and subtle signs to understand just what people meant.
Now, thinking back on it, I wonder why I didn’t just leave then. What was keeping me there? When there were so many dangers, warnings, the strange happenings, when I always had the feeling that something bad was just around the corner.
Maybe it was simply curiosity.
I was curious to see what would happen. A writer’s boundless curiosity.
And maybe a little pride.
I had the feeling that I would win over the entire town.
To somehow know the truth behind the people there without them ever suspecting me, to see what they were hiding, to let slip details to do with the dark sides of their lives, it didn’t just quench my curiosity but gave me a strange and exhilarating rush of power.
And like all forms of power, it is a pleasure that comes at a price, a pleasure for which you pay later on.
And now I know the price I had to pay.
XII
Two days after that strange conversation with Sümbül, I was sitting in the coffeehouse reading my newspapers when Mustafa’s enormous black car pulled up in front of the garden and his thickset driver, who was also the mayor’s official bodyguard, walked over to me. ‘Mustafa Bey is expecting you.’
Everyone at the tables around me seemed blown back by a sudden gust of wind; but then they were still; it was like a ring of energy had pushed them away from me. For the coffeehouse denizens I’d gone from being a friendly writer to one of the bigwigs.
They gazed at me with admiration, fear and respect.
It annoyed me that Mustafa had sent his driver to order me to come and see him. But there was nothing I could do.
It would have caused a real commotion in town if I’d refused him.
Anyone refusing a summons from the mayor would have upset the order in town, and even my good friends at the coffeehouse would have been angry with me.
This was the way things worked; it was unfair and meaningless but everyone had a place in the order of things, and they were accustomed to this. No one wanted to disturb the delicate balance. Though it was a balance full of threats, oppression and fear, it was a known element; they wouldn’t know what to do with themselves if the scales were somehow tipped.
I got up and walked over to the car.
We drove to the town hall.
I loved the building. It’s a broad, three-storey, sand-coloured stone building with oriel windows and dark blue tiles over the cornices and delicate columns at the entrance.
Mustafa’s office was on the top floor. It was a large room. Two leather armchairs sat in front of a long desk and at the far end of the room there was a round conference table. Between them was a wooden coffee table surrounded by a set of leather armchairs.
Two people I’d never seen before were sitting in the leather chairs and talking to Mustafa. When I entered the room he stood up to greet me.
One of the men seemed carved out of wood; he was a tall, thin, tough-looking man; the contours of his face, like those of his body, were harsh and taut, no flesh and blood, only bone. Under his thick, woolly eyebrows were dark little eyes fixed in a steely gaze.
‘The honourable judge,’ Mustafa said, and the man nodded his head without extending his hand. The other was a stout, young, informal man. A little rosary dangled from his left hand, and he was stroking the glimmering beads. Mustafa introduced him to me as the honourable district governor. Nonchalantly, he reached out his hand, which was soft and fleshy.
Mustafa chatted with me as if we were old friends, ordering me a coffee, and the others listened to us without saying a word. But before long they got right to the point.
‘We would like to ask you to write a speech for us,’ Mustafa said.
‘Me?’ I said, surprised.
I would have never thought I’d be called to a town hall to write a speech.
‘Aren’t you a writer?’ Mustafa asked, laughing.
For the first time since I’d been in town they saw my true face. I was suddenly incensed by all their disparaging jokes about being a writer. I felt the muscles in my face tighten.
‘You’re confusing literature with petitions,’ I snapped. ‘Call a clerk. You’re talking to the wrong man!’
In the heart of every writer there lies a murderer.
Writers spend their lives struggling to conceal this murderous desire from other mortals.
Like God, they ruthlessly destroy the people of their own creation, drag them from one cruelty to another, meting out punishment, and with the callous indifference of a serial killer. And no one knows when he has taken a life from the solitude of his room. But when a writer is enraged the walls of his refuge come crumbling down, revealing his true identity.
In that moment those men caught glimpse of a killer, and they recognised him straight away because of who they were and what they did.
They stirred slightly, moving forward in their seats, and respectfully uncrossed their legs as if they were sitting before their superior officer. They hadn’t expected such a reaction from me. They were flushed with fear. And they didn’t know why.
‘No, that’s not what I mean,’ Mustafa said. ‘We’re asking you to do us favour.’
‘A favour?’
‘I’m due to make a speech before the municipal assembly. Later, copies will be posted around town. So it’s important that we have something that’s well-written. We’re not persuasive writers. We’d only come up with something dry and official, and unclear.’
‘Well, then what do you want to say?’
‘We’re going to forbid people from going up the church hill. And we’re going to present this decree to the public. You see, there are far too many old wells and dangerous ruins up there. We’re concerned that someone might fall and die.’
‘Do you have the jurisdiction to issue such a decree?’
The judge spoke for the first time, in a gravelly but authoritarian tone, like sandpaper running over a wooden board.
‘When it comes to public safety it is within our jurisdiction to make any decision,’ he pronounced.
The district governor reiterated: ‘It is of course a matter of public safety.’
‘Is restricting people from going to such a place really a matter of public safety?’
‘God forbid if something were to happen to someone there,’ said the governor. ‘It is our duty to prevent such a tragedy from ever happening in the first place. Now, if someone were to tumble into one of those wells we would be the ones responsible.’
‘Why not put up a sign? You could simply warn people that way.’
Sensing the discussion could descend into argument, Mustafa cut us off.
‘A sign is out of the question. Someone will go up there at night and not see it … It’s simply not practical. A restriction is the easiest and surest way to handle this.’
‘But then how will you enforce it? How will you stop people from going?’
Running his fingers over his rosary, the governor explained: ‘We’ll post a watchman there.’
Clearly they already had everything planned out. No doubt the governor drove the enormous Mercedes parked at the door.
‘What do you want me to do?’
Mustafa flashed me a smile, and for a moment I felt like he might shoot me right then and there. ‘Instead of a dry, boring speech on the new restriction