Downtown Dharma was on its European Tour. We rocked. We were tight. We played Nirvana and Pearl Jam and STP covers, plus a few wicked originals that I must have channeled from Kurt Cobain himself. And of course, the obligatory Arctic Meltdown or Queers of the Mesozoic standards for the young kids in the audience, the ones who would have been tots the day The Kurt kissed the barrel of his shotgun.
We played Bristol, Coventry, Hamburg, Lyon, Oporto, opening for Osama Been Laid until the Submission Faction blew up La Roque House in Como an hour before showtime. Two roadies and six clubbers bought it. The fundies used cordite. Osama Been Laid went back to the States and changed its name. In between they spent some time rapping with Interpol and with Homeland Security. They had all this coming, was our feeling. You pick a provocative name, you’re going to pay the consequences, even if you’re just doing Moby covers.
The Italian police also asked us questions for an hour or three. Rick (drummer) popped a few benzos beforehand but still managed to nervously say, “We’re all criminals, we’re all victims.” Vlad (bass) told crap stories about the girls whose names he had tattooed on his arms, saying each was one he’d known who’d died in Bali or Jacksonville or on 7/7, but the middle-aged police inspector opined with a straight face how sorry he was that Alanis Morrisette had met such a tragic end. I, Dennis (vocals, guitar, keyboards) was pure Zen. I thought about my rock garden in Redmond. I’d like to think it was my perfect equanimity that kept Downtown Dharma from being detained until the Interpol goons could arrive. More likely, we presented ourselves as harmless fools not worthy of the investigational resources of the international community.
I think differently now.
We left the police station at dawn, bought cappuccinos at a Starbucks, then walked the promenade along the Lago di Como. The morning was warm and the water green and celebrity jet skiers were already making waves before the day got too hot. I felt the oneness with the universe that a sleepless night always gives.
Rick was not so mellow. He washed down a bar of Xanax with his cappuccino, swearing as he burned his mouth. He walked ahead of Vlad and me, drumming roll-offs on his liver-spotted balding scalp or twisting his fingers nervously in the remnants of his fuchsia-dyed ponytail. “None of you guys get the enormity of the situation. We’re next.”
“Next what?” I asked.
He didn’t turn. “Fundamentalized, Dennis. Blown up. Manburgers.”
“You’re reading this all wrong,” Vlad said. “This is a sign, dude.”
Rick turned. Pupils big as 45s. “A stop sign, you mean. A Dead End.”
Vlad sighed. “No. A portent. We weren’t hurt. We weren’t hardly even interrogated. Now what’s that say to you?”
Rick drummed on a plaque that said something about Mussolini being shot in a nearby village. “Law of averages is about to get us.”
Vlad sighed heavily and looked at me.
“We’ve got good karma,” I said.
“No, Dennis,” Vlad said. “It’s more than that. We got to keep making music.”
“I don’t want to stop making music,” I said.
“I mean meaningful music.”
“Don’t dis The Kurt,” I warned.
“Dude, you’re not getting me. I had this flash in the police station. I had this Saul of Tarsus thing. Why keep playing these clubs like Virgin Records is ever going to sign us? Why not do something meaningful? Why not take Nirvana to Islam!”
If you ever have the choice between being, say, a guitar virtuoso, and having good karma, choose karma. You got karma, you can visualize what you want and the rest will be made manifest. Sitting in our hotel room that night, Rick watching the Italian coverage of the La Roque House bombing (using headphones at our request), Vlad drinking Sambuca as he read Thomas Merton and Jello Biafra: American Prophets, and me on the bed deep-breathing as I sipped Coors Lite and visualized myself in my backyard, strumming my guitar soft as a whisper to my happy stone Buddha and the goldfish in my pond, I had my inspiration. Not a flash, not a numinous experience, but a tingle, a happiness. I could see Downtown Dharma, engaging some hostile fundies, guys hell-bent on blowing up the band, the club, any guy without a beard or woman without a bhurka, and we able to reach their gentle natures, the human part unsullied by the raging mullahs and the oil-sheik dictators. All through our music. Get ’em to fizzle-out their fuses, break their timers, love their neighbors whether they were Jew or Jain, Christian or Kurd. My pulse slowed. I opened my eyes. “I’ve got an action plan,” I said.
“Cool, dude,” said Vlad. He might be the one who’d initially get inspiration, but I was the one who did the Right Action. “Do you think Andy will book us somewhere?”
Andy was Osama Been Laid’s manager. He’d been handling the tour for us. He hadn’t returned my calls all day. “No, I was thinking Martha.”
“Auntie Martha? At the State Department?”
“Yeah.”
“She’s no agent! She’s the Man, dude!”
“She knows lots of shit.”
“Guys!” Rick shouted. “There we are!” The TV showed us walking toward the club, lugging our equipment, faces befuddled in the red-amber-blue lights of the police and ambulance cars. A girl with half her hair burned off, punk-style not by choice, gave Vlad a kiss. He was cool. Chicks always dug him. Rick though, freaking out, let go of his dolly. His drum kit would have rolled into the street if I hadn’t had the presence of mind to catch it. Rick moaned. “What fuck-ups we are!”
