Summary

Chapter 16 begins with the narrator journeying home from the hotel and reflecting on his relationship with Zuhal. The next morning, he has breakfast, considers the secret he knows about Hamiyet which is unknown to the audience, and goes to the poor neighborhood of town where he sits in a coffee shop across from a man making cradles. The narrator and the cradle maker discuss the murder in the coffee shop, and the cradle maker says the kid was involved with the wrong crowd. He suspects everyone is being driven mad by the rumored treasure, which everyone in town is confident exists except the cradle maker himself. They both confess to having seen lights on the hill the night before, and the old man suspects the mayor is beginning to excavate.

The two part ways and the narrator arrives back at Centipede’s coffee...