane Birkin singing ‘Je T’Aime’ with Serge Gainsbourg. Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot singing ‘Bonny and Clyde’. In the first club, they were the only ones there who weren’t waiters. In the second, Jeannie was the only one in jeans. All the Turkish women were wearing things that suggested pricetags in the thousands, with elaborate hairstyles and jewellery to match.
When Haluk led Chloe off to dance, and Sinan asked Jeannie if she’d like to dance, too, she said, ‘Listen, if you don’t mind, I’ll hide here in the shadows.’
‘Don’t be so self-conscious,’ he said, ‘There’s no point, anyway. They’ve already seen you. And now they’re talking about you, too.’
‘Because I’m wearing jeans?’
‘Yes, this is terrible,’ he said, propping his elbows on the table and leaning forward to stare into her eyes. Darkly. Dangerously. What could he be thinking? ‘I’ve promised myself not to tease you any more, because if you fall for one more joke you’ll break my heart. So I’ll tell you the truth. I hate this place. I hate the way they look at you. Do you know why they look at you like that? It’s not just because you’re tall, and blonde, and American.’ His eyes were shimmering like two black wells now. His voice was beginning to race. ‘It’s because you’re with me. This is very interesting to them because they all know who I am and how bad. And worst of all, they can see I’ve fallen in love.’
She could feel his sigh, piercing right into her. ‘You have?’
‘Of course I have,’ he said. There was a trace of impatience in his voice, as if I’d asked, are you wearing shoes? ‘Of course I’m madly in love with you. I’d be stupid not to be.’ Reaching across the table, taking her hand, he looked straight into her eyes again. She couldn’t hold his gaze.
‘I’m sorry,’ she’d said. Squeaked. ‘No one’s ever said anything like this to me before.’ She had not added that no boy she knew would ever dare be so forward. The closest she’d ever got was, ‘Your hands are warm…’ during the last slow dance and (at the senior prom), ‘Your hair is your crowning glory.’
When she found the courage to look up again, she caught the tail end of a smile. ‘Is this another one of your jokes?’
He shook his head. He bit his lip, squeezed her hand, and if she were to tell the truth, she caved in a little more. ‘Don’t you like me at all?’ he asked. ‘Not even a tiny bit?’
She thought she did, but she wasn’t sure (wasn’t sure!) it was a good idea to say so. He squeezed her hand again, and then, after glancing quickly over his shoulder, he winced. ‘Here we go,’ he said.
‘We’d been sitting at this discotheque for some time, not dancing, just chatting at a table in the corner, when I saw two girls crossing the dance floor. When they arrived at our table, at first they just stood there.
But then the taller of the two prodded Sinan on the back. He jumped to his feet. “What a surprise!” he said breathlessly. “I had no idea you were here! Jeannie, this is Lüset,” he said, gesturing at the smaller of the two, a neat, slender creature with long brown hair, large black eyes and china-white skin. “Lüset, this is Jeannie. And Jeannie, this is…” His voice trailed away.
The taller girl had smouldering blue eyes and a fine aquiline nose with distended nostrils; her hair was pulled back, leaving two long black ringlets that shook as she settled herself into a chair.
Sinan cleared his throat. “Jeannie, this is Suna.”
“So pleased to make your acquaintance,” Suna said. She jerked her chair over the gravel. “Yes, my name is Suna, and I am so, so, very, very pleased to make the acquaintance of yet another half-witted stewardess.”
In an even voice, Sinan corrected her. “Actually, she’s not a stewardess.”
“Oh?” said Suna, as she removed a cigarette from her beaded purse. Sinan reached over to light it. She gazed into the night as she inhaled. As she exhaled, she flashed Jeannie a poisonous smile and asked, “So, then. What is it that you are intending to do in our country? Work as a go-go girl? I was hearing of just such a vacancy at Hidromel.”
“As it happens,” said Sinan evenly, “Jeannie is here only to study. And to visit to her father. He works at the US Consulate.”
“The US Consulate. Hah! How fitting!” Suna knocked her cigarette sharply against the ashtray. “In all honesty, I cannot for the life of me understand why I didn’t guess this ironic travesty in the first place.”
Lüset put her hand on Suna’s arm and said something supplicating in Turkish. Suna waved her away. “So!” she said, turning back to Jeannie “Let us become acquainted. How old are you? Where do you live? What are your plans and aspirations? I want to know all this and so much more. But first things first. My dear boy, can you give me the whereabouts of Haluk, our fair-weather friend?”
Sinan waved his arm in the direction of the dance floor.
“Yes, you are right, I see him now. And who is that on his arm?” Suna asked, leaning forward. “Ah!” she said. Inhaling furiously.
I decided to take matters into my own hands. “I take it you and Chloe know each other?”
“We attend the same school,” Suna said.
“And is Haluk really your boyfriend?”
“Haluk is my friend, yes, but he can do as he likes. As indeed I can. If I like, I can throw him into the sea. The fact of the matter is that neither of us believes that love can be discussed in terms of private property. What we have between us exists on a higher plane.”
This provoked a groan from Lüset. There followed an altercation in Turkish. Sinan joined in, and after a lot of shouting and gesticulating, Suna rearranged herself into a pose of calmness. Turning back to me, she said, “I am sorry for my temper. I hope you will permit me to move on to more civilised subjects. Allow me now to pull a rabbit out of the hat. Yes, tell me. Tell me first and foremost how you justify your country. Let us begin with the hegemonic rationalisations of the army that is as we are speaking invading the virgin soils of North Vietnam.”
“I wouldn’t dream of justifying them,” I said. “I happen to think the war is wrong!”
“You think the war is wrong,” she said, sucking in the smoke so hard I thought she might swallow the cigarette. “Well, that is very interesting. What an exceptional mind you must have, to grow up in the fountainhead of imperialist ideology and still to know this war is wrong!”
“I’m hardly the only one. I’m one of millions!”
“Then it is all the more reprehensible that you have been content to tolerate a list of war crimes that is, quite frankly, growing every day. How do you justify a moral failure of this magnitude?” I said something about Kent State.
“Ah Kent State. Yes, how tragic. Tell me, were you there?”
“Of course I wasn’t. I’m not even in college yet.”
“My point exactly. When push has come to shove, you have done absolutely nothing. You continue as before, waving your flag as you plunder our coffers and corrupt our youth.”
“But that’s just ridiculous! I haven’t plundered anything. How could I?”
“Then let us move on to a more promising subject. Yes, let us speak of the CIA stoolpigeon making unlawful interventions in the internal workings of my country and who is also, as I hardly need to tell you, your father.”
“Suna!” Sinan and Lüset shouted together.
Suna put her hand up. “Please,” she said. “Do not attempt to speak for our friend. Let us hear what she has to say.”
But what she expected me to say, I cannot begin to imagine. I have never heard such a preposterous suggestion. They might as well tell me my father is Clark Kent. All I could think was, why are these people so negative? So that’s what I said.