Divorce Turkish Style (8 page)

“Never mind the smell. It's the land. The land's completely ruined,” said the blond man.

“We saw fields of sunflowers on our way here,” I said.

“Sunflowers, wheat, barley, corn. Yes, we grow those because the land's arid. We grow anything that doesn't need water.”

“This land used to be very fertile. Perfect for rice. In the past, we used to grow sugar beet, beans, cabbages and leeks. But the soil's ruined now and those crops won't grow any more.”

“The water even burns our feet when we're working on the land.”

“Is that because the River Ergene is polluted by factory effluents?” I asked.

“Thrace has exactly 1,406 factories, of which over a thousand are unlicensed and operating illegally. They draw water from underground wells, pollute it and then release it into the river. Not only are they contaminating the river and the basin, they've almost used up our underground water reserves,” said a young man coming towards us. “Are you journalists?”

“No, they're not,” replied the blond man on our behalf.

“How many years has this been going on?” I asked.

“Twenty years. It started in President Özal's time,” said the blond man, pointing to a stream which we could smell but couldn't see. “In the past, there were turtles and frogs in that water. Catfısh as plump as your thigh. Then one day we noticed some of them floating unconscious in the water. We all ran out and started collecting them up like fallen apples. The doctor at the health centre told us not to eat them on any account. Some people did, of course. Later, the water was sent to Ankara for analysis. What was the name of that doctor, Rıfat? You know, the young one.”

Rıfat didn't reply.

“Selçuk, wasn't it?” said someone else.

“Hah, Doctor Selçuk. He sent water samples all the way to Ankara for analysis, but when the report came back it stated that the water was clean. The doctor said, ‘This land's being ruined. Don't waste your energy for nothing, because everything's in the hands of the rich nowadays.' Not a single living creature has survived in that river. They've all died. If we irrigate the land with that water, the land dies too.”

“So what happens if you water the land?”

“It goes all slimy and mushy.”

“I watered the ground to grow beets, but after six years the land still hasn't recovered.”

“It doesn't produce anything nowadays. In the old days, we'd get over a hundred tons of beet per hectare, but nobody grows beet any more.”

“We used to have three thousand hectares of beet, but this year, only two out of 200 families grew it on a plot of less than half an acre, just to retain our quota. If we stopped growing it completely, the quota would be lost.”

“How do you live under these conditions?”

“We live on thin air, because the water's certainly no good,” said the blond man in his attractive Thrace accent.

Everyone at the table laughed.

“But how do you water your crops?”

“With rainwater. They only get watered when it rains. We owe everything to Mother Nature.”

“There's water lying nine to fifteen metres below ground here that we could use, but the diesel costs for extracting it are so high it's not economic.”

“And that water, which we can't access, is drawn off by industry. Then, just before dawn, when there's nobody around to check, they release the dirty water into the stream.”

“They don't do any checks anyway. All that stuff about doing it at dawn is a myth. They release dirty water all the time.”

Fofo and I looked at each other in horror.

“Why don't the factories have purification facilities?” I asked.

This time all the villagers looked at me as if I was either naive or stupid.

“Purification costs money, which is why even the factories that have purification plants don't use them. After all, it costs nothing to release dirty water into the river,” said the young man who had recently joined the table.

“But they won't be able to pollute the water any more,” said a man at a far table. “A commission's been set up in parliament to draw up an environment law and establish a team of environmental police. They came out here to tell the industrialists how to get purification plants if they didn't already have them. They can't still be polluting the river. I don't believe it.”

“Why not?” shouted Rıfat, joining in the discussion. “All those laws were introduced in order to enter the EU. It was just for show. Which of those laws actually benefited us? As we said, there are more than a thousand unlicensed factories. Leather, paint, textiles, glass, pharmaceuticals – everything you can think of. And what does the government do? Nothing. The industrialists get rich and the governor drives a Mercedes. Matter closed. I'm all right, Jack. The businessman who creates the most pollution gets elected industrialist of the year. What don't you believe? It's all there before your very eyes!”

“The governor has a Mercedes?” I asked.

“Yep. The industrialists got together and bought a Mercedes for the governor of Kocaeli so that he would leave them in peace to pollute the environment. It was in all the papers. Didn't you read about it?”

Obviously not. That's what comes of not reading the papers.

“Can't the villagers get together and do something?”

“That's what our dear Saniye was trying to do,” said the blond man, his hand resting on Rıfat's shoulder.

“Our villagers are timid and inactive. They're scared of falling out of favour with the government, and it seems to be impossible to shake them out of their passive way of thinking. They believe they'll lose their land or get sacked if they stick their necks out. What do you do with people like that?” said Rıfat angrily.

Once started, there was no stopping him.

“But you've already lost your jobs,” said the man sitting at the far table, who seemed to take Rıfat's comments as a personal threat.

“Everyone complains about the factories and pollution,” said Rıfat, “but most of them have children working in those factories. If the villagers hadn't sold their land to the industrialists, there wouldn't be any industry here. They sold fertile land for a handful of gold and became factory workers. Eventually they were sacked, and now they go hungry and spend all their time hanging around in cafés. It's too late for regrets now.”

