“My brother read about some ancient village and was sure it was exactly where we lived. Except there were no apparent ruins in our town, even though our home was built sometime in the fifteenth century,” Samer said. The two of them had talked about it and imagined the buried city based on photographs of ancient underground cities found in Istanbul. “But at the time I didn’t believe it could be real,” he said.

The group was mostly quiet, eating as they listened to Samer re-count the story they had already heard. “My brother loved to read and study.” Samer shook his head, reaching for a piece of bread. “I just took a sledgehammer to the floor the day we buried him, busted a hole in it and started digging. It was something to numb my brain. Or maybe I thought I could find my brother by finding this ancient city.”

The novelty of the underground space was beginning to wear off. I was both fascinated and ill at ease, wanting to know more but anxious to return to the earth’s surface, liking being included but still the outsider.

“I started with small hand tools, carving straight down. Then I used ones with longer and longer handles. I improvised. It became an obsession, and I didn’t tell anyone for at least eight months, until I had to figure out what to do with all the boxes of dirt all over the apartment.”

I forced myself to eat as Samer went on with his tale. Bilal had brought his dented tin kettle and heated it on a battery-operated burner; he poured tea for us in small glasses and gave the first to me, which I’m sure he meant as a gesture of appreciation, but instead it made me feel like a guest in their secret world. I accepted the glass, sensing a distance grow between us in the confined space.

“I had to do something,” Samer said, widening his eyes.

I sipped my tea, tasting the sage. Most people added mint to tea, but Bilal preferred sage as I did. I smiled at the thought, which Samer took as a reaction to the story he was telling.

“There were boxes of dirt everywhere,” he repeated, contemplating his tea. “Where I first started digging a hole became a crater as wide as I am tall. It was insane. I wasn’t sure if my mind was intact. I either had to tell someone or fill in the hole.”

But he kept digging, lowering himself by rope into the pit, now a few meters deep, until the night when he heard dirt fall. Then the bottom gave way and he fell through. “It was absolute terror. I thought the house was collapsing, and we would all be buried alive,” he said, finally sipping his tea.

“What about your family? Didn’t they hear the banging?” I asked.