The end of Ramazan: Istanbul has a festival feel.

As sundown nears, the bakeries are crowded, their warm aroma spilling into the streets. From open windows come the sounds of tables being set, glasses lifted and placed with anticipation. It has been the sound of David’s early morning runs for the last month - a fork falling in exhaustion, a plate being cleared. But for most of the city, the trial is coming to an end. Life is set to begin anew.

First, there is one last meal. Hasan’s apartment in Maltepe - in the city’s Anatolian interior, land locked - is crowded with family and friends. In the sitting room, Hasan and his brothers and male cousins sit watching the news. There is coverage of Gaza, of course, but mostly the news focuses on yet another fracturing of the Turkish bureaucracy - corruption, counter-corruption, all of it so convoluted that who is on what side often changes with the month. The police are being arrested in droves. Men who were heroes a summer ago, or three summers ago, are being rounded up and arrested. Simultaneously, former military men are being released from prison. When they were locked up three years ago, they were existential threats to the state. Now they are heroes, wrongly convicted. Good and evil are fungible within the Turkish state.

On the television, a man in sunglasses holds his handcuffs aloft. “These are badges of honor,” he shouts, again and again. The video is two days old. His silhouette has already been ironed onto t-shirts, the machine of capital already work exploiting this new crisis. David remembers the vendors during Gezi, all of them selling gas masks and Guy Fawkes’ masks. One of Hasan’s cousins is wearing this very shirt, which he proudly displays.

For some, the trial is ending. For Turkey, the trial is perpetual.

The call to prayer rings out and throughout the Atakent valley, minarets alight. The men eat in the dining room, their wives confined to the kitchen. David catches glimpses of them, fleeting shadows and broken phrases, but this is all he will see.

The conversation over dinner is, for David, also fragmented. The words he understands are like pieces of driftwood in a larger sea of incoherence. While they eat, Hasan’s boys and their small cousins bound around the room, jumping from couch to couch, screaming banshees. Here, and only here, the boys and girls are on equal footing. The food - a humus and minced meat dip, warm pide bread, a carrot and yogurt salad, a main dish of peppers stuffed with minced lamb and rice - is wonderful, as always. As always, David feels a hint of guilt, knowing the effort behind the scenes that went into it - and who put in that effort. Turkish hospitality is legendary, but it comes at someone’s expense.

But he is grateful, too. For the meal, for the kindness. Grateful for his place at the table.

Afterwards, they retire to the sitting room - first to pray, then for endless rounds of tea. The room overlooks the hills of Atakent and Maltepe, uneven neighborhoods full of identical apartment blocks that are occasionally punctuated by glowing minarets or by the blotted black of a gypsy slum. Once, centuries before, these hills were full of pine and cypress forests, clear streams and unfettered breezes. They were retreats for the Sultan. Now they are one more pocket of the endless city, indistinct but beautiful for that very indistinctness, a million million lives and dreams unfolding in the anonymity of the hidden valley.

While they pray, Hasan’s boys weave amongst them as they prostrate. Every so often, an act of mutual subterfuge, David opens his eyes, smiles, winking at the boys.

During tea, Hasan pulls out a gild-covered copy of Bediuzzaman’s biography. It is, he tells them, one of his favorite passages. He’s read it a lot these difficult days. It follows Bediuzzaman as he returns from his exile in Siberia. He’s run away, and through generosity and luck, has wove through Europe to arrive back in Istanbul. Though it is the heart of his the country, he has never been there. The city troubles him - the noise, the vice, the pollution. Turkey is being born, Islam is being cast aside. The Republican movement has seized the city. He yearns for Van, where he studied, and for his home. Eventually, he sets out for the places of his childhood. It is a pilgrimage. He dreams of the familiar streets, the castle in whose shadow he would often walk. These images, like those of a lost lover, sustained him through the war, his imprisonment, his long and winding journey home.

And when he arrives, he finds the city has been raised to the ground. The streets are rubble. His school is ash. He sheds tears, of course - as any man would. He sheds many tears. But he is not deterred. He is not broken. It is, like all of life, a test. Ashes can be buried. Schools can be rebuilt. All with faith in the All Knowing, the All Forgiving, the All Giving.

