Siren sounds at 9:05 commemorating the death of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Turkish Republic, eighty-eight years ago. This happens annually and is followed by two minutes silence.
We have a link of sorts with Atatürk. We stayed, a number of years ago, at the Baron Hotel in Aleppo, Syria. Actually stayed in Room 203, previously occupied by Agatha Christie who was engaged in writing Murder on the Orientation Express. Room 201, though, was home to Atatürk. He established his headquarters at the hotel during the Ottoman retreat from British and Arab forces in 1918 and ordered machine guns mounted on the roof to keep the troops at bay.
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