(For Part IX click here)

The Grand Bazaar of Istanbul is the one of the few tourist destinations in the world that attracts more locals than foreigners.  Close your eyes and it’s a time warp back to the days of Ali Baba — and behind her sunglasses, Madison had her eyes closed.  She was seriously hungover, and culture shock had finally caught up with her.  Overwhelmed, she just wanted to go back to the hotel and sleep.  Unfortunately, they had played hide-and-seek with Kemal’s personal assistant, Zehra (who had another marathon tourist day planned) all morning, and they’d barely escaped.  So now Madison sat with a plate of food that was making her sick and a vicious headache.  Plus, Sylvia had been particularly distant and insistent all morning.   Everything sucked, and Madison just wanted to go home.

“Well, hi!  Imagine running into you guys here.” The voice was North American loud but mostly lost in the noise of the market.

“Look, Emily.  It’s Sylvia and Madison.  What are you two doing in Istanbul?”

Before anyone could answer, the man sat down and in a much quieter voice said, “Emily, why don’t you take Madison shopping and … stay where I can see you.”

Emily practically pulled Madison out of her chair and was moving her through the crowd when Madison reacted.

“What the hell are you doing?”

Emily stopped.

“Sinclair has some business to discuss with your grandmother, and from what I understand, we don’t want to hear it.  Okay.  So let’s just …”

“You know Sylvia?”

“Only by reputation.  She’s a bit of a legend around here.”

“Yeah, so everybody keeps telling me,” Madison said sarcastically.

Emily laughed.

“Whatever!  But where I come from, anyone who jumps from a moving train — with a Soviet guard in a headlock to break her fall — is legendary.  That’s serious stuff, little girl.  Believe me, I know a little bit about dealing with the Russians.”  Emily fluttered her left hand.  It was missing the ring finger.

Madison wondered what but didn’t ask.

“It was a business deal.  Sinclair got what he wanted, and I lost a finger.”

“God, is anybody normal around here?” Madison thought.

“Ms. Harrow, my name is Dreyfus Sinclair.”

Dreyfus Sinclair looked like a college professor who needed some sleep and a haircut.

“Sylvia, please.”

“We need to make this brief.  Right now, we’re just a couple of expats who ran into each other by chance.  Let’s keep it quick and simple.  I have the person you’re looking for, or at least I will very soon.  How are you getting out of the country?”

“You talked to Karga?”

“For our purposes, Ms. Harrow, I’ve never heard of him.  What’s your plan to get out of the country?”

Suddenly, this was business.

“I’ve got passports and a car waiting just inside the Bulgarian border.  We drive across and either …”

Sinclair put his hand in the air.

“Since the refugees, the border is a lot tighter than it used to be, and there’s no way of knowing who those guys are working for.”

“I know the roads.  There are a lot of ways for silly women to get into Bulgaria without having their passports stamped.”

“Do you know them in the dark?”

Sylvia nodded.

“And when can you be ready to go?”

“Right now.  All I need is time to rent a car.”

“Don’t.  I’ve rented one for you.”  Dreyfus reached into to his pocket and handed her a key.

“Walk straight that way until you get to the street and press the fob.  It’s exactly the same as mine, so when we make the switch, you’ll know what to look for.  Do you know the Mall of Istanbul?”

“The big one right on the highway?  I can find it.”

“Okay, I’ll meet you there tonight at the main entrance, front and centre, just after dark.  Nine o’clock.  They’ll be lots of tourists, so nobody’s going to notice a couple more.  And I doubt if anybody’s going to think of checking the CCTV at a shopping mall.  We make the switch, and you head for the border.  And don’t stop.  Once the Albanians figure out what’s going on, they’re going to make life very unpleasant around here.  You need to be as far away as possible.  I’m going to use my car as the decoy.  I’ll leave it someplace conspicuous — that should slow them down for a while but not forever.  They’re going to start checking, and unfortunately you’re already on everybody’s radar.  So, if you can, don’t go back to the hotel, and stay away from your Turkish friends.  That’s the first place they’ll look.”

Sylvia did a quick mental inventory of anything they may have left at the hotel.  There was nothing they couldn’t lose.

“Okay.  I need a place to stay out of sight today.  Maddy needs some sleep, and I have to make sure my people are in place.”

“Do you know Salema’s?”

“No.”

“Uh – it used to be – uh — Ev Nabil?”

“Yeah, I know it.  Yeah, that’ll work.”

“Okay, I’ll see you at nine – Mall of Istanbul — and if I’m not there by nine thirty, clear out and run for the border because everything’s gone sideways.”

Dreyfus started to get up.

“Thank you,” Sylvia said sincerely, “I – uh – I wasn’t sure I’d be able to do this.”

