Benny’s dad called him on the cell, almost like he was crying, his old man’s voice crackly: “You need to get over here quick, son. Merla just showed up and took the kids.”

Benny was out on a date. Things were just getting good. But he cut the date short; he had to. “Sorry, sorry, bunnygirl, but that ex of mine is at it again. She just won’t leave well enough alone. ‘Ta bien loca. This time she’s taken the kids from my parents’ house, and it’s my weekend with them.”

His bunnygirl frowned, he kissed her on the forehead, then said, “You know you’re my only bunnygirl, right? I wouldn’t leave except it’s my kids she’s taken.”

The day before the secret police arrested him, Mustafa Kahraman sat with Ahmet Gül over glasses of tea and contemplated the many lies of his life at a small Istanbul café. Each lie was a secret that twisted the truth in the same way a black hole bent light. Each passed through Mustafa’s head as he sat with his old friend Ahmet. “What every man wants,” his father had said, “is to live his life so that he defeats its brevity.”