“Ali, come on over here for a sec, come and have a cig,” he calls out.

Without saying anything Ali slowly comes over. Raising his head he looks at Mustafa Usta.

“What’s wrong, Ali? So early in the morning …”

The Usta hands Ali a cigarette so he can light his own and he takes a deep drag. He seems poised to do something but he stands there for a while, unable to decide. Mustafa Usta walks over to a pile of wood and chooses a log to throw into the flames now lashing out of the open mouth of the oven. He is suddenly startled by the sound of Ali’s voice and he spins around.

“Allah!” Ali cried as he throws himself into the mouth of the oven. Mustafa Usta stood there for a moment in shock. Crock makers in their workshops, passersby and children playing in the ash all quickly gathered round. There was nothing that could be done when an oven is burning like that. And it burned for some time after that. Slowly the flames died down and went out. Hopeless and with not a little curiosity the crowd watched the smoke wafting out. It took a day for the oven to cool. Unafraid that they might burn their hands the crock makers then dismantled the oven before it was completely cold. They were looking for Ali.

A few bones among all the ash. Piling the crocks and jugs to one side, they would sell them in the Friday street market.

“Ali’s scent was in our water and our food for weeks,” mom said as she filled water into a jug she had just bought.

For years the scent of Ali was a part of village history. Over time the smoke that had wafted up from his body and that kindled a feeling of an infinite absence dissolved over the steppes and was gone.

Mustafa Usta’s astonishment never ceased:

“I mean, it was simply unbelievable … How quickly human flesh goes up in the flames!” he would say every time the subject came up.

*

“Come on, Adem, let’s get the next one,” said Yavuz Hoca and he disappeared down the corridor. We have a lot of work today, five autopsies to go. There is an Izmir sun outside, the kind that makes you happen for no real reason. Replacing the organs we have taken out of the last body, the technician, Adem, carefully stitched up the body. Then he stepped over to the refrigerator to take out the next one. Next is an old man found dead in the bathroom of his house in Basmane. He is tall, thin and fairly dark. They told us he was an alcoholic who lived alone. When his neighbors hadn’t heard a sound from him for a couple days they broke down his door and went inside. They found him lifeless in the bathroom, his head in the bathtub. He had stored water at the bottom of the tub to use during water cuts. Drunk he must have knocked his head against the tub and fainted. His head falling into the water the poor man ‘drowned in a handful of water,’ to use Yavuz Hoca’s words.