The Dervish House (24 page)

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Authors: Ian Mcdonald

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‘Now we come to the Western School. These are particularly clever. The common base is that, after obtaining the coffin, our hairy man of Cappadocia passed west through Istanbul to the Balkans to join a dervish order in what’s now Bosnia. It became a local relic and focus of pilgrimage after the dede of the tekke noticed honey leaking from the coffin and the legend developed that this honey, applied to the lips of soldiers, gave them the courage, strength and invulnerability of the Hacı himself. Wounds would spontaneously heal, bodies regenerate. It’s obviously a variant of Hızır legend, but that didn’t stop anointed partisans fighting off the Ottomans in the 1890s, the Germans in the Second World War and the Serbian militias during the 1990s. At the moment of the Bosnian people’s greatest need, the tomb of Hacı Ferhat will again exude miraculous honey. Now this is far too good a story and of course every embattled Muslim from Sarajevo to Islamabad appropriated it. Pashtun mujahadin, Palestinian
intifada
stone-throwers, Chechen suicide bombers, even Kurdish fighters have claimed the protection of Hacı Ferhat. What interests me is how once again the Eastern School is slowly absorbing another tradition. In twenty years or so I expect it will have subsumed the Western School entirely. So, those are your three options. In two of them the Mellified Man of Iskenderun ends up in Istanbul, in one of them in a tekke in Bosnia.’
‘I notice you’re not telling me which one of them is correct.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Well, are there any which are demonstrably wrong?’
‘The Tekke of Hacı Ferhat does not exist. There are several Nakshabendi Hakkani Golden Chain tekkes in Bosnia, but they are a sober order and not given to the veneration of relics. The Kadirilik are well established throughout the Balkans but their record keeping is fastidious and nowhere is there a mention of anything like a Mellified Man. Likewise the Rif’ai, though their main centre is in Albania. However, they are close to the Bektaşis and the Alevis, so a Mellified Man might have made his way back to Anatolia. The possibility remains that Hacı Ferhat could persist as a localized saint or have even passed into the Christian Church but given the weight of legend - invulnerable soldiers of matchless courage do attract attention - we would have heard about it. Certainly it attracted the attention of the Serbian Army in the latter days of the Bosnian War. As the Serbians were being rolled back by NATO’s Operation Deliberate Force, a small group of Serbian Special Forces under Major Darko Gagoviac was sent to locate and loot the body of Hacı Ferhat.’
‘Loot a legend?’ Ayşe asks.
‘But it’s not legend, is it?’ Red says. ‘He and his unit worked their way indiscriminately through dervish houses all across Bosnia. Hacı Ferhat was an excuse. Their mission was to kill as many Sufis and burn as many tekkes as possible. They found nothing - which doesn’t mean there was nothing to find. As word of the destruction spread, the dervishes would certainly have hidden their treasure. You see? Nothing is known. Nothing is knowable. So I have to conclude that, much as I am charmed by the Western School, I ultimately find it unconvincing.’
‘Tell me about the Russian School.’
‘I find Russian involvement unpersuasive, for opposite reasons to the Western School. Any number of old white Russians claim to have the Mellified Man. This instantly makes me suspicious. Why Russians, why not Poles or Kashubians or Bulgars or Armenians? The funnel of history in the form of the Russian Revolution is too convenient - it smacks of historical engineering. It’s the kind of story you would make up looking back from the present day. Sloppy thinking. If Hacı Ferhat had been in Crimea, he was much more likely to have been dislodged by the Crimean War, and so would have reached Istanbul sixty years earlier, or even France or England. Typical Russian self-aggrandizing, I fear. What kills it for me is that none of the Northern School stories existed at all before a book published in Moscow in 1992, just after the White Revolution, it’s called
The Honey of God: The Romanovs and the Mellified Man
. It was written by an ex-Black Sea Fleet helicopter carrier captain called Dmitri Lebvedev, who obviously had too much time on his hands.’
