On one occasion, we went to Istanbul to join the demonstrations in Gezi Park.
Located in the city’s heartland, Gezi Park had become the retreat where Istanbullers could raise their spirits with glimpses of sunny skies or showers from gamin cloudbursts or the bosomy silence of heavy snow. Other features like fragrant flowers, shady dream-catching trees, freshly cut grass evoking primal tales were additional delights.
Yet Turkey’s Ustan Guc, that mimicker of piety, had decided to raze Gezi Park and erect on its site a mosque superior to all others. Moreover, eager to prove that Turkey, albeit devoutly Muslim, was in step with Western customs, he also planned to build a grandiose shopping mall, a braid of luxury hotels, some exclusive clubs and an enclave of ritzy pieds-à-terre where his vassals could romp with courtesans. Finally, as the jewel in its crown, this Ustan Guc would maintain ultra-modern barracks for his Security Forces and a monolithic nerve centre that would outshine Lubyanka.
The Gezi Park demonstrations started when some office workers, on their way to work, came upon contractors uprooting the Park’s trees. Shocked by this infraction, they rushed to the Park and formed a human barrier in front of the bulldozers.
In a short time, families with children, students, artists, academics, businessmen, blue-collars, shop keepers, even old people, for whom Gezi Park symbolised freedom, flocked in support of the protesters. As the euphoria of solidarity spread, the ranks swelled.
Predictably the Prime Minister’s reaction to this illegal gathering was to warn the protestors that unless they disbanded the Security Forces would eject them forcibly. The protestors, by then numbering thousands, defied him with an increasingly festive spirit. Some raised banners stating that peaceful manifestations were a basic human right. Countless groups, inspired by youngsters, danced to bongo drums, guitars, violins, flutes, saxophones, clarinets and ouds. Some elders sang songs by Victor Jara and Atahualpa Yupanqui whom they had extolled during Chile’s and Argentina’s dark hours under military juntas.
We joined a group of academics and, consuming bottles of raki, discoursed on the persecution meted out to campaigners for freedom of expression and governmental transparency.
Near dawn the next day, Hrant became restive. Sitting like Buddha in a Nepalese outfit – a long tapalan shirt and tight suruwa trousers – and endeavouring to spread spiritual blessings by spinning a Tibetan prayer-wheel, he vented his apprehension. ‘About a thousand years ago, the Syrian poet Al-Ma’arri observed that two species of Saviours had hijacked history: the first with brains but no hearts; the second with hearts but no brains. Both, in their particular ways, fomented endless conflicts. People, if not reduced to weapons-fodder, perished with their dreams in pillages, rapes, deportations, famines and summary executions. Yet many while drawing their last breath, gazed at the world and marvelled at the beauty and benevolence it had so generously provided for them. And they prayed that one day both species of Saviours would wither and leave humanity to attain its birthright to life, love, freedom, equality, fraternity, happiness and natural death.’
Just then Ustan Guc struck. His security forces turned Gezi Park into an inferno. Harsh arc lights from helicopters obliterated the dawn. Water cannons churned the grounds into a mire. Salvos of bullets, pepper sprays, CR and tear-gas followed.
All the while loudspeakers indicted the protestors.
‘Traitors!’
‘Terrorists!’
‘Infidels!’
‘Apostates!’
The people, shocked out of their sleep, slithered helplessly in the mud. Many, choking on pepper spray and tear-gas, collapsed. Some hit by bullets fell on others injuring them, too.
Hrant grabbed us and, as if in possession of a magic carpet, steered us out of Gezi Park into a nearby hotel where panicking personnel were barricading its entrance.
He led us onto the hotel’s roof restaurant.
Early risers, petrified by the mayhem in Gezi Park, huddled under the tables.
Hrant ranted. ‘I was about to conclude. These days a new species of Saviour has risen, without brains and without hearts. Take a good look! We’ve entered the age of killing without rhyme or reason.’
The municipal workers wave at the immigrant gardeners and leave.
I watch the posters sway in the wind. I hadn’t looked at them closely. Now I do.
