I have not read the book. Khalil described it. He describes everything as if it has already happened and he is merely confirming.
He says there is a story about me. I told him: I do not need to read about watching. I watch.
4 p.m. The light crosses the water and arrives at the buildings on the far shore and the buildings turn the colour of tea held to a lamp.
The fare is four lira.
My hands are in the sink. The water is warm and grey with soap and the grease from the pan and the plates are stacked and the water runs over my knuckles and between my fingers and the water goes down the drain toward the pipes toward the city toward the strait. I stand in one water and watch the other.
4 p.m. The light crosses the water and arrives at the buildings on the far shore and the buildings turn the colour of tea held to a lamp.
The fare is twelve lira.
My daughter is taller. I know this in the body, not the calendar. The third step on the stairs is still cracked — cracked since before she was born. My knees know the crack. Every morning up, every evening down, four flights. The crack announces the third floor. The sole registers. The knee answers.
4 p.m. The light crosses the water and arrives at the buildings on the far shore and the buildings turn the colour of tea held to a lamp.
The fare is twenty-seven lira.
My hands are rougher. The dishes have done this — forty years of water and soap and the grease that does not come off the first time. The skin on my knuckles has split and healed and split in the same places until the splits are architecture. The dishes do not care whose hands wash them. The water does not care where it goes. The light does not care what it costs to cross.
4 p.m. The light crosses the water and arrives at the buildings on the far shore and the buildings turn the colour of tea held to a lamp.
The fare is forty lira.
The groove in the floorboard runs from the sink to the window. My feet wore it. Forty years of the same path — sink to window, dishes to light, warm water to cold water. The groove is as far as I have gone. The groove is my crossing.
Khalil says the book is warm. I said: so is the light at 4 p.m. He said: that is what the book is about. I said: then I have already read it.
He laughed. He poured. He did not argue. Khalil does not argue with people who are right.
The light is free. The light crosses the water without a ticket.
— Hafize
Karaköy. The window. The fare has gone up again.