meyhane. A distant relative found me the job. And after that you never saw a pen or a schoolbook in my lovely little hands. Day and night, I was washing dishes. In the early days, at least. The scullery was right underneath the big room where they served the customers — a low-ceilinged cavern that you reached via a wooden staircase so coated with grease that it stuck to your feet like gum. We could hear every chair that scraped the floor in the meyhane above — every laugh, every song and every curse. It wore us out, listening to that ruckus. But not because we were working like donkeys while other people were having fun. No, it wore us out because they were having fun just above our heads. Sometimes I would say as much to the other girls working there, and whenever I did, the djinns would get the better of me. They’d swarm around my head until I just couldn’t stop myself. I’d look up at that ceiling and let loose a string of filthy curses. But the others? Not a peep out of them. Not a peep. When my rage got the better of me, they’d just exchange shifty looks. Who would be the first to tell tales? That cave we called the scullery was hard to bear — no, impossible to bear — at times like that. But never mind, because it wasn’t long before I was sent upstairs to serve tables. Leaving the scullery to sink back into silence. For me, from then on, it was smiles and wayward glances and rowdy songs; it was fat-assed men who were belching one minute, and rearranging their testicles the next. It was the dark night of the soul upstairs, just as much as it had been downstairs, but the meyhane, at least, had lights. Each one more brilliant than the last. You know how it is — some rooms are darkened by clutter, and others by noise. Some rooms are dark because they’re too empty, or too narrow or too wide. Well, in this meyhane the darkness was in the lights. And it was through this shimmering, rakı-scented gloom that I ran back and forth with my tray. Once a week I’d go and see my mother. I’d take her flowers and the finest cakes and sweets, in darling little boxes. But sadly she had no idea who I was. She called me “Auntie”. My gifts would just sit there on her lap. How ashamed she looked, with those downcast eyes of hers! And so like a child! Just a glimpse of one of those white-aproned orderlies, and she’d shrink before my eyes. Shrink into me, almost. If ever one of those orderlies came towards us, she’d grab my hand, my mother would. She’d fix her pleading eyes on mine. And then, in a faint and wavering voice, she’d say, “Save me, Auntie. Please, get me out of here.” Over and over, on and on. How helpless I felt when she did that. Because honestly, I had no idea what to do. A moment would arrive when I couldn’t stand it any more, when I’d take my mother in my arms and hold her tight, as if I were her mother, and she my child. Then I could hold back the tears no longer. Or the hopeless sobbing. So there you have it. The story of a luckless young girl, laid low by a calamity that never lessens, that just goes on, and on, and on. What happened next? you may well ask. But you know full well how stories like this pan out in this city of ours, which oozes evil from its every pore. You could write the script, Ziya Bey. What happened to me is exactly what you would imagine might happen, right down to the last detail. In the past we ate shit. In the future we shall do the same. You know how it is, Ziya Bey. We can rant and we can rage, but nothing short of a miracle will change it. Which is not to say I didn’t try! I tried but it was all in vain, and that is why I trod the boards of that meyhane for so many years, just for a scrap of bread. Or to put it differently, this is where my story played itself out. And if Ercüment Şahiner had not walked into my life, who knows where I might be today? In a nursing home, I’d guess — alone with my memories, my thoughts turning to death, wheezing one minute, dozing off the next. And drooling. Drooling from both sides of my mouth. Or if not that, then maybe I’d be one of those poor souls you see going through dustbins, clutching dirty plastic bags — one of those homeless wretches that the council rounds up when the temperature goes below freezing, rescuing them from the parks and the pavements and the city’s phone boxes and then calling in the TV cameras, only to throw them back on to the street a few days later. . You’re wondering what this Ercüment Şahiner did for me? No need to beat about the bush: what this man gave me was an idea. Nothing more, nothing less. It was a winter’s day. I remember it well. The day before, we’d had a blizzard. From dawn to dusk, we’d watched that snow hurling down on us, thick as patches on a poor man’s coat. And then, that night, the blackest frost. By morning all the rooftops of the city and all its streets were stiff with ice, and, with so few venturing outside, a silence had fallen over everything, a faint and shimmering white silence. From time to time, a sound would float in. A city bus struggling up a hill. A child screaming. I was still in bed, and each time a new sound floated in, those sleepy eyes of mine flew open. Ercüment Bey, who had spent the night in my arms, was already up claiming business to attend to. There he was in the corner, getting dressed. The glare from the snow was so strong as to cast his shadow against the wall, and as I lay there, I watched it going through its paces. Ercüment Bey was getting dressed at the same speed and with the same care as the shadow, of course: buttoning up his shirt, zipping up his trousers, fixing his tie just so, and then looking himself over, from top to toe, as if to ask, have I missed anything? Am I done? To tell you the truth, I got some sort of strange thrill from watching that shadow. It made Ercüment Bey himself seem a little less real. It turned our night together into some kind of a lie. But back to the story. When Ercüment Bey had completed his toilette, he came back to my bed, whereupon, with his usual finesse, he slipped my money under the pillow. Why I didn’t wait for him to leave, I do not know. But I pulled out the money, and, before his very eyes, I put it into the chocolate box where I kept all my earnings. Ercüment Bey was back in my arms by now. Throwing a sidelong glance at the box, which was decorated with angels, he said, “Keep that money in a box like that, and you might as well just pickle it. It’ll never grow, my lovely. If you have any brains, you’ll put it into land.” I laughed, of course. I said, “You can’t buy land for three kuruş. I couldn’t even buy a plot as long as my arm for that.” Ercüment Bey got my meaning. But then said, “You might not be able to get something in the centre, but go beyond the far hills, buy some land even Allah doesn’t give a fuck about, and wait for the city to come to you.” Those words were like earrings, and for a few years that was all they were, dangling in my mind and from time to time catching the light. To cut a long story short, in the end I did what Ercüment Bey had suggested, Ziya Bey. A big property broker like him was sure to know what he was talking about, and so I went out to the back of beyond, to a place so remote that even caravans never passed. And bought myself a patch of land. Then after — what, thirty years — this huge wave of noise they call a city had spread so far that it engulfed my fields. One fine day a contractor knocked on my door — a young man, flashing a gold necklace. In an accent I couldn’t place, he made me an offer. What do you say, sister? What if I built two big apartment blocks and gave one to you? There are no words to describe how that threw me. It was all I could do to keep myself from crying! The truth is, I’d never imagined that the three-