He pauses for a moment and looks lovingly into your eyes and says:

“Forget about it, Doctor. In any case they’ll get bored and stop. I’ll just go. But you should stay. If not they make trouble for you, write it down. No sign of any wounds or bruises. They didn’t beat me …”

Yes, there is still a reason to have hope in this world.

*

They are hauling marble out of a quarry some way out from town. Using dynamite to blast open the stones. It was either a misplaced brick of dynamite or a fuse that was too short. A worker gets pinned under a rock and dies. The others just barely squeeze out from under it. By the time we arrive with the prosecutor and his usual team, they have already pulled all the other workers out from under the rock and to safety. The prosecutor is now speaking with them while the autopsy technician rolls up the trousers of the worker who has died and prepares to cut them with a pair of scissors. A worker then steps away from the prosecutor and comes over to us.

“Brother, couldn’t we do this without cutting the pants? His son is the same size. We’ll give those trousers to him. He can wear them.”

From then on what do those words “cordon off scene of the crime” remind you of? Will they take you back to an afternoon in one of those towns where you did your civil service as a doctor and wrote one of those court reports that you always had to write? Or will they remind you of the resignation of that laborer who was trying to salvage the trousers of his fallen friend?

*

Words have souls. These days there is talk of a Feth-i kabir to be performed to confirm the cause of death of a former president of the republic. For whatever reason, when I hear those words Feth-i kabir it’s not that former president who comes to mind, but someone else. Zeki Erginbay was born in Istanbul in 1948. In 1967, he began his studies in the construction department of the Faculty of Architecture and Engineering at Istanbul technical University. Zeki Erginbay was a hardworking, self-sacrificing, patriotic young man of the 1968 generation. Following the coup of March 12, 1971, he was arrested.

After being granted a pardon and released in 1974, he took up a post in the Bureau of Construction Engineering (BCO). Zeki Erginbay helped publish the BCO magazine Technical Power and he served as its chief editor.

On a Sunday afternoon on January 23, 1977 he was abducted and, despite all search efforts, he was not found until February 2, 1977. They found his body at the Ömerli dam, a bullet in the chest. In a poem about him, Can Yücel wrote: “his rose-written body was all purple.”

Some time after he was buried they performed a Feth-i kabir to ascertain the exact cause of death. The cause was made perfectly clear. Yet I really don’t know if a Feth-i kabir does any good in a country plagued with so many assassinations that were never brought to justice. But if nothing else I know that words have souls. I know that all too well …