*

Dad was an interesting man. Although he was a farmer with nothing more than a primary school education, he had a unique relationship with knowledge and books. When I started middle school he was so happy when he could line up the books he’d brought in Kayseri on the simple bookshelf our uncle Huseyin the carpenter had made us. Ivo Andric’s The Bridge on the Drina. My first book. The salesman recommended it, saying, “the author won the Nobel Prize this year.” There was dad’s crack at learning German from a couple that had settled in Avanos; the Olimpiya typewriter a friend had picked up for him on his travels abroad; and the adventure of opening his first soda works with his childhood friend Brother Yaşar.

*

Avanos. An evening in August. I am around eight or nine. The living room window over the garden is open. A warm breeze carries in scents from the garden. No one is home. I don’t know why mom and my brother aren’t there. I am lying on the somya, Turkish classical music is playing on our Philips radio. I am somewhere between sleep and consciousness. First the door opens like a shadow and then dad comes in. Leaning over me, he strokes my hair and then lies down beside me, puts his arms around me. I bury my head in his chest and fall asleep. In the most beautiful evening in the world, in the most beautiful house in the world, I drift into the most beautiful sleep in all the world. I never slept like that again.

*

The father of my childhood friend with whom I spent the whole summer fishing in the Kızılrımak and with whom I never hesitated to share my Tommix and Teksas comic books was an electrical technician who, when he was still a young man, fell off an electric pole and died. Both of us knew about it, but we both pretended like we didn’t. There were times, especially when I was caught in the wrong while we were playing football, when I would break the pact with astounding cruelty: “You don’t have a dad. You know that right? He’s dead.”

Speechless, my friend would pause for a moment then drop the ball and leave. Sometime later as I wandered around the garden with the ball in my arm and feeling as remorseful as a dog I would see my friend. He would be sleeping soundly on the divan in the entrance to their home, his head on his granddad’s chest. Cocooned in such heartfelt silence. …

Neşet Ertaş tells the story of a “flat-chested” saz. Neşet asks his luthier, Hüseyin the Rabbit breeder, to make him a flat-chested saz. But Master Hüseyin won’t do it. For whatever reason it just doesn’t seem right to him. For the chest of a saz is always bulbous. So Neşet has his apprentice make him one. It’s an incredible saz … Later everyone else wants one just like it. Here is how Neşet Ertaş explains why he wanted a flat-chested saz: