“With the children, you can imagine. But the cost of flying was just too much.” She’d come for a wedding, which meant no flexibility about dates, and high season fares, as we all know, are inflated to benefit from the tourist market, which left her with no choice but to drive.We sat on the terrace across the road from my first home here, and I wondered at how little she had changed despite being the mother of two youngsters. Since she still spoke only a little German, her son would be given help to catch up before he started school, she explained. Her husband was out of work, but the German state was generous, and I couldn’t help but contrast that with the Turkish state’s mean-minded refusal to allow me even the luxury of a museum card despite my having lived here for 12 years.
We drank tea, we nibbled pumpkin seeds, we passed round a box of sugared chestnuts. The terrace was ringed with oleanders and geraniums growing in old olive oil and tomato paste tins just as I remembered. Nothing had changed in one way, but in another it had changed out of all recognition. Before when we used to sit here we would be staring out into the pitch-dark silent valley running towards Üçhisar. Now the night was still silent but the last house in the village had been turned into a hotel and its lights burned brightly, blotting out the stars above us.
The second swallow had flown in from Amsterdam. She’s a woman who has been so badly battered by life and the loss of her three children that she must down her tea with anti-depressants and tears are never far away. Still I remember her as the feisty individual with whom I went grape-leaf-picking, the woman who kept her cigarettes tucked into her bra, the woman who could spot a leaf suitable for dolma-making at 50 paces. In spite of her trials, she’s done her best to make the most of her new life. Dutch? She’s taking a class. Work? She has a job as a cleaner. It may not pay enough, but with the help of the Dutch state…
My first friend tells me that she really likes her German landlady, that it’s a relationship a bit like mine with her family. Gazing into the eyes of both women I sometimes see myself reflected back through the prism of our shared experiences as immigrants. But whereas I am perfectly happy here and dread the thought of ever having to return to the UK, in these women’s eyes I detect a wistfulness, a yearning for home, for their families, for Turkey. Their lives may be materially easier in their new northern European houses but there’s the climate, you see, and the food. Most of all I suspect that they miss the easy companionship of the village, as would I if ever I had to move.
Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.
