Secondhand Sorcery

The monastery was fifty kilometers from Trabzon, somewhat less from Kemal’s apartment complex in the suburbs. The old man did not drive very quickly, and took the opportunity to ask a question every couple of minutes. Did she have any family he could contact, who might be worried about her? Were any bad people after her? Had bad men brought her into the country? She answered as vaguely as she could without being outright rude. He did not press her, but was obviously not satisfied.

He lived on the third floor of a five-story building, one of several mostly-identical complexes along a country road south of the city. There were only three rooms, a kitchen and living area and two bedrooms, the second of which was so full of clutter she could barely get in: trash bags full of clothing, boxes of books, a broken chair and somebody’s ancient vinyl record collection. Kemal hurried to clear a path to the bed, which had a very dusty comforter on it, explaining (if she understood him right) that his daughter did not have room for all her things in her husband’s new place.

He sounded very embarrassed, and she helped him haul the junk out into the living area without comment. By the time they were done, the air was about half dust and the rest of the apartment was almost as impossible to navigate as the room had been. They passed a relatively pleasant few moments out in the corridor, convulsively sneezing and wiping their eyes. Eventually, however, he ushered her inside, got her a cup of tea, they squeezed into the remaining space on the couch (at opposite ends, since she was a lady) and Nadia had to face the daunting task of a real conversation. It wasn’t quite ten o’clock in the morning, and Kemal had nowhere in particular to go.

Neither of them knew where to begin, but he had at least given up on simple fishing for information. Instead she learned—very slowly, as each of them fumbled for words the other understood—that Kemal had been a dockworker who worked his way up to supervisor before retiring, that his wife died eight years ago, and that his surviving daughter had been a schoolteacher but stayed home after marrying and becoming pregnant with his first grandchild, a boy. She planned to return to work after he was born.

“I was not happy, at first, when she worked. I did not think it was good for a girl to leave her home. But I saw how happy she was, how good with the children.” He looked at Nadia intently as he said it. “I cannot imagine these other men, other families, who threaten their daughters.”

“That did not happen to me,” Nadia told him, after translating ‘threaten.’ She decided to tell what she could of the truth, to stop him from getting worked up enough to contact the police. “My brother and I left Kazakhstan several years ago. We were taken by a bad man, who kept us and used us for a long time. He made us do work for him,” she added quickly, when his jaw dropped. She might pass for older than twelve, being tall, but not by much.

“A month ago he grew angry at me for trying to get help, and tried to kill me. I killed him first, then ran away with my brother. Other bad men found us on the road, and tried to use us the same way. I escaped. My brother did not. I do not know where he is.”

“A terrible story,” Kemal said, but his face was guarded. “Can you tell me where these men are, who have your brother?”

“They were in Ankara, when the attack happened.” Ankara had millions of people. It would not be dangerous to say that much. “I think they will have moved on by now.”

“Hmm.” Human trafficking was a real problem in Turkey—the whole region, really—so her story was believable. “Where would you want to go, if you could? Back to Kazakhstan, to your parents?”

“My parents are dead. I would like to find my brother.”

“Of course.” He looked out his window. It was a bit grubby; Nadia got the impression he didn’t get much cleaning done. “There were people who take care of children like you. I think they will be … too busy now. You understand?”

Nadia looked up the word. “Ezilmiş.”

“Yes. Overwhelmed. We are all overwhelmed, now.” He got up again, went into the kitchen, and came back with a plate of biscuits to go with their tea. “Are you overwhelmed, Fatima?”

“I am all right now, thank you. What will happen to Trabzon, and the army?”

He sipped at his tea. “What will happen to anyone? I do not think there is a real government left. If there is, it does not work anymore. Worse than before. You were at the capital, you say? Did you see what happened?”

“I did not see much,” she answered truthfully. “I know the national security building was destroyed, and the president’s house. I left the city after that. I do not know what else happened.” She had heard stories along the way, but her Turkish was not good enough to understand everything, and they could not all have been true.

Kemal closed his eyes and shook his head. “Terrible. These monsters must be punished. But I do not think they will be soon. Our government could not get them out of Fatih in eight months with America’s help. How will they get more of them out of Ankara?”

“Do you think they will come here?” She blurted the question out, then realized it was foolish. How would this old man know?

“They do not need to. The army is bad enough, I hear. Dogs running wild, with their master dead.”

“What are they doing?”

“I have told you enough of that already,” he sternly informed her. “Maybe too much. You are a lady. These things are not good for you to hear.” Nadia sank back into the cushions and nodded to show her submission. Kemal sighed. “I do not know what we will do with you. You can stay, for a time, but it is dangerous. I am fifty-seven years old. I have seen bad times before, though not this bad. It will get worse, before it gets better. This region is all hills, few farms. Soon trucks will not move on the roads, ships will not land. When the dogs run wild, the food runs short.”

