An Istanbul Memory of My Friend, ‘B’
I was teaching in T’bilisi, Georgia when I was told by my employer that I (and all of the other foreign English teachers) was going to be offered a free round-trip ticket to travel to anywhere that I wished over the winter holiday (which was more than a month). I thought about going to Istanbul, Turkey right away because I had a Facebook friend who lived there. I will call her B and I met her over the summer when I worked as a server assistant at Canyon restaurant. She was also a server assistant and we had a few talks with each other during our time there and I liked her. I thought that she was a beautiful girl with the most interesting face that I ever saw, it was what attracted me to her most of all. We somehow friended each other on Facebook and I never wrote messages to her or posted anything on her Wall but I decided to contact her and ask her about hosting me over the winter holiday. I was grateful when she responded and told me that she remembered me and that she was happy to welcome me to her country but that I was only going to be able to stay with her until after the first week of January because she had university exams to study for and take (Turkish university students start their winter break at the beginning of February as opposed to American university students who start their winter break sometime in the middle of December). I told her that that was fine, that I was happy to stay with her and her mother in a real Turkish home, with real Turkish hospitality. So it was planned a few months in advance. When it came time to fly to Istanbul, I took the bus 37 to the airport in T’bilisi (my leaving came as a shock to my host family. I was in the middle of sneaking out with my red bag and backpack when Irma, my host mother, saw me with my stuff as I was leaving the gate and she came up to me and, because she didn’t know any English, she didn’t understand when I told her that I was going away for the winter holiday [right when the running water at her house was completely shut off]. She called my employer and asked for a translation and when she got it, she tried to say in English to have a safe flight home). I told her that I would see her later and I walked away from my host family’s home). It took only two hours to fly to Istanbul from T’bilisi. The Ataturk airport in Istanbul was gorgeous but I wanted to get to my friend’s home immediately. I took a taxi all the way to Besiktas (the area where my friend lived) and I was greeted by a sleepy and smoking B. Her apartment was modern and gorgeous and full of blue evil eyes (the ‘evil eye’ in Turkey was believed to ward off bad luck and evil and B’s mother believed in it very strongly). Throughout my stay at B’s apartment, I enjoyed authentic Turkish meals, got to be welcomed by a loving and caring Turkish mother who I will call S and given a handmade orange shawl (of which I gave to my mother) by B’s grandmother, after her grandparents greeted me during a visit to the apartment (the grandparents lived just a few doors down from them in the same building), and got to see another beautiful Turkish girl who was B’s cousin, whom I will call Z, who didn’t know English either. Only B knew English in her entire family. I got to sit in in some of B’s classes and meet some of her friends and go out with them and B’s boyfriend, whom I will call BG, gave me a walking tour of all of the main attractions that Istanbul offered, which was incredibly generous of him (even though I didn’t see it at the time) because, like B, he was also a university student (studying some type of engineering) who was very busy with his studies. I even had a chance to visit his apartment with B. I certainly did have a pleasant experience meeting those European-oriented Turkish people (I called them as such because there were many Turkish people who were perceived more Asian than others and other Turkish people who identified themselves as purely ‘European’ because they had modern ideals and were on the move forward, not ‘backward’). B was certainly a European Turkish girl. She was into modern fashion and rejected the hijab and even headscarves altogether. She was well-traveled and she said that she wasn’t like other Turkish people when it came to allowing foreigners not to assimilate to Turkish culture. She said that one’s culture was no longer relevant when one travels abroad; that was how she felt when she worked at Yellowstone National Park and when she took a solo trip to New York City; she said that she was all about assimilating to the local culture, so why not foreigners who came to Turkey assimilate to Turkish culture? B was proud of being Turkish, but she seemed to be very different from other Turkish people that I met, or observed. The main part of her being different was that her English was more fluent than any other Turkish person I encountered. She actually told me that she first learned English when she was in high school and that she didn’t speak a word of English since working at Yellowstone National Park and upon hearing her say that, I told her that she had a talent for languages, that she was really intelligent and I admired her for it. Like other Turkish people, she was certainly modest and she said that that wasn’t so, that her English could still use a lot of work. She told me that there were many Germans of Turkish ancestry living in Germany and she said that they weren’t Turkish, though, that they were completely German. She said that if they were German, not Turkish, then I was certainly an American. B was a sophomore majoring in sociology, which was why she brought that up about Germans of Turkish descent living in Germany. She believed that human beings were actually more similar than different.
