When somebody dies—perhaps the man who scolded you and inspected his flowers the first day of March and sighed— we eat lokma. We eat lokma with our backs to the sun in the shadow of the van that comes and ask of his sisters, if they still will tend his house by the sea, and the boys that sprayed his geraniums. We eat, remembering, perhaps, his wife who listened to the hadiths on the radio and carried that good sourdough bread from Konak, which he loved. A Rabia, an İsmihan will turn, wondering if the cousin’s found the courage to twirl his clothes into the sea. We eat and watch each other, certain we’re alive a while longer, certain of the weather and the almond trees blossoming white in the field beyond. There’s nothing more to do  for him–the state hearse leaves its minor scars, the super’s wife, a Merve, thin, gathers the fallen photographs and ribbons, later.