Istanbul Noir - Mustafa Ziyalan [91]
My stepsister brought our coffees and then settled down into one of the sofa chairs. “Can’t we forget about all those bad memories for a while? We only see each other once a decade as it is,” she griped.
“Can you take me to their graves tomorrow?” I asked. My father nodded.
The small mosque next to the graveyard in Sanayi Mahallesi had grown immensely, like a piece of fruit pumped full of hormones. When we moved through the gate to the graveyard, Faruk asked, “Which way?”
“Downhill and to the right.”
We stopped next to my mother’s and my brother’s graves. I hadn’t been to visit for nearly ten years. My father held his palms facing upwards in prayer. I opened my hands and mumbled something that I thought sounded like a prayer.
Once he’d finished praying, my father wiped his hands over his face. “It’s not far,” he said.
We walked for a few more minutes until we reached a pair of graves surrounded by an iron fence. They looked like holy tombs where pilgrims came to pray. On both stones were written the words, Martyrs of the Revolution.
I turned and faced Faruk. “You remember this name?” I asked.
He looked carefully at the name on the gravestone. “It’s just a coincidence, two guys with the same name.”
“No,” I said. “That’s not it. The guy knew me.”
Faruk was smiling as we rode up in the elevator. This time I’d asked to have someone come with me. We got off on the thirty-fifth floor and walked down a long corridor and through a glass door. The secretary stood up to welcome us before letting lhan Bey know that we were there. A few minutes later, we were ushered into his office.
A slightly cross-eyed man wearing metal-framed glasses stood up when we entered the room. He was short and chubby.
Faruk looked at me, I gently shook my head.
He motioned for us to have a seat at the conference table. “How can I help you, Sadık Bey?” he asked.
Faruk was glancing around anxiously. “I came here two days ago, but they took me to see someone else on this floor by the same name,” I said.
lhan Bey smiled. “That’s impossible! There’s nobody here with the same name as me.”
“But I was here. In this conference room.”
“Well, I’m the only lhan on this floor,” he said with a smile. “I’m sure I would know if there was anybody else here with the same name!”
A cell phone started to ring. Faruk grabbed his phone and headed for a corner of the room so as not to interrupt us.
“Where did you go to college, lhan Bey?” I asked.
“Bosphorus University. I studied computer engineering,” he said.
Just then Faruk approached and whispered in my ear: “They found another body a few minutes ago. At Kanyon this time. They’re waiting for us.”
I did my best to give lhan Bey a smile; after all, it was probably the last time I’d be seeing him.
BURN AND GO
BY SADIK YEMN
Kurtulu
“It was you who pushed him. Then you made some kind of pact to keep quiet about it.”
I was so shocked, on so many levels, I couldn’t respond. “Kevork told me. He said it was an accident, an accident that became a source of lifelong agony.”
Anfi pushed back her long hair, which, though white now, was the feature most reminiscent of her younger days. Her large brown eyes were exactly like those of her son Yani; they were full of sorrow. They weren’t accusatory. There was no hate in them. For now, at least.
“When did he tell you that?”
“Two months ago, when I bumped into him on my way back from shopping. He’s changed the least of all. Still has the same thick red hair, square face, large, timid eyes.”
“I was eighteen the last time I saw him.”
“You know what they say, coincidence is a fickle thing. Just five more minutes and I would’ve missed him. He was looking for me. He was shocked at how much the neighborhood had changed in the last forty years, just like you were. He’d knocked on my door, but there was no answer, and so he was about to leave. Clearly, some part of him was thankful. That the past hadn’t opened the door. He jumped when I called his name. You should have seen how