Abraham fell into an uneasy sleep on the sagging bed, sweating in his clothes in the heat of the evening.
He was woken from dreams of deserts by a persistent noise, separate from the cars and the mopeds and the call to prayer and the endless shouting. A knocking, not loud but insistent. With effort he swung himself from the bed and went to stand by the door, wishing there was a spyhole.
‘Yes?’
‘Please to open door.’
The voice was high, but a man’s, with an odd rasp to it.
Abraham wished he had said nothing. What should he do? This man could be here to help him or arrest him. Or to kill him. A Turkish policeman, or a Daesh recruiter come to stop him from meddling. For the first time he felt his own vulnerability in all this, like a physical thing, a shrinking of the muscles.
‘Who is it?’
‘I am next room.’
What did that mean?
‘What do you want?’
‘Please, to power phone.’
‘Reception. Reception will have one.’
‘They do not.’
This was crazy. No one knocked on hotel rooms and asked for things from strangers. But in this lonely place it seemed wrong to assume that anyone’s reason to be here was worse than his own. The Christian thing to do was to open the door. The human thing, regardless.
‘Wait please.’
Abraham took his pills and his laptop into the bathroom, stood on the toilet seat, popped open one of the cheap tiles that made up the false ceiling and balanced both inside. Before finally opening the door he straightened his shirt, closed his eyes for a moment and took two deep breaths.
If the man who stood there had come to kill him he was going to do it with a smile. He beamed all the way across his face, which was wide and pockmarked around the cheekbones. Behind fleshy lids his big eyes smiled, too. There was oil in the smile, and sweat on the hand that he offered Abraham to shake, and the threat Abraham had felt gave way to a faint revulsion, and that in turn to guilt. So the man was unfortunate. Shouldn’t two unfortunates feel a sort of kinship in a place like this?
‘I am Vural.’
At least that’s what it sounded like. Vyooral. He gave a deep nod as he shook, then a wet-sounding sniff. Abraham looked down on the thin hair that he had combed carefully across his bald skull, on the thick black moustache that hung over his top lip, on the cheap grey-green suit that needed a press, and had the strong instinctive sense that this man’s life had fallen apart – that he was only here because he had nowhere left to go.
That was kinship.
‘Sami.’
Sami was the name he had given to the receptionist. Sami Labib. A Cairo doctor who had treated his mother twenty years ago.
‘I am next room.’
Vural let go of Abraham’s hand and pointed to the room next door.
‘Ah.’
‘I have better hotels.’
He refreshed the smile, sniffed again. His eyes were sad and yellowish.
Abraham found himself smiling.
‘Me too.’
‘You stay long?’
‘One day. Maybe two.’
‘Ten. I do business –’ he pronounced the ‘i’, busyness – ‘in Antep. I sell – wait, I show.’
He was gone for a minute, during which Abraham could hear him rooting around in the cupboard that, if their rooms were laid out alike, backed on to their shared wall. When he returned, he had a book in one hand and in the other a ladle, which he held up like a baton.
‘Kitchen things. Look.’
He held the book towards Abraham and flicked through it, a thick brochure full of cookers, fridges, washing machines, knives, chopping boards, colanders, orange juicers, saucepans, every single thing anyone had ever needed to use in a kitchen.
‘For you. Please.’
Abraham took the ladle, inspected it with due gravity, and gave a deep nod of his own, more touched than he might have expected. To be given anything here felt extraordinary, and against the odds it seemed to have meaning: here is something for your home, if you ever return.
‘Thank you.’
Vural returned the nod.
‘My phone, the power, is kaput.’
He fished in his jacket pocket and pulled out a phone in amongst several used tissues, one of which fell to the floor. In the same movement he stooped to pick it up and with his other hand passed Abraham the phone, sniffing on his way down.
‘Dead. You have power?’
It was a Samsung, like his own. Abraham handed it back, from long professional habit imagining the viruses clinging to it.
‘Perhaps. Let me see.’
He squeezed past the bed and went to his bag, found his charger and turned to see Vural reaching for his bedside lamp.
‘It doesn’t work.’
Vural tried the switch anyway.
‘Kaput.’ He shook his head. ‘I have better hotels. You want my light? I do not read.’
He picked up the book from the table. A history of Istanbul, which Abraham had bought years ago and never found the right time to read. Vural seemed pleased.
‘Istanbul. Yes? You go to Istanbul?’
Maybe with her, when this was over. ‘I plan to.’
‘I go one time. My eyes cry with beauty.’
‘I’m sure.’
Abraham handed him the charger, and Vural tried the jack for size.
‘Is good!’ He beamed. ‘I can?’
‘Of course.’
‘I bring. Later.’
‘Of course.’
‘Thank you. Teşekkür.’
Abraham wanted to repay Vural’s openness with conversation but could find nothing to say. His energy was low, most probably. Vural’s was not.
‘Small bag,’ he said, pointing at Abraham’s case. ‘Not much things. You do business?’
‘Not really. I’m just passing through.’
Vural frowned, not understanding.
‘I come and go. I travel.’
‘Aaah, traveller. I understand. Travel is best thing. For this.’ He tapped his temple three times with a fat finger. ‘You are writer?’ Replacing the history of Istanbul, he picked up the notebook that had been underneath and began to flick through the pages.
‘No. Not really. Please don’t.’
‘Is good, to write books. You must have big brain.’
Ridiculous though it was, Abraham was strangely flattered.
‘I’m not a writer. Really. I’m a chemist. A pharmacist.’
‘Aah, okay, is good, good job. Important. I have, how you say . . .’ he sniffed, and waved his hand under his nose.
‘A cold.’
Vural grinned.
‘Yes, cold. Funny to have cold when is so hot, no?’
‘Here. Wait a moment.’
Abraham went to his bag and from the small store of medicines he had brought took some aspirin and some vitamin C. Vural took them as if they were jewels of great value.
‘Sami. This is kind. This is good, thank you.’
But now he was shaking his head.
‘You, you are good man, I see, clear, clear. But Turkey, now, I am sorry, is bad men everywhere. And Gaziantep?’ He let out a low whistle. ‘Five years, beautiful city.’ Beeyootiful. ‘Now, everywhere bad men. You see?’ He gestured to the window. ‘With beards, and guns. You see?’
‘Yes, I see.’
‘Best thing, you go to Adana. Beautiful city. The most beautiful that is not Istanbul. Bridges, houses, old old. Beautiful. And no bad men. The Sabanci mosque, oh my goodness.’
Goodness. Abraham wondered where he had picked that up.
‘After here, Adana, do not stay in Antep. Is not safe for strangers.’
Vural was shaking his head and beaming at the same time.
‘Teşekkür ederim.’ He raised the charger and the aspirin. ‘You go today?’
A strange question to ask, at five in the afternoon.
‘I stay tonight.’
He beamed at Abraham a last time from the other side of the bed.
‘Tomorrow, Adana. No bad men there, yes?’