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didn’t appeal to Mümtaz. But at the end of this passage everything was suddenly illuminated, as if the sun were shining through lush, verdant leaves, and within this luminescence they entered a sea cave. Despite their hands and knees being covered with cuts and sores, the light, shifting between deep turquoise and naptha green, excited Mümtaz. When the waves ebbed inside the mass of rock that the sea had hollowed out, there remained a calm, somewhat deep body of water, like an artificial rocaille pool similar a natural pond, with a small island of stone, whose waters were clear enough to reveal fish swimming in its depths and crabs and crustaceans along its rocky edges. This part of the grotto was accessible by sea. Behind it, the part through which they had entered was wider and constituted a slightly elevated, largish cavern filled with rock fragments. When a wave struck and sealed the mouth of the grotto, all was suffused in verdigris light. Then, in a series of odd, seemingly subterranean sounds, the water emptied out, and everything was illuminated again through refractions cast by the sunlit sea. Hands on his chin, Mümtaz watched the chiaroscuro play of light and shadow silently for hours from the perch of a boulder.
    What did he contemplate? What did he expect? Had he assumed that the waves would convey something, or had he just surrendered himself to the curious drone made by the water filling and draining the grotto? The sounds bore an invitation, but where, to which arcanum?
    By chance, toward nightfall, a caïque that had meandered out along the coast transported them back effortlessly to the pier. Hastily, Mümtaz abandoned his friends and ran home. He wanted to describe what he’d seen to his mother. But she was in such a state that he didn’t dare utter a word and was mindful not to leave her alone again.
    He passed his days there, beside his mother’s sickbed, at times attending to her, at times lost in thought or reading. Each day toward noon he went to the telegraph office to learn whether any response to his mother’s telegram had come. Then he sequestered himself in her room, and within the sounds reaching him from the ever-animated, ever-lively street, he consoled her.
    As evening fell he sat before the window. Over recent days a girl had been walking down the street. Each night she passed before the houses singing türkü s as she carried an empty bottle or some other vessel. Mümtaz recognized her voice when she was still at the far end of the street:
    ’Tis nightfall and I haven’t lit this lantern o’ mine The Almighty has written this fate o’ mine I haven’t caressed my lamb to my heart’s content Should I die, darling, your fate will be torment
    Mümtaz’s heart ached, assuming the gaze his mother trained on him every time she lifted her head bore a meaning close to that of these lyrics. Nevertheless, he couldn’t keep from listening. The girl’s voice was beautiful and strong. But she was still quite small, and in the middle of the rendition her voice cracked oddly, like a whimper.
    A little beyond the houses, at the end of the street that led below, the song changed. Her voice suddenly grew bolder and more radiant, to such a degree that it seemed to resonate in intensely luminous echoes against the walls of the houses, the road, even the air itself:
    Mother-of-pearl, dear Mama, adorns İzmir’s minaret Pour and I’ll quaff, dear Mama, from a drinking goblet
    By means of the second türkü, Mümtaz was liberated from the woes of his short existence, whose meanings he couldn’t yet fathom, to be transported without warning to some other luminous realm, yet laden with longing and suffering. This realm began at İzmir’s Kordonboyu esplanade and ended with the death of his father, which also escaped his full comprehension. Here, too, dwelled a residue of torments that didn’t fit into his childhood imagination; here, too, gathered death, exile, blood, seclusion, and hüzün, the