Another old memory ---

I was a strange teenager. I read voraciously, rode horses every day after school, and loved archaeology. Living in Turkey gave me a wonderful unadorned picture of the life of an archaeologist, which I ultimately discarded because it meant being hot and filthy most of the time. I didn’t mind being horse-dirty. The scent of horse sweat made me happy. I told you, I was a strange child.

I was not boy-crazy, like most of the Turkish teenagers I knew. Sixteen year old Turkish girls, with their long silken black hair and incredible sense of style, were kind to me, but we inhabited other worlds. My Irish skin freckled, my hair bleached light in the summer sun, and I preferred jodhpurs and boots to miniskirts and heels. I loved horses more than I could any boy. One Turkish girl, Saide, glided through our teen years with a grace I could never achieve.

Then she fell in love with a teenaged boy, Turkish and handsome, as romantic as she. They ran off together. They soon discovered life was hard without wealthy parents to cushion the fall, and reluctantly, they returned to their respective nests. Saide’s mother was, to put it mildly, distraught. She asked if I could visit Saide and try to cheer her up, for she refused to even come downstairs to eat with her family.

Saide was pregnant, hugely so. I was, I admit, shocked as only a teenaged girl can be when life isn’t like it should be in books. Our last meeting was awkward. The only person she wanted to see was the father of her child. I was a very poor substitute.

The baby was born a few weeks later, I was told. Saide died in childbirth. I have thought of her often over these long years,and wished I had told her I admired her bravery in the face of family disapproval, to put it mildly.