“It’s all my fault.” When I say this to my  therapist, she frequently replies, “Seriously, Michele, you are not the center of the universe. You don’t have that much power.”

I’ve heard that choosing a therapist, counselor, or more affectionately known as a shrink is kind of like choosing a mate. Luckily I have been more successful in the shrink department than the mate department, but that’s a whole other story. So yes, I admit to having psychologically courted a few counselors until I finally found The One.

There is no shame in this.

Or maybe there is.

But at least I am working through my issues.

The surprising thing is that after years of going back and forth with different counselors, I found my “one” in an older white lady who had years of experience, but in my mind would never be able to help someone like me. When I say someone like me, I’m not saying I’m an alien or anything, but our culture and background on the surface is different. Or so I assumed. I am black, she is white. I am young, she is old…or older. I soon found out that I was wrong.

Once I was in a session where I was crying over a man who, for whatever reason, did not want me, but who I knew was perfect for me. Why oh why? What is wrong with me? I don’t understand why he won’t give me a chance.

My therapist simply told me, “He’s fucked up.”

“What?”

“It’s not about you; the guy is just fucked up.”

Is my therapist supposed to use the F word?

It didn’t matter because that was the recipe I needed to get me out of my rut. The main course was “the truth” for a gentle jolt out of my pity party. Add a side order of compassion to nudge me back into reality. And finally a shot of laughter to wash it all down.

Moving on to a different therapy session and me sulking over the same guy. Perhaps he really wasn’t attracted to me; maybe he just slept with me because he felt sorry for me.

“Did his penis work?”

I laughed. “Yes.”

“Then I would say he was very much attracted to you. The penis doesn’t work if there’s no attraction.”

Oh yeah.

~

A couple of days ago, I was in a therapy session where I was blaming everything on myself. I’m just the kind of person who thinks that everything is my fault. Perhaps it’s the conditioning of my conspiracy-theory-filled mother or the paranoia I formed from growing up in an alcoholic home. Or perhaps I’m just crazy. But if there is a conflict, I think it’s my fault. If there is tension, anger, sadness, or fear being expressed…it is my fault. If I experience loss…again, it’s my fault. An otherwise sane person would not think this way.  But I have associated myself with every bad thing that occurs. And it gets really extreme sometimes.

I could probably find a way to blame myself for the war in Iraq.

I never said it made any sense. It’s just what I do. I think it provides me with a level of comfort when things happen that I cannot explain.

My therapist told me that this “all my fault” thinking is called “magical thinking.” I was intrigued. I like to think of myself as a pretty magical person, so I thought at first it was a compliment.

But then she explained to me that I was thinking like a child…

I was a bit offended. But then I thought, I kind of feel like a child when I think this way. Children can be pretty self-centered.

You are not that powerful.

My therapist went on to ask, “Why is it that you believe you are at fault for so much?  Don’t you know the truth?”

I didn’t have a concrete answer. I sat there for a few minutes. Dammit, I was going to explain to this woman why everything is my fault! What kind of analogy could I use? And then the craziest thing popped into my head. “Do you remember Gazoo?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Gazoo. Do you remember the cartoon The Flintstones? Well, there was this little character called Gazoo that used to fly around and sit on Fred’s shoulder.”

“I remember the Flintstones, but I don’t remember Gazoo.”

The character’s name was actually the Great Gazoo, and he came in the last season of The Flintstones. He was this little, cute, flying green guy from outer space that spent most of his time with Fred and Barney and constantly caused trouble. He wasn’t bad, just a bit of a pest, and when he tried to help, he would always end up causing more harm than good.

So I told my therapist that my thinking goes that way when I’m visited by what I call the Bad Gazoo (as opposed to the Great Gazoo). So this little green guy sits on my shoulder and fills my head with guilt, shame, and blame, even though I know the truth. He thinks he’s helping me, but he’s really not. Gazoo is the little bugger that causes me to “magically think.”

I was satisfied with this theoretical explanation. But my therapist was not.  She leaned forward and calmly said, “I think you need to murder Gazoo.”

When she said that, I had the best belly laugh. I laughed so loud that I’m sure it echoed through her waiting room. My soul was smiling.

My shrink had done it again.

