Mehmet has only spoken to me once, when I first climbed into his passenger seat. He asked me where I wanted to go and I told him across the Bosphorus Bridge then back to the hotel.

“No stops?”

“No stops.”

He didn’t seem to find this particularly strange, so I suppose lots of tourists do it. There aren’t many chances to see two continents in one taxi ride, after all. I was grateful he didn’t ask why I wanted to go, since I might have told him in my fragile mood. What would I have said? That I was seeking my son, Steven? That I was trying to travel through time to find him? He’d have thought me a madwoman. Thankfully he kept his silence, and hasn’t spoken since. Good. I mustn’t be distracted. Not today.

I try to tune into Istanbul as we drive. It’s an idea I’ve borrowed from Steven. He once posted on Facebook about his traveller rituals when he arrived into new cities. He’d start with a long walk to try and pick up the hidden frequencies he said vibrated through every city’s streets. He said it was like dialing into an old-fashioned radio, trying to find clear notes amidst the hiss and fizz.

I lack Steven’s sensitivity, but I try my best to think like him now. I have this superstitious idea that if I can tune into Istanbul, I can tune into Steven. Or part of him, anyway. The part of him that took this same taxi ride ten years ago.

Mehmet nudges the taxi through the tangled traffic choking the old town. A hundred horns blare from the cars swarming around us, though surely nobody can know who is rebuking who.

The cacophony fades, which puzzles me until I hear the rippling notes of the call to prayer, loud enough to be heard over the engines. I know it’s broadcast from the minarets spiking the skyline, but it sounds ancient and deep, like it’s coming from the streets beneath us.

Steven would have loved this moment. Once, on a crackling long-distance phone line, he told how he lay one afternoon by a river in Java, listening to three mosque loudspeakers competing for the ears of the faithful. Tremulous wails weaved through the air into something so beautiful and textured he felt that if he reached up he could touch it. My son, the wanderer. My son, with the poet’s heart.

The traffic releases us quite suddenly and three expansive lanes usher us toward the Bosphorus Bridge. Steel spears the dawn sky, holding the bridge and us aloft. Martyrs Bridge is its official name, but I flinch from it.

“Yavas gitmek,” I say, one of the few local phrases I’ve learnt. Go slow. Mehmet smiles at my Turkish, decelerates, and eases the car to the right, gifting me a better view.

The Bosphorus reveals itself, a ragged ribbon of glittering water. Incredible that something so slender separates two continents. Borders are always smaller and less solid than we expect. I think of Steven’s pride if he could see me now: his old mother crossing into his beloved Asia for the first time in her 59 years.

I try to look for what Steven must have seen, hoping that might help me feel what he felt. I foolishly look for the men with fishing rods Steven photographed while he stayed here but, no, that was a different Istanbul bridge. There’s no footpath on this one, of course. That’s why Steven had to take the taxi.

I look across at Mehmet, whose mouth has softened into a small smile. Perhaps he’s remembering what a remarkable city he lives in.

What would he do if I grabbed my door handle now and threw myself out of his car?

It’s so hard to believe my soft-hearted boy once caused another taxi driver such horror. I can’t imagine it. I just can’t. No matter how many times I’ve read the consulate’s report.

Even if they were driving as slowly as we are, I can see how much that tumble onto concrete must have hurt Steven. How did he manage to climb the railings after that? What was in that mind of his in those final seconds before he hit the water?

I’ll never know.

Three words that live so deep in me they’ve become my heartbeat. Sometimes I forget they’re there, but that’s only the brief relief of distraction: they’re always pulsing beneath my skin. As we descend from the bridge and onto Asian soil, I know they’re still true. As true as they were on that first morning I woke into a world without Steven, as true as they were this morning, as true as they’ve been on every morning in between. Ten years, to the day.

I’ve failed again. I didn’t really expect to succeed. I can’t tune into a city like Steven could and I can’t tune into him. This is all there is: he is gone and I don’t know why. And as long as my heart beats, I’ll never know.

—Published previously in Fiction Attic Press (26 June 2024); appears here with author’s permission.

Jaime Gill

is a British-born writer now living in Cambodia. A former music and travel journalist writing for the BBC and The Guardian, he works across Asia as a communications consultant or volunteer for local and international non-profits. In addition to his day job, he is an emerging fiction writer, working on a novel, screenplays, and far too many stories.

Thirty of his stories have been published in venues including BULL, Exposition Review, Fiction Attic, The Good Life Review, Litro Magazine, The Phare, Pinky Thinker, Scribes, Stanchion, and Voidspace, among others. In 2024, his fiction won a Bridport Prize, the Honeybee Literature Prize for Short Story, Berlin Literary Review’s Best Flash, and the Henshaw Prize, and was selected as finalist for several competitions including the Bath Short Story Award, New Writers 2024, and the Masters Review. His work has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, and Best Small Fictions.

Author’s website: https://www.jaimegill.com

More on the Web: By, About, and Beyond

⚡ Author Q&A with Jaime Gill: Exploring Humanity in Fiction by Christine Nessler in The Good Life Review (28 August 2024); includes discussion of his story “Things to Talk to Jim About,” winner of the TGLR 2024 Honeybee Literature Prize for Short Story