Summary

In “A Toddler by Any Other Name Is Still a Toddler” (264), Mina tells the story of Aylan Kurdi, a boy whose dead body washed up on a beach in Turkey, provoking international mourning. Mina specifies that the boy’s name was actually not Aylan but Alan, that it must have been spelled incorrectly, and that his family’s name was Shenu, but they were called Kurdi in Turkey due to their ethnic background. Mina says that the Turkish poet Cemal Süreya is rumored to have lost one letter y in his last name, typically spelled Süreyya, in a bet. She imagines the extra y finding its way to Alan after the poet’s death.

In “Another Kurd, Another Drowning” (266), Mina tells the story of another drowned refugee, a Turkish boy named Baris Yagzi who wanted to study music in Brussels. He...