Arabesk

Barbara Nadel Arabesk

The third book in the Cetin Ikmen series, 2001

To my parents

Chapter 1

From the high vantage point of their apartment balcony the two men watched as the routines of the early morning city began to take shape. Men and women, still yawning and stretching from all too quickly curtailed sleep, slopped water across the pavements in front of their shops, cafe's and lokantas. Preparation for the thick dust that would later come both from the already choking traffic and on the shoes of passing shoppers, commuters and tourists. And as the gathering pall of cigarette smoke hanging over the ever increasing group. of shifty men assembling in Sultan Ahmet Square evidenced, tourists in particular were expected to be numerous. No self-respecting carpet or tour guide tout could or should still be in bed once the sun has risen over the Bosphorus. Some tourists like that sort of romantic nonsense, especially in the summertime when sleep is not that easy to come by. Up they get to watch the light hit the water, and then on their way back to their hotels and pansiyons satisfied, they will find it difficult not to be entranced by a truly beautiful carpet or the promise of a tour up to the legendary Forest of Belgrade. And in truth the tourists usually get what they pay for – whatever that might be. In Istanbul, it is said, a man can very easily satisfy all of his desires both earthly and divine. That the getting of those desirables might lead such a man, or woman, to discontent or even rage has little to do with either the city or its inhabitants. When you have been on the world stage for as long as Istanbul you are expected to deliver a very great deal to those who come to visit you. Çetin Ìkmen regarded the swelling ranks of touts, dodgy dealers and others who have knowledge of tourists with something between contempt and admiration.

'If only I could look upon the carpet men with new eyes, I might find their predatory nature quite interesting,' he said as he lit what was his third cigarette of the morning.

The man standing beside him was slightly taller and considerably younger. In every other respect, however, (even down to his almost ceaseless cigarette smoking habit) he was almost an identical copy. 'Still bored, then?' the young man said as he turned to face his father.

'I have this unpleasant feeling that when I don't work I actually cease to exist.'

'You're right, in the sense that you've built your entire identity around being an inspector of police,' his son replied. 'Had you involved yourself in other things years ago you'd have more extensive interests now.'

Although his son had spoken without any overt malice, Ìkmen's interpretation of his words was underpinned by his knowledge of his eldest son's opinions.

'You mean, I suppose’ he said, 'that I should have taken more account of you lot and your mother’

'Amongst other things, yes. For instance you could have watched the football with the rest of us last night, but you chose to be out here being miserable.'

Ìkmen followed, with his eyes, the progress of a small, red-haired woman he knew to be a local prostitute. As she stopped at the cigarette kiosk across the road he recalled that she usually smoked Camels. As a sort of exercise in self-flagellation he attempted to recall what brand his son smoked, could not, and so descended into still deeper gloom.

'I don't like football, it precipitates crime,' he said, breathing heavily on the already stifling early morning air. 'Oh, Sinan, what can I possibly do with all this bloody leisure time! How can I go on without even a pathetic watery little beer?'

His son, almost despite himself, smiled. 'Dr Akkale, as you well know, has said that if you rest, eat properly and refrain from alcohol, you could be back at work in a month. Thinking of sick leave as "leisure", which you hate, is only helping to make you more anxious. And that makes your condition worse.'

'You think so? I mean professionally. Not as my son but as a doctor?'

'I'm no expert on stomach ulcers, but I've witnessed my fair share of patients with a negative attitude towards their condition, whatever that may be, and I know that it really doesn't help.' For just a second he put one hand gently on his father's thin shoulder. 'If you could just relax, watch television – not football, other things – talk about nothing to Mum and the children, read… You're a very literate man. You always encouraged us to read.'

'Yes, but at my age I think I might have read most things actually worth reading.'

'Oh, what utter nonsense!' And as if to illustrate his point, Sinan reached across to the small table that routinely collected both dust and books from all those members of the Ìkmen family who liked using the balcony. He picked, at random, one volume from the pile. 'Have you read this?'

Ìkmen, whose eyesight had in the last year started to deteriorate, leaned back a little the better to see the title. 'The Black Book by Orhan Pamuk,' he read and then shrugged. 'So?'

'It's very good. Unlike most of the things you have read in the past it has been written by someone who is alive, Turkish and sober. But don't let that put you off.'

Vague mutterings about the benefits of reading the works of Thomas Hardy in the original English accompanied a very cursory perusal by Ìkmen of this, to him, very new author's work.

'Basically, it's a detective novel,' Suian explained, but it is also a work of philosophy which tackles the problem of who we are, as Turks.' 'Eh?'

'It's like a collage, but of ideas as opposed to pictures. It's clever and witty and it's about-'

Just at that moment Sinan's exposition was drowned out by an extremely loud burst of Arabesk music emanating from the open door of a taxi in the street below. An uneasy blend of traditional Turkish tunes and ornate Egyptian laments, Arabesk is for good reason sometimes dubbed the 'music of the slums'. Most of its performers, many of whom originate from the countryside, possess keen, often painful memories of poverty amongst the shanty districts and cheap tower blocks which even now house many of those peasants who come to the city in search of work. Always mournful and sometimes also critical of the plight of the poor, Arabesk has by turns been patronised by politicians and banned by same on the pretext that it undermines the nation's happiness. Not that the millions of its devotees care about such opinions. To Ìkmen and his son, however, whose faces only relaxed out of their grimaces when the music had ceased, Arabesk was anathema.

'Miserable, sentimentalised excrement!' Ìkmen said in a voice loud enough to permit those in the street below access to his opinions.

His son shrugged. 'It's as much a part of our national identity as lokum, or the harem system or this mad belief we all possess that if we copy them closely enough the Europeans might just get to like us one day.'

Ìkmen smiled. 'So are you now one of those who believe we should turn our eyes eastwards?'

'No. But as Pamuk illustrates again and again in his writings, we are some of the most contradictory of Allah's creatures. The stereotypically cruel Turk who is also the willing butt of arrogant European jokes. The melancholy, lovelorn Turk who is at the same time both faithless and subtle. Our women smoke, drink and work like men and yet they still live lives circumscribed by their fathers and husbands. I could go on and on.'

‘Yes,' his father agreed, 'you probably could.' Then moving forward to take the book from his son's hands he said, 'But far better if I read this. If this Pamuk is as good as you say I will discover it rather more eloquently from his words.' He sighed. 'And if it's a detective novel too then so much the better.'

Sinan wiped the first bead of sweat of the day from his brow and then smiled. 'You'll be able to pick holes in his method.'

'I expect I will. And I'll probably become angry in the process and might need to be left alone for a while in order to rage.'