The Dervish House (32 page)
Authors: Ian Mcdonald
‘I usually charge . . .’
Ayşe already has a twenty-euro note in her hand.
‘Maashallah, forty-one times.’ Beshun grunts with the effort as she lifts a shoebox from under the table. It’s filled with file cards glued to cardboard backings, each of them hand-lettered with a Koranic verse or a proverb or a line of poetry. Nashun clears away the tea glass and the ash tray under her seat. Ayşe worries about the proximity of Sobranie to so much guinea-pig food. Beshun sets the box on its side so the cards spill a little way from their confinement, then releases the rabbit’s leash, lifts it and presses her nose to its wiffle-nose, her lips to its rodent-y mouth, whispering and muttering rabbit-charms. Ayşe shivers.
‘This is Süleyman’
‘Should I ask a question or something?’
‘No need, love. Süleyman knows.’ Beshun turns the rabbit head-over-paws three times. ‘Hippity-hoppity lippity-loppity, by the swop of my ears and the lop of my feet and the wiffle of my nose, tell me tell me tell me.’ Süleyman the rabbit shakes the dizzy out of its ears and sniffs along the line of cards, three times up, three times down. It pokes at a card with its nose. Beshun lifts the card and sets it face down on the table. Twice more Süleyman prods at cards. Beshun sets them carefully aside and gives Süleyman a kiss between his ears before confining him again.
With great deliberateness Beshun turns the first chosen face up.
Al Ba’ith
. The forty-ninth beautiful name of God, written in a circle in fat felt-pen Arabic.
Al Ba’ith
. The forty-ninth beautiful name of God, written in a circle in fat felt-pen Arabic.
‘God the sender from this world into Paradise, the raiser from death; God the resurrector,’ she says. She turns the second card face up. Ayşe holds her breath. Theatre is more than half of any oracle. It is an old card, the paper yellow and torn at the edges, the corners patched with yellowed Sellotape. A verse from Rumi.
‘A strange sweetness, never felt before, spreads through the flesh,’ Beshun recites. ‘And the mouth revels in the luscious taste of the reed flute and the player’s lips.’
Beshun flips the third card. A garden of messy Arabic, poorly versified. Bees in coloured felt-marker and crayon draw little buzz-lines around the words. Some carry little buckets full of honey. Sura 16.
‘As Your Lord has taught the bee, saying, “Make houses in the mountains and the trees and in the hives which men build you.
‘“Moreover, feed on every kind of food and walk the beaten paths of your Lord.” From its belly comes a many-coloured liquid, which gives medicine to man.’
Beshun pushes the cards to the centre of the table.
‘Well, love? Are you answered?’
‘What do you think?’
‘You won’t find it. Istanbul has too many secrets, too many stories.’
Ayşe leaves an additional twenty-euro note on the little table. As she slides on her sunglasses against the glare-after-gloom of Yeni Cami Cadessi she is struck by the stomach-muscle twinge of not being alone. She doesn’t know how she knows, but she’s certain a car is following her. Ayşe sets down her bag on a pedestrian crossing call button on the side of a lamp-post and uses the excuse of hunting for a ceptep to scan the street. Cars driven by men. It could be any one of them. Does the driver of that silver Skoda look at her a moment longer than normal Istanbul street-staring? Fortunes and conspiracies. Hidden histories. Magical thinking. She has a bookstore to call on and lost dervishes to find.
The Boy Detective and his Monkey Robot Sidekick go dashing along dusty abandoned corridors and up and down lost staircases. Over the century since the tekke was dissolved by Ankara’s decree, developers and residents have partitioned and repartitioned the generous spaces of the dervishes, walling in a balcony here, connecting a pavilion there, boxing in that staircase and subdividing rooms and levels, in the process mislaying whole architectures that lie close as a kiss but forever apart from the inhabited parts of the dervish house. Here are ways known only to the rats, the famine-thin cats that hunt them, and nine-year-old boys. Usually in the tunnels and shut-off corridors Can will run his fingers along the wall, feeling the thrum of the outside world, its traffic, its people, its shouts and voices and musics, amplified through the wood. Today he’s too excited, bounding down the stairs two steps at a time. Monkey at his side spontaneously breaks into a swarm of scuttling components, forms into scuttling Snake, flies a few wingbeats, breaks apart again, shattering and reforming, picking up its master’s excitement. The Boy Detective has a lead, a real, proper like-it-is-on-the-television lead.
