We were painting the hall of our building when the old paint came off in one piece. Under it there was a name: Yorgo, 1951. Nobody in the building knew who Yorgo was. The oldest neighbour, Mehmet Bey, moved here in 1978. My daughter wanted to keep the name. My wife wanted a clean wall. We stopped painting and went to drink tea. That evening Mehmet Bey knocked on our door with an old woman. She was his sister and she had lived here as a child. "Yorgo was the first man in this building," she said. "He wrote his name when the walls were new. My mother told him it was rude." She laughed. "He said the building would forget him one day." We painted the rest of the hall. Around the name we left a small white square. Now everyone who comes up the stairs asks the same question, and somebody always tells the story.