Three Instances in Which Emre Kills His Daughters

Part i

Here is a man named Emre who lives in the Kasımpaşa neighborhood of Istanbul in a small apartment with two bedrooms—one for him and his wife, Mirhiye, and the other for his three grown daughters, Adalet, Necla, and Ece. Adalet, the oldest, is tall, tall as a tree, with lips that can’t help themselves from frowning. Necla, the middle, is dark, much darker than the others, with teeth that gleam like mother-of-pearl. Ece, young and thin with limbs like a sparrow’s legs, is just finishing high school.

Today, like any other day, while his colleagues file reports on various insurance claims, Emre is trying to finish reading his book about the brigand Black Mustafa. But Emre must keep shutting his book away in the desk drawer. His supervisor is puttering around the office trying to get reports in early so everyone can go home before the riot police close the block. Emre hunches his shoulders over his small treasure to protect it from his supervisor’s gaze, then flips back to his place just as Black Mustafa is laughing like a murderer at a girl he has snatched up from the nearby village. The girl is trying her hardest to climb a tree and knock free a hive dripping with honey, but the tree is too smooth. She keeps falling, while just beyond the hill, the police are shooting a storm of bullets into the sacks of sand Black Mustafa has dressed up as a decoy gang of thieves along the ridge.

Emre’s supervisor places his hand on Emre’s shoulder. “The police are shooting gas into the street,” he tells Emre. Looking up from his book, Emre half expects to see sandbag dummies with haphazard grins along the windows of the building, but instead the office has emptied of his colleagues, and even the supervisor has quit the floor for the elevator. Along the street, he hears the stray popping of canisters firing from short tubes. Emre keeps his finger in the book and rushes home without even stopping for a look at the riot-squad wall. Growls like an earthquake pass through the city. Winding his way around Beyoğlu and cutting through Sururi Park, Emre finally reaches the steps of his apartment building, his lungs rattling like boiling kettles. He slips in the front door and walks in on his daughters arguing.

There is young Ece standing at the kitchen table with a spoon in her hand, waving it wildly overhead. There is dark Necla at the counter stirring sugar cubes into her tea and spinning spools of hair around one finger. There is tall Adalet lying on the couch with her feet hanging over one end and a book held closely to her face.

“It wouldn’t matter if you were bald,” says Ece. “These guys would pin you down and wrap your head up because they can’t control their penises otherwise. In two years, that’s where we’ll be: squads of men on headscarf patrol.”

“So what if a woman wants to cover herself,” says Adalet.

“I’m not immodest,” says Necla, “but these women are uncomfortable.” She gives up the cord of hair in her hand and touches her shoulder like she is cold, like she should be worried someone is watching.

“Sister, you’ve got good hair,” says Ece. “All I’m saying is that if you only concern yourself with how your hair looks instead of the concerns of the country, pretty soon it won’t matter because all us women will end up wrapped in veils and scarves looking like round pushpins stuck across Istanbul.”

“Oh! with your frenzy,” says Adalet over the top of her book, but she is not reading anymore. She can’t focus because as preposterous as she finds her sister there are many sirens pleading down the street, many shouts like gravel not far from them. Listen, listen to them press against the windowpane.

“Jealousy is an ugly shade for you,” Necla tells Ece.

Ece is worked up now, talking...