The Few

  While Derda was sleeping, Steven was sitting in the consulate’s safe room, typing a cryptograph into a keypad. Each typed letter was encoded into holes punched into a paper ribbon inside a machine. The yellow ticker tape was vomited out of the machine like a snake emerging from its hole. It curled and coiled. While he finished the code, he inspected the ribbon like it was the receipt from a cash register. Using his thumb and his index finger, he counted out eight figures. Then he put it into an envelope, sealed it, and waited for the M16 courier to come. They came from London twice a month. With diplomatic passports in their pockets, of course. For an intelligence service, a courier was an arrangement as antiquated as messenger pigeons. But Steven was like that. Old-fashioned enough to write a letter. Nothing had pleased him so much as the fact that the Internet program specially designed for cryptography they’d loaded into his computer had been a terrible failure. Thinking of the choice words to write in his text, he fondled the yellow ribbon hanging out of the side of the machine in front of him. As for what he wrote, this was the header:

  SURVEILLANCE REQUIRED FOR BEZIR, MEMBER OF HIKMET

  And he continued:

  Notwithstanding the arrangements made on your orders to process with due order the visa requests of a laborer previously convicted of murder and his daughter, I believe that having more comprehensive, continual profiles of Ubeydullah and his son Bezir would be ultimately profitable for our cause. In light of the most recent documents I have obtained, it appears to me that Bezir has become a fanatic inclined to violence. As for Ubeydullah, he is attached to Hıdır Arif with an unshakeable allegiance. Accordingly, in my view, approaching him with the offer was a mistake. In sum, given my assessment of him as a potential mudjahadeed, I would request that as soon as feasible Bezir be placed under strictest surveillance.

  Steven didn’t return to his Beyoğlu home till it was practically morning. Knowing he wouldn’t be able to sleep, he turned once again to Thomas Edward Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom. Maybe for the thousandth time. As he read, he still couldn’t quite put his finger on why he was such a great admirer of the man known as Lawrence of Arabia. He wondered why for maybe the ten thousandth time. Perhaps because he had been a spy, too? Or was it because he too had been a masochist like himself? There he was, between the two reasons, smiling as he rubbed himself through the fabric, back and forth. Steven was sitting on the sofa in his living room dressed like an Arab sheik, like Lawrence. He felt happy inside the white fabric a Damascene tailor had sewn for him.

  He had read some twenty pages when the telephone rang. He answered like an Arab sheik. He didn’t care it was four in the morning.

  “Dad!”

  Then Steven hung up in his son’s ear. He didn’t care if it was the first time in four years he’d heard his voice. Then the phone rang again. Three times, right in a row, like it was coming from close by. Steven turned a page and silently looked at the phone long and hard, as if from far away.

  When Derda passed through the cemetery gates the sun was about to set. He stopped in front of the guard’s house.

  “Brother Yasin!”

  “Why are you yelling, boy?”

  He stopped in place. Yasin was behind him. He handed him the bağlama he was carrying. Inside its black case.

  “The man fixed it. They did just what you said.”

  Yasin asked as he took the bağlama, “Was it enough money?”

  “Yeah, was enough.”

  “Any change?”

  “You said keep whatever’s left. I was out all day for you. I already …”

  “Fine, boy, fine,” said Yasin.

  Then he walked inside his guard’s house. He shut the door and sat on the divan. He unzipped the case and slipped it off the bağlama. Two days before he’d fallen against the wall during a bout of heavy drinking. He was holding the instrument by its round body, and the handle had snapped when he’d slammed against the wall.

  “If anything had happened to the body, they’d be no saving it,” the master had said to Derda. Then he’d put on a new handle. The handle that was now cradled in Yasin’s palm. He was about to touch the strings but he stopped. “I’m sorry,” he said in a small voice. The bağlama forgave Yasin and the sound of a türkü emanated from the guard’s house. It was a türkü Derda knew: “I Did it Myself, I Found it Myself.” There hadn’t been anyone else for Yasin to blame. Ever. But there was someone Derda was angry at. Yasin.

  “He sent me off at the crack of dawn!” Derda said. Then he wondered if anyone had come. He wondered if anyone had come and gone to the tomb he’d watched from the base of the tree, never letting it out of his sight for a whole week until this morning. There was only one way to find out. And that was to go and see.