Dreyfus laughed, “No worries.  From what I hear, you used to do this stuff in your sleep.  I’ll send Madison back in a minute,” and then louder, “No problem.  Your hotel tomorrow night for dinner.  ‘Til then.”

When Madison came back, they paid the bill and found the car, a black Toyota Rav4 with tinted windows.  Madison had more than a little trouble with the wild Istanbul traffic, and they got lost once, but they finally found Salema’s and got a room – by the hour, no questions asked.

“This place smells!”

“Try and get some sleep, Maddy.  It’s going to be a long night.”

Just before nine, Sylvia and Madison drove up to the main entrance of the Mall of Istanbul.  They eventually found a parking spot that gave them a good view and sat back to wait.  At nine ten, a black Toyota Rav4 with tinted windows pulled into the passenger pickup area.  Dreyfus Sinclair got out.  Sylvia saw him, got out of the car and walked towards him.  Dreyfus stayed with his vehicle and didn’t move– even after he saw Sylvia walking.  She dodged across the traffic and held her hands out as a question.

“We’ve got problems.  The Albanians are right behind me, maybe 20 minutes, half an hour.  And you wanted one girl,” Dreyfus exhaled, “I’ve got five.”

(For Part VIII click here)

Somewhere around one in the morning, Karga decided that Madison’s attentive young man was getting a little too attentive and sent him home.  After that, people began switching from raki to coffee and, with it, bowls of Turkish Dondurma ice cream, made from wild orchids.  The party was winding down.  There was no more dancing and the music was slower, sadder — like the stories, tinged with politics and tragedy.  A little later, Taavi came back and Karga and several of the older men went out onto the balcony.  Too shy to approach Sahin in person, most of the young people stayed at their own table, and Madison and Sylvia were pretty much left alone.

“I’ve never seen you dance before,” Madison said. “That was like totally hot.”

It was clear that Madison had been drinking.

“Not bad for an old lady, huh?”

“Did you really have a boat?”

“Umhum, it was a beautiful old sailing ship.  I lived on it for a while.”

“Until the Russians blew it up.”

“Yeah, until the Russians blew it up,” Sylvia laughed.

“Weren’t you scared?  Like, I’d be totally petrified if somebody tried to blow me up.”

“I don’t really remember.  I guess I didn’t think about it at the time.  There were just too many things happening for us to worry about being scared.”

“How come nobody knows about all this, like, in the family?”

“Well, dear, it’s not something you bring up around the dinner table.  ‘Pass the pepper and, oh, by the way, I used to smuggle cigarettes and whiskey into the Soviet Union.’  Come on, Maddy!  Can you imagine your mother?”

Madison laughed loud enough to ripple the conversation at the other table.

“That’s too good.  She’s always going on about how me and Sara should experience life and get out there and do things and not get saddled with a husband and a bunch of kids.”

“Like she did?”

“Like you did.”

“Oh.”

“No, no! I didn’t mean it like that.  She loves you, like, lots.  It’s just that’s she’s always talkin’ about how you never do anything without Poppa, and if it wasn’t for him, you might as well be in a convent.  I’d love to see the look on her face if she knew what we were doing right now.”

“You can’t breathe a word about this, Maddy.  This has got to be our secret.”

“Yeah, yeah, totally.  But it would be funny.”  Madison stopped laughing, “Does Poppa know?”

Sylvia exhaled and reached for her glass.  She took a small sip.

“No-o-ot really.  I always meant to tell him, but it never seemed to be the right time.  And then, over the years, it just got to be embarrassing.  Your Poppa’s a wonderful man, but how many men want to hear that their wives used to run with Turkish gangsters?”

Madison thought about that for a few seconds.   She looked around the room, smelled the hot coffee flavour in the air and heard the music in the background, sweet and melancholy.

“Were you and Karga in a relationship?” she asked.

“You mean were we sleeping together?  No, dear, we never did.  He was married, and I was young and foolish.  And, before you ask, I never slept with Teddy or Freddy either.”

“Oh, I thought they were gay.”

“Hmm, I never thought about it, but from what I remember, they probably had their innings.  But let’s not talk about them right now. Teddy and Freddy aren’t a topic of conversation around here.”

“They stole Karga’s money, didn’t they?  What would he do to them?”

“He’d kill them, dear.”

Madison saw the serious cloud cross Sylvia’s face, and she looked out at the men talking on the balcony.  They might dance and laugh and tell funny stories, but these were dangerous men, and Sylvia had been part of that world.  She looked across the table for some sort of reassurance, and Sylvia seem to read her mind and said, “They’ll be back in a minute.  Let’s get some coffee.  I know you don’t drink it, but try it.  It’ll be a new experience for you.”

Madison relaxed a little bit.

“Tell me about your boat,” Madison said.

