I met Pandeli in one of those workers’ coffeehouses. I put the photograph on the table and took a good look. Yep, that was him. The police chief. The young hero of those infamous “incidents” of September 6 and 7. As they say, You can tell the make of a man from his baby shit. And there he was in his baby-shit days. He must have lost the mustache later. The gold tooth too. He didn’t need to be showy. Judging from those piles of bills he’d secretly stashed away, he’d been a virtuoso of the fine art of skimming.
Finally, Pandeli laid it all out there for me, unloading himself like a dump truck. His father’s store had been raided during those “incidents.” I’d heard a lot about those lootings, which went on for several days, from my mother and grandmother; the excuse was that Atatürk’s home in Saloniki had been bombed. They said that you couldn’t walk on Istiklal Avenue without stepping on goods from the gutted stores.
Pandeli’s father was never able to recoup his business. Nor his head. The family emigrated to Greece. The poor guy killed himself when Pandeli was still young. Pandeli found this photograph among his father’s belongings. He recognized their store. Then he read the articles about the chief and saw the photos of him. He recognized the guy and put two and two together. Then, on the fiftieth anniversary of the events, he thought of returning to Istanbul to look into things. It was his first visit back since he’d finished his residency.
We were silent for a spell. Then I told my story. A weird kind of confusion had overcome me when my mother was sick and dying. I don’t recall exactly, but I think I believed I was the Grim Reaper or something. I was in a hospital for a while. I heard about the things done to my mother from a friend of hers who visited me there. From Leyla Teyze. The poor woman didn’t really have any desire to talk about such things at a time like that, but she was sick and, I think, afraid of dying before she’d had the chance to tell me.
“Okay, look,” said Pandeli, “the Spaniards are after Pinochet. But that sort of thing will be a long time coming in these parts.”
What could I say? I smiled bitterly.
“So are we just going to let this guy off the hook?”
Good question. We paused and thought for a moment.
“Is there anybody you can think of who knows the city well enough and could find the people we’re looking for?” Pandeli asked.
“Yes,” I said, “there is, there sure as hell is...”
He was right: We were each worse than the other.
I found Pamuk in his coffeehouse in Tophane and convinced him to take a break and come back to Aksaray with me.
“Look,” he said, “I’m doing this for your mother’s sake, not yours!” Fair enough. We both were Aksaray kids, we went way back; he knew my mother, and he knew other people who had been tortured too.
The three of us gathered at a table back in the workers’ coffeehouse. Pamuk looked at me. “So what’s your beef this time?” he said.
I was sitting on one side, and on the other Pandeli was leaning toward Pamuk and rattling on in his ear. Pamuk, all serious, was giving him his full attention. Pandeli turned to me. “Let’s give him something, at least for his expenses,” he said. I gave Pamuk an envelope containing five thousand dollars.
“Finish the job and you’ll get another five grand,” I said.
“You got it!” he replied. He finished his tea. “Enjoy your teas, fellas. I’ll excuse myself now, if I may.” In fact, Pamuk was not the kind of guy who asked for permission for anything. He stepped out of the coffeehouse, fading like a huge shadow into the Aksaray evening.
“All right,” I said. “Great. What now?”
“Give it some time,” Pandeli said. He knew something. Then he told me of his intention to leave for Vienna soon. We kept our goodbyes brief. One never knew.
I was getting restless. I was about to swing by Dolapdere and look for a job. Then one day I read it in the papers: The Scalpel Slays Again! This time it had cut up a retired police chief who lived on Çıngıraklı Bostan Street. To shreds. And you didn’t have to look too closely to figure out that these were not your ordinary serial killings, not your ordinary serial killer. Some person was clearly rubbing out torturers.
I mailed copies of the newspaper articles to Pandeli in Vienna, just in case. The way he had told it, while looking at the photographs in the papers, he’d remembered some scalpels he had seen during his residency and developed a hunch as to who the killer might be. Then he sent Pamuk, not to do the deed himself, but to tip the killer off that he was in the know, to point the killer in the right direction: in the direction of the chief. Okay, that part I understood. According to this version of the story, the killer had been hanging out at the medical school at some point in the past. Yes, those scalpels were not something you’d forget. Still, how come no one else had remembered them and identified the killer? Was Pandeli the only one close enough to the killer back then to have the privilege of seeing his or her handmade tools? Could the killer be a woman? Was there more than one killer? Could Pandeli be one of them? Was he up to something in Greece too? I didn’t understand, I couldn’t understand. I was taking that old advice: Eat the grapes, but don’t ask about the vineyard. But who knows, maybe one of these days I’ll swing by Vienna and go to the trouble of looking the man up and asking him.
This time I swung by Pamuk’s coffeehouse in Tophane for a change. I drank his tea. I gave him the five grand. I left the Kırıkkale and the bullets with him.
“Haven’t you heard, my man?” he said. “Ours is the cool age of glockalization...”
Okay, if you say so.
I called Leyla Teyze at the number she had given me. I gave her the remaining money. I kissed her hand. It made her so happy. I didn’t know much about these things; I asked her to give the money to some organization dealing with human rights, helping inmates or torture victims. Any way she saw fit. That way that dirty, evil bundle of swiped cash would be put to good use.
I was done with Aksaray, with Istanbul. For the time being, at least. But where to now? I didn’t know if I actually had anywhere to return to. I still don’t.
I arrived in Brooklyn at an ungodly hour. But Tahir, my partner, was still working in the shop. We embraced.
“Sorry about your loss, bro,” he said. “I hope you had a chance to get rid of all those knots.”
Well, that’s not happening anytime soon, I wanted to tell him — my knots, brother, are here to stay. I tried to deal with death by becoming the Grim Reaper himself; I tried to deal with the monstrosities by becoming a monster myself. But what choice did I have? I’m not part of any political organization or gang or anything. I’m just here, just me, in Brooklyn. One horse, one gun. A retired Grim Reaper. That’s it.
As I said, my knots are here to stay.
And as for Aksaray, the “White Palace” of Istanbul...
I keep quiet.
Except every now and then, I let go: “You! Damn You! Fucking Black Palace, that’s what you are! Black Palace!”
So very familiar
by Behçet Çelık
Fikirtepe
Whenever my gaze falls upon the apartment door, where we lingered as she prepared to go without even saying goodbye, I feel her eyes resting on me that one last time — they’re looking at me still. Frozen, frightened, confused, but determined. I must have looked confused too. I thought everything was going just fine, I thought for sure she’d come over and take me into her arms and we’d make love again. She pulled the door shut behind her quietly, and left.