I. The Ghost Route
The Ghost Route: Selahattin Usta’s Mysterious Letters
Selahattin Usta was 72 years old. His eyelids drooped slightly from the weight of age, and his hands were yellowed and lined from gripping the corners of tens of thousands of envelopes. Mail delivery was a profession ending with him. People now spoke with hurried electronic voices, having lost the patience for paper. Defying the suffocating speed of technology, Selahattin rode his old-fashioned bicycle, setting out on his route—a path his colleagues called the “ghost route”—which had become deserted.
His mailbag was light. He generally stopped at the same government offices, the same few shops that were on the brink of closing. The only truly consistent letters were always destined for the same address: a desolate, single-story, abandoned house on a wind-scoured hill on the outskirts of the city.
Selahattin had been coming to this house for twenty years. He always carried a letter for the same person: Cemile Hanım.
The letters always came from the same military unit near the southeastern border. And every letter was inside a yellowish, faded envelope. He had never seen Cemile Hanım. He would always leave the letters in the box, returning without questioning the mystery of the life behind the door.
Selahattin had settled on the idea that the old woman was senile, that she had lost the concept of time. This was because the date on the letters was always twenty-five years ago, in 1999. These were the letters of a soldier, her son, who had stepped on a landmine on the Syrian border twenty-five years prior.
Every week, the same letter, with the same date and the same handwriting, would arrive. The post office had resolved this delicate matter years ago, agreeing to “send” the letters at regular intervals. It was a painful lie that kept Cemile Hanım’s decaying memories alive.