He looked so pathetic as he said it that she wanted to hug him, tell him she could help. He was still talking, glaring down at the box of records on his coffee table. “My grandson, my daughter’s boy, how will he grow up, in this world? Will he have food? Will there be work? Will the dogs come for him too, one day? Ask him to join the pack? Fah!” His tea splashed over the saucer as he set it down too hard.

“I will take care of you as I can, while I can,” he said. “It is a command. The Prophet himself—peace be upon him—was an orphan. Perhaps my daughter can help. If you truly have nowhere else to go, it is important to have a woman for kafalah. I will ask her. But ... I can make no promises.”

“It is enough,” Nadia told him. “Thank you.” There was no way she could stay with this man’s daughter, even if she was as nice as him. Which she probably was.

After a pause just long enough to be awkward, he got up again, and started rummaging in his fridge for lunch, though half the biscuits were still on the plate. They had cold lamb kofte on bread; both sandwiches were small, but he gave her the larger of the two, and glared at her when she protested. There was more tea to go with it. They were soon finished, and made a brief attempt at idle chit-chat about things like the weather before the muezzin’s cry sounded outside.

Kemal at once made his way to the sink, washing hands and face and the tops of his shoes with the familiarity of long practice; he left the sink full for her, but did not look surprised or offended when she stayed put. She did at least stand up—it felt more respectful—while he rolled out his prayer rug, and discreetly crossed herself while he was bowing and kneeling in the other direction. After five minutes of prayer, he got a book from his shelf and sat down again to read it, saying nothing of her behavior.

“I am sorry,” he said after a moment. “I do not have a television. Help yourself to any of my books, please.”

And she did, though she didn’t read Turkish much better than she spoke it. Trying to puzzle out a mystery novel was still good practice, and she needed something to do. She kept at it, hoping Kemal would drift off to sleep as he read and pondering what she could do if he did. It was obviously past time for her to begin paying her penance, but Trabzon was a big enough city that she had little hope of simply stumbling across a situation where Ézarine could help.

It did not matter, in the event; after a couple of hours’ silent reading the old man snapped his book shut and returned it to the shelf. “Come. It is cuma.”

“Friday? Yes, but … oh!” Friday. Communal prayers at a mosque. And he could not leave a girl he had barely met alone in his apartment.

Kemal gave her a sad smile. “Do not worry. You, my Kazakh cousin, have been away from God for many years. Angry, upset. You understand?”

“Lapsed?” she said in Kazakh.

“I do not know that word, but maybe. You come to watch, not to do. They will understand.”

“You should not have to lie for me in your god’s house!”

“Nyet, I should not,” he said, so simply that it took her a second to catch it. “But lā ik'rāha fi l-dīni, and we cannot risk your safety. This area is unhappy, and tempers are hot. I will say as little as I may, and they will understand what they like. Now, come … Fatima. We must drive, and I cannot be late.”

It was not a very long drive, and she passed the time wondering what he thought he was going to do with her in the long term. He seemed so resolute, like he had come to a decision quickly and then moved on, with no regrets. That frightened her, though she could not say why. He really didn’t seem to mean her any harm.

The mosque was a modest white structure in the country; the call to prayer sounded from its minaret as they drove up. There were already several people present inside, many of them older. Nadia was not the only newcomer, it seemed. Several other young people had to be introduced to the mostly older regulars. One of the visitors was a man in uniform; the other congregants (if that was the word for them) shied away from him, though he was not armed. Nadia went to the back of the raised women’s gallery in the rear of the mosque, and waited.

The service lasted a little less than an hour, and was mostly the preacher reciting a sermon in a mix of Turkish and Arabic. For some reason he sat down and said nothing for a short time in the middle of it. The actual prayers came at the very end, and Nadia spent them pressed up against the rear wall, feeling intensely out of place and wondering how she was expected to continue like this with Kemal or his daughter. Once it was over, the whole crowd retreated to another room to talk over coffee and tea. Kemal was inclined to haul her away before they could get into any trouble, but she heard the start of a promising discussion, and stood her ground.

It was not as if it was very dangerous; everyone seemed to be very involved in conversation, and did not even notice the shabby-looking foreign girl standing behind them to listen. Something about soldiers—the young man in uniform had promptly disappeared at the end of the prayers—and a fight, maybe? She wished she’d had more time to practice her Turkish. They spoke very quickly and quietly.

Kemal, sensing her intentions, waved his hand for her to come and get in the car, but she raised a finger: one moment. He frowned, hands on hips, but did not make a scene by trying to haul her off.

