“He was really fond of ducks. That’s what my mother used to say. So he gave me the name.”

In a moment I go back all those years and that dark-haired, olive-eyed, nameless little girl comes to mind.

“I am going to change your name,” I say, raising my voice slightly.

“Look, I am going to record your new name here in this book. And I am going to write you a prescription with your new name. I am giving you the name Cemile. From now everyone is going to call you that.” Then turning to the young men:

“I have given your mother the name Cemile. From now on you are going to call her Mother Cemile, ok?”

They look at me in astonishment.

“When you run out of medicine and come back for a check up I want you to register with your new name, Cemile,” I say, ending the conversation.

There is a twinkle in her eyes and her shoulders rise. She leaves the policlinic without her children under her arms.

A taxi drives down the deserted street outside. I hear the morning call to prayer from a distant mosque. Now I feel really tired and sleepy. Letting myself fall asleep in the arms of a country where all the sisters and mothers are called Cemile, I slowly close my eyes.

1. A line from a poem by Turkish poet Edip Cansever.

7

The Seal

Winter … I am in my third year at elementary school. We have moved out of the big house where we were living with our uncles and cousins and into a new house on the other side of the river. We are now what they call “cross-overs.” There isn’t much to the house but we are so happy all the same. Mom has draped her hand-woven carpets over the doors inside. My brother (two years older than me) and I have discovered how to bury potatoes in the ash that gathers at the bottom of our brand name “Eskişehir Sus” wood burning stove. We are waiting for him to come home. In my lap is Kemal Tahir’s Seven Plane Tree Meadow, which I checked out of the Avanos Public Library. Last week our neighbor, who is a schoolteacher, came over to our house to visit dad during Eid:

“Mevlüt, who is reading this?”

“Our youngest son, hocam.”

“This book is a little heavy for him. I don’t think he should read it.”

Dad doesn’t say anything. In any event I’ll be done with the book soon then start Jules Verne’s The Enchanted Island.

Mom is collecting sacks of sugar she has washed over the stove and hung there to dry. A little later she puts several pans in front of me. These are gifts people brought to us before. One of them is unmarked and I write “Fadime of the Köse family.” Carefully she wraps them up in newspaper. With a plastic bag filled with freshly washed sugar sacks in her other hand, she leaves the house.