Many and Many a Year Ago by Selcuk Altun Page A

told him I had some business with Haluk Erçelik he became effusive.
    â€œHaluk the French teacher, God knows, was the Rock Hudson of Ayvalık society. He lived on the top floor of Number 19b, just behind you. The women and girls, young and old, used to dress to the nines and parade in front of his door. I think it was the year Tony Shumacher transferred to the Fenerbahçe football team—wow, that’s nearly twenty years ago—that his wife finally put her foot down and they moved away overnight. He told me that they’d bought an olive grove near C. village. Maybe …”
    Suddenly a very large white-haired woman appeared behind him, screeching, “Eh, Mahmut, enjoying ourselves with the passers-by again, are we? Don’t you know God will strike you down, Mahmut? Eh?” She swooped down on the smiling man and snatched him up, whereupon I saw that he indeed had no limbs.
    I had no better idea than to head down to the Clock Tower Mosque and watch the boys play football in the courtyard. My attention focused on a left-footed blond kid who ran circles around the opposing players and just grinned at his teammates whenever he lost the ball. When they got it back they passed it to him again. I soon wearied of watching this dramatic but repetitious circling. The match ended abruptly when a mosque official came out and planted himself in the middle of the courtyard. The sweaty boys scattered and in the wake of the cats and pigeons I also took my leave. It occurred to me while watching that blond ball-wizard that Hasan Gezgin and Halit Mesutoğlu could have been hiding something—a suspicion all the more reasonable if you looked at their stories side by side. The hope arose in me that if I bequeathed to Haluk Erçelik the happy news of his inheritance, he might reward me by spilling some dramatic secrets.
    Trusting that Mahmut the Fenerbahçe fan hadn’t been pulling my leg, I approached a
dolmuş
minibus idling beneath an acacia tree. I didn’t warm to the mustachioed driver, but I did enjoy the olive-oil fragrance that enveloped the vehicle.
    â€œYou’ll be there in ten minutes,” said Bilal from Harput, who opened the door and gave me the seat beside him. As we slalomed through the olive groves in the direction of Edremit, I followed the parade of patient trees with amazement. “The youngest of those trees is two hundred years old,” Bilal said, “and the oldest is six hundred.”
    I was surprised too at the enormous mosque that appeared at the point where the tranquil village met the sea. The mosque looked like a blueprint for a town of 20,000 rather than the small village that it was. Not a person was in sight to ask directions. “Are they all at a meeting in the mosque?” Bilal asked, then hurried toward a man who finally appeared on the horizon. I waited on the bus. I understood that we’d found Haluk when I saw the grizzled villager pointing at a spot up in the hills. A mixture of curiosity and petulance swept over me and my right hand began to shake. I felt like praying for a flat tire.
    The hill we climbed was silent and covered with olive groves. A bashful boy who was studiously flicking a cigarette lighter showed us which house belonged to Haluk. Ancient stone walls protected the garden, and a green mailbox hung next to the main gate. With a silent
Bismillah
I pushed the doorbell. A middle-aged man who looked like a bodyguard emerged and said with some surliness, “What d’ya want?” I told him I was bringing news of his boss’s old-time pals Halit and Hasan. He barked a command—it sounded like Kurdish—and threw his cellphone to a little girl in a bright red dress who came running up. She pushed a couple of buttons—trying hard not to laugh—and handed the phone back to her father. I knew the exchange between this neatly mustachioed fellow and his boss would be short.
    Immediately on entering the