Hasan looks around the room. He has told no one yet - of the job interview, of the apartment search. Not even his parents know. The whole scene is changed, suddenly fragile and about to disappear. He tries to see this way at all times, as it is what He would want - to see the world with the eyes of a dying man. But it is impossible, except for a select few. He is not, he has accepted, one of those few.

“I’ve turned to this a lot these last months. Just as Bediuzzaman was tested, so are we tested. And despite that, here we are, family and friends. We can all gather and we can drink tea. We’re still fighting. With faith, the fight goes on. But as it does, we remember how much we have to be grateful for, how much God has given us.”

Everyone nods in agreement. In the silence of reflection, a noise comes up to them, from the street below. They all hear it - indistinct at first, then clarifying.

God is great, God is great. Death to Israel. God is great.

They move to the windows. The whole neighborhood does, drawn out by the spectacle below. It is a large phalanx, filling the street. The buildings channel the sound so that it rises to them clear as a struck bell.

God is great. Death to Israel. God is great.

They march, more or less, in battalions. Some carry banners, Palestinian flags, a few torches. The men are at the front and it is their voice that hits them first. But in their silence, another voice, this one much more chilling to David, rolls forward from the back. It is the women, bringing up the rear. The chant is a call and response. The men lead, the women follow, their soprano piercing him through.

God is great: Allahu Akbar.

Hasan’s boys nestle into his arms, craning their necks to see.

“Why are they marching?” the youngest, not yet four, asks.

For him, the photos from Gaza have hit him in the heart. He sees young boys sprawled on the beach, and he sees his sons. He wonders: how does one forgive such a thing? How does God help you to manage that anger? Can it be managed? Should it be managed? There are times when he is afraid that such a trial would be too much - that anger would be the only possible response. He pulls his boys closer, can feel their hearts in his chest.

“They’re marching because they’re angry,” Hasan says quietly.

“Why?”

“Because of something very far away.”

Eventually, the voices fade into the distance, the women’s song lingering far longer than the men’s. The mood has changed, and sleep is taking hold of them. Hasan brings out fresh melon, and then the men begin to gather their bleary children, their patient wives. One by one they leave, until only David is left. Hasan’s youngest has fallen asleep in his arms, and he strokes the boy’s head softly.

“I have something I need to tell you, David.”

“Sure.”

David is ready to leave. Nur is waiting for him. He will help break the fast, and then he will go spend the night committing haram.

“I’ve been looking at a job in the US.”

The words, completely unexpected, hit David more than he expected. The air seems to have been pulled from him.

“You would leave Turkey?”

Hasan looks down at his son, then out the window, lights stretching as far as either of them can see.

“I struggle to recognize this country sometimes. It does not feel like my own.”

They sit a time in silence. Finally, Hasan smiles.

“Nothing is final though. Maybe the election will surprise me. Maybe things will change again. This all happened so quickly. Perhaps it can be undone just as quickly.”

David remembers something from one of their first conversations: it takes years to build something, and mere seconds to burn it down.

“And David? Please don’t mention this to anyone. Not yet.”

“Of course. Sure, of course.”

~

The city is alive, vibrating, full of verve and noise, the smell of meat and towers of fruit stacked high, the Africans displaying their counterfeit wares and the Syrian children running barefoot from tourist to tourist, their smiles the only thing not covered in grime. Families feast and drink tea by the sea, beneath immense plane trees, their daughters weaving flower crowns, their sons playing football, a few brave barefoot daughters in sun dresses joining them, their screams rising above the soft communal din. The trial is over. The city is alive, changing, ever growing. The trial will not end.

Nur waits for him on the steps of Gezi. In the square below, floating lanterns are being set aloft.

“You know,” she says as he sits down, “someday soon an earthquake is going to turn this whole city to ash. And us with it.”

“Someday soon,” he says.

They spend the night walking, talking about the easy things lovers discuss when they have become easy together - things forgotten almost they moment they are spoken, but that years later he will try in vain to recapture. Not a word will remain.

They end the night in the wide plaza above Macka park, where they sit on a fountain - as she and Andrew had once done; as he and Andrew often did in Rittenhouse - and watch dawn break over the modern buildings of Nisantasi, the Bosporus far below, black smoke rising from fires around the city, the holy month drawn, once more, to a close.