And Sylvia told her the story of the Sahin, silently slipping under the Soviet radar, quiet as a deer, her hold full of capitalist plunder.  Then, waiting nervously off the beach, watching the dark horizons for patrol boat silhouettes, while Ukrainian fishermen unloaded their loot.  And then, the last hatch closed, turning into the morning wind and full sail running for home.

“Then the bastard Spetsnaz turned her into firewood,” Sylvia said, her words harsh and bitter.

The big glass door opened, and Karga and the men came back into the room.  The men started gathering up their various people and Karga walked over to Sylvia and Madison.

“We have to go Sahinim.  There are many things we have to do.  Do you remember Havuzlu in the Bazaar?

“Yes, I remember it.”

“You need to go there tomorrow, for lunch, at one o’clock.”

Sylvia didn’t speak, but her face was full of questions.

“Someone will meet you there.  You can do this thing.”

(For Part VII click here)

When Sylvia and Karga came back to the party, Madison had already discovered the beauty of raki – talk and food and more talk and more food and … until everyone was either eating or speaking.  Plates of melon and feta, fava beans with garlic, Kofte meatballs laced with pistachios, chestnuts, tangerines, Pide bread with olive oil, and paper-thin pastry filled with meat and onions.  These were the tastes of the exotic Ottoman east since the days of the caravans.  The sights and smells and touch of sun-bright courtyards, mosaic-blue corridors, canopied pavilions and the beaded, curtained harem.  And the music wove through the air like erotic threads, searching for a tapestry that was just beyond hearing.  Sylvia remembered this – all of this — as if she’d fallen asleep for a few minutes and dreamed a whole different lifetime.  As if she were an amnesiac coming out of a coma.  As if … and she saw Madison, bright-eyed and oh-so-young, listening to an attentive young man explaining it all to her.  And she smiled, remembering her own young men – persistent and gallant.  She tucked her arm into Karga’s.

“Come dance with me.” She said.

At first, nobody noticed.  The music was low and slow, and Sylvia and Karga were alone by the windows.  Then a couple of people saw them and caught the attention of a few others, and there was a drum beat rhythm, and soon conversations began to fade.  And then there was a singer, a single female voice that swayed into the music like a thread of silver.  Sylvia moved her hips as if she was born to be there, her palms low and open and inviting, and Karga matched her movement, following her with his shoulders, his arms out so she could not escape.  And the lights of the city night behind them were shivering neon stars that surrounded them until they became lost celestial beings, alone in the heavens – dancing their eternities – but unable to touch.

It was the most sexual, sensual thing Madison had ever seen.  She could feel the deep, desperate ache of love.  The need of it, the want of it, the satin tightness in her stomach, the whisper hairs on the back of her neck and the humid velvet ….

“Oh.  My.  God!  That’s grandma!” Madison said out loud.

“Sahin,” replied Madison’s attentive young man, helpfully.

“It’s the song.”

Madison looked blank.

“The song,” he gestured to the music.

“They wrote it for her.  I’ll tell you.  It’s the story of a great Sultan who had a beautiful falcon, and they would hunt together in the summer mountains.  And he would feed her from his fist, and no other bird was as fearless as she was.  But one day, the falcon was taken from him, and his anger flared so fiercely it burned the clouds and scorched the sky.  But nothing he could do would bring her back to him.  So, over the years, his sadness grew, his tears filled the sea and no one ever saw him smile again.  Finally, he went back to the summer mountains to sit in the evening sun and wait for his falcon to return — because he knew, if she could, she would come back to him.”

And as Cenk (the attentive young man) told Madison the story, the music stopped and there were cheers and clapping, and then someone said “Tarkan!” and before Madison knew it, Cenk had pulled her out on the dance floor.  And she looked across and saw Sylvia, holding her dress up with one hand, her knees bent, her hips moving and her other hand waving in the air.

And they danced, and they drank, and they ate, and they talked.  Madison heard the story of the time Mehmet fell off the East Wall, running from the police …

“Two broken legs, and six months on crutches, but I can still dance.”

And he jumped up to prove it.

And the one about Sahin’s sailing ship that the Russians blew up in the harbour because they couldn’t catch it on the high seas.

And they ate some more and …

“Don’t eat that one, Maddy: it’s liver.”

… drank.

“No.  More water, or I won’t be able to walk out of here.”

And then there was the night they dressed up in stolen uniforms and raided the American airbase.  Three truckloads of Johnny Walker whiskey, sold to the Soviet’s 14^th Guards Army of the Ukraine – for American dollars – and they all laughed and laughed.

At some point, Karga took his son Taavi aside and talked to him earnestly for several minutes.  Taavi left the party, and Karga came back to the table.  He leaned close to Sylvia’s ear and whispered.

“Sahinim, we can do this thing.”

Sylvia smiled and crinkled her eyes.  It was a sparkle that Madison was getting used to.