![]() ![]() Because of it, I told myself the voice had to come from one of my grandmother’s friends. Your ladino was old, throaty and smoky as frankincense. And yet the raised hair on my arms, on the back of my neck, told me someone was there. I was drawn to the door, unlatching it with slow hands so as not to wake my grandmother. I sensed you before I saw you, as a bird senses the gaze of the garden cat from the shadows. It was my singing that drew you to our house in Tahtakale that autumn night. They taught me, their only granddaughter, ladino songs rich with the silt of the Guadalquivir, thick with longing for a west that fell too soon into twilight. I was born in this city, raised on a tongue of land embraced by swift straits and glittering seas. ![]() I imagine you slipping velvet mist over your shoulders, sweeping past mosque and meyhane, sleeping beasts and sleeping houses. ![]() ![]() I watch the window, thinking of you moving through the sleeping city, your footfall silent as the breathing of dreamers. “Seeing you,” the men say, “I want no other life.”Įach night, as the diadem of the Bosporus drifts into slumber, violet shadows drape the narrow streets of Eminönü. Cities like her make men leave their hearts on their shores. ![]()
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