Ona sorarsanız: ‘Lafı bile edilemez, mikroskopik bi zaman…’
Bana sorarsanız: ‘On senesi ömrümün…’
Bir kurşun kallemim vardi, ben içeri düştügüm sene
Bir haftada yaza yaza tükeniverdi
Ona sorarsaniz: ‘Bütün bi hayat…’
Bana sorarsanız: ‘Adam sende bi hafta…’”
- Nazim Hikmet
Since I’ve written my last post, the moon has circled the earth 358 times
If you ask the moon: “It’s a microscopic slice of time”
If you ask me: “It’s a year of my life…”
I bought this laptop a year and a half ago
And ran its battery down writing this post
If you ask the battery: “That’s an entire life…”
If you ask me: “Man, it’s only a couple of hours…”
But, in some ways, this last year has been an entire life for me as well. These three hundred and fifty eight days began by puffing my puffing my chest out, raising my chin, and daring the world to kick me in the nuts. A beautiful young girlfriend. A great new job. A luxurious house (with a huge bathtub!). I was ready to join the upper crust of Turkish society – dinners on private yachts, luncheons in Ottoman palaces overlooking the Bosphorous, beds with actual legs instead of just mattresses on the floor! Oh yeah, this was gonna be a great year!
But somebody forgot to say “maşallah”, and the world, as it is wont to do, kicked me in the fucking nuts. Then, when I bent down, cupping my wounded testicles in agony, it stuck its fingers in my nostrils, pulled my whimpering face up, and sprayed cat urine in my eyes. I fell to the ground, writhing in agony, and it proceeded to whip me with a cat of nine tails, reciting a list of my sins, blacker than the fluid that began dribbling out of my abused genitals.
It was that bad.
Actually, things started off pretty cool. The job was going great, and I decided to rent this classy flat in a relatively quiet, upscale area. My university was close by, so I walked home from work in the sun, whistling all the way. I would arrive at my house, whereupon my girlfriend would fling open the front door, apron around her waist and a sheet of freshly baked cookies in her hands. I would smile, tip my hat, and nonchalantly break into song. Sometimes, we would meet at the Starbucks a couple blocks down the street. We would sip iced lattes and laugh like “har har har” at all the people less fortunate than us. Unfortunately, that misfortune was closer than we thought.
My mom’s factory was bought out by evil capitalists from Denmark (or some other equally evil place), and her unemployment wasn’t enough to pay her bills. First she lost the house, then the car. She rented a room in a den of iniquity (her sister’s house) and knitted socks for orphans for two cents and hour until her fingers bled. She was forced to sell one of her kidneys just to afford enough money for beans, which she would add to the soup she made from boiling leather boots in a trash can out back.
It was that bad.
So, I says: “Mom, come join me in smiling, happy Turkey, where all the smiley, happy people smile happily!”
And she says: “Um… ok”
But things aren’t always what they seem… Mom arrived in January, where I immediately put her to work for a family of rich Jewish freemasons. She spent her days running after a crosseyed autistic boy who spit on her and beat her with a big stick. As the family gathered for their wonderous feasts, the likes of which we wage-earners will ne’er see, she would eat her scraps in silence in the kitchen with the other hired help. She cried herself to sleep every night, singing “Neden geldim Istanbul’a”
*That last sentence was a lie. She doesn’t know that song.
Slowly, the darkness that rested over Ohio (and most of the rust belt), spread across the world like a cloud of… darkness… and all the smiley, happy people in Turkey hung themselves.
Mom quit her job, my girlfriend couldn’t find work, and then… my father died.
It came as a shock to everyone, at least to everyone who didn’t know that, in an all-too-common display of Rotsinger stubbornness, my father had convinced himself that he had somehow miraculously cured himself of diabetes and cardiomyopathy and stopped taking his medicine half a year prior. (Previous displays of the aforementioned stubbornness include my grandfather refusing to get a voicebox implanted after successful throat cancer surgery, leaving a gaping hole in his neck which he would clean with a pipe cleaner; and my great-grandfather, who died from complications resulting from a hangnail, not bothering to go to the doctor until his foot basically fell off).
Although I was entitled to 5 days of compassion leave, I only took 3, not wanting to spread any burden to my overworked colleagues. Upon returning to work, I was immediately informed that my contract was not being renewed. That I was, essentially, fired. When I told my students, they exploded in tears (and one in blood, but I think she has a medical problem) and resolved to do something. Letters were written, meetings were held, signatures were collected, curse words were written on pants (they were my pants, and I gave them permission!). The result of all this is that the rector called me into his office and said:
Aaron, I don’t think you should be here anymore.
And I said: er… huh?
And he said: We’ll give you approximately ten thousand American dollars if you go home quietly and don’t cause any more fuss.
And the air around me went: whoosh! As I ran out the door.
Three and a half months. Paid holiday. What should I do?
I immediately downloaded every James Bond movie ever made and sat down to watch them all (Everyone prefers Sean Connery, but I find Roger Moore to be superior in many ways). Then, I downloaded Battlestar Galactica. Then Star Trek. Then a bunch of movies. Then I got really fucking bored.
So, I left. I packed up my Mom and my girlfriend, and we headed down to İzmir, a sunny, liberal Turkish city on the Aegean coast. The nickname of the city is “Beautiful Izmir”, and it’s known for its gorgeous women and unusually modern way of life.
However, Izmir… is full of nothing but whores and horses, and I’m not going to explain that any further.I was offered a job at the Izmir University of Economics, the most prestigious university in Izmir. When I saw the salary, I immediately laughed and bought a train ticket out of there. I could make more money selling pork in Mecca.
We continued down south to Ephesus, an ancient Roman city, containing the ruins of John the apostle’s tomb (sans the mosaic tiles that I stole and are now in my living room). We spent a relaxing few days there whining about how we had to return to Istanbul, and then returned to Istanbul so I could keep looking for work.
But I couldn’t find any.
Neither could Mom. Neither could my girlfriend. Mom began to hate the bright lights and big city and started to miss the bigotry and incest of her quaint little Ohio town. After much deliberation and many tears, we put her on a flight back to Ohio, where she is now happily working and putting back the pieces of the life that those Norwegian bastards shattered.
Yet I still found no job. The luxury apartment began to weigh heavily on my budget. We switched from kebab to rice, from baths to showers, from beer to diluted antifreeze (which really isn’t much cheaper unless you conserve it by drinking your urine afterwards). I had a slew of interviews, from the most prestigious university in the whole city to a ramshackle campus of peeling paint and exposed wires. (I was actually interviewed by a smelly, unshaven Irishman wearing jeans and a Simpsons t-shirt).
Yet I still found no job. I lost all hope. I drank too much and beat the dog. Then the dog ran away. Then my finacee beat me for making the dog run away. Then we ran around Kadıköy together, looking for the dog so we could beat it for running away. We didn’t find it, so we stopped beating things.In my lowest point, I did the unthinkable. I applied for a job in the northern reaches of Siberia, in a town called Нижневартовск. I had a video interview over Skype, and they offered me the job. My girlfriend and I talked about it, and it was eventually decided that as much as we were tired of beating each other, moving to a barren oil field in the middle of a vast vodka-filled tundra was probably not going to make anyone very happy, so I turned it down.
However, out of nowhere, I suddenly got offered a job at Bilgi University, one of İstanbul’s best private universities. It couldn't have happened at a better time.
My reply to them:
“Yes yes oh thank you yes yes please yes yes pay me pay me pay me yes”
Exactly two days later, I hired some villiagers to destroy everything I own, throw all the broken pieces haphazardly onto the back of a truck that can simply not be street legal, and carry it far, far away from my little Kadı villiage, to the inner city. To Kurtuluş. To freedom. To... a ghetto?
Let me explain how we chose this apartment. We were walking around this area called Kurtuluş, wondering why all these nice apartments were so cheap, when I said to my girlfriend:
“I really like this area, it’s really cosmopolitan and diverse”
A man turned around to me and said, in perfect English:
“This place isn’t for you. It’s for refugees. From Iraq. Like me.”
I smiled, turned to my fiancee and said, “Great! We're home!”
That was a little over two months ago, and since then, I’ve been quite happy here. There have only been two bombs since we moved here, and I missed the closest one by at least 5 minutes, which is, like, a pretty long time. *not exactly fair – it was detonated by the police.
Actually, I think most of the Iraqis are quite happy here along with the transvestites and their little dogs. And the Africans with their duffel bags full of perfume. And that one strange Saudi guy who sits at the börek shop ALL DAY EVERY DAY. (Sure, the börek is good, but come on!).
I even managed to squeeze in a little late-summer holiday to the southeast of Turkey (I couldn't actually leave the country because I was techically here illegally), where my girlfriend and I danced through the fairy chimneys, slept in a cave and narrowly avoided a train crash. (It wasn't my fault!)
Yes, yes, this year has been HELL, my friends, but it’s all looking up now. Dog (yes, that was his name) has been replaced by a cat (to whom I’m terribly allergic, but love means sacrifice...). Özyeğin has been replaced by Bilgi, where I work 6 hours a day (2 of which are my lunch break). My Mom is irreplacable, but she knows how to use teh interwebs now, so we stay in touch.And the hat, well, the hat shall always remain.
