Free Divorce Turkish Style by Esmahan Aykol Page B

said.
    â€œHe actually checked your IDs?” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Did you notice how frightened he is? They’re all afraid of their own shadows. Even my father.”
    â€œWho are they afraid of?”
    â€œWho? The factory owners, of course. Who else? It just takes one to cause an upset and everyone is ruined.”
    Fofo and I looked at each other in alarm, sensing the intimidation that engulfed those people.
    â€œWhat would you like?” asked a grinning waiter.
    We ordered three mineral waters.
    â€œI’m from Lüleburgaz, but my parents are Albanian,” said Naz, as the waiter moved away. “They’re both Macedonian Albanians. They were born here, but we still have relatives there. In other words, we’re not originally from here. As you know, there are lots of migrants from the Balkans living in Thrace.”
    We made no comment, in the hope that she would explain why she was telling us this.
    â€œPeople suffered terribly when they were turned out of their country, both during and after the Balkan War,” continued Naz. “Anyone who lived through that time has it etched on their memory for ever. The last of them were forced to leave Bulgaria during the religious and ethnic oppression of the late 1980s and many settled in Thrace.”
    â€œWhere they had kinsmen, you mean,” said Fofo.
    â€œPeople are forever referring to kinsmen. I use the term too, but I don’t like it,” said Naz.
    I took a sip of the mineral water that the waiter had put on the table, and prepared to return to the main topic.
    â€œYou were asking if the industrialists could have had my sister killed,” continued Naz. “I’m only a cardiologist. An oncologist would be better placed to give an accurate picture of the situationin Thrace, but I’ll give you a few simple statistics. In this region, 30 per cent of deaths are from cancer, which is three times the national average in Turkey. The majority of cases are stomach and liver cancers caused by environmental pollution.”
    â€œThree times the national average?” said Fofo, his eyes widening.
    I started to bite my nails.
    â€œIt’s incredible, isn’t it?” said Naz. “Yet we still can’t persuade the villagers to unite against the factories, which just goes to show how much fear has been instilled into them. But coming back to your question… My view is that the unchecked development of industry in Thrace means that the industrialists are, in one way or another, committing murder every minute of every day. People have been, and still are, dying from the pollution already created. However, future generations will also die because the factories are depleting the supply of water in the underground wells and contaminating the River Ergene, which is in turn destroying the agricultural land and the forests. You asked me if the industrialists killed my sister. What do you expect me to say?”
    I felt mesmerized by her words and unable to respond.
    â€œI don’t understand the business about the underground water,” said Fofo.
    â€œWe’re told there’s a six-hundred-cubic-metre table of water in central Thrace that’s been there since time immemorial. In recent years, four hundred cubic metres of this water have been used, mainly for industry but also for agriculture and drinking water, and they’re continuing to extract the remaining two hundred cubic metres. Therefore, within a very short time, there’s danger of serious drought in the region.”
    Naz paused for breath before continuing.
    â€œThe problem of the underground water supply becomingexhausted is one thing. But I think what’s more desperate is that the water extracted by industry becomes polluted with substances harmful to human health and the environment, and is then pumped back underground. Take the leather industry, for example. There are two types of tanning