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