The Dervish House (22 page)

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Authors: Ian Mcdonald

BOOK: The Dervish House
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I know this theory
, thinks Georgios Ferentinou.
I know it very well indeed. And you’ve learned the second part of it equally well; that the prerequisite for this creative Great Leap Forward is a sufficient, rich and diverse ecology of information, with no data outweighing any other. Not perfect information, that economic lie, but a landscape in equilibrium.
‘We’ve gathered a group of the most diverse and original thinkers in Turkey. We’ve cast our net very wide; we’ve aspired to the eclectic. I believe that this diverse group, working on minimal information, may reach insights and intuitions that the Haceteppe group never will. Thinking is allowed here; everything is permitted. These are big wide blue skies. One thing I would say is; in sessions, don’t depend on your own strengths. Allow yourselves to play, to be surprised.
‘You’ll be relieved that we don’t require any mental heavy lifting, not today. This has been an introductory session; a chance to get to know each other and your diverse fields of work. I’d encourage you not to hurry away, to stay around and talk. We are on a government tab.’ Small but appreciative laughter from the older academics. ‘We’ll run four sessions over the course of this week. You’ll appreciate that I can’t give you any documentation or briefings to take away with you, but I will leave you with one thought. Just play with it, kick it about, let it roll around in your head.’ Saltuk makes television presenter gestures with his figures. He has also had his teeth whitened. Georgios now notices their perfect occlusion. Exactly meeting teeth are false and vaguely terrifying. Georgios finds his own gritting. ‘Don’t censor yourself, don’t be afraid. One word. Gas.’
 
The bell rings up and down Özer’s trading floor. The Artificial Intelligences shut down around Adnan like butterflies folding their wings. The market is closed. A quarter of a million after margin payments, in tight trading. Adnan has been riding the Iron Condor, trading options on the twenty-four-hour delivery market. It is part of the foreplay to Turquoise, trying to subtly tickle up the market to maximize the value of his hot Iranian gas. Adnan loves options, the quick-buck ballsiness of the short-order market, hedging strategies changing minute by minute as the market price hovers around the strike price. Straddles and strangles, butterflies and that Iron Condor; Adnan’s shifted strategies constantly, anticipating market moves. It’s not about the gas. It’s never about the gas, carbon credits, oranges. The gross material is irrelevant. The deal is the thing. It’s trading deals, contracts. There are even derivatives markets in onions. The market is money in constant motion. The market is endless delight.
When Adnan returned to Kaş in his first Audi and bespoke suit the boatmen along the harbour jeered him, the bar owners and restaurateurs threw one-liners but behind the barbs and the banter was the realization that you could make it out of Kaş, make it all the way to Istanbul, make money.
No one could understand how he had made that money. ‘You sell things you don’t even own, so you can buy them back cheaper when the price goes down?’ Adnan’s father had said. ‘How is that right?’ They were on the boat. It was moored firmly to the quay. Some day Adnan might brave it out into the turquoise sun-dazzle of the Mediterranean. Not this day. ‘Short selling,’ Adnan said. ‘It’s a way of hedging your bets.’ His father had shaken his head and thrown up his hands when he tried to explain derivatives, options and futures and that every day contracts worth ten times the economic output of the entire planet changed hands.
‘It seems to me that you people don’t need us,’ Adnan’s father said. ‘Banks and funds and companies like Özer, all you need are your contracts and your tradeables. You don’t need a real economy. It gets in the way, a real economy.’
‘It’s just buying and selling, Dad.’
‘Oh I know, I know. All the same, when they ask, I’d like to be able to tell people what my son actually does.’
Adnan strips off the red jacket and throws it to one of his junior writers as he strides off the floor. The thing is saturated with perspiration. He’s occasionally tried to calculate how much liquid he sweats out on the floor. At least a football match worth; probably more. They only play ninety minutes, with half time. They can wear shorts. Adnan is almost permanently dehydrated. He enjoys the little edgy glow, the vague spikiness. It works well with the nano, and the first drink always hits like a hammer.
Behind the glass in Settlements, Kemal looks up. He frowns at Adnan, grimaces strangely.
‘Where are you going?’ Kemal asks.
‘I’ve a meeting.’
‘Meeting? Who are you meeting?’
Adnan bends kiss-close. ‘White. Knight.’
‘I thought that wasn’t until tonight.’
‘It’s not until tonight, at the hour of seven o’clock when a very fine speedboat will take us out to the Princes Islands. In the meantime I am going to get possibly the best shirt available in Istanbul from my tailor and spend maybe an hour at my barber because I don’t want to look like a bloody student and the inside of my nose is hairy as a dog’s ass. And I may very well buy Ayşe something silver because she likes silver and she is hot in silver. And by the time I’ve done all that, it will be time for the speedboat.’
‘So you’re not looking over it this afternoon.’ Kemal chews his bottom lip. He’s been doing that more lately but Kemal is always jittery. He’s been taking ever-larger doses of concentration nano. He’s the edgy one at the Kebab Prophet’s, the pop-eyed war-movie grunt who’ll run amuck with the chaingun: Twitchor: Ultralord of Nervy.
‘Not today.’ It’s a point of professional honour to Adnan to be there when the accounts are settled. The Sarioğlus pay their way. ‘So if you’ve any awkward little bodies to bury, this would be a good day to do it.’ Adnan claps Kemal hard on the back. The guy almost rattles.
‘Go and fuck our White Knight,’ says Kemal but the humour is uncomfortable, like grit in an eye.
‘I certainly shall. I’ll call.’ Not for the first time Adnan wonders about the staunchness of Kemal, of all his partners. He’s thought through every detail of Turquoise; the shell companies, the financial instruments, the subtle market manipulation and the hedging strategies; everything except the exit strategy.
 
