I’m still not really sure why I first left for Turkey. I was
content with my life in California.
After six years in Santa Cruz
I had many close friendships, deep roots in the town itself, and a strong feeling
of belonging. I had a simple but enjoyable job where I worked with my best
friends. Life there was good. Santa
Cruz: this is the real city where the young go to retire.
Maybe that was why I left. I was content, yes, but uneasy with that easiness, the comfort, the complacency.
And then there was that impulse, steadily growing ever since
my first visit to Turkey in
2009 and further stoked by later visits, to live in Istanbul. There’s a postcard I wrote to a
friend back home - and I wish I had kept a copy of what I wrote to her on hand
somewhere – where I described the classic ferry scene, complete with
the seagulls, the scent of sea on the breeze, the sounds of the hoarse voiced men
selling tea, and those breathtaking shades of blue you only see in waters of the
Bosphorus. I ended the card saying, “I know one day I must live in this city.”
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| photo credit: katie fassbinder |
I think anyone who’s been to Istanbul will know what I’m talking about
when I say that it just does something to you. It enchants you, pulls you in,
makes you want more. It can make you sigh and call out its name. I’ve even
heard this from family members of mine, aunts and uncles who’ve spent their
entire lives in this wonderful - and also insane and sprawling - city. It is
still has that certain something that can tear an “Ah, Istanbul…” from their lips, even after all
these years.
So I guess in a sense it’s not surprising at all that I
would eventually move here. That the impulse would finally get the better of me
and that I would leave my friends and drop my contented and satisfied life for
something new. And there was also the family connection that played a large role in my desire to move. That surprise and delight I felt visiting for the first time the neighborhood where my mom and grandmother
grew up. Seeing the room in Haydarpaşa
train station where my great-grandfather worked. Witnessing the welcoming and loving
expressions on my relatives’ faces when they met me for the very first time and
yet made me feel as if I was their very own son. The recognition I felt in
seeing certain gestures and attitudes, things that marked me as different in California, being
reflected in my Turkish family. The realization that I felt in many ways more
at home in Turkey
than I did in my own country. Kan çekiyor,
as they say in Turkish, the blood pulls. It’s an idiom that describes how our
character and our personalities, for better or for worse, often resemble that
of our families, and how even when we are separated from each other
geographically there is still the tendency to behave and conduct ourselves similar to our family. And of course there is the pull, the desire to lessen that
distance, to be together.
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