Losing My Religion

It's taken me 79 days of virtually zero homesickness or adjustment to finally crash into the reality of Turkey. I needed some space tonight, and, after work, ate dinner alone at Gazi's restaurant. It's right outside the door up to our flat. I walked home in the rain--soaked for 45 minutes and needing a change of clothes--so I went upstairs first to put on dry things and grab my English/Turkish dictionary.

No one paid me a lot of attention for awhile. Gazi was charming as always, and Müjdat was sweet and chipper as he made my food. But as I sat there, watching everyone chatter about daily life in Turkish, an overwhelming feeling of sadness seeped up from somewhere inside me. I have no idea what it was, and it seemed to come from nowhere. Like I'd accidentally stumbled into a fresh feeling.

I nearly cried, right there in the restaurant. I started thinking about how we are the language that we speak. In a fundamental, inextricable way, I am the English language, and I am deeply, deeply, deeply American. Yes, attitude and spirit can be expressed through actions and behavior, but so much of us is language. There is a feeling of standing outside of someone, of seeing the outside of a house, or a cave, or somewhere deep and intricate, and being unable to enter. With no words, no verb tenses, no imperative, no adverbs, no inflection, no mastery of a language, I have no way to get inside another person. And then I thought about how we are only as strong as the language that we know. I know some numbers. Some polite expressions and only the most basic of understandings of how to turn an adjective into a statement about myself (i.e. I am sick; I am cold; I am good). But what am I beyond that? Little.

After awhile, Müjdat finished making pide and sat down with me. Using the dictionary and napkins, we plotted a conversation. It began with me writing the word "silver", and moved to sugar, and then the Turkish equivalent. We talked about our families, drawing pictures for the number of children (we are both the third children, but his parents had four more after him). I drew pictures of California and the United States--he showed me where he was born in Kars. We learned the months in order to establish that we are both 23, our birthdays in July, 12 days apart. There was lots of page flipping, and dead ends, and mis-translations and second attempts, but with nouns and horrible verb conjugation, we talked about what our parents do.

It is so deeply unsatisfying to communicate in this stilted, rough, ineloquent manner. To be hypersensitive to the reality of being encircled by the high, impenetrable linguistic and cultural barrier. To realize that I am light years away from being able to understand Turks on their own turf.

There is a sort of sadness that fills me. I only recognize it as a nostalgia for the past, but that description doesn't fit it properly. See, even my own language is slipping. I can't tell if I miss the States or not--not enough to wish myself away from Turkey, or to wish that the time here would pass more quickly. Maybe it's really that I long for a future--an ability to speak Turkish, to find myself here. I long for a me that doesn't exist yet. But I think I also long for a me that won't ever really exist. I can learn Turkish, but it would always be a second skin, a different personality, a different me.

I am the English language.