The Dervish House (31 page)
Authors: Ian Mcdonald
‘All I did was offer a safe haven,’ Ismet says.
‘Do you profess that there is one God and Muhammed is his prophet?’ Yusuf asks.
‘It’s like I’ve been asleep, or buried, or that my eyes just haven’t been able to open wide enough, but now I am awake and I can see things. I think I was pretending at playing a person, until now. How can this be?’
‘Yes, but do you profess?’ Yusuf asks again.
‘God’s power is not to be constrained,’ Ismet says.
‘We are judges, not mystics.’
‘I don’t see any distinction. We are judges, and we are mystics. If people are to trust our judgements they must see that they are God’s not man’s. This is God’s power.’
‘Cheap showmanship degrades our work.’
‘This is God’s will at work. God has given us a rare and precious gift; we don’t have to understand why and how and to whom he gives it. We can’t. All we have to do is accept that it is for us.’
‘This is superstition.’
‘It brings people.’
‘It brought the police,’ Armağan mutters. Ismet rounds on him.
‘Let them come! It only shows how weak they are, how afraid, how distant and remote from what people really want and need. If they persecute us, it means we’re doing God’s will. Let them come, we’ll show them who’s strong. Vote. What do you say brothers? I say, from God.’
‘Haram,’ Armağan says.
‘Halal,’ says the young man next to him, the one with the almost-moustache, whose friend had been caught in the roadside bomb. The vote goes around, the pattern is simple to see. The young vote yes, the older ones vote no.
‘No,’ says Yusuf, ‘This is haram.’ But he knows he has lost the vote and his influence in the group.
‘This is Islamic,’ says the final dervish in the circle.
‘Let there be no disunity,’ Ismet says, holding out his hand to Yusuf. ‘God is one.’
‘God is one,’ Yusuf says and takes Ismet’s hand. The tarikat breaks up with a brief prayer, the circle rises. The young men crowd in around Ismet. Already they’re calling him Dede, grandfather, the honorific of a dervish leader. Ismet Dede. Shaykh Ismet.
Hızır remains seated on the carpet.
What have you done?
Necdet thinks. Hızır answers in a laughing voice like spring:
Who ever said I was a tame saint?
What have you done?
Necdet thinks. Hızır answers in a laughing voice like spring:
Who ever said I was a tame saint?
Ismet has a word for each of the tarikat members as they leave the mosque, a handshake, a touch on the back, an embrace. When they have all put their shoes back on and gone to their garages and banks and stores and metro trains and taxis, Necdet says to his brother, ‘What would have happened if I had lost the judgement?’
‘How can we be respected as kadıs if our judgements carry no weight?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Half the law is its enforceability. Even the infidel judges will tell you that.’
The imam looks over. He wants these zealous young men, these troublemakers, out. He wants his beautiful, historical mosque back. Ismet gently turns his brother to one side, shielding himself from the imam’s view, and casually slips back the waist band of his jacket. Tucked into the waistband of his trousers is the butt of a gun. Outside, in the brilliant light, the djinn flock and storm like starlings.
‘Red? So?’
Beshun Ferhat sits enthroned among rabbits and birds. At her feet are mega-packs of vegetable seeds, the photographs of aubergines and peppers and fat tomatoes faded to near-monochrome. To her right hand is a small table on which sits a glass of tea, a Sobranie Black Russian in an ivory holder balanced on an ash tray filling the air with its glorious louche incense and a white rabbit on a lead. Beshun Ferhat is a mountain of a woman, sloping outwards from the top of her head to her floral patterned harem pants and her clumpy country-woman’s boots. She smells of rose water and the body-warmed, oily musk of menopause. In the gloom of the animal market she wears round-eyed dark glasses, as if she wants people to think she is blind though Ayşe knows she is not. She seems immovable among her cages of pet rabbits and puppies and singing birds, a pillar of the market. Ayşe has detested this place from early memory. The smell of piss-sodden straw and unclean animal bodies whirls her back to the age of five when her father brought her here as a Sunday treat. She had cried at the sight of the poor puppies six to a cage and tried to pester her father into buying them all to set them free. They hadn’t stopped at this stall. This terrifying woman would have branded herself on Ayşe’s memory.
‘He’s not catching any fish,’ Ayşe says.
‘No one is,’ Beshun says and takes a long draw on her Sobranie, an affected, theatrical gesture that involves the most delicate of fingertip holds on the ivory, an upward tilt of the head, a trickle of smoke up through the birds’ cages to the minarets of the New Mosque. She notices Ayşe’s noticing. ‘Would you like one, love?’
