Eleven at night. The kitchen.

The jacket is on the chair, not on the hook. Hüseyin sits down and does not take off his shoes.

Emine has left the soup on the small burner, on a low flame, with the bowl turned upside down over the pot so it will not go cold. The bread is this morning's, in the cloth.

The radio sits on top of the fridge, turned down low. It is the eleven o'clock news.

On the table there are the salt, a dish with three black olives and two tea glasses, one of them upturned.

İlker is at the table with his phone in front of him, screen down.

Nobody says anything until the news is over.

The news gives the stock exchange. It gives a road closed in Izmir. It gives the bread.

Then it ends with tomorrow's weather. Twenty-nine degrees in Ankara.

Emine turns the radio off with the button on top, not at the socket.

Hüseyin went into the silver mine at Gümüşköy at twenty-four. Now he is forty-six. That is twenty-two years, and the first nine he did underground and the other thirteen at the washing plant, and at the washing plant the hands wear out less but the noise is the same.

Since December the wages have not come. Eight months.

The envelopes are in the inside pocket of the jacket. Folded in four, all together, and the fold keeps them that way. They make a thickness like a deck of cards.

Twenty-two of them left on the evening coach from Gümüşköy, and at six in the morning they were in Kızılay with their placards rolled up under their arms, because in Ankara they make you close an open placard before you even reach the right pavement.

The right pavement is in front of the ministry. There are the plane trees. There is the low guardrail.

They stood there forty minutes.

Then the vans came. Then they were told to get in. Then they read out the names, one at a time, with the document in hand and a voice that carries through the whole van.

They read his out too. Hüseyin Aydın, Gümüşköy.

In the van you sit on two benches facing each other. Nobody talks. A man from Doruk said they had been at it since March and that in March there were forty of them.

They let them go at nine at night. The coach for Kütahya leaves at a quarter to eleven.

Emine warmed the soup at eight, when Recep's brother-in-law telephoned and said they were at the station house, and she warmed it again at half past ten, when she heard the gate.

In October the gallery reopens. They said so in two meetings. They reopen and they call people back, and they call back by seniority.

İlker turns the phone over and sets it screen up in the middle of the table. He does not switch it on.

"Dad. Give them to me."

Hüseyin looks at the upturned bowl.

"It is not over now," İlker says. "Now it is over if nobody knows. Tonight not even the radio said it."

Emine is standing by the sink and does not turn round.

Hüseyin reaches an arm towards the chair. He takes the jacket by the collar. He puts two fingers into the inside pocket and pulls out the packet.

He sets it on the table. The envelopes open a little by themselves.

He puts them into his son's hand. All eight. İlker's hand closes.

Then Hüseyin takes seven of them back.

He takes them back one at a time, off the deck, holding his son's hand still with his left. At the last one he stops. He looks at the date.

"Only the March one," he says.

İlker no longer closes his hand.

"March is one. Eight is eight."

"March is one," Hüseyin says.

"And in October?"

"In October they call back by seniority."

İlker looks at the envelope left to him. He turns it over. There is nothing written on the back.

"Everyone has seniority," he says.

Emine turns on the water in the sink and lets it run.

Hüseyin puts the seven back into the inside pocket. He presses them with his thumb so they will stay. He folds the jacket over his arm.

İlker stands up. He takes the phone and the March envelope and goes to his room. The door does not slam.

Under the door you can see the light of the screen. It goes off and comes on. It goes off and comes on.

Hüseyin hangs the jacket on the hook behind the kitchen door. The inside pocket still makes a thickness. Less than before.

It is the hook where the jacket has hung for twenty-two years, and below it, in the wall, the plaster is worn away in a circle, the size of a shoulder.

He sits down. Emine puts the bowl in front of him and the bread in the cloth. She takes away the upturned glass and puts down one the right way up.

"How it went."

"It went."

On the coach, at one in the morning, the man from Doruk had asked all of them the same thing, one by one, walking down the aisle, and of each one he had asked how it had gone.

"It went," Hüseyin had said.

Tomorrow morning at the bakery they will ask him how it went. At the bakery there is always someone who asks.

"It went," he will say.

Emine sits down opposite. She does not eat. She looks at the bedroom door, where the light goes off and comes on.