Chapter 7
The two spectral figures mirrored Alexander and Banks’s movements down several streets.
The dim glow of lamps in doorways threw harsh shadows, obscuring the unlit and contorting what the light touched.
They’d strayed from the main thoroughfare of the market and now walked on a narrow street that was more an alley covered with tattered awnings.
Fewer hanut made their home there, but a dozen tanned faces turned to them as they passed, and dark eyes roved over them with interest.
Banks gave Alexander a sidelong glance and jerked his head toward a closed stall, and they stopped within its shallow cover.
Banks tapped a cigarette against his case and lit it.
Alexander glanced about the street casually, his eyes searching for the two women who’d followed them.
He spotted them huddled in the corner of a haphazardly arranged set of chairs in front of an elderly man with an urn, perhaps a makeshift tea stand.
They were speaking to a young man in a rumpled shirt that might have once been white.
His overlong hair was pushed back from a slim face raptly focused on the smaller of the two women.
A moment later, his eyes met Alexander’s.
An enormous smile spread across his face. He detached himself from his companions and made toward Alexander and Banks.
“Hello, my friends,” he said, but this appeared to be the extent of his English. He continued tentatively in Turkish, eagerly looking between the two of them to see their reaction.
Banks translated for Alexander. “He said welcome to his neighborhood, and asked if we were looking for hospitality.” He jerked his head at the two women lingering across the street.
“Ask if he’s seen them,” Alexander instructed, extracting a few coins from his pocket.
The young man accepted the money without hesitation as Banks asked his question. He must have given some signal to the women, for they drifted away into the darkness.
As the conversation between them progressed, Banks became more aggravated and the boy more reticent. The dark eyes of the boy lost their sheen of excitement and Alexander was quite sure whatever use this boy might have been would soon be lost.
“Behlul—that’s his name—says he might have seen some Westerners, three or four young men. He’s asking for more money,” Banks said, looking at the boy with distaste.
Behlul’s eyes darted between them again, smiling nervously, and he inched away as though he might run.
“Wait,” Alexander said.
Behlul paused with a hopeful grin. His teeth gleamed like his eyes, bright despite the darkness of the alley.
Alexander smiled at him and then at Banks as he said easily, “Tell him we also want to go where they went. Make it seem like we want to have a good time, not that we’re retrieving them.
He probably works for someone around here and will get in trouble for losing business if we burst through the doors demanding their customers. ”
Banks all but gaped at him. “We’re not actually going to follow this boy into some dark house where we’ll be robbed!”
“Tell him we want to find a place to come during our lengthy stay in Smyrna and I’m paying double tonight if I’m pleased. Returning customers have to be worth more.”
Banks pinched the bridge of his nose. “ ‘Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing, it is always from the noblest motives.’ Very well. Let’s be stupidly noble.”
Behlul’s wide grin grew as he nodded several times to Banks’s words. He said something that sounded agreeable and beckoned them to follow him down another alley. Alexander and Banks followed, Banks looking frequently over his shoulder as they went.
Through a flurry of shadowed alleys, they followed the boy until they came to a house whose lit windows were glaringly bright after the sleeping market. It stood apart from the rows of buildings, a house by itself rather than a flat. From it emanated the sounds of conversation and music.
Behlul knocked on the door and they were admitted by a handsome older woman, her tanned face set with lines.
She nodded at Behlul with approval and beckoned them inside.
They followed Behlul through a hallway and a large sitting room arranged with a dozen low tables populated with men, dressed traditionally in robes or suits and fezzes, better attired than the men in the alleyway.
Through a doorway, Alexander could see a cluster of women in similarly mixed dress sitting together at a table with tea glasses, chatting.
The place was modestly but tastefully decorated.
Several wooden tables held large contraptions with glass bottoms bubbling with aromatic steam.
Alexander watched as one guest serenely puffed on a long mouthpiece connected to it.
“That’s a nargile, a water pipe,” Banks said, following Alexander’s gaze. “But surely the assistants haven’t come all this way just for a water pipe.”
Alexander had heard of such a thing from Geoffrey Kent, who’d researched in Syria. He’d also heard that tobacco was not the only thing that could be smoked using a water pipe. A bad feeling crept over him as Behlul beckoned them from another doorway.
The next room was curtained with patterned cloth and more dimly lit.
Within, reposed on embroidered cushions with a bubbling nargile on a table between them, lay three young men in dinner jackets, smiling stupidly.
They started upon seeing Alexander and Banks glaring at them but broke into snorts and laughter a moment later.
