Cemetery. Maybe that’s how we managed to dodge the city’s wrathful whimsies. Out of respect for the cemetery’s silhouette the crooked and careless but god-fearing buildings stood a mere three stories high. In return Z.’s resident winds refrained from harassing the L. neighborhood. Our bazaar consisted of little shops lining two sides of the sorry street, which was prone to flooding. The residents sighed for the lack of a bank or a bar whenever they saw one in one of those cowboy movies. The pharmacist considered himself the street’s VIP, priding himself on living in a shanty house in neighboring Ç. As he faded away in the evenings on his motorbike, the factory workers spilled out of the coffeehouses to be replaced by the night shift of gravediggers. In that labyrinth of streets I knew so well I scarcely remember the echo of laughter. It was as if despair were a local disease. I even dreaded the gaze of the babies who crawled around outside their houses, and wondered whether a dream of being rescued from this pit could persist.
