The Few

he couldn’t entirely shut down his past, especially his history as an ex-con. Regaip hadn’t taken a shine to prison, just like he hadn’t taken a shine to the security cabin at the entrance to Ubeydullah’s furniture factory he was confined to his first three months in London. He could hardly breathe in there. So one morning he left home with the other security guards, just as if they were going to work. But instead they went straight down to the underworld as if running to a newfound freedom. He’d never learned the fundamentals of English grammar but Regaip quickly formed his own gang because he knew the rules in the underworld. They were called the Fighting Wolves, a group formed with the children of relatives from Yatırca. The first few weeks Ubeydullah and Bezir tried to hunt Regaip, but they knew he was a forest ranger and this time wasn’t just hiding out in the mountains. He was in London. It was futile tracking down a ranger in a city like London. They’d never find him. So there was only one thing left to do. Ubeydullah took the matter into his own hands: he put a curse on the man, and not a small one at that.

So many years in prison and now holed up in his house in Chelsea with nothing to do but stare at the walls and curse his fate, Regaip stayed in command of the Fighting Wolves and he had no qualms investing his earnings in cocaine. “If I can’t go out into the world, I’ll bring the world to me,” he’d say before taking a blow. The coke made him say, “God is great, but fuck his decrees.” In his drug world, he met the people who’d shot their own brother, who’d strangled their wife. People who didn’t even know their own children. The drug world turned people against each other. Heroin addicts didn’t give a damn about anyone else in the world. They themselves were the centers of the universe and they found as many reasons as there were planets to justify their actions. “May God save them,” Regaip used to say. But he didn’t say it any more. Hadn’t said it for five months. In fact, he’d been cooped up like this for the last five years. He no longer had a brother or a wife, so his tragedy now was not recognizing his own child. He had no idea that his daughter had been living the life of a retired trade attaché since he saw her last. He could hardly even remember what she looked like.

He let go of Derdâ’s leather jacket and walked into the living room, muttering to himself in Turkish.

“How would a stupid egghead like you even know if you were being followed?”

Derdâ stepped into the apartment and then stopped, holding the envelope, waiting. Regaip called out to her from the living room.

“Come here!”

Derdâ was reluctant to go into the living room. All she wanted to do was deliver the envelope and leave. Regaip stood scratching his forehead with the barrel of his gun. The room was empty except for a television and a sofa. He pointed to the sofa with the gun.

“Sit.”

Derdâ handed him the envelope.

“This is for you …”

Regaip trained the gun at Derdâ’s face.

“I said sit.”

Derdâ’s felt sick. The poverty and deprivation she had endured in her short life, the weed she had just smoked with the Jamaicans, and the sight of her armed father after so many years. It was all too much to bear.

Her voice quivered, “I just came to drop off this envelope … please …”

Regaip stepped forward and grabbed Derdâ’s ears. She didn’t have any hair to grab. The pain was so great she bent over and nearly collapsed on the sofa. There was no way out. Regaip released her and she grabbed her ears as if to regain balance. It felt like he’d torn them off. He’d only pulled them the way any other father would have done. He scolded like a father, too.

“If I tell you to do something, you do it. If I tell you to sit down, you sit down. If I say stand up, you stand up. Now listen to me. Listen. Listen carefully. Take off your clothes.”

Tears welled up in Derdâ’s eyes. She shouted in Turkish this time, silencing Regaip.

“I’m Derdâ. Derdâ. Your daughter! I’m your daughter!”

For a moment, Regaip froze. A moment later, his body went limp.

Then he screamed in Turkish: “How the hell do you know my mother’s name?”

And he struck Derdâ in the face with such force that he knocked her over, leaving her crumpled up on the sofa, hyperventilating like a wounded animal. Like a young dog about to die. Her mind was blank. She was looking through the wrong end of the telescope again.

“Don’t waste your time crying,” Regaip said. “I’ll fuck you either way. Isn’t that why you came? Didn’t that kid tell you? Timur …”

She gave up trying to convince her father who she was. Derdâ cried out through her tears, “Who’s Timur?”

“The bastard who goes by Black T,” Regaip said, laughing. “I asked him for a girl and he sends me you. But first give me that envelope.”

So Black T knows, she thought. He knows I killed his sister. He sent me here to get his revenge.

Until then Derdâ had kept a tight grip on the envelope. She stood up and threw it at Regaip’s face. It bounced off his shoulder and fell to the floor. Regaip smiled. He leaned over and picked it up. He opened it and pulled out a thick wad of cash. He counted it, his eyes flickering over the bills like a money-counter.

“Now strip. I don’t want any more trouble from you!”

And he slapped his daughter’s breasts, his bloodshot eyes smiling hungrily like gaping mouths.

“Or do you want a little something before? A little tetanus shot?”

“Dad,” Derdâ pleaded. “Dad, don’t you remember me? For God’s sake …”

He caught her by the ears