The Eighth Day (26 page)

Danny had to laugh at that. “Danny Cray.”

Atilla gestured toward the kebabs. “So just vegetables, huh?”

“That’s it.”

“Boy, are you in the wrong country!” He turned a knob and flames shot up; he made an adjustment and the flames diminished. “Except for pistachios. We have the best pistachios in the world.”

“Your English is great. Where’d you learn it?”

“School.”

“You have good schools here?”

Attila picked up a pair of vegetable kebabs, brushed them with oil, and drizzled them with the juice from a lemon. Then he sprinkled them with salt and pepper and laid them on the grill.

“Yeah,” he said, “the education system is pretty good. Everybody goes to school until they’re twelve. After that, you have to qualify. High school, technical school—university, if you’re smart. We’ve got thirty of them.”

“And anyone can go?”

Attila shook his head. “No way. It’s hard to get in. You have to take a test. It’s very competitive.”

Danny pursed his lips in sympathy.

Attila chuckled. “I know what you’re thinking—I’m cooking kebabs. But, actually, I did okay. I went to Bogazici. That’s a university in Istanbul. Studied economics.” He looked up from the grill. “ ‘The dismal science.’ ”

“That’s what they say. So why’d you study it?”

“Because that’s what they gave me. It’s not like you get to choose. I wanted to be a veterinarian, but the state decides what it needs. But I don’t mind. Because that’s where I learn English. Once you get to university, almost everything is in English.” He turned the kebabs.

“So . . .”

“What am I doing here?”

Danny nodded.

Attila flashed a wicked smile. “I’m making kebabs for you, my friend, what do you think?” He paused for a moment, and added, “I’m
from
here. This is my father’s place, but . . . He can’t be here right now. So I’m helping out.”

“I see.”

“You do? I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s in prison.” Seeing Danny’s surprise, he added, “We’re Kurds. Everyone here is. Except the army—they’re . . . whatever. So there’s a lot of trouble, you know?”

“I heard.”

“They want to kill the culture, so they go after the language. Until ten years ago, we can’t teach it, speak it, broadcast it. I can’t even name my kids what I want. I have to give them Turkish names.”

“So it’s better now?”

He turned the kebabs again. “Not much. Personally? I’m moving to the States, start out with my cousin. Soon as I get a visa. Other people give up. Or join the PKK.”

Danny didn’t know what the initials meant, and his face must have shown it.

“They’re Kurdish separatists,” Attila explained. “Very hard-line. Ankara calls them ‘terrorists.’ ”

“And are they?”

Attila smiled. “Yeah. Big-time. Only lately, kind of quiet.” He paused and laughed.

“Why is that?”

“Their leader got caught.”

“You don’t seem all that sorry.”

Attila shrugged. “Little towns like this—people get squeezed. The PKK and the army think the same way: you’re part of the solution, or you’re part of the problem. So you’re fucked, no matter what you do.”

Danny frowned. “You mean—”

“These guys come in—I’m talking about the PKK—they come in, they want a little help. Food, money, a place to sleep. You don’t give them what they want, they fuck you up. Big-time. Then they take what they want. Because they
can
. They’ve got guns. So, naturally, you give them what they want and, after a while, they move on. Like locusts. Then the army shows up. And they say, ‘We hear you’re helping the rebels.’
Pow!
” He chuckled bitterly. “That’s how guys like my father end up in prison. And that, my friend, is why
I’m
making kebabs.” With a grin, he lifted the sizzling skewers from the grill and slid them onto a platter. Then he dished out some rice with a dollop of yogurt sauce and gestured toward the dining room.

Danny carried his plate to a table where the appetizers were waiting.

“What do you like to drink?” Atilla asked. “Lemonade? It’s not from a can.”

“Yeah, great,” Danny said, taking a seat.

Atilla called out to the waiter. Nearby, a quartet of old men sat in the corner playing cards. The waiter hustled back with two lemonades. Atilla pointed to the chair across from Danny. “You don’t mind?”

“Not at all.” Besides the old guys playing cards, Danny was the only customer.

Atilla sat down, sipped his lemonade. “You’re not a tourist,” he said.

Danny laughed. “You can tell?”

“Yeah.”

“How?”

