kuruş land I’d bought at the dawn of time would prove so fruitful. That’s why I was so surprised. And who knows, Ziya Bey, maybe I felt a little ashamed to find myself showered with these great riches all of a sudden. I felt accusing eyes all around me. Voices saying I didn’t deserve it. It didn’t last long, this shyness. Once the apartments were up, it wore off, bit by bit, until one fine day it vanished like a morning mist. It happened in stages. That said — if you asked me to chart those stages, I’d have to give up before I began. Maybe it was time that gnawed away at it. Though it could be that my shame was no match for the miseries I’d suffered in earlier life, and the rancour those miseries had left me with. All I know is that I was at last able to relax. My mood lifted. I strolled through my building each morning, casting smiles right and left as I went. I was a child with a new toy, a curious child with a happy heart. How, how I loved going up and down in the lifts, just for the fun of it! How it thrilled me, to touch the banisters, to know that every single one of the doors standing in their pretty little rows belonged to me! I’d walk down every corridor, and every stairwell, until I’d seen the whole building, and then, having nothing else to do, I’d plop down on a chair on the balcony, and there I’d stay till evening. And oh! What joy I felt, as I took in the view! In actual fact, it wasn’t easy. It was, to tell the truth, a fantastically tiring state of affairs. People always say that happiness makes life seem so much lighter, but for me it was so much more tiring, Ziya Bey. If there is any lightness at all, it is only the first stage. And anyway. As you already know, when happiness takes root in you, it can dazzle your mind. It can blind you. You could say that I, too, was blinded, I mean, during those long and mindlessly happy days I spent on that balcony. And all the while, Ercüment Şahiner was in my thoughts. My happy heart fairly fluttered with the gratitude I felt towards him. And so I got it into my head to thank him, to throw my arms around him, and kiss him — let him know he was my miracle’s true architect. I rushed out to find him, and, what a pity, Ercüment Bey was no longer in his office. His colleagues told me that a childhood friend he’d claimed as his blood brother had left him up to his gills in debt. And so he’d fallen into the hands of a usurer. Then it went from bad to worse — Ali clothing Veli, Veli clothing Ali and both robbing Peter to pay Paul. Then the thugs came in to raid the office, and after that had happened a few times, he’d gathered up his things and fled. That was one story. Another story had it that he’d fallen in love with a slender, fair-skinned woman, who visited the office once a week. Maddened by passion, he’d buried himself in a deep, deep silence, until one day he upped and sold everything he owned to follow this woman to another city. But I can’t say I found this very convincing. Ercüment Bey didn’t have enough brains to lose them in such a way — so, no, I don’t think he was up to it. My guess is he went into hiding after those thugs who turned his office upside down put the fear of God in him. Maybe he was inside there, shivering like a wet kitten, thinking they’d come back to kill him on the spot, never guessing it was me looking for him. One thing I know: if someone, anyone, had told me what hole he was hiding in, I would have pulled him right out — paid his debts twice over, and then, to restore him to his rightful place, I’d have gone out to the flashiest neighbourhood in the city, and bought him the biggest, brightest office going, and furnished it from floor to ceiling in the finest taste. I’d have shown him to his chair, and said, “Do sit down, my life. Do sit down.” I could have done that many times over. That’s how grateful I felt. No words can express the depth of my gratitude to this man. Oh, the months I wasted, traipsing from building to building, down corridors that stank of piss. I combed every street, every arcade, every land-registry office. Every office of every muhtar who ever ran a neighbourhood, too. Wherever a broker might show his face, there I went, to find him. Now and again, I’d come across a muhtar or a broker who showed me the courtesy of listening to my problem. They would take down my details, and promise to let me know if they had any news of him, but a year and a half later, not a single one had got in touch. That’s when I knew I’d never find him, Ziya Bey. That was when I gave up the ghost. I returned to my chair on the balcony, empty for so long, and from dawn till dusk I took in the view. But my debt of gratitude still weighed down on me, of course. There was none of the old joy. I’d just sit there, looking emptily at nothing in particular. Gratitude is a terrible thing, Ziya Bey; the havoc it wreaks is something only the sufferer can understand. I would go so far as to say that it does a great deal more than ravage the souclass="underline" it presses down on you, turns you into a slave. A slave who is willing, even dying, to prove herself worthy. A wounded slave who is bent on opening her wounds even further. . But anyway. So there I was, sitting on my balcony, gazing emptily at the apartments across the road, watching the cars and the crowds. Many visions came to me at that time. They fell into my mind like photographs from an album, slipping every which way. One such image showed me sewing that button back on to my uniform, my father at my side. I was turned in his direction, smiling faintly, and taking in his scent. There was another, much noisier picture, lit through wine glasses: a crowd of men. All smiling. At me. Or had they narrowed their eyes like cats to sneeze their smoke through their moustaches, all at once? Whatever the truth of this photograph, it summoned up another from the depths of my mind. In this one I was following my grandmother through a long street full of puddles. The further I walked, of course, the more darkly the slums cast shadows over my photograph. And soon they had grown into one great fake and lifeless tangle amid the rippling, quivering puddles. And now another photograph, wafting through the whole trembling mess. And in this one, I am having sex with men I don’t even know. Sometimes I even see myself coming to collect my father’s jacket, or washing dishes with those silent, cowering girls, or visiting my mother with those cute little boxes, or dragged to and fro by the claws of a shadow. And so it continued, Ziya Bey. It was one photograph after another, for days and weeks on end. Until somehow they drifted out of view. One by one, they vanished from my mind. The only one that remained, I must tell you, was the picture of the money I’d saved in that chocolate box. No matter how I tried, I could not shake that image from my mind. It was as if a hidden hand was holding it up to me — trying desperately to tell me something. From dawn till dusk that picture never left me. I was lost to time, lost inside time and in thrall to it. My soul was elsewhere, far away. My mind was blank. Utterly blank. I might as well have been an idiot. Maybe that’s what did it — the blankness. Because one day at long last I was hit by a new idea, a thunderclap of an idea that turned all my memories inside out. The Ercüment Şahiner for whom I had searched high and low was a broker, after all. But I had allowed this fact to slip from my mind. I had, as a consequence, felt more gratitude than was warranted, had allowed myself to become crippled by it. No doubt Ercüment Bey told everyone he met back then to invest in land. It was part of his job. That is what I told myself, and that was when I remembered that that money in the chocolate box was my own. I had paid for this building with a wasted youth spent hopping from lap to lap. Once I understood that, Ziya Bey, I was no longer willing to let tenants surrender their keys to my accountant when they vacated the premises. What I mean to say is that I came to see my tenants as having occupied my own lost years, and that is why I decided they should, at the very least, come and give me the key themselves. So that’s what it’s all about, Ziya Bey, this business with the key. Now let me apologise for taking up so much of your time with my chatter. And not just your time, I fear. Am I right in thinking I’ve also given you a headache?’