‘Murat Felek, this is him?’
Mrs Demirsoy said the name like a schoolteacher remembering some errant child.
‘I don’t know his name.’
‘Murat Felek. It will be Murat. Tall boy, hair like this, thinks he is a little better than everyone else.’
‘That could be him.’
‘I know his grandmother. I know his mother. He should have gone away but I see him in his suits, he thinks he can make money in hell. Maybe he can. Maybe he is the clever one. But he will not take you?’
‘I can’t pay him enough.’
‘How much does he ask for?’
‘Hundred thousand lira.’
Mrs Demirsoy had been topping and tailing long yellow beans but now she stopped with the blade of the small knife held at her thumb.
‘For this I would want Raqqa to come to me.’
Shaking her head, she went back to her work.
‘I will talk to Beren.’
After breakfast Mrs Demirsoy went out, and when she returned she found Abraham still in the kitchen where she had left him.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Nothing. Thinking.’
‘Good. You should think. We should all think more.’
She had bags of shopping, and Abraham got up to help her with them.
‘Thank you. He will do it. You must see him at one o’clock, at the cafe. He will charge you twenty thousand, which is expensive but fair. There is risk for him. Your papers will take time but he will arrange everything. In the meantime you will stay here.’
She passed him a bag of coffee and pointed to a cupboard above the table.
‘There. Empty it into the tin.’
How long will it take, Abraham wanted to ask.
‘Thank you,’ he said, nodding to himself, tearing the top off the packet, trying to imagine this real future that was now upon him.
‘Your poor daughter,’ said Mrs Demirsoy, who was watching him tentatively begin to sift the coffee, ‘without a woman in her life. Here. Like this.’
She took the packet from him and upended it in one swift action into the tin, shaking out the last of the grounds.
‘There. Useless. Don’t worry. Only a madman would want to go. My family is in Raqqa, my cousins, but I do not visit, and the devils are scared of me. They are scared of all women, but most of all they are scared of old women, and the older we are the less they like it. We have a power they do not understand. They do not kill old women, it is the last thing they will do, but still I will not go there.’
‘Do you think I should?’
‘You? You have to. Not for her but for yourself. What, you would go home and for all your life you wonder? Of course not.’