103. Lion’s Milk

I don’t know why it’s never occurred to me to write about the biggest impact of the pandemic on my life, but today, with a zoom call from Turkey, I’m reminded. My long-ago roommate, now teaching at a university in Ankara, and another Peace Corps friend from the time, who is now in Seattle, spent an hour this morning trading old stories—but mostly catching up on where we, our kids and grandkids are today. How we and our families are coping with the pandemic. Speculating on once again meeting in person in Ankara, Seattle, Portland, or somewhere on the East Coast. 

 

In April of 2020 I was slated to spend ten days in that Ankara university with the American Studies Department, talking about the Nez Perce and other Western Tribes, about the history and cultural lessons I’ve learned from books, notes, and Indian friends over the past 50 years. 

 

I had tickets, and gift copies of Alvin Josephy’s 500 Nations packed and ready to go, notes for talks, and a DVD or two that I might use in telling Turkish college students about another side of American history. Turks—and Germans, the French and others around the world—are sometimes more interested in these chapters in American history than we are. I’d get a chance to explore why.

 

And I would eat lamb kebabs, white cheese, fresh melons, baklava, lentil soup, and the olives that had once tasted bitter but grew sweet in my almost five years in Turkey, 1965-70. 

 

The covid crushed all of that. I was reminded today of how, when covid hit, we summarily changed important plans, how we hunkered down away from friends and family members—and of how we, over the course of a year, have learned new tricks, and can now visit across continents in real time. 

 

Still—the lentil soup I make is not the same as the ones I drank in Turkey (yes, in Turkish we “drink” soup rather than eat it). I can hear faintly, in my mind’s ear, the cries of Ankara street vendors and shared taxi drivers, and see in my mind’s eye the minarets of Istanbul and the shops in the covered bazaar.

 

I’ll maybe dream in Turkish again tonight, the words and pictures in my mind rolling back the 50 years, from a time when three new friends, one Turk and two Americans, discussed our futures over glasses of absinthe, the drink the Turks call raki, or “lion’s milk.”

 

# # #