“The man has no god.”
“Absolutely.”
“So what exactly are you going to do?”
“Give him the go-ahead, I’ll go under his orders. Let’s see what he’s up to.”
“Good idea,” Hıdır Arif had said. “But we can’t let my father find out. He absolutely cannot find out that you are going after that bastard.”
“You just play it cool. I’ll find some excuse. I’ll say, may God forgive it, I’m going to take a look at operations abroad.”
Tayyar hung up the phone and picked it up again. This time he called Gido.
“Yes, Brother Tayyar!”
“Forgive me, brother. Brother, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“Go ahead.”
“This Hıdır Arif has double-crossed me so bad, if my father weren’t in the middle of it I’d strangle him. And I’m saying, I don’t want this whole thing to blow up. If you arrange some things in Istanbul for me … if I could leave this to you.”
“Of course, Tayyar, think nothing of it. It’s a good thought,” Gido Agha had said.
Then, lastly, Tayyar called Steven. For the British residence permit that he’d been promised in exchange for services provided to MI6. Steven had had told him, “Not to worry, we’ll have it sorted in no time at all.” But that no time at all got longer and longer. In that ever-lengthening period of time, Tayyar had left the Hikmet organization, liberated himself from his beard and robe, and had manipulated both Hıdır Arif and Gido Agha into thinking that the other was an informant. But then he started to get himself into trouble. Because both Hıdır Arif and Gido Agha got wise to the situation, and when it got to that point, Tayyar’s judo skills were not going to be much use to him. And, seeing how Sheik Gazi had appointed one of his own sons as his successor anyway, the others started to distance themselves from Tayyar. That meant the old man knew something. Maybe when he told Tayyar he wouldn’t cry again, what he meant to say was, “You’re not going to cry again, because you’re going to make others cry.” And no one wants a man around who’s going to make them cry.
Tayyar, first sliding out from beneath their rules, and then being sidelined by the clan and from the order, invested all the money he’d gotten from the MI6 into all sorts of criminal activities he’d always thought about doing. One of these was the illegal printing press printing pirated books that Derda did the hauling for. And, to protect that business, he invested in having Hanif the Trashman killed.
How could Tayyar have known? That a kid he’d seen years before for half an hour at most would be the one who, thousands of days later, would kill him within another half an hour?
How could Derda have known? That by killing Tayyar, he took revenge not only for himself, but for everyone?
How could Israfil have known? That he should never have brought Tayyar and Derda together?
How could Hanif the Trashman have known? That because of Derda, he was still alive?
How could mankind have known the results of existing?
And to all the same answer: They couldn’t have known.
Maybe that’s why life can go on. Because no one can know in advance just what it was all about. If a person could foresee all the outcomes of all his actions, surely he’d stop living right then and there. He’d stop himself from living, he’d stop life. In horror. In fear of committing any action while his heart was still beating. For the stark end result of every action is pain, and if women and men really knew this, maybe they wouldn’t perpetuate the human race. But maybe it’s worse than that. Maybe they do know and still they continue. But in the end, he was a human being, and it was his nature to cling onto life. He would have done anything for life. If necessary he’d abandon his mother’s corpse in the maternity ward, he’d even go forth into the world still bonded to a twin, because at least he’d still be alive.
Derda wasn’t eleven years old anymore. He didn’t have to cut up bodies anymore to be able to carry them. It wasn’t easy, but he managed to drag first Tayyar then Israfil to the bottom of the sand dune. He went through all the pockets of both men. He found a packet of money, a revolver, a box of shells. If he had known how to drive, he would have taken the keys to the Mercedes off Israfil, but he didn’t, so he didn’t.
On his second trip circling around the house he found a shovel, and returning to the recently departed, he started churning up the sand that was turning into mud in the increasing rain. Within a few minutes, there was no dead man left lying. Maybe it wasn’t in the soil of the earth, but at least they had been buried somewhere.
He went back into the house and shut the door behind him. As long as it rained, he had to wait inside. First he went into the large living room. He stepped onto the staircase rising from beside the far wall. When he arrived on the second floor, he walked down the corridor and turned the doorknob of the first door he came to. He entered a room with a double bed and, above it, a large photograph. A black and white photograph inside a gilded
