But not yet. Please God, not yet. Does anyone face a choice like that unless it’s forced on them? I can read her journal and see her unvoiced anxieties seeping into every sentence. No description is neutral. Even the city is doomed.
By October 1970, cholera had come to Istanbul. Although all reported cases were in the shanty towns on its western edge, there were draconian measures to keep it from spreading. Every restaurant and cafeteria in the city shut down.
‘So now the city, with its locked and inward looking shutters, has become my metaphor. For every day, there are fewer places I’m allowed to go. Every day, there is either an anti-American demonstration in Taksim or rumours of an unauthorised march that could turn into a riot. The universities downtown have turned into war zones. Robert College is still relatively peaceful, but there is still boycott after boycott, and, every few days, a noisy forum in Albert Long Hall to argue about the boycotts. It is not unusual to see a pair of students begin to push and shove each other, even kick each other’s shins as their friends struggle to pull them off.
But when I reach the terrace, I find Sinan alone, aloof and reading a book. It is never a textbook. This is a point of honour – even when we study in the library. He hates engineering in practice more than he had hates it in theory. He is still attending class, although he finds it hard, in his foot-dragging misery, to concentrate. He finds it harder still to bear the adults who threaten, chide and cajole him and police our every move. I find this unconscionable. Sinan shrugs it off – perhaps he can’t afford not to. But there is so much anger in his eyes sometimes, I think they might catch fire.’
The date for that entry is October 23rd 1970. The next entry is dated January 7th 1971, and it offers only the most cursory references to the months in between. But in the letter she left me on her computer, just before she disappeared, Jeannie described them to me in bitter, jagged detail.
Each detail serves the moral of her self-lacerating story: people who can’t face up to the truth need scapegoats. The best scapegoats were the ones you never got to know as people. ‘So inevitably (she wrote) Dutch Harding was doomed to become mine.’
It happened slowly, and in stages. It would be many months before their orbits intersected. Was this deliberate on Sinan’s part? If so, why? In her letter, she still wasn’t sure.
Certainly he made no effort to hide him from her, or her from him. As she wandered about the campus on Sinan’s arm that autumn, he would occasionally point out a long-haired man in a sheepskin coat dashing into the Robert College library or snaking his way though a crowd at the opposite end of the playing field and say, ‘That’s Dutch over there. Can you see him?’ Although he was always too far away for Jeannie to see him properly, she felt she knew him, for she and Sinan could not have a serious conversation without Dutch coming into it. ‘Well, you know what Dutch says about this, don’t you?’ Sinan would say. Or ‘Dutch has an interesting take on this.’ Or ‘I used to think that, too, until Dutch reminded me that…’ But never once did he say: ‘It’s about time that you met.’
At first, this really bothered her:
‘I did not yet understand how important it was for Sinan to have one person in his life who did not have perfect knowledge of his movements. Nor did I know how far his elders and betters would go to oversee his studies, his social life and even his future. All that changed when Sinan’s father swooped into town in mid-November, brandishing that shameful report.’
The showdown took place at Süreyya’s – then the most expensive restaurant in the city, although it was situated over a BP station. It was the only time Jeannie ever met Sinan’s father: she remembered him as a ‘grey, grim eminence, with grave, appraising eyes.’ She remembered, too, that Sinan was wearing a navy blue sports jacket she’d never seen and never saw again. He sat as if he had a board up his shirt and peeled an orange with his knife and fork.
Whatever Jeannie said, the father’s reply was, ‘Aha! How fascinating!’ He was all smiles, even when the conversation turned to Sinan’s studies. Sinan was all deference. ‘Yes, Father.’ ‘Of course, Father.’ ‘Certainly, Father.’ His answers were truthful, if strained and rehearsed. He was attending his classes, keeping up with his work, not enjoying it, but keeping an open mind.
Then his father reached into his pocket, took out an envelope, and passed it across the table. Inside was what looked like a typed letter. After Sinan had read it, he threw it down, folded his arms, and glared through the filmy green curtains at the Bosphorus. ‘So,’ said his father. ‘I await your explanation.’
‘There is no explanation,’ said Sinan. ‘I’ll see who I want.’
‘In a free country, this might be possible. In ours, alas…’
‘I have a right to my own life,’ Sinan retorted.
‘You are forgetting who you are,’ his father replied.
‘Who am I then?’
‘A Turk.’
At which Sinan picked up the piece of paper, crumpled it into a ball, and threw it across the table. Startled by his bad manners, Jeannie picked it up and smoothed it out. Though the report was in Turkish, she could see the name Dutch Harding. When she asked Sinan why, he snorted, and said, ‘My father has been spying on me. Or rather, he has hired a scum to do it for him. You see, he doesn’t like the company I keep. He thinks they’re leading me astray.’