  He came to the row of tombs closest to the wall and stopped to think. He looked at the tomb where the first envelope had been buried. Then at the one to the right. Where the second had been buried. Then he turned to look at the tomb to the right of that one. “Do they go from left to right?” he asked himself. “I mean, are they using the tombs in a row? Yes,” he said. They had to be. They must have to constantly move their hiding place so there’s no risk of someone discovering their system, he thought. But they’re going down the row. Left to right.

  He was so sure of his theory, he stepped right up to the tomb, stopped in front of the tombstone, and stuck his fingers into the soil in the grave bed. He loosened the soil, searching, until he felt something hard. But this was no envelope. He sank his hand in even deeper until he could grab onto what seemed to be some sort of box. He pulled it out. A white box emerged from the earth. It would have been impossible to find a kid more ecstatic than Derda was just then anywhere on the face of the planet. Who knew what sort of treasure was inside the box? Maybe more money than could fit inside an envelope!

  He took a quick look around him, then opened the box. But as soon as he opened it he wanted it shut, and fast. But he couldn’t get the lid to fit back on. He lost his grip jostling the pieces of box and lid, and everything tumbled to the ground. Derda practically fell himself. The box, lid, and his mother’s left hand dropped into the dirt. Well, whatever was left from his mother’s hand. A bit of flesh, and lots of bone. Derda knew it was her left hand because he’d buried it at the base of that tomb. He swallowed to keep from vomiting, he took deep breaths to keep his heart from stopping in its tracks, and, holding it gingerly with the edge of his T-shirt, he put the hand back in the box and set the lid on top. Then he took four steps to the other side of the tombstone and, dropping to his knees, looked for the hole he’d dug before. But there was no need to look far. It was there, gaping open between his knees.

  Someone had found his mother’s left hand, put it in a white box, and buried it in the earth in the grave bed. But who? Derda didn’t know Tayyar’s name. “He saw!” was all he could say. “That man must have seen. That morning he saw what I did. That’s why he said to be more careful. Be more careful or you’ll get caught!”

  He was right. Steven’s directive had been: “Write a list of the documents inside the envelope, and put that into the envelope, too. That way I’ll be able to confirm what is supposed to be inside.”

  Steven, taking advantage of this basic preventive measure, had informed Tayyar of the missing documents. And he, for his part, made a list of those who could have seen him bury the envelopes. And there was only one person on that list. That kid who’d been secretly burying something at the base of the tomb. Tayyar dug where he’d seen Derda on his knees and when the piece of flesh appeared before his eyes it was enough to turn the stomach even of a hardened warrior like Tayyar. He shook it off, though, and prepared a line with one single bait. One hook, one bait, one fish. He wasn’t about to run after the kid, who came from who knows where and who went who knows where. He was going to catch his prey with one single shot. He only had to decide which tomb to use as the trap. The tomb where the kid had stolen the documents? Or, as if everything were following its normal course, put it in the nex
t tomb to the right that was going to be used? Two possibilities, one gamble. Tayyar banked on his suspicion that the kid was clever enough, and that he had been watching them for some time. He buried the box in place of the papers.

  It was perfect; the perfect bait. In just the right place and in just the right measure, thought Derda, it couldn’t have been anyone else. It must have been that man in the robe! If it had been someone else a ton of police would’ve come. They would’ve grabbed me before I even got into the cemetery. But that white box, this business with burying. “What am I going to do,” said Derda, out loud. Practically yelling.

  “I am in so much fucking trouble!”

  Then he looked at the box in his hand. First he had to get rid of that. That before anything else.

  He ran to the base of the wall and dug a hole as deep as he could, threw the box inside, and covered it up. He got up and turned around without looking. This time he didn’t even want to remember where he’d buried it. He didn’t care anymore about knowing where he’d buried his mother. Did it do him any good to know? It wasn’t like he was going to go up to each tomb and say a Fatiha for her in each place. “Whatever,” he said to himself. Whatever. But now what am I going to do? What do these guys want from me? he thought. “Money!”