“Were you with Sani when she visited the villages?” I asked, with a growing suspicion that these industrialists might have arranged to get rid of Sani because they feared she'd be able to get the villagers organized. If industrialists could collectively organize the purchase of a Mercedes for the Kocaeli governor, it was surely not beyond the bounds of possibility that they could cooperate over a murder.

“We went from door to door, village to village, explaining the problem,” said Rıfat. “The environmental pollution created by industry isn't our only problem. There's also population growth, or the migrant issue.”

“We noticed some tents outside the village on our way here.”

“They're not migrants,” said Rıfat with a rueful smile. “They're Gypsies. They live in Lüleburgaz and come here as seasonal labourers to work in the fields. The other villages won't let them set up their tents. Our village is the only one they can persuade to let them stay. People say Gypsies steal, yet our government deprives our unborn children of bread. If a Gypsy goes stealing, at least it's for a chicken. And good luck to him! But we've seen no sign of them stealing anything so far.”

“Do they work in the fields for cheaper rates?”

“Of course. What else can they do, poor wretches? Around here, both our Bulgarian kinsmen and the Gypsies get taken for a ride. Bulgarians get twenty lira a day, while Gypsies get fifteen.”

“So why do you complain about the rise in population, then?”

“The government wants to make this area completely industrialized. The papers say the population of Thrace will rise to four million within a decade. They're going to build ten thousand new houses in Gebze and Çorlu and send Istanbul's surplus population out to us. Everyone knows that Thrace can't even cope with its present population, so what would it be like if four million more come?”

It was indeed a very bleak prospect. I remained silent, deciding not to order another tea, or even finish drinking what I had, for fear that the poisonous effluent had got into the tap water.

“Would you mind showing us around?” I murmured to Rıfat eventually. It had become too crowded around our table for talking to him about Sani.

“I'll come with you,” said the plump blond man at once.

“I'd rather we were alone, if possible,” I whispered to Rıfat. “I want to talk to you privately.”

“What about?”

“I wanted to talk about Sani.”

“About Sani?” said Rıfat, looking flustered as he straightened his cap and put his hands in his pockets.

“Yes,” I said.

“Wait here. I'll go and get my car.”

“There's no need. Mine's right here,” I said, pointing to the Renault Clio.

“In that case, let's go,” he said.

“We have to pay for the teas,” I said.

“No, no, my girl. You're our guests here,” said Rıfat, indicating with his hand that he would hear no more about it and turning to the blond man, saying, “Ahmet, wait here, I'll be back soon.”

*

I indicated to Fofo to sit in the back.

“You aren't environmentalists, are you? Who are you?” asked Rıfat.

“We're—” I started.

“If you don't mind, I'd like to see your IDs,” he interrupted.

It was a strange and pointless request. What could he learn from our IDs?

I asked Fofo to pass my handbag from the back seat.

“We're not the police or anything,” I said, holding out my birth certificate.

“Who said anything about you being the police?” said Rıfat, which was just as well because I hated being likened to the police.

“Kati Hirschel,” he read out aloud. Turning to Fofo, he said, “And you?”

“I'm Spanish,” said Fofo, giving him his passport.

Rıfat read out his name too.

“What do you want from us?” he asked.

“We want to find out whether or not your daughter really died as the result of an accident,” I said.

“Why?”

Not having a sensible answer to this sensible one-word question, I turned on the ignition and asked, “Which way are we going?”

Rıfat indicated a track to the right.

“Why are you so interested in Sani's death?” he asked, clearly making a superhuman effort to maintain his composure.

“We're private detectives,” I said, hating myself for this pretence, which was against everything I'd been brought up to believe, but there was no other option.

“Who hired you?” he asked and, without waiting for an answer, added, “Was Sani murdered?”

“There's a possibility that she was murdered, which is what we're looking into,” I said.

“Do the police think she was murdered?” asked Rıfat, frowning.

“The police are pursuing their own investigations, so they must have their suspicions.”

The track came to an end, and I stopped in the middle of a field.

Rıfat took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket and offered them round. Fofo and I declined.

“So you're telling me that my daughter was murdered,” said Rıfat as he opened the window and lit a cigarette for himself.

“It's a possibility.”

“Who would do such a monstrous thing?”

“She was preparing a court action against the industrialists who are polluting the environment here. We have our suspicions about them.”

“Has someone hired you to investigate this?”

“No,” I said.

“No one's paying you?”

“No.”

“Were you a friend of my daughter's?”

“No,” I said again.

“Why are you getting mixed up in this if there's nothing in it for you?”

“Does anyone pay you to fight against the industrialists and environmental pollution?” I asked.

Rıfat said nothing, but looked directly at me. I saw a gleam in his eyes, and felt that he recognized a kindred spirit in me. Neither of us were the sort to give up. We shared a steely determination that enabled us to fight against anything that offended our sense of justice or values, whether it was a suspicious death or an illegal factory polluting the environment.

“My youngest daughter Naz is a doctor at Lüleburgaz State Hospital. Talk to her before you go back to Istanbul,” said Rıfat. “She was interested in the environment before the rest of us. It
was Naz who got Sani involved. She'll tell you what you need to know.”