Istanbul Old City
My daughter has returned to her teaching job in Istanbul. She signed a two-year contract and completed her first year of teaching English literature and writing to Turkish teenagers at a private school. Then she made plans to come home to Portland for a two-month summer holiday.
On the night she planned to leave, she was making final preparations before wheeling her suitcase down the street to meet a friend, who would share a cab to Ataturk Airport with
Ataturk Airport attack
her, when she saw a news flash: Istanbul’s airport was under attack by terrorists. The airport was promptly shut down and she wasn’t able to leave the country for another three days.
I had breathed sighs of relief after several previous terrorist attacks in Istanbul that she had been lucky enough to avoid. But the attack on the airport, on the same evening that she had planned to go there, was a little too close for comfort. For the first time I felt real fear for her safety. When she finally arrived at the Portland airport, I couldn’t stop hugging her.
Still, she planned to return after her vacation. And I never gave up on my plan of going to live with her, at least for a month or two, in an attempt to finally reach fluency in Turkish after my years of study. She had even requested a larger apartment for the next school year, just to accommodate me.
And then . . . July 15 happened. A military coup shook Turkey. When I heard the first reports I thought that President Erdoğan had pushed the country too far with his despotic
After the Coup
version of democracy. When Erdoğan began arresting thousands, that was bad enough, but when he claimed that the United States was the real enemy, I suddenly didn’t want my daughter to fulfill her contract.
To me, it seemed too dangerous for a young American woman to wander among crowds of people incited by the leader they blindly follow. If one of them identified her as an American, ergo, the enemy, all manner of terrible scenarios might arise.
By early August, I was comfortable with the fact that my daughter would not return to Turkey. She had even interviewed for a new job in Portland.
And then . . . August 6 happened. That was the date of the annual reunion of alumni of Portland State University’s Middle East Studies Center. That’s where I had studied Turkish as an undergrad, before being encouraged by the director of the center to continue with graduate studies at the University of Chicago. PSU’s Middle East Studies Center was where other students had studied Arabic and were recruited after graduation by the CIA, the NSA, and the State Department. That’s where hundreds of students had had their horizons expanded and for careers chose work that drew upon their knowledge of the world and its cultures.
Meriwether came along to the reunion and ended up talking to a number of
Meriwether Lewis
people who had survived war zones, natural disasters, the hardships and remoteness of travel to the far ends of the earth. Suddenly, the slim possibility that one of her neighbors in Istanbul might lash out at her because of her nationality seemed like a small problem.
By that evening she had made her decision: she would return and fulfill her contract. And suddenly my maternal fears were replaced by pride. I did, after all, name her after an intrepid explorer. And now I see that she is living up to her name.