And so, as I write this, my shrink and I are planning the capture and ultimate murder of Gazoo. Rest in peace.

Michele Whitney is a writer, blogger, and musician from Chicago. She is currently a PhD candidate for public service leadership at Capella University where she is working on a dissertation titled: The Human-Animal Bond: A Phenomenological Study of People’s Attachment to Companion Animals. Her writing has been published in the Chicago Sun-Times, Diverse Voices Quarterly, Foliate Oak Literary Magazine, and other venues. Michele’s message of emotional healing, recovery, and connection can be found in her blog, Words of Compassion, Creativity, & Knowledge. Her free time is spent playing the flute, cooking, and practicing aromatherapy. She resides with her mom and her feline kid named Samson.

Read an interview with Michele here.

Today, in a Chinese city of fifteen million people, I step onto the biggest airplane I’ve ever seen, spend thirty of the most uncomfortable hours of my life running to gates and hitching connecting flights, and finally settle down into the back seat of my mother’s car.

I have been studying overseas for six months, and I have never felt so torn. In the black night as we drive the eighty miles home, I try to sleep, but every time I close my eyes, I see the faces of friends I will never see again. We all said we’d find each other again someday, somewhere, maybe in Mumbai or Singapore or Istanbul—hell, maybe even back in the filthy streets of Dalian or Beijing—but I know better. Back in the Midwest, snow is on the January ground, and I can once again see the stars from my middle-of-nowhere home.  I feel far away from everything. I make no sound. For the last few days, I have longed for home, for family, for a bed with a mattress, and a view of trees with green leaves. It’s a strange, uncomfortable sensation to feel comfort neither here nor there, to want nothing more than to go and also to stay.

At home, I sleep for two whole days. My biological clock is broken. My mother wakes me to make sure my heart is still beating. I tell her I am unsure. My bedroom is unexpectedly familiar, dull. When I came back from the East, I hoped to be surprised by the person I was before. I secretly longed to be like someone awaking from a coma or cryogenic hibernation who returns home to find that he remembers very little about who he once was. I imagined myself sifting through my own belongings as a stranger, struggling to piece together stories from a former life from nothing more than photographs in dark wooden frames or coins in a glass jar. But nothing has changed. I still remember where to find socks, favorite shirts, CDs. I left Missouri so I would come home and find that everything had changed, that I’d forgotten it all, but I was wrong. Everything is still the same. Even me.

I am depressed. I miss the energy and the smell of the city. I look out my window, hoping to see hundreds of people I will never meet, talk to, or see again, but all I see are open fields of white and Charolais cattle nosing around in muddy patches of snow. Missouri has never felt so lonesome. I think about my friends on the other side of the world cramming themselves into city buses, eating at unusual restaurants, trying to communicate with taxi drivers with nothing but severely broken Mandarin and hand gestures. I smile and remember the life I led just a few days before, the same funny things, but they feel like dreams and become foggier and foggier the longer I am awake.

I have lost all sense of the comfort of home, and I fear I may never find it again.

~

Some old friends, real country boys I grew up with, drive out to the house and pick me up. They’ve planned a night out at the deer cabin, and they want to hear about all the little “Chink gals.” I’m torn between offense and ennui. Nothing can ever be explained. I would rather not talk about any of it.

They take me out into the snowy woods for the night. Three of us ride in a small truck, and scents of tree bark, wet dirt, and fire smoke linger in the air. As we drive through a field and stop to unlatch three gates, I see the moonlight has covered the landscape in the same blue hue often used in nature calendars for the month of December—a solemn blue night scene to symbolize the death of the year. As the truck pulls up to an open spot in the field, there are others waiting for us, feeding wood to a huge bonfire out in front of the old wooden cabin, which is inhabited mainly during deer and turkey hunting seasons, with its patchwork tin roof, wooden stoves, kerosene lamps, and mismatched antique furniture. All around the 2500-acre piece of land are food plots, deer cameras, hunting blinds, and other things I don’t know much about. But I have spent many nights at the cabin over the years, just hanging out around the fire, listening to my friends, the outdoorsmen, tell stories of the hunt. A lone liberal amongst rural conservatives, I was the only one who didn’t hunt, but my disinterest was never questioned. We had grown up together over fifteen years with other things in common—schoolteachers, summer jobs, and baseball. We knew everything about one another. We were like brothers.

