I went to a funeral today. I go into my work trips prepared to give teacher training workshops, observe classes, check out potential ELF housing options and drink a lot of tea while talking to directors of English departments. This trip was going to be a bit different because one objective was to scout out potential sites for future camps. I was prepared with everything from work clothes and heels to hiking boots, ski jacket and gloves ready to venture into the mountains and experience the outdoors of Turkey. A funeral just wasn’t on the program.
The English faculty in Erzincan, like the city it's in, is small, so I was able to meet most of them on my first day. Young and new with energy and ideas, this is a group with great vision for the future of their fledgling school. After a few cups of tea, training and a couple of meals, I already felt like I had known them for months.
After only 24 hours of knowing the director, I noticed that he carried an extra weight on his shoulders when he joined us for lunch on the second day. I had seen it since the night before while, actually, having dinner with his family. The natural warm smile that made him so approachable the second I met him had morphed into something strained and forced in the past couple of hours for some reason I was oblivious to. Then he got the phone call. Something about health, something apparently serious that required he give it immediate attention. Five minutes later the phone of another colleague eating with us rang, having the same effect. More phone calls followed filling in some holes to a horrible tragedy. A very close colleague and friend from the university, a man loved by faculty and students and known as simply a friend to all, had died.
Erzincan is a town that, when most Ankara Turks hear it mentioned, is sort of disregarded as a mountain village that is known because it was severely damaged in an earthquake exactly 18 years ago. Looking at it from the airplane, it is located smack dab in the middle of a powder sugar covered mountain bowl. Walking its streets, every direction you look are peaks thousands of meters high. Since I landed, I’ve wanted nothing more than to walk in any direction and head straight into this amazing scene. The wind tends to blow strong here and it seems as though every time I try to move in a direction here, a massive gust of wind swirls up and blows me in an unexpected direction, toward places and people that make me like it even more here.
Our hosts obviously had more pressing things to deal with now than Aycan, my Embassy colleague, and me. We took the afternoon to find an art museum, maybe do some shopping, take a nap and have dinner in the hotel restaurant – simple. The crazy winds blew us to an art gallery that was closed, a café where we obviously didn’t fit in and a jewelry shop where we spent more money than we had planned. Wanting to get out of the wind by late afternoon and have a rest, we headed back to the hotel where a gust came up and shifted the trajectory of the rest of the evening. After the news of the death that shoot the entire town, our plans to check out campsites with a local guide we thought were on hold . . . and then . . . there was a man with the tour company waiting for us at the hotel, ready to keep the appointment and take us into the hills and show us some videos. So much for the rest. They wanted to take us out to dinner too, which would make the night that much longer. UGH.
The wind kept blowing though, and what started as something I was not at all excited about had been blown around enough to become a surprisingly perfect evening of amazing food, nargile, photographs, videos and stories of a man that had explored every corner of the mountainous land around this city. Rock and ice climbing, skiing, water skiing, camping trips with groups of 200 kids at altitudes of 2000 meters sleeping in tents and seeing sights and landscapes you forget really exist on this planet were all presented to us as possabilities available to students and even to us, whenever we wanted. I felt like this man knew something about me that I didn't share, like he was answering my questions and reading my mind without me having to say a word. I could see myself in just about every picture he took and being a part of his incredible lifestyle and adventure.
When the wind blew me back to my hotel room, I knew that it would bring me back to this place in the near future and experience these mountains for myself. Unfortunately, this time the wind was in charge and mountain exploration wasn't going to happen. This time was about the heavy hearts of these strangers I wanted to call friends. I watched them support each other at the funeral, creating a net to hold each other up. They even opened themselves up to include us a bit in their net, making me feel again like I knew them before.
Seeing the pain and confusion in their minds made me want to take people who were, in all ways, strangers to me and somehow comfort them. Seeing the land around here and what it has to offer left me with a sense of comfort knowing that enjoying nature and its beauty can be found in the most unlikely places. As I leave, even though the experience didn't include all that was planned, a different plan played out. I know that I will be back here to see these people and this place that I blew into a few days ago.
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