Good Morning, Ester (Morning, Day 12)

The telephone is ringing persistently in the desert tent but nobody is answering it. There are no officers or soldiers on patrol. What is this place – are these the barren hills of Libya? The gleaming shores of Çanakkale? The lush green forests of the Balkans? The vast, endless sands of the Yemeni deserts? The phone keeps on ringing, as though it will never end, as though it is desperate to pass on some news of woe. At my wits’ end, I eventually lift the receiver. I am expecting a furious rant from an enraged commandant but what I hear instead is a more restrained and altogether more urbane voice, that of Ömer from reception.

‘Good morning, Şehsuvar Bey. I do hope I am not disturbing you. I would just like to inform you that you have a visitor.’

I realise I am in my bed in the hotel.

‘I wouldn't have disturbed you like this but he is insistent,’

Ömer went on. ‘He says you're expecting him’.

Who could it be? I hadn't been expecting anyone. What new nonsense was this? With great difficulty, I opened my tired eyes and squinted up at the clock on the wall. The time was eight thirteen. Who could it be at this ungodly hour?

‘He says he's from your hometown. He looks like a war veteran of some kind. He's got an arm missing.’

‘Cafer’, I muttered happily. ‘Çolak Cafer!’

‘That's what he says his name is, sir, yes. Cafer. I asked him to wait for you in the Domed Salon but he refuses. He's standing here now in front of me waiting for you.’

That was difference with Fuad. In the evening, he says he'll do something, and by the morning he's got it done. Whatever promises he makes, he keeps. A few minutes later, I was dressed and downstairs. He was a thin man, Cafer, one of those guys that looks so frail, you'd think a gust of wind could blow him over, and the sight of the right sleeve of his jacket swinging in the air beside him made him look even more unimposing. However, when he saw me, he gave a wolfish grin, displaying rows of uneven teeth stained black by tobacco.