“Do you sell bathing suits? I need a bathing suit.”

She stops for a moment, surprised.

“Alright then, but this is a woman’s store. We don’t carry anything for men.”

“Ok, well then I’ll buy something for a woman. Maybe a present for someone.”

Later … Later we are in Bornova … An 18-year-old girl’s smile at night. Çınar Patisserie in Küçükpark …

Two lines from a poem by Edip Cansever on the wall on which we sit side by side …

Then kissing the palms of her hands with the joy that comes from having heard her promise she would meet me the following day.

Then there is another girl who washes her hair every morning in the rain. In the Montrö Square. On my face lingers the scent of Aqua Velva. A friend’s pair of trousers ironed the night before. A trembling hand that holds mine until I get to school. A day spent smelling the lingering scent in the palm of my hand in the amphitheater.

Years later perhaps a little note stuffed into the same palm. That’s all.

*

September 12 is the day the king’s soldiers start working overtime. Cleary they have made all the preparations well in advance. They chase us down as if they are out on a hunting spree in the forest. With their guns and their dogs. One by one they shoot the ones who lag behind, the ones who trip and fall and who are too tired to carry on. Calm in their cruelty, they corner the ones who can’t get away and they take them alive. With chains, irons, clubs and cables they push the limits of their own villainy.

One of the thousands of stories from those who make it out alive comes from a brother in Avanos:

“… I don’t remember how many days had gone by. After a beating and the bastinado they picked us up and took us to another room. The told me to take off all my clothes. They drenched me in ice-cold water. I was numb from the cold. Right after that they started torturing us with electricity. There was someone else in the room. I knew the kid. From Ürgüp. They had him strip too. They attached cables to our genitals. Then they attached the other cable to our palms. They were going to shock us with a small electric generator. They told us what we had to do. When they gave me the first jolt I had to scream ‘aaah’ and when my friend was shocked he had shout ‘eeee.’ They made us bray like a donkey.”

Such oppression has a devastating effect on prosperity. Everything these friends worked for slipped right out of the noble palms of their hands and was gone. And perched on their chairs like owls, they are left to live out their miserable days with a conscience that takes silence as their savior.

*

In those days I had nowhere to stay. Neither in the dorms nor in a friend’s home.