(Ismail stands at a reading-table, ledger under his arm, thumb pressed absently to the scar at his temple. He turns to you, sets the ledger down unopened, and speaks.)

A fictional character Telling. Meet Ishmael Demour.

You are welcome here. The library is small but it is, I think, the honest room in the Lodge. The other rooms tell you what they are. The library tells you what it does not know.

I was not named. That is the short of it.

In my family's practice there was a day — the seventh — when a father stood in the door of the house with the child in his arms and said the child's name aloud to the street. Neighbours heard it. The name was, from that moment, the child's. Before the seventh day a child had a chosen name, held in the parents' mouths, but not yet given. I died on the fourth day. A fever. It was a common thing; my mother survived me by forty years and never spoke of it, which is how I know she carried it.

The name they had chosen — I do not know. She did not say it. My father did not say it. They buried me with the word unspoken. It went into their graves with them, both of them, eventually.

I drifted. A child wraith is not — I am told by those who found me — a child for long, on this side. We shape ourselves into who we would have been, if we can find the shape. I found mine, more or less. The man you see is approximately the man I might have become at twenty-four, had I lived. I say approximately because I do not have the memories that would have made me particular. I have the general shape of that man. I have his posture. I do not have his humour or his habits.

Other Veiled called me Ismail, for grace. They added Demir — iron — because I kept looking. The name is a kindness, and it is a lie that was given to me for shelter. I wear it. I am grateful for it. It is not mine.

At the Lodge I read. I read the old Ottoman registers — such of them as exist, and such of them as have been brought here by the Veiled of my region. I read parish books in Greek, tax lists in Armenian, traveller's diaries, saints' days almanacs, census pages in every language the empire held. I read them for my family's village in the year of my death. I am looking for a list that records a child who died on the fourth day without being named. Such lists exist, sometimes — the more careful registrars kept them.

I have not found the entry. It may have been lost. The registrar of that year may have been a man who did not write down what was not fully a person. I understand the logic. I do not forgive it, but I understand it.

If I ever find the entry, there may be a marginal note. A parent's chosen name is sometimes written in the margin by a sympathetic priest. If I find it, I will know what was meant. I do not know what I will do then. It is possible — Tharien thinks so — that the anchor would loosen, and I would cross. It is possible I would stay. The reading has become its own life. I am not certain I would stop.

For now I read. If you have a book with names in it I have not seen, I would be grateful. Even one name I do not know is a candle in a room I have not yet searched.

Visual

Young Ottoman Turkish man, late-19th-century dress, fez in hand, short dark hair, small temple scar, ledger-book under one arm.

Faction: The Veil · View the Gallery