Vineyards and olive groves blanketed the mountainside above the town. Pale-green olive leaves, flickering in the wind, blazed like a giant lamp, and a yellowish light from the vineyards fell over the hill. Cypress and plane trees cast long, dark shadows, their wisdom and dignity lending the setting a solemn air.
At the foot of the mountain there was an old, brick-built wine factory with wisteria cascading over the walls. Locals grew contraband cannabis in the fields behind it – everyone around here seemed to smoke weed – and everything in the area bore the faint scent of marijuana.
Below the factory wealthy residents lived in large, two-storey, sand-coloured houses with broad terraces that looked down on the town through flower gardens. The town itself was a cluster of stone houses and walled courtyards veined with narrow streets, built on the plain at the base of the mountains. A row of palm trees ran along the coast where the town met the sea, and between the palms grew oleanders with red flowers that seemed to have been planted by a tasteful gardener. Then there was a golden beach that stretched along the shore.
In the centre of town there was an old train station with a yellow brass roof, but the tracks had been torn up. I always liked that station no longer visited by trains. There were little shops inside, which smelled of tobacco and steel. Next to the station was the Çinili restaurant, with its shaded garden. The tables were covered in white tablecloths – it catered to the grandees in town – and it always smelled of anisette and dried mackerel.
I arrived late one summer afternoon. I’d been on my way to the Taurus Mountains, hoping to find a mountain village where I could live for a while.
Through the heat haze rising from a stretch of highway, I noticed a narrow road, and a piece of wood hammered to a stake. The faded letters on the sign read: ‘sea for sale’.
I turned without even thinking.
I like driving down roads I’ve never seen before. There is almost always an adventure that lies ahead. In the end I usually find my way, but then again, that never really happens, and the adventure lasts a little longer than you expected.
I was hungry and so I stopped in front of a köfte restaurant on the road that ran through the centre of the town. There was no one else there. I sat down under a willow tree in the garden and ordered something to eat.
I was tired and restless.
I had been wrestling with ideas for a new book, a murder mystery, but I hadn’t managed to start. I was wondering if I would ever write again. I needed a miracle to jolt me back to life, and back to writing, something that would stir the creative juices that had grown still in the dark cave of my soul. I was dead to the world, and no one knew. Writing would bring me back to life.
I was served a plate of grilled meatballs, a bowl of hot sauce and a tomato salad. The food was actually quite good.
The proprietor came over to my table and asked me if I wanted anything else. He made me feel a guest in his own home.
‘Thank you. I’m fine,’ I said.
He hovered over the table, a bored look on his face.
‘Where to? Your car’s filthy, by the way.’
‘I’m heading south.’
‘It’s burning up down there.’
‘Burning up right here.’
‘Much hotter there.’
I agreed with him in the hope that he would leave me alone.
‘A cold beer is what you need,’ he said. ‘Goes well with the grilled meat.’
‘Why not,’ I said obligingly, and in a flash he was back with two beers.
‘Beer’s on me,’ he said, sitting down at my table. ‘I hate this time of day. Everyone’s at home, avoiding the heat, cars hardly ever pass by and if they do people aren’t hungry, and I can’t just close up and go home, and if I stay I get bored so I wait, hoping someone will stop by …’
‘Ah yes, now that’s it,’ he said after taking a swig of beer and nodding to an imaginary friend in approval.
A burly young man, neatly dressed and with his hair combed back over his head, lumbered into the garden. ‘How’s it going, Uncle Remzi,’ he called out to the proprietor.
‘Slow and steady, Sultan,’ he replied.
‘Uncle’s called me over.’
He greeted me with a nod and left.
‘Not a bad kid,’ said the proprietor.
‘Seems like a polite fellow,’ I replied.
‘Polite, eh? A real killer.’
‘What?’ I said. I thought I had misheard him.
‘A murderer,’ he said, as if telling me the young man was a cobbler.
‘Did he shoot someone?’ I asked.
‘Shoots them all the time,’ he said, ‘but he never gets caught. He’s Oleander Ramiz’s nephew.’
I looked him straight in the eye, but the expression on his face was grave, almost sad. ‘When he was a kid, his uncle ate the oleanders in their garden and poisoned himself. Imagine that. That’s how he got the name.’
‘What’s his uncle do?’
‘Him? He’s a killer too.’
I leaned back and looked at him again. Sad and tearful eyes. He seemed troubled by stories he had never shared and mysteries that would never be solved. His shoulders were hunched, like a man resigned to his fate. I felt that he would either become a good friend of mine, or a calculating enemy.
‘I saw a sign back there, sea for sale,’ I said.
‘Oleander wants to sell the beach.’
‘It’s his?’
‘How could the beach be his?’ he said, looking at me as if I was a fool.
‘Well, how can he sell it then?’
‘He can’t … But he wants to.’
‘Give me another beer, will you?’
The expression on his face brightened and then I knew that we would become friends. ‘And one for you,’ I said. ‘This round’s on me.’
Over the second beer, he told me about the killers in town. Yugoslavian refugees had come ‘eons ago’ – as he put it – and fought with the locals, even killed each other.
‘What’s the issue?’
‘Land, marijuana sales, women … This place now has a real reputation. They even go elsewhere to kill people.’
‘But it seems like such a peaceful place.’