“Because we don’t
have
any tourists. We’re ten miles from Syria, twenty miles from Iraq. So what we get is drug dealers. Spies. Carpet buyers. Snakeheads. Once in a while, an academic. Which are you?”

Danny shook his head. “Actually . . . I’m a sculptor.” The hummus was delicious.

“ ‘A sculptor,’ ” Atilla repeated, as if Danny had confessed to being a stork.

“Right,” Danny said, “but that’s not why I’m here. I’m looking for someone.”

“In Uzelyurt?” Atilla looked incredulous.

“Unh-huh.”

“Well, that shouldn’t be hard. What’s his name?”

“Barzan,” Danny told him.

The Turk’s face went slack.

“Remy Barzan,” Danny added.

Atilla nodded thoughtfully, then drained his lemonade and got to his feet. “I better get back.”

“Wait a second!” For the second time in an hour, all the goodwill had flown from a room. “You know who I’m talking about, right?”

The Turk shrugged. “Maybe. So what?”

“How do I find him?”

“Ask around.” He turned to go, paused, and turned back again. “Though maybe that’s not such a good idea.”

Danny didn’t get it. “Why not?”

“Because I don’t think he wants to be found.”

The American nodded. “That’s what I figured, but—”

Atilla put his hands on the table and leaned toward him. “Look,” he said. “This isn’t the kind of place you come into and ask a lot of questions. Remy’s got a big family, a big clan. The Barzans are related to everybody, and they’re involved in a lot of things.”

“What kind of things?”

Atilla straightened up with a derisive snort. “There’s a civil war—it’s been going on for a hundred years. They do what they have to do.”

“Like what?”

“Whatever it takes. And they do it for all of us.”

Danny didn’t know what he was talking about, and it must have shown.

“The old man—the grandfather—has a lot of responsibilities,” Atilla explained. “He’s an Elder.”

Something clicked. “You mean . . . the Yezidis.”

It was the cook’s turn to be surprised. Finally, he said, “Right.”

“Then—”

“Look—you want to find Remy? Maybe you should see Mounir.”

“Who’s ‘Mounir’?”

“The old man. Sheik Mounir. He’s Remy’s grandfather. I don’t think he’ll tell you anything, but if you go door-to-door like this . . .” He shook his head. “You could get hurt.”

Danny raised his hands up in mock surrender. “So where do I go?”

The cook sighed. “You saw the poppies?”

Danny thought about it. The ride into town on the
dolmus
. The fields ablaze with flowers. “You mean . . . on the way into town?”

Atilla nodded. “And the house? The big house—”

“On the hill? That villa?”

For some reason, the cabdriver wouldn’t take him where he wanted to go, so he hitched a ride out of town in an old truck driven by a jovial farmer. The truck was ripe with barnyard smells, but it was only a few miles to the villa. After ten minutes, the truck turned a corner and there it was, bolted to a hill in a sea of poppies.

“This is good,” Danny announced, smiling his thanks.

The farmer glanced at the house, rolled his eyes, and swore beneath his breath. Then he stepped on the gas.

“Hey! Hold up! We’re here!”

The farmer clicked his tongue and threw his head back. Danny got the message but didn’t know what to do. The truck rumbled on for the better part of a mile, with Danny getting up the courage to jerk the keys from the ignition. Then the house and the poppy fields disappeared from view and the farmer brought the truck to a shuddering stop in the middle of the road. Abruptly he leaned across the front seat and threw open the door.
“Ayril!”
he ordered.
“Ayril!”

So now Danny knew a fifth word in Turkish.
At this rate,
he thought,
I’ll be fluent in about a hundred years.

It was a ten-minute walk back to the Barzan spread, where a country lane arced through the poppy fields toward the house. Walking uphill, Danny saw that the villa stood behind a stone wall whose ramparts glistened with broken glass. It was not the kind of house that one could approach unmolested and, sure enough, he began to sense that he wasn’t alone. Turning, he found two young men walking quietly behind him, about fifty feet away. Each of them was smoking a cigarette and carried an automatic weapon as if it were a lunch pail. Danny smiled nervously and gave a little wave—“Hey”—but the greeting went unacknowledged. His companions continued as they were, their faces impassive, their distance respectful but easy to close.

Soon he arrived at the wall in front of the house. Passing beneath a stone arch whose massive wooden doors were thrown open to the sun, he entered a plain courtyard whose only adornments were a silver Jaguar and a burbling fountain, slick with algae.

