the second house over there in Turkey

the second house over there in Turkey

fiction
edward w pritchard

It was not usual for families in Istanbul to have a second house outside of the city that was always in progress, building wise. As money was available materials would be bought and the extended family would go out to the house after work or dinner and all work on it. Most families if they drew from a large enough relative base didn't have to hire much of the work done and using sweat equity created a lot of value for the family over time. It was an ancient custom, born of instability and it hedged the family fortune, encouraged community and communications between generations and was a forced savings device.

In our family sometimes the generations argued about the project. This wasn't supposed to happen for we were supposed to respect the elders. Still the younger people sometimes had better heads for business having been to University or been in the army and traveled around a lot and saw different things.

We had been working on our second house for about ten years and there was an earth quake and it destroyed most of the second property. Like everywhere the insurance companies think of everything and there is no insurance on the property because it is in progress and they don't insure that because of excessive risk to them. We knew that collectively as a family but a lot of us assumed different.

We have decided to start another second property in a different area this time.