Car, I don’t think we’re Ankara anymore.

These are the very first words I say to my sister, as we walk through airport security, breathing in fresh air, after a five hour flight in a metal bird. Unlike the easygoing, small airport with overenthusiastic staff we’re used to back in Ankara, Istanbul Airport is massive, crowded and strictly professional. No random airport employee coming to help us here. They don’t even want to tell us which bus to take to get to our dormitory near some place called Hirka-i-Serif in Fatih. The one personnel we do manage to stop, glares at us, muttering, yabanci, as he walks off.

We’re not used to the cold shoulder in Turkey. Still, after much effort, and a quick stop at a cafe at the Airport to attend a work meeting, we manage to flag a cab. The cabbie, eyeing our clothes, overcharges us. We spend fifteen minutes scolding him for not following the metre in Turkish, before proceeding to get the right price, and disgruntled, hosgeldiniz. He doesn’t bother taking our baggage out and the two of us struggle with our four suitcases.

We don’t notice our surroundings until he’s gone.

“Where are we?” Carmen’s the first one to look around, causing me to finally look around. The street we’re in is crowded, and too many women are wearing burkas for us to feel comfortable. It seems as though time’s turned and we’re in the ‘40s. The cobblestone street is rife with cigarette buds, newspaper scraps, and people in full Arabian robes, tasbih in hand as they speak in Turkish- with a distinctly Arabic accent. We share a look, and proceed to look at the building in front of us. It’s old, very old, and there’s a furniture store housing the ground floor. The only indication of our dormitory is the huge wooden board next to it, with the words MELEK KIZ OGRENCI YURDU painted on it, its colour faded from age, leading into what looks like a damp alleyway.

“Hotel?” I ask and she shakes her head.

“This is our registered address,” she says.

“Not yet.”

“Hotels aren’t considered proper addresses, or did you forget?”

I sigh. “Your call.”

*

The sign board accurately represented our dormitory. With its musky-smelling, deep blue and grey carpets, the old lift that only goes until the fourth floor, and the hideous yellow wallpaper, it seems as though we’ve really travelled back in time. The main dining hall has those old fashioned wooden benches and table combos- like Hogwarts, if Hogwarts is an underfunded government girls’ dormitory in 1986- incidentally, the year of the dorm’s founding. Or so, the dorm manager informs us. The study room, following the pattern of the rest of the building, has old box computers, the OS is literally Windows 1996. I spend an afternoon hacking the computers, breaking into the firewalls, corrupting anything I can find of value (nothing is) and remotely controlling the monitors from my laptop…until one of my fellow dorm-dwellers rat me out.

That ends the one entertainment I have at the dormitory. Our dorm mates keep to themselves, most of them also wear the hijab, something that’s quite surprising for Turkey. Or at least, the Turkey I know from Ankara. Surely, a year away during the pandemic hasn’t changed the country?

The answer is no; I just have the awful luck of getting a dorm room in the more conservative parts of the city. But I don’t know that…yet.

*

Turns out, universities in Istanbul give you ten days off for Spring Break. We’ve never gotten ten days off back in Ankara. All we got was a Friday off and a long weekend. But clearly, Istanbul’s on to something because it starts snowing in April, and we’re awestruck.

The girls at the dorm go to their villages and it’s literally just us, and the caretaker. We last two days indoors before losing our minds, and decide to finally explore our neighbourhood. So what if it’s night time and the people here dress more conservatively than in Saudi Arabia, so what if the streets literally feel as though there’s a ghost of an Ottoman Sultan lingering about? What’s the worst that could happen? We’re going to explore this part of town.

And that’s how we find ourselves in a small cafe, in what looks like the town square with its fairy lights and open air dining experience. The moon’s out, and strangely enough, it rests above the dome of the Hirka-i-Serif. The stars are out too, which is weird, because the buildings are old, and there’s traffic and too much light. What’s more there are too many people about but the Turkish Coffee is just like Ankara and-

An old man, perhaps in his seventies, approaches our little table, and greets us in Urdu. We forget our mother tongue in shock. “O-of course you can join us,” I stutter, and he laughs.

“You sound like your grandfather,” he states and my sister and I exchange glances.

I don’t sound like my grandfather. In fact, I don’t sound like anyone from Mummy’s side of the family. Maybe I sound like Dad when I’m angry but-

“You look like him too,” he goes on and clicks.

Oh. He’s talking about the other one.

My other grandfather.

“What about him?” Abby’s on the edge. I’m on the edge. We’re in a part of Turkey that doesn’t look like Turkey, and a random man (not uncommon for Turkey, but definitely uncommon for here), who can speak our language but doesn’t look Pakistani, with his Turkish cap and clothes and-

“I knew your grandfather,” he says.

*

My father’s late father was one of the lucky ones. As a career banker in the sixties, seventies and well until his retirement in the late 90s, my grandfather had the unique opportunity to move to West Pakistan several years before the Fall of Dhaka. Of course, he’d still fall into the hands of the Indian army (and was offered the remainder of the family estate in Bengal by Indira Gandhi herself. Or so, claimed my grandmother). But compared to my maternals, who had to begin their life from scratch after the Fall, my granddad was quite lucky.

