The Dervish House (42 page)
Authors: Ian Mcdonald
‘Every man is welcome at prayer,’ Yayla says. ‘God’s good.’ At the gate to Sidik Sami Omar Cadessi he turns to look back at the great Süleymaniye, backlit by a titanic sunset unfurling like the banners of the army of God over Eyüp, eerily luminous in the floodlights. ‘This is joy. Joy!’
There is no joy in this
, Ayşe.
This is hell. I’ve become one of the lost
. Selma Özgün warned her. Red on the Galata Bridge warned her. Even Beshun Ferhat’s rabbit warned her. Honey lures, honey seduces, honey traps. Don’t get involved with the Mellified Man-hunters. But she did. She let herself be seduced. She has become one of the Lost Legion of Hacı Ferhat.
, Ayşe.
This is hell. I’ve become one of the lost
. Selma Özgün warned her. Red on the Galata Bridge warned her. Even Beshun Ferhat’s rabbit warned her. Honey lures, honey seduces, honey traps. Don’t get involved with the Mellified Man-hunters. But she did. She let herself be seduced. She has become one of the Lost Legion of Hacı Ferhat.
Barçin Yayla steps down on to Sidik Sami Omar Cadessi and stops dead. His mouth contorts as if in pain.
‘I am standing on something,’ he says. Ayşe is quick to his aid but she can see nothing on the stone cobbles that might damage him. Yayla’s left foot is on a drainage grating, a rather beautiful piece of worked stone, of an age with the mosque, carved and pierced. There seems to be some sort of low-relief motif; rather elaborate for a drainage cover. Then she sees. She sees. The pattern is a series of Kufic letters, laid over each other in a complex grid. Ayşe kneels in the street. A citicar hoots past her, the driver shouting. She does not hear him.
‘Kha, shin, say, thaw, tha, jim,’ Ayşe says. ‘Kha, shin, say, thaw, tha, jim! Kha, shin, say, thaw, tha, jim!’
‘I felt it through the sole of my shoe,’ Yayla says with wonder. He kicks off the shoe, stands one foot bare in the street. ‘I have stood on the Secret Name of God.’
‘Well, take your foot off the Secret Name of God,’ Ayşe orders. She traces the letters. The carving has resisted four hundred years of Istanbul traffic and rain. The spaces between the rectilinear Kufic letters form the drain holes. Ayşe glances up and down the street. Between the feet of pedestrians, the skittering mopeds, the humming citicars she sees that the drain covers are spaced regularly and evenly across the street. In plain sight, in the least assuming of places, small but ubiquitous, overlooked by all but those who have the eyes to see.
‘Sinan, you fucking genius!’
Barçin Yayla is breathlessly chanting
Gracious God is Good, God is Compassionate
.
Gracious God is Good, God is Compassionate
.
Ayşe kneels and presses her cheek to the grating. A breath of air, cooled by the deep places of old Istanbul. The breath of the Fa, the missing letter, the unique orientation that points to the heart of God.
‘Shut the fuck up!’ Yayla is stunned into silence. Ayşe fumbles at her rings. Her wedding ring gives easily. No, not that, never that. She twists off a beautiful Tulip Era turquoise she took as part of a settlement from a buyer from Bulgaria. Ayşe Erkoç drops it through the grating. Moments later there is a faint, clear chime.
Can loves the supermarket. Soft neon, the glow of the shelves. The cool cascading from the chiller units and the mysteries stacked on the high shelves beyond his reach. Families squabbling around the trolleys, putting things in and taking them out again, tiny children in kid seats dealing him grave stares as they are wheeled past or abandoned in the middle of the aisles of wonder, the mothers glancing pitying at him as Mum signs to him. Look, little deaf boy. No, I’m not deaf, and even if I were, I could still see you. The Boy Detective misses nothing, including the packets of pantyhose or razors or bottles of Johnnie Walker Blue they slip under their coats. At the check-out he likes to try to guess the personalities of the shoppers ahead from their groceries sliding along the belt. What Can loves about the supermarket is that it is not Adem Dede Square. It is not Kenan winking at him and Asking. Him. In. Very. Big. Mouth. Movements. How he is today?
The supermarket is full of old people this evening, shuffling up and down buying nothing, keeping cool in the air-conditioning. The car park is suffocatingly hot after the chilled aisles. The air smells of hot blacktop. The world is endless and rich.
‘Mom,’ he says. ‘I think this is what California must be like.’
Şekure Durukan makes the sign which says,
What are you on about now?
