Peter again lowered his head into his arms. The small of his back pressed against the cold concrete wall. He was listening carefully. All around him he could hear the heavy breathing of those who slept and the murmured conversations of those who didn’t. These sounds were punctuated by disagreements, the predictable bickering between those who wanted to rest and those who wished to talk. They had arrived soaked from the water cannons, and to keep them from freezing in the night the police had handed them each a wool blanket, which trapped the residual scent of tear gas from their clothes as effectively as it trapped a damp second-rate warmth.
“I need to make a call,” Peter muttered.
“With this on my record, I’ll lose my position at the museum,” said Deniz.
“Will you flag down an officer and ask about the phone for me?” said Peter.
“Without work, I’ll have to return to Esenler.” Deniz collapsed his head into his arms. “I can’t return to Esenler.” He spoke to himself alone, his imagination casting a spell of paralyzing outcomes. Peter could hear the desperation in Deniz’s voice, but he needed his help, even if Deniz believed himself to be beyond help. Peter raised his head and with scissored fingers made another attempt to peel apart his eyelids. The world blurred as if submerged underwater.
“I need to make a call,” Peter repeated.
Deniz lifted his head. His bottom lip had been split open and bled badly from where his braces had cut into it. The blood that pooled in the ridges of his gums outlined his teeth in red. The white of one of his eyes had also been stained red from a blow to the temple. His hair was mussed in such a way that it revealed a slight bald spot, which with his hampered vision Peter managed to notice even though he had never noticed it before.
“Who are you going to call?” Deniz asked. “The consulate? Are you going to call Kristin?” A look of surprise registered across Peter’s face. Deniz continued, “You thought I didn’t know her? I was one of the first people she met in this city when she was newly assigned to the consulate, newly married … she was newly everything back then. She was newly posted to Cultural Affairs, too. They sponsored a reception at the Çırağan, that’s where we met.” Deniz smiled serenely as he thought of Kristin. “Cultural affairs,” he said, rolling the word around his mouth like a peppermint. “That’s one way to put it. Yes, I’m all too familiar with her.”
Deniz gathered himself. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve, swallowed and then smoothed down his hair. Straightening, he approached the cell bars and hooked his arms through them, stuffing his index and ring fingers into his mouth, releasing a piercing whistle as though he were hailing a cab, or catcalling a woman. A commotion began among those who were trying to sleep in the steel bunks, a chorus of voices pleading for him to shut up, and then they began to offer threats of their own, pledging an assortment of ways in which they would soon silence him. Rising above the growing commotion, someone called him an ibne.
Nearly half those in the cell sat up. “What’d you say?” came a voice.
“Ibne.”
Peter couldn’t see who had said the word, but beneath the rectangular window one of the bunks came crashing down. Whoever had offered the insult had been swiftly pulled to the ground. Sides quickly formed. Among stomps and cocked fists, those who wished to offer this homophobe a beating paired off against those who wished to defend him. And like that, their ranks once again devolved into a mob.
The mêlée instigated by Deniz’s whistling didn’t last long. Tucked in a corner of the cell was a camera, a menacing black orb that held a view of everything. Half a dozen officers materialized down a long corridor as if from nowhere. They didn’t enter the cell, not at first. Instead they rattled their unsheathed batons across the bars. This did nothing to silence the prisoners, who exhibited little concern at the prospect of receiving a further beating by the police.
Peter and Deniz didn’t participate in the brawl. With his severely hampered vision, Peter could hardly protect himself, so he and Deniz hunkered alongside one another near the cell door. One of the officers had begun to blow a steel whistle, which some of the prisoners confused with Deniz’s whistle from moments before. “Shut up with that!” a few shouted, interpreting the noise as a further provocation.
Another half dozen police left the precinct’s offices and gathered by the cell door. They formed up in a line, gripping their black batons. From inside the cell someone reached through the bars, grabbed one of the officers by the belt and pinned him in place. He thrashed about for a moment but couldn’t move, and in that moment someone snatched the steel handcuffs looped onto his belt and managed to secure the free cuff to one of the bars, locking the officer to the cell. In a panic he seized his canister of pepper spray, which he emptied indiscriminately. All of the prisoners had time to turn away except Peter. Crouching in the corner, he couldn’t see the stream coming at him.
But he felt it as it seeped into his skin’s already clogged pores and coated the membranes of his eyes. Whether it was the noise of Peter’s screams, or the realization that the police would willingly stand behind the cell bars and douse every person inside into compliance, the result among the prisoners and even the officers was silence.
The cell door rolled open.
The officers stood in the threshold. They clutched their batons, their round knuckles bulging tightly beneath the skin. The only noise came from Peter.
He lay on his side, his legs pumping and his heels stamping the floor as the burn continued to spread. Deniz struggled to lift him as he kicked. “Calm down,” he whispered to Peter, trying to remain calm himself as he hooked his arms beneath Peter’s and hoisted him toward the cell’s exit. “Give him some help!” Deniz shouted at the officer who had sprayed Peter and whose colleagues had managed to unlock him from the bars where he’d been cuffed.
Deniz impatiently heaved Peter up once more and motioned to leave the cell. The officer raised his baton. He would strike if Deniz attempted to cross the threshold. Undeterred, Deniz shifted his weight forward.
“Let him out!” In the open door at the far end of the corridor, from where the police had emerged, stood a man in plainclothes. He hadn’t shaved and wore jeans and a cheap leather jacket. Although he didn’t have a uniform, he had the same black shined police boots. “Are you trying to kill him?” he said.
Deniz stepped across the threshold in defiance of the other officer, who moved aside, casting a resentful look at the plainclothes detective, who seemed to be his superior. “Help him into the infirmary,” ordered the detective, nodding down the corridor that ran next to their cell and into the parts of the precinct that were lit up and clean.
Hearing this new voice, Peter took a deep, calming breath. He tried to open his eyes. The pain was searing. His vision came down to a near pinpoint of light as he almost lost consciousness.