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By Root 327 0

streets he and I have just run, siren blaring. I sit next to the driver. He doesn’t ask any questions, and I don’t say a word. We pull up to the emergency room. They put the boy on a stretcher and take him in. Nobody says a word to me. Should I just get out of here? Now they’re going to ask me all kinds of questions. Still, I can’t bring myself to leave. I’m so worried about the boy. What if they notice me leaving, what’ll I say? There’s a handful of people waiting in front of the emergency room. A couple of people rush out of the emergency room and over to the glass-partitioned area on the side. I’ve finally caught my breath, but my legs are still shaking. Should I go over and sit in that glass-partitioned area too? But I can’t move. I just watch instead. There’s a reception window; that must be where they do all the registering and signing in and stuff. And there are chairs for people waiting on the other side. One person’s stretched out asleep, and there’s a group of people talking. In the far corner, some bum’s leaning back against the radiator; he’s holding his grimy head in his hands. He’s probably a regular here at night, just moved in; nobody cares.

A middle-aged policeman exits the emergency room. Is he heading toward me or what?

“Which one of you brought in the injured kid?” he yells out.

I walk up to him. I ask him how the boy’s doing.

“Fine,” he says, and I notice he’s holding a small notebook. He’s going to ask me something now. How will I answer? Should I tell him the truth? If I tell him I just stumbled upon the boy, he’s going to ask what business I had over there at that time of night. Basically, I’m screwed no matter what. Best to ask him some questions first.

“Is he conscious?” I say, surprised at my own ingenuity in coming up with that one.

“Yes, yes he is. Let’s go see him.”

There are patients waiting on stretchers in the hallway, with friends and relatives standing or sitting next to them. I can hear moaning and weeping coming from the rooms, their doors open. A tired nurse carrying IV fluids walks by. Another is telling one patient’s relative something, as if she holds the key to the world’s most important secret.

The room we walk into is a grid of curtains. I spot the boy’s feet in the first partition. Without realizing it, it seems I’ve memorized his shoes, his pants. When the policeman opens the curtain, the boy sees me too. His eyes fill with fear when he sees the two of us together.

“He says he fell. Is that true?”

“I think so. I didn’t see him fall. I ran out of cigarettes and was looking for someplace open. That’s when I saw this boy lying on the ground.”

I’m thinking I’ve provided unnecessary detail when the policeman lets out a yawn and turns to peer at the boy, who shakes his bandaged head yes, without looking at me. For the first time, I get a good look at his face, there in the fluorescent light. At first I thought the mark on his face was a bandage, but upon closer inspection I see it’s a bruise the size of a quarter. It’s so very familiar. Something from that very last look in front of the door, always there before my eyes—and on her lily-white neck.

THE BLOODY HORN

BY NAN ÇETN

Fener

I had opened the window and was looking into the distance, into the blue horizon and the dark, peaceful waters of the Golden Horn. I contemplated this view from high up in my room in Pera Palace. And the view, it howled in warning.

For years I have wondered, in vain, at exactly what point in my life I had gotten off track. How a perfectly orderly life could become so disjointed along the way. Was it because the gates of the past had been suddenly crashed open, in a single violent thrust? I had been scared to death of making a mistake. Fener—complete with its temples of three different religions, its narrow streets, my family, and the house where my destiny was shaped—had always been alive in my memory. If I handled it right, I could fit my whole life into Fener. I was born and raised there. I fell in love there. I left Fener when I was fifteen and returned at the age of forty-five.