People who run jails are all the same. When I was naked, he searched the inside of the clothes and the shoes. Next he looked in my mouth and ears with a flashlight. Then he took a rubber glove and a jar of petroleum jelly from the wall cabinet and searched my rectum. I have always deeply resented that indignity. Finally he took my fingerprints. He was very businesslike about it all; he even gave me a piece of toilet paper to wipe the ink off my hands before he told me to dress and go into the next cubicle. In there, was a camera, set up with photofloods and a fixed focus bar. When I had been photographed, I was taken along some corridors to a green wooden door with the word ISTIFHAM lettered on it in white paint. Istifham is a Turkish word I know; it means “interrogation.”
There was only one small screened and barred window in the room; the sun was beginning to set and it was already quite dark in there. As I went in, one of the guards followed me and switched on the light. His friend shut and locked the door from the outside. The guard who was to stay with me sat down on a bench against the wall and yawned noisily.
The room was about eighteen feet square. Off one corner there was a washroom with no door on it. Apart from the bench, the furniture consisted of a solid-looking table bolted to the floor and half a dozen chairs. On the wall was a telephone and a framed lithograph of Kemal Ataturk. The floor was covered with worn brown linoleum.
I got out my cigarettes and offered one to the guard. He shook his head and looked contemptuous, as if I had offered him an inadequate bribe. I shrugged and, putting the cigarette in my own mouth, made signs that I wanted a light. He shook his head again. I put the cigarette away and sat down at the table. I had to assume that at any moment now a representative of the Second Section would arrive and start questioning me. What I needed, very badly, was something to tell him.
It is always the same with interrogation. I remember my father trying to explain it to Mum one night, just before he was killed. It’s no good for a soldier who is up on a charge before his C.O. just telling the truth; he has to have something more, something fancy to go with it. If he got back to barracks half an hour after lights-out just because he’d had too much beer and missed the last bus, who cares about him? He’s simply a careless bloody fool-seven days confined to barracks, next case. But if, when he’s asked if he has anything to say, he can tell the tale so that the C.O. gets a bit of fun out of hearing it, things are different. He may be only admonished. My father said that there was a corporal in his old regiment who was so good at making up yarns for the orderly room that he used to sell them for half-a-crown apiece. They were known as “well-sirs.” My father bought a well-sir once when he was “crimed” for overstaying an evening pass. It went like this:
Well, sir, I was proceeding back along Cantonment Road towards the barracks in good time for lights-out and in a soldierly manner. Then, sir, just as I was passing the shopping arcade by Ordnance Avenue, I heard a woman scream. Pause. Well, sir, I stopped to listen and heard her scream again. There were also some confused cries. The sound was coming from one of the shops in the arcade, so I went to investigate. Pause again, then go on slowly. Well, sir, what I found was one of these Wogs-beg pardon, sir, a native-molesting a white woman in a doorway. I could see she was a lady, sir. Let that sink in a bit. Well, sir, the moment this lady saw me, she appealed to me for help. She said she’d been on her way home to her mother’s house, which was over on the other side of Artillery Park, when this native had attempted to-well, interfere with her. I told him to clear out. In reply, sir, he became abusive, calling me some very dirty names in his own lingo and using insulting language about the Regiment Take a deep breath. Well, sir, for the lady’s sake I managed to hold on to my temper. As a matter of fact, sir, I think the man must have been drunk or under the influence of drugs. He had sense enough to keep his distance, but the moment I escorted the lady out of the arcade I realized that he was following us. Just waiting for a chance to molest her again, sir. She knew it, too. I’ve never seen a lady more frightened, sir. When she appealed to me to escort her to her mother’s house, sir, I realized that it would make me late. But if I’d just gone on my way and something terrible had happened to her, I’d have never forgiven myself, sir. Stiffen up and look without blinking at the wall space over the C.O.’s head. No excuse to offer, sir, I’ll take my medicine. C.O. can’t think of anything to say except: “Don’t let it happen again.” Charge dismissed.
