Last Train to Istanbul (20 page)

PARIS

Tarık Arıca had been living in a cheap hotel ever since he set foot in Paris. Sitting in a taxi with his two suitcases, on his way to his new apartment, he was very happy. Moving to rented accommodations meant that he no longer had to live in a cell-like room with just a bed, a bedside table, and a wardrobe. His new home had two bedrooms, a small sitting room, a kitchen large enough for a small breakfast table, and a big bathroom with a huge bathtub and a bidet. What was more, it was also fully furnished and close to both the Métro station and bus stops. It was almost perfect. As far as Tarık was concerned, his only problem was financial: because of the high rent, he would have to share the place with someone. That someone was Muhlis, his colleague at the consulate. When Tarık told Muhlis about the apartment he had seen, and mentioned it was too expensive, Muhlis, who was looking for a convenient apartment himself, immediately offered to share it with him. As there were two bedrooms, Tarık thought it was a good idea. Now, on the day they were to sign the contract, he suddenly wasn’t so sure. Would he be able to share a place with someone he worked with day after day? Would he be able to cope with this person who never stopped talking, who was always telling jokes?

But the decision had already been made. They signed the contract and paid the deposit.

On the day they were due to move, Muhlis had to take some documents to the Turkish embassy in Vichy, so Tarık had to move his things on his own. After putting everything in the appropriate cupboards, he went out for a stroll. He sat in a café having some Pernod and enjoying a cigarette. He had planned to celebrate this day for a couple of reasons. More important than moving to a new apartment, Sabiha had telephoned!

It had been almost two years since he had heard Sabiha’s voice. He was so surprised and excited that Muhlis, who was sitting at their desk, made signs to ask what was happening.

Sabiha was asking Tarık to protect her sister and her family who had moved south. Tarık wondered who could protect anyone from Hitler. Did she think he was God? Tarık explained that both Selva and her husband were in possession of perfectly valid documents and could therefore return to Turkey if they wished. Sabiha had also told Tarık about her father’s heart attack. If anything should happen to Selva and her son, the old man’s heart wouldn’t be strong enough to stand it.

Tarık took in everything that Sabiha said, as if he were receiving news of his own family. It took him a considerable time to console Sabiha and convince her that Selva would be all right. He promised to let Selva know the timetable for trains from Paris to Istanbul. He would insist that she leave Marseilles. He would try to protect her and her family.

He had said all that on the telephone, but how he was to achieve it was a different matter. All he could do was contact Nazım Kender in Marseilles and ask him to keep an eye on her. Come to think of it, wouldn’t Nazım Kender consider it odd that Tarık was asking him to protect a married woman?…No, he certainly couldn’t do that.

As soon as he put the phone down, he felt obliged to at least check the trains going to Istanbul, because of his love for Sabiha. Train journeys through occupied countries were very dangerous. Because of the skirmishes en route, the timetables were haphazard. He couldn’t force Selva to take such a journey, but while making inquiries he stumbled on something that gave him a glimmer of hope. He found out that Turkish diplomats were in the process of trying to gather all those Jews in Paris they had saved from the labor camps and send them by train to Istanbul, and then by sea to Palestine. It was the Turkish ambassador in Vichy who told Tarık of this scheme. It wouldn’t be easy to accomplish. According to the plan, the Turkish government would hire a carriage and attach it to one of the trains going toward Edirne. Turkey was a neutral country, so she would exercise her right to take the train car under her protection. A lot of effort was being spent to bring this plan to fruition. This meant that he would actually be in a position to do something for Sabiha.

There was something else that pleased Tarık.

Sabiha told him on the phone that she had begun to see a psychiatrist. Apparently he had qualified in Austria and was a very unusual doctor, not one of those psychiatrists who simply treated their patients by prescribing sleeping pills and tranquilizers. On the contrary, he spent hours talking to them and as a result reached the root of their problems. Sabiha was going to see him twice a week and she was very pleased with him. He wasn’t judgmental, he didn’t apportion blame, he didn’t even give her advice; he simply listened to her.

Sabiha had finally found someone she could talk to about her inner fears and doubts. Feeling a little jealous, Tarık had asked her what sort of man this specialist was—was he old, was he handsome? No, he wasn’t old. Yes, he was handsome. “Really!” Tarık had responded. Sabiha’s voice was like music to his ears. She reminded
him that the psychiatrist was a doctor, after all, and he would never be able to take the place of a loyal friend. She missed Tarık’s warm friendship.

Toward evening, Muhlis arrived at the new apartment loaded with shopping, which he took straight to the kitchen and put away on the various shelves.

“What on earth is all this? What on earth have you bought?” asked Tarık.

“These things make life worth living—various cheeses, wine, and bread.”

“I thought that we might go out for dinner.”

“These are not dinner, my dear friend, these are things from the delicatessen.”

“Where did you find this cheese? I asked the grocer across the street as I was coming home but there was no Brie. He told me it’s not easy to find these days…My God! Look at all this wine. Who’s going to drink all this?”

“I can find anything,” said Muhlis. “As for the wine, it’s for us and our guests, of course.”

“What guests?”

“Just you wait and see. Ferit and his wife will be here soon. Ferit is a friend from Galatasaray, my school in Istanbul. He was doing his master’s here when the war broke out and he couldn’t get back home, so now he’s teaching at the university. I’m sure you’ll like him. He’s not cheeky like me. He’s serious like you, and let me tell you he’s also very talented. He was a track champion at school and also a very good actor in the school plays. I’ll never forget the night he ecstatically danced a Kazakhstan dance! We were left speechless.”

