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ten years now. You
know what? We wasted the best days of our life. The very time when we should have been making money. Thank God, both my children completed their education. I have two sons. One’s an agricultural engineer. The other’s an accountant. I have to be grateful for that. When I look at some people’s children… At least ours are straight as a die.”
    I didn’t want to be rude, but I had to interrupt him, otherwise he would have carried on talking about his children.
    â€œIs there anyone else who knew Osman well?”
    Yücel Bey fixed his eyes on the window and thought, stroking the large mole on his face.
    â€œMy dear lady, ask any of the old Kuledibi folk. They all knew him. But I doubt if they could tell you more than I can. Just a minute, let me think,” he said, still stroking the mole.
    â€œOsman had a lady friend he was infatuated with at one time. I’ve no idea how you’d find her, but she used to visit Osman’s a lot. We’d bump into each other downstairs in the lobby almost every day. I’m talking about five years ago. Maybe more.”
    â€œDon’t you know her name?”
    â€œI used to know it. I knew it because she brought out a CD later on. I even saw her on television one evening. Very indecently dressed she was too, I must say,” he said, pointing to his chest. “If you ask me, it all stemmed from that time. After all, my dear, what was she doing visiting a family man?”
    â€œHer name?”
    â€œI’m trying to remember,” he said, tapping his fingers on his calves, as if playing a trumpet. “Was it Rüya? Or Hülya? Something like that. People like that use stage names, don’t they? It certainly won’t be her real name. Yes, I remember she used to sing wearing a mermaid outfit with a sort of tail on it. She even dyed her hair blonde. When she came round here, she was never blonde. But I recognized her instantly and I still remember her song. She wore the mermaid outfit because it went with that song.”

    He started singing in a low voice:
    Across oceans, from the depths, I came to you
Embrace me, give me warmth, let me be with you
Hold me tight, I’m so cold, and yearning for you
    When he’d finished singing, he looked at me shyly.
    â€œSorry about my voice, but it went something like that. It might be worthwhile finding that woman. It’s three or four years since I saw her on television and I’ve no idea what she’s doing now, of course. How would I? Osman always had lady friends, but this one lasted a long time. Youngsters nowadays would probably say they were an item.”
    He stopped suddenly, and then added, “You can’t help knowing what’s going on when you’re neighbours and living on top of each other.”
    â€œYou’re right,” I said. I’d made a note of the lyrics in the hope of finding somebody who remembered them.

5
    I returned home without calling in at the shop, hoping that over the weekend the local tradesmen would forget about what had happened. I called Lale, the only one of my friends likely to remember a song from four years ago.
    â€œYou’ll be joining the Prozac club soon. It makes everything seem much better, I can assure you,” she interrupted. Yet I hadn’t told her half of what had happened in the four or five days since we had last spoken. Prozac was what kept Lale and half the Turkish women in her circle going. The other half were on herbal antidepressants.
    â€œCan you find me someone who knows about Turkish music?” I asked, after we’d been on the phone for over an hour. I was holding the handset in my left hand, my right arm having gone completely numb.
    â€œI’ll find you just the person. Someone who can even tell you the name of the company that issued the album. Why don’t you come over this evening? We’ll go and eat farmed sea bream at caviar prices in