Aitch’s appetite has been voracious of late. The other day, he was shoving fistfuls of leftover turkey into his mouth. I was about to admonish him, “Don’t do that, you’ll choke,” when a Thanksgiving memory suddenly popped into my head. Well, it isn’t really my memory, but one that I acquired.

It was my second year in the Peace Corps. Two other volunteers and I had been invited to the Ambassador’s residence for Thanksgiving dinner. A much larger group was invited to the DCM’s house (Deputy Chief of Mission, a kind of assistant Ambassador). Since both houses were in the suburbs of Tunis, and most volunteers lived several hours outside of the city, many of my friends traveled to Tunis on Wednesday and spent the night at my apartment.

Needless to say, whenever two or more volunteers got together we would pool our resources, buy booze and food, and have a party. This night was no exception. We drank and smoked my hookah pipe and listened to my cassette tapes until the wee hours of the morning. I fell asleep but was awakened in the middle of the night by the sounds of a conversation in the next room. Now, at the time I was engaged in a mild flirtation with one of the other boys in the group–we’ll call him X. The conversation was X dishing to one of his friends about the women in his life, including me.

I was livid. I’m not sure why — he hadn’t said anything uncomplimentary, nor had I learned anything I hadn’t already known — but that’s the kind of drama that evolves when you’re twenty-five and you have fifteen or twenty single people sharing living space. The next day, I imperiously told X off and ostentatiously avoided speaking to him until we left for our respective Thanksgiving dinners.

The Ambassador’s dinner went swimmingly. The residence was beautiful, the food was good, and I met some nice Foreign Service people. Two young gentlemen asked for my phone number — to no avail, because I didn’t have a phone, but my ego was gratified nonetheless. Who needs X, I thought?

The evening wrapped up, and we went back to my house where the other contingent had already returned from the DCM’s fete. When we walked in the door, they were bursting to tell their story. “You should have seen X!” they cried. “X was a hero!”

They had decided to take the TGM train to the DCM’s house to save money on cab fare. (TGM stood for “Tunis - Goulette - La Marsa,” but it may have been a play on “TGV,” the European “train a grand vitesse.”) They arrived at the station just as the train was pulling out and made a mad dash for the last car. The last volunteer to board the train fell just as she crossed the threshold, getting caught in the closing doors. She would have been dragged to the end of the platform, but X acted quickly, leaping out of the train, pushing her in, and then hopping back on just in time.

When they got to the DCM’s house, the other volunteers availed themselves of the open bar, toasting X repeatedly. They then tackled the buffet with gusto. The other guests were visibly taken aback at sharing their Thanksgiving board with the great unwashed volunteers.

A friend of X’s, whom we’ll call Y, was eating his turkey ravenously when he began to choke. Everyone at the table paused, waiting for him to recover. He started turning red and gasping, and everyone froze. X jumped up and gave Y a few mightly Heimlich squeezes. A large gob of half-masticated turkey went flying across the table. “Thanks!” Y said, and went back to his plate with renewed zeal. The other guests returned to theirs with slightly less enthusiasm.

For the volunteers, though, it was a story that would serve as conversational capital for the rest of their service. “X saved two lives on Thanksgiving!” I could not stay angry with X after that, and it’s a memory I treasure to this day — even though I wasn’t there to see it.