‘No, just traffic signals,’ came the reply through her headset, in heavily-accented English.
‘Dawn, you’re on air in thirty seconds. Anything to report? Over.’ The voice of Seb, her producer, broke into the conversation.
‘Nothing, apart from the earlier accident which closed the Unkapani Bridge, but that seems to have re-opened now and the traffic’s moving freely. Just in time for the morning rush. Over,’ Dawn replied.
‘Okay, just tell the nice listeners that and then hand back over to the studio. Fifteen seconds, we’ll run the jingle and then you’re on. Over.’
She could hear the radio station as it was being broadcast through her headset. ‘That was Survivor with Eye of the Tiger. Talking of which, let’s go to our eye in the sky, Traffic Dawn, with the latest update on the roads. Traffic Dawn, your eye in the sky. Hi Dawn, how are the roads looking this morning?’
Hamil was just covering the mosaics with dust sheets ready for the grand unveiling, a piece of theatre that always seemed to please the TV cameras, when he heard a low rumble. His first thought was that they must have diverted the traffic down the normally quiet side streets because of the earlier accident; but, as the noise intensified, his second guess was that it was a helicopter. He was right. He could distinctly pick out the rhythmic beat of the blades as it passed overhead.
He was standing on a platform of wooden planks, forty feet in the air, supported at either end by scaffolding, which his protégés, all final year Archaeology students from the nearby Koç University, had used to painstakingly remove the metal masks and white plaster from the intricate glass and gilt mosaics. If the Ottoman Turks had been able to see how masterfully the mosaics had been restored they would have realised, to their chagrin, far from destroying these works of art, as they had intended, they had actually helped preserve them for future generations.
The sound of the helicopter returned, only this time it was much louder. It made the perch he was standing on shake and the ladder, which was propped against the scaffolding, clatter to the ground. He was annoyed with himself because he had told his students, on numerous occasions, that they should always ensure it was fixed securely with ties before climbing up. He would have to wait for his cleaners to arrive in half an hour before he could get down, which was fine because he still hadn’t finished his preparations.
He couldn’t imagine the size of the helicopter that was capable of causing such vibrations, and then suddenly a distant memory came flooding back to him, which made his heart beat faster and his mouth become instantly dry. He had only ever experienced this sensation once before in his life, when he was a young boy on holiday in Fethiye with his parents, but that was enough to leave an indelible impression on his mind.
They had been staying at his great aunt’s house by the coast, when she burst into his room in the middle of the night, shouting for him and his sisters to get outside and stand away from any buildings. He must have slept through the initial tremors but, by the time he’d reached the top of the stairs, the whole house was shaking. He froze, not knowing what was going on, but his mother appeared behind him, picked him up and carried him outside to join the rest of the family on the beach. Several other households had already congregated on the sands and were being joined by people running from every direction, some crying, some screaming; but the majority just huddled in groups, staring silently in the moonlight, as they watched the houses in front of them crumble to a pile of rubble.
‘What’s that over there?’ Dawn was pointing to what looked like a plume of smoke rising from a street just in front of them.
Devrim pushed the joystick forward and the helicopter descended to get a better view.
‘It looks like a house has collapsed onto those cars,’ she said, as the downdraft from the helicopter swirled the cloud around them. She could see the half-demolished building, in the middle of a row of houses, and just make out figures running into the street covered from head to foot in dust.
‘Gas explosion? You’d better let the station know. That road is going to be blocked all day,’ Devrim told her, hovering just above the commotion.
‘Seb, it’s Dawn. Over,’ she spoke into her microphone and waited for a response from the station.
‘Go ahead, Dawn. Over.’
‘We’ve got an incident on…’ She checked the map on her lap for the street name.
She was trying to work out where they were, when Devrim’s alarmed voice came over her headset.
‘Dawn, look!’
She looked down to see the whole terrace collapsing in on itself, like a house of cards. The explosion took them both by surprise. The shockwave hit their undercarriage a full second before they heard the boom, propelling them higher into the air. Devrim gritted his teeth as he tried to regain control, pulling back the joystick as far as it would go. The nose rose sharply, but the turbos failed to deliver the thrust and they didn’t gain any more height. Instinctively, he pushed the stick to the left and the helicopter banked, just in time to avoid the huge fireball that had erupted. He pulled back on the controls again and this time he was relieved to hear the pitch of the engines change as they started to ascend.
Giyas was cold, tired and soaked through to the skin, despite wearing an all-in-one weather-proof suit with several layers of clothes underneath. He was just hauling in his third catch of the day when he heard the sound of the explosion in the distance. His father must have heard it, too, because he turned around to ask him what it was.
‘Another bomb, maybe?’ Giyas suggested.
They were constantly living under the threat of bomb attacks from one or other of the extremist groups, so it came as no surprise to either of them. Only the day before, a Kurdish terrorist had killed himself, a policeman and injured several others, in an apparent suicide attack on a local police station.
His father didn’t say a word; his thoughts were with the innocent victims and their families. He shook his head and returned to the wheelhouse to navigate the boat. Giyas was well aware of his father’s views on the subject and would no doubt be hearing more of them over the dinner table that evening. Being of Hungarian descent, he had had his history lessons from his father from a very early age. He knew all about the Ottoman Turk invasion of his country in 1541, and the subsequent deportations and massacres throughout their 150-year rule before the Prince of Transylvania rescued them from their subjugation. His father would always talk fondly of the ‘old country’, of the traditions and cultural values of its people, despite never having set foot on Hungarian soil himself.
Another meagre haul, Giyas thought to himself as he pulled in the last of the nets. His father turned around and Giyas could see the disappointment in his sunken, aging eyes.
‘We’ll try the other side of the bridge. Maybe our luck will change,’ his father shouted over his shoulder as he turned back to steer the boat on a new course.
Hamil knew that he had to get outside and into open space, which meant the Sultan Ahmet Park, located next to the museum, but first he had to get down from the dais, which was starting to sway wildly backwards and forwards as the tremors increased. He realised that there was no point in trying to retrieve the fallen ladder; his only two options were to either jump or try to scramble down the scaffolding. With time and fitness not on his side, he chose the former.
He took off his overcoat and fell to his knees to eye the drop; he reckoned that he could increase his chances of not sustaining an injury by hanging onto the wooden planks by his fingertips and then letting himself fall. He manoeuvred into position by turning his back on the nave and lowering himself slowly over the side. He held onto the edge of the platform, his knuckles white from the weight of his own body, his legs dangling in open space. He could hear the sound of his own heart pumping blood through his veins as his arms took the strain.