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    Saturday       On March 19, at 1 pm in a café off Turnacibaşı St, an Italian man could be seen summoning the courage to ask two women if he could take their picture Like most Istanbullus in Beyoğlu then, we were making fevered use of our phones ‘I suppose so,’ my friend looked up, ‘but I’m a bit hungover’ Even with dirty hair, she was radiant enough to make anyone invent excuses for a longer look   It was a Saturday The man said he was a journalist Four hundred metres away, limbs were strewn over European Istanbul’s main shopping street Ninety minutes ago, someone blew himself up on Istiklal, but that wasn’t why the man was asking He didn’t know Raja looked distressed for someone who counseled activists in countries that pitched on the waves of foreign opportunism and domestic corruption He couldn’t know that, poised as she was, it was not unthinkable that she would rather credit her fraying composure to intemperance than shock at the government’s crumbling security façade He just pulled his Nikon D300 off the table and started fiddling with the settings   For the first time in three years, surveillance helicopters flew over the neighbourhood   The Turkish language differentiates starkly between past events we have witnessed and those whose existence comes to us by hearsay Events reported by others are distinguished by adding –mIş to the end of the verb or nominal clause ‘Ben seni sevdiğimi dünyalara bildirdim,’ the first line in a Black Sea folk song made famous by Kazım Koyuncu, means ‘I let the world know that I love you’ It happened, and I know because I told everyone Moreover, I did the thing ‘Ben sana doyamadım,’ the song’s final line begins: ‘I couldn’t get enough of you’ These are emotional certainties There is no temporal or physical distance between their occurrence and my knowledge of them   At the other pole of perception are actions that not only did we not execute, but which we did not see or hear That you heard (‘sen duymuşsun’) of my betrayal through