The Turk Who Loved Apples Read Online Free PDF Page B

that constantly threatened to veer into fidgety, unrealistic anticipation of imminent delight.
    That was how my perception of travel began, and for a very long time it remained unchanged. When my father, a historian specializing in Revolutionary War–era Concord, Massachusetts, first took me abroad—to Denmark and England at the age of almost-eight—I had no map or guidebook to prepare me, just a sense that, somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, a paradise of Lego bricks and unseen Dr. Who episodes awaited me. And perhaps that was all I needed, for nothing of importance that took place on that adventure could have been predicted in a book.
    And it was an important trip, maybe the most important of my life. The Matt Gross who arrived in Copenhagen one afternoon in the summer of 1982 was a strange, nearly feral creature: messy curly hair neither tamed nor touched by brush or comb; tough dungarees with grass stains at the knee; blue eyes huge and unblinking, like an alien. And, always at his side, a crocheted yellow polyester blanket, softened by years of love, that provided a sense of security, particularly when paired with a thumb in the mouth. Picture Linus from Peanuts , crossed with Pig-Pen.
    The first thing this Matt did, upon arriving in his hotel room, was look out the window and spot the glowing red neon sign of a bookstore. Books! This was a treat. He hadn’t really known where to start exploring, or what to do in the days before he and his father would make the trip to Legoland, in Billund (wherever that was), but now here was a bookstore. He could read, and pretty well, too: Encyclopedia Brown, Dr. Who novelizations, Tolkien. No surprise for the child of an editor and a history professor, really. So when he saw the bookstore, he leapt with excitement to show his father.
    Only, there was a problem. A tricky problem that Dad didn’t know precisely how to explain, or rather, he knew how but wasn’t sure Matt would understand. And so he just said it.
    â€œMatt, that’s an adult bookstore.”
    Did Matt understand? He did, somehow. It had something to do with sex, whatever that was, with a world that he’d sensed existed but that had been, until now, beyond him. Well, it was still beyond him, but here, on his first day in Denmark, it was closer. He could see it, he could be told where it was, and though he was denied entry, this one step, this knowledge was enough. He’d inched closer. He laughed, I imagine, and his father laughed with him. It was funny, that he could understand even though he didn’t really understand. And besides, he’d brought other books to read anyway.
    From there, the revelations and significant moments began to flow, seemingly at a rate of one per day. At Tivoli Gardens, the grand amusement park at the center of Copenhagen, Matt attempted to eat a fast-food burger from a kiosk—but rejected it as disgusting, inedible. His father, unbelieving, cajoled the tearful boy to finish until, at last, he himself bit into the foul gray thing. Into the trash it went; they dined on french fries instead. For the first time he could remember, Matt had been right about something in the grown-up realm: taste. And soon he was learning more. At Legoland, he had his initial plate of the heretofore exotic spaghetti bolognese, and liked it, enough that the dish became his mainstay, the food by which he could judge a restaurant, and on which he could rely in the absence of compelling alternatives. He was moving forward.
    Although at times, it did not feel like moving forward. After a few days in Denmark, Matt and his father departed, by train and ferry, for England. It was an unbelievable journey—the train actually drove onto the ferry , Matt was stunned to learn—and despite the rocky seas and attendant nausea, he managed to play Centipede in the ferry lounge well enough to win a free game, another breakthrough. Once in England, however, Matt made a