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By Root 320 0

Cavidan Hanım’s naked body onto the passenger seat, pulled on his pants, and zipped up. He was sticky all over. The inside of the car reeked of semen, but he decided against rolling the window down, with the wind blowing so forcefully outside. The woman’s head first hit the glove compartment, and then the door. The gearshift stick bruised her waist. You might think, Well, what does it matter anyway, now that she’s dead? It wouldn’t matter, of course, if every mark on her body wasn’t later considered evidence of battery. But as you probably guessed, Tolga wasn’t the kind of guy to dump a dead body—and one which had expired with uncanny timing—on a pile of wet cold stones and just leave it there, even if it did belong to someone he didn’t know, and even if he would have to pay by having his own life wrenched to pieces. After all, he had faith in the justice system.

And then …

I won’t say what happened next. Not because I don’t know, but because I don’t want to bore you any further. Considering the intimate details I’ve already provided, I must have heard all about it from one of the parties involved, and since that obviously couldn’t be Cavidan Hanım (though who knows, right?), I must have heard it from Tolga. Perhaps I’m Tolga’s best friend, bearer of his secrets, his lawyer, or better yet, perhaps I’m Tolga himself. If I’m not making all this stuff up, that is. But what difference does it make anyway? Who says these were their real names? I probably changed them, right? Especially since the case still remains to be settled in court! Sharing these experiences with you—even if I don’t actually know you—has, it seems to me, forged a bond between us. And that bond forces me to confess: Yes, I changed the names, and I also changed the professions and the addresses. Unfortunately, these are not real people except for their genders and ages. The only real thing is that everything unfolded exactly as I have told you. Oh, and the wind! It was every bit as powerful as I have said. Really, what a lodos it was!

THE STEPSON

BY MEHMET BLÂL

Sirkeci

It was one of those winter evenings when the darkness descends early. His hands burned from the cold, his stomach from hunger, and his heart from longing for his mother. He looked at the kiosk in front of Sirkeci train station, at the spit of twirling meat, the döner, fat seeping out of it onto the fire below. He swallowed. He reached into his pocket. He had just enough money for one more night in a bachelors’ room—unless he took care of it tonight, then he wouldn’t need to pay for the room anymore. But what if his stepfather failed to show up again? It would mean another night of dining on simit, that’s what.

When he had reached his home that frosty evening, the woman who opened the door was a complete stranger to him. It was from this sinister woman, with the gaping front teeth and foul look in her eyes, that he learned his mother had died. The woman was one of his stepfather’s wives, and she told him that she’d moved into the house after his mother’s death. She refused to explain any further. The woman started to shut the door, but he grabbed it, forcing it back open. How did his mother die? When? And where was his stepfather? The woman said nothing about his mother, only that she hadn’t seen her husband in a long time. He stopped by once in a blue moon to drop off some cash, but he never stuck around for long. That was all she could tell him. She shut the door.

The roots of his hair were damp with sweat, there was a tingling in his knees, and the tips of his toes had gone numb. He sat down on the wet concrete step in front of the house. He was frozen in a state of shock and grief. His facial expression, the thoughts and questions running through his mind, the entire flow of life, all of it was frozen in a state of temporary coma. At every door he knocked on that night, he met the same response: “I don’t know anything about it!”

Both he and his mother were outsiders in this place, his stepfather’s hometown. Something had happened, someone had done something to his mother,