“He is has ‘Buergers,’ sir. He has Engin Bey’s disease. He’s been with us for a week. From Dolapdere. But he’s improved since. All the same we’ll send him to Surgery. Necrosis in his right leg. I think they are going to amputate.”

Buergers. In other words, ‘Trimming Disease.” Common with smokers. They are willing to lose a leg over smoking.

A little later the man comes out of the bathroom and walks past us, leaving a fresh whiff of smoke in his wake.

A week later they cut off his leg at the groin. I saw his relatives waiting for him outside the morgue. Had we lost him? No. “Thank God he’s fine,” they said. They were waiting for the amputated the leg. Truth is it hadn’t occurred to me. “What are you going to do with it?” I asked. “We’ll take it to the cemetery and bury it,” they said. “You have to bury human organs, hocam, they also need a grave. They surely do.”

*

I am in Avanos. There is that strange panic and stress that comes on the eve of a religious holiday. The weather is really hot. I am sitting next to dad in the garden, our backs up against the wall. For the hundredth time he is telling me a military story which involves his commander Semih. He ends the same way he always does, asking, “I wonder if Semih is still alive?” Then doing the calculations, starting from the year he did his military service to the present day, he comes to the conclusion that Semih must still be alive and then he moves on to another memory.

Mom signals to me from the living room window. She must have a problem she can’t share with dad. Making an excuse, I get up and go inside, leaving dad in the garden. Mom is waiting for me on a spring mattress.

“Son, no one is listening to me so the least you can do is listen. Take me to Kıran. So I can visit the graves of mom and dad. It’s been so long. I’ll read them a prayer.”

“Alright, mom … Of course, let’s go.”

Half an hour later we are at the Kıran cemetery on the hill overlooking town. Mom is looking for my granddad and my ebe’s graves.

“The gravestones have all but disappeared. As if they were made of kısır. The wind and the rain have eroded the stones. Last time I came I brought some paint and splashed a little over what was left of the stones, leavıng a mark … So I would be able to find them.”

And we did. Mom kneels down like a little girl in front of the graves of my granddad and my ebe and she recites prayers and speaks to them. Standing a little behind her, I silently watch.