We arrived at the cemetery. Everything was draped in the morning mist. In silence the villagers were planted all around us. Their hoca was waiting for us at the head of the grave. We would open the grave and when the autopsy was done we would cover him with talcum and bury him again. Five or six gendarmerie officers were lined up, waiting in front of the cemetery wall, just in case family members caused any problems. We pulled the body out of the earth and then the shroud. He was curled up like a fetus, resting there. On his stomach was the scar of a recent operation. Our job was done. With a prayer we buried him. The hoca, the technician, the official scribe and two gravediggers are present. In the distance the prosecutor is holding a handkerchief over his nose; for whatever reason he won’t come over. I walk over to the car. Through the mist comes the low, sorrowful voice of a woman:

“Doctor, I am here … Prosecutor, I am here. But where is my lamb?”

Was this deeply heartfelt voice complaining or lamenting? Oh she sounded so much like Hikmet’s mother.

*

On the morning of July 2, two sisters, Asuman and Yasemin, aged 16 and 19, were overjoyed: they were going to attend a festival in honor of Pir Sultan Abdal in Sivas. At the festival they were going to whirl. As if they were on their way to a wedding, they set off for Sivas. Just before events got underway Asuman called her mother.

“The whirling dervishes were wonderful, mom, all up above the ground like they were flying,” she said. Concerned, Yeter Hanım said, “girl you must be drenched in sweat. If only you’d put a cloth on the back of your neck.” Sometime ago her daughter had come down with pneumonia. Now how was her mother supposed to know that soon her daughter’s lungs would be filled with smoke and the smell of burning flesh?

Soon after Asuman called her mother someone else from the group called her brother.

“They have stormed the hotel, don’t tell mom, we’re leaving the hotel and going to Ankara.”

In any event it wasn’t long before the mob outside had set fire to the hotel.

Their mother heard about it on TV.

“The names of the wounded and deceased ran along the bottom of the screen. I didn’t know what to do. We went home. Everyone knew who’d died but they wouldn’t tell me. I lost all hope. Somehow they’ll find a way to call me I said to myself. But they didn’t. For days I cried out for people to tell me where my Asuman and Yasemin were. But they didn’t hear me …”

*

When the body of 15-year-old Hatice was found in Batman Creek last week, it was initially thought that she had drowned but it soon became evident that she had been raped and impregnated by two cousins and then killed by her two uncles with the encouragement of her grandfather. Hatice’s body was in the State Hospital morgue till December 17. They simply left her there in a plastic bag, pushed into a cold drawer. No one came to claim the body.