“Turn it off,” Vlad said.
“Now every fundie that watches Al-Jazeera knows us!”
Vlad grabbed the remote and turned off the tube.
“I got the jitters,” Rick whined. He started searching for pills through the shag carpet.
I’d hidden his stash. I’d been doling it out to him at intervals. I didn’t want to deal with an ER trip. That would be just too Kurt Cobain.
I took out my cell phone, then dialed Martha’s cell.
She picked up on the third ring. “Dennis. You need to call your mother.”
“Yeah, I’ll do that.” My mind blanked as I listened to Aunt Martha lecture me on my irresponsibility, on not calling home to let my folks know I was okay, on not going to N.A. meetings, on not brushing my teeth or wearing earplugs during shows (“You’ll be as deaf as Pete Townsend someday.”) Or even that fucking canard, what’s a forty-three-year old doing playing a young man’s game? I thought of some assholeish things to say, but remained Zen. “Aunt Martha, I was hoping you could help us.”
“You need money to fly back to the States, tell me.”
“Thanks. We’re okay on money. What I was thinking was maybe you could help with visas.”
“Visas? What idiocy do you have planned now?”
I took a breath and counted to three. Then I told her about my plan. She heard me out. She’s a good listener. “So maybe you could help us get a visa to some Muslim country, like Iran or Egypt or Lebanon.”
Vlad began to sip another shot of Sambuca, but reconsidered, and gave the shot to Rick, who had gone bug-eyed.
“Dennis,” Martha said. “There is something called the Internet. The State Department has a website. You might want to visit it. There we list the countries with which we no longer have close diplomatic ties. These countries don’t issue visas to Americans.”
I silently gave Aunt Martha the finger. Me not know the Internet? I’d surfed to RocTube just yesterday because our fans had already uploaded our Lyon show. “What about, um, Indonesia? Or Turkey?”
“Indonesia, no. As for Turkey, your EU visa works, but travel there is officially discouraged.”
“Discouraged? Why?”
“Biological terrorism incidents.”
“What? Anthrax?”
“The Internet also has something called news. There is a new biological agent called Amanita which has been used in Ankara and Istanbul over the last few months.”
“What’s Amanita?”
“This frequency is not secure, Dennis.”
“Right.” Martha couldn’t talk to me about something which probably any website could give me volumes on. “So, is there anywhere safe we might go?
“Sioux Falls, South Dakota,” she said. “But if you want to pursue your good-will mission, you might consider Cyprus.” She took a deep breath. “I have friends in Nicosia who might rent you a house in a safe neighborhood.”
“Cool! And there’s Muslims?”
“As there are stars in the sky.”
“So tell me about your friends in Nicosia.”
“Call your mother, Dennis. Then let’s talk when I’m not at work.”
The house was on a hillside in the Strovlos neighborhood, overlooking downtown Nicosia, and beyond it the old mosques and apartment blocks and treeless hills of Turkish Northern Cyprus.
Smog tinged everything sepia like an old fashioned photo.
“This is like a house in Redmond,” Vlad said.
“Not enough green,” I said, as I pulled our air-conditioned ’98 Fiat into the driveway.
“Bet it’s got a nice garden out back,” Rick said. He laughed like he’d made a witticism. I’d given him four milligrams of Xanax when we boarded the plane in Athens. I had sensed he was this close to a panic attack. “Bet it’s got a Buddha.”
“This looks like the house of a career diplomat,” Vlad said.
“Andros and Maria work for the government of Cyprus,” I said.
“We might as well have stayed in Ath—” Vlad started as we got out. He stopped. The heat was incredible. He leaned against the car, then yelped. “Fucking hot!”
“I brought my hat,” Rick said, pulling a wide-brimmed straw hat down over his head.
I’d known Cyprus was hot, one of those places even the old crones no longer wear black but heat-reflective Mylar jumpsuits. “At least it’s a dry heat.” But my breath burned my lungs as I carried my two guitar cases toward the door. We passed two skinny pine trees still green and two others long dead. I knocked at the door.
A dude in a Saddam Hussein mustache and a double-breasted suit with a rainbow sheen greeted us. “Hello. You are Instant Karma, no?”
“Allahu akbar!” giggled Rick. I elbowed him.
“We’re Downtown Dharma,” I said. “You must be Andros. My Aunt Martha gives her regards.”
The man bowed. “Your aunt is a fine woman. I am called Ali Musharak. Mr. Andros and his wife are spending the summer in the Peloponnesus. They send you this message.”
Ali Musharak presented his cell phone. It played a video. Andros, olive-skinned but hair bleached blonde, wished us a pleasant stay. Maria, who had a Texas accent, said, “Don’t y’all go trashing our place, you hear?” but she said it with a wink. I liked them.
Ali motioned us in. Air-conditioning on so high it gave me goose pimples. “Fine salon, yes?” he asked. It was decked out with Bauhaus (not the band)–style furniture, rigid black leather chairs and couchettes that just looking at made your back ache. Walls adorned with classy framed B & W photos (Broadway, NYC, 1936; Market Street, SF, 1947). There were icons, too, the Virgin Mary, and Jesus on the cross, and some Greek Orthodox Patriarch in a black cassock. And there was a glass bookcase, with books in Greek but also English: travel books and gardening books and, most interesting for Vlad, a Religious Section, Bibles and Korans and books about Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Gandhi and Deepak Chopra.
