The sun had begun its leisurely descent over Bodrum Town on a September afternoon when I started going back over my list, making sure I hadn’t missed anything. A stroll along the marina, pausing to take a video of a forest of Turkish flags fluttering in the wind: check. Bites of kabak cicegi dolmasi and enginar kalbi on the terrace of a restaurant overlooking gulets bobbing in the harbor below: delicious. Browsing leather shoes and handwoven towels in the labyrinthine bazaar: my credit card statement would attest to that. Satisfied, I started mapping out the route back to the hotel, working in a stop at a posh Turkish delight shop a friend in New York had recommended. I turned to my mom, ready to lead her out of the bazaar, when I noticed her hesitate.
“Can you take a picture of me?” she asked, a sheepish smile dancing on her lips.
I’m never one to decline a photo opp, especially in such a beguiling setting, so I immediately found an angle where the sun gilded the water perfectly behind us and looked around for someone to capture the moment.
“No, this way,” she said firmly, gesturing toward the ruins of a crumbling stone castle in the opposite direction. “Make sure you get all of it. And just me, please.”
During the pandemic, my mother became obsessed with Turkish dramas, bingeing thousands of episodes of period productions from her exercise bike and summiting the highest levels on Duolingo Turkish. So when she glimpsed a Byzantine-era fortress in Bodrum that reminded her of ones she’d seen on Diriliş: Ertuğrul and Kuruluş: Osman, she was thrilled: I don’t think I’ve ever seen her smile as brightly as she did when she posed for that picture—not even at my wedding, or when my brother’s kids visit. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever witnessed my notoriously difficult-to-impress mother actually deign to request a picture in front of anything before. And yet there we were, on a mother-daughter trip to Turkey, where the only way I could describe this usually stoic woman’s behavior was giddy, utterly enthralled by the language and history that had consumed her imagination for the last four years. I took the picture, and a few more for good measure, trying to make the best of the backlit angle. She inspected them, and only when she was satisfied did we make our way back.
Anyone who’s ever traveled with me is not surprised to discover I thrived as a line leader in elementary school: decades later, I plan every trip meticulously, with the same sense of responsibility I felt when making sure every classmate in my care found their way to recess safely. My friends are mostly happy to leave the itinerary in my hands, and my husband is grateful to turn his brain off and follow me to whatever just-opened restaurant or obscure guided tour I’ve planned for us. But it’s a strange kind of role reversal whenever I’m traveling with my parents, the very people who first showed me the world and taught me how to delight in it. These days, when my mother and I set out on trips together, I slow down to her pace, giving up my preferred early starts to more leisurely mornings, and hiring a car and driver instead of navigating the subway or setting out on long walks like I do when I’m on my own. But I also know when to nudge her out of her comfort zone—insisting she sample all the sushi and sashimi at Nobu aboard the Crystal Serenity to Quebec City or dragging her up the Charminar monument in our hometown of Hyderabad. ”I grew up here and never once felt compelled to climb it, why are you making me do it now?” she muttered as we panted our way up the claustrophobic medieval stairwell. But when we finally reached the top and took in the panorama over the Mecca Masjid and Laad Bazaar, a bird’s-eye view she’d never beheld before, all was forgiven.