First the formalities. Can takes out the earplugs, carefully cleaning off the wax and skin flakes and ick that’s gathered there. The heard world rushes in; always his heart thumps, not in panic, chaotic patterns of sodium ions polarizing and depolarizing across its surface, but in the pure thrill of what he had only felt through his fingers filling up its proper sense. Mr Ferentinou makes tea. Can doesn’t like tea but he likes to be offered it. It’s a man-to-man thing.
Mr Ferentinou is a bad mood this morning. He answered the door in it, he’s making tea in it, he bangs down the saucers in it.
‘Are you all right, Mr Ferentinou?’ Can asks.
Mr Ferentinou is taken aback by the directness of the question. He bristles, harrumphs, then softens.
‘I’ve had an argument with someone,’ he says.
‘People your age can have arguments?’
‘People never stop having arguments,’ Mr Ferentinou says. Can thinks about the vibrations he feels through the bedroom wall some nights, the soft, rhythmic syllables, high and low; his mother for a long time his father for a short time, his mother for a long time again. Parents arguing when they know their son can’t hear. ‘It’s worse at my age, there’s the possibility you might not be able to put it right again.’
Can knows that this has to do with death. Can knows about death. He is forced to think about it every day.
‘What will you do?’
‘I’ll put it right before the stubborn bugger dies. I’ll call him. Oh, stupid man.’
Can sets his plastic evidence bag on the table. He can barely contain himself, squirming in his seat.
‘I found something out. A lead.’
‘What have you done?’ Mr Ferentinou asks.
‘That bit of robot I found, I put it out on a conspiracy wonk site.’
‘Conspiracy wonk?’
‘Gladio dot tee ar.’
Mr Ferentinou rolls his eyes and says something in his own weird language that Can knows can’t be good.
‘You do know, young man, that MIT watches those Deep State sites.’
‘I got a lead,’ Can says doggedly. His BitBots have reconfigured into Rat and sit on his elbow, tasting the air with silicon whiskers. ‘I found the robot, the robot that chased me.’
‘We’re in this anyway it seems. Tell me what you found.’
‘The number is from a chassis, khassis . . .’ Can fumbles over the alien word, ‘chassee number. It’s a factory ident. I know what it is and where it’s from. It’s a version of a Nissan A840 Precision Manoeuvre robot. License Number NPM21275D. They’re made for difficult inspection areas, like working at heights or in tunnels or in high-energy environments like power lines n-plants.’
Mr Ferentinou nods his head. He’s impressed.
‘So we know where it was made.’
Now Can bounces up and down on the bench seat.
‘But I know where it went, I know who bought it! Botsearch dot tee ar. It’s an English language site but some Turkish fans have done their own Turkish language pages.’ Can taps on the silkscreen, the book that holds all books. He turns the displayed page to Mr Ferentinou. ‘Look, see? Built in May 2024, leased to TIK to June 2026. What’s leased?’
‘It’s like a kind of renting. TIK are a big infrastructure company.’
‘They work on bridges and the Marmaray, I know that,’ Can says. ‘Then Huriyet Cable and Transmission. They’re a big electricity company, they run power lines and those big pylon things. That’s infrastructure too, isn’t it?’
‘Very much so, Mr Durukan.’
‘They have him until last October, when he’s retired because he’s picking up too many faults.’
‘He, him. You said
him
.’
him
.’
‘I did?’
‘You did. I find it interesting that we assume robots are male. Carry on.’
Can often can’t fathom Mr Ferentinou’s wanderings and ramblings and diversions. He frowns in concentration. This is Detective stuff.
‘He goes quiet then until he turns up in a sale, here, in April.’ Tap, drag, windows open and slide across the i-paper. Samast Auctions, over in Kayişdaği.
‘Do you know who bought him? It?’
‘No, they paid cash, like you always say. Cash is king.’
‘It’s the first lesson any self-respecting terrorist - or freedom fighter for that matter - learns. Your detective work is very good, Mr Durukan, but the trail seems to go cold here. It’s quite a distance from Samast Auctions to lying in pieces on the street outside here.’
