Peter saw none of it, however. To know the outcome, he hadn’t needed to.
* * *
The first two taxi drivers Peter stopped refused to take him to Gezi Park. The third agreed, but insisted that Peter pay double the normal fare, and that he pay up front. With his depleted funds, this was a not insignificant expense. Peter accepted the terms, however. He fished a billfold of cash out of his pocket and paid the driver nearly all of it. The two of them then rushed along Cevdet Paşa Caddesi, the driver grasping the wheel in both hands as though it was a jackhammer’s T-bar and he was tearing up the ancient pavement. They sped through chic waterfront neighborhoods such as Arnavutköy and Ortaköy, which in Ottoman times had been sleepy fishing villages, and they soon passed the beautiful yet ominous stretch of road that abutted Dolmabahçe Palace with its unscalable limestone walls built by the sultanate with the single purpose of protecting the royalty that had once lived in opulent seclusion inside, isolated from the populace—the same populace which now defied the current authorities in Gezi Park.
Past the palace, two police cruisers had parked herringboned across the road, their siren lights turning orbits. The officers leaned against the hoods of their cars. Holstered pistols brooded at their sides, as they commented on the passersby and exchanged risky grins. Across from them was the new, incomplete stadium for Beşiktaş football club. A placard staked into the ground touted the project as a public-private endeavor, sponsored by both the government and Yaşar Enterprises. As much as the police officers manned their roadblock in order to regulate traffic heading toward the protests, it also seemed as if they’d taken up this position to ensure that no one disrupted construction on the new stadium, which from the lack of building equipment or materials on-site appeared beset by an indefinite delay.
When Peter’s taxi approached the roadblock, one of the officers glanced up and flicked his wrist in the opposite direction. Needing no further instruction, the driver immediately turned around. He double-parked adjacent to the football stadium and motioned for Peter to get out. This was as far as he would take his taxi. Peter leaned over the gearshift and gestured through the windshield to a couple of narrow, unblocked alleyways, which could likely get them all the way to Gezi Park unnoticed. The driver responded by removing his key from the ignition and stepping onto the curb. He then opened Peter’s door and stood, impatiently waiting.
Peter gathered his camera bag and walked in the opposite direction from the police, who rerouted traffic while they continued to chatter idly with the heels of their palms resting on their pistol grips. Although the seaside road had been cordoned off, dozens of tributary passages unspooled toward Gezi Park. Some were just wide enough for two people to pass shoulder to shoulder, while others could accommodate a single car. It was impossible for the police to block all of these. Most of the shop fronts had been shuttered, but housewives and children who’d been kept home from school because of the turmoil throughout the city filled the apartment windows from the second floor up. Leaning over window boxes or out toward the wash lines stretched between the buildings, they kept vigil above their streets.
Peter made a quick survey of what would be the quickest route to the city’s interior. As he glanced to the heights and the park, he could smell the faint chemical scent of tear gas tumbling toward the waterfront. The trace of it in the air excited him and he could feel his stride lengthening as he passed around the back of the football stadium in the direction of an access road that would—he thought—deliver him to Gezi Park undetected.
Halfway up the access road he came across a pair of excavators poised to dig out a new foundation although they had not yet begun; the teeth of their steel shovel blades remained clean. Crouching by the treads of one of the excavators, a pair of men sipped tea from paper cups. One was smoking. The other was not. The one without the cigarette, who was tall and slim with the lean sunken cheeks of a distance runner, shouted for Peter to stop. He had spoken in Turkish, but he could have issued the command in any of two dozen languages and Peter would have understood him by inflection alone.
Upon noticing Peter’s camera and fair complexion, the other man, the one who smoked and was of a normal height and handsome, or at least appeared comparatively handsome next to his companion, called after Peter in English, “Come here!”
Peter stood motionless on the dirt path he had been following, which curved around the back of the stadium. A hundred meters up, the path would fork in a half dozen directions, leading him into a labyrinth of neighborhoods where he could, likely, get away. He considered the option of running for an instant and in that same instant surveyed the pair of men who’d called after him. They were dressed shabbily, in old jeans and nearly identical fake leather jackets. Neither had shaved for a few days and Peter could see the traces of gray in their stubble. If they were thugs out to profit from the morning’s chaos, they appeared about a decade too old. Peter also noticed their identical black leather boots, which were shined to the same mirrored gloss as those worn by the uniformed police.
Peter followed their instructions and approached.
“The roads up to Gezi are closed,” said the shorter of the two as he exhaled a plume from the nub of his cigarette, which he’d smoked nearly to the filter. He flicked it on the ground, where it drizzled a cascade of embers at Peter’s feet. “What are you doing back here?” The man had meat-flavored breath, a dog’s breath, and one solid gold tooth, an incisor, which gnawed fang-like on his lower lip as he spoke from the corner of his mouth. The rest of his teeth were clean and straight. Peter wondered how he’d lost the tooth and imagined it had been punched out in a brawl.
The taller man, the lean one, pointed to Peter’s camera bag. He raised his dark eyes, which contained no expression, and then muttered something to his friend in Turkish, which Peter couldn’t understand.
“What have you got there?” The man with the gold incisor cocked his head and gave a lopsided smile. “Are you a journalist?” Before Peter could answer, the taller man took a step toward him, grasping after the bag. Peter tugged away.
“I don’t have to show you anything.”
As soon as Peter issued this challenge, both men reached into their pockets and removed their wallets, inside of which they carried police badges that they now brandished like a winning hand of cards, one that they had held through several rounds of betting, knowing all along that they’d collect from anyone foolish enough to gamble against them.
They ordered Peter to hand over his bag.
The prospect of losing his camera sent Peter into a mild panic. He didn’t have the several thousand dollars he would need to replace it and without the camera there would be no reason for him to continue with his project. And so no reason for him to stay in the city. It would be the perfect excuse to abandon the work he’d invested himself in. He couldn’t be blamed for a crime perpetrated by the authorities. He would be a victim, not a failure, and could go home as such. His panic strangely began to feel like relief.