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at the end of a two-hundred-meter-long dirt road just past the sign at the town exit, one side of which read “Welcome to Kandalı!” and the other “Good-bye!” As for some reason my father refused to have the road paved, we’d emerge at the main road covered in dust. So I’d made a sign reading D UST S TREET and tacked it up at the entrance of the road. The sign had been so well received even the postman had written it in his address book. Henceforth our address was Dust Street, Kandalı. No number, since ours was the only house there. I even hated our address. If it were a living thing, I’d kill it! Anyhow …
    Our plot of land was one and a half acres. Left to my mother by her father who’d died when she was just a girl. It was basically as if the plot were the only relative I had besides father. We had no one else. I had absolutely no knowledge of the whereabouts or activities of my father’s family. Father didn’t tell me anyhow. All I knew was that he’d come from far, far away. He had up and come to Kandalı from Bosnia or Bulgaria or South Africa or some other place I couldn’t care less about, maybe lost his family on the way.
    He must have seemed interesting to my mother because his looks differed from that of the town average. He was pale, with eyes of even paler blue, and he was handsome as a cat. Genetically speaking he was a dickhead. So it hadn’t taken him long to catch my mother in his web, and then I was born. And when mother died, it was my turn to fall into the web. I don’t know if at any point in his life he had a legitimate job. Perhaps he had gotten into this line of work at nine, like me! Ultimately, all I knew was that the house, shed, and the reservoir underneath the shed were his places of business and that he occasionally transported vegetables and fruits. For the sake of giving the impression he was working, I suppose …
    Aruz’s eighteen-wheelers took off from Kandalı into the depths of Asia Minor, arrived at the entrance of the village of Derç that was three hundred kilometers away, and drove along the Derçisu Creek, in the winter a thousand times its summer width, before entering the forest. The road ended a few hundred meters in, but the huge eighteen-wheeler would already have been swallowed up by the surrounding red, black, and stone pines, becoming invisible. That was the exact point at which the fifteen-minute run of transporting the goods would take place and, having nothing to do except open and close the vault doors, I’d breathe in the fragrances of thyme, sage, and lavender and imagine burning down the whole forest so it would smell even more strongly. That was the precise spot my father had buried Cuma. Among the lavender …
    That morning, I’d neglected to turn on the conditioner when I was supposed to, and then forgotten about it completely. According to father’s plan, we were to put Cuma on the boat toward nightfall and then return to Derçisu to pick up new goods. Father must have counted on me, since he didn’t check the back when we were setting out. But when we made it to the cove where the boat was waiting and opened the back, we’d encountered not Cuma, but his corpse. This had forced my father to make a decision. He would have to either bury Cuma somewhere in the cove and be late for the delivery, or take him to Derçisu and figure it out there. He chose not to be late. And to give me a lesson … thus I’d had to ride to Derçisu not on the passenger seat next to my father, watching the road, but in terror in the back, trying not to look at Cuma’s corpse. For hours on the road—trying to stay as far away as possible from Cuma’s constantly shifting corpse …
    When we got to Derçisu, my father dug away like a beaver and quickly buried Cuma. That was why the forest was as cursed to me as it was sacred to the immigrants. Because there they were one step closer to their goal. When their transition to the truck was complete, there was a brief