By then, the young guns were at his side.

After ascertaining that their visitor spoke no Turkish, the older of the two patted the air with his left hand, indicating that Danny should stay where he was. Then he muttered something to his friend and went into the house.

Minutes crawled by as Danny lounged against the fountain, admiring the house under the unwavering gaze of the young man with the AK—or whatever it was. An enormous villa in the Mediterranean style, it had tall rectangular windows and unpainted stucco walls. Each of the windows, Danny saw, was occluded by a curtain, drawn tight.

Soon the guard who had gone into the house emerged. Gesturing for Danny to raise his hands and spread his legs, he handed his weapon to the second guard and began to pat the American down. This was not the kind of frisking that a man might suffer at the security gate at Heathrow or LaGuardia. It was a slow and meticulous
search
, a massage, almost, that took the better part of a minute. When the search was finally done, the guard retrieved his AK and gestured for Danny to accompany him into the house.

The villa’s interior was nothing like Danny had imagined. He had expected to find a page from one of the catalogs that Caleigh was always receiving—French Country Living or something like that. Instead, he found himself in what might have been the lobby of a Four Seasons hotel. Subdued lighting. Air-conditioning. Wood paneling. Expensive and tasteful furniture of no obvious provenance. Classical music played softly in another room, and it seemed to Danny that he might have been anywhere. The only clue to the villa’s actual whereabouts was a collection of old prints hanging from the walls in plain gold frames. On inspection, he saw that these were nineteenth-century steel engravings on Ottoman themes: the covered souk in Istanbul, some dhows sailing on the Golden Horn—

“Avete desiderato vederli?”

Danny swung round to the voice and found an elderly man in a dark business suit regarding him through a pair of gold spectacles. Despite the man’s age, he had a full head of iron-gray hair and a Vandyke beard of the same steely hue. Though stooped with age and leaning on a cane, he was still as tall as Danny. “I’m sorry,” Danny said, “but—”

“You don’t
capiche
.” The old man smiled. “My friend, here, thinks that you’re Italian.”

Relieved to find that the old man spoke English, Danny introduced himself and asked if he was the grandfather of Remy Barzan.

“Yes. I am Sheik Mounir Barzan.”

“I was hoping you could help me,” Danny told him. “It’s important that I find him right away.”

The old man frowned. “You are a friend of Remy?”

Danny shook his head. “Not really. I mean, we haven’t actually met.”

“And yet . . . you’ve come all this way?”

Danny shrugged. “I was in Rome. It’s not so far, and . . . it’s important that I see him.”

The old man looked skeptical. “I think Remy would prefer to be alone right now.”

“I understand that,” Danny explained. “But we have a problem, a problem in common. And I thought we might be able to help each other.”

The old man walked slowly to the window and gazed out across the courtyard. “I’m afraid I haven’t seen Remy in several weeks.”

“But you know where he is,” Danny guessed.

“Perhaps,” he replied.

Danny sighed, uncertain how much he should say. Finally, he said, “Remy’s in a lot of trouble.”

Mounir Barzan nodded to himself. “I know. That’s why he’s come home. And what about you, Mr. Cray?”

“I’m in trouble, too.”

The old man gave him a look of commiseration. “I’m sorry to hear that. Perhaps
you
should go home, as well.”

Danny shook his head. “It’s not that easy. I really need to talk to your grandson.”

The old man’s shoulders rose and fell, as if to say,
I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.

“Look,” Danny said. “I don’t know how much you know about this—”

“I don’t know
anything
about it, Mr. Cray. Remy hasn’t confided in me.”

“Well, I know it sounds melodramatic, but . . . the point is: There’s a man who wants to kill him.”

The old man’s face twisted into a frown. Then, ever so slowly, it softened. “These things happen. Young men get in trouble. He’ll be safe where he is.”

Danny gave him a skeptical look. “The man who’s looking for him has a lot of resources.”

Mounir Barzan bared his teeth in a thin smile. “We’re a big family,” he said. “If Remy needs help, he knows where to find it.”

“Mr. Barzan, I don’t think you understand—”

“I think I do. You said that you and Remy have a problem in common. Which means that the man who’s looking for Remy is also looking for you. Is that correct?”