The Dead Dad Diaries

In the summer of 1989, Dad and I went on a two week holiday to Turkey. I was 11, he was 54.

We shared a small, basic room in a rather faded hotel. There were frequent power cuts in the town, including one on the night of our arrival. Possibly as a result of being plunged into near-total darkness in a strange place, I had my first ever attack of existential angst that night. We sat on the balcony, under the abundant stars, and I confronted the fact that I was going to die. I asked Dad if he was afraid. He said no.

He had almost no adult company during the entire two weeks, while I made one friend who barely spoke a word of English (my Turkish, obviously, didn’t extend beyond politely ordering a Coke).

There was no sandy beach, just a strip of pebbles backed up against a concrete wall. Swimming happened off the end of a rusty jetty. There was not much to do but sit on the pebbles and swim, and I became quite ill with sunstroke. A cooling ice cream made me even sicker (did I mention those power cuts?).

On the last night of the holiday, Dad and I had a blazing row while strolling through the town and he hit me (not hard, and I believe I may have hit him first).

It was undoubtedly the best holiday we ever had.

I was at that prepubescent sweet spot: although capable of brattiness, there was no one in the world I would rather be with than my dad, and yet I was old enough and swotty enough to carry on a decent conversation. It was the last time we shared a room, until we went to San Francisco together more than twenty years later. We were very happy swimming and reading, reading and swimming. A couple of times, we chartered a boat for a day. It was a traditional wooden fishing boat called the Mavi Boncuk and it belonged to a lovely Turkish man. He didn’t speak a lot of English but he soon found a new favourite word: “‘mazin.’” No doubt he picked this up from Dad, who was easily and frequently amazed.

At least once we shared the boat with a very friendly young couple from Jersey, Andrew and Helen. We went to little bays only reachable by boat and swam. We rolled down the Turkish flag and went to the Greek island of Simi for the afternoon. The Turk and Andrew fished.

When we weren’t on the boat and I wasn’t ill, I played happily with my Turkish friend. The only English she knew was the lyrics to the Madonna song “Like a Prayer” but this proved surprisingly sufficient.

Now, it seems ‘mazin’ to me that Dad didn’t go mad with only an 11 year-old for company. But barring the last night fracas, proof if proof were needed that two weeks was long enough, I don’t recall any signs of madness. ‘

Years later, I was in L.A. and on the phone to Dad, who was at home in Belfast. I had recently seen the film Love, Actually, and was complaining about Hugh Grant’s opening voiceover, which I found sentimental. In it, he says the people who made phone calls from the planes that were going down on 9-11 all called people to say “I love you.” “Oh yes,” said Dad. “Dreadful.” It took me a moment to realise that he wasn’t talking about Richard Curtis’ script: he actually meant the people saying “I love you.” Taken aback, I asked him what he would say to me if one of us was on a plane that was going down. He didn’t think for long. “I’d say, ‘Remember what a wonderful holiday we had in Turkey?’”