Not One Grain

15 August 2026

Selim spends August in Bodrum, as his family has for longer than anyone has kept records. The town is arranged around a beach. In all his summers here he has not once set foot on it.

Featuring Selim

The white rooster walks down the centre of a narrow weathered boardwalk laid across pale sand toward a turquoise sea, his feathered feet well clear of the sand

There are, he will tell you, eleven ways to reach the water from here without touching sand. He has walked all of them.

Close-up of the rooster's heavily feathered white feet on pale marble, perfectly clean, a fallen magenta bougainvillea flower beside them

Nine o'clock. Immaculate.

The rooster stands on the varnished teak deck of a wooden gulet moored in a turquoise cove, a teak gangplank reaching to a stone quay, pine-covered hills around

The sea is best approached by boat, and the boat by gangplank. The gangplank is teak. He would not have boarded otherwise.

In the evening the rooster sits at a lantern-lit table at the very edge of a marble waterfront terrace with a small glass of tea, the beach beginning just beyond the marble and the castle lit across the bay

In the evening the whole town comes down to the water. He comes down too, as far as the marble goes, and not one step further.