A little clump of women had gathered to one side of the room. One of them had just started crying. Nadia drifted closer, ignoring Kemal’s tapping foot. The crying woman looked about twenty or twenty-five, conservatively dressed with a scarf around her head and neck so you could only see her face (when it wasn’t buried in her hands). She had a marked accent and was even harder than the others to understand, but it had something to do with her husband. He was gone, taken. He was not a Turk, but not Kurdish either; it sounded like they were Circassians.

If Nadia remembered her old lessons right, Imperial Russia had driven the Circassians from their home in the Caucasus back in the nineteenth century; they would have no reason to side with Russia that she could see, and had nothing to do with Kurds. But her husband had a strange accent and complained yesterday about something the soldiers were doing, so away he went to lockup. Supposedly.

The other women crowded around the girl, trying to think of words to comfort her and obviously coming up short. Nadia cut through the feeble murmurs with a question: “Where did they take him?” As one, the women turned to stare at her, not at all approvingly, but she repeated the question in a louder voice, adding, “Could you perhaps visit him?”

From the looks on the women’s faces, that was a stupid question, but the girl said, through snuffles, that she had tried, this morning. There was a prison in the city, not a very large one, and as far as she knew anyone they rounded up went there. But they would not let anyone else get close, or even confirm that he was there.

She was just asking where the prison was inside the city when Kemal lost patience and yanked her away by the arm. “This is not an intelligent way to behave,” he growled from the side of his mouth as he hustled her out the door. “Nor grateful. I am trying to keep you alive, and you make a fool of me.”

“Some things are more important than just living,” she shot back at him, annoyed. She had enough self-control to wait until they were out of sight before reclaiming her arm.

“Why does this matter to you?” he said, ignoring her. “Why must you know what they do? You do not need to know. It is better not to know. The world is ugly enough, and you look for more that is ugly. How are you better off?”

She studied his face. He was annoyed, deeply so, and a little frightened, but not mistrustful. He still did not mean her harm. If he was going to try and get something out of her, or use her for something, he should have started asking by now, but he hadn’t. Which made him the best man she had met in three years. As good as Gulya. She was unlikely to meet any better. “If I told you there was a way to help that woman’s husband, would you want to be a part of it?”

“If the way was righteous, and lawful for a God-fearing man? Of course. But you are a girl, a child!”

That decided her. “Then take me back to the place where you found me. I left something behind there, something I have to show you. You will understand everything much better once you have seen it. Then there will be no more secrets. I promise.” Only a bit of it was false, and she could not tell the truth and expect to be believed.

He still looked worried, and grumbled about the price of gas, but she could tell he was curious, and again she held her ground. After a minute’s consideration, he agreed. They drove back in silence, a good deal faster than they had come. Nadia felt like she was passing between worlds, riding into the hills with this old man. Leaving the dangers of humanity behind them. But there was a different kind of danger ahead.

She helped him up the long stairs, letting him lean on her arm like she was his actual cousin. He didn’t need a lot of help, but it was his second trip up those stairs in one day, and he wasn’t young. Still, his heart was strong. He would need that.

When they stood together inside the inner court of Sumela, she said, “I’m going to show it to you now. It might frighten you. If you see it, and decide you don’t want anything to do with me any more, I will let you go. I will have to move on from this hiding place, but it’s far enough away from anyone else that I’ll have a head start.”

“I did not agree to do anything immoral,” he protested.

“I don’t think it’s immoral,” she told him. “It’s just complicated. I couldn’t explain it. I had to bring you here.” Where there were no other humans around.

His jaw was clenched. “I know you have secrets, cousin Fatima. I have not betrayed you yet. Show me, please.”

She called Ézarine the old way, without the wall, so the keystone sequence had time to play out instead of hitting him like a hammer. She was only there for a moment, long enough for Kemal to see the shining figure of a mostly-nude woman and instinctively turn his face away, abashed and offended by this shameful breach in decorum. He could hardly feel anything else until Nadia dismissed her familiar. Then she did, and he understood what he had seen. Then she had to lunge to grab him before he toppled over backwards and hit his head on the hard ground.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It was the only way. You deserved to know the truth.”

He turned his head back to stare at her face—if you could call it staring. His eyes didn’t seem to focus on her correctly; they ran over and around her features as if they were an abstract painting, or a puzzle with the pieces out of order. Trying to make sense of an absurdity. She gave him all the time he needed. She had nowhere else to go, and the sun would not set for at least an hour.

Gradually the color returned to his face, and after clearing his throat several times he worked up the courage to ask one question: “Who are you?”

She answered much more easily. “My name is Nadezhda.”