Last Letter from Istanbul. Lucy Foley

seemed the colours were everywhere, the Golden Horn lighting up with reflected fire. The boy gave a shriek of delight. She had been thrilled at this unexpected show of emotion, this sign, perhaps, of a brief respite from the things that haunted him. She had actually worried that they might remind him of that terrible night. After this re-assurance, she had begun to enjoy the fireworks too.

      How democratic they were, for anyone who chose to watch them – though she doubted this had been the intention. They seemed to be lost on their intended audience, in fact, who seemed too absorbed by their business inside the meyhanes. Then without any warning one of the doors had opened and a chaos of khaki-clad bodies had been disgorged into the street in front of them, some clutching spilling glasses of beer.

      Nur had pushed the boy behind her, but had not had time to prevent one of the men stumbling into her, catching her hard on the shoulder. Involuntarily she had shoved back with both hands, merely trying to keep him from knocking her down. He had toppled and briefly tried to right himself before his momentum had got the better of him, sending him crashing backward to the ground. She had stood there stunned by the act, by her sudden, unexpected power. His fellow soldiers had been beside themselves with glee – laughing and pointing, slurring insults at him where he sat in the pool of his spilled beer. Then the fallen one had looked up, and she had seen that the shock had sobered him; that his expression was pure menace. She had humiliated him, she understood this look to mean, and she would pay.

      She had turned to the boy. ‘Run.’

      They had fled back down the way they had come, through the cobbled streets. The men had pursued them for a while, alternately laughing and shouting orders. But the men were drunk, and she knew the streets better – knew a secret shortcut through a series of interconnecting alleyways that would take them back to the tram stop.

      They had escaped, but she still has a queasy fear of one of them recognising her in the street one day and demanding retribution. If she were arrested, what would become of them all … the boy, her mother, her grandmother? She looks at them all now, and decides it is not worth thinking about.

      As the sky beyond the windows loses the last of its light, she heats a basin of water on the stove and begins to wash her mother’s hair. She has a bar of soap scented with Damascene rose that she keeps for this purpose. The aroma is famed for its ability to soothe and heal. It reminds her of her mother, too. The woman she used to be – who would ask the girls to crush the petals into her skin and hair before her bath, who wore pure attar oil dabbed behind her ears. Who wore gowns of pink silk and read French novels.

      From the corner, her grandmother speaks. ‘You won’t get anything out of her. Worse than an infant today.’

      ‘She has suffered so much, Büyükanne.’

      ‘So have we all, girl.’

      Her mother stopped speaking on the day they had word from the front: Missing, presumed lost. They knew as well as anyone that the notice meant dead. Her brother survived only within the bureaucratic chaos that meant the exact circumstances of his death were not yet clear. Sometimes, in the early days, Nur had allowed herself to believe that he was alive. There were rumours of Ottoman men being taken as prisoners of war. If she did not feel his death, might it not be real?

      Now she sees that this was just a fiction she had created to delay pain. She did not feel his death because they had been denied the absolute certainty of it: that was the cruellest thing of all.

      From somewhere beneath them comes the eerie, distorted wail of an infant. The walls might be made of thick card, not stone. Above and below can be heard, with peculiar domestic intimacy, the sounds of other lives. Most of the time the voices are indistinct, as though they are travelling through water.

      Her mother’s eyes have closed. If one were to look briefly she might appear to be in a state of bliss. But her breath comes too quickly. Beneath the purplish lids there is restless movement, as though projected there is a play of images that only she can see. Nur has some inkling of what those scenes may be. They are the same that wake her mother at night, from which even in her sleep she is not safe.

      She is trying not to think about how much more hair there used to be. Her fingers discover absences, patches of bare scalp where whole sections seem to have vanished. She sluices warm water, creates a silky white lather. She inhales, exhales, hears the hitch of her breath and tries to smooth it. She understands the importance of remaining calm. Knows how powerfully the fingertips, those tiny repositories of sensation, can convey emotion. She tries instead to convey only her tenderness, her love.

      She fills another cup of water to rinse away the foam. The colour has changed, too. It used to be a magnificent colour: somewhere between brown and red. A great sweep of it, with the shine of metal. Depending upon the quality of the light it would gleam bronze or copper. Now it does not reflect anything at all. This, of course, may be merely to do with age. A cruelty, yes, but a natural one that comes to all. And yet it happened so quickly – in less than a year.

      She tips the water. There is a small sound as the water drenches her mother’s scalp, which could be a sigh of pleasure or pain.

      ‘Is it all right for you, Anne?’ But there is only silence.

       Five years earlier

       The Prisoner

      Their enemy, at the very entrance to their camp. The Russians had come for them, through the snow. Silently, cloaked in whiteness. Then they were everywhere, and death came all at once. Death came in pellets of metal that could travel the whole way through a body, and break it all up inside. Men were killed opening their mouths to speak, or scratching themselves, or putting both hands inside their jackets to warm them, or bending to fasten a shoe, or squatting to defecate against a tree. Some died even before they had time to shout, some of them with screams that outlived them. And some were dying slowly, with whimpers of fear and pain. They fell and the snow covered them. He had not known that death in the name of a noble cause, in the name of everything one stood for, could still be so ugly. So small, so pitiful.

      He shouted to Babek to fall, to pretend to be hit. He lay down, and waited for the snow to cover him as they made their advance. He felt the cold enter him like a sword. He realised it might have been better to have been shot, because now he would merely freeze to death – and it would be slow.

      He lay for an hour; perhaps several. But time had frozen too.

      Beside him, on either side, stretched a phalanx of corpses. Bodies that would soon be hardly recognisable as such, skin turned hard as stone. The Russians had brought dogs, and some of them had begun to feast. He could hear them, a little way off, fighting over the spoils. There was more than enough to go around.

      Babek lay somewhere close by. He thought that he could still hear the rattle of his breathing, but it was difficult to be certain.

      The enemy came now, following the dogs. He could hear voices, the creak of the snow beneath their boots. Their boots lined with fur. This was the Russians’ element. They were men of ice and snow.

      He felt the weight of the dead man beside him disappear as the corpse was hoisted into the air and carried to some unknown place. Then they came for him, prodded at him with a rifle. He felt the sting of the bayonet’s blade against his skin, but he did not cry out.

      He could hear them talking; but he could not understand the words. He supposed they were gloating over their victory. And then he heard; unmistakable, a voice speaking in a language he understood. A heavy Russian accent, but the words were clear enough.

      ‘You’ve done well. You will be rewarded for this.’

      Another voice, accented, but not Russian. ‘Thank you.’

      He opened one eye. And he saw, he was sure that he saw, the same Armenian who they had thought lost to the snow.

      When the Russians had finally left he dragged Babek into the shelter of one of the tents. They would wait here for the reinforcements