The Sultan of Byzantium (22 page)

The Cappadocian grandmother of John Newberry, my neighbor at the hotel, was subject to the population exchange of 1924. When her family had trouble adapting to life in Thessalonica they emigrated to Melbourne. John was a retiree and a widower. In honor of his grandmother’s memory, he sat on his balcony admiring the view of Erciyes Mountain, cracking and eating pumpkin seeds one by one. He expressed amazement that I didn’t know the Australian player on the Galatasaray football team, Harry Kewell, and I tried to win forgiveness by reciting a stanza written by his fellow citizen, the poet Les Murray.

On the second day the team and I went to the Ihlara Valley in the hotel van. The driver, Tahir, was a small man with a shining face. If I cracked a joke to him he would lower his head, embarrassed. Maybe modesty was a character trait left behind from the monastery phase of the place. I knew Pappas would be the first to laugh at my theory about the small size of the Cappadocians (so that they could take shelter in the fairy chimneys on the day before Doomsday).

The valley with the lyrical name, Ihlara, was a good thirty miles from the hotel. I was getting used to feeling like our road was taking us across the weary Patagonian plateau. Millions of years ago, when Hasandağ, killer of so many mountain climbers, exercised its right to erupt, Melendiz Creek flooded the fissures and probably prevented a camp of fairy chimneys from forming here. Ihlara was quite a mystical canyon, which was no doubt why, since the sixth century, so many hermit’s cells, churches, tombs for nobles, and other structures were hewn from the rocky cliffs rising up from the stream.

We disembarked from the van at a point that rose 500 feet above the valley floor, where we could, as Tahir put it, be in command of the panorama and look down at the creek snaking along like a rope. As I stepped out, a ten-year-old girl materialized in front of me. Apparently her faded T-shirt and cotton trousers did double duty as pajamas at night. The man’s black jacket she wore over them – maybe for camouflage – was at least two sizes too big. She had fair skin, a long face, and bright almond-colored eyes. Her ancestors might well have included a Byzantine beauty who sought refuge in the valley a thousand years ago.

‘Welcome to Ihlara,’ she said.

‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘And is your name as pretty as your face?’

‘It’s Naile.’

‘Naile, what in the world are you doing on top of a mountain all by yourself?’

‘I’m a guide.’

This got a laugh, but Naile didn’t seem to mind, maybe because she was used to the reaction.

‘Well then, our young guide, tell us how the Ihlara Valley was formed.’

Naile brought her two feet together and turned toward Hasandağ. In a charming tone she made an impressive presentation parallel to the guidebook’s. Listening to her, I felt at once lighthearted and regretful for my delayed fatherhood, with no children of my own to enjoy. As I rummaged through my pockets for small bills to make up fifty liras, she told me that she would be a fifth-grader next year, and if she won a scholarship for indigent students, she hoped one day to become a teacher. She had some trouble extracting her right hand from the pocket of the big jacket.

‘Why are you wearing that jacket in this hot weather?’ I asked.

‘My mother won’t let me go around without it.’

‘Well, that’s curious. Why?’

‘Because I don’t have an arm below my elbow,’ she said, and bowed her head apologetically. I felt a wave of pity for this young girl, who had lightened my spirits, more than for the primitive mentality of hiding a physical disability. I felt like a harsh wind had just stripped the petals from a rare and fragile flower as I stood admiring its beauty.

I had a quick meeting with the team. I borrowed half of all the money they had with them for half a day, added it to all the money I had in my pocket, and put two thousand liras in an envelope. I asked Naile where she lived. Her father was dead; she lived with her mother at her grandfather Haci Ali’s house. I put the envelope in the right-hand pocket of her jacket as we sat on neighboring rocks.

‘Naile, please give my greetings to your mother and to Haci Ali Efendi, and say this: “I helped out four gentlemen today. They liked me very much and sent this money with me for my education.” And be sure to tell Haci Efendi that the money was earned honestly.

‘Say “The youngest of them is the boss and he grew up like me, an orphan. He has a small problem and he asked me to pray for him.” He said, “Since you’re a smart girl with a pure heart, God will accept your prayers.” He said he would visit us when he gets his problem solved, and then he will see that my arm is fixed. He said he would pay my school expenses too, until I receive my diploma.’