Great-Aunt Sezen has lived so long on the balcony that she has become part of the architecture. No one can remember when she first dragged her bed through the family room on to the little iron balcony hung with a Turkish flag but at least two generations of Gültaşli males handy with welding torches and power tools have put up screens and roofs and added extensions and annexes so that Great-Aunt Sezen’s balcony is a second apartment clinging like a spider to the first. Summer and winter, she will be found there. She believes that it is bad for the lungs to sleep indoors. Great-Aunt Sezen claims not to have had a cold in thirty years. And she can watch Bakirköy flow beneath her, and the aeroplanes coming in to land, which she loves precisely because she has never been on one and never will. She watches them as wildlife, a branch of ornithology.
She is a lioness of a woman. From the outside of the building her presence fills the apartment. She is a big woman, of rustic build. She is crowned by an animal-thick, pure grey shock of hair, combed and styled every day by the women in the house. She speaks little; she has little need. Her eyes are bright, penetrating, see all and understand more. She can still barely read, the world comes to her through her sprawling, brawling, ever-expanding family and the radio, which she adores, especially now it has been connected to a solar panel. She has no time for television. She is the mater familias of a real life soap opera. She is universally adored.
Sub-Aunt Kevser is her Vizier. She consults, conveys and commands. She interprets the will of Great-Aunt Sezen. She issues fetvas. If Great-Aunt Sezen is in favour, it is halal, A-Number-One, approved with the highest possible authority. If she says that Great-Aunt Sezen does not like it, it is haram, condemned, with no hope of appeal. Sub-Aunt Kevser frequently does not deign to trouble Great-Aunt Sezen with trivialities; all that is necessary is whether, out of Kevser’s long and deep knowledge of the matriarch, Great-Aunt Sezen would or would not approve. Sub-Aunt Kevser is wire-thin, of indeterminate middle-age, short-haired and square-spectacled, itchy with constant nervous energy. She never seems comfortable on a chair or a divan. She has never married, it was never expected that she ever would. She is Vizier and Gatekeeper.
‘He kidnapped my car,’ Leyla Gültaşli says.
Yaşar raises a finger. Sub-Aunt Kevser insists on parliamentary proceedings for family councils. Great-Aunt Sezen approves of proper order.
‘Point of information. I think you’ll find that it is Ceylan-Besarani’s car.’
‘What I mean is that I took this job on the assumption that I was to put together a funding strategy for a nanotech start-up company,’ Leyla says. ‘Nobody said anything to me about hoods holding the company car to ransom, or about dodgy relatives who seem to have been grey nano dealers and disappear owing a lot of money, or about using half a family heirloom as a loan certificate.’
The Gültaşli/Ceylans look at her. The council consists of Sub-Aunt Kevser, Chief-Uncle Cengiz, In-house Cousin Deniz, Aunt Betül, Yaşar and Great-Aunt Sezen on her balcony, the radio burbling like a little singing bird.
‘I’m a professional, I expect a little professional respect.’
Silence around the table. The Honda engine still stands under it on a layer of motorsport magazines.
‘I’m not doing anything until someone tells me what’s going on.’
Aunt Betül breaks the silence. She is the family genealogist.
‘Mehmet Ali is on the Yazıcoğlu side of the family, in that his great-grandfather Mehmet Paşa is also your and Yasar’s great-grandfather, so you’re all second cousins. Mehmet Paşa is Great-Aunt Sezen’s father, his eldest son Hüseyin was head of this branch of the family until his death twelve years ago - taken before his time, much missed - his third son is Mustafa Ali your grandfather who was a bus driver in the 1940s and married into the Özuslus of Demre, whereas his youngest daughter Fazilet married Orhan Ceylan in 1973 and set up a branch of the family in Zeytinburnu. So you are related and there is a claim of kinship there.’
Family first, family always. Since she arrived off the bus from Demre, Leyla has feared that her escape to Istanbul was permitted because it had been agreed that it was temporary. One day her mother would have a fall, her father a mild stroke. In Istanbul the ceptep would call, a call of kinship would be made and she would spend the rest of her life spooning food into her father’s mouth, helping her mother up and down the street steps into the road. Her brothers would add an extra floor on to the leggy house, she would be comfortable with her own kitchen and bathroom and a little balcony from which she could look across plastic roofs like rolling waves to the unobtainable sea. But she wouldn’t be free. Women of Demre didn’t have freedom. They had responsibilities. Career, what does a woman want a career for? Women don’t have careers, it’s against nature. As a girl it had always been implicit that Leyla’s career was to be the carer. Her sisters would have the husbands and babies.
For her sister Rabia’s twelfth birthday Leyla bought her a wonderful wonderful present, a thing she had seen online that had filled her heart with amazement: Magic! Sky! Lanterns! As the sky darkened everyone had gone up on to the flat new flat roof - Aziz had just finished a newlywed floor - and her father had lit the little wad of fuel-soaked cotton wool. They stood in a circle around the glowing tissue paper balloon, holding it carefully as instructed, doubtful that so flimsy and flammable a thing could do anything other than catch fire and blow on the wind. Then, wonderfully, wonderfully, her father had let go, it had bobbed toward the concrete, then lifted, climbing high and fast, a globe of light receding into a purple sky streaked with indigo cloud: the Magic! Sky! Lantern! going higher and higher until the wind from the mountains caught it and swept it over the top of the tallest of the Russian hotels and out over the dark sea.
Again, again!
Rabia had cried and they had sent the rest of the pack of four aloft, one after another but the magic only works the first time and as Leyla peered to make out the tiny shining dot against the banded clouds she had thought,
I shall be like that. I shall rise so high and brilliantly I can never be pulled back down to the tomato fields of Demre
.
But family pulls and family ties and family binds and if she has called this conference in the Gültaşli family living room, it’s partly because she hasn’t been told everything she should about Mehmet Ali and the Koran contract, and partly to tell them not take her for granted or assume the liberties to which family feels entitled. She is here today as Leyla Gültaşli, professional marketing consultant, not Little Tomato with her nose in books.
Take me seriously.
Chief Uncle Cengiz is the senior male and rules the outdoor world of business and dealings as the women rule the indoor world of home and family.
‘He was always trouble that one, from the day and hour he was born. His father was a truck driver, so he was never there to give the boy the right discipline and then when he was thirteen his mother upped and walked out with his little sister. This is what’s wrong with this country; nobody sticks with anything, as soon as there’s any trouble or effort or they hit a rough patch they get up and walk away. When the going gets tough, the tough get out. Well, his Dad couldn’t mind him, not with the hours on the truck, and at the time I was working with his uncle Aziz Yazıcoğlu in the parts shop. He hadn’t the room for the lad so he came to me, I’d space after Semih got married, so I took him in. Worst thing I ever did. I was never done with the police coming round. Your Aunt Esma’s head was turned. I minded him until the army would take him, in the idea that it might knock a bit of sense into him. Well it knocked something into him because whenever he came back he moved straight out into his own apartment. None of us saw hide nor hair of him for six months until he turned up in a very flash suit and a sportscar and some Russian Natasha on his arm. From tapping everyone and his wife for cash to wads of money in six months? There’s no way you do that righteous and sober.’

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