What are you on about now?
‘Oh, nothing,’ Can says. He loads another bag into the back of the Gas Bubble.
Supermarket night is always treat night; an ice-cream bar that Can eats in the car, not from impatience but because of the sense of sophistication he gets from biting through the dewed chocolate to the creamy cold beneath with the lights of the city streaming past. In the car at night, eating ice cream, his mother drumming her fingers on the steering wheel to the dancing volume-display of the radio, he has a powerful sense of a different life they all could have led. It takes place in a nice suburban house, with a garage, and a red tile roof and some space around it. There’s a swing and a trampoline at the back. There’s a woman sitting on a verandah reading a magazine. There’s a dad inside watching sport with his friends; later they may play cards. There’s a boy whirring around on the street on a cool bike. He can go anywhere in the world on that bike. That boy is the Can who doesn’t have Long QT syndrome.
‘QT,’ he sings to himself. ‘Cutie. Cutie.’
‘What’s that, love?’
‘Cutie.’
Şemsi flashes her spangly red booty at him from the wall-sized hoarding.
Can is not allowed to lift anything heavy up the steep steps to the apartment because of the strain it might put on his heart. His parents have debated fitting a stair lift but have always deferred the cost against the hope that Can will grow into a fitter and stronger teenager. Şekure calls Osman down on the ceptep. Three bags per hand, waddling up the steep wooden steps. Why don’t they just lower a basket over the edge of the balcony? Sometimes you can’t tell people these things. Not for the first time Can suspects he may be much smarter than his parents.
Can’s left a last little nugget of ice cream, a reward for being left in the Gas Bubble out on the street. Şekure and Osman had pulled him in the moment the police swarm robots descended on the crowd. He had been angry at that, then frightened as soft screams began to penetrate the cloak of silence around him. They should have let him see. Adem Dede Square is still measled with RFID-paint in hard-to-reach places: the undersides of gutters, coamings and cornices, carved woodwork, lines and verticals out of the reach of brushes or long-reach window cleaners, the floral-carved stonework of the fountain. The Improving Bookstore hasn’t even tried. Can finds the leopard-spotted steel shutter an improvement: excitement, wild stuff within. Aydin’s stall is likewise shut up for the night. There is Kenan in his shop, watching Sky Sports on the flatscreen above the door. Bülent and Aykut are engaged in precisely the same activity in their rival çayhanes, lining up their tea glasses in neat ranks and files, Bülent’s gold rimmed, Aydin’s crimson. Can smiles. He likes to notice these patterns. It’s the way Mr Ferentinou looks at the world. There’s Necdet; Shaykh Necdet now, Can supposes, creeping home down the steps of Stolen Chicken Lane from wherever he spends the day. He never looked great but he’s dreadful now, face thin and eyes staring like you see in cartoons of mad imams and hunched over. If that’s what God does to you you should pick your friends more carefully. There might be a robot watching him. There are so many places in the konaks and old buildings around Adem Dede Square where a robot can hide unseen, spying. Can knows, he’s used most of them. He remembers Mr Ferentinou’s warning and squeezes down into the seat well, peering over the top of the dashboard.
Necdet hesitates, as if he’s scared to go down Güneşli Sok to the squat. Then all the doors open on the little white van parked beside the Adem Dede çayhane, a van Can has not even noticed because it’s so ordinary. Three men: young men in bomber jackets and sports pants. They run at Necdet, too fast for him to react and knock him hard to the ground. Before he can recover they roll him on to his stomach, pull his arms behind him and bind them with cable tie. While the wind is knocked out of him and he can’t cry out they drag him to his feet and rush him to the van and throw him in through the back doors. Two men follow him in, the third gets into the driver’s seat. Doors slam, engine kicks. Can slides down into invisibility as the white van accelerates past him down Vermilion-Maker Lane. All in the single, silent breath held by Can Durukan. So fast, so hard, he’s the only one saw the kidnapping. Bülent and Aydin at their glasses, Aykut watching one of the interminable preambles to the Galatasaray cup-tie, all were looking elsewhere. Can is the sole witness.
He exhales. The paralysis is broken. The Boy Detective knows what must be done. Can rushes from the Gas Bubble, up the stairs where his parents are descending for their second, complaining load. Şekure signs furiously at him. Can opens the computer and throws himself on to his bed, squeaking in frustration at the interminable boot screens. So slow so slow! It’s up. More endless moments as the BitBot application opens.
