Without a Country

by Kulin, Ayse

  When I got home, I told Demdem what had happened.

  “How could you?” he said. “What’s that supposed to mean? ‘Scaredy-cat Jew.’ Where did you hear that?”

  “Somebody said it at school.”

  “Never say it again. Never say anything like that. We don’t make fun of people for their religion or nationality. Ever!”

  “What was I supposed to do?”

  “You could have ignored him. Or given him a bloody nose. Or called him a fascist.”

  “A fascist? Like Hitler?”

  “Yes, Hitler was a fascist. If we were living in Germany, that boy would have been taken in to see the principal, and his family would have been notified. It’s hate speech.”

  As sheltered as I’d been growing up in Turkey, I knew, of course, that fascists were terrible and that Hitler was even worse. At school on Monday, I made sure to call that boy a fascist. I thought that was the end of it, but my grandparents had other ideas.

  I sprawled out on the sofa that evening to watch my favorite show. When the commercials came on, I decided to go to the bathroom. On the way, I overheard Su talking in the kitchen.

  “A discussion program on a major channel. And he was waving a list of the names of supposed Crypto Jews and secret followers of Rabbi Sabbatai. He claimed that certain Turkish surnames are ‘suspect.’ I was horrified! Doesn’t he realize people will be targeted because of his so-called research? He’s a historian and a professor, for God’s sake!”

  I burst into the kitchen.

  “Who is? And who’s Rabbi Sabbatai?”

  “Were you eavesdropping on us?”

  “No! I had to go to the bathroom. But then I heard you say ‘Jew.’ Did Demdem tell you what happened?”

  “I didn’t want to worry your grandma because of two little brats and their dumb prank,” Grandpa said.

  “Then what were you talking about?”

  “There was a news program, and one of the guests was talking about the German scientists who came to Turkey to get away from Hitler.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Why are you so upset about it?”

  “There’s something you should know,” she said. She had a terrible look on her face.

  “What?”

  “It’s nothing bad. It’s just that I think the time’s come for you to learn a little more about our family. My parents are Jewish. Your great-uncle Peter and I were the first ones in our family to marry someone who wasn’t Jewish.”

  “But my great-grandparents are German. Aren’t Germans Christians? And aren’t we Muslims?”

  “You can be Jewish and German, and you can be Jewish and Turkish. My parents are German Jews. I fell in love with someone who was Muslim and became a Muslim, but my heritage is still Jewish. We respect all faiths, Esra. And people who aren’t at all religious, too. You can think of faith simply as a kind of path from your heart to God.”

  “Then why are there are so many different religions?”

  “Rituals and community can help people find their path. Most people adopt their parents’ religions without ever thinking about why. Here in Turkey, most people are Muslim. You’re Muslim, too.”

  “But they called me a Jew in school today!”

  “That must be because of me. My family is Jewish. We came here from Germany because Hitler was killing all the Jews. It’s important to know your family history and your background, even if you were brought up Muslim.”

  “Is that why you were so upset when they bombed the synagogue?”

  “Esra! How can you even think that? People died! Some of them were Jewish, but many of them were local shopkeepers, Muslims.”

  Grandma put her arms around me, and we stayed like that for a long time.

  That night in bed, I thought about religion for hours. What was I, really? My heart wasn’t telling me anything. All I knew for certain was that one branch of my family tree was Jewish and the other was Muslim. But I was Turkish. And most Turks were Muslim. Enough, I thought as I drifted off to sleep. I was Muslim and that was that.

  Like most teenagers, I teetered between the joys and disappointments of my own little world, which rotated around schoolwork, socializing, and sports. The protective wall my doting grandparents had erected between me and the real world kept out some of the ugliness, but not all of it.

  Inexplicable things were happening in my country. A number of engineers working on software for the defense industry, scientists and bureaucrats, died in mysterious car crashes. A helicopter carrying the leader of a political party crashed on a snowy mountainside, and some said it was no accident. A sixteen-year-old boy shot and killed a Catholic priest in Trabzon.

  Then, on a winter’s day in 2007, Hrant Dink was killed.

  This time, too, the gunman was just a boy.

  This time, the public decided that enough was enough. Hundreds of people got red carnations and laid them on the spot in front of the Armenian newspaper’s offices where Hrant Dink had fallen. Tens of thousands started gathering in a spontaneous outpouring of grief and rage. The crowd of men and women, young and old, grew and grew, spreading to Taksim Square and then Şişli. The funeral procession stretched from Taksim to Mecidiyeköy.

  Su asked me to attend the funeral, for Madame. I didn’t see the connection, but I knew that certain things were sacred to my grandmother, and the memory of Madame was one of them. There was no way I could get out of it. We took the tram from Tünel to Taksim and marched from there. I had never seen anything like it, and that day would stay with me forever.

  Hrant Dink wasn’t a religious figure, a celebrity, or a politician. He was a writer, and only a handful of intellectuals knew him from his articles and books. An Armenian Turk born and raised in Istanbul, he was also editor-in-chief of Agos, the newspaper.

  “It’s bubbling over,” Demdem said, gesturing at the crowd. “We’ve all had it up to here! This is a show of love for Hrant, but we’re also saying, ‘Enough hate!’”

