“Fine then, alright. Let’s give her a name … What shall it be?”

With a naïve smile on his face, the man listens to our conversation. It’s all too clear that he feels like he has absolutely nothing to do with the matter.

Leaning back a little in my chair, I look out the window and over the endless steppes. I think of Brother Mehmet (Özgül), who came to visit dad with a copy of his own translations of Cengiz Aytmatov. It was the most beautiful gift of my childhood. For months I would lose myself in those beguiling stories about the steppes. Oh and there was Cemile.

“Let’s call her Cemile,” I say. It seems like the man hasn’t even heard me. His little girl burrows a little deeper into his jacket as Mesude Hanım writes down the name Cemile on the blank space in the form.

*

I am in Istanbul. Working at a policlinic. A little after midnight. I am dozing off in an armchair when the front door slowly opens. Leading the way is our health officer Erdinç followed by two young men who are supporting a middle-aged woman between them. In the morbid light of the “Emergency” sign the procession leaves strange shadows in their wake as they slowly come over to me and stop. The woman is in an oddly forlorn state. Sitting her down on the examination table the two young men wait in silence. They are close in age, and clearly her children. One quickly takes a position over his mother and the other stands guard at the door: they seem worried about having forced her to come here and fear she might try to scramble out at the first opportunity.

I had to write down the woman’s name and her condition in the policlinic log.

“Your name?” I ask.

There is a fleeting silence. The woman shifts on the table and mumbles something between her lips.

“Excuse me … I didn’t catch that. What did you say?”

She has difficulty raising her voice.

“Duck.”

The young man standing by the door lets out a grunt of laugh. The woman and the other man shoot daggers at him. But I am still not sure.

“Duck? So your name is Duck?”

Silently the woman confirms the name with a nod.

I forget about filling in the form and start the examination. The woman has chronic headaches and problems sleeping. But I can’t find an organic cause for her symptoms. Most of her complaints seem psychosomatic. I finish the examination still thinking about her name. I try getting her to talk by asking her all sorts of unrelated questions. Responding more and more she begins to open up and soon she seems much more at ease. Figuring now the time was right, I ask:

“So who gave you that name?”

“My dad, which he never should have done.” Then she went on in a murmur:

“As if there was no other name.”

“Why in the world would he choose a name like that?”