‘My late father was a commander in our Black Sea Fleet,’ Ayşe says.
‘I did my military service in the navy.’ Red shrugs at his fishing line. ‘Too much time on my hands.’ He rises from his seat to check the line. Weighted hooks cast from above hurtle past Ayşe to plop into the languid water. A ferry swells out of ship-scape, in bound for Rüstempaşa.
‘So it’s some variant of the Eastern School,’ she says.
‘This is a labyrinth in which entire lifetimes can be lost. Selma will have warned you, I will warn you again. There are people who have given years of their lives - their entire - lives to studying the Mellified Man. Many of them were searchers like you, but they gave it up when they realized that if the Mellified Man were ever to be found, it would almost certainly not be from their theories, and the finding would prove that their theories were worthless and their entire lives manifestly wasted. Istanbulus can happily waste whole lifetimes on trivialities as long as reality is never allowed to intrude. Theories. Never let your theory be exposed to vulgar empiricism. If you wish to search further, I can point you in the same direction I have pointed all the others. Make of it what you will. All I have are stories. Perhaps stories are all there are - and that would be enough. That would be a colossal edifice of creativity. But if you want to talk to a direct descendant of Hacı Ferhat - or who claims to be - then you must go to Beshun. You can find her in the Egyptian Market. She only works mornings. Look for rabbits. Rabbits and vegetable seeds. As dear Selma told you, tell her, Red sent you.’ He gets up from his chair, lights a fresh cigarette and peers down the length of his line into the water. ‘Come on up, you bastards. The sun’s off, it’s the cool cool cool of the evening. Oh. By the way, you don’t mind getting the coffee, do you?’
As he promised, it’s overpriced. As Ayşe rattles off a grudging few cents as a tip, she notices a smaller, nimbler, faster craft come up alongside the ferry and then dashingly cut across it to curve in towards the landings at Eminönü. She hadn’t noticed the time, the slant of the light, the length of the shadows, the deep gold of the hills of Asia. Her boat has arrived.
‘We much prefer online applications,’ says the smart man from the European Emerging Technologies Investment Board. He is quite handsome but knows it, which is a flaw in Leyla’s book of smart men, and wears a nanoweave fabric tie that changes pattern every twenty seconds. That is a lesser flaw. The office is full of little nano toys and gewgaws; a sheet of nano-weave silk folds and refolds in restless origami while a pile of smart sand in a tray on his desk builds itself into endless pagodas, no two the same. Nano-impregnated liquid runs uphill to fall over a little water mill, a floor rug changes texture from pile to fur to quills to bark. Nothing holds its shape for more than thirty seconds in this twitching office
‘I think I was in this place on an early acid trip,’ Aso had whispered as they seated themselves at the itchy, compulsive desk while Mete Öymen retrieved his notes on Ceylan-Besarani. In his suit and shirt Aso is much more presentable as ambassador of Ceylan-Besarani than Yaşar. He has the presence of height and he’s not fat, a thing Leyla dislikes in a pitch. It’s not hard to tighten up a good look for your business. There is still room for Aso to improve: shoes for a start, and ironing.
‘Online doesn’t give you the immediacy of a face to face meeting,’ Leyla says. ‘You don’t get the passion.’
Mete Öymen looks as if he might vomit at the thought of passion face to face. He studied his silkscreen.
‘Nano. Yes. Eighty per cent of our applications are for nano start-ups. ’
‘We’re not a start-up. This is development funding to build a prototype and market test.’
Again Mete Öymen studies his screen. ‘You haven’t come to us before.’
‘We’ve had private funding so far. You have a fast-track fund.’
‘It generally takes six to eight weeks.’
‘We’ve got maybe four days.’
‘I would have to say it’s unlikely.’
‘At least an expression of interest.’
‘The next funding decision meeting is on Friday. It might be possible. How much are you looking for?’
‘A quarter of a million.’
‘Applications for funding over one hundred thousand go through the European Regional Technology Infrastructure Development Fund.’
‘How quick is that?’