“Now, the upstairs,” Ali said. He took us up a winding staircase and showed us three small bedrooms, then led us to what he called a “rock and roll room,” which, with its beanbag chairs and mini-fridge and Foosball game, looked like something out of a Seattle basement. The one wrong note was that the polished wood floors were covered with a clear plastic tarp.
“What the fuck?” Vlad asked.
Ali pointed at the electrical outlets. “There are adapters for your American voltages, for your amplificators.” He pointed at the mini-fridge. “It is stocked with beer. But please to not smash the walls.”
“Dude, we’re not twenty-one,” Vlad said, pissy.
“Most certainly,” agreed Ali.
“You got a garden?” I asked. “Maria said there’s a place to meditate in the backyard.”
“I show you the kitchen,” Ali said. “Garbage disposal. Twelve hundred watt microwave.”
“I’d rather see the garden.” Vlad’s pissiness and Rick’s Xanax-induced giggles were disrupting my equanimity. “I need a place to be mellow.”
Ali stiffened. “I will show you the backyard.”
He took us out back. I’d been imagining the house in Redmond: Buddha and koi pond surrounded by lilac bushes and jade plants and a soothing wall of redwood trees.
Instead there was a hot cement slab and a plot of brown grass and two more dead trees. “Apologies,” Ali said. “We have fine sprinkler system, but its use is made illegal by the global warming.”
I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. “What I want to know,” I said to Ali, “is do you know the rock scene in Nicosia?”
Ali smiled. “Oh, yes. I know the rockers. I can take you to the club, the Bachus, yes?”
“Thirteen hundred dollars a month for this?” Vlad said. He was strumming his bass, unplugged, in the small bedroom he’d claimed for himself, and I was in the lotus position on my yoga mat on his floor. My acoustic guitar rested at my side in case I got inspired.
“You wanted Islam,” I said. “It was your idea.”
“But this is Christian Cyprus. This is your aunt’s friends’ place.”
“Downtown Nicosia’s just twenty minutes away! You’d rather sleep in some cockroach motel by a minaret where they might blow us up just for not wearing beards?”
“Fuck, dude, what kind of shit are you talking? You sound like Anne Coulter.”
“Peace, dude.” He was right. I closed my eyes. I picked up my guitar, and played the intro to “All Apologies.” One of The Kurt’s greatest songs. A few measures of it can express sentiments no mortal man would dare speak. I relaxed and smiled at Vlad.
“Beautiful, dude.” Vlad had a soft look on his face. He looked twenty-five again. “But don’t take this the wrong way. Your sound’s kind of muffled, like.”
“I know.” I thumped the side of my guitar. “I’m safekeeping Rick’s stash in a sock in here.”
You might be wondering why I’m so the Mother Hen for Rick. It started because of a show we did at the New CBGB in NYC a few years back. We were nervous. We’d just released our CD Grange Grunge and we were getting airplay outside Seattle for the first time since ’96. And here we were playing at the world’s most famous club. Well, it was the New CBGB, in Staten Island, rather than the original CBGB, in Manhattan, but that’s just a detail. Anyway, we were opening for Orange Pulp, and it was before I found the Buddha, and we were all popping Benzos, and drinking our various beverages, and we got through the show okay. But afterwards two groupie chicks hit on Rick, the first time (for him) in years, and they took him to their apartment, and he came back the next morning to the house we were crashing at. I was still hungover but he was talking a mile a minute because he’d mixed ten milligrams of Xanax with some meth. Finally he took the last of his Xanax, maybe fourteen milligrams, and fell asleep. Two days later we took the van to Boston to play a club, Rick itchy and edgy and passing gas like he’d eaten nothing but refried beans. We were all out of Xanax so I gave him Coors Lite to ease his withdrawals. It helped a little, but he was still talking fast, this time about dying, not fucking seventeen-year-olds, and I asked him if he wanted to cancel. But he was a trooper, just like Kurt was, and he said the show must go on. And so we did our show, and it was a good one, he sweating and pounding with more urgency than I’d heard from him since sometime last century, and finally, for our encore, we played “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” It was then he lost control. He accelerated during the second chorus, drumming so fast neither Vlad nor I could keep up, and then he stood up and shouted, “I am Keith Moon!” holding his arms up in a V like Jeremy in that Pearl Jam song, and then, still clenching his drumsticks, he fell over his drum kit, knocking down his highhat and kicking a hole in his kick drum, and then, the scary part, he flopped around on stage like a fish out of water.
The paramedics were there in minutes.
Rick spent two days in Boston General, which nixed our profits from the tour as well as putting us six thousand dollars in debt to Aunt Martha.
Boys and girls, never cold turkey off of Xanax.
At dusk we started toward the club called Bachus.
