Lying at the crossroads of East and West, Istanbul belongs to neither and to both, and it is precisely this elusive in-betweenness upon which the city thrives. No matter how much blood is spilled trying to conform to Western standards, they just don’t stick in this slippery city. Here, you don’t break the rules, you forge a loophole through them. It is no coincidence that transvestites are generally banished to the gritty back streets of Istanbul, while one of Turkey’s most popular icons is an outrageous and outspoken transsexual, cherished by families throughout the nation.
A den of sin and a bastion of virtue, Istanbul is a fog-covered playground of power and resistance, denial and repression, and if you don’t know the tricks of the game, you’ll likely feel the urge to abandon your marbles and go.
Some people here say that you’re a true Istanbulite when you start insisting that you’re leaving, but you never do. Others insist that there’s no such thing as a true Istanbulite — everyone comes from somewhere, but that somewhere is never Istanbul. These clichés are perhaps testimony to this city’s simultaneous push and pull, its allure — whether aesthetic, economic, mystical, inexplicable, or otherwise — and its tendency to either eradicate or repulse its own. It is a city of love and of hate, where passions ride high and often come crashing down with a vengeance.
Welcome to Istanbul Noir: Leave your shoes, and expectations, at the door.
Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler
Istanbul, Turkey
August 2008
Part I
Lust & Vengeance
The tongue of the flames
by İsmaıl Güzelsoy
Büyükada
How big a mistake can one possibly make? How much ruin can we possibly bring upon ourselves, our loved ones, or even strangers? Such questions would have sounded ridiculous to me when I was in my twenties. Back then, at most, you’d take a gun and empty two clips into people you didn’t know from a hole in the wall. Okay, let’s make that three clips. How many people can you kill at once? Or, for example, how deadly a bomb can you build on your own? That should be the true yardstick of how unhinged one is: How much havoc can you, as an individual, wreak upon the world? That was how I thought, and that was the reason, I imagine, why I was a guy who simply didn’t give a damn. I was so damn sure that the highest price I’d pay for any mistake couldn’t be more than my own life.
Now, as I do some soul-searching before boarding the ferry to the Princes’ Islands from Sirkeci, I see how much I’ve changed over the last twelve years. Without understanding, or even realizing it, I have become another person all together.
I was calm and certain, as if going through the motions I went through countless times every day. As if every day I’d put in a token and pass through the turnstiles, checking over and over again whether the safety was off on the .45 caliber Beretta in my coat pocket, caressing the bag containing the painful last moments of the twelve loved ones I had lost.
I had tweaked my plans to avenge those twelve as soon as I was released from prison in my mind so many times, that by now I wasn’t sure if I was living in reality, or only dreaming in the ward about the moment I’d confront the maniac responsible for their slaughter. But then, what did it matter! The truth is, there was only one clue to help me discern fantasy from reality: The setting for that scene of revenge in my dreams was a dark alley full of crime and vice, where thugs settled scores. I would imagine how he, with his graying hair, dreamy eyes, and the self-confidence of a comic book hero, would collapse at long last, his back against a wall, full of fear, finally aware that there was no escape from my wrath. The location would be a street of transvestites and pimps who knew well and good when to look the other way; when cornered in that street, Nigel’s faint smirk and wistful expression would transform into a look of utter horror. Clearly understanding the end I had planned for him, he’d be able to remain standing only as long as he was leaning firmly against a wall of obscene graffiti. Finally, he would concede defeat, falling to his knees in a dirty puddle of rain.
I had been fantasizing about dozens of variations of this scenario every night, like a child who never gets tired of listening to the same fairy tale over and over. I had no choice. Then I’d plan how and where to look for him. This part worried me most of all. It was possible that Nigel, knowing my release date, had already made his escape. Yet the note he’d attached to the Polaroid that he sent with the last book (which I now kept next to the Beretta) made me think that he was as prepared and eager for the second round as I was: Büyükada. I’m waiting for you.
So there I was, gliding through the Sea of Marmara on a ship rocked by a rough and humid breeze. I could see the Princes’ Islands lined up in a row on the horizon, rising like the décor of a dream emerging from the fog. I thought that as I drew closer, certainly the spell would come to an end and I would be confronted with the cold reality of the island’s earth. Spread over the hilly terrain of Büyükada, a dark forest shivered in the blast of harsh wind, allowing a glimpse of magnificent mansions before quickly concealing them once again. This shiny paradise that I used to visit as a child during summer vacations now stood before me in a diabolic visage, surrounded by fog and dark clouds heavy with rain. The closer I got, the better I understood why Nigel had chosen this place for our final showdown. He didn’t want anyone else involved in this final reckoning. Nobody else would see us there in that little world of forests and isolated houses. We were now in the heart of nothingness. This is where we were to settle accounts. Ours was to be the confrontation of two ferocious, raging animals. Far from everyone and everything... But why was he dragging me all the way out here, when in his own twisted mind he’d already gotten his revenge for Xenia’s death?
The death of Xenia was the result of a complicated and unfortunate game he could never buy into, he could never understand. When he was burning my loved ones alive he was righting a wrong in his mind, yet what he did indicated how hard it was for him to accept the state of things. Yes, his girlfriend Xenia was in love with me. That, essentially, was the fact he could not stomach. That was the reason why he was rubbing out my loved ones; the massacre he had carried out was not a response to my burning Xenia to death in a hotel room. I’m not fooling myself; I say it in all sincerity: The only reason Nigel killed twelve people I loved was his girlfriend’s passionate love for me. If you asked him, he’d play weird games with his broken Turkish, so you’d see that his profession as an acrobat and juggler had shaped his speech too. He was an acrobat of the mind, a juggler of thought. He knew very well that he could fool others as long as he could fool himself. The way he put it thirteen years ago in Çiçek Pasajı: “If you want others to believe your lie, you first have to believe it yourself. That way you’ll at least have a chance of convincing everybody else of equal intelligence.” During that first lengthy conversation we had, spiced with laughter, Xenia did not look impressed by all his cunning, quasi-philosophical talk; she kept looking at me with a bored expression. You didn’t have to be a genius to realize that she wasn’t enjoying her lover’s conversation, that she did not share the same world with him. Xenia, in stark contrast to the magnificent harmony they created on stage, was remote, disinterested, and cold to Nigel in everyday life.