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ered once again how this was where she spent the happiest

years of her life with her first husband。 But could she also tell that this same

house was the refuge of two miserable and lonely men; and that it bore the

stench of death? I didn’t walk with her on the way back for she had broken my

heart by ing back here。

It wasn’t the cold and blackness of the night that brought together the two

fatherless children and three women—one servant; one Jewess and one

widow—it was the strange neighborhoods; the nearly impassable streets and

the fear of Hasan。 Our crowded pany was under the protection of Black’s

men; and just like a caravan carrying treasure; we walked over out…of…the…way

roads; backstreets and solitary; seldom…visited neighborhoods; so as to avoid

running into guards; Janissaries; curious neighborhood thugs; thieves or

Hasan。 At times; through blackness in which you couldn’t see your hand

before your face; we groped our way; perpetually bumping against each other

and the walls。 We walked clinging to one another; overe by the sensation

that the living dead; jinns and demons would surely emerge from

underground and abduct us into the night。 Just behind the walls and closed

shutters; which we felt blindly with our hands; we heard the snoring and

coughing of people in the nighttime cold as well as the lowing of beasts in

their stables。

378

Even Esther; no stranger to the poorest and worst districts; who’d walked

all the streets of Istanbul—that is excluding those neighborhoods wherein

migrants a