The Parallel Universes of Cas

Turkey Time

Thanksgiving has always been my favourite time of the year. I mean, who doesn't like to stuff themselves with so much turkey and mashed potatoes that they can't walk for a full hour afterwards? It's the perfect American holiday. Not only does it mean you can eat piles of food without being judged, but it's also a great time for family bonding. That's what hit me really hard this year.

I don't have any connections with my extended family. Everyone is either dead, evil, or halfway across the world. This was never really a problem for me because my family was always invited over by other families, or we had a party with some friends. I didn't mind not having real family over for Thanksgiving because I didn't have a personal connection with any of them. You can't really miss what you never had in the first place.

However, this summer, I had met up with my grandfather in Turkey for the first time in nine years. His city in Iraq had been invaded by ISIS and his house was completely destroyed. He had managed to get to Turkey and so my family met up with him there and tried to find him a better place to live.

Among the chaos of of figuring out what to do about the situation I found time to really get to know my grandfather. We would walk up and down the small streets of Alanya, the small town we were staying in in Turkey, and buy fruit from the small street vendors. He would ask me to take a picture of every pretty flower we passed on our way and would laugh at all of my jokes no matter how bad they were. He had special nicknames for my sister and I and tried to teach us some Turkish. When my family finally had to leave and go back to America I found myself missing him more than I've ever missed anyone before.

Unfortunately he had to return back to Iraq. The only form of communication we had was through phone calls, but we could only call once a week. Every morning when I woke up and every night when I went to bed I wondered if he was still okay. I would never know at any single moment if he was still alive or not. My only reassurance was the once a week phone calls.

Living in constant worry was bad enough, but then about a week before Thanksgiving there was a huge earthquake in North Eastern Iraq, right near the city that my grandfather was living in. That whole week was torturous. While my friends were complaining about having to deal with annoying family coming over I was praying that my grandfather wasn't affected by the earthquake or hit by a bomb. Three days before Thanksgiving he called and thankfully his apartment went unharmed, but the pipelines in the city broke so there was no running water. My Thanksgiving break was spent eavesdropping on phone calls between my mother and grandfather talking about how he was surviving the sandstorm season without any running water. I couldn't bear the idea of him dying of thirst in the middle of a war zone. All I wanted was to send my grandfather the pictures we took of the colourful flowers and to tell him more jokes. All I wanted was to hear him call me by my special nickname.

~~~
~Cas💜