I made her repeat her lines until she had them down. Pappas took our picture as I held her in an embrace. When I knelt to say good-bye, she put her good arm around my neck and burst into tears. My eyes were wet too. She said ‘Thank you’ and disappeared behind the rocks, bounding down the path like a young goat.

If I thought that Pappas wouldn’t seize the occasion to pile on compliments, I would have said, ‘I’ll never make an emperor even in exile, will I?’ We walked back to the van and I recalled to him the lines by Cahit Sitki Taranci, the poet who actually died when he was forty-six: ‘Thirty-five years old and halfway down the road.’

‘Meeting Naile was a breaking point for me,’ I said. ‘It reminded me that I’m thirty-four. It’s time for me to get married – by next year – and start loving my own children.’

*

After a long but pleasurable slalom down the hillside, we came to the floor of the Ilhara Valley and sat for lunch at an open-air restaurant next to the Melendiz River, which had been reduced to creek category by old age. The valley had in the meantime become a universally acclaimed hiking preserve. The adjacent tables held European tourists who had just completed their tours. They were mostly middle-aged and wearing perhaps slightly exaggerated expressions of gratitude for ‘mission accomplished’.

I started out on the hiking path from the village of Belisirma, a Byzantine leftover. Our destination was the Yilanli Church. We followed the winding path, keeping the Melendiz on our left. The coyly flowing creek and the birds singing in whispers bolstered the mystical atmosphere. At every step the botanical scene shifted, with a different kind of tree in our path. The braggart poplar and willow trees stood like an army of spears, yet despite them the most attractive plant of the valley was the oleaster trees, which gave off a subtle scent. I felt a lightness in my being as I trailed a flock of butterflies as small as bees. A feeling of peace suffused the place.

The Direkli Church that popped up on our right was not on our agenda, but I couldn’t resist its challenge. I gave the order to climb the rocky path. The church, which at first appeared to be a spacious cave, was carved out by exiles fleeing the Iconoclast controversy. The artist who painted the biblical frescoes on the ceiling must have splashed them on in two hours and run away. The thin pillars, narrow chapels, and tiny nooks squeezed in here and there around the place made me feel like I was on a Noah’s Ark lowered down below ground level.

I wanted to shout ‘Open Sesame!’ when I came to the apse with a Judgment Day fresco inside its dome. A little later I felt a sudden trepidation – was the dagger-shaped piece of plaster dangling from the narthex a bad omen? I smiled and moved on, my mind trying to figure out why wild animals didn’t move into these untended caves. Heading back down the path, Pappas slipped and fell, and I helped him up, whispering in his ear, ‘I’ll have to ask Nomo why they put a potato sack like you on my trail.’

We continued walking energetically in an eastern direction. The path carried us along like an anonymous poem, without a single line slipping into the margins. The afternoon was advancing; hardly anybody else was out, only a swaying group of Japanese coming back from their tour. A lot of churches have frescoes of Saint George slaying the anti-religious dragon or serpent, and so are called ‘Yilanli’, ‘snake’ churches. The reason why I chose the Yilanli Church in the Ihlara Valley was that I wanted to see the picture of Christ sitting with crossed legs. And I was curious about the twenty-four saints representing the twenty-four letters of the Byzantine alphabet.

We went on walking east. As the afternoon matured, the presence of nature grew less emphatic. We crossed to the left side of the creek over a bridge that resembled an overturned boat. The climb to the Yilanli Church seemed to be developing into a bit of a challenge for the team. It was actually a cross-shaped chapel cut from the rock in the ninth century. I liked the anarchic feel of it as I wandered around with my flashlight. Christ was not only sitting on the floor with his legs crossed but also had the irritated look of someone caught by paparazzi in an unofficial pose. The twenty-four saints, each representing a letter, looked as perplexed as suspects in a Hollywood movie, put in a line-up to face the victim. The biblical stories on the walls gave off a kind of animated movie warmth. According to my guidebook, the winged devil behind a Christ-figure was saying, ‘Son of God, invite me to your holy supper tonight.’ The last image carried a warning: it was a woman who would not give suck to her children being bitten on her breasts by two snakes. I said to Pappas, ‘Don’t you think this place looks like a bar abandoned because the owner couldn’t find a bartender to work for him?’ He laughed.