The Saviours are in various attires: in presidential array – Numen in tuxedo and gold chain of office; the Grand Mufti in silken thawb, bisht, ghutrah and agal – peacocks displaying tails. Also, humbler poses: piously at prayer; as doctors auscultating; in cap and gown receiving honorary degrees; music buffs at concerts; engineers in hard hats; grimy miners with head-lamps; farmers threshing; picnicking with their families; handing cups to football teams. And larger portraits as bemedalled commanders-in-chief: Numen trooping the colour like a British sovereign; the Grand Mufti in the cockpit of an F-14 on his aircraft carrier.
The last reminds me of a conversation we had with Hrant on our return from Saudi Arabia. Mercifully, he said, luck was on our side for undertaking our mission before the King appointed his son, the thirty-two-year-old Crown Prince Amyr, to run the country. Since then absolutism has ruled the Kingdom. Soon after, Amyr, having seized control of the armed forces, shut down the country and incarcerated some 500 top dogs – including eleven princes – in Riyadh’s palatial Ritz-Carlton Hotel on the pretext of stamping out corruption and reclaiming some 100 billion dollars appropriated from the Treasury. Simultaneously promising to end ‘terrorism’ and to institute comprehensive human rights, he covertly forged a formidable security web. To fulfil his ‘promise’ he pursued whosoever dared to criticise, even mildly, his governance. He arrested and executed these innocents – killing on one occasion forty-seven of them in one day. And all the while he escalated Saudi’s participation in Yemen’s War which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians – a large percentage of them children – with aerial bombings, starvation and deadly epidemics.
It should also be noted that Amyr is a mogul himself. In addition to his undisclosed wealth, he owns an ultra-modern yacht, a French chateau and Leonard da Vinci’s portrait of Christ worth, respectively, 500, 300 and 400 million dollars.
Under those conditions, Hrant stated, all of us in JJ’s team would have been slain soon after setting foot in the Kingdom.
That conversation with Hrant left me – not Belkis, never Belkis – wondering whether we can still believe that Pachamama’s children – we Dolphineros and Leviathans – will eventually defeat Hydra’s brood. Can the world be repaired ever? Can power be defeated? Or is power omnipotent as it has always claimed to be?
If so, why am I still resolved – assuming I can defeat Hidebehind – to confront Saviours?
For a grand last stand?
Can that excel the peace of Picayune, our magical island?
Dolphineros’ last stand or Picayune?
Can’t feel Hidebehind’s presence. Does that mean Picayune?
A commotion interrupts my thoughts.
A tall amputee dressed in a bodysuit and balancing on one crutch is pointing to the poppies and shouting at the gardeners. ‘They’re the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse! In disguise! Look – there’s Pestilence. Behind it: Famine, War, Death. I, Don Quixote de la Mancha, have cornered them at last. One strike with my halberd – they’ll be six feet under!’
The gardeners try to reason with him. ‘But sir – these are only flowers.’
He pushes towards the poppies. ‘Charge!’
The gardeners block him.
As he raises his crutch to hit them, I jump up to intervene.
But Belkis and Childe Asher are already by his side. When did they reappear?
Childe Asher holds him by the waist. ‘It’s all right, valiant knight. I’m here. Sancho’s here!’
‘You see them, my man? Evil. Evil!’
‘Yes, sire. But they’re running away. These poppies are their victims. Felled by them.’
The man’s eyes go cloudy. ‘Felled, you say? Felled …?’
‘Look! Their blood. Redder than red.’
The man stares at the poppies. ‘They felled me, too. Tore me to pieces.’ He shuts his eyes to banish the past. ‘But I pulled myself up …’
‘As veterans always do.’
The man looks around him in frustration. ‘Run away again, have they? You’d think they’d have guts, stand and fight.’
Childe Asher takes his arm. ‘Come, dear knight. We’ll find them. Let’s saddle Rocinante.’
‘Oh, yes, my horse. Where did I leave him?’
Childe Asher leads him away gently. ‘Just around the corner.’
Belkis whispers. ‘We’ll take him to Jujube Palace.’
I nod.
One of the gardeners mutters. ‘Maybe madness is better for him – safer world.’
‘Maybe.’
I return to the bench and open my journal again.