Central Nicosia is nothing like Redmond. Well, there’s a few little glass skyscrapers, but mostly it’s old: narrow streets, and ancient Greek temples, and old domed buildings that might be churches or mosques, and those cement five story apartment blocks made popular by Stalin. And crumbling walls and fortifications built by the Venetians and the Ottomans. It probably had some grandeur, and majesty, and all that, but the Cypriots were honking at me because I was driving too slow, and not passing buses on blind curves, and most of the street signs were in Greek, not American. And then Rick, riding shotgun, gawking at the ruins or saying random things like, “Is that the Turkish Baths?” drummed a roll-off on the dashboard.
The GPS began to give us directions in Greek.
“You dumbass,” said Vlad.
“But we’ve gone over!” Rick said. “It’s real here! No Kentucky-fried corporate Americanized globalization!”
“There’s a Quizno’s down that block,” Vlad said.
“Both of you, either tell me the street we’re on, or shut up,” I said.
They were quiet. They hadn’t heard me speak so sharply since before I found Zen.
I tried reading the GPS map, and reading the street signs, but both driving and navigating proved too much, and a few wrong turns brought me to a cobblestone street where there were no cars and the storefronts were shuttered with steel and there was a steel picket gate that had been lowered. Two soldiers carrying automatic guns stared at us.
“We’re dead,” Rick said.
I lost it. I tried putting the car in reverse, but put it into fifth gear instead. The car jerked forward and the engine died.
I turned the key. There was a whine but nothing happened.
“You need to engage the clutch,” Vlad said.
I almost cursed him but thought of my koi pond.
One soldier came over to us and I rolled down the window.
The heat slapped us like a wet towel.
“Problem with the car?” asked the soldier. British accent.
The soldier held his gun easily before him but I could see the whites of his eyes, which, made yellow by his wrap-around shades, darted like rotten eggs from person to person.
“We’re cool,” Vlad said.
“We’re through with being cool!” Rick giggled.
“All right, gentlemen, I need to see your passports.”
My heart trip-clawed. Damn Rick. I tried to picture my koi pond. I smelled the soldier’s sweat and aftershave. I heard pocket and paper sounds, then Vlad reached across me.
The soldier tapped the barrel of his gun against the top of the car. “Yours, too, mate.”
I zipped open the pocket of my cargo pants and brought out my passport.
The soldier looked through each of the passports carefully. “You were in Italy?”
“Como,” Rick said. “We were one of the bands that was going to play.”
The soldier looked at me. “Downtown Dharma.”
I breathed, nodding.
“That’s bally,” the man said. He handed me the passports back. “And you thought you might pop into a towel-head club tonight, and have a shot at the karaoke machine?”
I prayed that Rick would not answer that.
“We were lost,” Vlad said.
“Right. You know that I believe you. But I’m afraid I also believe you’re the kind of ignorant Americans that might just cross the Green Line on impulse. You don’t want to do that, mates. We’re locked down to vehicular traffic again. You won’t get across unless you have a stamp for your passport and you’re traveling with a vetted tour guide. Even that I wouldn’t recommend. Your night in Como might suggest why.”
I was afraid one of us would argue about Como, but it was Vlad who was conciliatory. “Sir, really. We are lost.” He sounded plaintive as a child.
I got an idea. “Could I call a friend on my cell phone who might help us?”
The soldier shrugged. “All right. But park over there to place your call.”
He pointed his gun behind us, at a loading dock at the entrance to the street, fifty yards from the checkpoint.
Ali climbed into the car ten minutes later. Still in his sharkskin suit. He was pissed. He ordered Vlad to sit in the back seat so that he could ride shotgun with me. “This is not the ugly Americans. This is the moron Americans.”
“Our car died, dude,” Vlad said.
“Is a good thing. You were approaching the Green Line. Drivers have been shot for not stopping.”
“We were lost,” I said.
“But we’re Americans,” Rick said, whiny.
“I take you to Bachus,” Ali said. He was short with us. We’d fucked up. But the British soldier had taken it well. Surely it was more than him taking pity on us just because we were Americans. He must have sensed my Buddha nature beneath my nervousness.
“I thought Aunt Martha said Cyprus was safe,” Vlad said.
It was a dig at me, but Ali answered. “Your Aunt Martha is a fine lady. She cares deeply about all peoples of the world. But she listens too much to Andros and Maria. They talk the pretty picture because they think sweet words will make hard men soft. And because they live in the nice house, and go to fine restaurants, and consort with diplomats and intellectuals. Martha smiles at me like I am boy when I tell her the Cyprus Liberation Front has been infiltrated by the Submission Faction. But there have been kidnappings and bombings even in Greek Cyprus these last weeks. Why do you think the U.N. does not let you drive across the Green Line?”
“They think we have a car bomb?”
“They do not want an incident. They do not want dead Americans, and airplanes bombing mosques for the vengeance.”
“Who would Jesus bomb?” Rick said, not giggly. Hysterically.
“We’re on a goodwill mission,” I said. “Rock can unite polar opposites.”
“Ah, envoys for the peace. Your aunt will be proud.”
He was being sarcastic, but I didn’t want to challenge him. The easy way he’d waved at the soldiers as he reached the Fiat told me he was one dude who took shit from no one.
