Recluse

‘I’m a failed Muslim. I drink raki now,’ he says. A bottle twinkles on the upturned orange box. On the unmade bed, a punch-drunk pillow lurches in a sea of ruptured quilts. ‘I never pray,’ he adds, as hawk-eyed Ataturk retreats to an ascetic frame and glowers at the room. And we who are too precious to confess our faults feel awkward in the silence. Turkey, 1990 First published in Blue Minaret