Things seemed to have gone well between B and me at first, but when B noticed that I didn’t say very much during all of our outings together with her friends, she was annoyed. I sensed that she wasn’t happy by my lack of talking but I didn’t mention that I felt that way. Like other Turkish people, B didn’t directly tell me that she felt unhappy with me, but she did ask me a few times why I didn’t seem social. She asked me why I seemed to have a hard time having conversation with people, why it seemed like I never knew what to say, how to start a conversation. The way that she looked at me made me feel that she couldn’t stand the sight of me and that she was embarrassed, as time went by, to introduce me to her stylish friends. Her friends actually didn’t seem to mind that I didn’t have much to say, they were polite and they seemed welcoming and smiling. I didn’t want to think that, deep down, maybe her friends also thought the same way that B did. I thought that the reason why B was that way was because, as I’ve described her earlier, she was very Western and very much pro-European. For most of my life, I’ve never felt Western, but as either someone who was more Asian-oriented, or just a lost person. When B commented on my lack of a social personality, I felt bad. Inside, I felt angry at not being accepted as I was once again, at my age: 23. B was three years younger than me. I felt like B didn’t know anything about anything. I wanted to run away when she told me about my lack of social personality. But I was glued to my seat in her apartment. She even told me that she didn’t feel comfortable introducing me to her friends when all I did was smile politely and just say hello and nothing else. She said that she didn’t understand why I didn’t have much to say, she said that I was college-educated, that I certainly had to know what to say, that I certainly knew the about the art of having a good conversation. I was confused when she told me that I seemed immature because I was quiet. I’ve never perceived quiet people as immature. I’ve always thought that perhaps quiet people just had a lot of thoughts or just preferred to listen. But it was easy for me to see it that way because I was a introverted, quiet person. B had a lot of friends and didn’t seem to think deeply about very much and she always had a lot to say. I do understand why she thought the way that she did, but, at the time, even when I did understand her, I was very angry about being misunderstood all over again, like I always was since I was a little girl. I actually thought that when I left university, that no one was going to judge me or put me down for being quiet, but I was dead wrong. I realized that it was probably going to be something that I had to put up with for the rest of my life.
One day when I was sitting in in one of B’s classes, I was yelled at by her teacher for taking a bite of my chicken sandwich. I wasn’t aware that Turkish university students weren’t allowed to eat or drink anything during class at all. B reprimanded me for doing what I did. She said that it was common sense. Her teacher told me that I was welcome to leave the classroom to eat my meal and I told her that I wasn’t going to eat anything, that I was going to stay and she actually asked me if I was sure and I said yes, and she pointed out that her lecture was going to be in Turkish, that I wasn’t going to understand anything. At that point, I wanted to cry, but I didn’t. I told her as calmly as I could that I thought that Turkish was a beautiful language to listen to and that I was going to stay and listen and that I was sure that her lecture was going to be interesting nonetheless. The entire confrontation took place in front of B’s entire class. And a lot of them knew English. I felt mortified at being reprimanded by both B and her teacher. But I knew that I had to tough it out because life was that way. I tried to keep my spirit up during the lecture, trying to forget about the exchange between me and B’s teacher. After the lecture, everyone got up and started taking pictures. I had no idea what was happening because everyone spoke in Turkish. B told me if I didn’t mind taking pictures of her and her classmates and I told her that I didn’t mind, though, all I wanted to do was cry again because I didn’t know what was going on and B sounded really cold when she asked me to take pictures of her and her classmates. I dutifully took the pictures, trying to be as strong as I could. I was told my entire life by my mother that one who cries was one who was immature (meaning that one wasn’t able to deal with how horrible life could be) and I told myself to grow up and be mature about the whole thing, that it wasn’t a big deal. After I took the pictures, one of B’s classmates came up to me and asked me if I was from America. I told him yes and he asked me if I was staying with B and he eyed B when he said that and I said yes. B had her attention diverted to other people. She definitely didn’t seem to want to have anything to do with me. I felt like I was back at Hollins (University) when a girl told me that I wasn’t meant to be French Club president at all because I wasn’t social, and she said that a club president was supposed to be talkative and involved with