It’s like that line from a poem by the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad, “someone wrote the word stone on a wooden board and all the birds in the courtyard took flight.”

In those chaotic years I graduate and then sign up to do my mandatory civil service. Dad is happy but now I really am a doctor. It is my seventh year in Anatolia. I need to be in Istanbul. I want to be posted there but they won’t make it happen. It is clear what dad is thinking: “Son, you have a thick file. Don’t you think the ministry knows what you have been up to? You should have left all that behind, son.”

I resign and leave my work. Now I am in Piyalepaşa in Istanbul. I have turned a repair shop into a hospital. Dad is much older and he has Parkinson’s disease. He and mom are both living with me. He loves sitting with me in my office in the hospital and chatting over coffee. In those days I get caught up in politics. In theory this is now “realpolitik.” I am racing about day and night. There are dinners, ceremonies and parties. My room is always overflowing with people. I am going to be a Reis Bey, a distinguished chairman!

One day party delegates come to see me and only dad is in my office. Of course they don’t know who he is. I am speaking with someone in the room next door. Some time later I come back. The delegates have left and dad is disgruntled. He says, “Son, when you were in the other room those people wolfed down all the biscuits on the coffee table. Meanwhile they were saying things like, ‘eat ‘em up, buddy, let’s eat all the doctor’s biscuits. Does the doc think it’s all that easy being a municipality mayor? He’s got to cover the costs.’ Son, no good will come of those people. They are just out to fill their own bellies. How are they going to feed the nation?”

This time I didn’t say it: “Dad, what has that got to do with it?”

Dad went through some trying months before he died. I always did my best to be with him. I knew I was going to lose him soon. He would ask me all sorts of questions and I would try to bring up subjects he liked.

“What do you think about this? What’s your take on that?”

“How should I know, son? I have all these memory slips, son … But I trust you … You have never done wrong … you know what’s best.”

Not much later I lost him … My heart ached … Indeed now I really needed to say those words that for so many years were a call of protest.

“Oh dad! What has that got to do with it, for the love of God? How should I know? Now more than ever I need to hear what you have to say …”