The only trouble is that, in the army, unless you are always making a damned nuisance of yourself, they would sooner give you the benefit of the doubt than not, because it’s easier for them that way. Besides, they know that even if you have made the whole thing up, at least they’ve had you sweating over it. The police are much more difficult. They don’t want you to have the benefit of any doubt. They want to start checking and double-checking your story, and getting witnesses and evidence, so that there is no doubt. “What was the lady’s name? Describe her. Exactly where was the house to which you escorted her? Was her mother in fact there? Did you see her? It takes twenty-two minutes to walk from the shopping arcade to the other side of Artillery Park, and a further thirty minutes to walk from there to the barracks. That makes fifty-two minutes. But you were two hours late getting in. Where did you spend the other hour and eight minutes? We have a witness who says that he saw you…” And so on. You can’t buy well-sirs good enough for the police for half-a-crown. Intelligence people are even worse. Nine times out of ten they don’t even have to worry about building up a case against you to go into court. They are the court- judge, jury, and prosecutor, all in one.
I did not know anything about this “Second Section” which the Commandant had mentioned; but it was not hard to guess what it was. The Turks have always been great borrowers of French words and phrases. The Ikinci Buro sounded to me like the Turkish counterpart of the Deuxieme Bureau. I wasn’t far wrong.
I think that if I were asked to single out one specific group of men, one type, one category, as being the most suspicious, unbelieving, unreasonable, petty, inhuman, sadistic, double-crossing set of bastards in any language, I would say without any hesitation: “the people who run counter-espionage departments.” With them, it is no use having just one story; and especially not a true story; they automatically disbelieve that. What you must have is a series of stories, so that when they knock the first one down you can bring out the second, and then, when they scrub that out, come up with a third. That way they think they are making progress and keep their hands off you, while you gradually find out the story they really want you to tell.
My position at Edirne was hopeless from the start. If I had known what was hidden in the car before the post Commandant had started questioning me, I wouldn’t have told him about Harper. I would have pretended to be stupid, or just refused to say anything. Then, later, when I had finally broken down and “told all,” they would have believed at least some of what I had said. As it was, I had told a story that happened to be true, but sounded as if I thought they were half-witted. You can imagine how I felt as I waited. With no room at all for maneuver, I knew that I must be in for a bad time.
The sun went down and the window turned black. It was very quiet. I could hear no sounds at all from other parts of the jail. Presumably, things were arranged so that there they could hear no sounds made in the interrogation room-screams, etc. When I had been there two hours, there were footsteps in the corridor outside, the door was unlocked, and a new guard came in with a tin bowl of mutton soup and a hunk of bread. He put these on the table in front of me, then nodded to his friend, who went out and relocked the door. The new man took his place on the bench.
There was no spoon. I dipped a piece of bread in the soup and tasted it. It was lukewarm and full of congealed fat. Even without my indigestion I could not have eaten it. Now, the smell alone made me want to throw up.
I looked at the guard. “Su?” I asked.
He motioned to the washroom. Evidently, if I wanted water I would have to drink from the tap. I did not relish the idea. Indigestion was bad enough; I did not want dysentery, too. I made myself eat some of the bread and then took out my cigarettes again in the hope that the new man might be ready to give me a match. He shook his head. I pointed to a plastic ash tray on the table to remind him that smoking was not necessarily prohibited. He still shook his head.
A little before nine, a twin-engined plane flew over the jail and then circled as if on a landing pattern. The sound seemed to mean something to the guard. He looked at his watch, and then absently ran his hand down the front of his tunic as if to make sure that the buttons were all done up.
More to break the interminable silence in the room than because I wanted to know, I asked: “Is there a big airport at Edirne?”
I spoke in French, but it meant nothing to him. I made signs, which he misunderstood.
“Askeri ucak,” he said briefly.
An army plane. That concluded that conversation; but I noticed that he kept glancing at his watch now. Probably, I thought, it was time for his relief and he was becoming impatient.
Twenty minutes later there was the distant sound of a car door slamming. The guard heard it, too, and
