Whoever is ringing the doorbell isn’t going to stop. I get up to see who’s there. A tall, pockmarked man in a coat. He is standing there with an incongruously innocent look on his face, like he isn’t the one who has been ringing the bell and pounding on the door for the last five minutes. A mild, innocent look on his face. It’s summer but I get the feeling he’s been wearing the same coat for years, like he’s never taken it off.

With an odd dash of sincerity in his voice, he says:

“Where you been?”

“What’s wrong? Someone sick?”

“The wife’s sick that’s who. We’ve been waiting for you since morning.”

Clearly he’s the type who comes into town at five in the morning, run his errands and rushes back to the village by nine. Behind him stands a thin, frail woman dressed in a long, black overcoat. She is quietly waiting. I go back inside to wash my face. We quickly walk down the only street in town, tractors passing us on either side, loaded with wheat. We pass the coffeehouse next to the police station, the sounds of a Karate movie wafting onto the street. Nine or ten people sit motionless in front of a television screen, half-filled glasses of tea in their hands. With me in the front, the man in the middle and the woman behind him, we make a strange procession, disturbed when a man rushes over to me. He has something to say but he’s not quite sure how to put it. Tilting my head, he finds the opening and says:

“I took her to Ankara, and still no luck … X-rays and all that … Nothing … They give her three or four different kinds of pills … She’s taking them, but nothing’s changed.”

“Ok, I’ll have a look at her now. Tell her that I am going to examine her.”

“Like I said, the medicine doesn’t do anything.”

I keep quiet and for a while we walk on in silence. Her head bowed, the woman is walking behind us, keeping the same distance.

The man starts talking again. Now it’s obvious he’s going to air his grievance. Decisively, he says:

“Well you go ahead and examine her but tell me this, is it going to be expensive? I swear I can’t spend too much on this. In the end she never gets any better. So don’t give us any more medicine if she isn’t going to get any better.”

“Oh come on, let me examine her first. How else can I know what’s wrong?”

I understand from the way he’s speaking that he’s from a Kurdish tribe that was forcibly resettled in one of the local villages years ago.

We go into the examination room together. He’s still talking: