Yasemın Aydinoğlu: Istanbul Noir

I don’t know if my mouth said anything to Anfi. I was on the verge of sleep. My eyes were no longer open to the room. My thoughts were scattering like a harem of women at the sight of a strange man. As darkness fell upon my mind, in spite of everything, my will to live and see the flames was letting out its final, weak roar.

Unfortunately, regrets, however strong, cannot roll back time.

Moda

In a dolmuş on the way to Moda. That’s where twelve-year-old Nazlı’s story begins. Nazlı, a delicate name for my delicate little girl.

Her mother and I separated early. It just didn’t work out between us. Yet we were so in love! Or at least that’s how I remember it being, at the beginning. I always wanted Nazlı to remember things that way too. That day, we had met at the Kadıköy piers and were making our way to the Moda dolmuşes when Nazlı asked me if people got married for love or money. Why? I asked. Because I’m in love, she said. At that moment I felt a twinge of pain, deep down. Like any father of a daughter, I was a little shaken up at first. I felt very clearly then and there that I was not prepared to share her with any other man, but I kept this sentiment to myself. Love is important, I said, but you have to have money too. I said it like it was some trivial remark. Like I usually did. And which I would so desperately regret later. She was a little angel. A little girl. This time, though, I decided to play down my hopelessness. Actually, dear, I said, it’s not about money; love is all that matters.

Just then, the early afternoon sun, shining from above Kumkapı, way over across the Bosphorus, struck our faces — the trees were up to their tricks again. We crossed the street. Eight-person dolmuşes had largely become a thing of the past, but I insisted that we wouldn’t board anything but. All right, buddy, the steward at the dolmuş stand told me, just hold on. So it seemed they hadn’t yet become completely obsolete. It wasn’t long until it arrived. A yellow, beat-up old thing. It was something like this, right? I asked Nazlı. Yes, Daddy. I latched onto her hand, and onto that moment when she boarded an eight-person dolmuş from Kadıköy to Moda, to see her grandmother. Her hand was cold. My heart beat unevenly, and with a wrenching at my gut, I told her that I felt chilly. There was a crisp nip in the air that winter. Warm me up, Daddy, she said jokingly, and then kissed me on the cheek. We settled into the very back seat. You sit by the window, Daddy, she told me. No, you sit by the window, I said, and look outside, so I can see outside and watch the sun shining off of you at the same time. Oh, you’re such a romantic, Daddy! she said. And then with a roguish smile: He’s just like you!

Nazlı was still smiling, there in her plaid pleated skirt and red plush coat. And the time sped by, as the dolmuş swayed its way toward Moda.

The dolmuş took the coastal road for a while before veering inland. I just sat there, Nazlı’s hand in mine. Again I felt that I loved her too much to share her with anyone else. Whatever it was that I had felt toward the rotund little baby in the nurse’s arms at that very first moment, that’s what Nazlı was. A miracle. Inhaling the scent of my twelve-year-old girl, I would whisper in her ear, telling her that she wasn’t alone. And she, she would laugh. Always. She knew that her grandma had baked a fabulous cake to go with the tea, over which the two of them would chat about politics and whatnot. As my mother’s first grandchild, Nazlı had a special place in her grandma’s life, and she milked it for all it was worth. Both of them were fully aware of this, and neither had any complaints.

How wonderful that you’re with me, Nazlı, I said, out of the blue. The dolmuş was making its way up Moda Boulevard, past the flower shop and the toy store. I got a few strange looks from the people around me. But Nazlı was there, with me; I could see the tiny veins on her neck, her hazel eyes gleaming from beneath full brows.

I didn’t need any more memories of those eyes reflecting off the windows of the passing cars. I needed Nazlı, only Nazlı. My daughter; she was twelve years old.

I’m so glad you’re with me, Nazlı!

For those sitting near me, I was just some guy mumbling to himself, one passenger out of eight sitting in a dolmuş headed toward Moda. A father searching for the past in a heap of odd recollections. To think that it had happened just two years ago. And now there I was, a man left with nothing but a few pathetic memories, all his miracles wrenched away, especially...

Earth to Daddy, Nazlı might have said. Don’t mind me, I would have replied. The dolmuş was passing by the Kadıköy Girls’ School just then. Back when I was in my early teens, we used to come here a lot after school, to pick up girls. I was going to tell Nazlı that, but then I changed my mind and sank a little further into the dolmuş’s threadbare seats.

I had a girl on my mind, a girl from two years ago. It was a winter day, and late afternoon was turning into early evening. She was running late to her afternoon tea. The light was different then; twilight was already setting in. I wasn’t with the girl on that day. It was another man who sat next to her. The same man, with his dark face and skittish eyes, that I would later grow sick and tired of seeing, first in the newspapers, in sketches based upon witness testimonies, then in photos, and finally in the flesh. But on that day, at that hour, he was still just a traveler en route to Moda, sitting next to a girl. Another man among men. Except he wasn’t. In gray police files he was known as the “Ümraniye psycho,” a man who raped children in secluded corners of the city, then killed them and carved his signature, deeply, into their tender young necks. But still, he looked like anyone else: he was ordinary, common, his eyes dull and distant.

Twenty-four hours after the incident, the Moda muhtar at the time gave a press conference in a corner of the apartment-building courtyard where the girl’s body had been found, describing the incident as “the degenerates’ invasion of Moda” and avoiding other questions posed by the press; it was just too close to election time.

The girl was so young. Her breasts had just budded the previous spring. She had a few pimples, but her face was still that of a child, her dimples still those of a baby.

When the eight-person dolmuş had taken off two years earlier, the girl had felt a slight tingle on her right leg. At first she assumed that it had something to do with the way the space between the seat rails was sucking her in. Sitting on a seat of shriveled, gray animal hide, a piece of skin wrinkled and bitter, she stretched her leg down to feel for the floor beneath her plaid skirt. The tingle, however, continued. Sliding back and forth on the seat, her skin on the skin of the seat, it seemed to her that the tingling was about to pass. But soon it was replaced by another discomfort. A heaviness. As if something had been added to her leg. A third skin. At that moment, she could not fathom why on earth the third skin might be there. Her head was, at best, in the clouds. That’s what her grandmother would have said, and then chuckled.

Her grandmother must have been waiting for her then, with the tea brewing. There would be meaty pide to go with the tea, and her grandmother’s scrumptious lemon cake.

Maybe the weather was to blame. They hadn’t yet had a proper winter that year. Or maybe it was Moda’s fault. Moda was so wonderful, so beautiful and dreamlike, and in her mind’s eye it would forever remain that way. Or so the girl hoped. One thing was for sure: Within this idyllic landscape, there was no such thing as a stranger. For her, at that time, a stranger — or el as her grandma would say, using the more old-fashioned word, incidentally the same word for “hand” — was something far away and unknown, foreign and distant, far in the future. Like growing pains. Like blood. Like pus. Like death even. All of it unbelievably distant and strange. And that was how it was supposed to be. But next to her the breathing grew grunting and putrid.