  “They want their money. Fuck, they want their money back. But it’s gone. I already spent it all. But wait, the papers are still here. I’ll give them those back. Maybe they’ll forgive me. When I give them the papers maybe they’ll stop following me. But what if they don’t?”

  That night he brought a box to the hole and put the papers wrapped in his pillowcase inside and buried it, smoothing over the dirt as best he could. That night he didn’t sleep. He waited with a knife in his hand, hardly daring to blink, alone inside his dark house. Until the morning ezan came like a lullaby and put him to sleep.

  When he woke up he left the house barefoot, ran to the wall, and jumped over. He went to the grave bed and dug. Then dug some more. And some more. He dug away at the dirt in the grave bed until he’d flung it everywhere. He laughed while he flung it away. And in the end he was sure. They’d taken the papers. They’re gone! The man in the robe must have come and taken the papers. And maybe he’ll never come back. But the money, thought Derda, his face hanging. And if they come back for the money? But it wasn’t that much, right? But what if the man in the robe does come back to get the money? I’ll be so screwed then, thought Derda, terrified down to his core. He’ll kill me. Because I can’t give that money back, not for my life. I couldn’t get it together, even if I had months. “Shit!” yelled Derda. “Fuck!”

  After that day, Derda became like a hermit. And day after day he grew older. Because the pain is not the fear itself, the fear is in the waiting. And waiting for fear is worse than fear. Just like someone once wrote.

  “What’s up?” Isa said. “You waiting for someone?”

  “No,” said Derda.

  But he wasn’t very convincing. He kept looking around, stretching his head out to see past the trees. Even standing up then sitting back down again. He’d been acting this way for just about a month.

  “Then why do you keep looking around?”

  “What’s it to you?” barked Derda. Then he regretted it. “I’m going to say something. But it’s a secret.”

  “Ok,” said Isa. “Tell me.”

  “If you see a guy in a long robe around here, tell me.”

  Isa pointed to someone over Derda’s shoulder. “There’s one,” he said.

  Derda jumped to his feet and looked behind him. It was Ubeydullah’s brother Yakup, wearing a long robe; he stood at the head of the tomb that looked like a mausoleum, his hands opened in prayer. Derda turned to Isa.

  “Not that guy! Yeah, he’s wearing a robe, too, but look: You know where he’d be? You know our wall, right? Our house wall? There, those tombs closest to the wall, right? You know, the last row? There. If you see a guy there, you better tell me. If I’m at home, come get me. Wherever I am, come find me, I mean. For the love of God, look, it’s really important.”

  Isa laughed.

  “Ok, but why’s it so important? Is this your secret?”

  “Look, recently, I did some work for that man in the robe. I washed a tomb. Then he didn’t give me any money. So I cussed him out. Then the guy beat me up. Get it? Now if that guy finds me, he’s going to really shit in my mouth. I really cussed the guy out bad.”

  “Really?” said Isa. “You think the man has nothing better to do than chase after you? He probably forgot. He’s not coming back.”

  “Inşallah that’s true,” said Derda. Then he got to his feet, used his hand to block the sun, and surveyed the scene. Sitting down at the base of the tomb and leaning back against it, he took the cigarette Isa was offering him.

  “Anyway, if there’s anyone walking around back there by those tombs you tell me, Ok?”

  Isa lit Derda’s cigarette.

  “Sure, don’t worry,” he said.

  Then he lit his own cigarette, adding, “But if you ask me, you’re scared for nothing.”

  Isa took five drags before he asked, “You know Fevzi, right? That kid who ran away from the orphanage?”

  Derda nodded his head.

  “I saw him yesterday. That guy’s weird. You know, he’s always carrying a bag around. And you know what’s inside it? He showed me. It’s a doll. You know, like a toy for girls. It’s got this dress on. Then Fevzi took its clothes off. It’s got boobs and an ass like a real woman. Like a real grown-up woman, you know? Anyway, he said that doll was the reason he ran away from the orphanage. What do they call them? Barbo, Barba, anyway, something like that. Barbie, Barbie. And you know why? Because the guys there saw him there, feeling up the doll, then they jumped Fevzi, you get it?”

  Derda, still keeping an eye out, stubbed his cigarette out against the tombstone.

