“Selami, brother, why aren’t you sending over my money? How many times do I have to ask you? I told the president at the club, too. It’s no problem for me to sign the forms but when it comes to the money it’s all hot air … Is that it? Tell me if I’m wrong! After all, I’m the municipality doctor. You wrote it down in the books. You gave me a contract. You said this guy’s our doctor. But this just isn’t on, brother, a person should have a little dignity,” and so I sallied forth as Selami listened to me in a strange silence, gesturing with his hand as if to say, hold on a minute, and then leaning over his desk he started to rummage in his bottom drawer. It wasn’t long before he’d found what he was looking for because he resolutely got up from behind his desk and marched over to me. I was leaning against the frame of the door, turned slightly toward Gülnaz and babbling something about how I was right.

Then I saw the gun in his right hand and I immediately shut up. He came right up under my nose the way he always did when he talked to me. He was half my size but he reached out and grabbed the front of my turtleneck and yanked it up to my throat. At the same time he kicked the door shut.

Speechless, I looked at Selami with a mixture of fear, shock and desperation. Keeping a vice-like grip on my throat and showing a strength I’d never expect from a man like him, he pressed the muzzle of his gun into my temple as he pushed me back up against the wall.

“Enough already, you punk … Money money money … Well there isn’t any, punk! Son, don’t you just don’t get when there’s nothing there. I could just shoot you and be done with it, mother fucker …”

My tongue was stuck to the roof of my mouth and my mind was a total blank, I was beyond fear.

Momentarily shocked, Gülnaz raced over to us. “Selami Abi what in the world are you doing? Brother, let him go … Have you lost you mind, abi. Let him go already!”

“You want a bullet in the head, you want a bullet in the head,” he said before he lowered his gun, batted away Gülnaz, let go of my throat and went back to his seat. Putting his gun back in his desk drawer, he said to Gülnaz: