Turkish Reflections Part III

It’s hard to think that come May we will leave this country that is so frustrating to me and yet so familiar to me and go to another country that is not America and not Turkey.

As I walked around the airport in Ankara, I heard so much Turkish. I understand a lot of it. The language sounds familiar to me. It has a comfortable ring in my ears. I met two women from Portugal. They speak Portuguese, the language of the country we’ll soon live in. They were talking. I couldn’t understand anything they said. I thought it would sound like Spanish and that it would feel familiar. But it didn’t. They told me Portuguese was a mixture of Spanish and French. Something new. 

It hit me. There will be a new language. New culture. New rules.

It exhausts me to think about that. 

I can see why a lot of people, when doing overseas stations, decide that after two consecutive overseas locations, “We need to get back to the U.S.A.” You do a reach a point that you have had enough.

I think of missionaries a lot. I wonder how you do this for the rest of your life. That would be a challenge for me. Not being sure if I’d ever live in my home country again.

Speaking of travel. On my way to Germany, everyone, and I mean, everyone, tries to speak to me in German. I suppose I look very German. Sprechen Sie Deutsch? Hayir. I mean no. I mean nein.

While waiting for my flight from Ankara to Munich, I found a seat amongst about fifty people waiting for our flight. It was far from fully booked (lucky for me as I had booked it just that morning) and so there weren’t very many people there.

A woman in head scarf and long skirt (a step down from the burqa attire). (Side note: Here is a very interesting blog post about the different options for Muslim attire.) was talking on her cell phone. She stopped right next to me. By that I mean she was standing with her rear end, had I turned just slightly, right in my face.

I tried to shift in my seat a bit. She looked Turkish. Personal space is a bit different. Maybe she just wasn’t paying attention. I mean this was a huge room. There was nothing close to a crowd. She could be standing anywhere. So why was she standing in my space?

Just when I was just about to scoot over a chair, she stopped talking and handed me the cell phone she was talking on.

Now I have learned a lot about culture in the last two years. I know the Turks don’t blow their noses in public. I know shoes are incredibly unclean. I know that you don't use a handicapped restroom unless you are handicapped. I know you kiss on both cheeks when greeting someone. 

But I don’t know anything about giving people your cep telefonu.

I knew she didn’t speak English. She had that look of an older Turkish woman whose English is limited to absolutely zero. You start to spot people who might speak it and people you know do not. It almost seems like there is a way they hold their face that gives away their ability to speak or not speak English.

So I tried Turkish. What? Why? She just kept pointing to the phone. I just stared at her. Then I stared at the cell phone. Then I tried Turkish again. I looked at the Turkish people around me pleading with my eyes for them to step in. Why in this room of completely dark headed Turkish people would she pick the blondest woman she could find? It made no sense.

I tried to hand the phone back to her. She wouldn’t take it. She just pushed it up my ear.

I let her. I heard a man talking. “Merrhaba,” I said tentatively. “Hello?”

The man started talking in German. I stopped him. "Türkçe biliyor musunuz?" Did he speak Turkish? He didn’t. I then asked in English. 

“Yes. Yes. I speak a little English,” he said.

Okay. Now we were getting somewhere. The woman picked me because I didn’t look Turkish.

Go figure.

I then got the following bit of information. Wife. Iraq. Flight. Munich. Ticket. Where? Okay? The entire room is now looking at me. I knew I was talking loudly. I had to. I couldn’t understand him. I could barely hear him. People were laughing. They were as confused as I was. Why in the world would this woman give me her cell phone?

The man asked me who I was.

“I’m from America,” I said in Turkish and then repeated in English. “I’m just sitting here waiting for my plane. I have no idea why I am talking to you.”

The room became a murmur of giggles.

So if he didn’t speak Turkish, his wife didn’t speak Turkish. A guess. But a right one. She handed me her passport. It said Iraq. Not Turkish. I asked her husband what languages she spoke. Arabic and some other language I was not even familiar with enough to remember. I stood up. Did anyone speak Arabic?

Where was Rana when I really needed her? 

No. No Arabic. No one.

But her husband was worried for her. And I could see why. I realized how lucky I am to speak English. I had just been thinking that as I walked around the airport looking for a place to eat. Signs in major tourist spots in Turkey are written in two languages: Turkish and English. English is the international language. You can find someone who speaks it nearly anywhere you go.

What if I only spoke Spanish? How would I read the signs? What if, like this woman, the language I spoke was nowhere close to the ones on the signs throughout the airport? I can nearly always find someone who speaks English. But what if, like this woman, you were in a place where no one spoke your language? You couldn’t read the signs. You had a ticket. But you had no idea if you were in the right place.

Was she in the right place? He kept saying twenty minutes. Twenty minutes. I glanced at a clock on the wall. Twenty minutes to departure. He wanted to make sure she was heading to Munich. I looked at her boarding pass. It looked different than mine so I wasn't sure. 

I handed the phone back to the woman telling her husband I’d help confirm things if I could. I approached our flight crew, waiting in a corner for the flight to be cleaned. Forgetting that I was now on Lufthansa and no longer on a Turkish flight, I asked them in Turkish if anyone knew English.

They had no idea what I was saying. I hadn’t even thought through it clearly. They were all blondes.

Like me. German – or at least on the outside. Did they speak English?

Of course came the unanimous reply.

Oh. So. wonderful. English. My heart language.

Could they check this woman’s boarding pass? Was she in the right place? Did she have the right ticket?

She did.

I lead the woman to a seat and found someone who was sitting near her on the plane to help her find her seat when boarding started.

And as I sat in my seat on the boarded flight I couldn’t help but reflect. Here was an American and an Iraqi woman. In Turkey. Helping each other. Being friends. So not concerned about the war that has been waging against each other for more than a decade.

And I realized that the world isn’t nearly as big as we think it is. And in the end, we are just people who can help each other and find what we have that is the same.