Yaren: One's Loyal Companion and Heart Friend—Turkish

On being friends with other species, walking alongside as companions, and the culture of friendship in Japan as having "moai"

Your friend is your needs answered.

He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.

And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.

Kahlil Gibran

Last week, I stated that this week's word would be in Turkish, which is also more difficult for me to write about than a word in another language. But then one of life's pleasant surprises happened, and I discovered a word that captivated me far more than the one I had intended.

Still not easy, but more fun.

Prepared by author in Canva

I've been following a heartfelt story for a long time and wrote about it recently. Bursa, one of Turkey's most picturesque cities, has a lake village: Eskikaraağaç. Aside from being a delightful place and a home for various birds, this village has become one of the European Stork Villages, especially with its stork population in summer. But that is not what exactly concerns us. I believe one of the most pleasantly touching stories about nature and human’s relation is happening in this village.

On an ordinary day, a tired and hungry stork, having just returned from a long migration journey, landed in an old fisherman's boat in the middle of the lake. When the fisherman saw the stork's exhaustion, he offered him some of the fish he had caught. The stork accepted and ate the fisherman's offering. This sparkled a friendship and the same stork was a guest on the fisherman's boat the following days, and the fisherman took care of him well with freshly caught fish.

This is how the story of the stork and the fisherman began. The stork and the fisherman meet every day on the same boat during every summer for exactly 12 years, Like a father and son, the fisherman feeds the stork, and the stork approaches him affectionately.

Adem and Yaren the stork — Alpertuydes, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The two of them are experiencing one of the highest points of communication that two different species of living things have managed to establish. They became friends and "companions" with each other.

Yaren means more than a friend in Turkish; it means a heart companion, someone you trust and can lean on with confidence. Its origin actually comes from Persian, but Turkish, just like its geography, includes many words from the neighboring countries since it is at the intersection of many cultures.

Since the stork in our story is a friend to the old fisherman, the villagers call him Yaren. Yaren is also used as a female name in Turkish.

The essence of the word is to accompany a person on their path, no matter how they go. Sometimes only standing with someone who is sad or offended, even if you do nothing but accompany them. Sometimes helping someone struggling with a difficult task. Sometimes walking hand in hand on a path.

These are the work of a yaren, with love and care from the heart.

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Friendship, or being a true companion, makes us better. Whether we're the one being accompanied or the one accompanying—maybe it's the same thing, by the way—we're definitely becoming better.

Of course, being a companion is not a concept just in Turkish. For example, friendship is one of the most important elements that help people live long in Japanese culture, which is one of the main cultures of the longest-living people in the world. Especially in Okinawa, which is famous for longevity, the concept of "moai", which means a small group of friends closely connected to each other, proves this.

People live in groups of “moai”s. Most of the time, they come together for some special purposes.

In the article about Okinawans life, Moai—This Tradition is Why Okinawan People Live Longer, Better, moai’s place is explained:

In small neighborhoods across Okinawa, friends “meet for a common purpose” (sometimes daily and sometimes a couple days a week) to gossip, experience life, and to share advice and even financial assistance when needed. They call these groups their moai.

Having moai provides you with social, psychological and even financial support which makes leading your life with ease and sometimes fun.

Notes & Reads:

The friendship of Yaren and Adem was recognized around the world and became the subject of a documentary. The documentary Yaren, directed by Burak Doğansoysal, won the best documentary award at the Prague Film Festival.

The Peanuts Movie, which I love as an adorer of children’s stories, gives the emotion and warmth of friendship even between different species: Charlie Brown and Snoopy, a boy and a dog. Trust, solidarity, disappointment, and all the other aspects of friendship along with social relations are written affectionately.

I hope a life where we would never live without a yaren or a moai.

Next week, we’ll stay close to Turkey again, not a Turkish word but from one of its neighbors. We’ll also stay close to the topic of social relations.

Have a nice week and weekend.

— Gulsun

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