We exchanged stories of our hosts in a sort of competition, observing everything they did like anthropologists or comedians. One of us slept on a fold-out couch in the kitchen. One suspected that the “uncle” who visited the family weekly, while the father was away in Switzerland, was actually the mother’s lover.

The boat voyages that shaped a family’s identity.

I would examine the black and white photographs of Alpullu’s golden age. In their shadows, I identified the vanished town.