More Stories from Turkey

The first night at Yuva we sat around a small campfire built in the dirt. A., our host, had wrapped potatoes in foil and threw them in the fire for cooking. Moments later, something small and crawling from out of the ground attacks the fire, spins away, paniced behind one of the stumps we’re sitting on.

“What was that?” someone asks. A. grapples with his unsteady English, trying to explain. “Is like, we call ‘akrep’. Dey like the tumors,” he says, pointing to the roasting foil treats.

“It looked like a giant potato bug,” I offer. “It had the same abdomen. Do you have potato bugs in Turkey, A.?”

“What dis, ‘potato bug’? Like dese, but bug?” He points to one of the potatos. “Maybe dis what you call akrep. I don’t know how you say.”

I turn to the Americans. “That’s funny – a Turkish potato bug after the potatos! Come here little guy, where’d you go?” I turn around and began searching for the creature I had seen emerge from the embers.

“Shannon, be careful… you don’t actually know what it is,” my mom says cautiously.

“Ah, come on — it’s a potato bug. I saw it in the firelight: it’s got that big abdomen and the creepy head and twiggy legs and…”

C., the British fiancé of Atilla, approaches as I’m hunched over the stump under which I last saw the bugger. “What are you looking at?” she inquires.

“This huge bug we saw. I think it’s a potato bug: he’s got the same body, really light skin, and –”

Right then a large near-translucent creature crawls up the stump. In the glow of the fire he throbs with light. He is primordial.

“Oh my god!” Caroline shouts, and startles me away from the log. “That’s a yellow scorpian, Shannon. I wouldn’t get close.”

Upon hearing the word “scorpion” everyone moves as far away from the tainted stump as possible, except A. who smiles in recognition.

“Yes!” he laughs. “That is what I mean to say — you call akrep scorpian. He continues laughing and stroking the fire, rooting out our now-cooked potatoes.