OUR PASCAL

Our Pascal
Serdar Tastanoglu


My dear readers, this week I want to share with you another of my memories. The reason for sharing this memory is to give you an example and to emphasise the value of disabled people in western countries and to show the importance of tourism for disabled people.

I also want to tell how Europeans value humanity which is contrary to our views of them, we think of Europeans as selfish and obsessed with their comforts and material goods. I want to tell you their humanitarian ideals and human emotions.

That year after working very hard, my wife and I needed to have a break. We decided to go to a holiday village in Bodrum that we went to a couple of years ago, a place we were very pleased with. This holiday village was nice but not very flashy, a place with mostly middle-income European tourists and not many locals. We started our holiday as a happy family of three people.

A couple of days after our arrival a group of around forty tourists came to stay in the holiday village. Some of those tourists were noticeably intellectually disabled. The group’s leader Mr. Samuel was from France but originally from Africa. He and I have become very good friends since then. I was surprised to see these people had decided to come to Turkey for fifteen days’ holiday to boost their moral and motivation.

This holiday village was very luxurious for my wife and I even though we both working and getting good salaries, but this place was very ordinary for this group of middle class disabled tourists. These people weren’t looking any different than from the people who weren’t disabled, a scholarly looking gentleman with a cap and a scarf on his neck smoking his pipe, the laughter from a young lady was like the laughter of an English lady and she got the all benefits from the activities of the holiday village. I was very surprised when I learned that this girl was disabled.

These people had all the benefits of every single corner of the holiday village like the other tourists, they weren’t skipping any details, they joined in all the activities and music entertainments. I observed that these people weren’t being treated differently to the other people, if anything they were being treated as important people.

There was solar eclipse due which was all over the media, everyone including us wanted to observe it, as we were trying to darken broken glass with soot with our lighters to watch the eclipse Mr Samuel brought his group special glasses so they could watch this event properly which we’ll never forget.

We were spending time with our young son and enjoying our stay, we were going to the sea, joining in the activities, playing in the swimming pool and dining in the restaurant. Everything was going very good.

The care we were giving to our son caught the attention of one of the disabled guests who came over to us, which we learned later was our handsome Pascal.

One day at lunchtime Mr Samuel asked us faint heartedly if we didn’t mind if Pascal could sit with us? There was three of us and we were sitting at a table for four. We accepted him immediately, the forty years old huge blue-eyed Pascal came to our table.

Pascal had a mentally disability and was only able to speak a couple of words, because of this he mostly communicated with sign language. Pascal’s care assistant who knew Pascal very well told us that Pascal was jealous of the care we were giving our son and he was expecting the same care for himself. If you saw Pascal wearing a suit entering a reception you would think that he was the Italian actor Franco Nero. But our Pascal was like a big child with his cap, his small tight t-shirt and his shorts up to his waist.

We had a race feeding our son and Pascal at the same time, Pascal was clapping his hands with joy and cheering to his friends saying “Papa, Papa” (Daddy). He was by our side for the rest of his holiday. When I played Poker, he was with me, when he wanted ice cream he came to me, when he needed an explanation as to what was happening during the Hotel’s entertainment shows, he came to me, in the swimming pool with his swimming ring, he was with me. Pascal became our family’s big son.

Mr. Samuel kept telling us how grateful he was that the usually introverted Pascal had completely turned around and came to life with us. Pascal even came first in one of the Hotel’s fun races, he was crying with happiness and jumping up and down at the same time. Which is not something that I can easily forget.

Pascal leaving his own group and joined our family caught the attention of the other tourists, they were looking at us admirably and some of them even expressed their thoughts verbally.
We became good friends with Jean Claud and Linda, a middle-aged Belgian couple who had spent most of their time with us at the beach this Belgian couple also loved us Our friendship started when they used to leave their towels on the sunbeds beside them so no one else would take the sunbeds before we arrived. This couple were both on their second marriages and each of them had children from their previous marriages who resented their relationship, so they watched us and Pascal with admiration. We had a beautiful holiday with Pascal, our new Belgian friends and the other hotel guests.

All too soon it was the end of the holiday and time to say our goodbyes. Firstly, we said good bye to our Belgium friends who were so emotional that they both began to cry. Jean Claud my Belgian friend wanted to give me a present but he was afraid that I would misunderstand, I was very curious what this present was and I told him that it would be an honour to receive a gift from him. He told me he was chief of the Brussels fire brigade, and it was time for his retirement. When he began working for the fire brigade they gave him a belt with the symbol of the Belgian fire brigade on the buckle, this belt was in perfect condition and he wanted me to have it. I thanked him for his gift, we hugged and said our goodbyes.

