the phone rang.
It was Selçuk. He would have the coroner’s report sent over the following morning. The Seçkin brothers had never come to Istanbul from their home in Rize. There was no reason to suspect them. They hadn’t even attended the funeral and had told a reporter that they didn’t have “a little brother like that”.
“Come to dinner one evening. You’ll have a chance to see Ayla.”
Ayla was his wife. She was also from the neighbourhood. Selçuk had sucked her lips as well as mine. He’d preferred hers. They began going out when they were in middle school. In short, they’d been happily married for as long as I could remember.
“Allah willing,” I said.
Chatting with Jihad2000 had affected my choice of words.
The monitoring program had done its job. Jihad2000 had cut off his private connection to me, but it didn’t matter. I’d found out where he was connected. It was just the information I needed.
I remembered a fair amount about the history of the prophets. Years ago I’d read all the holy books out of curiosity. What’s more, my interest in costume films and devotion to Ava Gardner had led to my watching John Huston’s “The Bible” on DVD. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Nimrod, Noah’s flood, Abraham, Lot, and Sodom and Gomorra stayed in my mind from the film. The most handsome man of the time, Peter O’Toole, had played the three angels that visit Lot in the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorra.
In the film, coloured by the conservatism and censorship of the 1960s, Sodom and Gomorra was an ill-defined gloomy place. I couldn’t help imagining how an imaginative director of our own times could enliven it with some well-shot porn scenes.
I had fuzzy images of the tale of the Prophet Joseph from my childhood, and remembered a film starring Yusuf Sezgin. The similarity between the names Yusuf Sezgin and Yusuf Seçkin was truly unnerving.
As far as I remembered, the Prophet Abraham was cast into a furnace by the unbelieving King Nimrod, but the flames were transformed into birds. Prophet Abraham escaped unscathed, and his followers increased. Our Abraham-Ceren had simply burned to a crisp. The flames hadn’t become birds.
Jihad2000 had mentioned Salih, who was caught in a great earthquake. Who was Salih? What earthquake was it?
I began researching, and came across Prophet Salih’s name. He is mentioned as one of the prophets in the Koran. He was sent to the idolatrous Arab tribe known as the Semud. He called on them to follow the one, true God. They didn’t believe him, and maimed and killed a female camel sent by God. If there really was a God, they wanted to know how he would punish them. Salih told them to hide themselves in caves carved into a cliff-face. Then came a powerful storm and earthquake. The unbelievers perished in their homes.
So the Prophet Salih really did have some connection to earthquakes and storms.
But why had Jihad2000 made a sudden reference to Salih? When had a girl of ours named Salih died? I racked my brain, but came up with nothing.
I called Hasan, our all-knowing muhtar . He was busy, and kept it short. At first he hesitated when he heard the name, then he remembered who Salih was.
“Ah, that’s right. You know her as Deniz. It happened a few months back. She fell into the elevator shaft and died.”
I remembered. It hadn’t been considered a suspicious death. She had indeed fallen into an elevator shaft in a district of high rises in Atakoy. I recalled it clearly. It had nothing to do with an earthquake. There had been no connection between a tremor and Deniz’s death. We grieved, but quickly moved on.
“Have there been any dead girls with the real names Isa, Musa, Nuh and such?” I asked.
“What’s this all about? Some kind of history of the prophets?” he asked.
Actually, that was about right. What we had here was a series of deaths that all closely followed the history of the prophets. Girls with names the same as prophets were dropping
It was Selçuk. He would have the coroner’s report sent over the following morning. The Seçkin brothers had never come to Istanbul from their home in Rize. There was no reason to suspect them. They hadn’t even attended the funeral and had told a reporter that they didn’t have “a little brother like that”.
“Come to dinner one evening. You’ll have a chance to see Ayla.”
Ayla was his wife. She was also from the neighbourhood. Selçuk had sucked her lips as well as mine. He’d preferred hers. They began going out when they were in middle school. In short, they’d been happily married for as long as I could remember.
“Allah willing,” I said.
Chatting with Jihad2000 had affected my choice of words.
The monitoring program had done its job. Jihad2000 had cut off his private connection to me, but it didn’t matter. I’d found out where he was connected. It was just the information I needed.
I remembered a fair amount about the history of the prophets. Years ago I’d read all the holy books out of curiosity. What’s more, my interest in costume films and devotion to Ava Gardner had led to my watching John Huston’s “The Bible” on DVD. Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Nimrod, Noah’s flood, Abraham, Lot, and Sodom and Gomorra stayed in my mind from the film. The most handsome man of the time, Peter O’Toole, had played the three angels that visit Lot in the sinful cities of Sodom and Gomorra.
In the film, coloured by the conservatism and censorship of the 1960s, Sodom and Gomorra was an ill-defined gloomy place. I couldn’t help imagining how an imaginative director of our own times could enliven it with some well-shot porn scenes.
I had fuzzy images of the tale of the Prophet Joseph from my childhood, and remembered a film starring Yusuf Sezgin. The similarity between the names Yusuf Sezgin and Yusuf Seçkin was truly unnerving.
As far as I remembered, the Prophet Abraham was cast into a furnace by the unbelieving King Nimrod, but the flames were transformed into birds. Prophet Abraham escaped unscathed, and his followers increased. Our Abraham-Ceren had simply burned to a crisp. The flames hadn’t become birds.
Jihad2000 had mentioned Salih, who was caught in a great earthquake. Who was Salih? What earthquake was it?
I began researching, and came across Prophet Salih’s name. He is mentioned as one of the prophets in the Koran. He was sent to the idolatrous Arab tribe known as the Semud. He called on them to follow the one, true God. They didn’t believe him, and maimed and killed a female camel sent by God. If there really was a God, they wanted to know how he would punish them. Salih told them to hide themselves in caves carved into a cliff-face. Then came a powerful storm and earthquake. The unbelievers perished in their homes.
So the Prophet Salih really did have some connection to earthquakes and storms.
But why had Jihad2000 made a sudden reference to Salih? When had a girl of ours named Salih died? I racked my brain, but came up with nothing.
I called Hasan, our all-knowing muhtar . He was busy, and kept it short. At first he hesitated when he heard the name, then he remembered who Salih was.
“Ah, that’s right. You know her as Deniz. It happened a few months back. She fell into the elevator shaft and died.”
I remembered. It hadn’t been considered a suspicious death. She had indeed fallen into an elevator shaft in a district of high rises in Atakoy. I recalled it clearly. It had nothing to do with an earthquake. There had been no connection between a tremor and Deniz’s death. We grieved, but quickly moved on.
“Have there been any dead girls with the real names Isa, Musa, Nuh and such?” I asked.
“What’s this all about? Some kind of history of the prophets?” he asked.
Actually, that was about right. What we had here was a series of deaths that all closely followed the history of the prophets. Girls with names the same as prophets were dropping
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