The Impact of Covid-19 on Global Mobility

Sharon Brandt – Client Services Manager is the head of Crown’s World Mobility Division, annually managing the relocation of over 2500 corporate customers on behalf of Crown’s managed accounts.

1982 was only 36 days old.  I'd been living in airport terminals for 2 days.  I was tired, hungry, confused as all hell, and seriously jet-lagged.  I was also now looking at a respectable pay raise and a substantial amount of training to keep my new rank.  I'd been given travel orders to the wrong base by some military clerk (which I learned when I got to the wrong place).  I managed to make all the travel arrangements to complete my trip, but in the meantime I was 500 miles from my destination, staying in transient quarters for three days in Ankara, the capital city of the Republic of Turkey.  I needed to get something to eat for the next three days, unpack, and bath (finally!)   And once those were done, I still had letters to write, a new travel schedule to learn, transportation to arrange, and a new place to get the hang of.

Finally, very late on the night of my arrival - or more correctly, very early the next morning - my tasks were done and I was able to just relax.  Breathe it in.  It was all so very new, but I had made it.  Not where I was supposed to be, but here none-the-less.  I had three days with nothing to do after all the build-up and emotion of leaving home and family and friends and country and even my old job and rank behind.  I went to the patio door of the apartment I had been assigned to just take a look at where I had landed, and stepped outside onto the balcony.

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The air was very cold and I huddled in my coat, arms wrapped tightly around against the chill.  It was early February, and I was high up in the mountains of Turkey.  The apartment was built onto the hillside, and the sleeping city fell down and away from my balcony in a bowl lit by twinkling lights beneath twinkling stars.  Moonlight splashed over minarets giving an Arabian Nights flavor to the night.  I was at eye level with the nearest minaret, maybe a quarter mile away to my right and down the side of the hill.  I breathed in air smoky from the wood-burning stoves used to heat the neighboring homes and hinting at spices I had only heard of before; frankincense and myrrh.

And as I stood there - small beneath the moon and stars but high above this exotic and mysterious place - the clear, haunting, foreign song of the imam's morning call to prayers lifted softly to my ears.  The soft chanting of that lone voice was soon joined by other voices from other mosques on the Scheherazade landscape, forming a Gregorian tapestry of echoed reverence in the still air.  I lingered there, no longer feeling the cold, until the prayers echoed away mosque by mosque, leaving the smoke-brushed air humming; the memory hanging between the twinkling lights and the twinkling stars.

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