He directed us down a series of streets, some so narrow we had to back up to let cars coming the other way pass, then had us park in a garage so insanely crowded that I tore the fender off the Fiat on a pillar pulling in, then knocked over a Vespa in the stall behind us as I straightened out.
We pulled the Vespa upright. It was leaking oil onto the cement. Ali pushed a handful of euros into its pannier.
“Cypriot insurance,” Ali said.
Rick giggled. “Can you be our manager?”
Ali laughed. His teeth were so white they seemed to glow blue. “You don’t need a manager. You need a nanny.”
Gas fumes in the garage made me faintly nauseated. Just like home, except the cars were all dinky—some three-wheelers even. Outside it was still hot, though visually breathtaking in that European way, with a crumbling Venetian tower silhouetted against a sunset of layered golden and reddish clouds, stepped in a three-dimensional effect.
Rick sang the last line from “Stairway to Heaven.”
The Bachus was an ancient onion-domed church set smack-dab against the Green Line. The top of the Green Line wall was coiled with barbed wire.
“What the fuck?” asked Vlad.
“We know some vespers,” I said.
“Mr. Ataturk knows what the American and German tourists want. Not church services. So Thursday and Saturday night, he has the rock and roll.” Tonight was Thursday.
We stepped between concrete pylons designed to dissuade car bombers.
Inside there was a good crowd already, sitting in the pews, tourist-types, dressed in baggy shorts and baseball caps and Gold’s Gym Santorini T-shirts. I spied an emo or three with black hair in their eyes and dour looks on their faces. There was a distinct lack of smoke, only that old dusty church smell, the smell of ancient places I always found comforting.
Light through stained-glass windows picturing saints and Jesus cast peaceful patterns on the concert-goers.
Toward the back was a neon-lit table at which sat an elderly jowly man with slicked-back white hair, two muscled skinheads I took for bodyguards, and a cute chick in a headscarf. It was a big table, and the old man motioned us to join him.
“I am Felix Ataturk. You are the Dharma Bums?” asked the old man.
“Downtown Dharma, sir,” I said. “Dharma Bums is a group from way back.”
“You look like you are from way back, as well. But I have seen the video of your Lyon show. Tell me, what inspires men of middle years to keep touring when your contemporaries have become lorry drivers or at best house bands at Atlantic City casinos?”
“Don’t give up on us baby, we can still come thr—” Rick started, and I kicked his ankle.
I breathed mindfully. “We’re past wanting to be big stars,” I said.
“We have a mission bigger than rock and roll,” Vlad said.
“Ah.” He looked toward the cute girl. “Shayla, why don’t you get these young men drinks. Is beer okay?”
Shayla smiled, but I could see resentment in her eyes.
“Just a soda-pop for Rick,” I said.
When she had gone, Felix Ataturk said, “She does not know her place yet. She has too many Western ideas, mixed with too many fundamentalist ideas. Ali would like to marry her, but tell me, how often have you seen him pray?”
“I do not pray for an audience,” Ali said, but his face turned red.
It seemed unkind to put Ali on the spot like that.
Vlad changed the subject by telling Ataturk our plans for uniting Islam and the West.
The bodyguards snickered.
Ataturk drank from a gin and tonic. “You are too old for that kind of idealism. You must become realists, if you want to live much longer. I would have thought Como would have instilled common sense into your heads.”
“Como inspired us, Mr. Ataturk,” I said. “If we don’t do our small part, how can things ever get any better. I mean, look at U2. They do good shit.”
“U2 are the richest men in Ireland,” Ataturk said. “They have millions to give. They have two hundred security guards at their performances. Perhaps you should follow their example.”
“I could fire missiles from my drumsticks!” Rick said.
Ataturk was saved from responding to this inanity by Shayla, who brought back four drinks on a tray.
One of the bodyguards said something jokingly to her in Greek that did not make her smile.
Ali attempted to pay for his beer, but she pushed his cash away. “I am not your hostess.”
“Shayla is my daughter,” Ataturk said. “Beyond that she will define herself as she will. She can play hostess. She can play ice-queen. She can play fundie. She can even play the bass guitar.”
“Nei, papagia,” which even I could recognize was Greek, not Turkish.
Ataturk glowered and drank from his gin and tonic.
“I could drink too, but I do not,” Shayla said. “The Prophet forbids it.”
“Good reason for that,” Rick said. “He would have forbidden benzos, too. They can destroy you surely as whiskey.”
Shayla glared at Ali. “You told them?”
Ali drank from his beer, then said something angrily in Turkish.
“Let us speak in English for our American friends,” Ataturk said. “You have had a problem with prescription drugs, Rick?”
“Oh, yeah.” While sipping his Coke, he told the story of the Boston show. He exaggerated his Xanax usage and the severity of his seizure, giving his typical rock-star drug-abuser narcissistic spin. The interesting thing was not his B.S. but Shayla’s reaction to it. Her brown eyes took on a moist glow. Her features, hawk nose, full lips, high cheekbones, which I’d initially gauged as merely cute suddenly became pretty. Maybe it’s that it’s hard to see the real women with those ugly scarves; you think they’re nuns or chemo victims. Or maybe she was taking pity on Rick and her face had become softer. I’d seen chicks do that before. “Then I spent six weeks at the Betty Ford clinic.”
