Then comes the day of the birth. Though everything appeared to be fine on all the ultrasounds, the baby is missing both legs: one from the knee down and the other from the hip. An anomaly at birth. Taking the disabled baby in their arms, the family leaves. A few days later mother and father come to visit you with their baby Emre. Nothing is said. When Emre’s mother goes into another room to breast feed, his father gets up, puts his arms around you and you quietly cry together.

You tell him your story. How your wife was four months pregnant after her last ultrasound and your colleagues told you she should have an abortion. That day you and your wife hold each other and cry and decide that you are going to have the child all the same. Five months later Poyraz is born, fighting fit and in your arms and with a wild look in his eyes. It turned out they were wrong about Poyraz but they hadn’t noticed what would become of Emre.

It is in the middle of a night shift and you are drifting off to sleep when a silent old man in his fifties or sixties comes in. He has recently picked up a cough and it just won’t go away. After an examination and taking at an X-ray of his lungs, you notice the tumor. How will you find the right words to tell him? You are only two sentences in when he asks in a voice so calm it makes you shiver:

“Don’t worry about it, doctor, just tell me, how much time do I have?”

You shut the door to the policlinic and slip into a deep conversation with the man, who is a gravedigger at the Zincirlikuyu cemetery. He has reached the age of retirement and he’s just waiting the year out so he can get his last salary increase. From that talk the following sentence sticks in your mind like a nail:

“Who stays in this world forever, doctor. Do you know how many people these hands have put in the ground? Famous people and the rank and file, both rich and poor. Give me any name. I’ve buried them all. Their loved ones are fearful and they stay away. They can’t go to the grave with them. But I am always there. I take the body in my arms and place him or her in the ground. And so you can’t scare me with talk of death or the grave … Go ahead and tell me, how much time do I have left?”

Us

Maybe this is a personal matter, too: Having the impression the world began with you and dreaming of an eternal life. It is why our skin has grown so thick. It is why our hearts are as cold as a bottomless well.