Our street has been called four different things in ninety years. The oldest name is on a stone above a door at number 14. It is in Ottoman script, and almost nobody in the street can read it. A student came once and translated it for us: "Fountain Street." There is no fountain now. The second name was given in 1937 and honoured a general. It stayed for thirty-one years. The third came in 1968 and honoured a different general. The current one is a date. Streets named after dates are safer, my father says, because dates do not later become inconvenient. The post office ignores all of this. Our address in the system has not been updated since 1968, so official letters still arrive with the second general's name on them. My grandmother refuses to use anything except the fountain. She writes it on envelopes. The postman knows and delivers them anyway. Last year the municipality put up a small board explaining the history of the street. It lists three names. It does not mention the fountain, because the fountain was demolished before the records began. I asked the woman at the municipality why. "If it is not in the archive, it did not happen," she said, and then she heard herself and looked uncomfortable. The stone is still above the door at number 14. It has outlived every board, every general and every archive, mostly because nobody in charge could read it.