Ayşe lights, inhales, savours the pungent, exotic, Russian flavours. It reminds her of wooden Riva speedboats, horse-drawn carriages, exquisite verbal duelling, almost sex in the empty streets just above this mosque-shadowed market. She issues a stream of tiny smoke rings from deep in her throat.
‘You know, I should buy these more often.’
‘I used to smoke Samsun but none of the Turkish brands taste of anything since we joined the EU.’ The rabbit twitches its ears. ‘So, love, my family heirloom? Red told you his stories, did he? All you’ll get from me, love, is another story. Stories are all there are. Yes yes yes, I am Beshun Ferhat and I am the ten-times-great-granddaughter of Hacı Ferhat. My people are Hatayis, we are the veritable Ferhats of Iskenderun though none of us live there now. None of us have lived there for five generations. The Ferhats have been in Istanbul since 1895 but as you know, love, it takes much longer than that to be accepted as a true Istanbulu. Who are your people?’
‘Erkoç of Şişli. It was an old naval family. My mother is a Çalışlar of Meşrutiyet, her sister married the Justice Minister.’
Beshun rolls her head.
‘Old stock. Here. Let me show you something.’ She gropes for her bag. Ayşe refuses to find it for her.
You can see, old woman
. Beshun takes out a sheet of yellowed paper in a plastic sleeve. ‘This is my family tree.’ Her fingers trace the trunks and branches. ‘See how I can trace my lineage back to Osman Fahir Ferhat, the oldest of Hacı Ferhat’s sons, the one who supervised the sealing of the coffin.’ Her fingers skip down a drastic narrowing of the trunk. ‘This is where we came to Istanbul. See how many of the branches die off here? We suffered a great reversal of fortune in the late nineteen hundreds. Death in war, death by drowning, murders, vendettas, plague and disease. Male heirs died young; some were not suffered to live, if you understand what I mean. God was hard on the Ferhats, but fair. He pruned out the dead wood, the diseased and inbred. He gave us an opportunity to start afresh and renew our fortunes.’
You can see, old woman
. Beshun takes out a sheet of yellowed paper in a plastic sleeve. ‘This is my family tree.’ Her fingers trace the trunks and branches. ‘See how I can trace my lineage back to Osman Fahir Ferhat, the oldest of Hacı Ferhat’s sons, the one who supervised the sealing of the coffin.’ Her fingers skip down a drastic narrowing of the trunk. ‘This is where we came to Istanbul. See how many of the branches die off here? We suffered a great reversal of fortune in the late nineteen hundreds. Death in war, death by drowning, murders, vendettas, plague and disease. Male heirs died young; some were not suffered to live, if you understand what I mean. God was hard on the Ferhats, but fair. He pruned out the dead wood, the diseased and inbred. He gave us an opportunity to start afresh and renew our fortunes.’
Which is why you are managing a pet stall at the cheap end of the Egyptian Bazaar
, Ayşe thinks. God but these Sobranies are nice.
, Ayşe thinks. God but these Sobranies are nice.
‘This was long after the curse of the Hairy Man of Cappadocia.’
Beshun stamps a booted foot and rattles the side table with a fist. The rabbit starts, eyes and nostrils wide but its leash is harshly short.
‘Do not pollute my ears with the name of that charlatan! There was no curse, there was no hairy-assed dervish from the wilds of Anatolia. Listen if you’d be wise. My family were renowned in Iskenderun as great magicians. That was always the source of our fortune. Hacı Ferhat himself was the founder of our family school: he was a merchant, a traveller and also a student of the mysteries and magics of the countries that he visited on trade. His interests knew no bounds, he conversed with shaykhs of Aleppo and Damascus, the djinn masters of Cairo, the Jewish Kabbalists of Tripoli and the angel summoners of Jerusalem. He was on first-name terms with the greatest magicians of Persia and India. He studied with ritual mages in Rome and the star magicians in Milan, he regularly visited demonologists in Prague and Vienna, he corresponded with the great Etteilla in Paris and the London disciples of Enoch.’
A middle-aged man wanders in among the cages from the throned alley, asking about guinea-pig food. Beshun leans heavily over in her chair and hauls a packet of vacuum-packed hay from a box underneath the puppy cages.
Men of voting age should never have anything to do with guinea-pigs
, she thinks. One of the pups manically scratches its ear. Ayşe fears fleas.
Men of voting age should never have anything to do with guinea-pigs
, she thinks. One of the pups manically scratches its ear. Ayşe fears fleas.
‘Where was I, love?’
‘Your family of magicians.’
‘Oh yes. Hacı Ferhat. Like any good father, he wanted success for his sons in life and business so he taught them what he could of his magic. They’ve passed it down the line to this very day.’ Beshun heavily pats the rabbit. It flinches from her hand. ‘But at the same time he was also a member of a secret tarikat. Its father-house was here in Istanbul but it drew brothers from all over the empire. It wasn’t exactly a magician’s circle - it was very respectable, there were shaykhs and dervishes in it as well as many prominent men from all parts of Thrace and Anatolia - but it was interested in the more bizarre aspects of religion. Not only Sufism, they also studied Buddhist teachings from Japan and Tibet, Hindu belief, Christian mysteries. They believed that there was a holy language - not Arabic, not Hebrew, not Latin or Greek or any language people speak - God’s language, and that it was a written language, and that each letter in its alphabet had control over a different part of the universe. They got in trouble with a few imams because of oaths and allegiances and things like that but they had enough money and the right political connections to buy them off. Well, love, you know what Hacı Ferhat did and what he turned himself into, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. And you know that the Mellified Man of Iskenderun disappeared. This is how it really happened.’
Beshun lights another Sobranie. Ayşe accepts the offered cigarette. Smoking in a pet market is not smoking in the street. This is acceptable for a lady.
‘You see, the stories of the curse of the Mellified Man have it right enough to be wrong. Yes, my family did fall on hard times, but that was not because of the Mellified Man. Yes, there was a dervish, but he was not a wandering Sufi. He was a magician. What happened was, my great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Ahmet decided that the only way to restore our fortunes was to sell the Mellified Man. There were bids from all over the empire and Russia, Egypt and the British Raj and as far afield as China. Then a letter arrived, oh! Like a thunderbolt. We had forgotten all about the secret society, the Tarikat of the Divine Word, but they had not forgotten about Hacı Ferhat. It said that a man’s first allegiance was to his tarikat, that oaths had been taken, that Hacı Ferhat had never stopped being a brother and the Tarikat of the Divine Word had an iron claim on the Mellified Man. Now, as you might imagine, it was not exactly legal to sell a Mellified Man, even in Ottoman times, so we could not go to a judge. The tarikat offered a solution: let God decide through a duel of magic, our family magic against theirs. Now, no one knows what happened, no record was ever made, all the participants were sworn to secrecy and no one has ever spoken, but my great-great-great-great-great-Uncle Nihat Ferhat, who had never married and had dedicated himself to studying Hacı Ferhat’s writings, met with the greatest magician of the Tarikat of the Divine Word. It was a battle of words: the old magic of the spoken word against the magic of the written word. We lost. We surrendered the Mellified Man. All was lost, we sold up what we held in Iskenderun and came to Istanbul to rebuild our fortunes, the ruins of a proud family.’
The two women slowly exhale fragrant smoke.
‘And the Tarikat of the Divine Word?’ Ayşe asks.
‘It would have been destroyed by Atatürk at the time of the Revolution along with all the other orders,’ Beshun says.
‘Yes, but we all know that the orders were never destroyed, they merely went underground,’ Ayşe says.
‘This order was singled out in particular. It was popular with members of the Sultan’s family and high-ranking government officials and members of the Committee of Union and Progress were members. There is a story that the other orders were suppressed to cover the total destruction of this one.’
‘No trace remains?’
‘You’re very far from the first to try and find the Tarikat of the Divine Word, love.’
But ideas buzz in Ayşe’s imagination like fleas on puppies, flies around cage-cleanings wrapped in newspaper, song-birds fluttering in cages. The trick is not to let story seduce in a city built from stories, tale upon sedimented tale. Istanbul is an oral culture. The old magic was charmed into being by spoken words. Historians, columnists, writers, curio-hunters, even psychogeographers, their primary sense is hearing, and so they are deceived by their ears. Ayşe’s sovereign sense is vision. Truth is always in the eye.
Beshun strokes her rabbit.
‘The magic hasn’t gone away you know.’
Here I pay the storyteller
, Ayşe thinks.
, Ayşe thinks.
‘It still passes down through the family in the direct line from the Iskenderun brothers. I have some limited power to foretell the future. Would you like?’
‘Go on then,’ Ayşe says.
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