Vlad rolled his eyes at the lie.
“You too, Rickie?” Shayla asked. “That is where I went. After drinking the bourbon, and snorting the lines of coke before concerts. It was at Betty Ford that I found God.”
“Dennis is my higher power,” Rick said. Then he looked abashed; he apparently didn’t want to be so flip. “Do you really play bass?”
She sneered like Billy Idol. “Do you really play the drums?”
“Touché.” Rick unconsciously brushed the top of his head, like he still had a full head of hair. “Your band plays tonight, right?”
Shayla nodded.
“Well, maybe I could sit in with you. Just for a song?”
“Maybe. I saw the video of your Lyon show. You have a steady beat, like Ringo Starr.”
“Thanks,” Rick said. Vlad smirked. Saying you played like Ringo Starr was like saying you had the dependability of a metronome. Which, in Rick’s case, was a compliment. “So you play tonight?”
“My band is called Fatimah. We go on stage in a hour.”
“I wouldn’t do anything flashy.” He sipped his Coke. “I’m a professional. My wild youth is behind me.”
“Your band will not like an American playing drums,” Ali said.
“Stuff it, Ali-baba. They’ll think it’s cool.”
“It is these kinds of transgressions that inspired madmen to spread Amanita in Istanbul.”
Mr. Ataturk slammed his glass down so hard I thought it might crack the tabletop. “Ali Musharak, you have been friends with my family for many years. Shayla, while she was once very fond of you, has cooled in that regard. But neither of these facts gives you the license to speak to her rudely in front of guests.”
“I apologize. Moving forward, I will strive to act as the gentleman, inshallah.”
He swallowed a deep draught of beer.
I sipped my beer. Even with the church setting, I was tense now, too. I figured Ali and Shayla had been engaged, and Shayla, in true rock-chick style, had dumped him. And there was this cultural divide thing, too. I didn’t know how much anger was for show, how much was deep-seated and real. I had a couple bars of Xanax in my pocket for Rick (just in case) but was wondering if I might need them myself. “So,” I said, to break the silence, “what’s this Amanita about?”
“It is the Russians,” Ataturk said. “The FSB.”
“It is the Submission Faction,” Ali said.
“Nonsense,” Ataturk said. “The Submission Faction are medievalists. They believe in humors and the evil eye. They do not have the technology to manufacture drugs. The Russians, however, do. They seek to keep Cyprus divided so Turkey cannot join the E.U. fully.”
“The Submission Faction delivers it to the target,” Ali said.
“Perhaps. Any fool can carry a test tube.”
“But what is it?” Rick asked, tense for the first time since he’d set eyes on Shayla.
“It’s a designer spore,” Vlad said. He’d been the one of us to read about it on the Internet. “Recombinant DNA. Luminescent growths like shrooms. Causes your skin to break out in all sorts of colorful ways.”
“Internally, too,” Ataturk said. “Your lungs and sinuses bloom with sweet-smelling fungi until you asphyxiate.”
“Heavy shit,” I said.
Everyone was quiet. Then Shayla said, “It’s a pretty way to die.”
With her accent I couldn’t tell whether she was perverse or sincere.
The bodyguards made low jokes, in Greek or Turkish, then finally the night’s first act took the stage, a rap-metal group, Plutonium Rhymes. Baseball caps and golden chains and those stupid gangsta hand signals. They rapped in cockney-sounding English about hating Americans, hating Armenians, hating Palestinians, hating Zionists, hating Kurds, hating Shiites, hating Saudis, hating Al Qaeda. At least they seemed equitable in their hatreds. Their guitarist was ace, though. It was nice to hear a rap act that could actually play instruments.
“They do not speak about hating the Turks or the Greeks because they once spent a month in jail for that,” Ataturk said.
The crowd was clapping, but merely politely; it was a church after all. But this pissed the guitarist off. He said, “No encore for you tonight, wankers!”
And then he stormed off stage, to the hisses and boos of the audience. The rest of the band played on for a few bars then looked at each other, shrugged, and stood up. The turntable dude, shaved head and doleful eyes, apologized to the crowd, then left.
The crowd politely clapped for him.
Then Mr. Ataturk took the stage and introduced Fatimah.
The crowd cheered.
“Let us rock this house,” Shaylah said, as she tuned her guitar, feedback so loud I felt it in my beer mug.
The band had a rhythm guitarist, an older guy with long hair like he was stuck in 1992, who seemed competent; but also a young dude, lead guitar, in a fedora and tattoos who kept trying Jimi Hendrix riffs at inappropriate times. The drummer, buff and shirtless, wearing a yarmulke, kept a solid beat.
Their sound had the anger of Hole but the melodies of R.E.M.
“They are good, are they not?” Ataturk asked. I allowed they were, though the lead guitarist needed some restraint.
“They pack every club they play.”
