Turning to the large man who was quietly listening, Yaşar said:

“Come on then, Kamil.”

Opening up a box that he had tucked under his chair, Kamil pulled out a clarinet. He slowly put the pieces together. He wet the reed. Blew a couple times. Then he began a graceful improvisation. My friend the dentist who happened to be there with me in my office and who was watching everything in astonishment got up and firmly shut the door behind him. A little later the mournful sound of the clarinet was echoing through the hospital as patients in the waiting room tilted their heads, trying to locate the source of the music.

After a while Yaşar gently tapped Kamil. The music stopped. The clarinet was carefully put away in its box. Yaşar said:

“Doctor we could never pay you enough, we’re musicians, and so this is all that we have to offer you. Nothing more. So please accept this.” They left in silence, as if they had never come.

We were in each other’s lives. Whether we wanted to be or not.

How can you disregard the story of a retiree from Erzincan with a failing liver and a house condemned to destruction because of urban development? Or the case of an ambitious young footballer who is wild about sports and who had a lump removed from his leg that may or may not be malignant, his father a laborer from Alucra who was fired from his job the day before. Wouldn’t you worry about it? Could you just examine a mother from Tunceli, write a prescription for her rheumatism and send her home when you know that she lost one of her sons to a long hunger strike while the other son languishes in prison? Wouldn’t you ask her more? How else could you be truly “altruistic?”

*

Izmir … In those days when we all feel the full weight of the 1980 military coup. They have detained one of my dearest friends from med school and we have no idea what’s happened to him or where he is. His brother-in-law comes and asks for my advice.

“What are we going to do? No word from him for the last five days. Where could he be?”

I have already come to fear my own shadow. Nevertheless I try to come up with a plan. The next day his brother-in-law gets word that our friend is being held in the infamous political branch of the security building in Konak. He comes to the school cafeteria and says, “let’s go over together.” Having a fairly good idea of what might happen to me, I trudge over to the political branch with my friend’s brother-in-law. We ask after our friend:

“Is he here, is he OK?”