A gentleman of grapes
Aylin Öney Tan
We were driving toward the vineyards. Suddenly, he pulled over and looked up at the sky. A plane was taking off. He watched the plane for a while. He seemed to be flying away with the plane. He was surely seeing something beyond a plane simply taking off. Perhaps it was an imagined destination or himself dressed handsomely in the cockpit. As the plane almost disappeared in the sky, he murmured dreamily: “I always dreamed of becoming a pilot when I was young.”
This is one of the most vivid memories of Orhan Ziya Diren, who passed away last week — a memory that stayed with me. The vineyard bearing the family name was in Tokat, a town in the mid-Black Sea region of Türkiye. He could have owned that plane or even a fleet of them. He could travel wherever he wished. In fact, he traveled a lot, representing Türkiye as a Member of Parliament in international organizations. But his childhood dream of becoming a pilot and flying across the globe remained just that — an unfulfilled dream.
Visionary father
