The Accordion File

Welcome to your accordion file. It is one of your most important assets, having the capability to compress millions of moments, breaths, and images; your moments, breaths, and images. But in this undeniable feat, it can sometimes lock away those treasures, or store them so effectively that you forget they ever happened, until one day, they flitter across your mind’s viewer again.

I have been back in California for precisely 127 hours. How is it that these 127 hours can outweigh in my memory my last four months living in Turkey? These four months encompassed so much. In the closing weeks of August, we hung on for dear life during two weeks of rigorous orientation and drove across Turkey’s landscape to our new home, Alanya. In September, we saw the Villa for the first time, met our host families, and took Turkish cooking lessons. We travelled to both Syria and Cyprus in October, and celebrated Halloween in Alanya. Some of my classmates put together one of the best haunted houses I have ever attended, filled with scary movies that we all watched and screamed at together, telling three hours of ghost stories, and happily devouring a package of American candy sent from our study abroad advisors at Georgetown. Despite what you are thinking right now, we are ‘mature adults,’ I promise. In November, I traveled for the first time with friends across Turkey, horseback riding across the eerie terrain of Cappadocia amongst the giant “fairy chimneys,” seeing the Italian Prime Minister in front of façade of the library in Ephesus, walking up the side of the sulfur crusted ‘cotton castle,’ or Pamukkale, and discovering the beauty of the tiny seaside town of Kaş.

Back at the Villa, we dressed up as pilgrims and Indians for our turkey day in Turkey. Thanks to the staff at the Villa, we even had a hybrid Thanksgiving meal American-Turkish style, consisting of the most delicious turkey, mashed potatoes, pomegranates, and traditional Turkish pumpkin dessert. And then, before we knew it, December was upon us. I typed out 40 pages for finals, breaking for dance parties to Christmas music with my roommates to ease the stress. With December also came the goodbyes to some of the closest friends I have made during my three years in college. In a period of four months, we have shared a lot together.

But here I am, and it honestly feels like it all never happened. At first, I attributed this phenomenon to the accordion file brain that I’m pretty sure equips humanity’s thinking capacity. I know these memories are still inside of me, somewhere. It is just a matter of remembering, of pulling them out of the slots in which my mind categorizes and stores them away for safekeeping.

In the end, though, I can’t reduce the brain to an accordion file, because our minds are partners to our hearts, full of emotion and malleable. So even if these memories are not always at the forefront of my mind as time passes, they are still a part of me. They have shaped me in ways that I may not recognize for days or weeks or years. As of now, I know that because of my four months I will always know the Turkish word for hello, have a new, wider perspective on a region of the world, be always grateful for Turkish hospitality, and have friendships that mean so much to me when I return to Georgetown next fall. Maybe I’ll return to Turkey some day or make some decision because of my months abroad, but these are things that are beyond my ability to know today, and beyond any function of an accordion file. I will only write, and forever leave you with this: Inshallah, God willing.