The fire outside the cabin grows tall and bright, and no one can stand too close to its heat. A few of us stand with our backs to the flames, turning like sausages when one side becomes too hot. There are eight of us out here, the sun has long gone down, and someone asks about the skillet’s heat. Chad violently shakes meat in a ziplock bag full of breading and yells that we’re going to have a feast. I ask what’s on the menu. Suckers, rabbit, venison, turkey, dove breast wrapped in bacon, chips, and cans of Coke. Garret even brought some crow meat in reminiscent celebration of a disgusting dare I had taken a few years back. He promised to eat it with me this time, to share the grotesque glory. They had been saving all this food and planning this night to celebrate my return from the East. For the first time in a week I smile and laugh and dodge surprise swats to my groin. We laugh and wrestle. Their voices are so incredibly familiar.

Around the fire we sit on pieces of wood or in camping chairs, our laps holding Styrofoam plates. A few boys eat within earshot on a wooden porch swing to keep an eye on the meat still in the deep fryer. They ask me about China, if I was a giant, if I ate any dogs or cats, and more questions like that, but they also ask where I lived, what the Great Wall was like, and if the food was any good. I give them my answers and tell them in my best words what life was like there, what my experience had been, what it meant to me. I let them know I am still trying to understand it all myself. They listen in near disbelief, say the things I am telling them—some of my stories—are hard to believe or crazy, some sound like fun, but my friends make it clear that they could never do it, that they could never go off on an airplane over the ocean to such a strange place away from here, that they could never leave this land or their families for any period of time or accept any danger of maybe never making it back. Too much at risk. Too much to lose. They would be here forever, but they would gladly listen to my stories when I had them to tell.

We eat and eat. My friends cook fresh meat like five-star chefs. They talk of different culinary oils, meat rubs, and the cooking herbs they grow in small gardens and on windowsills. They have honed their outdoor skills throughout their entire lives, and I have always been fortunate enough to reap the rewards, the edible final products. This is the first time I have eaten a hearty meal in more than half a year. “You’re skinnier’n a snake,” they tell me. We each eat twice our fill, and there is leftover food we will take home to our families tomorrow.

A few friends disappear around the back of the cabin as some of us are packing leftovers. A minute later, I hear laughing and look over to see them coming around the corner of the cabin pushing the golf ball cannon Chad and Adam’s dad built. Their family owns the cabin, so I have seen the black iron contraption before, with its heavy chase and dark bore. It’s secured somehow to an axel between two old bicycle wheels and has some other pieces of metal rigged up to absorb the kick—no doubt a personal project their father created during down time at the local steel plant where he’s worked for over thirty years.

With the cannon in place, Garret brings over a square hay bale and places a rotting pumpkin on top of it. Chad explains they had been saving the pumpkin for this occasion since Halloween, even though their mother complained of the flies it attracted to her porch. They pour black powder down the barrel and shove a white Titlist golf ball inside. Everyone stands back and covers their ears as Chad touches a fiery stick to the vent. Nobody sees the golf ball. The pumpkin explodes and a resounding boom travels across the fields and meadows where it will be heard miles away and someone will undoubtedly call the local police department and complain. Slimy chunks of pumpkin rain down all around us, onto our shoulders and into our hair, and we laugh. Chad and Adam tell a story about a neighbor more than a mile away who had found a lone golf ball in his field while out walking. They swear it had to be theirs.

The cold night gets colder. Once the cannon is wheeled back around the cabin, we all go to warm ourselves near the fire and talk some more. The focus shifts from my adventures in China to deer hunting, then to duck calls, then to crappy beds. I am happy to listen and watch my friends laugh and carry on, telling their own stories. Looking around, there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot out here in the middle of nowhere—an old cabin, a snowy woodpile, a couple of old rusty burn barrels, a saggy barbed-wire fence—but still, I cannot imagine myself never being here again.

Talk dwindles and we begin to nod off in our camping chairs, so we rise and surrender to the cabin. There is no electricity and only an old pot-bellied wood stove for heat, but the beds and down mattresses strewn throughout the rooms are covered with heavy homemade quilts to keep out the cold. Two hours before, Chad had built a fire in the stove to warm the cabin. We find our places on bunk beds and on couches, and Chad, the oldest of us, argues and wins his spot closest to the hot stove. I follow my two closest friends up the homemade ladder to the attic that holds the stove’s rising heat, where, in two beds, a few boys can sleep “pole to pole or hole to hole, just not pole to hole,” as Adam chimes like clockwork, an essential piece of his camping dialogue. The three of us laugh, having heard him deliver the line so many times throughout the years. The fire outside is still burning brightly, and light from the yellow flames enters though the small attic window and dances on the low ceiling. There are spider webs in all the corners, everywhere. Garret recalls a time a few summers back when we all ran out of the cabin in the middle of the night and slept in our trucks because the cabin was full of brown recluses. We share a nervous chuckle.

Once our bodies settle into the feather mattresses and under the heavy quilts, we talk quietly for a bit, retell old stories. As usual, Adam falls asleep first. After minutes of silence, Garret asks me if I miss China. I tell him yes, that I do, but maybe not as much as yesterday.

Without speaking, he and I listen to the fire outside crackle and die down. The wood is burning away, and early in the morning when we awake to a cold stove and pull the quilts up over our numb faces, ash, smolder, and blackened Coke cans will be the only signs of our time.

Justin Kingery recently completed the coursework for a PhD in Technical & Professional Discourse at East Carolina University, where he also taught composition and nonfiction writing, and soon after left academia to pursue a career in writing in his native home state of Missouri. His essay published here was originally written in 2006, after a study-abroad experience in Dalian, China.

Read our interview with Justin here.

If Ponce De León could search for the Fountain of Youth, could an Armenian daughter demystify the elusive Iskiri Hayat?

Hidden away in my parents’ home in New Jersey is an extraordinary liquid in a glass decanter shaped like Aladdin’s lamp.

Tinted like a carnelian gem and with a spicy, musky, transporting scent, this exotic liquid seemed destined to be applied like perfume rather than consumed like a beverage. The liquid only emerges from its cabinet to be carefully meted out for honored guests or as a folk remedy for the odd illness.

Enter the rare and precious Iskiri Hayat. Persian for “the elixir of life,” this tonic has been a source of curiosity and admiration since my childhood—a cryptic key to a fascinating past.

The word iskir is a dialectical variant (Turkish corruption) of the Persian iksir (elixir). Hayat means “life” in Persian and Arabic. And from the veneration with which the beverage was spoken about and handled when I was a child, I was convinced that Iskiri Hayat had mystical properties.

Dèdè (my paternal grandfather) knew our Armenian ancestors concocted this liqueur in their native land, but not much else—other than that one whiff had the power to transport an inhaler from exile all the way back to our native province of Dikranagerd (present-day Diyarbakir, Turkey).

I once got a glimpse of the raw ingredients, each preserved in a cloth sack tied with string. Some of them—what looked like clusters of horsehair, or a bunch of petrified raisins—could have populated a witch doctor’s medicine bag. When I was old enough, Hairig (my father) would reel off the 20 ingredients of the liqueur to me in reverent tones: Amlaj, Kadi Oti, Koursi Kajar… Recited in succession, they sounded like an incantation. In fact, as an adult, I learned that Hairig regretted not asking Dèdè more about “the medicines”—what Dèdè called the herbs and spices comprising Iskiri Hayat.

On his last visit to Beirut in the 1950s, Dèdè returned with a batch of the ingredients given to him by Manoush, one of his three sisters. Illiterate, she prevailed upon her nephew, Vahan Dadoyan, to take dictation and write in Armenian script the name of each ingredient on a tag that would be affixed to each item. As was customary for that generation, women knew recipes by heart and gauged ingredients atchki chapov (by eye). Thus, Manoush did not identify any measurements.

Fortunately, Dèdè possessed a dry mixture of ingredients already combined. We don’t know where he got it, but Hairig had, since the 1950s, repeatedly used it to make the drink. Today, our quantity is scarce and the potency of those mixed herbs, roots and spices has been depleted. Only one bottle of Iskiri Hayat remains. This has only intensified Hairig’s mission to decode and recreate the family recipe for Iskiri Hayat.

