An immigrant is an unopened book, a story waiting to be told. No less or more than a non-immigrant, except of a life under multiple horizons, one of which must have been necessarily too dark, so unforgiving, and easily hostile to drive her into the uncertain waves of an ocean sure to end her existence or to take her to the unfamiliar shores of other worlds. If the story is told, the same hostile ocean having become a distant memory now-a beaten menace.
Recently, I was asked to describe who Turks are, what a Turkish is.
To me, my grandfather is a Turk. After sending his young father off to fight the Canakkale War, clinging to his mother’s skirts picking tobacco at his family’s farm on the coast of Montenegro, shadowed not only by ancient olive trees but also by the threat of violence against his entire family because of how they prayed. He endured hundreds of miles long journey on foot at the age of six, following his mother and holding his younger brothers to get to the ports of freedom, leaving everything behind. His mother’s strength included letting her three young children share one cotton filled, rolled bed while she slept on wet leaves in the rain. The children not only lost their father to the Turkish war but also their mother to the hatred against the Turks.
To me, my grandfather’s journey as a young boy, from Europe to Turkey is Turkish. His endless hard work, sense of humor, ability to easily find poetry, wild strawberries and mountains with plateaus overlooking seas is Turkish. He didn’t speak much Turkish and could only communicate with my grandmother in Bosnian but he knew and recited every poetry in Turkish history. He would reminisce about his childhood home in Montenegro and often talk about the warm breezes through the pomegranate trees and the pine saps fallen over their ancient stone house. But, he would collect his thoughts quickly and say that hard work could turn any place into a home, especially if it was a plateau on a mountain overlooking the sea, just like Montenegro. He claimed to be and always acted like a Turk, a true Turkish farmer for whom it was always inconceivable that he wouldn’t achieve what he wanted in life.
As a concept, it is also easy to define everything Turkish. Complete lack of entitlement, fear of privilege and dread of an end for hunger for possibility is Turkish. Living a painful existence while saving the best for the guests, always seeking fresh, better ideas, connections and service to the community and to our creator, ignoring the warning of risks and dangers and focusing on that one success story as proof of possibility is Turkish. Finding pride in frugal living, turning poverty into opportunity, all so that the story can be richer, more colorful when starting again… is Turkish.
The problem is that any description or attempt to completely define the Turkish story is incomplete. It is incomplete not because it is untrue or that it lacks any merit at all. In fact, each story is complete, perfect and final in its own right. But, the genuine and true diversity of a Turkish story will virtually always make ANY story attempting to describe and define a complete Turkish story impossible.
A story of a successful entrepreneur from the Isik schools of Fetthullah Gulen is a completely inspiring one. It is Turkish. A frustrated and relentless TurkishAmerican college professor who is never good enough for his colleagues back home is a common story. It is Turkish. A construction worker whose asylum application has just been approved for his persistent claim to his Kurdish roots is a completely and predictably possible one. It is Turkish. All the Mencheti families bringing with them not only their proud Turkish history and culture but also the handmade rock oven right outside their city home in Dayton or the Bosniak couple making fresh molasses from the grapes they grew on their porch in Bowling Green are perfect Turkish examples. A Greek Orthodox whose last three generations of family has called Istanbul home, a starryeyed girl with a headscarf whose entire truth is formed around the sins of her hair and guilts of her gender, a handsome young pizza store owner whose pride is directly linked with the independent decisions and actions of his sister or daughter, the middle-aged used car salesman with a goatee who is saving for dowry for his third marriage to his third Turkish wife, whose immigrant visa application is pending and the beautiful Walmart clerk whose wedding in Turkey to her American boyfriend next month will be bigger than the company’s biggest event with better food than everything Walmart could ever sell with all its stores combined… they are all complete Turkish stories. One at a time, each as unique, genuine, original and real.
None of them alone, however, define a Turk. A Turkish story is a combination of all, including all the fights over what the real Turkish thing to do would be.
As unique yet completing and necessary pieces of a big, beautiful puzzle, we are all waiting for someone to put us together. We would make a great decor if framed, too. Our colors don’t define us, as we all have to have our own unique contributions to the scene. We can be blond and red from the Black Sea region, black or brown if from the East, pale as dead, short “as midgets” or tall “as camels.” None of us “look” Turkish. All of us do.
One day, when we are all put together, perhaps, we know what the picture will be: a mountain with plateaus overlooking the sea. Making immigrants out of our homes and homes out of our plateaus…
