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Back Fairy Chimney Soda Save as PDF
Chapters (38)
  1. Cover
  2. Half Title
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright Page
  5. Contents
  6. Preface
  7. 1 Kurban:
  8. 2 I Am an Orphan, Press Me to Your Chest
  9. 3 What Has That Got to Do with It, Dad!
  10. 4 I Am Grown Up, Dad
  11. 5 The Weight of Your Coat
  12. 6 “We’ll Ask Someone for Our Name, and She’ll Tell Us”
  13. 7 The Seal
  14. 8 Whose Blood Is That on the Photo?
  15. 9 The Smell of Bread or Blood?
  16. 10 What’s Left for Us
  17. 11 A Drop of Water
  18. 12 Just Let Go
  19. 13 Turkey at the End of Its Rope
  20. 14 Hearts in the Palms of Our Hands
  21. 15 The Burnt Smell Inside Us
  22. 16 The Quilt
  23. 17 Where Are Our Dead?
  24. 18 Mothers Sniff Out Their Lambs
  25. 19 The Soul of a Word
  26. 20 Three Kinds of Truth and Us
  27. 21 The Country Doctor
  28. 22 The File Under My Arm
  29. 23 The Country of the Forgotten Dead
  30. 24 The Coming of the Fiancée
  31. 25 The Lie
  32. 26 Why These Scars?
  33. 27 The Municipality Man Who Drew a Gun
  34. 28 Tell All Your Friends, I learned How to Die
  35. 29 God Willing, He Is Dead
  36. 30 Come Along, Let’s Start off by Saving Ourselves
  37. 31 A Whistle Out of Chestnut
  38. Glossary

Ilyas went to sleep in his bed that night. Wrapped in his blanket. Calm and comfortable as if he isn’t the one they were going to hang. They came and took him away in the middle of the night. Just as they were leaving he put his foot against the door and said, “They will be held accountable for this.” In the last letter he wrote before he died, Ilyas left a note about his personal effects. He left his watch, his trousers, his shirt and his blanket to his family.

I hear my son’s voice in the other room. For the last few days he’s had a fever. Today he is feeling better. But he’s a little boy and he’s always kicking off his blanket. I go in and cover him up. Later when I crawl under my own blanket I will quietly think about what I have lived through …

17 Where Are Our Dead?

17

Where Are Our Dead?

We really tried but we couldn’t bring him back. By the time I got there he didn’t even have a pulse. He was a dark, fat man with a thick mustache. An intercity truck driver. They brought him in from one of the thermal baths that are so popular in Basmahane. When an attendant saw water running out from under the door he broke it down and went inside to find the man slumped over the basin. Clearly the man had had a heart attack.

I was in my second or third year in medical school. Those were my first days working ER till morning. I was fascinated by everything. It seemed every patient who came through those doors gave me the story for a film. After they finished filing the report on the deceased, they called for the nurse. She would take the body down to the morgue. I lingered at one end of the stretcher. The fact is I wanted to see the morgue. In a deserted hospital in the middle of the night we moved along the dim corridors. With a spine-tingling squeak of the cargo elevator, we arrived at the morgue. But there was just one problem. All the drawers were full. Grumbling under her breath, the nurse was opening and closing different drawers as she looked for an empty spot. She stopped and thought, then flipped through a registry book on an old wooden table for a while. She went over to a drawer, pulled it out and took out the body of a baby no bigger than her hand. She scanned the cooler for a moment. Then pulling out another drawer, she placed the baby beside the body of a woman.

Together we placed the body of the truck driver into the empty drawer. A strange grin stretched across my face, showing a mixture of fear and astonishment. I’m not exactly sure how I was looking at the man but the nurse felt the need to explain: