‘Tomorrow is the nineteenth of July,’ he said.
Ayşe looked at the cigarette between her fingers and said, ‘Smoking ban day.’
‘Finally upon us,’ İkmen said with a frown. Then he sighed. ‘Enjoy it while you can, Ayşe.’
She watched him go, and then she smoked her cigarette right down to the butt. As she scrunched it out in İkmen’s ashtray, she found that her eyes were caught by the tiny glowing embers at its heart. One by one, they all fizzled out.
Acknowledgement
I’d like to thank Fire Investigation Team Manager, Deon Webber from Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service for giving me so much information about the nature of fire and firefighting. If any of the details about fire in this book are inaccurate or wrong then that is entirely down to me and me alone.
Glossary
adhan
– call to prayer. Performed five times a day by devout Muslims.
Bey
– Ottoman title denoting respect, still in use today following a man’s first name, as in Çetin Bey.
inşallah
– Arabic, translates as ‘As God wills’. Used by people all over the Muslim world to express the concept of divine direction. For instance, we will go to the cinema this afternoon,
inşallah
, if God wills. Christians often express the same concept by saying that they will do a certain thing only ‘if I am spared’.
kapıcı
– doorkeeper. Blocks of flats have
kapıcılar
, men who act as security, porters etc. for the apartment community. They are said to know all the tenants’ secrets.
nargile
– water pipe. Used for smoking plain and flavoured tobaccos.
yali
– mansion, typically wooden, usually of nineteenth-century Ottoman vintage.
Zamzam water
– from the Well of Zamzam in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. The water from the Zamzam well was supposed to have been produced by God for Ishmael, the thirsty infant son of the Prophet Abraham. The heavily salinated water is said to possess miraculous properties, and although it is not supposed to be sold outside the Saudi kingdom, small amounts of Zamzam water can be obtained in vials that can be hung around the neck. One of the things that pilgrims to Mecca always do is drink water from the Zamzam well.