When they arrived in Çemendağ, they stopped at the Sheik Gazi clinic where they entrusted Derdâ to female doctors before performing their noon prayers in the small mosque in the clinic’s garden. Rising after his prayers, Ubeydullah said to Regaip, “That’s all we need from you now. You’ll go your own way, and we’ll go ours.” But Regaip had no intention of going anywhere.
“Take me with you!”
Ubeydullah had not expected this. He assumed he’d paid Regaip enough to satisfy him.
“Where?” he asked, surprised.
“To wherever you’re going.”
Hearing Regaip’s tone, Bezir took two quick steps forward. One sudden move and he could have broken Regaip’s arm, but he stopped when he felt Ubeydullah’s hand on his chest.
The old man fixed his gaze on Regaip and slowly intoned, “We have an agreement. We take the girl and go. And you stay.”
Steadying his eyes on Bezir, waiting for his father’s signal to attack, Regaip asked, “And if I go to the police?” He said the words slowly, calmly, but not as an obvious threat.
“What is it you want? Tell me!” Ubeydullah shouted, unable to restrain himself. He was tired from standing for so long; he leaned on Bezir’s shoulder for support. Negotiating was what he did best, but now his voice was trembling. Normally he could negotiate for anything and with anyone, with the devil, with God, with anyone.
“I’ll go with you and then I’ll disappear. That’s all. I don’t want anything else. Take me to England with you, and then I’ll go my own way.”
“You pay for your own ticket,” Ubeydullah interrupted. He was in no state to come up with any other way to silence him. He was tired and he was concerned about the health of a young girl he’d just bought for his son. He was worried about his factories, the ones he called his shops. He was worn out by this wretched man’s insistence and by the thought of having gone to such pains for his son. Now what, he thought. The swine will come with us and will surely cause us grief. Will I be dogged by this man until the girl comes of age? Should I give him a job? Maybe it would be better to keep him close, so I can keep track of him. But I won’t pay for his ticket! He’ll pay himself! God damn him. The sly bastard.
He stopped himself and said, “How do I know you won’t cause trouble? If you’re just going to cause trouble, then don’t come. You’ll never leave my sight and you’ll work for me, understood?”
“We’ll see.”
“What’s your line of work?” Ubeydullah asked.
“Don’t have one. I was a ranger in the government militia.”
Though a keen negotiator, Ubeydullah’s patience was at the limit. “What were you doing in Istanbul then?”
Regaip’s lips curled into a frozen smile and his tongue lashed like a razor between his teeth. “I killed people. When your men found me, I’d just been let out of jail.”
Killers did not intimidate Ubeydullah. When it came to sheer violence, there were hundreds of men around him who could outdo Regaip. Only thieves scared Ubeydullah. He didn’t hesitate a moment more.
“All right then,” he said. “You’ll be a bodyguard.”
“We’ll see,” Regaip said, deliberately aggravating the men even more. “Let’s just get there first and then we’ll see.”
Bezir’s right hand seized Regaip’s neck like a knife thrown at a target and yanked the man up into the air. Regaip could hardly breathe, struggling to balance on his toes. People in the clinic garden turned to look but when Ubeydullah shouted “Bezir!” he released Regaip’s neck as fast as he’d grabbed it.
Coughing, Regaip forced a smile and said, “You want to kill me? You wouldn’t kill your own father-in law, would you?”
Regaip insisted they all travel together so they couldn’t double-cross him. But when he couldn’t get a seat on their plane, they all had to travel the next day and Ubeydullah had to forfeit his tickets. The police kept close surveillance on Ubeydullah. Now they had an extra day to kill, so he told Bezir to drive them to a cemetery. There Ubeydullah recited verses from the Koran at the grave of Yakup Hodja Efendi, Sheik Gazi’s brother. Yakup had been nomadic just like his brother, moving from one place to another all his life, and was buried where he had died. There was a wooden fountain beside his tomb, so the whole thing looked like a small mausoleum. At least that was the intention. If they could have, they’d have made a tomb out of the man himself. Just the way it was with his brother.
Derdâ was tasked with pulling out all the weeds covering the grave. When the car pulled into the cemetery a boy about Derdâ’s age watched it drive down the cemetery’s lane. Now he approached them with two tanks of water.
“Shall I pour some water, uncle?”
Ubeydullah frowned at the boy and continued to loudly recite from the Koran before quickly falling off into his typical mumbling. But sensing that the boy wasn’t going to leave them alone, he lifted his head and signaled to the grave with his eyes.
The boy stepped toward the grave and carefully began to pour water over the grave where Derdâ had already cleared, watching the water seep into the soil. Derdâ angrily continued to pull out the weeds, and the boy poured water into the holes left in the earth. They moved in silence around the grave. There were other members of the Hikmet Tariqat who had come to the cemetery to visit the graves of their relatives and Bezir stood silently listening to their stories. Whatever it was they were telling him couldn’t have been very interesting because he kept looking around over his shoulders.
The
