Levant pulled back slightly, and his expression retreated into more guarded territory.
“Look, I’m not here in any kind of official capacity,” Tess added by way of comforting him. “This is just a personal quest. I’m just trying to understand something about an old book I found, that’s all.”
The travel agent massaged his mouth and his chin with his hand, then ran it up his face and all the way across his balding pate. He glanced at Reilly, studying him too. Reilly said nothing and just stood there, trying to appear as sheepish and unthreatening as he could. The bald man’s eyes settled back on Tess, then he leaned in and his expression went all conspiratorial.
“I can take you to a private dhikr this evening,” he told them, referring to a Sufi remembrance ceremony. “It’s a very private affair, you understand. Informal. Just friends getting together to,” he paused, “celebrate life.” He held her gaze, waiting to see if she got his gist.
She nodded. “And you think there’ll be someone there who can help me?”
Levant shrugged, like, Maybe. But his “maybe” was definitely skewed positive.
Tess smiled. “When?”
THE ELDER WASN’T MUCH HELP.
The prayer ceremony itself had been spellbinding. It was held in the grand living room of a large, old house. The dervishes, a dozen or so men and women, lost themselves in their trances and spun around endlessly, arms spread out, right hands opened upward to receive the blessings of Heaven, left hands pointing down to channel it to the earth, moving to the tender, mesmerizing music of a reed flute—Rumi’s beloved ney, the divine breath that bestows life on everything—and a drum. From a seated position, an old man, their master, accompanied them by reciting the name of God repeatedly, the part of the ceremony that was most strictly forbidden. But no one stormed the house and no one was arrested. The times were, it seemed, a-changing.
But the elder wasn’t much help—in fact, he wasn’t any help at all. With his grandson to translate, he told Tess he didn’t know of any drapers or cloth makers who had been notable dervishes, and didn’t know of any who were currently, either. Tess and Reilly thanked their hosts for their hospitality and wandered off in search of the hotel the travel agent had booked them into.
“I shouldn’t have let myself get carried away like that,” Tess grumbled, feeling exhausted and crestfallen. “There were plenty of lodges in Konya, even back then. The odds of stumbling onto the right one … it wasn’t likely, was it?” She sighed. “This could take a while.”
“We can’t stay here any longer,” Reilly said. “They want me back in New York. And we don’t even have a change of clothes or a toothbrush between us. Seriously. This is nuts. We don’t even know it’s here.”
“I’m not giving up. We just got here. I need to go to more of these ceremonies, talk to more elders.” She glanced at Reilly. “I’ve got to do this, Sean. We’re close. I can feel it. And I can’t walk away from it. I’ve got to see it through. You go. I’ll stay.”
Reilly shook his head. “It’s too dangerous. That son of a bitch is still out there somewhere. I’m not leaving you here alone.”
The comment soured Tess’s face. Reilly’s concern wasn’t unfounded.
“You’re right, I know,” she said, nodding slowly to herself, unsure about what to do.
Reilly put his arm around her. “Come on. Let’s find that hotel. I’m beat.”
They reached the bazaar district, where they asked for directions before cutting through a galleried market hall the size of an aircraft hangar. Despite the late hour, it was still buzzing. All kinds of smells accosted them from colorful piles of fruit and vegetables, bucket loads of freshly made dolmates salcasi tomato sauce, and huge sacks of sugar beet and spices of every color, the whole succulent tapestry manned by old men in patterned hats, old women in multicolored head scarves, and cay boys hawking syrupy-sweet tea. A pit stop of doner kebabs and minty yogurt drinks was hard to resist. They hadn’t eaten much all day.
“Can’t you stick around a couple of more days?” Tess pleaded, the idea of heading home and giving up the search sitting as heavily in her stomach as the thought of staying there alone.
“I doubt it.” He chucked his empty sandwich wrapper into an overflowing garbage bin and downed the last of his drink. “I still have a lot of explaining to do over Rome.”
“Rome,” Tess shrugged, her tone distant. It felt like a lifetime ago.
“They don’t even know we’re here. I need to call in and find out when we’re being picked up and see if they can pick us up from here. Besides, I want to get back. There isn’t much I can do from here. I need to be back at my desk to coordinate the intel and make sure all the alerts are properly in place so we don’t miss him the next time he pops up.” He put his hands on Tess’s shoulders and pulled her closer to him. “Look, it doesn’t mean you have to give up on this. We’ve got a contact here now, that travel agent. You can call him from New York. Let him do your legwork. He’s better placed to do it anyway. We can pay him for it, he seems like a helpful guy. And if he comes up with something, we’ll fly back.”
Tess didn’t answer him. Her expression had gone all curious and she was staring at something beyond him. Reilly eyed her for a beat, then turned and saw what she was staring at. It was a carpet shop. A bald, chubby man was carrying in an advertising sandwich board from the sidewalk. It looked like they were closing up for the night.
“You’ve gone into shopping mode now?” Reilly asked. “With everything else that’s going on?”
Tess shot him a reproachful grimace and pointed a sly finger at the sign above the shop. It read, “Kismet Carpets and Kilims,” and below that, “Traditional Handicraft Workshop.”
Reilly didn’t get it.
Tess pointed again and made a face like, Look again.
He looked again. Then he saw it.
In smaller letters, at the bottom of the sign. Next to shop’s phone number. A name. The name of the owner, presumably. Hakan Kazzazoglu.
Kazzaz-oglu.
Reilly recognized the first part of the word, but it didn’t gel with what he expected to see. There wasn’t a fabric in sight. “It’s a carpet shop,” he noted, his tone confused. “And what’s with the ‘oglu’?”
“It’s very common suffix in Turkish family names,” Tess replied. “It means ‘sons of,’ or ‘descendants of.’ “
She was already heading into the store.
Chapter 54
As Tess had deduced, the carpet seller was indeed the descendant of a draper. In her desperation, Tess had been more forthcoming with him than she had been with the Sufi master, telling him that she had come across some old biblical manuscripts and was trying to find out more about their provenance. After a bit of hesitation, she’d even reached into her rucksack and shown him one of them. Sadly, he didn’t turn out to be any more helpful than the elder.
It wasn’t that he was being evasive or difficult in any way. The man just genuinely seemed not to know what Tess was talking about, despite being very candid about his family history and about being a practicing Sufi himself.
It didn’t deter Tess. She felt sure that they were on to something. It wasn’t necessarily a draper and his fabric store they were looking for. It was a name. A family name, one that could be associated with any profession or any kind of shop. And in that sense, the carpet seller had been helpful. He wrote down a list of all the other Kazzazoglus he was aware of and where their places of business were. There were more than a dozen of them, everything from other carpet sellers to potters and even a dentist. He also listed several other possibilities where the family names were also derived from the other ways of saying “draper” in Turkish, using the same words the taxi driver had given Tess.