At which Sinan’s father put up a protesting hand, and said, ‘Please! Don’t exaggerate! This has nothing to do with you, my dear Miss Wakefield. Nothing at all!’ But he said it in such a way that left her wondering.
What did this man have against her? That evening, after supper, after her father had opened the subject (‘I hear you met my old golfing buddy’), she tried to find the words to ask. But the words rebelled, forming themselves into another question: ‘What does this man have against his son?’
‘Nothing,’ her father answered. ‘As strange as it may seem, he loves his boy to death.’
‘So why the snooping? Why the intimidation?’
‘Ah,’ said her father. ‘To answer that, I need to give you some of the history.’ As he rocked his chair and locked his arms behind his head, he studied her carefully. ‘Sinan’s told you none of this, I take it?’
He went on to explain that there had been a war going on between Sinan’s parents since long before the divorce. ‘You could even say it started before the poor boy was even born.’ Sinan’s father’s uncle was a general who had fought alongside Atatürk (and against the Greeks) in the War of Independence. He had gone on to help found a narrowly nationalist political party that later became overtly fascist. Sinan’s father had never been a member of that party, but he had stern views about national honour and patriotic duty. No son of his was going to fritter his life away in the arts: so Sinan had three options: the army, the foreign service or engineering.
Sinan’s mother, on the other hand, came from a famously bohemian and artistic Ottoman family that had (‘like Atatürk himself’) been based in Salonica until the end of the Ottoman Empire. They had moved to Istanbul in the 1920s, and though they were enthusiastic supporters of Atatürk’s republic, they refused to give up their love of things Greek. They had even sent Sibel and her siblings to one of Istanbul’s Greek schools. There was, my father said, no link between this eccentricity and ‘a later political scandal’ that had resulted in one of Sinan’s maternal aunts defecting with her husband to the Soviet Union, ‘though various scandalmongers seem to think otherwise.’
‘So the two sides of Sinan’s family have always fought over him. As families do. But in this case there’s a twist.’ As much as Sinan’s mother might have wished her son to follow her into the world of art, she was as fearful of Communism as her ex-husband. ‘Hence this brouhaha over his friendship with Dutch Harding. Hence this report.’
‘So you know about it,’ Jeannie said.
‘Not only do I know about it. I’ve read it,’ he was proud to say.
‘Why?’ Jeannie asked. ‘How?’
Smiling through pursed lips, he said, ‘It just so happens that I know the guy. The author, I mean. We don’t always work in tandem, but it’s always better when we keep each other informed. We’re on the same side, after all. Though in this case I am of the view that my friends on the Turkish side are over-reacting.’
Because (as he now informed his daughter) it was important for youth to make up its mind about things. Treat tomorrow’s leaders with respect, and eventually they come round. Come down hard and heavy on them, and they swing the other way. ‘The more they make a fuss about Dutch Harding, the more they add to his allure. Which is tragic, and laughable, because…’
He left the sentence hanging, and he refused to name the author of the report. But later that week, Jeannie met him. Though it would be more accurate to say they renewed their acquaintance.
The Saturday before Thanksgiving, William Wakefield gave a party. It was an annual event, and a sought-after invitation, though possibly this had more to do with the host’s famous view than any great affection for the man himself. It was one of the few occasions when the Robert College set mingled with the consular and business people from downtown. William’s Turkish ‘friends’ were also there in force.
Sinan came with his mother, who had by now returned from Paris to ‘watch over’ him. She was as glamorous as her pictures – svelte and sculpted, with large, heavily accented almond eyes, thick black hair chopped in the manner of Cleopatra, and a way of holding herself that suggested sorrows borne but never forgotten. Everyone was watching when she strode across the library with open arms to kiss Jeannie’s father’s cheeks.
‘Then it was my turn. There was a warm but thorough examination before the full embrace. I can still feel her hands: there was a warning in them. “So at last! We meet!”
Sinan stood at her side, looking grim. Why? Because she was beautiful? Because he wanted to protect her? Because she’d cramped his style? She kept taking his hand and pulling him over to meet a “dear, dear friend” and then she’d notice a speck on his shirt collar and say something despairing as she flicked if off. She’d kiss him on his forehead and ask the dear, dear friend if she had “ever seen a boy so handsome” and then she’d see another dearer friend across the library and sail away.’
She didn’t stay long. Sinan escorted her to the outside gate, returning very slowly, circling the trees in the garden as he smoked. On rejoining Jeannie, he nodded in the direction of a sharply dressed middle-aged man on the porch.
İsmet smiled, as if he’d been expecting them. He gave Jeannie a crisp handshake and it was then that she recognised him as the man with the policemen’s eyes, the man who’d been working with her father that morning back in June. When she told him so, he said, ‘Good memory!’