Banks snatched one of them up by the jacket front and said, “You think it’s funny, do you? Being stashed away in some hash house with no one knowing where you are?”
He thrust the blinking man back into his cushion and glowered at the three of them. They were far gone; clearly, they’d not had just tobacco in their pipe.
“Banks, ask what this lot owe and let’s get out of there,” Alexander said. The sweet-scented lingering smoke was making him lightheaded.
Banks did so, but Behlul shook his head with a frown.
He was insisting as he spoke, gesturing to the intoxicated assistants and Alexander.
Banks translated, “He’s angry we want to leave since you said we’d be good customers.
He says he doesn’t want to get his boss, we’ll all be in trouble if he does. ”
Alexander cocked an eyebrow. “He’s made a threat? That’s rather bold.” Banks shrugged. “Let’s speak to his boss then. I’m sure he doesn’t want five guests of the government to go missing in his place of business.”
Alexander’s cool attitude toward meeting Behlul’s boss didn’t reflect the real anxiety simmering within him. There was no way of knowing if this boss would respect their status as guests of the government. It was a new government that no doubt had its detractors.
At the end of the hall, Behlul knocked and opened the door for them.
Alexander and Banks stepped into a well-lit room, blinking at the colorfully chaotic interior.
It was made up like a study, something between an old-fashioned European library and a Turkish sitting room, with art plastering the walls and lamps on every surface.
The furniture, far too much for the small room, was also mixed, some of it clearly high quality, but most of it inexpertly repaired such that even Alexander could see the uneven rendering of the legs and imperfect staining of the wood.
He was so lost in the decor, he barely noticed a wizen man among the cluttered tables and bookshelves, sitting on one of a series of cushions making up a sort of low couch on the floor.
His face was a maze of wrinkles, and he wore a well-tailored Western suit with a burgundy fez on his head.
He squinted up at them and took on a cross look as he spoke sharply to Behlul.
His main feature was a generous mouth, which in its current state of displeasure was puckered into something like a pout.
The two Turks spoke for some time, Banks interjecting at one point with irritation.
Alexander let his eyes stray from the interaction to a document on the table before the old man.
On a table layered with papers of Arabic characters—for written Turkish used that language’s characters—it immediately caught his eye.
It was a shipping manifest, but one written in Greek.
The man must have seen him looking, for he surprised Alexander with the sudden change to the same language. “You are Greek, boy?”
Expression as neutral as possible, Alexander replied in kind. “I studied it.”
The old man frowned, his wrinkles deepening and his mouth growing more trout-like. “You insult me, boy. Am I not descended from your same ancestor? Here, we are all from the same family.”
Alexander smiled slightly at this statement, and the man’s accent. He might speak Greek, but he was certainly not from there. He would have been cast out, if he had. “There are few in this city who would agree with you.”
The old man huffed. “The city has turned itself anew. Half the population has been killed, exiled, or fled. Who is left? Turks, now poor and beaten down. I would have kept the Greeks. They have better merchandise.”
“Indeed,” Alexander said shortly. “I asked to speak with you regarding our friends who partook of your hospitality. I wish to settle whatever they owe.”
The old man shifted slightly in his seat. “We do not do business in a rush. We are civil, for our behavior determines what treatment we receive in return, eh?”
Considering the man had immediately set to arguing with his young employee rather than introduce himself to the newcomers or offer a seat, Alexander took that to mean that, despite his statement of civility, he and Banks were on thin ice.
“Havadan sudan konusmak,” the old man said, then in English, “We sit, we drink tea, and we discuss the weather and the crops in the way of our grandfathers.” The older man spoke the Turkish word for tea to Behlul, who scampered away, closing the door behind him. He gestured to the table before him.
Alexander resisted the urge to immediately sit, as he would have done if one of his uncles had waved a hand at him like that.
Taking care to look regretful, he said, “I must ask your forgiveness and insist we be allowed to pay our friends’ debts and collect them.
We are scholars invited to study the agora. Our work begins tomorrow.”
The old man scrutinized him for a long moment, then shrugged. “Tell me your residence, and my man will drive you there.”
Banks’s lips parted, perhaps to refuse, but Alexander said quickly, “You are most generous, but our driver awaits us in the kemeralti.”
“You will return here to my tea house,” the old man said, lumbering to his feet. He was short and wide, prosperous-looking in his elegant suit. He offered his hand. “Insallah, it will be so. You tell your man to bring you back to the han of Ali Fethi Bey.”