I delivered the good news that the expedition was over. We were walking back toward the small bridge when Askaris suddenly leaped on me, shouting, ‘Excellency, look out!’ We fell to the ground together as a man on the rocks above the church fired three times at us with a pistol. The sound of the bullets sailing over my head was lyrical. Kalligas emptied his own miniature revolver in return, but Askaris opined that by then the shadow wearing a black ski mask was long gone.

I picked myself up from the dirt and said to Askaris, ‘I can’t extend my thanks to you, Askaris. But I can say that you didn’t do a bad job of administering the Nomo test for courage.’

*

My third day in Cappadocia. Three is the magic number in fairy tales. But it was not a good sign that I thought about this. Was something more ominous waiting for me in the land of fairy chimneys? Well, I didn’t care even if there was. I was getting bored with this chess game I’d been sucked into. Perhaps the ‘Stockholm syndrome’ I couldn’t get over had something to do with it.

It was impossible to see the sunrise because of the forty or more hot-air tourist balloons polluting the sky. I couldn’t imagine the excitement levels of the people in those brightly colored balloons that could hang in the same place for half an hour. But I was sure they cared little for the poetic side of their flame-powered ascension. I took breakfast in my room and waited for the first wave of tourists to clear the churches. I opened
Ba
, by the poet Birhan Keskin.

As the noon
ezan
filled the air we were just about to enter the Göreme Open Air Museum, which encompassed the Tokali Church, which resting quietly behind its retaining wall, symbolized the holiness of Cappadocia. Inside the ninth-century space I discovered the mysteries of both a cave and an underground sanctuary. The Tokali Church frescoes were like oil paintings compared to the etchings and cartoons in the other eight churches. It was almost like the Tokali art was apologizing to the Bible on behalf of the other stuff. With their lapis-colored backgrounds, the sacred frescoes appeared as if in a divine exhibition catalogue. George Seferis thought they constituted a visual narrative of the whole Christian epic.

Besides me, there was an elderly British couple in the church, speaking in whispers. Like me they were patiently examining the walls and ceilings with their flashlight. I was all alone when I found the purple square. It was waiting for me at the table of ‘The Last Supper’, in the middle part of the fresco that was just where the church dome met the wall. It was ten feet up from where I stood, but it didn’t take me long to find a way to get there. I took the silver box from my bag and held it just below the tableau. It took about two seconds for the purple square to descend, like the word of God, into the box and nestle perfectly into its repository. Across from it these words appeared: ‘Haghia Sophia, Constantinople.’ I shut the box, muttering, ‘Of course it would surprise me if there were no Haghia Sophia in this Byzantine mosaic puzzle.’

I didn’t immediately leave the Tokali Church. I was a little uneasy at reaching the happy ending so soon. Was it the winged devil I’d met earlier in the Ilhara Valley who pointed my flashlight to the supper gone unfinished for the last thousand years? According to my guidebook, I’d taken the last square from the hand of the traitor Judas Iscariot. My heart was pounding and my forehead itched badly. I walked up and down the dim corridor. Had I been tested yesterday in courage and today in bluffing? Yesterday I was saved from an assassin; today was I receiving the news that there was a traitor in our midst? All right, then. If so, why wasn’t Nomo protecting their emperor, who was busily and successfully passing his exams? Was this another stress test?

Did the last square, the one I took from the hand of Judas, contain a message? If there was a traitor on the team, Nomo had a duty to eliminate him. I loathed the idea of drawing up a list of candidates from my closest circle. But long live intuition! I remembered a list my father once made up that I’d seen among my grandfather’s rare books. But now I couldn’t find the thing, which, as I remembered, looked something like a mosaic puzzle with embroidery. Were I a character in a novel, I lamented with a smile, I could easily find it and extract secret clues from it.

I marked two chess tournaments in the southern hemisphere for the month of April, and I was about to register when Nedim of Kulu called. His voice was tense.

‘My dear friend,’ he said. ‘I have things to tell you, but first you have to promise me you won’t get angry.’

‘Come on, Nedim,’ I said. ‘What could you have done to make me angry?’