Tarık was upset. He’d hoped to listen to the radio or read a book after dinner on his first evening at home. He was looking forward to an early night, and even having the opportunity to think
about that morning’s telephone call. He would try to remember the conversation word for word and perhaps manage to read between the lines. He would try to analyze Sabiha’s anxious, but happy, tone of voice with a clear head.

“I wish you’d asked me first,” Tarık said.

“You can stay in your room if you don’t want to join us. I thought it would be a good idea to celebrate our first day in our new home.”

“It would be embarrassing if I stayed in my room, but I’d appreciate it if you would ask me before inviting guests again.”

“You’d think we were still at school! Look, Tarık, you know that I always treat you with respect as my senior at work, but you have to understand that if we are to share this apartment, we have to have equal status, otherwise it won’t work. Both of us should be in a position to come and go as we please. We’ve got to be free to ask whomever we want to come back home with us, whether it’s female company or guests we want to entertain at home. Is that OK with you? After all, we’re no longer kids anymore, are we?”

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to think about this. If I don’t agree, it might be better if we go our separate ways before we jeopardize our friendship,” Tarık said, going to his room.

He sat in the armchair by the window, not switching on the light; he sat thinking by the light of the streetlamp. Was he being difficult? Muhlis’s words had startled him—what was it that he had said? He said that they should be free to bring back whomever they wished—including female company. He was a young man himself too, but it had never occurred to him that he might want to bring a woman back, especially when someone was sleeping in the next room. This was the difference between someone raised in Anatolia, as opposed to Istanbul. Just the thought of it was enough to make someone who’d attended a lycée in Sivas blush, but it was perfectly normal for someone who went to the Galatasaray lycée in Istanbul.

Maybe it was time for Tarık to grow up, for him to realize that life didn’t consist of just going back and forth to work, that love wasn’t about being enamored with a woman who could never be his. Maybe meeting Muhlis was a godsend. Was Muhlis the mediator who could bring him out of his shell, introduce him to new friends and new places? Could he widen his horizons by introducing him to the Paris nightlife, where he could enjoy the company of women?

He left his room and went into the kitchen, where Muhlis was setting out various cheeses on a plate. Tarık put his hand on Muhlis’s shoulder and spoke to him in his usual calm voice.

“You’re right, my friend. We’re not at school, we’re in our apartment, our home. You must feel free to come and go just as you please, and of course you should be able to invite your friends whenever you wish. My only request is that you let me know when you’re inviting people so I can make other arrangements if I don’t want to join you. I can go to the cinema or whatever.”

At the end of the evening, Tarık was pleased to have made the decision to join. Ferit and his wife were very pleasant indeed. They brought a bottle of wine with them and interesting conversation flowed easily. Far from Tarık’s expectations, Ferit turned out to be a sensible and interesting man, not at all the frivolous guy he was expecting. He was exactly as Muhlis had described him. His wife, Evelyn, was a very nice French girl whom Ferit had met at the university; they had known each other for about six years and had finally gotten married six months ago. Evelyn could speak a little Turkish, but with difficulty. However, as the evening wore on and after a few bottles of wine, there was no language barrier. They all felt comfortable together and talked about everything under the sun. Inevitably, the conversation turned to the war that had engulfed Europe and the awful conditions they were living in.
Ferit shared their views on the cruel and inhuman attitude of the Germans toward the Jews. He himself had hidden several Turkish Jewish friends from the university in his apartment. Because they were afraid to go to the consulate themselves, he had gone on their behalf and filled out the application forms for them.

Tarık told them how he had also saved some Jews from the Gestapo’s hands. Muhlis described how one old lady Tarık had saved kept trying to kiss him all the way to the consulate in the car, and they all burst into laughter.

Evelyn too had stories to tell. Apparently she had heard dreadful reports about what was going on in the labor camps, through the fiancé of a girlfriend. How had he found out? It seemed that because he had been pro-German, he had been allowed to carry provisions in a pickup truck into the camp. It was during his comings and goings that he chatted to those working at the camp and found out about the hair-raising atrocities being carried out there. Needless to say, that had been the end of his pro-German views.

Evelyn, Ferit, Muhlis, and Tarık stayed up talking until the early hours, their voices slightly slurred as a result of consuming wine. Their nerve-racking stories led all of them to agree these poor people needed support, and they promised each other to do everything they could to help.

“You’re doing everything you can anyway,” Ferit said, “but in our own little way we’re doing our bit too!”

“Really, what do you mean? Some association, an organization, or what?”

“Not exactly,” Ferit said, getting up from beside Tarık and switching on the radio, fiddling with the dial until he found a station playing music. The conversation came to an end. By the time Muhlis had another go at the radio and found some dance music, their mood had changed. When the guests had left, Tarık
and Muhlis tidied up and retired to their respective rooms. Tarık lay down on his back with his hands behind his head; he was rather drunk but happy. His apartment mate who had verbal diarrhea had certainly managed to add some color to his life.

ANKARA

Sabiha was sitting in an armchair with her feet on a footstool in Dr. Sahir’s consulting room, trying to relax.

“We’ll wait until you are ready as usual,” her doctor had said. “Please don’t talk until you are ready. Just lie back and relax, allowing your thoughts to take over. I can even play some music for you if you wish. I know you like classical music. I’ve got the Brahms piano concerto right here. Would you like to listen to it?”

“Oh yes, please.”

Dr. Sahir picked up the big black record, dusted it carefully, and put it on the gramophone. After the initial scratching noise, Sabiha heard the first few notes of the music. She closed her eyes and listened to the concerto she knew so well. It definitely helped her to relax, as if she were half-asleep. She could hear the doctor’s voice but she wasn’t sure where he was. He wasn’t directly in front of her. Was he sitting behind her or pacing around the room? He would talk for a while, then listen, occasionally asking questions.