As one of the richest men in the family, working for the largest bank in the nation, he had many, many brushes with the most powerful men in Pakistan. A famous family legend places my granddad in the direct crosshairs of General Zia-ul-Haq. According to relatives, the great dictator wanted him to approve of a loan for a friend of his. Other accounts state that it was a matter of forgiving someone’s loans. Either way, Dada was a man of principle. He promptly refused. This action was, of course, followed by a quick transfer to a less relevant department. That didn’t work, Dada was requested back into said department and retired at the prestigious position of Vice President of said bank.

Point is, Dada was rich. Very rich. He had a car back when only governors had a car in Karachi, and even dish telly when most of Pakistan only had access to the state broadcaster. But he gave it all to his wife who disinherited Daddy who had three daughters instead of a son. Dada knew how fickle Grand-mère was with her “Iranian” (read: white supremacy and sexism disguised as cultural values) airs and graces, and he still left Daddy with nothing. I abhor the man. Especially when Grand-mère made Mummy give away her jewellery (ancestral jewellery, might I add) to my eldest Aunt’s daughter on her wedding day.

*

“How’d you know him?” I ask. As far as I know, the man’s never been anywhere.

“I met him in London in 1975,” he says and I frown.

“That’s not possible,” I counter, “He was in Islamabad in 1975.”

Daddy told me the story. Apparently my grandfather has a house there that Grand-mère and her children use as a summer home. Just another thing not given to us, not that we need it.

“Not true,” he shakes his head, “you don’t know the full story.”

“What story?” Carmen demands, and he smiles.

“How about another round of coffee?” he offers and we nod reluctantly.

When our orders arrive, and we take our first sip, he begins to speak once more.

“This part of town’s not safe,” he remarks, “why’re you two here?”

“The dorm was cheap,” I answer sheepishly, and he sighs.

“Consider the Asian side,” he says, “Istanbul’s a big city. Unfortunately, some parts of it don’t resemble the rest of the country. It’s not like Ankara.”

“How do you know we lived in Ankara?” Carmen’s question goes unanswered.

Instead, “Your grandfather, what do you think he did?”

“He was a banker.”

“A banker?”

“What department?”

“Dad didn’t mention.”

“Because you didn’t ask, or because he didn’t know?”

“Can you just get on with it?” Carmen’s the one to snap, tired of the mystery. We don’t care about our other grandfather. He’s the last person we’re thinking about on this side of the world.

“I met him in London during a conference,” he informs us, “he was representing your government for certain matters.”

“Such as?”

“Intelligence.”

“What kind of intelligence would he have…” I begin to ask before it hits me. “Oh.”

*

My grandfather disappeared in the middle of the night in 1989. According to Daddy, the Pakistani intelligence agency found records of Dada at an airport in Sri Lanka at the same time as some high-ranking Indian generals. He was missing for six days. When he returned home, unscathed, he’d laughed, saying that there had been a terrible misunderstanding. Daddy said that it was an awful time for him, not knowing if his father was dead, not knowing what he would do as the eldest son, aged 17, not sure how he’d provide for his five sisters and mother-

*

“So, what? He was a secret agent? A spy?” I roll my eyes.

“Yes, and a very good one too,” he says, finishing his coffee. “He was compensated for it too.”

“Oh please,” Carmen joins in, “As if any of that matters. He didn’t care about us. He let our father down. We suffered because of him and his wife’s stupidity.”

The man glares at us for that. “You don’t respect your grandfather,” he observes.

“Of course, we don’t,” she goes on, “he knew how she was; he still ruined our father’s life, dragged our mum into, and lo, behold- us, and our endless problems.”

He shakes his head. “I thought you’d want to learn about your grandfather.”

“You choose the wrong grandfather,” she retorts, and he slumps back into his seat.

“You don’t know your grandfather,” he says softly, before waving at the waiter.

“We don’t want to know him,” she lets him know. We watch in silence as he tells the waitstaff to put it on his tab, and leaves. But not before I have a chance to stand up and call after him.

“Why’d you tell us this?” I ask.

The man turns around and sighs. “Because you deserve to know,” he says simply, “You’re like him. But you don’t know him. He was really excited, you know- when he found out about you. There’s a bunch of us, we all came up together, working for our governments. Most people tell their families, but he didn’t. He was protecting you.”

“He never protected us,” I argue, “my father had to work very hard-”

“-and conveniently found himself out of debt every time he went bankrupt?”

I press my lips together. Daddy’s great but he’s not great with money. We’ve gone bankrupt three times; most recently during the pandemic. The memory stings. Still-

“I was four,” I tell him, “when I was kidnapped.”

“And we got you out,” he points out.

“My uncle saved me,” I state, remembering a particularly traumatising childhood memory. My first month in Pakistan (Grand-mere pretended to have a heart attack), in 2002, and I’d been kidnapped from school. My therapist says that I’ve blocked it out, but I remember: the dark room, the smell of cigarettes and cheap beer, the discussion of child trafficking…and then my maternal uncle, bursting in with his friends from-

“My uncle has no connections in the police,” I piece it took together, “it was-”

“Your grandfather’s friends in the intelligence community,” he finishes. “He’s always looked out for your family. Even though he’s never around. You don’t know the whole story.”

I turn to my sister. Should we know the whole story?

– Sura Hassan