How could my father, in the 21st century and far from his ancestral homeland, reconstruct the recipe when he didn’t even know the English language equivalent for the names of some of these captivating-sounding ingredients, nor how much of each ingredient to dispense?

Alas, like the melange of spices and herbs in this ethereal concoction, many of the ingredients’ names themselves were probably combinations of languages spoken along the Silk Road, including the Armenian dialect of Dikranagerd, Arabic, Western Armenian, Kurdish, Turkish and perhaps even Chaldean Neo-Aramaic. Even for someone like my American-born father, who was fluent in the dialect of Dikranagerd and possessed more than a dozen dictionaries for the languages in question, trying to make sense of some names was problematic.

He knew that Sunboul Hindi was Indian Hyacinth. And that Manafsha Koki was Violet Root. But what the blazes were Agil Koki, Houslouban and Badrankoudj?

So much was lost in the genocide. To cut the Gordian Knot for an Armenian of the diaspora is to locate his/her confiscated, ancestral house in Western Armenia. Since Turkish authorities deliberately changed regional names and landmarks after 1915 to obfuscate their Armenian origins, the directives (often descriptions of the house and surrounding areas, handed down verbally from genocide survivor ancestors) are today insufficient.

For Hairig, another vexing quest had been to find people, of Dikranagerd ancestry or otherwise, who could help him decipher the names and meanings of the elusive ingredients in Iskiri Hayat. Though the famous Cookbook of Dikranagerd possessed a recipe for Iskiri Hayat, it was not the formula he sought. And while some firms produce commercial formulas, he wanted our specific ancestral recipe.

While the task seemed insurmountable, my father had made some progress over the years. However, in recent times, he seemed to have exhausted his options.

So, when I decided to make the pilgrimage to the deserts of Der Zor—the killing fields of the Armenian genocide—last year, I hoped to extend our search to Haleb (Aleppo, Syria), where some genocide survivors (including my relatives) found refuge. There, I surmised, the right person would surely recognize the ingredients’ names, know what they looked like, and even point me to where I could obtain them. We could worry later about how much of each item to blend.

Ultimately, my aim was to refresh Hairig’s supply—and from a source logistically close to Dikranagerd. Doing so seemed a meaningful thing a grateful child could do for a devoted parent in his twilight years.

My father had never seen the home of his ancestors and, yet, he carried the ham yev hod (flavors and fragrances) of Dikranagerd in his words, thoughts and deeds—from his modesty, humor and hospitality, to his dialect and storytelling ability, to his culinary and musical aptitudes. A humble gift would be to help him make that remarkable elixir that could, at least emotionally, bring his ancestors, their way of life, and our lost homeland back to him. And was it not worth it to rediscover a missing and precious part of our culinary heritage, and perhaps share it with the world?

During those fleeting days I spent in Haleb and through fellow traveler Deacon Shant Kazanjian (another Dikranagerdsi—a person hailing from Dikranagerd), I met and quickly bonded with Talin Giragosian and Avo Tashjian, a married couple who possessed the fine qualities one would wish to encounter among Armenians. Talin also happened to be Dikranagerdsi, and it stirred the senses to hear her and Deacon Shant converse in our earthy, colorful, near-extinct dialect. Talin, an English teacher, tried her hand at translating the Iskiri Hayat ingredients we did not recognize, and even enlisted her mother’s assistance. However, they both were as baffled as my father had been over the virtual hieroglyphics. And with that, Talin and Avo met me at the famed covered Bazaar near the Citadel of Aleppo, where the passageways are said to extend from the Fortress all the way to the Armenian Cathedral of the 40 Martyrs in the Old City.

This underground marketplace was a reminder of what life was like centuries ago. Rather than seeming anachronistic and backward, the atmosphere was invigorating. The Bazaar lured visitors to connect with history by showcasing cultural features that had managed to remain intact despite the modern world’s creeping influence. Here, people were not “living in the past,” as some are inclined to say about those who don’t conform to modern habits. These people preferred to cling to their traditions, taking part in an authentic continuation of the past in the present.