Sinan spat something at him in Turkish.
‘Whoa, boy. Slow down,’ said İsmet. ‘That’s a pretty big mouthful.’
This prompted another torrent.
‘You know?’ İsmet replied. ‘This just isn’t fair to our lovely friend here.’
Speaking in English, Sinan said, ‘Don’t worry. She knows what I think.’
‘Oh to be twenty,’ said İsmet, flashing his teeth. ‘You know, this boyfriend of yours cuts quite a romantic figure. He’s quite a poet, in fact.’
‘You know nothing about me,’ Sinan snarled.
‘Oh, but I do,’ said İsmet sharply. ‘What I choose to disclose – that’s another matter entirely.’ He turned to Jeannie. ‘How long have you been here now? Three, four months? No, it’s almost six, isn’t it? The novelty must be wearing off. You must be wondering what you’ve let yourself in for!’
He paused to light a cigarette. His lighter was large, heavy and gold. ‘For example, yours truly. You meet me through your father. You hear I am “his other half.” Then later you discover I am linked also with Sinan. You hear that his father and I did our military service together. Did he not tell you this? Oh dear. That must mean he also neglected to inform you I was married to his aunt.’
‘Until she died,’ said Sinan. ‘Ask him how she died.’
This time it was İsmet who spoke in Turkish. And when Sinan responded, also in Turkish, his voice was loud enough to attract their host’s notice.
Pressing his hand down on İsmet’s shoulder, William Wakefield told his ‘other half’ to lay off. Turning to Sinan, he added, ‘That means you, too, boy!’ And perhaps he got the tone wrong, perhaps the tone he used was only acceptable if you were speaking to your own son.
‘I just met your daughter’s boyfriend,’ Jeannie heard a nondescript American woman tell her father some time later. ‘He’s a little mercurial, don’t you think?’ When William said no, he was just in a bad mood, she said, ‘Isn’t he a little old for her?’ Again William said no. His daughter was seventeen and Sinan had only just turned twenty. To which the American woman said, ‘Three years is a lot at that age. And then there’s the culture gap.’
William said she shouldn’t worry about that too much. ‘Sinan’s lived all over the world.’ But the woman persisted. ‘I suppose what concerns me most about Jeannie is that she seems to be doing a lot of care-taking.’
‘You think so?’
‘If I were her mother, I’d be telling her to cool off.’
‘I wouldn’t dare,’ William replied. ‘Jeannie has a mind of her own. And she’s crazy about this boy. They’re inseparable.’
‘All the more reason to tread carefully,’ said this woman. ‘When all is said and done…’ But Jeannie was never to know what happened when all was said and done, because now Sinan was leading her to the door.
There were fairy lights on the trees so anyone could have looked out and seen them kissing. When Jeannie pointed this out, he only held her tighter. ‘If I didn’t know you, I’d think you were doing this for show,’ Jeannie said.
And he said, ‘Why shouldn’t I? We’re inseparable. Remember?’
The next day he took her to the House of Shrouds to have lunch with his mother. Sibel was politeness itself when Jeannie first walked in – thanking her for the splendid party, asking after her father, asking Jeannie about her ‘passions and interests,’ plying her with food, and paying no attention to the son smouldering in the corner. Jeannie was never to know what sparked off the argument, because the first sally, like so many that followed, was in a language she didn’t know. She listened in her usual way, fishing for familiar names and words. Though Dutch Harding came up most frequently, Jeannie heard her own name, too. So rashly she interrupted. ‘What exactly do you have against me, by the way?’
Sibel took her hand. ‘My darling, you are a delight! It is simply…’ and she took her hand away. ‘This boy of ours is young. Do you understand, my sweet? I have no wish to ruin his fun. What is life, if not for fun? But fun is all, yes?’
Failing to secure agreement, she turned to Sinan and, in stern and cutting French, she said, ‘She does not look so pretty when she’s angry. In fact, she looks like a goat.’ This Jeannie had no trouble understanding.
Sibel seemed to know this. For now she reached out, smiling, and flicked her finger against Jeannie’s chin. ‘There, that’s better,’ she said, in English. When you don’t puff out your lower lip, you are, as I said, simply divine.’
Turning back to her son, she launched into what Jeannie now assumed to be Greek. Her voice, at first soft and cajoling, grew steadily louder and more urgent. Sinan kept his answers short and his voice guarded, until she said something that made him slam his fist on the table. She raised her arms, as if to beseech God, ‘Ah, mais ça suffit. Vraiment j’en ai assez!’
After she had slammed her way out of the apartment, Sinan hurled himself into a chair to steam in silence, raising his hand in warning every time Jeannie asked what was wrong. Then he relented. Leading her into his bedroom, he said, ‘This is what’s wrong.’ Where the terrarium had been, there was a pile of ironed shirts and paired socks. ‘You remember the books on those shelves? Well, guess what? My mother threw them out. I just came home last night and Dutch’s precious books were gone. What am I going to say to him?’
