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Nishantashou, where Papa lived now with Aunt Hüsnü.
    Ismail Dayi’s house was two stories high, its smooth wooden flanks painted rust red. It was set in a garden on the shore of the Bosphorus just outside the village of Chamyeri. Behind the house, a forest of plane trees, cypresses, and oaks painted the steep hills. The house was set on the narrow stage of the shore in front of this towering green backdrop. Before us, the broad band of the Bosphorus glittered with light, its currents twining and coiling like a living creature. Sometimes the water threw up arcs of dolphins trailing aquatic rainbows. The colors of the water changed constantly in response to forces I still do not understand, from oily black to bottle green and, on rare magical days, to a translucent pastel green so clear that I felt if I looked long enough, I would see the bottom. On days of such clarity, I lay on the warm stones of the shore wall and let my head hang over the edge, looking for quicksilver sprays of anchovies. Below them I imagined the cool, heavy bodies of bigger fish turning and slipping through the liquid light. The shifting sands beneath uncovered the pale moon faces of dead princesses, eyes closed, lips slightly parted in fruitless protests against their fate. The gold thread of their brocaded gowns weighed them down. Their delicate hands lay, palms up, pinned to the sand by enormous emerald and diamond rings. Their black hair streamed in the current.
    On cold days, I lay reading on the cushioned divan in the garden pavilion. It was a one-room structure with tall windows looking out over the water. Stacks of mattresses and quilts were kept ready for visitors who preferred to sleep there on hot nights. In winter, wooden shutters protected it against the wind and a brazier provided warmth and heated water for tea, although hardly anyone went there once the weather turned chill.
    Mama complained about being isolated from her friends and the social life of the city. It was a long way to come from Istanbul by bullock cart or boat just to share a cup of coffee. The ferry from Istanbul took almost two hours and docked north of here at Emirgan. It took a carriage another hour to come the rest of the distance. Not many ladies had their husbands’ permission to stay the night. Only in summer, when the ladies moved to their summer houses on the Bosphorus, did we socialize. But I loved Ismail Dayi’s house. I was allowed to roam the garden in the benign care of Halil, our old gardener, and, later, under the watchful eyes of Madam Élise, my French governess and teacher.
    Those first years in Chamyeri, Papa came once every week to try to convince Mama to return. I heard them arguing behind the carved wooden doors of the receiving room. He told her he would buy a separate house for her, that there was no need for her to live with her brother. But no matter how much I flattened my ear against the door, I never heard my mother’s response. In retrospect, I can see that her refusal to return to Papa’s protection must have shamed him before his family and peers, and this small protest gave my mother strength. By moving into my father’s house, even into a house apart from the one in Nishantashou where he lived with Aunt Hüsnü, Mama would have signaled her acceptance of Aunt Hüsnü as his kuma.
    I don’t know whether Papa sent my mother’s financial due to Ismail Dayi, or, if he did, whether Ismail Dayi accepted it. Despite his eccentricities, Ismail Dayi was a respected hodja, a jurist and poet who had inherited his parents’ house and considerable wealth. Mama’s inheritance had gone with her into her marriage dowry, but remained hers to claim. Between Papa’s visits, Mama sat at her needlework in the receiving room, waiting for visitors who rarely arrived, her fingers dancing over the silk thread.
    This was our life at Chamyeri until I was thirteen, in the Rumi year 1294, or 1878 by your reckoning, when I found the body of a woman in the