Free Baksheesh by Esmahan Aykol Page A

fast.
    â€œI’m so sorry about your loss,” I mumbled. “That’s why I’m ringing you. It seems that the family are holding me responsible for his death.” For a moment, we were both silent. “That’s not exactly correct, but in a way it is.”
    The woman was still absolutely silent, but I knew she hadn’t put the phone down because I heard her sniff.
    â€œOh, grow up. How could you have killed Osman?” she said with no hint in her voice that she had been crying.
    â€œTo be honest, that’s exactly what I’m wondering. But the police need to be told this. So do the brothers.”
    â€œWhere are you?”
    â€œI’m at a friend’s house in Kuzguncuk,” I said, thinking Lale would kill me if I didn’t go out with her for dinner that evening.
    â€œGood. I’m in Koşuyolu. Write down this address.”
    I had no option but to do as she said. There was something irresistible about her voice.
    Â 
    Promising Lale I would return within half an hour or an hour at most, I left and jumped into a taxi at the Kuzguncuk rank. Taxis from ranks are a cut above those that roam the streets of Istanbul. At least their interiors don’t stink, and the drivers don’t insist on filling your head with their ideas on politics and the EU. They also don’t drive at such crazy speeds. In other words, you can get into them without having to fear for your life.
    â€œThis is it, miss,” said the driver. We’d stopped in front of a group of horrendous-looking apartment blocks. About twenty of them lined up side by side. The balconies served as
storerooms for the people who lived there. Discarded washing machines, mangles, barrels, wooden chests, dilapidated pushchairs, Scandinavian-type chairs without their cushions, a twelve-place Formica dining table – all waiting hopefully in the copper rays of the evening sunshine for the day when they would be taken inside again.
    Habibe Hanım lived in E Block, number twenty-four. She had told me the bell had the name Büyüktuna by it. In Turkey, it’s not customary to have only a surname by the doorbell. If a woman puts just her surname next to the bell, it indicates that she lives alone but doesn’t want her neighbours to know that. Unlike Cihangir, not every district is welcoming to people who live alone.
    I took the lift to the sixth floor.
    There were four doors on that floor. I pressed the bell of the one that was slightly ajar and, putting my mouth close to the gap, called, “Habibe Hanım?”
    â€œCome in. Come in. I’m in the kitchen,” she said. It was the voice of the woman I’d spoken to on the telephone.
    I closed the door and stood indecisively in the entrance hall.
    â€œDon’t bother to take your shoes off. Come in as you are. I’ve been out of Istanbul for two months and the place is filthy,” she called from the kitchen, which was to the left of the front door.
    I waited quietly by the kitchen door, listening to Habibe unpacking food and cramming it into the refrigerator. I always feel shy when I’m a visitor in a Turkish home. I feel like a spy intruding on people’s privacy. It has something to do with the importance Turks attach to their homes, the very personal way they fill them with scores of knick-knacks, and the little secret details that give away the identities of the occupants. I think I’m a bit afraid of Turkish homes. They make me feel both voyeuristic and stifled by the dread of seeing something I shouldn’t, something I will have to try to erase from my memory. I never go right inside unless a member of the household tells me to do so.

    That was why I stood like a lemon by the kitchen door, waiting to be rescued by an invitation to sit down.
    â€œWould you like a coffee?” asked Habibe Hanım.
    â€œIt’s too late for me to drink coffee. I wouldn’t sleep.”
    â€œSomething cold? Iced