Observing the manner in which the cars submissively pass, with their drivers riding the brakes, Murat can’t help but think about the changes that have occurred across the country in the months since Gezi Park. Two or three years before, a police officer would have been cursed at for needlessly blocking a road. After the protests of that summer, the government had reasserted itself like a parent who had long been too lenient with a petulant child. The people could bang their drums, chant their chants, they could howl in all the public squares of the world, but unless they could topple the State, and unless they could build a new state in its place, their optimistic visions would remain delusions and these delusional children would be the architects of their own prison. When Murat imagines that prison, he knows it to be a place where an aging traffic cop in an ill-fitting uniform inspires fear.
After the last of the cars eases past them, Murat feels that fear in the next question the officer asks: “You’re Murat Yaşar, aren’t you?” Murat keeps both his hands planted on the steering wheel. He stares straight ahead. The radio program fills the silence. The two commentators continue their debate about Berkin Elvan and who is to blame for this latest spate of violence. “Your license plate number came up immediately,” the officer explains. “I wouldn’t have expected to find you in this part of the city?”
“I’m here on business.”
“Business?”
“Scouting out development opportunities,” Murat answers in a meek voice that escapes his mouth in almost a whisper, as if he needs a drink of water.
The officer smirks.
Murat grips the steering wheel more tightly.
“Why would you build anything in this part of the city?” asks the officer. “Regardless, the charge is loitering. Unless you’d like me to do you a favor?”
“Loitering?” asks Murat. “Are you threatening me?”
“Why should you feel threatened?” asks the officer. “Listen, I could simply write you the ticket but I’ve offered to do you a favor.” He leans a bit closer to Murat. “You could call the precinct captain, or even the police commissioner and ask for a favor, correct? They would, of course, drop this charge for you. You’re an important man. But asking that favor of them would require a bit of explaining, don’t you think? Whereas I could let you go now. Would you rather owe a favor to powerful men like them, or to an inconsequential one like me?”
Murat recognizes the officer’s logic. He also recognizes that a person is only as powerful as the favors he is owed. He can’t afford to have this episode with his unfaithful wife play out in any public way. The charge, “loitering,” has become a catchall by which an investigation into any number of areas could begin. The officer stands with his bent arm thrown jauntily on top of the car door as he awaits Murat’s answer. Of all the negative feelings Murat harbors in this moment, the most pronounced is envy. Yes, he envies the officer. He reluctantly admits it to himself. For his entire life Murat has invested in a series of assets—his father’s business, his marriage, his adopted son—and he has watched as each transformed into a liability. Murat wants what the officer has: the freedom of possessing nothing. It is that freedom that has always allowed the powerless to challenge the powerful, or, put another way, that freedom has allowed the unencumbered to outmaneuver those weighted down by their own successes.
Murat reaches into the silk lining of his suit jacket. He removes his billfold. “How much do you want?” he asks.
“I don’t think you understand,” says the officer. He holds out his palm toward Murat, refusing him. “I’m not interested in your money.”
Confused by this, Murat awkwardly inquires whether there is a policemen’s association, or some other benevolent organization where the officer could proffer a contribution on his behalf. For what seems to be his amusement alone, the officer allows Murat to struggle with the appropriate method to offer a bribe. But the officer has no intention of taking a bribe, which only confuses Murat further. “Then give me my ticket for loitering and let me go on my way,” he says.
“What’s the real reason you’re down here?”
Had the officer been willing to take a bribe, Murat would have happily explained everything, knowing that the officer would be vulnerable to him for having accepted money just as he would be vulnerable to the officer for having revealed the disarray in his personal life. But to reveal a vulnerability without the other person making themselves equally vulnerable, Murat knows the power he’d be granting this man. He grows very quiet.
The officer reaches into his pocket and removes his pad of tickets and a pen. He begins to fill out a citation while speaking to Murat. “You will see in the bottom right corner I am putting down a date. That is the deadline for protesting this citation, otherwise …” The officer doesn’t need to go further. Murat knows that an official recording of the ticket would be registered, that he would then have to take up the matter at a court summons and, hopefully, he could get the entire issue dropped before any further inquiry. He hasn’t committed a crime, far from it, but he has foolishly allowed himself to come under suspicion. He knows all too well that, just like guilt, suspicion carries its own sentence.
“You see that building.” Murat raises his finger.
The officer stops writing. He squints upward.
“My wife’s lover lives there.”
“So that’s your explanation,” says the officer.
Murat nods.
The officer flips closed his citation pad. He slides it into his pocket. “Good enough for me” is all he says and walks back to his cruiser.
Murat’s admission is done. His hands grip the steering wheel. His eyes shift nearly imperceptibly into the rearview mirror. The police cruiser pulls out from behind him. Its lights are off. As the officer drives past Murat’s window, he stops so that their cars are alongside one another. The officer removes his sunglasses. His eyes are gray and dull, like unpolished silver, or a day without sun, or any other neglected and disappointing thing. “Drive safely, Mr. Yaşar,” he says. “Maybe I will see you around.”
* * *
Murat still circles the block. The two commentators on the radio continue their debate about who is to blame for the tragedy of Berkin Elvan. “Blame rests with the person who committed the original crime,” says one of the commentators, “and that is the government.”
“The demonstrators began this chaos, not the government.”
“The Gezi Park protests were the inevitable reaction to corrupt policies.”
Murat wonders how much longer they can volley inconclusive arguments at one another. The fuel gauge on his dash nears empty. He hasn’t seen another car on the road for at least a quarter of an hour. Then, up ahead, he glimpses a taxi. He can make out the silhouettes of three people in the backseat. The taxi’s blinker signals its turn in the direction of Peter’s apartment.