The Delight of E-mail from Around the World

Two letters about Turkish Delight from Joshua Pong, an E-mail friend in Hong Kong:

Turkish Delight! I have a buddy, a Chinese who shares with me a deep passion for hiking. We two have tramped the hills of Hong Kong I don’t know how many times over. Yet we still want to do it again during our holidays. He lectures in a theological college, is proficient in Greek and Hebrew, largely educated in the States and yet managed to come back to Hong Kong about ten years ago to pick up Chinese again and write several books in that language. He doesn’t read Lewis, nor George MacDonald. In other words, apart from hiking, we have almost nothing in common, despite of our common religion. One of his sidelines is to lead Christians in Hong Kong to the Holy Land and its neighbouring countries (which I have never found a desire to visit). From one of his numerous trips there, one year he brought back a present for me. When I tore away the wrapping, to my absolute delight, it was a packet of Turkish Delight from Turkey!

Friendship is a sweet thing, isn’t it?

On the packet of Turkish Delight my friend brought back from Turkey it was written that the stuff had aphrodisiac property. I suspect this might be a sales gimmick on the part of the present-day candy vendor in Turkey.

A LETTER ABOUT TURKISH DELIGHT from Chanock Weil, an E-mail friend in Tel Aviv:

Turkish Delight is Rakhat Lokum in Turkish, but —

1. I don’t much like it.
2. I don’t know what Rakhat Lokum means in Turkish.