Edit: I’ve concluded that my prior account lacked sufficient texture to convey the full measure of my observations in Turkey. Though I’d endeavored to maintain brevity and simplicity, I found myself compelled—after no small deliberation—to furnish additional particulars. For what is a journal, if not a repository of detail? Should these pages ever serve a purpose beyond mere recollection, I wish them to provide a more deeper narrative for future reflection.
It was a chill, sharp morning in Cappadocia, the sort that pierces bone and rouses even the sleepiest of minds. The hour was scarcely past six when we assembled, my wife and I flanked by our disgruntled progeny, their protests muffled by layers of jackets drawn tight against the cold. The balloon’s basket lay before us like a great wicker sentinel, its burners silent but poised. My wife, stoic, betrayed no sign of the milestone this day marked—her fortieth year—though her eyes held a determined gleam. The children, however, were less circumspect.
“Oh my god I can’t stop my teeth from chattering,” muttered my elder daughter, though her indignation faltered as the first flame roared to life.
We ascended as the horizon bled crimson, the earth falling away to reveal a realm of jagged spires and valleys carved by time’s indifferent hand. The cold lingered, cruel as a creditor, but the spectacle proved a potent distraction. Hundreds of balloons dotted the dawn, their vibrant canopies aflame in the rising sun. My younger daughter, who doubtless up to this point was more concerned with how little her gloves protected her hands against the cold, gripped the basket’s edge, her breath catching as the light gilded the rocks below.
“Like a whole ‘nother planet…” she declared, and for once, her sister offered no contradiction. My wife stood silent, her smile slight but profound.
A birthday, I mused, worthy of remembrance.
Izmir greeted us with the clamor of a city both ancient and alive. Our lodgings, nestled in a warren of narrow lanes, were compact yet curiously inviting—a haven of embroidered cushions and the perpetual scent of brewing çay. The true marvel, however, lay in its people. At a hole in the wall, a grizzled Turk who spoke English just as well as German and French all the while flipping burgers to make a living, regaled us with tales of Izmir’s past, of its ancient city, of Smyrna. We spoke of faith, of the differences of our culture’s preferences of animals, where mine rarely sees dogs for pets.
“I hope we read the same Quran,” he remarked, shielding his heart and marking his surprise, but laughing at the ridiculousness of the revelation. My eldest, initially shy, soon bartered phrases in broken Turkish with his wife, their laughter mingling with the cries of a mother cat and her kittens looking for food.
Ephesus proved a masterclass in antiquity. We trod its marble thoroughfares, our footsteps echoing those of Roman senators and Byzantine merchants. The Library of Celsus, its façade restored to stark grandeur, drew a rare reverence from the children.
“Imagine the stories these walls could tell,” my wife murmured, trailing a hand over weathered stone. “I can only hope our new house will last the same amount of generations.”
My younger daughter pocketed a pebble from the agora. “Proof,” she said, “for the skeptics at school, and for Uncle Rory.”
Antalya’s charms, though undeniable, paled beside Istanbul’s majesty. Where the coastal city lounged in Mediterranean languor, Istanbul thrummed with the urgency of a bridge between worlds. A boat along the Bosporus laid bare its splendors: Topkapi’s serrated silhouette, Hagia Sophia’s defiant dome, the Galata Tower piercing an iron-gray sky.
“It’s like…layers upon layers of history,” my elder daughter observed, her diary abandoned in her lap. Even my younger daughter, nose oft buried in her tablet, gaped as a smack of jellyfish breached beside our vessel.
Yet for all its grandeur, the city bore scars familiar to my own homeland. A shopkeeper in Beyoğlu, his wares of spices and silver spread with pride, confessed in hushed tones to rising rents and vanished savings. A university student, her English crisp, joked bitterly of degrees earned for emigrant futures. Their resilience, though, was unmistakable—a dogged persistence mirrored in the fishermen mending nets along the Golden Horn, in the grandmothers hawking simit beneath ancient arches.
Our final evening found us preserving what currency we had left in the heated mezzanine of a McDonald’s, the city street below us humming a cold tune. My wife sipped her tea from a paper cup, her gaze distant.
“A fine trip, fitting forty years,” I ventured.
She nodded, but her attention drifted to the street in front of us, where a young couple danced to an accordion’s lament, their joy defiant against the gathering dusk.
We departed with relics of our journey: a Ephesus pebble, a Cappadocia sunrise captured in instax, and a quiet recognition. Hardship, I reflected, wears no single face. It is etched in the learned man’s squint as the steam from the burgers rose against his face, the student’s weary grin that vanished just as easily as it appeared, the shopkeeper’s stoic shrug. Yet so, too, is beauty—in balloon-dappled skies, in ruins that refuse oblivion, in a people’s unyielding grip on hope.
As our plane climbed above the Marmara, my elder daughter turned to me.
“Daddy,” she said, uncharacteristically solemn, “we’ll come back, won’t we?”
I met her gaze, and then my wife’s. “Without question,” I replied.
For Turkey, like all great tales, demands a second reading.