When Radhanath Swami and his friends asked the border guard the way to Istanbul, the guard pointed to a lonely country road. It stretched out into the darkness of the hilly, fertile country of Eastern Thrace. As they walked, Radhanath Swami saw for the first time the minaret of a stone mosque. The mosque’s dome and spires fascinated him and he was thrilled to see a place of God. There was no traffic on the road and Istanbul was still 150 miles away. What now? As they stood wondering how they would ever reach their destination, an old flatbed truck rattled down the road and pulled up next to them. Strangely, it was covered with wooden benches upon which sat a dozen or so cheerless policemen. Radhanath Swami and his friends clambered aboard. All the policemen wore shabby uniforms. All were silent, except for one who wore no uniform.
He whispered in Radhanath Swami’s ear.
“I want to buy hashish from you. Sell to me. I am not a policeman.”
“I don’t have any,” Radhanath Swami answered. The man demanded again and again. Later, the man jumped down from the truck, put on a police hat, and strutted away.
In the middle of the night, Radhanath swami and friends arrived in Istanbul. When the leader of the police asked them where they would stay, Ramsey told the policeman that they were looking for an inexpensive place. The leader peered at them over his spectacles and then walked off to speak privately with a junior officer. When he returned, he told them to follow his assistant policeman.
The assistant’s uniform was faded and torn. His expression was stoic and he didn’t speak a single word or ever look in their direction. Radhanath swami along with his friends followed behind him through the deserted streets of Istanbul, the poverty increasing with every block. It became obvious for them that he was taking them into the heart of the ghetto, one of the very places where the cholera epidemic was raging. The scene was demoralizing. Poverty and disease surrounded them on all sides.
Jeff trembled. “We’ve made a big mistake. That no-man’s land was safer than this place.”
Even Ramsey sighed aloud, “Mates, in my years of travel, I’ve never seen a place as depressing as this.”
Radhanath swami tried to pray but his mind only reeled in confusion. Where was this man taking them?
The unnerving darkness was pierced by the shrieks and moans of people in agony. The contagion was taking a severe toll in this filthy slum. Radhanath Swami was afraid to breathe. Cholera ravages swiftly, bringing about severe intestinal misery and death. They were lost and alone and—led by this strange man—they couldn’t turn back.
An ominous medieval building made of stone loomed before them.
An eerie sensation seized Radhanath Swami. All his intuitions told him to run. But their guide, smiling, led them inside. They entered a dimly lit room that served as a billiard hall. Inside, a dozen men puffed on cigarettes and shot pool. They looked like the sleaziest gangsters of the underworld. As they sized them up with icy stares, Radhanath swami couldn’t help but think that these thugs were the kind who would think nothing of killing someone over a gambling debt. The leader, short but formidable, leaned against a wall. His muscles bulged from a skin-tight black T-shirt as he scraped dirt from under his fingernails with a switchblade. When he saw their guide, he slipped the knife into his pocket, slid his hand across his oily black hair, and came over to speak with him.
The two seemed to strike up some kind of an agreement and motioned for them to follow to the back of the pool hall and up a dark, steep stairway made of uneven slabs of solid stone. To one side was a stone wall and on the other side a steep drop into a deep cellar with no railing. It was pitch black. Radhanath swami and friends lost their breath climbing. Once at the top, they passed through an unlit hallway that led to the room where they were to stay.
There was no question of a hospitable welcome. Rather, their “hosts” insisted that they pay them cash up front. Their aggression was so startling that it began to dawn on Radhanath Swami that he and his friends had seriously blundered. Had they just walked into a trap? They’d wanted cheap, not end-of-the-line. Ramsey spoke up, telling that they didn’t have any Turkish lira and asking the “hosts” to tell the exchange rate for dollars. “Then we can discuss paying you. But for one night only.” The “hosts” shocked them by offering only half the official bank rate. Ramsey objected and politely tried to bargain for a higher rate.
But the head shark would have none of it, as they were now in his turf. With a scowl deforming his face, he flung his smoking cigarette at the wall. He sliced the air between them with his switchblade and exploded into a tirade. Small though he was, he power of his cruelty terrified them. His piercing black eyes raged. Lips quivering, he screamed insanely, pointing his finger into their faces. Anger personified seethed before them. The other thugs looked on with cold expressions. By this time, even their erstwhile friend, the policeman, shuddered and winced in fear.
They were on their own. Taking their money, the men left them in the prison of their room.
What if they come back to rob or kill them? They looked for an escape route, but there was none. Other than the door, there was only one window with a long straight drop to the cobblestone alley below.
They were trapped. “Jeff, lock the door,” Ramsey whispered, “and, Monk, help me push this double bed against it. This way, those goons can’t get in there while we are sleeping.” Sleep was the last thing on any of their minds, but it seemed wise to do what they could to protect themselves.
As quietly as Radhanath swami and friends could, they lifted and pushed the bed into place and tied the steel bedpost to the doorknob with a rope for added security. Ramsey and Jeff lay on that bed, while Radhanath swami took a smaller cot against a wall. The room was a dump. A single light bulb hung from the ceiling. Green paint and plaster peeled on the walls. Cobwebs dangled from every corner and a stale stench turned their stomachs. Gasping for fresh air, Radhanath Swami wrestled with a large window, six feet high and three feet wide, until it finally opened. He fell back into the bed, but within minutes bedbugs attacked. Rest was out of the question. The three of them lay in the dark waiting.