Now Can is boiling with excitement, and he almost squeaks with pleasure and he snatches the screen away from Mr Ferentinou and opens up new pages with his fast young fingers.
‘But remember, I said it was a fan site.’ The page is titled
Spottings
. Two thirds down the list of registrations is NPM 21275D. Him. And times and dates. 15:30 January 18th 2027. 09:25 February 22nd 2027. 14:04 March 2nd 2027. And places. Dereboyu Cadessi. Meriç Cadessi. Evren Sok.
Spottings
. Two thirds down the list of registrations is NPM 21275D. Him. And times and dates. 15:30 January 18th 2027. 09:25 February 22nd 2027. 14:04 March 2nd 2027. And places. Dereboyu Cadessi. Meriç Cadessi. Evren Sok.
‘Is this crowdsourcing?’ Can asks. He learned the word from Mr Ferentinou. He likes the idea; throw a question out into the world, someone - or everyone - will answer.
‘It’s the modern word for it.’ Mr Ferentinou frowns, then drags out the addresses on to a map. The stork’s eye view of Istanbul swirls, then swoops down to the eastern suburbs. Stars appear among the flat roofs of the housing blocks: the places where Kayişdaği’s botspotters, its nine-year-old boys and old men with nothing to fill their mornings, spotted the robot NPM 21275D.
‘See how close together they are?’ Mr Ferentinou says. ‘Terrorists tend to form small world networks, with strong local bases and occasional global connectors.’
‘Terrorists,’ Can breathes.
‘Oh, I am sure so, Mr Durukan.’ Then Mr Ferentinou does one of those pieces of mind magic that Can loves to see but can’t quite understand. Keeping the pin-marks, he pulls up maps of his other Istanbuls, the ones made from how long it takes to get to work, how far people travel to buy food, where the power lines are, where the dolmuşes run. Bus routes, levels of debt, water supply, ages of mosques, gas pipes. Here he stops. Can follows his finger down on to the map. In the centre of the constellation of robot sightings is a small knot of blue lines.
‘Kayişdaği Compression Station,’ Mr Ferentinou says. Fingers to map, Mr Ferentinou and Mr Durukan follow the blue lines. Can remembers winters filled with puzzle books his dad bought him from Aydin’s news stand. Join the dots, that was connecting, the pleasure found in anticipating the final shape as the line grew more defined from point to point. Mazes: finding the centre was easy, the reward poor; a chocolate bar or an angel or a statue. The real pleasure came in following the seeming dead ends and imagining what greater treasures might lie hidden beneath the pages; secret doors, other worlds.
Fat veins run away to all cardinal points; north and south to connect with other pipe nodes, east towards Anatolia and ultimately the Caucasus, the gas lands of Central Asia, west to Istanbul, under the Bosphorus to the Balkans and southern Europe.
‘Blue Stream, Nabucco . . .’ Can cuts off abruptly. Mr Ferentinou has shut off the silkscreen. He snatches it up to his chest.
‘No, that’s enough. No more. It may already be too much. No no. You have to go now Mr Durukan.’
Can’s head and heart reel from the sudden shock. He might cover his face, then he might cry.
‘But Mr Ferentinou . . .’
‘No no, don’t talk to me any more about this. You have to leave this, do you understand, Can? I am beginning to see something and it makes me very very afraid. We’re not detectives, this is not the television; great crimes and terrorist plots don’t get solved by old men and boys; they’re solved by police, the security forces, with guns. Promise me you won’t have any more to do with this. Promise me. You must promise me this or you can never come here again.’
‘But that’s not fair,’ Can begins to say and bites it back because that’s the sort of thing a kid shouts and the rules between him and Mr Ferentinou have always been gentlemen’s rules. Misters both. Mr Ferentinou means this. So Can looks at him in the eyes, which has always made the old man uncomfortable, and says, ‘All right then, I promise.’
But it’s a lie. No, not a lie, something else, a Does Not Apply. Rat perches on his elbow and as everyone knows - everyone in Yildiz School - no promise made in the presence of a rat is ever valid.
The conversation with Türkan Bey, Landlord of Felicity Apartments, takes place entirely through the street door intercom.
‘Mehmet Ali Yazıcoğlu,’ Leyla repeats.
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