The two men stand over the ram until it stops twitching. They are waiting to make sure the ram is dead so they can go back into the house and join the festivities taking place in the living room. A few children have gathered at the front door to watch the killing, and as the men reenter the house they tell the children to stay put and make sure no stray dogs or cats bother the ram. Its body lies still now, but it will take a while to finish bleeding out.

Inside the house the living room is abustle with dozens of relatives of all ages. Elderly aunts and grandparents sit together on the couch reminiscing about friends and relatives long gone. Children play hide and seek, chasing after each other from room to room, laughing at the tops of their lungs. Sullen teenagers text friends they haven’t seen in, like, forever (meaning yesterday). Middle-aged men stand in the hallway drinking tea and talking business.

Outside, of course, lies the dead ram. Stray dogs and cats come poking around every few minutes to see how close they can get, but children come running out of the doorway to shoo them away. Later, the ram will be butchered. The family will give one third of the carcass to the poor and one third to their neighbors. They will keep the remaining one third. Most of their one third will be packed into the freezer for future use, but some of it will be roasted and will appear on the dining room table, where the women are assembling a feast to end all feasts. For now though, there is just a dead ram in the courtyard and a house filled with laughter and conversation.

That was the strange world I entered when I met a beautiful Turkish woman on a flight to Hong Kong and unexpectedly moved to Turkey in 2003. Over my six years there that country would change, at least in my eyes, from an unfamiliar and foreign land into one I would love and hate, respect and disdain, want and reject, and then, in the end, call home.
This is the story of that journey.

My name is Matt. I am originally from California, but I lived the first part of my adult life in Seattle until I moved to Turkey at the age of age 33.

Seattle was good to me. I had a great house, a great career, and great friends. I had activities I loved – kayaking, camping, snowshoeing. In fact, I am not a religious man, but for years I’ve said, “God lives in the desert, but He vacations in the mountains of the Pacific Northwest.”

So life was good, but it was missing something: I didn’t have anyone to share it with. I had plenty of friends, and I was only alone when I wanted to be. But I knew no life I could create would be worth a hill of beans if I had no one to share it with. And that part, well, that just wasn’t happening.

My friends told me, “Matt, be patient, you never know where it will come from, you never know just how you will meet that person.” And now I know that’s entirely true. But at the time, I had no way of knowing my life was about to change dramatically, and of all things, the change would begin on that flight to Hong Kong.

I wouldn’t have been on that plane, though, if my black lab Milk Dud had had better social skills…

[This is an excerpt from the introduction to A Tight Wide-open Space.]