Come on
, he breathes at the screen. Come
on
. And he’s in. And he stops, hands crossed in the gesture that assembles Bird out of the wasp-nest of BitBots clinging under the eaves.
Promise me you won’t have any more to do with this
, Mr Ferentinou said.
We are not detectives. You must promise me this or you can never come here again.
Come on
, he breathes at the screen. Come
on
. And he’s in. And he stops, hands crossed in the gesture that assembles Bird out of the wasp-nest of BitBots clinging under the eaves.
Promise me you won’t have any more to do with this
, Mr Ferentinou said.
We are not detectives. You must promise me this or you can never come here again.
‘But I’m the only witness,’ Can murmurs to the screen. ‘If I don’t do anything, no one will. Only me, Mr Ferentinou.’ Can crosses his open hands in the haptic field and Bird forms. He crosses thumbs, waggles fingers. Bird, fly! And he’s up, wheeling over the overhanging wooden eaves and cloistered garden and little hushed graveyard of the dervish house. There are only so many ways the white van can go from Vermilion-Maker Lane and Bird can cover them all with its many eyes. Bol Ahenk Sok, no, Alçak Yokuşu. Can has seen people take mopeds down the steps. Desperate and dangerous kidnappers might risk a van. No. Down on to Necatibey Cadessi. Evening traffic, headlight and streetlight dazzle, neons and luminous trams sailing past, hard to make out one white van from the many on the big street. Can reconfigures Bird’s eyes and swoops low over Necatibey Cadessi. They have to be here and they have to be going in this direction, towards the bridges. But there are so many white vans. You never notice how many until you need to look for one white van. There. There. Five back in a line stopped at traffic lights. Bird glides up over the line of cars.
‘Size of rat!’ Can whispers and brings his fists together. Bird explodes into a rain of BitBots. Millimetres above the road, they configure into fast, street-smart Rat. But the lights have changed, the traffic is rolling. White van is drawing away. Can hisses with concentration as he steers Rat in and out between crushing car tyres and dodging mopeds, faster faster! But White Van is getting away from him as he frantically scampers through the taxis and the trucks. By a silicon whisker he escapes the guillotine of tram wheels as he follows White Van across the tracks where the line curves up toward Beşiktaş. Two car lengths, three car lengths. Can rolls his tongue in fierce concentration. Every neuron is focused on this ultimate street-driving game. They’re getting away, they’re getting away. And then the traffic lurches to a halt in one of those inexplicable Istanbul slow-downs that freeze whole districts for no obvious reason and just as unreasonably clear themselves. Rat dives under crawling cars, dashes between wheels. There there! Less than a metre to go and the traffic speeds up again. They’re moving off, getting away. One chance and one chance only: Can stabs his hands forward with a sharp cry even he can hear through his plugs. Rat leaps, seems suspended forever in midair, latches on to the rear licence plate.
‘Yes!’ Can pipes but the robot magic isn’t done yet. ‘Go go rat baby!’ Down on Necatibey Cadessi, Rat splits open from the head. A tiny ratling, a thumbnail-sized clone of its parent, locks on to the back of the White Van. It’s a little app he got from the BitBot forum: BitBot MiniMe. Like most apps, Can had played with it once, shown it to his friends once and then never looked at it again, unable to find a use for it. But now is the bit for which they can’t write apps.
‘Rat, home.’
Rat Daddy drops off the van, rolls into a ball and goes skitter-bouncing down Necatibey Cadessi, tumbling like an empty plastic cola bottle between the crushing wheels and the growling engines. Now. Again Can brings his fists together. In mid-bound Rat reforms, dodges away from a water truck and scampers to the safety of the gutter.
‘Good Rat, clever Rat,’ Can says and sets the robot into homing mode. It will slowly but inevitably find its way back to the Durukan balcony, crawling on minimum power. Rat’s job is done. Now the task is Rat Baby’s and Can opens up its window. The view from its tiny cameras is fish-eye distorted; the device is little more than a tracking device and that is all Can Durukan needs. Rat Baby will ride the White Van all the way to its destination.
‘I know where you live,’ says Can Durukan.
The bedroom door opens. Can’s father stands there in the wedge of light. Can can see his jaw tighten in frustration.
‘What do you do in there?’ he asks with wonder. Can pretends not to be able to lip-read him. Osman Durukan closes the bedroom door. Can returns to Rat Baby and opens up his location on a map. Heading for the Atatürk Bridge.
‘I so rule,’ says the Boy Detective.
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