He sat down on his bed. Jeannie sat down next to him but he pushed her comforting hand away. Accustomed now to his flights of temper, she lay down on the bed next to him and waited. Was this care-taking? she wondered. She gazed into the shadows where the terrarium was no longer and thought back to the day she’d first seen it. She thought about the snake, and their trip with the snake to the islands, and the glittering waterfronts they’d passed on the night ferry. She imagined the night ferry changing its mind at the last minute, looping back to return them to the Sea of Marmara and the glittering harbours of Kınalı, Burgaz, Heybeliada and Büyükada…slipping across the dark sea to Yalova, Bandırma and the Marmara Islands, to the Dardanelles, and Çanakkale, Gallipoli, Imbros, Samothraki, Alexandroupolis, Kavala…
A door slammed. Then another. The overhead light flicked on. There, looming over them, was Sinan’s mother. More Greek fury. But Sinan refused to budge. ‘You can say whatever you like,’ he said in French. ‘We’re not doing anything. You know why? We can’t! We’d have more privacy in a panopticon!’
‘Then go to a panopticon, why don’t you?’
‘You don’t even know what a panopticon is.’
‘Of course I do! What do you take me for?’
‘A follower of Bentham – what else?’
‘Ah! And who might this Monsieur Bentham be?’
‘The author of one of the books you threw away.’
‘One day you’ll thank me! And perhaps you’ll then explain to me why, with all the girls in the world, you had to choose this one!’
‘I “chose” her because the moment I saw her, I knew you’d hate her!’
‘Ah! Mais vraiment, c’est insupportable. Vraiment ça suffit!’
Jeannie knew now what she wanted to ask Sinan, but she had no idea how.
‘So I got up and turned off the light, lay down again next to him, and resumed my travels. I went back to Büyükada, retracing our lost, happy steps, except that this time, after we’d visited the prison-guard-turned-prison-artist, and waved at the elderly couple speaking Ladino on the porch next door, the couple had waved back, and invited us to stroll around their garden. And over supper, because of course we stayed for supper, they talked of their ancestors, who’d come to Istanbul to escape the Spanish Inquisition. We lost all sense of time, and suddenly there was only just enough time to make the last ferry…but along the way we met a man with an Albanian grandfather, a Circassian grandmother, and an Armenian wife. They all had stories to tell, and though the stories looped back on themselves, swirled out of orbit, careened around blind corners, the chain never broke. Each story led on to another story, and the last returned us to our starting point. When we reached the waterfront, the night ferry was still waiting, and I was as far from the real world as if I’d been riding on the tail of a comet.’
‘Jeannie? Are you asleep?’
‘No. Just thinking.’
‘What about?’
‘About a trip I wish we’d taken.’
‘Where to?’
She told him.
‘You could go to jail for that, you know.’ he said.
‘For a daydream?’
‘You’d be surprised.’ He propped himself on his pillows. She put her head on his chest. ‘I’m angry with my mother. But also, I understand her reasons. You’ve heard about my aunt, yes? I mean Emine. The one who had to defect. One day, perhaps, I’ll tell you the story. All I’ll say now is that İsmet had his hand in it. And İsmet is not done. He will not be done until he has purified me. So naturally, he suspects my mother. She isn’t pure, you see. İsmet believes Turks must be pure. Dutch, on the other hand, says there’s no such thing as a Turk.’
‘But that’s nonsense,’ Jeannie said.
‘What he meant,’ Sinan explained, ‘is that the “Turk” is not a historical reality but an ideological construct. This construct was designed by our founding father, to legitimise his nationalist project. Do you have any idea what my father would do to me if he heard me say that?’
‘Laugh?’
He punched the wall. ‘They’re all such hypocrites! So I read a few books! Do they think a gun is going to jump out from the pages and take up arms against the state? Just because I read a book, it doesn’t mean I agree with it! Whatever happened to critical thinking?’ His voice was racing. ‘Dutch says that the entire Western tradition is based on critical thinking. Did you know that? He says you can’t get anywhere unless there’s part of you standing outside, asking questions.’
‘Why don’t you ever question him, then?’
‘Oh, I do! Of course I do! You still don’t understand! Dutch has never pretended to be right about everything. In class, when he got something wrong, and we told him, you know what he’d do? He’d just laugh. Do you know how rare that is in Turkey?’
‘You still let him dictate your thoughts,’ Jeannie dared to say.
‘Oh you think so, do you? Well, then let me ask you this then. If I let him dictate my thoughts, if I let anyone dictate my thoughts, do you think we’d be lying together on this bed?’