‘Fast Track is quicker. There is an Accelerated Entry level for the ERTIDF and because it’s a structural fund it doesn’t attract as high a percentage of match-funding.’
‘Friday?’
‘Doubtful. It might be possible to split your EETIB Fast-track fund into two or even three separate applications, as long as none of them are over one hundred kay in value.’
‘At least take a look at our presentation.’
Aso handshakes the code to Mete Öymen.
‘It’s best on your ceptep.’
Byzantium’s not dead
, he whispers to Leyla as Mete Öymen watches the pretty crawling molecules. The patterns stop playing on his eyeballs.
‘I don’t get it.’
Leyla feels Aso twitch.
Keep cool.
‘It’s a universal bioinformatic read-write head. It stores information on non-coding DNA - junk-DNA as you call it. It turns every cell in the body into a computer.’
‘Why would anyone want to have such a thing?’
Aso is shaking with suppressed anger. Leyla touches her hand to his arm.
‘This is a world-changing technology,’ she says. ‘Revolutionary. Nothing will be the same.’
‘There’s little market for revolutions, I’m afraid. I’m not convinced it’s commercially viable but throw in an application and it’ll be judged on its merits. I’ll need your most recent audited accounts, articles of incorporation, a statement that there are no financial encumbrances on the company and some indication of match-funding, in cash or kind.’
‘We can get that to you.’
‘If you want us to look at it in the next round it would need to be on my desk first thing tomorrow. I don’t know if that gives you enough time.’
‘We’ll make the time, Mr Öymen.’
His handshake is as shapeless and indefinite as his nano.
Aso doesn’t speak in the elevator. He doesn’t speak in the lobby or on the street as they stomp through the evil heat to where Leyla has parked the car, cursing the virused autodrive that means she can’t leave it to run around town by itself and come when called. He waits until they are belted in, engine running and pulling gingerly out before shouting ‘Bastard!’ so loudly that Leyla almost swerves into a kid on the way home from afternoon school.
‘“Little market for revolutions, I’m afraid”. Bastard! “I’m not convinced it’s commercially viable”: why is that, Mr Mete Öymen? Is it because you can’t imagine everyone having the ability to store every piece of information they’ll amass in their entire lives? Or is it because you can’t see why people would want to be able to swap in talents and abilities and whole other personalities like ceptep apps? Or is it that you just can’t see the advantage of personalized brain-to-brain telepathy? “But throw in an application and it’ll be judged on its merits.” You wouldn’t recognize its merits if I carved them into your forehead with a laser, you snivelling, cowardly, patronizing, smug, jobs-worthy little Turkish bureaucrat. Apologies to any Turks here present. Sorry. I get passionate about it. I get angry about it. I’m not asking him to understand it down to the last detail; just see the bigger idea, see the possible, be awed by it. It excites me. This is total human makeover, man! This is humanity 2.0!’
‘I’m trying to drive here,’ Leyla says. It’s cram-hour, Istanbul hot and impatient to get home, into the cool of home, shoes off jacket off air-conditioning on. Aso’s is not the only anger on the streets. She creeps the citicar forward through the stalled, sweating traffic. Truck wheels loom over her, crushing orbs.
‘I come from a passionate people!’ Aso cries. He is lucid with his arms when excited. Leyla ducks. ‘I tell you something, we’re a people who know injustice when we see it - and we’ve seen a lot - and that was an injustice. A fat, monstrous shit-stuffed injustice.’
‘Don’t kid yourself it’s personal,’ Leyla says. She threads the little silver three-wheeler between two dolmuşes. The packed passengers look more miserable even than Aso. ‘It’s nothing to do with you, or the project and it’s certainly not eight hundred years of prejudice against the Kurds. Even if Oymen had thought it was the most brilliant visionary thing he’d ever heard in his life, even if it was the biggest evolutionary leap forward for humanity since we got up on our hind legs, we still wouldn’t get it. We couldn’t. Aso, we don’t have the articles of incorporation.’

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