people, but that’s another story. But how B treated me brought me back to that time. I knew then that my being told that I was quiet and not a good enough person for being quiet was going to haunt me for as long as I lived. After all of the students left, B told me that I was free to go to wherever I felt like going, or I could go out with her and her friends, but that I wasn’t obligated to, which meant that I wasn’t welcome to go out with her and her friends. Still feeling hurt about what happened, I told her that I needed some fresh air and exercise and that I was going to take a walk before returning to her apartment. She said that it was fine and we went our separate ways. That was when I ran into that man in the shop. (I’ve written about this in ‘Istanbul Memories- Turkish Men’.) After receiving a stone-cold silence from B when I returned to her apartment, I felt more isolated than ever. I knew right away that I was no longer welcome in her apartment. I felt very awkward about the idea of staying in her apartment any longer. B did mention, before I even arrived in Istanbul that she planned to take me with her to a friend’s place on Princes Island to celebrate the New Year. I knew that that wasn’t going to happen when, in the following morning, B told me that she had exams to study for and that she was too busy to host me any longer (she did tell me that I was going to have to search for another place to stay before I arrived in Istanbul, but only some days after spending New Year’s with her and her friends). I didn’t feel that I was able to get along with B since the beginning of my stay. At times, I actually forced myself to ask a question to one of her friends, and, most of the time, I usually thought hard about what to ask or say to her friends but I could never think of anything that seemed acceptable or could lead to a conversation, so I remained quiet. Honestly, I felt very comfortable not saying much because I’ve grown up that way. I’ve always been an avid reader and writer, two skills that didn’t require any talking. But my quiet nature was completely foreign to B. I never hurt B. I never insulted her, never got mad at her, never bullied her, never offended her friends, I never did anything negative to her, and she put me down only because I was quiet. I found it unbelievable that being a quiet person could get me so much mistreatment. Not long after B told me to go find another place to stay for the rest of my time in Istanbul, I decided to go away and find a hostel to stay at and that was when I met Recep (again, the story about me and Recep can be found in ‘Istanbul Memories — Turkish Men’). And there were a few other men after Recep that I felt took something away from me, broke me down into a billion pieces, made me feel dirty, made me feel undeserving of love and anything genuine. After I left B’s apartment (I actually left her apartment earlier than she expected), I called B while having my meal of a slice of pizza with Recep, with his plate of greasy fish, at his hostel to let her know that I found a place to stay and she told me to be careful. After hanging up, I told Recep what she said when he asked and he said that if she wanted you to be safe, she would have just let you stay in her apartment. What could you have possibly done that was so wrong?
I forgot about B after leaving her apartment for good. It was one sad instance after another. B didn’t exist. I had no friends in Istanbul. Any time that I spent with her before leaving her didn’t mean anything. All of the people whom I met through her didn’t exist either. That was another world, a different time. I was completely on my own. I battled Istanbul in the best way that I could. I came out from Istanbul with a lot of scars. I’ve thought so many times about when I could ever recover enough before returning to Istanbul. It was the end of January 2011 when I left Istanbul. It is now the beginning of April 2014. I still haven’t recovered. I still remember how much I wanted to scratch myself raw. I still remember feeling inadequate because B made me feel that way. The men I met after leaving B’s apartment made me feel like that was all I was good for, just something for men to have sex with, to use to please themselves until their erections went away. I felt like I was only good enough to be something that men used to fill their semen up.
These days, I even feel like a touch from a strange, sleazy man is like rape. I’ve been sensitized to the point of feeling like a thing that people used to fulfill their physical needs. I’ve wondered why my entire being is somehow something that attracts such people.
I’ve unfriended B on Facebook long ago. I have no idea how she is at the moment. She has surely graduated from university by now. I don’t know what she does for a living. I also don’t know if she still lives with her mother. I don’t know about her whereabouts, nor do I care to. I’m still mad at her to this day. Sadly, she still doesn’t know that I’m angry at her because of what she thought about my quiet personality. I never told her because I’ve always felt like she wouldn’t understand me; since she didn’t accept that I was quiet, then she wasn’t going to understand. So much for people being more similar than different, as she thought.
