death in the family

I've been in Diyarbakir since Friday. Burhan, a veterinarian who was incredibly kind and helpful a few years ago in introducing me to his tribe for a photography project, had offered to host me. But when I texted him saying I would arrive in a few hours he responded that his father's brother's daughter had committed suicide and he had to go to their village. Last night he came back to Diyarbakir and picked me up from his hotel in a little van smelling strongly of cow and told me no hotel tonight we'd go to his new home. He recently bought a huge apartment with all brand new appliances and not one but two şark odaları--literally eastern room meaning a carpeted guest salon with cushions or low couches instead of chairs. Over tea and walnuts and a kind of not-too-sweet green grape fruit roll-up that I'd never had before and whose name I've forgotten we caught up after all the years and talk politics and family. On hearing about the suicide I had reflexively wondered if it was something sex/honor related but from Burhan's account it was completely unexplained. She hadn't seemed depressed, nothing traumatic had happened, she'd just taken her father's pistol and shot herself in the head. She was in the hospital for four days before dying. 17 years old. We had to get up early the next morning because her older brother was arriving from out of town at Diyarbakir bus station. They hadn't told him that she was dead, just that he should come back from university because she was sick. Burhan seemed surprised when I told him that where I come from we immediately tell people over the phone; the thinking here is that it's better they hear about it when together with loved ones than all alone and that telephone isn't an appropriate medium for the communication of such important information. There had actually been some debate as to whether to tell him at all or let him find out when he came home for vacation. But he was coming and Burhan wasn't sure whether he should tell the brother right away or let closer relatives do it when they got to the village, an hour away. Burhan overslept in the morning and he was waiting in the cold when we pulled up to the bus terminal. Burhan said a few words of greeting in Kurdish as he got into the back and I said hello and after a few minutes of driving Burhan said I was from America and the brother said welcome and then more silence. Somehow it hadn't occurred to me before seeing his face that if this is the usual way siblings are informed he probably already had figured it out. They dropped me off near my hotel and Burhan and I made plans to meet again when he's back from the village with his wife and kids, who stayed there with much of the extended family in mourning while Burhan came to Diyarbakir.