Now it was time for us say good bye to our son Pascal, with Mister Samuel’s help we told him it was time for us to go. Pascal started crying Papa, Papa and this made all of us cry too. It was very difficult for us to leave Pascal as we had become so used to him beside us. His initial jealousy towards our son had been replaced with the love of a protective big brother. Pascal had the infectious joy of a small child who would light up with happiness at the smallest thing and we couldn’t help but share in this happiness with him.

Over the year we sent a couple of lovely cards to Pascal and we wrote letters to Mr Samuel, Jean Claud and Linda. They told us that when we left Pascal he didn’t talk to anyone else until he went home to his home town which was in the North of France, he was making moustache signs with his hand and saying Papa to describe me which made everybody laugh as well as a little sad. In their letters our Belgian Friends were insisting that we came to visit them in Belgium.

That summer we decided to visit Belgium and after Belgium we would go to Den Helder in Holland where I did my postgraduate. When we got to Belgium we stayed in Jean Claud and Linda’s home. They were more welcoming then some of my own relatives. This lovely couple had a very modest life style. They did everything they could to make us happy, they introduced us to Brussels but drinking coffee and chatting with these lovely people in their garden was more than enough for us. We had so much to talk about and learn from each other.


One morning I got an offer from Linda and Jean Claud “You saw Brussels and we have another city called Bruges, it’s really worth seeing. Its four hours away from here and we would like to bring you there. You have no right to object to this as we have already planned it all for you, get ready for tomorrow and we will all go.” they said.

European people are not spontaneous like us, if they are going to do something they will plan and detail it in advance. We understood that our friends had organised this trip for us but however we wanted to visit Pascal who we had all met last year. As we had become very close, without hesitation I asked, “how far is Pascal from here?”

Immediately they opened the map and they calculated it. According to the map Pascal was four and a half hours away from here which was the same distance as Bruges. After my question Linda saw that we really wanted to see Pascal and she said, “Just to let you know, the village that Pascal lives is a very ordinary place and there is nothing interesting to see there”
They talked with each other for a couple of minutes and they said we have an offer for you, Pascal’s village or Bruges? You can choose which one, you decide where we go. Like you guessed, we chose to go to Pascal’s village.

Both of our Belgian friends’ eyes filled with tears and they said “Instead of seeing Bruges which is such an unmissable place to visit you chose to visit Pascal. This is very emotional for us so we will bring you Pascal’s village and Bruges.” We protested that it was enough to see Pascal’s village and we would see Bruges another time, but they would not change their minds.

At last we took the road to Pascal’s village and after a long journey we were very excited to enter the village and I had so many questions. What would Pascal do? How was his family and their home? Would he remember me? We knocked at their door and an old lady answered it, Linda said that this was Pascal’s mother. She introduced us to Pascal’s mother and explained to her the reason for our visit.

Pascal’s mother excitedly called to Pascal inside the house, Pascal come running outside and when he saw us he gave us a hug and he started to cry. This was a scene which you could never forget. Pascal was saying Papa Papa while making a moustache sign with his hand and he was hugging my son and wife. Our son Pascal hadn’t forgotten us!

After a while we met Pascal’s elderly father. He was an extremely modest gentleman but you could see that the years had taken their toll on him. He no longer had the energy to deal with Pascal, maybe that’s why Pascal picked me as a surrogate father, to give him the care that he wanted and that’s why he found me suitable.

With Linda acting as our interpreter we learned that after the holiday Pascal was always asking about us. Where did we live? What was Papa’s job?

Pascal showed us his bedroom which had the Mickey Mouse card we sent him on the wall, afterwards he showed us his garden and introduced us to his little sweet puppy and showed us his neighbours home. He asked me a lot of questions in sign language which I couldn’t understand.

Sadly, evening came and it was time to go, we had a four and half hour journey back to Brussels so we had to leave. It was very emotional to leave but this time he was much more mature, he didn’t cry but his eyes were full of tears. I think because he was with his parents he was able to control himself.

Pascal’s parents thanked us for our kindness to their son and gave us presents to show their appreciation, these gifts were very spiritual things which we still have in our home today. We returned to Brussels with the happiness of seeing our son Pascal again.

It is important to know the importance of disabled people in the western world and how organised disabled tourism, both foreign and domestic, could be a benefit to our country’s economy. I also saw that hospitality is not only unique to us, I saw how important it is for everybody to have a rich heart, to love humanity to live humanly.
Because of this memory, once again I lived and understood.

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