An hour or so later, they heard a key slowly turning in the lock. Silently, the door opened then hit the bed. The intruders pushed gently at first, not realizing that the three of them were squatting on the floor at the other end of the bed, heaving all of their weight into it. They pushed harder. Soon they understood that Radhanath swami and friends were blocking them and howled in rage, slamming their bodies against the door. It flung open, but the three friends pushed all their weight against the bed and shut it again. By then, both sides in their life and death tug-of-war were frantic. Radhanath swami jumped on to the bed to again tie the doorknob to the bedpost when, through the crack in the door, one of the attackers stabbed a knife in his direction. His mind screamed, “They want to kill us.”
The battle continued. They cracked their bodies against the door and it slammed again and again into the bed. They screamed threats and curses as Radhanath swami and friends bashed themselves into the bed. Unable to force the door open, they abruptly retreated. A heavy silence fell.
To rest before the inevitable next siege, Radhanath swami retreated to his bug-ridden bed. His mind was full of ghastly thoughts, “What am I doing here trapped in the cholera-infested ghettos of Istanbul, a target for the underworld?” Tossing over and over, he called to mind the life he had left in Highland Park.
I’m a simple boy with a loving family and friends. Why did
I leave the shelter of such a peaceful home? Now I’m helpless and alone. He prayed. I came here in search of enlightenment; is this the path I have to tread in order to learn surrender?
A thought emerged. If so, let it be. In our predicament, only God can save us.
His prayers were interrupted by the door smashing into the bed. Round two of the battle began. Their would-be assassins shouted in wrath, pounding ferociously. A moment of inattention and Radhanath Swami and friends would be dead. Despite the biting cold, sweat flooded from their pores.
They gasped in exhaustion and their limbs were battered, but their predators did not tire. Their roars terrorized them. By this time, Radhanath Swami felt as if his bladder were about to burst. The only toilet was in the hallway outside the door. Three formidable battles raged simultaneously within him: the battle to keep the assassins out, the battle to keep his urine in, and the battle to make sense of it all.
Unable to bear it any longer, he deserted Ramsey and Jeff and climbed up to the windowsill. There he relieved himself into the alley below. Suddenly, a woman’s scream blasted his ears. The alley was about fifteen feet wide. Straight across from him was a window where an old Muslim woman dressed in a traditional black veil had been watching. In his desperation he had not seen her, but she stared straight at him. Outraged by his obscenity, she screamed in revulsion. That was too much. Radhanath Swami stood helplessly on the window ledge with his pants down, urinating, face to face with her and begging for pity.
Cursing him, she threw a shoe into his face. It was a direct hit. He shut the window, jumped down, and wiped blood from his nose and mouth. But he had not finished. His bladder was still bursting, Meanwhile Ramsey was crying out, “Monk, get back here. We can’t hold them off.” Radhanath Swami was losing all three battles. I can’t survive this,
he thought, God help me! Just then, he saw the answer, and finished where he’d left off in the shoe. Putting it in a desk drawer, he reentered the battle. Pressing firmly, the three friends held the goons off.
But the three were trapped with neither food nor water. It was only a matter of time before the goons broke in. As the gray light of the dawn appeared, they agreed that their only hope was to quietly escape through the door between attacks.
Radhanath swami and friends decided to risk their lives on the tiny chance of escape. They had no idea whether a guard was standing post outside their door, but if so, they were dead. It was a chance they had to take. Slowly, and as quietly as possible, they swung the door open into the pitch darkness. Radhanath swami could not see his hand before his face. As they tiptoed forward, the aged wooden floor creaked with every step, each creak like a scream. In this darkness, would they blunder right into one of them? His heart was pounding. They made it to the gothic staircase. Still unable to see, they groped the outside wall, terrified of falling over the other side. In this way, they crept down the staircase toward the dimly lit pool hall where, to their horror, the guard laid sleeping on a pool table. Holding their breath, they stole across the room to the door.
It was locked. The latch would not budge. They had never seen a lock like this. Frantically, each one of them tried to open it. Finally their attempts roused the guard from his stupor and he shouted to the others. From another set of stairs came the horrifying sound of their stampede.
“Oh my God,” Radhanath swami gasped. “Open the lock quick, Ramsey, open
the lock!”
“I’m trying. I’m trying.”
Ramsey jiggled the lock in every possible way to no avail. The stomping of boots as their captors came closer made him sick. Just as they were almost upon them, all at once the lock popped open and they burst into the street, running as they had never run before, backpacks and all. Behind them, they could hear the screams of their adversaries. Not looking back, they dove into a taxi. They knew only one place in Istanbul. “Blue Mosque, Blue Mosque,” they chanted in unison.
But, scanning through the rear view mirror at the gang of men approaching them, the taxi driver did not move. He saw an opportunity. “Two hundred dollars,” he demanded. “What? Two hundred dollars?” Jeff cried.
The driver shouted loudly, “Two hundred dollars, Two hundred dollars.”
Hastily, they agreed, “Yes two hundred dollars, two hundred dollars.”
The driver zoomed off. But were they safe?
Jeff, the keeper of the wallet, was concerned. “We can’t give him two hundred dollars,” he whispered. “Will he be the one to kill us?”
They didn’t want to find out. At the first stoplight, they bolted from the taxi. The driver howled, “Two hundred dollars, two hundred dollars.” But they were gone.
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