Chapter 5   

The next morning came and once again it was the cool air and the call to prayers that woke me up. I rolled up my bedclothes and went to the latrine. This morning I tagged along with one of my fellow servicemen. SSgt McKinley was a five-year veteran and had been in the country for six months. He was the ranking airman but not the recognized leader of our group, that position belonged to Sgt Joseph Pereira, who was more outspoken. He was far from fluent in the Turkish language but had picked up some rudimentary phrases. He was a large man and already was suffering from the oppressive heat and the lack of circulating air. He was also a heavy smoker which did not help his ability to breathe. We shared our interrogation stories over breakfast as we decided to pick up our bread from the front gate and supplemented it with items from our rations and other supplies. We made a small campfire using driftwood supplied by one of the courtyard groups for a small fee and heated slices of chopped ham and eggs. We used empty containers like coffee cups and traded with others in the yard for jam and fresh fruit. Mac, as he was called, worked on the flight line as a weapons loader and he was nearing the end of his sixth year in the Air Force with two years remaining. Incirlik was his fourth duty assignment and his first overseas assignment. The guys he had gone on the beach trip with, had all been released and he could not understand why he had been left behind. During his questioning, they had repeatedly tried to get him to accuse others and he took on a couple of bumps and bruises before signing a bogus confession. I talked about how my plans of making the Air Force a career was not going to happen if we ever got out of our present situation. We both wondered what was being done to secure our release and he said that over the last couple of months there had been scuttlebutt on base that tensions in the region were escalating, something having to do with borders, historical lands, and indigenous people groups. I absorbed the information but really could not relate to any of it and reminded him that I had just barely arrived in the country, before changing the subject. We finished our breakfast and headed back to the room.
I found Emir and Effendi at their shared bunk, Effendi had the bottom bunk, and they were seated on it. I took note of the fine Turkish rugs and linen bedclothes they had and wondered how they were able to maintain everything under squalid conditions. I told Emir that I needed his help in finding someone to help me with taking a shower and maybe wash some clothes. Effendi spoke an order in Turkish and one of his nearby underlings left the room to fulfill his request. Emir explained that my request was being handled and that Effendi had invited me to sit at his bunk until his man returned. A couple of airmen had joined our group sitting on the floor near the bed. As we were waiting, I asked Emir if he would translate for me as I had some questions about the old man. He agreed.
Effendi was in his early sixties and looked much older. He had spent more than half of his adult life in jail and prison for criminal and political offenses. He had been interrogated, beaten, and tortured by guards and police officers at every level and his hatred of governments and authority is what fueled his existence. Not that he was an innocent victim. His list of crimes included robbery, assault, theft, and even murder charges. I asked if the missing fingers on his hands were from a bomb or something and Effendi shook his head with a smile and explained that early in his career, he was a belligerent and angry young man, and he was a fighter. During his first time in prison, he became angry one day and hit a guard and as punishment, they cut off one of his fingers. Several years later, he hit another guard and was rewarded with having another finger removed. This continued to happen at several of the prisons and jails he served time in. The old man laughed and said that after the fifth incident he realized he was going to run out of fingers before they ran out of guards, so he changed his tactics. This explained his position of honor at the jail, Turks are fierce fighters and extremely loyal to family and culture. Before I could learn any more, his man returned. The door opened, and a young man walked through it. He was over six feet tall and had bright red hair surrounding a freckled face. His crooked smile showed an absence of half his teeth and rotten gums. He had broad shoulders and bulging muscles, formed by a lifetime of hard labor and hard knocks. He looked down at the ground in front of him before asking permission for an audience with Effendi. The old man motioned for him to come over and introduced him as Ahmet Bal. He explained to Ahmet that I was looking for someone to heat bathwater and wash clothes and we quickly agreed on a price of 5 cents for bathwater and 2 cents for each article of clothing that he washed. Ahmet’s grin grew wider as the deal was announced and he was eager to start. We agreed to meet after dinner and Ahmet left the room.
The rest of the day was uneventful, and I passed the time exploring some of the other rooms with Emir and a few other guys from our room. I felt a sense of security being with him and my French was improving every day. I shared with him how I was studying to become an engineer before partying my way out of school and then decided to join the Air Force even though mandatory service had been discontinued and replaced with an all-volunteer military. The war in Vietnam was winding down but as I explained to Emir, a part of me wondered how I would fare under enemy fire, would I stand, or would I run? He agreed that it was part of every man’s rite of passage and although he had been conscripted shortly after his 18th birthday, he too, had never faced that situation.
After dinner was over, Ahmet dutifully showed up in the room carrying clean towels and a bar of soap. I did not want to embarrass him, so I just picked up my shaving kit and fresh clothes, while handing him my soiled laundry. The care packages we had received from the Air Force included military-issued white boxers and undershirts thankfully, I had packed very few items for the 3-day trip and undergarments had not been a priority. I followed Ahmet to the bathroom and undressed while he adjusted the water to my satisfaction. We worked out simple hand signals to communicate when he was to turn the water on, and I got under the wooden bucket and enjoyed my first shower in 3 days. It was wonderful and when I finished, I saw that half of the guys had followed my lead and were waiting their turn. I paid Ahmet and returned to my cell in a better mood than I had been in, my laundry would be returned by tomorrow afternoon. Emir asked how it went and I told him it was great and thanked him and Effendi for arranging the introduction. I asked him how old Ahmet was and why he was in an adult facility when he looked to be in his teens. Emir filled me in, Ahmet Bal was fifteen years old and was in jail awaiting his hearing on murder charges. Someone had paid the teenager five dollars to bash in the head of a man who had committed an offense against their family. Ahmet did it without hesitating or trying to hide his involvement in the crime. He was picked up immediately and had been in jail for almost six months without even the equivalent of a preliminary hearing. There were no facilities for juvenile offenders, especially those who committed capital crimes, so Ahmet had spent the last five months trying to survive in the jail with no outside help. He also was known to be mentally retarded, but this afforded him no additional services or special treatment. He had found refuge with Effendi, who empathized with the young boy’s plight, and assisted him in finding a group to join. He was given an unofficial place in our room activities but could not afford the cost of a permanent spot in the room. Wow! Okay, now I had a murderer for a valet. I certainly was not going to mess with his pay or turn my back on him!
