Making Turkish Coffee and Lokom on a Lazy Afternoon Reminds Me of Another Afternoon When My Armenian Grandparents Entertained Some Special Turkish Guests.
Turkish coffee and lokom - what could be a more perfect treat on a Sunday afternoon. Lokom, by the way, is a chewy sort of sugary confection, with the general consistency of a gum drop, that my grandmother used to make on special occasions. Turkish coffee, for the uninitiated, is a pure shot of full-on coffee flavor that you can almost chew.
Memories rush in whenever I make Turkish coffee and lokom. I pour some of the rich liquid from my grandmother's ancient brass ibrik, close my eyes, and I am a child again, sitting in her parlor.
That parlor was often filled with guests, some more memorable than others.
Once, I recall, my uncle - doing a stint in the Army as an interpretor - had the assignment of escorting visiting Turkish Army officers to various installations around the country.
Now, while my family had deep roots in Turkey for generations, we were Armenian. During the Armenian Genocides that occurred in the first part of the 20th century, many of our family had been killed. Prior to that, however, my grandfather had served proudly as an officer in the Turkish Army and had planned to make that his career, until political circumstances forced otherwise.
The delegation my uncle was escorting happened to be passing close to our home at one point and he took the opportunity to call.
"Bring them for coffee," my grandfather insisted The prospect of spending an afternoon with his former comrades must have proved irresistable .
And so they came.
As the hours passed in that parlor, the coffee was prepared and slowly sipped, and the small bits of lokom and other pastries, like paklava and Irmig Helva, consumed, I remember how the conversation flowed back to to memories of a country I only knew from my grandparents' stories. There was no harshness, no recrimination, no blame or even anger. For their part, the Turkish officers seemed to relax and recover a bit from the culture shock they had been experiencing, as they explored a culture as unfamiliar to them as the America of the early sixties.
By all accounts, the informal party was a great success. What I remember most from that afternoon,however, was the picture of my grandparents entertaining these officers as lost acquaintances from a place and time they so clearly missed, without the sadness that so often punctuated their stories.