As we entered the Bazaar, we marveled at the vaulted ceilings, the intricately carved doors and metalwork on the walls. Merchants — some wearing kaftans, others in Western dress — would call out to customers. Through the narrow, serpentine passageways, hired hands led donkeys carrying sacks of grain. Others carried supplies on horseback. Niquab-wearing women haggled over prices. Through the labyrinths, we passed through the jewelry, textile, pottery and camel meat districts, until we finally reached the herb and spice district.

Talin directed me to the stall belonging to the Spice Man of Aleppo. He was the eldest, best known and most amply supplied of the spice vendors. Talin surmised that the Spice Man, who inherited the business from his father and grandfather, retained the knowledge they had amassed and transmitted to him. This would have meant that when our ancestors emerged from the deserts of Der Zor speaking a variety of dialects, the Spice Man’s grandparents picked up the many names a product went by, including those used by the Armenians.

In spite of whatever their personal ambitions may have been, the Spice Man’s four sons all worked in the family business, operating out of a closet-sized stall. It was teeming with bottles, packets, canisters and jars filled with powders, liquids, seeds and roots. A ladder led to a trap door on the ceiling that opened into an attic, their main storehouse.

Unable to communicate with words, I still could not contain my zeal upon encountering the Spice Man. Stoic and world-weary, he had no inkling of or interest in the source of my enthusiasm. A man of few words as it was, the Spice Man did not speak English. But as Talin recited the shopping list to him, name by name, something incredible occurred:

“Do you have Agil Koki?”, she asked in Arabic.

The Spice Man gestured a grand nod of the head, like a solemn bow, to signal “Yes.”

“What about Badrankoodj?”

Again, the Spice Man’s head would slowly move from up to down until his chin brushed his collarbone.

And so this ritual went on. Talin would say a name, and the Spice Man would unhurriedly acknowledge that not only did he know what the word meant, but that he stocked the desired item.

Then, the Spice Man would call out to his sons to each fill different parts of the order.

By the time Talin was through, we had collected all but one of the ingredients on the list. Even if he were not interrupted by demands from his customers, the Spice Man still would not have been inclined to have a significant chat. We were neither able to cajole him to explain in Arabic some of the more esoteric terms, nor did Talin recognize mystery ingredients by sight or smell. However, the Spice Man’s sons did write down, in Roman letters, each ingredient’s name on its corresponding package—a revealing moment.

I was in mortal shock when we left the stall having completed the lion’s share of my mission. To celebrate, Avo, Talin, Shant and I went to the Bazaar’s bath oil and fragrance district and rewarded ourselves by purchasing traditional kissehs—the coarse washcloths used by our elders.

Back in my hotel room, I shed a tear while inhaling each aromatic ingredient. Then, I securely packed them into Ziploc bags, distributed them throughout my luggage, and hoped I wouldn’t be taken aside at Damascus airport for suspected drug smuggling. Even afterwards, the heavenly scents that clung to the clothes in my suitcase made my mouth water when I unpacked them back in the States.

What was Hairig’s reaction when I returned to New Jersey, told him my tale, and presented him with one packet after the next? He seemed gratified, but also at a loss. Were we really that close to our goal? It was almost too remarkable. He inspected each sachet carefully as if to say “So this is what Badrankoodj looks like!” and braced himself for the next step: finding a knowledgeable spice vendor who could give us English equivalents to foreign words with the help of visual stimulus.

From here, we will keep readers apprised of the last legs of our intoxicating voyage. The reconstituted beverage may indeed be so supernatural that the next time you hear from us may be from Dikranagerd itself.

Lucine Kasbarian, writer, political cartoonist and book publicist, has been immersed in book, magazine, newspaper and online publishing for more than 30 years. She is a descendant of survivors of the 1915 Turkish genocide of the Armenians, Assyrians and Greeks, which drove her grandparents from their native lands in Western Armenia (now within the borders of Turkey). Lucine is the author of Armenia: A Rugged Land, an Enduring People (Simon & Schuster) and The Greedy Sparrow: An Armenian Tale (Marshall Cavendish). Her syndicated works, often about the culture of exile, appear in media outlets throughout the world. Visit her at: lucinekasbarian.com

Elixir in Exile first appeared in The Armenian Weekly.

Read our interview with Lucine here.