The next few days went by quickly as we were all settling into a routine. Breakfast is followed by a couple of hours in the yard, lunch and quiet time in the room, the outside courtyard again, and then dinner, a shower, and more room time. The Turks had moved people again so that we all had ample space on the floor and the only non-Americans in the room were the ones who had earned the right to a bunk bed. The weekend came, and we were surprised by a group of wives from the enlisted and officers’ clubs. They brought homemade cookies, pies, cakes, fresh fruits, candy, and more reading materials. We were not permitted to do more than thank them for the gifts before they left. There was no official word about what was going on with our cases and they left as quickly as they came. We stashed our goodies and headed to the courtyard. By now I was on a first-name basis with the guys, and we ate all our meals together. It turned out that five of us played chess and we devised a workable set using stones, wood, and items from our ration kits. The board was elaborately decorated with pencil and ink, was hand-drawn, and was a collaboration of several of the guys in the group. We ordered lunch and set up the chess set while we waited. We played chess and cards the rest of the afternoon and we also started to come together as a group and people began to naturally slip into distinct roles. Some of it was based on personalities and service rank, but it was leadership and people skills that determined the pecking order among us and our Turkish roommates.
Carnegie-Mellon University has a diverse student population. In addition to students from every state in the US, there are students and faculty from every nation in the world. My roommate was a rich Jewish kid from upstate New York. He and his friends introduced me to hard rock and the hippie movement. I had jock friends with whom I spent hours playing flag football and pick-up basketball games. When we were not playing sports, we were watching it on TV and debating every major league or major college team. I played cards, ping pong, pool, and hung out with the couch potatoes. Planning a trip to Kent State to see the massacre? Count me in! The African- Americans or blacks on campus included those that had been there before affirmative action and the sixty of us that were part of the new initiative to recruit minority students. I reveled in meeting new people if it were in a group atmosphere, and I could enjoy listening to everyone without having to offer an opinion. People appreciate being good listeners, and I became an expert at it long before I learned the importance of it. Now I had a captive audience, both inside and outside the jail.
The mood was festive in the room that night as we shared our new bounty with the Turkish prisoners. They loved the various goodies the Air Force wives had brought and there was so much of it that we were able to share with the other groups in the jail. I had grown accustomed to the strong coffee, and we also had tea and soft drinks. While we eating Effendi had Emir ask if I had ever done any boxing. I replied that I had put on gloves before and did not care for the sport as a participant but had followed boxing closely growing up. The Turks continued to insist that all black men must be boxers and brought up the names, Ali, Frazier, and Foreman. Of course, they had followed those careers from the Olympics to world title fights and surely noticed the substantial number of Negroes that competed in them. Emir joked that I was too short to be a basketball player and too small for American football, so there was the proof! They continued to jest with me, and I finally just went along with it and admitted to some amateur bouts. That quieted them down, but I could not help noticing the whispered conversations that took place soon after our little group broke up. Another thing that happened is that the Turks started referring to me using the word, “hadji.” Emir told me that it was the Turkish word for ‘black’ but when I heard it used in conjunction with my name, it was always followed by smiles or laughter. I used my Turkish-English dictionary to discover that the Arabic translation was a term of respect for those who had made the pilgrimage to Mecca, which made no sense. I accepted the fact that something was being lost in translation and spent the rest of the evening listening to stories from the various criminal careers in the room and how most of them came to be at the Erdemli jail.
Warden Polat was finishing another long day at the facility and was preparing to leave for the night. The arrival of the military spouses had caused quite the commotion earlier. His staff was unprepared to handle a dozen women who had presented themselves without warning shortly after breakfast. The women had tried to dress down for the occasion, but his men were not accustomed to seeing the exposed legs, arms, and other flesh that Arabic women always took care to hide under their burkas. The local press had been bolstered by the presence of the international correspondents who were beginning to flock to the area, and he could not risk alienating them by not allowing the ladies to deliver the stuff they brought. Instead, he took precautions to check all the items before releasing them to the prisoners and then quickly had the delegation leave the jail. Everything appeared to have gone smoothly but he took extra time and care in reporting the visit to his superiors. The prisoners were in better spirits after the visit and that information had been certainly reported by the wives when they returned to the base.
He decided to meet with his top informant among the prisoners to see what, if anything, was happening with the Americans. Mustafa Aksoy was of Turkish-Cypriot descent and was a political prisoner, accused of working with dissidents in the northern district of Cyprus. Mustafa was nearing the end of his sentence and he was very receptive when the Warden had his guards recruit him as an informant. He struck a deal that assured him that he would be protected and receive other considerations. A knock on the door signaled that it was time and Mustafa was escorted by a trusted guard who closed the door behind them and took up a position behind the seated prisoner. Mustafa barely raised his head to glance at the warden before excitingly informing him about the plans for a fight. When he got to the part naming the contestants, Polat broke out in a nervous sweat and motioned for the guard to pour him a stiff drink. As the details of the fight emerged, he relaxed and saw this as an opportunity to get back some of the power the inmates had gained from the influx of news reporters and others. He dismissed the informant and laid out plans for turning the fight into a win for him, no matter the outcome. The warden locked up his office and congratulated himself on getting through another day.

Until we meet again,

Barron Broomfield