Inside, the hiss of brakes and the chime of departure boards blend into one constant undertone. The high‑speed train to Ankara waits, silver and intent, its nose angled toward the tracks stretching east.

Tickets pass through the gate with soft clicks. We find our seats, stowing bags overhead. Outside, the last few passengers hurry along the platform.

When the train pulls away, the waterfront and its restless noise fall away behind us, replaced by the smoother rhythm of steel on steel. Eastward now—to Ankara, Lake Van, borders, and whatever lies waiting beyond us.

The rhythm of the train settles into my body—a long steel pulse carrying me east under the shifting Turkish sky. I sit by the window, a slim notebook open on my knees. My Mont Blanc moves, red ink, pauses, moves again—tracing not just the landscape but the residue of people, silences, and nights I don’t know how to name. Occasionally, I lift my eyes from the page, following the slow scroll of fields, minarets, and distant villages stitched into the winter hills.

Karim sits across from me, spine straight, eyes scanning the length of the carriage in practiced arcs. He’s alone in the work now; Asdar slipped away at some unseen junction, as if he were never more than a shadow in our company. I’m not sure if Karim misses the giant’s physical presence or the certainty his silence seemed to bring, but for now, he keeps his own counsel, counting faces, mapping exits, listening to the train’s song.

Two rows back, Mitra cradles a paper cup of scalding coffee. She’s staring out at the empty sweep of steppe, but I sense she’s seeing something else entirely—two boys, her sons, grown wild without a father, while she was making the money meant to secure them. Different fathers, the same absence. They slipped through her fingers in ways she fears to name.

Roger Boswell had promised to “straighten them out” while she was gone—the words echoing in her head, half comfort, half threat. What does that mean, exactly? And when she comes back—if she comes back—what will she find? Mitra’s faced plenty of unknown landscapes in her life, but motherhood is the one terrain that never obeys a map.

The countryside lengthens and falls away. Villages give way to long reaches of bare earth patched with snow, herds of sheep gathered like smoke above a ridge. Inside, the air smells faintly of tea and train oil, the hushed chatter of other passengers a backdrop to thoughts none of us share aloud.

Somewhere in the middle distance of my mind, I catch the drift of Saadi’s old verse—the one about humans being members of one whole—and wonder if that “whole” could ever exist for a family again. Is this journey east carrying us toward repair, or further into the place where ties fray and vanish?

My page fills slowly with looping script. Karim scans the aisle.

I.Ph.