At some point he catches movement from the corner of his eye, and turns to see a figure approaching through the veil of white. She might be unidentifiable, wrapped so comprehensively in shawls, but he knows from something in the movement that it is her. The rush of joy he feels on seeing her takes him by surprise. It is that which one might feel upon the unexpected arrival of an old friend; even a loved one.
He raises a hand. He doesn’t call out – he isn’t sure whether she will be able to hear him from this distance and somehow the words won’t form themselves anyway. It is as though something has winded him.
She comes closer, stepping carefully. When she is near he sees that the snow light has changed her eyes; they look not dark but almost silver.
‘What are you doing?’
‘He wanted to see the snow.’
There is a lightness between them, he feels it. It is something new, almost like friendship. It is the magic of the snow, the strangeness of it.
‘It looks more as though you were both eating it.’
From somewhere in the folds of her cloak she produces a small package, wrapped in brown paper.
‘I bought these for him.’
She hands it to him. He takes it; it is warm. For a moment he thinks it is the warmth of her, the warmth beneath her cloak. He feels something new go through him and looks hard at the package in case it is visible on his face.
‘Chestnuts,’ she says. ‘The street sellers are roasting them on every corner. He likes them.’ And then, an afterthought: ‘And perhaps you will have some, too.’
‘Thank you.’
There follows a reckoning silence. Neither of them seems quite certain of how to proceed. And then something rather unexpected happens: a shock of wet and cold hits him square in the face. He splutters, flummoxed and angered by the assault. For a confused moment he thinks that she has thrown it at him. Then he understands: one of the branches above has released its weight of snow onto him, a direct hit. The boy is laughing in delight. Even she has allowed herself a smile. As he sees the thing as they must have done, he begins to laugh too.
The Boy
He watches Nur hanım. She is different, somehow. She looks the same – apart from an extra layer of clothing against the cold, perhaps – but she wears the new thing on her like an invisible cloak that warms her in some secret way. He thinks he knows what has caused this change in her. It is the doctor. He realises that he has never thought of an adult needing a friend in the way a small boy might. He would never have thought it of Nur hanım, especially, because she has always seemed so strong. And she has never had a friend, as far as he can think, in her life. But now she is smiling, and her whole face looks different: less tired, less old.
She told him, all that time ago, that the doctor was not a friend: that he is the enemy. She seems to have forgotten this.
There is something else, too: that he is too young to interpret but not to notice. He can feel it, like a change in the atmosphere, like the scent of a new season. It is in glances, in words: but beneath the words. Something powerful, perhaps dangerous. Do they know it, too? He isn’t certain. He knows, too, that he cannot speak of it to Nur. Not just because he does not know how to put it into words, but because he does not think she would like him asking.
The Prisoner
Acts of destabilisation. That is the phrase to remember. Do not let them become too comfortable.
‘They have to live here like everyone else,’ the officer says. ‘If their existence becomes a little less secure, they will be that much less effective at the business of occupation.’
This is where they are powerful. Not in the way of an army – in an open show of might. Rather as agents of uncertainty and fear. However universal an occupation, it cannot be all-seeing.
He is involved in a number of smaller subversions. Some of these are raids on the artillery stores of the Allies, the weapons to be passed along a chain that will eventually see them in Ankara, with the rebel government. Some are caught in similar acts.
On his return from the coffeehouse, late at night, he happens across a British soldier drunk upon the quay. The man is bending down to vomit into the Bosphorus. The gold epaulettes upon his shoulders mark him out as an officer of high rank.
And these are the men to whom we are supposed to relinquish our city, who have made what was ours their own. The shame of it.
He acts almost before he has decided he is going to do it, the impulse of a moment: a hand shot out to catch the man in the small of his back. Only a tiny amount of force. But this is all it takes to send the officer toppling forward. The man enters the water with hardly a sound, as though he had never been there. The surface appears almost undisturbed.
Within: is there not a small ripple of disquiet at the deed? Yes, in spite of himself and all he has learned. Because this death must be nothing to him. After all, he has killed innocents and those deaths were necessary. He must believe that, or be destroyed.
