by Ayşe Kulin
As the ambulance bounced over the rough road, Fiko opened his eyes for a moment. When he saw he was headed for the Croatian zone with a stranger, his heart sank.
“I’m not really a stranger,” Stefan said. “I’m a close friend of your mother’s, a colleague. I’ll get you to a hospital soon. Don’t worry. Once you’ve been treated and you’re well again, you can decide if you want to go home or stay with your relatives in Istanbul.”
“What would I do in Istanbul?” Fiko asked. “If I get better, I’m going back to Sarajevo.”
“If you want to live in safety for the rest of the war . . . Never mind, you can make up your mind when you get out of the hospital.”
“If I survive.”
“You’ll live,” Stefan said as though he were issuing an order.
Fiko couldn’t see much more than blue sky and leafy treetops from where he was stretched out.
“Are we close to the border?” he asked.
“We’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes.”
When the barricades marking Croatian territory came into view, Stefan slowed down.
“Fiko, close your eyes and pretend to be asleep,” he said. “I’ll tell the police you’re unconscious. Don’t give me away, no matter what.”
Fiko glanced up one more time at the skies over his homeland. Then he shut his eyes tight.
“Good-bye, beautiful Bosnia,” he said to himself. “Good-bye to the land of my birth, to my country, to my family. Good-bye.”
Bosnia, long-suffering Bosnia, would be waiting for yet another one of her sons to come home. Waiting with hope.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
After graduating from the American College for Girls of Istanbul, Ayşe Kulin worked for many years as an editor and writer for several newspapers and magazines, as well as in the cinema industry. Her first book of short stories, Güneşe Dön Yüzünü, won two prestigious literary awards (Haldun Taner and Sait Faik), and her first novel became a bestseller. Kulin has been the recipient of numerous other literary awards for her work and was selected as Author of the Year several times by Istanbul University. Some of her stories and novels have been turned into TV series and films. Her work has been translated into twenty-four languages. She has been a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador since 2007.
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
Born in Salt Lake City in 1964, Kenneth Dakan is a freelance translator and voiceover artist who has translated numerous works of fiction and nonfiction from Turkish to English, including Ayşe Kulin’s Farewell and Last Train to Istanbul, Ece Temelkuran’s Deep Mountain: Across the Turkish-Armenian Divide, Buket Uzuner’s Istanbulians, and Mehmet Murat Somer’s The Prophet Murders, The Kiss Murder, and The Gigolo Murder. In 2011 and 2012, Dakan participated in the Cunda Workshop for Translators of Turkish Literature.
