I realize he is talking about the revolutionaries so I keep quiet.

“Last night when I was coming back from the club I came across your people writing slogans on the wall … Two kids. I recognized one of them right away, Kadir, Ethem’s son. There was a young kid with him. I didn’t recognize him. He looked like Zelve, Faruk’s kid. One was holding a bucket and the other one was writing. ‘Down with Fascisim,’ is what they wrote. I pointed out that they had made a mistake, put an extra ‘i’ between the ‘s’ and the ‘m.’ Anyway, I told them and they fixed it. You don’t put an ‘i’ there, I said. You still don’t even know how to spell, son. How are you going to make a revolution?”

“What has that got to do with it, dad?”

*

I started life in Ankara like I was jumping into a color somewhere between black and grey. I was going to stay in the ground floor flat of a wretched, little apartment building on Süngü Bayırı in İç Cebeci. Two acquaintances from Avanos were living there. Both friends of my brother. One of them was a soldier in Mamak, a reserve office, who only stayed there over the weekend, and the other was a Railway engineer. Although the door only opened halfway, we managed to squeeze three mattresses into the front hall. Near the apartment was the Kütahya Dormitory. Supposedly the Nationalists stayed there.

Across from the dorm the man at the corner shop raises his chin at an overly made up middle-aged woman buying cigarettes and says to my brother, who is helping me move a few pieces of furniture brought from Avanos in an Anadol truck:

“If only it was night and we could hop in bed.” My brother laughs. The shopkeeper is from Tokatlı and my brother assumes he’s a leftist.

“Those ones over there are Kurds,” says the shopkeeper, referring to the students in the dorm. He looks me in the eye as if he’s trying to figure out where my brother stands on all this and then waves his hand to say “forget about it” and he goes over to the pastas. But we can still hear him:

“You might be a Kurd or you might be for Ecevit, doesn’t matter to me. We only care about our putting food on the table.”

Dad and I are climbing the stairs to the Politics Department. They searched us seven times before we actually got through the door. I had this sinking feeling in my heart. Dad is looking suspiciously around the room. The walls are covered from top to bottom with slogans and placards. Someone who says he is a representative of the association comes over to us:

“Welcome, friend.”

Together we walk over to the registration desk. Dad is startled, unsure if he should follow us. The representative is just a kid who’s acting like dad isn’t even there. At one point dad leans over, giving me the impression he might say something to the kid.