James, after receiving your letter (so old-fashioned!) at my place of employment, I muddled through my last class of the week, faked a stomach bug, and went home early to my flat to pour a tall, murky glass of the communal drink of the natives, which, yes, is also the private daily restorative of your old man, if you so choose to think of me that way. To be honest, I’ve had to summon some courage before writing you. Specifically I leaned out the casement window of my living room (it’s the kind that opens on hinges, like a door) to take in the lovable slapdashery of my neighborhood: The granite cobblestones. The vine-covered canopies. The motor scooters parked at a lilt. The warm fragrance of the afternoon’s bread baking. The tin-man stovepipes and their little hats. The grimy facade of the adjacent apartment building. The ironmonger’s clanging hammer. The snap of checkers on the backgammon boards. A tanker moving through the Bosphorus Strait must make sixteen turns, cutting them as tight as it can; every half hour one slips by so close that it looks, from my vantage point, as if it’s passing up the middle of the coast road. In fact, I can hear, what with my windows open, the low rumble of a churning propeller now.