Around that time I went away to Izmir on an extended trip. Hamid spent some time looking for me. He asked Serkan. “He wasn’t looking very good, hocam,” says Serkan. The next day I was lounging in the afternoon when the new prosecutor sent for me … Someone has hanged himself … . We were off to a village some way outside of town. Apparently Hamdi hanged himself from a beam in a village vineyard house. I went and performed the autopsy. That night in the residence I couldn’t get to sleep. Hamid’s quilt was prickly. I folded it and put it away in the closet.

*

Istanbul. Troubled years. Now I was alone. When they handed over the keys to that 67-square-meter house I had bought with a five-year installment from Emlak Bank my doctor friend had pushed me to take, he said with the pride of a cowboy who had just gotten his noose around the neck of a wild horse:

“Aha so now you are on track … Only installments would tame you.”

I called mom and told her I took the house. The following day she fasted. They had an animal they were going to sacrifice. For some time the only thing I had in my new house was the quilt she had sent to me in the back of a bus from Avanos. I kept half of that wool blanket from mom’s dowry under me and the other half over me. I used a chair cushion for a pillow. But a few years later when mom and dad come to Istanbul for Parkinson’s treatment and they stay with me I rush out and buy a sofa bed and a TV …

Dad’s illness is in the late stages. He is nothing but skin and bones. Fourth stage Parkinsons. Bedridden.

“This quilt is pretty heavy son, put something else over me.”

“Of course, dad.” I take my mom’s wool blanket off his shoulders and replace it with a fiber one. He’s really happy.

The day before he died he was coughing a lot. I went over and gave him a glass of water. “My back’s cold,” he said. “Tuck the blanket around me a little tighter.”

“Can you get up, dad? And have something to eat?”

“No, son, just tighten up the blanket. I’ll sleep a little. Wake up in the spring.”

“What spring, dad?”

“Did I just say spring, son? I meant in the morning.”

My dad never woke up again …

*

October 1984. Izmir … Ilyas was one of the last young men hanged by the Junta … Ilyas Has … A friend who had spent time with him in prison explains:

“… We were walking in the courtyard.

‘So it’s your turn?’ I said.

‘What turn?’

‘They are going to hang you tonight?’

‘Ah … You’re right … I figured so much. I’m ready,’ he said.

I touched his hair, and we said goodbye …”