Hustle

Chapter 3

To give him something to do during the day, Jared had gotten Serkan admitted into the Mimar Sinan University of Istanbul. Founded from humble roots in the 18th century, the directors of the institute had struggled to find appropriate space for group classes. A couple of hundred years later, it comprised of a conservatory, 3 separate faculties, 2 institutes and several departments that taught students from all around the world everything from ceramic and glass design to music and the performing arts. Just looking at the architecture of the buildings on the campus alone was a history lesson in itself, but for today’s special art history class, Professor Yalcin was taking them to the Topkapı Palace.

An hour-long bike ride across the Ataturk Bridge landed the group of students in the middle of downtown Istanbul. Spanning 700,000 square meters with domes that dominated the city’s skyline, the Palace-cum-Museum was one of the world’s most attractive tourist destinations. Given that Serkan’s entire mission revolved around antiques, he had made more trips to Topkapı than he cared to remember. He had walked and re-walked, analyzed, inspected, taken mental pictures of the mid-15th century structure. However, the grandeur of the palace and the sheer amount of wealth that must have gone into hand-carving and creating custom mosaics on the ceilings never ceased to amaze him.

“Eez your firrst time ‘ere?”, inquired a French girl as Serkan locked his bicycle outside the palace gates.

He shook his head. “I’ve been coming here since I was about ye high”, he motioned in exaggeration, holding his hand a little above the ground.

She giggled and fell in step beside him as they made their way to the Enderun (inner) palace. “What eez it that you wish to draw today?”, she inquired.

“We’re drawing today?”

“You arre very funny!”, she remarked.

Corrine, as she introduced herself amidst flirtatious giggles and random pieces of conversation, was a French exchange student from Paris. She had traveled the world, but it was her first time in Turkey. She liked painting, croissants and the color green.

“The Sassanid Shield”, Serkan said.

“That eez not something I ‘ave ‘eard of before”, Corrine smiled back.

“It dates back to the 7th century. Persian”

“So you know your antiques, monsieur”

Professor Yalcin interrupted their brief encounter with a small lecture on the heritage of the Palace, the different areas and what they hosted, what parts of the architecture they should keep an eye out for, and the important figures of history that occupied the walls they were standing in right now. History professors were all about the drama.

Serkan unzipped his canvas bag and set up his easel in a somewhat stranded corner of the Persian exhibit. The “10,000 years of Iran’s civilization” visiting exhibition was in town for another two weeks and comprised of over 150 artifacts ranging from ancient sculptures and ceramics to jewels and weaponry dating back to the Sassanid era. The item Serkan was busy sketching was one that didn’t hold the interest of too many tourists. It was a gold shield about the size of a big dinner plate that displayed a scene of war. It was a man in full armor holding a gem-studded sword against a group of opponents who outnumbered him. Although it was just an artistic depiction, Serkan could see how calm the warrior was about it. What the people who didn’t afford the shield more than a moment’s glance didn’t know was that the man depicted in this shield was the 20th emperor of the Sassanian empire also known as “The Immortal Soul”. He was a celebrated, romanticized figure in the history of Persia and the empire had flourished under his rule. Another thing they didn’t know was that the shield was made of pure gold. There were rarely any pieces of art that were made of pure gold for fear that they may disfigure over time given the soft nature of the metal. But the most important thing that the museum visitors were unaware of was that the item that had come all the way from Persia to Istanbul, was in fact, a replica no more than a couple of years old. The real shield was somewhere in Ekrem’s antique shop and Serkan knew just how to relieve the old man of such a treasure.