Shayla looked hot on stage. She’d taken off her black robe (leaving on the scarf), and was wearing jeans and a red mesh shirt that gave a good indication of the shape and color of her curves. She put down her guitar and played an upright piano as she talked. “Allah’s gift to us is our bodies. We must treat them with respect.” She thrust out her breasts as she said that: the crowd cheered. “We must display our beauty, but not let those with impure thoughts take the advantage of it. We must feed ourselves, but not at the expense of our health. Whiskey, gin, marijuana, cocaine, beer—and benzos—will all destroy what Allah has given us. And even our ears—we must take care to keep them from damage.” With that she stepped away from the piano, and inserted two foam ear plugs in her ears. “Now, back to the rocking.”
The crowd whooped.
She played a power chord.
“She’s so hot,” Rick said.
“She is a whore,” Ali whispered, too soft for Ataturk to hear.
“Dude, you need to come to America, so you can see some real ho’s,” Vlad said.
“I have lived in L.A., and been to Tulsa, and it made me sick.”
They played a few more songs, political stuff, sure, but mild partly because the lyrics were downright opaque. She had a nice voice, well-timbred, and even when she screamed she kept in tune. She played some love songs. Even with those, the guitarist kept thrashing where calm would have been effective: hadn’t he ever listened to Nirvana? And then she just played her guitar, the rest of the band quiet, and she stepped down from the stage, walking between the pews, back toward us. She started singing the Led Zep oldie, “Thank You,” and when she reached our table, she pulled off her head scarf. Her hair was lustrous black and longer than her shoulders and my god so sexy. Rick’s eyes bulged. Even I got a hard on. But she wrapped the scarf around Ali’s shoulder.
He threw it to the floor.
“Asshole,” Vlad whispered to me.
Shayla stood there, still smiling. I noticed she had a narrow inch-long scar across one cheek. When she’d finished the song, she led Rick to the stage by the hand. There they played “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Rick was under control. Professional like he’d been the entire road trip. The crowd loved it. Or maybe they loved Shayla; who could tell?
The crowd wasn’t body-surfing, but they were standing up on the pews, dancing, pumping their fists.
It was a rock show.
Ataturk leaned toward me. “When you have played the Narghile, why not play somewhere better? Why not play in Greek Cyprus or in Greece or in Tel Aviv? In Athens, I can pay you better than what you were getting playing little clubs in France.”
“I want to do something more than rock and roll.”
It was a weird night, mostly because Ali decided he wanted to be our manager after all. Neither Vlad nor Rick was hot on that idea, but Ataturk surprisingly was. “I do have a financial interest in the Narghile,” the old man said. “I do not mind giving my people my business. Most of them are good Turks who want only to live peaceful lives. It is just the virus of fundamentalism that poisons the mind of the few.”
“But Ali?” Vlad asked.
“He is a good man. Our families have been friends for generations. My daughter thinks of herself as, who is that, Courtly Love, and must do things to provoke him. I side with her of course, except in business matters; I know her provocations are mere show. Ali knows Nicosia and he will know how to get you a good rate. Also to whom to give baksheesh so that you are not stuck in a cement interrogation cell for a week.”
I could see Shayla being Courtney, but that would make Ali The Kurt, which was plain laughable.
“Why don’t you manage us?” I asked.
“Though I am Turkish, I prefer the Greek side of the Green Line.”
The next morning, Ali drove us in a Lexus SUV that reeked of cigar smoke. He and Ataturk had already made some rehearsal arrangements with the manager of the Narghile, and we had stored our gear in the back. The three band members sat in the rear seat. Up front sat Shayla, dressed all in black, like a fundie, except that she announced, “You know, I wear nothing underneath,” causing Ali’s neck to redden and his fingers to grip the wheel until they went bloodless.
“Business and pleasure don’t mix,” Vlad whispered.
“Man, I need some help,” Rick said. He was jittery, in withdrawals, his powers of observation uncomfortably keen. “The LEDs on the dashboard, man, they look like eyes of the devil.”
I gave him a two mg Xanax.
He relaxed almost immediately. Shayla turned toward Rick. In her headdress, she looked like a nurse from the Florence Nightingale era. “Is a hard drug to quit, no?”
“Hard once the evil eye of Shaitan sees you always,” Ali grumbled.
“Come on, dude, he’s having a rough time,” Vlad said.
Ali sighed theatrically. “Sorry. All apologies.”
Ali’s words cued The Kurt’s greatest song inside my head. I closed my eyes and thought about my koi pond, and I breathed in and out mindfully. Rick, relaxing, began pointing out sights, his drug-induced excitement an odd counterpoint to Kurt’s melancholy. Only once did Ali correct Rick, like a concert-goer disappointed by his favorite band but too polite to heckle.
We reached the same checkpoint we’d been stopped at yesterday.
“Hello, my friend,” Ali said to the same British soldier we had met before.
“Good afternoon, Ali,” the Brit said. “A show tonight, Ms. Ataturk?”
“I have my transit documents,” she said.
“I know. I was having you on. These three, however—”
I had my passport ready. I pushed it at him. “I have a two-day visit stamp.”
He glanced at it cursorily but did not ask to see Rick’s or Vlad’s.
“We’re thinking about moving here!” Rick said.
“Do not joke,” Ali said. Then, to the Brit: “They are fool American rock stars. I am their manager.”
