Akira: I Can See Turkey from My Room

I can! The mountains of Turkey are just right there. Just in my view. From my window, that foreign land is resting there.

I'm now Rhodes-stuck and quite content to be here. It's lovely, just beautiful. This is the side of Greece I was hoping to experience. The calm, the nymph-touched; the ocean, the sweet scent of a looming storm. Athens was fine but I'm none too sad to be gone. There's not too much I will miss.

Well, that is, save the old lady who lives across the hall from the room I have now permanently left.

As I have already said, she has been a giver of unending kindness in the two weeks I spent across the way and, yesterday, I gave her a little gift as a thank you. It was a red rose I bought with the change in my pocket and a note sloppily translated in Google telling her my name, my origin, my thanks. My handwriting was probably half illegible. The characters were foreign to write and I penned them with care, despite the terribly messy end result. Today, with the earlier urging of my mother, I asked Finitsis to pen a second letter asking for her mailing address.

I was nervous.

But she obliged.
She invited me in to her little home. Her floors were wood and green marble and all the varnished wood surfaces in her home were decorated with doilies and nik-naks that reminded me of my mother. Actually, all the things she had reminded me of the things my mother collects. Vases with fluted edges. Crystals hanging from the lights. Antique figurines of angels and Victorian women in big dresses, colored with light pastels. The oil paintings on her walls were all signed by the same person--I wonder if she or her husband created them--and a partially knitted sweater in baby blue was draped across her chair. All the chairs and sofas were vintage and covered in thick velvet throws, all mismatching yet somehow cohesive, like little old lady houses often are.

She gave me a mint when I sat and started writing me a note. Her little yorkie was ecstatic. He ran laps around the apartment, he was so excited. I wonder how often she gets visitors..? She took a long time writing her letter and we attempted to convey what we could through the language barricade by using hand gestures and facial expressions. I couldn't understand a word she said, but they were tender and kind. Her eyes were pure sweetness.

Then she excused herself into the other room.

I noticed a picture of a man and a man and child together on a stand by the couch on which I sat.
When she returned, she brought two knitted items with her: a scarf and a table runner. I would later learn--once Finitsis translated her letter--that the table runner was from Crete and the scarf she had knit herself. They are both delicate and incredibly beautiful. I get a bit nostalgic just thinking about them. I will cherish them forever. They will be my heirlooms. It was so difficult to give her my true thanks and tell her what I wanted to, but I hope my face showed all I wanted, like hers did to me.

We hugged and kissed many times. She held my hands and talked and I wished so much to understand her. I've never wished more deeply in my life to communicate, to know. To be struck with some sudden gift-of-gab and be able to say and hear and just talk.

When I left with my luggage to take the elevator down and out, she came from her apartment and blew me kisses. Her yorkie wiggled all over me, oblivious. She seemed a bit teary.

I do not think I will miss Athens--with its relentless noise and clatter--but I certainly will miss her.