  He asked, “Yeah, but why’d he take the shit for a doll? Why didn’t he just get rid of it? Throw it away and not get beat up?”

  “Wait, listen,” said Isa. “Guess who gave him that doll. Do you know?”

  “Why would I know?”

  “Man, the prime minister gave it to him!”

  “Fuck!” said Derda.

  “I swear, man. They were in this town, this village, whatever, the prime minister came. So they all went. He was smaller then. The prime minister was giving out toys. The kids were all scrambling around, grabbing and pushing. He found it on the ground. First he didn’t really get what it was. Then somehow he couldn’t give it up or throw it away. I mean, if nothing else, the prime minister did give it to him, right? But the kids in the town, they saw him and it’s a girl thing, right? They started to touch it. Fevzi couldn’t do anything about it of course. Then they started touching Fevzi. And he …”

  Derda turned and looked at Isa.

  “Man, did you do something?”

  Finally Isa answered. With a question.

  “You want to?”

  “Go fuck yourself, man,” said Derda. “What do I want from him?”

  “You get bread and give it to him, and then Fevzi …”

  “No way,” said Derda.

  “Everyone’s doing it. That’s what Fevzi said. The kids from the football pitch come, too. But you should see the doll, it’s like a real woman. And Fevzi, with his hand …”

  “Man, go fuck yourself!” said Derda. He felt sick to his stomach. Not from what Fevzi did to Isa in exchange for his loaf of bread. For believing what Fevzi had told him about what happened at the orphanages. Maybe all of it was true. Maybe they did jump Fevzi in the toilets. But Derda wasn’t about to carry around a Barbie. For a second he thought he’d done everything for nothing. He’d been afraid of the orphanage for nothing. He’d chopped up his mother and buried her for nothing. He’d stolen the money from that man in the robe for nothing and for nothing he’d gotten into a shitload of trouble. And all because of Fevzi. And all because of that stupid doll. Because he got a doll and went crazy.
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  “I’m going to fuck that Fevzi!” said Derda out loud, without even realizing it. Then Isa looked him right in the eye and he corrected himself.

  “Not like that, man.”

  “Wake up, wake up!”

  He was stretched out in the shade of the cypress trees, sleeping between two graves in an empty plot waiting for death. Derda opened his eyes and saw Isa leaning over him.

  “What’s going on?”

  “There’s someone at one of your tombs. But it’s a woman.”

  Derda jumped to his feet. Out of habit, he grabbed his plastic tanks and his brush before he set off after Isa. His heart was in his mouth and he pressed his lips together to force it back down. But when they came close enough to see the woman standing in front of one of the tombs, he knew he’d have to open his mouth to say something.

  “It’s Ok, you can go.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Isa.

  “Yeah,” said Derda. “Go back to work.”

  Isa walked away, leaving Derda to hide himself among the trees at his lookout point. He trembled like a leaf as he watched the woman.

  The woman stood in front of the tomb where his mother’s left breast and rib cage were buried, those parts that’d given him so much trouble to chop apart. She stood entirely still, staring at the marble slab. Derda thought she might just be a regular cemetery visitor. She looked like she was about to cry. She touched the tomb’s marble edge and then covered her mouth with her hand. Derda was almost totally convinced. This woman wasn’t the fear he’d been waiting for. Then just as he was moving out from his hiding spot in the trees, he saw something that practically made him faint. He rubbed his eyes, then spread open the curtain of leaves in front of him and watched the woman pull a white envelope out of her bag and lay it on top of the earth in the tomb bed. “Fuck!” reverberated through him like a scream.

  The woman dug a hole with her hands. She dug it deep enough to bury the envelope inside and then she looked around. Derda ducked his head behind the tree. What should I do? he asked himself over and over again. What am I going to do? What am I going to do? What am I going to do? Then a thought occurred to him. What if I go up and talk to her? What if I go and explain everything to her? If I tell her I can’t give them their money back? If I fall over her feet and tell her I’m sorry? If I beg for forgiveness? Maybe I could persuade her. Then she’d go talk to the guy in the robe. Yes, yes! he said to himself. It’s got to work. I’m sick of being scared. I don’t care what happens.