The Brit had tensed up; I could see his yellow eyes examining us. “Your passport, please,” he said to Rick.
Rick handed him the passport and this time, not only did he read the passport carefully, he waved an electronic wand over its bar code. Then he handed it back.
“Do watch what you say, mates. You’re not entering friendly territory.”
“Understood,” Vlad said.
Ali pulled something from his pocket. A big doobie? No, a cigar, cinched with a gold band. “Cuban,” he said, offering it to the soldier.
“No, thank you, Ali. I appreciate the gesture, but we’re on alert with this Amanita business. Can’t even accept olives.”
Ali sighed. “It is what Allah wills.”
“Hopefully, it’s temporary. Soon I will have a gift for you, inshallah.”
They raised the gate, a set of vertical steel bars that looked strong enough to withstand tanks.
When we had passed into Turkish Nicosia, Shayla said, “Apparently, we must wait for this week’s bottle of Scottish whiskey.”
Ali swore in Turkish, then turned the Lexus’s MP3-player to some sort of industrial death metal thing, so loud and disturbing Rick cried out in pain.
Shayla switched the sound system to the radio. The BBC. “You are punishing him, not me.”
“It’s cool, man,” Rick said. “Just give me another bar, will you, Dennis?”
“Too soon,” I said.
“Good,” Ali said. “He needs to learn the self-control. You mock my whiskey, but I never have more than two drinks a night.”
On the radio, we listened to some snarky British lady comment on office politics as we took in the sites of Northern Nicosia. It still looked prosperous, nothing like Beirut or Cairo or Baghdad, but the differences between it and the Greek half of the city were profound. Many storefronts were shuttered closed. Few people walked the streets. Most women I saw wore headscarves, and some even wore bhurkas.
“Amanita must be scaring everybody,” I said.
“It is Friday,” Shayla said. “We observe the day of rest.”
“Like all good Believers, we shall stop at the Great Mosque to pray,” Ali said.
But he was being sarcastic. We sped past a mosque with minarets like corn silos. We saw some open tourist shops, and a Jamba Juice at which were congregated many patrons wearing Mylar suits (“silverbugs!” Rick said), and a low-rise 1980s-looking office building, into which a Saudi in full headdress was hurrying, alongside three Asian-looking businessmen in cooling suits so mirrorlike we could see Ali’s green Lexus reflected. The streets were crowded with cars, many of them big SUVs like the Lexus, but Ali found a parking space in front of the ruins of an old building.
“Ancient Greek?” Vlad asked.
Ali snorted. “Post-war British! Bombed six months ago!”
Rick trembled.
“Is safe now, Rickie,” Shayla said. “Was the apartment building in which a Greek sympathizer lived.”
We got out. The hot air felt like stepping into a packed club whose owners would rather risk the heat-stroke deaths of patrons than turn on the AC. We started unloading our gear. Rick, white, still shaking, couldn’t even pull his snare drum out of the Lexus. Shayla made him drink from a bottle of water, then Vlad whispered to me, “Give him another bar. Fuck this clean and sober shit.”
I gave him a Xanax and made him sit in the car with the AC still on.
“Americans, very strong,” Ali said.
Shayla said something angry to him in Turkish. He did not apologize to us, but did help us finish unloading our gear. When Shayla started to help us, he gave her a disapproving look, but did not stop her.
We walked half a block. I pulled the drum-kit dolly with my acoustic guitar strapped on top, Ali carried my electric guitar, Vlad pulled the dolly with our amps, Shayla carried his bass, and Rick carried the duffel bag with our mics and wires. We passed a Starbucks on one corner, crowded with tourists and locals. Rick said, “Man, a Frapaccino sounds good.”
“Too expensive,” Ali said. “Omar will have coffee for you.”
Omar ran the Narghile. The building was Ottoman-style, tiled arches over vertical windows. It stood catty-corner from the Starbucks. Omar had wall-eyes and a pot belly and a Saddam mustache just like Ali’s. “God be with you,” he said, then, outside on the sidewalk, he waved a metal detector wand over each of us men. He allowed Ali to rub the wand over Shayla. Ali took his time. She glared at both Omar and Ali, but Omar was studying Rick. “You strung out?”
“He doesn’t do well in the heat,” Vlad said.
“He is the Xanax junkie,” Ali said.
“He sign non-liability document,” Omar said.
“WTF?” Rick said.
“I talk,” Ali said. “You stay quiet.” It was weird, negotiating on the sidewalk with our equipment at our feet, but Shayla and I calmed Rick down, while Ali and Omar gabbed away in Turkish. Then Ali said, “Mr. Rick will sign that the Narghile Club, Omar, and Mr. Ataturk will not be financially responsible for the damage caused by him. Also, not responsible for the hospitalization, burial, or police and coroner investigation in the sad case of Rick’s death.”
“You got us a fucking good deal,” Vlad said.
“He will guarantee the Downtown Dharma four hundred euros per show,” Ali added.
Vlad fumed. I felt dizzy in the heat, but thought of Redmond, cool and overcast, my koi swimming peaceably, and I said, “I think we can work with that.” I patted Rick’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay. Remember what we’re really here for.”
“Saving the world,” Rick said flatly.
