The Renovation

Dilara, a Turkish woman living in exile with her husband and father in the village of Baronissi, Italy, discovers that the builders she hired to remodel her en suite bathroom have instead installed a replica of a cell from Silivri Prison in Istanbul. The cell contains a metal-frame bed, a combined toilet-sink, and a wall-mounted table. When she steps inside, a Turkish-speaking guard confirms the location and warns her not to cause trouble. The contractor, when she finally reaches him, dismisses her complaints and hangs up. She drapes a tarp over the doorway and stages the room with plumbing tools, hiding the prison from her husband, whose chronic anxiety she fears will spiral into crisis.

The renovation was necessary because Dilara's father, a former university professor and minor novelist known for antagonizing the Turkish government, could no longer live alone. After eight years of Alzheimer's disease, his condition has deteriorated unevenly: some days he is lucid, other days he falls, stares blankly, or loses words. His refrain for everything he can no longer articulate is "It isn't correct." After Dilara found him one night on the floor of his apartment covered in blood from a broken nose, he moved permanently into her flat. His medical equipment filled the main bathroom, making a second one essential. Dilara, a former school psychologist, has been unable to find work in Italy due to language barriers and licensing differences. Her husband, a former accountant, works as a local mechanic.

The novel moves between the present in Italy and extended flashbacks to Istanbul, tracing the parallel deterioration of Dilara's father and of Turkey's democratic institutions. In 2013, the Gezi Park protests, a small environmentalist sit-in that swelled into massive anti-government demonstrations, brought father and daughter together after a period of estrangement. At a family dinner during the unrest, her father became agitated, shouting about the 1980 military coup as though it were happening in the present, then admitting he did not know where he was. In subsequent years, political repression intensified. Her father was attacked outside his university by a fanatic who broke his nose and arm. Brain scans revealed his Alzheimer's. His language began to erode: he first substituted synonyms and invented compound images, saying "long horse" for giraffe, before those workarounds failed and he fell into frustrated silence.

The July 2016 coup attempt marks a turning point. Dilara, her husband, and her father barricade themselves inside their flat as tanks roll through the streets. By dawn the coup has failed. Erdoğan calls it "a gift from God" and launches sweeping purges. Dilara's father is among over 600 professors dismissed by presidential decree. Dilara is fired from her positions because of her ties to her dissident father. Berk, her father's closest colleague at Boğaziçi University, warns them that police raids are imminent, then is arrested two days later. Shortly after, Dilara's father looks at her and sees not his daughter but his dead wife, Ayşe, a genuine misrecognition that tips the family toward emigrating. In 2017, they leave for Italy.

In the present, Dilara's husband discovers the prison cell and panics. He stuffs a suitcase with underwear and crossword puzzles and flees. He returns briefly to ask why she is not following, but when she tries to calm him, he protests that his ulcers cannot handle the situation and leaves for good.

Alone with her father, Dilara calculates she has three to five months before their money runs out. She begins retreating into the cell with increasing frequency, finding comfort in its atmosphere, which feels distinctly Turkish. Sometimes the cell conjures hallucinatory sensory experiences: the click of tavla, a backgammon-like game, car horns, and gull cries. When she desires something from Turkey, it materializes, though these gifts vanish if she tries to carry them out. She domesticates the space with a duvet, flowers, and an electric kettle, but the furnishings only accentuate the harshness of the prison fixtures.

Her aunts call from Istanbul using encrypted messaging, wary of government surveillance. During one call, Dilara tries to recall a Bosporus-side restaurant where the family gathered for celebrations but cannot remember its name. She searches for photographs she took there on her last night in Istanbul. When she locates the images on an old hard drive, they look wrong: the skyline features landmarks in impossible configurations, and the restaurant does not exist on any map. Her foundational memories have become unreliable.

Women begin arriving in the prison cells. The first is Zeynep, a journalist imprisoned for calling the Turkish state a system built on the exploitation of women. More follow, mostly political prisoners arrested for attending protests, writing for the wrong newspapers, or speaking Kurdish. Dilara adjusts her routine to participate in the prison's rhythms while concealing her ability to leave, using a tape recorder to simulate her presence when she tends to her father. A young woman named Müge is placed in the next cell, arriving in tears. Dilara comforts her through the wall at night and brings her books and sweets during recreation. When Müge asks her name, Dilara lies and says it is Ayşe.

This impersonation extends to her father. As his misrecognition deepens, Dilara stops correcting him when he calls her by her mother's name. She wears her mother's perfume, hums her music, and mimics her mannerisms, a deception that also serves as mercy, restoring to him the face of someone he loves. One night, Dilara hears her mother's voice in the prison, speaking through the walls, using exact phrases from her childhood. She finds glossy prints of the restaurant photographs on the cell floor, and in this version her mother is present at the table. By morning, the prints have changed, her mother's image gone.

News of the February 2023 earthquake in southeastern Turkey reaches the prison, and women scream the names of their home villages as the scope of the disaster becomes clear. Dilara withdraws for three weeks, unable to bear the grief. As the 2023 presidential election approaches, she invests hope in the possibility that Erdoğan will lose. On election night, a runoff is announced. Dilara realizes that even if the opposition wins, the Istanbul she dreams of no longer exists, transformed by construction and the passage of time.

The women then discover that Dilara's cell has a door leading out of the prison. They confront her at night, furious and desperate, and demand she take them with her. Unable to deny them, she promises to devise a plan.

In the novel's final section, Dilara's life blurs between the cell and the flat, and her own memory begins to corrode. Her father's eyes have gone mute, his body still. In a moment of exhausted cruelty, she places his cane where he will trip. He falls, and she stays in bed listening, unable to move. She then prepares to leave him permanently, clearing the flat of hazards, filling the refrigerator with food, and plastering every surface with sticky notes reading "FOOD IN THE REFRIGERATOR." She leaves the front door unlocked. Her father no longer recognizes her, whispering only "Something" and "Who?" She carries provisions into the cell and begins mixing mortar. Brick by brick, she walls herself in from the inside, sealing off the doorway to her bedroom. As she works, the cell fills with visions of Istanbul: the Bosporus breeze, Judas trees in bloom, the Ortaköy Mosque, fishmongers, lovers. She presses the last brick into place, her body enclosed in Silivri Prison, surrounded by everything she has ever loved and feared.