We planned to start the autopsy right away. But there was a problem. Either the refrigerator was playing tricks on us or Adem had missed something. The corpse was now frozen solid and we had to wait for it to thaw until we could do an autopsy. But we didn’t really have the time. Adem wanted to finish everything before Yavus Hoca got back so he turned on the hot water tap and started to wash the body in burning hot water. Naturally the ice began to melt. But when Yavuz Hoca came back a little later he was enraged and we knew there was a problem with the hot water.

“What have you done, Adem? You have burned the man?” Adem just stood there holding the hose. We both stared at Yavus Hoca. Why was he making such a big deal out of this? In the end weren’t we washing a corpse?

“My God!” the hoca kept saying as he paced about the room. Then it must have occurred to him that his reaction seemed strange to us so he muttered as if in defense:

“Do you know what it’s like to suffer a burn, son?”

“For God’s sakes the man’s is being burned after death,” he said and then turning to us, he added:

“Boys, a burn is an unbearable pain. Never forget this, when a patient is suffering from a burn think first of how you can relieve the pain.”

*

During those years of mandatory civil service I also served as the doctor of a village prison. I would go on Tuesdays and if nothing else the convicts could look forward to that day of the week when they could sit down and have a nice long chat with a young doctor. Physical ailments were just excuses. I would finish all my examinations by noon, write any required prescriptions and then go over to the prison mess hall with the director. He was a hypochondriac and there was always some part of his body that was aching or going numb and he would hang on every word I said in response to his imagined condition. But most all I was curious to know more about the women’s ward. It was only three by three meters big. And 11 women were kept inside. There was a young woman who always had a headache. She was nursing a baby. She had been sentenced with her mother-in-law. Every week her young husband came to visit. Sometimes I would see him planted at the door, holding a bag. Yet there was something strange about him. During the visit, husband and wife would lower their heads as if they were quietly waiting for the time to run out. Over the set meals with the prison director, I learned the whole story. Over an extended period the young man’s father had raped the young woman. Neither her husband nor her mother knew anything about it then. But when it became apparent that the young woman was pregnant she told her mother everything. One night she and her mother killed the man in his sleep when his son wasn’t there and set the house on fire. Word got out about what had happened. And they confessed to everything. Later the young woman gave birth in prison.