*

Dad is lying on the old sofa bed in the sunroom of the entrance to our house. I’m sitting on a plastic chair watching him. We stay like that for some time in silence. All of a sudden I hear the sound of water in the garden. Mom must have turned on the electric pump. Struggling, he pulls his leg up to his stomach. Then he picks up a stained napkin from the corner of the sofa and wipes his lips. Mom is coming and going with a tray, mumbling to herself. The popping of a scooter engine fades away at the end of the road and is gone. I’m thinking of going downtown. I could have a stroll, buy a few newspapers, maybe have a tea with an old friend. I’m looking for a good excuse to get up and go. I stir in my seat. He’s watching me, too.

“Take me to Kızılöz,” he says. I pause for a moment.

“Now, dad?”

Without answering me, he says:

“I haven’t been in such a long time. I’m wondering what it’s like now.”

I feel a little trapped. I was about to go downtown.

“Alright, dad. Come on then, get up and I’ll take you there.”

Half an hour later we’re in Kızılöz. Where he grew up. We see all the little houses, stables and rooftops he worked on when he was a hired hand. Most of them are in ruins, farm animals kept in what remains. Several stray dogs wander through the rubble. I carefully help dad out of the car. The summer is over, the season sliding into fall. A wind blows off the steppes and we shiver. Leaning on his cane, dad looks around. I can tell he’s looking for our old home. He starts walking toward one of the crumbled homes on a hilltop. Now he’s full of life and energy, healthy again. Silently I follow him. He arrives at a broken wall and gazes out over the hills like he has spotted something. I step over to him and stand beside him in silence. For a moment his face goes pale and I think he’s going to fall. It was pretty common those days. I quickly take him by the arm and gently lower him to the ground. He’s holding onto me with both hands. He doesn’t let go. I wait. I need to find a soft spot for his head and something to prop up his feet. But he doesn’t let go.

“Dad, just let go,” I say.

He looks at me with fear in his eyes, silent.

Leaning closer, I whisper:

“Dad, don’t be scared … Just let go.”

Dad slowly loosens his grip. And I lie him down on the earth.

13

Turkey at the End of Its Rope

I was around nine or ten … It’s a hot September in Avanos. School starts in a week. All summer I’ve been in plastic sandals, hand-me-down trousers from my brother that mom adjusted to my size and a checkered, blue, short-sleeved shirt. A thick hemp cord around my waist that’s called a kendir. “The breadwinners of Avanos wear a kendir,” goes the expression. I am working in dad’s gazozhane. The cold water runs down my little legs and out the cuffs of my trousers. In my pockets are the shells of pistachios I have munched on the sly. Dreaming of listening to “Children’s Hour” at five o’clock on our Phillips radio. Fairy Soda from soda maker Mevlüt… The slogan was pretty naïve: “Drink fairy soda in the land of the fairy chimneys.” That evening a relative was getting married in the open-air cinema. Maybe I would see Serpil. It was that time in my childhood.