A Memory of Mulberries
The things that bring us home
It’s mulberry season. For some, that means weeks of cussing purple bird poop on their cars. For others, it means the sweetest treat in the forest staining our hands and clothes as we pick from bountiful branches.
For me, it means remembering my Turkish roots, right here in the middle of Iowa. Don’t we all have a moment, a season, a scent or yes, even a taste, when everything and everyone we’ve come from becomes crystal clear? For me, it’s mulberry season.
I was 12 the first time my cousins took me to my grandfather’s grave in Turkey. My grandfather was at the height of his military career when he died in a car accident in 1956. I never met him.
In my grandfather’s day, the Turkish military were considered the keepers of the republic. If the citizens of a country free from Ottoman rule for only 30 years were wooed to vote too far left or right, the military was there to maintain the center, even if it meant a coup. This served Turkey well until neoliberalism and globalization swallowed the country whole in the 1980’s, three decades after my grandfather’s death. Extreme poverty, corporate opportunism and government land grabs drove rural peasants into city slums. That made them ripe for the picking as rightwing religious factions took advantage of their misery, doling out cheap bread for political loyalty. The result? The current so-called leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the conservative-Muslim-in-secular-clothing, journalist-jailing, protestor-murdering, patronizing fascist for a new century.
My family are considered children of Ataturk. We believe in a secular Turkish republic, modernization and women’s rights, as Ataturk did in 1923. As such, we are no longer welcome in Turkey, except in a few urban enclaves. My cousins haven’t found decent work since Erdogan and his friends took over. He gutted the military too, jailing generals who, like my grandfather, had come up through the ranks on merit. No one is left to protect the republic.
During that first visit, our grandmother ordered my older cousins to take me to see our grandfather. The cemetery was special, my cousins told me on the way there. It was reserved for top military officers, the most revered generals, the heroic founders of the republic. Even as we approached, I could see ancient, leafy green trees rising high over towering stone walls and wrought iron gates. Unlike most of Ankara, which was so dry the concrete sidewalks and government buildings competed for shades of dust, in this amazingly lush place, rich greenery surrounded each gravestone, birds flittered and chirped and leaves rustled in the breeze. Once parked, we only had to walk a few feet to my grandfather’s grave, located in a place of honor not far from the guard house.
The older sister visited with the soldiers on duty while the younger one, perhaps nervous about a 12-year-old’s reaction to the dead, tried to distract me. As we walked up to my grandfather’s carved marble sarcophagus, I noticed his colorized military photo in porcelain at its head. She pointed to the tree next to it instead.
“Looks Suzan! Dut!” She pointing at the tree’s branches, repeating this silly word that sounded short for “dooty.” She was the funny cousin, but even she couldn’t have meant the American slang for poop. Then she pulled down long, white berries and told me to taste. “Good. Really good, trust me!”
The funny-looking berries were the sweetest fruit I had ever eaten, even more delicious than the Turkish watermelons and figs the size of my hand we’d eaten the day before.
In broken English, she tried to tell me that if you eat a lot of cherries, you’ll look slim like the stem of a cherry, but if you eat a lot of dut, you’ll get fat like dut. The translation was lost on me at the time, but I laughed because it seemed like I should.
We ate our fill and then, after a warning look from my older cousin, attended to the grave. I didn’t know what to do. I stood quietly, hands folded in front of me, and silently said hello and introduced myself to my grandfather. In his photo, his hat was cocked a little to one side, against regulation my cousin told me. It was a signature move that later allowed me to identify him in parade photos and even in a photo of him standing guard at Ataturk’s grave. The guy had a little rebellious streak.
My older cousin joined us and regaled me with stories of our grandfather’s integrity and courage. She said he defected from the Ottoman army when he was 16, after the sultan ordered him to his hometown to kill his childhood friends. (We later learned he lied about his age and was only 13.) He sought out Kemal Ataturk in the mountains and joined the fight for a democratic republic. Within three years, he was promoted to lieutenant. He rose through the ranks to become commandant of the Turkish West Point, the post he held until he died in 1956. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the route for his funeral procession. As she spoke, I stared at his photo, trying to find my own connection to him. This man was a great leader who inspired a country. I was a chubby American kid. I wondered if he would’ve even liked me.
After the sisters put flowers on the grave, they lifted their forearms, palms up as if holding a platter, and closed their eyes. The younger one winked at me when her sister wasn’t looking, making me stifle a giggle. We all knew they weren’t the praying type, but the soldiers were watching. When they were done, they wiped their hands down their faces and signaled it was time to go.
Forty years later and 6,000 miles away, we built our home at Draco Hill. One day, I walked down the hill from our new home and saw a tree full of longish, purple berries. I had no idea, no memory and certainly never imagined I’d eaten them before. I took a tentative taste. Suddenly, I was transported to that day, the dry heat and bright sun, the cool shade, my cousin making me laugh, the soldiers and my grandfather. It was dut! Purple dut!
“Hello, Turkish Grandpa!” I said out loud as I grabbed at berries. I thought of his cocked hat and laughed. “You’re here! In America! Welcome!” I imagined a wry smile. As I picked and ate and looked out across the gentle slope toward the river, I thanked him for encouraging my father to go to America. I thanked my father for his lifetime of hard work in his adopted country that allowed me to purchase this land. I thanked them both for the passion that drives me and for their dedication to the future that allowed me, now, the good fortune to steward these acres.
I did. I stood there giddily eating mulberries and talking to my ancestors. And for the first time in my life, I felt like I had come home.
Start the conversation! Do you have a scent, object, song or season that connects who you once were to who you are today? Share it in the chat!
Love this Suzan! What a wonderful story. Thank you.
Thanks Denise! Have you discovered how hard it is to get a conversation going on this platform? Any ideas?