School is out for the holidays. It is a really hot day. Hikmet and a friend of ours are going swimming. But not in the usual spot: this time we are going to the Kızılöz shore.

On the bottom of the Kızılırmak there are deep depressions you would never think were there. People in Avanos call them cumbak and they are really dangerous. So after swimming for some time we were just getting ready to come out when Hikmet must have gotten snared by one of the cumbaks because he was sinking. Reaching out, he tried to grab hold of our wrists. We tried pulling him out but we couldn’t. And before our eyes he disappeared.

I will never forget how his mother raced up and down the river with her hair all a mess, like she was out of her mind. It took them five days to find Hikmet. His mother spent those five days keening on the river shore.

It was on one of those days when I was going downtown with dad early in the morning when she saw us and came over. The grief had darkened her face.

“Mevlüt, Mevlüt … The river won’t give me back my child … Look, your little lamb is here with you … That’s good but where’s mine?”

I remember dad standing there, not saying a word.

*

On the Anatolian steppes spring is the brother of winter. On a Sunday morning I am getting the stove ready. This house is both home and a clinic. I rented the place last month. Finally I had got out of that hospital room I’d been staying in since I first came to town. I am really happy in my new home. The more I gaze at the sofa bed, fridge and bed I bought on installments from Kırıkkale, the happier I feel. The water heater is coming tomorrow. Brother Mevlüt sent over the stove from the clinic because they got central heating. The stove is practically new and it warms my place up real nice.

Below me is the meyhane where Hacı Taşan plays saz. Years later we went back to the place to shoot a film and the owner didn’t recognize me at first. I showed him the picture on my driver’s license without saying a word. And we embraced each other in tears.

After coming back late from the hospital and pottering about for a while, I finally drifted off in my armchair. When I got up I heard the village minibuses outside. It was already late in the morning. I went out onto the balcony. Turning back inside, I heard the prosecutor’s driver call up to me:

“Doctor, we are off to do a feth-i kabir, the prosecutor says you need to come with us.”

“Feth-i kabir?”

The prosecutor told me everything on the way there. There was a 21-year-old kid, the only kid in his family. Not more than a month ago he got caught up in a fight for no real reason and was stabbed in the stomach. Ok … I remembered hearing about it. They had brought him over to the hospital in the middle of the night. There was nothing I could do for him so I sent him to Ankara. They operated on him in Numune. He was fine. But then he contracted an infection. And he died. They brought him back and buried him. But the matter wasn’t closed. There was still the question of whether he had died from the stabbing or the infection. An opposing party claimed he died because of the operation. So the prosecutor requested a feth-i kabir. In other words, we had to open up his grave and do another autopsy.