Follow Me As I Discover Land, Language and Self...
I have a new class of English language students. Ten from Somalia, three from Mexico, and two from Togo, all mothers of young children. I like to get some background on my students, and so, on the first day I handed out a brief questionnaire. It asked how long they had studied English and how many years of education they’d received, both in their country and here in the U.S.…
It’s easy to second-guess other countries’ political situations. Easy and actually kind of fun. When I lived in Turkey, I found local politics a welcome distraction from my own country’s problems. The answers to my adopted country’s dilemmas seemed so clear. From the beginning of our stay, in 2010, the people we knew spoke against Prime Minister Erdoğan. They said he was trying to turn Turkey into Iran. I wasn’t…
From 2010 to 2013, my husband, Sankar, and I, were immigrants in Turkey. We could barely speak the language of our new country, and we adhered to a religion followed by only a minuscule number of Turkish citizens. Having been in that (admittedly temporary) position, I sympathize with immigrants in my own country. I know what it is like to look different, speak differently, and believe different things. We never…
Sankar’s job was winding down. He had already started working on projects in other parts of the world. It was time to head home. “We’ll be home for Christmas,” I told Angela on the phone. I loved those sentimental words. “No,” she replied. “I want one more Christmas in Istanbul.” Greg agreed. Sankar and I were surprised, but pleased. Even though our kids had visited the past summer, we had…
Turkey had given Sankar and me an unexpected gift. Living there, we had uncovered a strong mutual interest in history, something that had lain dormant throughout our marriage. After visiting historic sites in nearly all parts of the country, in late summer of 2012, we were heading out to see something very much in the present. The war in Syria was in its eighteenth month. What had begun with…
In the final months of our Turkish posting, I welcomed the arrival of a new attribute: competence. Competence, which I’d been so lacking only two short years before, which I had longed for and studied for and pressed people to try and achieve. Now it seemed within my grasp. A great deal of pride could be attached to figuring out a foreign city. And that pride was heightened in vast,…
I stood in the Old City, next to the 18th century baroque Laleli mosque. Admiring its calligraphy-adorned sultan’s entrance, I looked up past bare winter branches at its minarets, shaped like tulip bulbs. Then, I turned and strolled through the Sahaflar (book exchange) Bazaar, a courtyard market dating to Byzantine times, when it was called the Khartoprateia. I ran my hand over the cool marble of a kiosk where Ottoman do-gooders would dispense tea, water, and…
I called it The Work Caravan to Asia, but by now it was simply a routine drive from our apartment to Özyeğin University and then on to 3M. One car, Ümit driving, Sankar and I sitting together in the back seat. We did cross the Bosphorus, however, Turkey’s watery intercontinental border, and I loved peering down at the elegant Ortaköy mosque on the European shore. Traffic wasn’t usually a…
The student population of Özyeğin University had doubled in size in 2010, the year before I started work. In 2011, it doubled again. And it was predicted to double once again in 2012. Turks equated school size with importance. I wasn’t sure why, but exponential scholastic growth was considered a very good thing. I was often reminded of the old riddle: is it better to receive $5 a day for…
Sankar and I stand facing six huge, stone-carved heads. Above us are terraces containing the carved bodies to whom these heads once belonged. It is a scene of drama and grandeur, but also destruction. We are spending three days in southeastern Turkey, gliding from the Roman era back to pre-history and then forward to the Biblical period of Abraham. The occasion: another American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) tour. Our itinerary: the World…
