Follow Me As I Discover Land, Language and Self...
This is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir . . . July, 2010. I close the thick door of my apartment and descend two flights of stairs. Out the grille-framed door with a clang and down the marble-paved walk slippery with the morning’s dew. American thoughts of falling down and lawsuits. Smile on my face, I open the black metal gate to the compound and greet the trim youngish…
This is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir . . . We were tired of spending every weekend in our apartment or close by, and we longed to establish some kind of connection with our new country. In early August, 2010, we decided to take a day trip to Iznik, formerly Nicea. Iznik was the town I’d read about in Eyewitness Guide Turkey back in Minnesota. The guide had…
This is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir . . . Our upcoming relocation was no longer breaking news. The machinery of the move had started up, the most visible effect our now-empty living room. We had packed and sent personal effects, including a sofa and three upholstered chairs to Turkey. They would be at sea for about three months, arriving in Istanbul in June, 2010. My focus had…
This is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir. . . The wings of the plane tilted, and with it, my stomach. I stared out the window and saw a jigsaw puzzle of land and water. Turkey has about 5,000 miles of coastline; I had located the Aegean, Mediterranean and Black Sea on a map back home. Now, a bird’s eye view confirmed how water-bound Istanbul itself was. The sea…
It was almost 2010. Sankar would start his job in Istanbul in March, and I planned to join him in June. We had work to do. We needed to begin building our life in Turkey. Or at least creating a pathway toward it. I tried to recall everything I’d ever learned or heard about Turkey. It wasn’t much. In fact I came up with just four facts. First, Turkey was…
This is an important excerpt from my upcoming memoir because it reveals my deepest fears regarding travel and its effect on marriage. As I am open in this piece, I want to leave it open to you. How can I improve? (even after countless edits). What did I leave out? Please leave a comment and let me know. The Call “Leave your phone on today,” Sankar’s boss emailed him that…
Eastern Europe has been free of Communism for nearly a generation, but to me, it still seems relatively unexplored, an area of over a dozen countries poorly known here in the U.S. Sankar has traveled to many of its cities for work, and has enjoyed them. It was time to go and take a look. In February, we sat with travel buds Arlene and Scott looking at maps in our National Geographic atlas. Should…
On October 19, Sankar and I left for a 10-day visit to Turkey. As we boarded the plane, I was carrying a few worries. I had loved my years in Turkey, and had already set about preserving my memories through writing and photography. What if my old friends and the sights I encountered on this trip didn’t seem the same? Would that overwrite my memories, changing the way I felt…
We had a Turkish dinner guest on Sunday evening—I will call him Murat—and we quizzed him about Syria. Murat told us his countrymen do not favor an American attack, though they believe it will probably occur. Turks don’t trust their own press enough, he said, to be certain Assad actually used chemical weapons. If you were sure, what would your opinion be? I asked. Well, Murat replied, “It is not…
For me, it started with a post in a friend’s blog. But it really started with two distressed kittens crying under a bush in Turkey. My friend Waverley and her family were wrapping up their tour of duty in Istanbul, scheduled to return to Minnesota in June. In April she wrote a blog post titled, The Rule of Three – Cat Version. In it, she explained how her cat family had…
