Piro needs slippers

Most of Mustafa's friends just ignore me, but there are a few who try to make conversation. One of those is Piro, an ex-guerilla, with a strange, high-pitched voice, a graying mass of curls, and a penchant for old-fashioned clothes, grandfatherly cardigans, button-down shirts, khakis or unstylish pleated jeans. This morning he throws up in the bathroom next door. The sound of his retching vomit and his high-pitched mutterings wake me.

Mustafa tells me that Piro has not worked for the last ten years. Before that, he lived in Germany, doing what, no one knows, but his German is still broken. When I ask him about his time there, he responds vaguely, as if he doesn't want to talk about it. He has just been to Tunceli, he tells me, a mountainous region in Turkey where the majority practice the minority Alevi religion. He's an only child, in his early forties, who has never married, and is among those who lost his farm when the Turkish government burned the villages of those they thought were supplying the Tunceli guerillas with weapons or bread or food.

Of those who come to the house regularly, Piro's one of the ones that I like. He allows me to make mistakes when I speak Turkish and he doesn't give up making conversation if I trip over the words or I can't quite express what I mean to say. Maybe he's more forgiving because he knows what it's like to speak a foreign language and to live in a foreign country. He's also an Alevi, as they all are, everyone who comes to the house.

Piro makes his way from the bathroom, smiles as if embarrassed, and passes into the living room. I can see that he's wearing socks but no shoes and the apartment is cold. Piro needs slippers, I realize. There are the slippers I bought at the Tarlabasi market last year. They're crummy and worn-out, yet they keep disappearing on me. Mustafa offers them to all the guests, the ageing former guerrilla fighters, the out-of-work opera singers, the visiting girlfriends, even the electrician who never fixes the faulty wiring. I too offer the slippers now. I put them in front of Piro's feet and ask him if he wants some tea.