Eren said that he wanted to see me the following week and then left. It was quite late by then. I understood that my friend’s brother was in fact trying to tell me so much more, and in a different way. I was convinced that after so much pain and suffering packed into such a short time this young man was left with a healthy conscience and a clean heart. But I was also left with the idea of a country that had forgotten how to hug. For in that embrace we are crying as we painfully look over those lost years, seeking a resolution …

29 God Willing, He Is Dead

29

God Willing, He Is Dead

In my third year of my mandatory service I was sent to a town in province B. with a name that rivaled the town’s high altitude, harsh climate and the cruel judgments of its denizens.

The truth is everything I had been through in the town before would help me out tremendously in B. In my first week they evicted the medical secretary from a residence he had been holed up in for years despite having no legitimate reason to be there, and I quickly settled into the lodgings with the odd bits of furniture I got from Sümerbank, and the carpet and the single bed with an extra mattress I got from Güven Mobilya. After making off with one of the unused stoves idling in a corner of the clinic and setting it up in my living room, I had all the furniture I needed.

I happened to learn that the kayamakam was from my home town and someone I dearly loved and he was as quick as he could be in getting me whatever I needed at the Health Clinic, and he took every opportunity to treat me differently than the bureaucrats.

I survived a fairly harsh winter conducting examinations in the Health Center, chatting over rakı in the city club and inspecting the small health clinics in the surrounding area.

One day I spotted someone bringing a tractor out of a little storage space next to the restaurant where I always had my afternoon lunch. It had been idling there all winter. So the man was clearing out the space. I asked him straightaway if I could rent it. By nightfall on the following day, I had already painted the place, put in a few chairs and a table, and I had divided the back in two with a piece of chipboard—in the end I had myself an examination room. Leaving the health center in the evening, I would go over to my examination room and sometimes read late into the night or chat over tea with people passing by; and, on summer nights in particular, I would examine patients from the surrounding villages.