V
Another customer arrives. She serves them cheerfully and rapidly and is back by the caminato fixing the second cup of coffee, this is for her. I notice that she gave me the better of the two cups she has on the premises, a rule in poor households in these parts of the world. Guests are treated as God-sent. She is focused on the coffee pot. The bubbles will rise up forming a foamy layer over the surface of the coffee. The pot will stay over the caminato until the foam rises to the edge of the pot. She will withdraw the pot just before it overflows. As she does so while also pushing the flock of hair falling onto her face with her other hand, the risen foam gradually starts receding to form a creamy bubbly layer over the coffee. She pours the coffee into her cup slowly with her eyes still fixed on the pot and the cup. Once we both have our cups full, she lifts her head up with a warm smile, now she is back, to be with me.
She lights a cigarette with swift movements of her hands, hands that do things, as if the hands know where the package and the lighter, clearly has done this many many times. She invites me into the shack. So this is where she lives when there are no customers. I take my time to get used to the dim light inside, especially after the abundance of light outside. I see a reclining chair pretty much in the middle of the space; a few small end tables host lots of odds and ends. What is most striking is that there are many iconic figures of Orthodox Christianity, all over the place. I never saw so many in such a small place before. My mind wanders to 17-18 years ago when I had visited my brother who was then a cultural attaché in Comotini in Northern Greece. In our travels we had gone to a famous monastery. I had seen a multitude of such artifacts on the way to and at the monastery. But what left an unforgettable impression on me during that trip has been the beautiful, young British nun, who was working at the gift shop at the monastery. Recognizing her British accent, I had asked her about her history. For a split second, her eyes had shone with excitement, and had started telling me she was from Britain. But before, almost the end of her sentence, the sparks in her eyes had faded away and our mutually exciting conversation ended with “there is no life for me before the monastery, this is my home.” It was so clear that this wasn’t fully what was in her heart. I felt a burning desire to convince her to take my hand and walk out to freedom and safety. Certainly I had questioned myself about this “safety” concept. Did I even know what brought her here in the first place. That encounter has been one of the profound moments in my life related to “If you can’t get in the shoes of someone else, how can you judge them?” To date, I have been wondering what had made her flee her country and find refuge in that confine. I had walked away forcing myself to resist the urge to go back to snatch her out of the gift shop.
Lenea’s voice motioning me to the reclining chair clears away the memory of that beautiful innocent face. She gives me the reclining chair despite my benevolent protests. This is the expected dance in this half of the world. The hosts to give the best of everything to their guests and guests not to accept offers too readily, as a sign of humility. We both do our parts. We both feel at home. We both know this dance, we’ve done it all our lives. Of course, she insists as expected and I finally submit to her. I am now in her reclining chair. She pulls a stool to the entrance of the shack and sits right across from me. As we start sipping our coffee, she starts asking me questions. She is leaning forward on her stool, very interested in what I will say. She’s got sharp eyes, fully focused on me now. She asks me what I do in “Ameriki”. I tell her, I am a professor at a children’s hospital, I am a “yatro”, a kid’s doctor. She can’t believe it, I am so used to this reaction. With my 5’2” and 115 pounds, I could never impress anybody at the first encounter I could be a doctor even when in appropriate attire, let alone this outfit I have on now: hiking pants, hiking boots, a loose shirt with a bandana around my neck and a safari hat on my head. I don’t blame her, I don’t look like a doctor at all. I remember my father seeing me in scrubs at the hospital mumbling “My daughter, why don’t you get dressed like a doctor like your fellow doctors?” He was right, most Aegean female doctors like to dress up in high heels with make-up and all even when they are on-call. I was an outlier among Izmirite women in that regard all my life.
I finally manage to convince her and she is now very impressed that I take care of kids who are beaten by their parents, I don’t know how to say abuse and neglect, I have to describe the kinds of kids I see. She understands, I can tell she likes me, she has a kind heart. And the more we talk, the more I like her, too. I am delighted that I stopped here, that I decided to linger around and to try to chat with her. She is smart, I start a sentence, as I try to find words, she figures out what is to follow and completes my sentences, how sweet, she has become my teacher already! The more I try, the easier it becomes to find words and I can use words I have already learned over and over including those I’ve learned from her.
She asks me about my husband “I don’t have one.” She pretends to sulk, a woman without a husband has a hard life to say the least in her mind, I know. I ask her about hers. She doesn’t have one, either, I learn, he had passed away a few years back. She asks me about my children. I tell her I have one. She is in medical school, she lives in “Ameriki” with me, but not in the same house. “Is she married?” “Ohi”. She is shocked “in the same city but not in the same house and she is not married.” Not something she can comprehend. Fifteen years ago, I would not have comprehended that, either. It is my turn to ask her questions about her children. All of a sudden her face clouds up, did I say something wrong and offend her inadvertently? I catch the word “son”. But why does she look so depressed all of a sudden? As I start feeling anxious, I get shaken with the word “apothane”. I know this from my grandmother. That explains the dramatic shift of expression on her face; from joy to despair. Death does that to all of us, doesn’t it? At least for some time if we have the resources, courage and strength to face grief and to befriend it for as long as we need to until we reach a new normal as they say. Especially the death of a loved one. Especially the death of one’s child. “He died.” lands on my face like an unexpected punch. I am shaken up. “My goodness, so she had a son, but he died.” I am still trying to process the information. She continues without hesitation and helps me understand her son drowned in the Aegean. It is my turn to get depressed. The amount of pain she must have endured and still must be feeling.
A scene from 25 years back reappears before my eyes. I am traveling on a bus from one province to another on the southern coast of Turkey for vacation. My daughter with her 2 year-old plump body is sleeping on my lap. After couple of hours of sleep, I’d like to get up and try to wake her up. She just doesn’t want to wake up as if she is in a stupor or deeply sedated. With the shallow knowledge of an intern I feel my heart turning upside down in my chest with panic “what if she never wakes up, what if she has encephalitis?” Of course in a little bit she does and gives me the most beautiful smile after having slept such a deep deep restful sleep. The explicit memory of that split-second horror is still with me, to date.
I know from that day, the worst thing that can happen to a person must be losing a child. I look up. Her eyes have darkened, but no tears. I can tell, she roughed up her pain, covered it with layers, perhaps the wells of her tears dried up. I see a hand reaching out, it is mine, I hold her hand, she is leaning forward, allows me hold her hand. Hands do the talking now. They understand each other, the hands of two women, the hands of two mothers. From different levels of education, from the opposite sides of The Water, speaking different languages, living in opposite sides of the globe, but we are women, we are mothers, we know what it is like, what it must be like.
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