Büyü - Part II

Photo by Maria Orlova on Unsplash

This could hardly be called a lodge, he thought, as he entered the dilapidated guesthouse located in the more remote parts of the city.

The people staying here were all foreigners, most of them Arabs by the look of it, and those who were native to Turkey seemed too high to even speak their own language.

As soon as the floater left, a Syrian guy called Ahmad, the clerk, ushered him to a stinky room on the second floor.

The first thing that crossed Kerem’s mind upon passing the threshold to the room was how it was possible for something to look so clean yet reek of urine.

Then he spotted the stains on the walls and floorboards, which spoke for themselves. Out of every place they could find him, they gave him this pigsty of a place, huh?

But the thoughts of spending several days in this place were soon replaced by other thoughts. What now, he thought to himself, what now?

Apart from telling him to come down here and memorise his new identity, they told him nothing else. Now that he thought about it, the fake ID they gave him was odd in its own right.

Arda Karaman. A 26-year-old university student on an exchange programme, studying Mechanical Engineering. Both parents were Turkish immigrants living abroad and he had no siblings.

What kind of university student booked a room at a place known for being the hideout of junkies and criminals? Moreover, why was the fake ID almost identical to his real identity?

Something about this whole thing didn’t sit right with him. But what was it? The thing that kept bothering him.

It was like his mind was a blank page and all thoughts a jumbled mess. What was wrong with him? And just what exactly was he supposed to do here?

The answer came sooner than he expected.

Someone banged on the door.

But no one was beyond it save a fragment of a torn newspaper on the Persian rug. A message directed to him was written on it and a phone number that started with +90.

Kerem twisted and turned the piece of paper, trying to find any mention or hint of the sender’s name. What he noted instead was the choice of heading on the torn newspaper.

The Madımak Massacre.

In 1993, in the province of Sivas, a hotel was set on fire. In the wake of the arson, thirty-seven people, of whom were mostly Alevi, were killed. The two perpetrators, two Islamists, were also killed during the incident.

He was roughly six years old when the arson took place. His dad flew to Turkey after the arson, he recalled that vividly, and didn’t return until two weeks later.

One of their relatives had succumbed to the flames. He didn’t know it at the time but learnt later on that the person who bit the dust so untimely was his uncle, Cemal.

As he looked around in the dim hallway one last time before closing the door, he couldn’t help but feel unsettled.

Both his parents passed away a decade ago and they hadn’t been in touch with their relatives ever since they relocated.

The more he thought things over, the more he was convinced that all this gibberish about an extraterrestrial form was made up. Someone lured him to Turkey. But why?

“Alo, kiminle konuşuyorum?”

‘Hello, who am I talking to?’

The voice belonged to a woman. She couldn’t be a day over twenty.

He hung up.

This kind of voice didn’t belong to someone who would work for the Secret Service. It sounded too ordinary for that.

Moreover, how was he supposed to reply? He understood Turkish, he was taught to speak it at home, but the more he diverted from his roots, the less he talked over the years.

No matter what he did, it sounded too awkward to speak in his mother tongue. But speaking English in a predominantly Turkish-speaking population wasn’t a good idea, either.

He had to come up with another way to—the phone rang. It was that phone number.

“Is this Arda?”

She knew English. But that wasn’t what surprised him. She… she had no accent.

While he admitted that Turkey became more globalised over the years, it wasn’t to the point where people spoke perfect English.

She wasn’t a native, not in the traditional sense, perhaps an immigrant like him, but definitely not someone who had lived her entire life in Anatolia.

“Yes, who’s this?”

“Oh, hi! My name’s Leyla. I heard a lot about you!”

“You… did?”

“Hmm! You’re looking for a job I heard?”

He hesitated. A job? What job?

“I’m sorry, can you brief me on who told you about me?”

“Hold on, I just—there you go! What’d you say, again?”

“I… Never mind. You said your name was Leyla, right?”

“That’s correct. I’m sorry, I’m hanging the laundry and things are not going as I planned!”

“No, uh, it’s okay. You were talking about a job…”

“Oh, right! Sorry! Yeah, so, basically, there’s a bookstore across the guesthouse. The owner is looking for a cashier who can work at night.”

“At night?”

“Yeah, I know, it’s kinda odd. But the owner’s even odder. You’ll know what I mean when you see him later today.”

Kerem stuttered. “Today?” He cast a look at the clock, which read a quarter past nine o’clock in the evening. “But it’s—”

“You’ll start your shift right away, so come prepared, all right?”

Before he could object and speak his mind, the young woman ended the call.

Read part I HERE!