Last Letter from Istanbul

dismisses it as a percussion of the wind. But it persists, soft, but too regular to be any fluke. Someone is outside. Her first thought is of the boy, the doctor; something is wrong. She dresses, and hurries down, opens the heavy door as quietly as she is able. She is so surprised by the sight of the figure on the other side that at first she cannot make sense of it. She steps back, goes automatically to close the door again, believing it must be an apparition, some figment of her dream carried over into life. This is not the first time she has thought she has seen him … in the streets of the city, boarding a ferry, through a window. But he has always eluded her before; whenever he has come close enough for her to see his features they have resolved themselves into those of a stranger and her mistake has been evident. She has accepted that all she has seen is an imprint of memory, a ghost. But now he is near enough that there can be no mistake; she can see the mole on his cheek, the double fold of the eyelid of his right eye that does not quite match the left.

He puts out a hand, holds the door.

‘It’s me, Nur.’ The voice is his and yet not his – there is a new, raw quality to it. ‘Let me in, quickly. I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself than I have to.’

She steps back without saying a word, still half certain that if she speaks it will all become real, he will disappear back into memory. But he follows her in, a presence coherent enough to move the air.

Now, in the lantern light, she is surprised that she recognised him at all. He looks like a beggar, worse than the ragged Russian White Army officers seen on street corners. His hair is matted, it does not look like human hair at all, but the rough bristles of an ill-kept mule. There is more grey in it than black. In each cheek there is a crease, a worn fold. There are black patches upon his cheekbones, as though the skin there has died, or is in the process of rotting away. His lips are scabbed, ulcerated, as though they have decided to part ways with his face. Oddly enough, these changes in him persuade her that he is no apparition. Because, if he were, he would surely appear as his old self, whole, the one known to her.

Her little brother.

She risks speech. ‘But where—’

He makes a motion for her to be silent, pulls the door closed behind him. He moves like an animal. Just above the stink of sweat and unwashed flesh she detects the metallic odour of alcohol, the anise tang of raki.

‘I went to the old house first.’ His voice has been changed too, is low, harsh, and it too speaks of pain. There is nothing of the old affection in it. It will come, she decides, one cannot expect it yet. Now she realises that they have not even embraced yet, have not exchanged the expected words of love. They will come.

‘Where have you been?’

‘In hell. There were men there, Nur, at the house. Englishmen—’

‘We thought you had been killed.’

‘I think perhaps I was. Or something like it.’ There is a rattle in his voice that seems to come from somewhere deep in his lungs.

Now the stifled joy rises in her. ‘They said missing in action. But we couldn’t let ourselves believe it. So many were really dead. Missing came to mean—’

He has raised a hand to silence her again, as though he has been continuing a separate conversation in his own mind.

‘I have been in the desert. A prisoner of the British army: the same one that has taken over our city.’

‘Of course.’

‘For four years. They did not think to let us come home when the war ended. They let us rot in there for another three years after the Armistice was signed.’

‘Oh, Kerem …’

‘The people here looked at me in the streets like I was an animal. They backed away from me; small children pointed at me. Is that how we welcome our war heroes? I have done things … things that should be asked of no human being: but necessary things, for the good of all. And this is how I am received.’

‘What things, Kerem?’

Even as she asks it she isn’t entirely sure that she wants to know. He does not hear her, or he chooses not to – either way she cannot help feeling relieved that he doesn’t answer.

She would like to embrace him but she senses that he would not allow it.

‘I have maggots in my feet, Nur, fleas in my hair. I am disgusting, yes: I can see that you think it, just as the people in the street thought it. But this is what they made of me.’

‘We will get you clean. You are home now, Kerem.’

Perhaps he does not hear or feel the tenderness in her voice; he shows no sign of it. Instead, he says: ‘This is not my home. This is a hovel.’

She frowns to bring him into focus, trying to overlay this new character, this stranger, upon the image of the former. He is different in almost every respect. She cannot believe the changes in him. He was so mild before; allowing others to make decisions on his behalf. But this must always have been in him, mustn’t it, written in secret somewhere? This latent fire.

‘I cannot believe it, Kerem. I’m – so happy.’ She isn’t, though she knows that she should feel unmitigated joy. Instead it is something more akin to fear; she is too unnerved by the change in him. But perhaps if she keeps saying it, with enough conviction, it will become true. Besides, he doesn’t seem to have heard her. He stares, blankly, at the portrait of himself hung upon one wall.