  I asked Su what he meant. She tried to explain, but even on that day and at my age, she couldn’t quite bring herself to tell me the whole truth.

  But it was too late. My eyes were finally beginning to open.

  About four months later, three Christians, one of them German, two of them Turkish, had their throats cut at Zirve Publishing House, in Malatya.

  I was home sick with a fever that day. Grandma was insisting, like she always did, that I have some linden tea with honey.

  “Su,” I said, “what’s going on? Why do these people have such a problem with Christians and Jews?”

  “They hate anyone who isn’t like them.”

  “But—who are they?”

  “People who don’t know how to use their brains.”

  I couldn’t think of a single person who fit my grandmother’s description. From the janitor to the delivery boy at the corner grocery, from our neighbors upstairs to the colorful characters my crazy mother brought to Side: they were all different, but they all had brains and knew how to use them. They had hearts, too, and tried to be kind, not just to me, but to everyone around them. Rozi and her children were Jewish. So were my grandparents’ old neighbors, Selin and Simon, along with their spouses, children, and grandchildren. My grandparents had Christian friends, too. Wasn’t that normal?

  The people planting bombs, the ones who hated anyone who wasn’t like them . . . didn’t they know anyone who wasn’t like them?

  It’s absurd now to think how naïve I was. I assumed people were good and the world was a mostly kind place. For that, you can blame my grandparents, the nicest people in the world.

  In 2010, when I was eighteen, I finally saw just how cruel and unjust the world can be. And it was like a slap in the face.

  The Mavi Marmara was part of a flotilla of ships carrying aid for Palestinians. It sailed out of Istanbul on its way to the Gaza Strip. We all followed its progress. Then, in the dark of night, Israeli army commandoes opened fire before the ship reached shore, killing nine and injuring up to fifty.
Demdem and Su watched as the disaster was broadcast live on TV. At our house, and in houses across Turkey, the reaction was one of indignation, rage, and sorrow.

  And then something inexplicable happened. In the street, at school, and on social media, anger started building toward Jews everywhere, including in Turkey. A popular singer tweeted, “God bless Hitler!” Even Su and Demdem couldn’t shield me from this.

  And when I joined one of the marches to protest what happened, I was horrified to find many of the demonstrators pouring out their hatred for Jews in general.

  “Why can’t they tell the difference between being Jewish and what the Israeli government did?” I asked Su.

  “Some people don’t think clearly when they’re angry,” she said. “Political leaders take advantage of it. And Jews end up being the target. It’s why my parents lost their home, their country, everything. It’s why my dad’s mother and sister were murdered by the Nazis. It seems like it’s part of being Jewish, even if you’re not religious.”

  Just then, feeling the unfairness of a target on my own back, I didn’t know whether to resent my great-grandparents or cry for them.

  Love in the Days of Resistance

  It was 2013, near the end of May. Having transferred from the Austrian school to the Italian school near our house, mastered another language, and graduated, I was now enrolled in med school.

  The classes were hard, so I was determined to keep my head down and focus on my work. Love and everything else could wait. But that summer, I got swept up in something bigger than my academic plans. I became a protestor.

  Three days earlier, five trees had been uprooted when a wall in Gezi Park was torn down. Members of a group calling itself Taksim Solidarity had set up a camp in the park and were staging a sit-in against the desecration of one of the last green spaces in central Istanbul.

  The next morning, more people joined the protest. With the support of a few opposition leaders, the demonstrators blocked the developers’ backhoes. It was a peaceful gathering with chants, songs, and lighthearted, poetic signs. They cared about the trees, of course, but young people were also tired of our prime minister, who had been chastising us on every aspect of our lives, right down to the length of our skirts. The protest was a rebellion of sorts.

  Those first days of the “resistance” were festive, with impromptu jam sessions, street theater, and dance performances. A concert and film screening were scheduled for the following day. But in the early dawn, the police set fire to the tents where the protestors were sleeping, and a lot of people got hurt. The next day, the families of the kids nearly burnt alive took to the streets.

  And I went from tweeting about the protestors to joining them.

  The day I joined the resistance, the police clamped down harder. Water cannons knocked people to the ground, but they got back up. The police fired pepper spray and tear gas, but the protestors held their ground. Barricades were set up around the park, so the protestors moved into the adjacent streets and into Taksim Square. The prime minister issued inflammatory statements. But the protestors refused to back down. And tens of thousands of us joined them.

  I got home late that night, my clothes wet, my eyes burning. Demdem rushed at me the moment I stepped through the front door.

  “Where have you been?” he said. “It was all I could do to keep your grandmother here. She was going to go to Taksim and look for you. If she didn’t have asthma, I might have let her. You know what she’s like! Why didn’t you call?”

  “I’m sorry, Demdem. My phone died.”

  “Then you should have used someone else’s. Are you trying to kill your grandmother?”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I’m sorry. I need to lie down.”

  I escaped to my room, but I was too tired to sleep. My back and legs still ached the next morning.

  I’d intended to stay home the following day, but when I learned that the Turkish Medical Association was setting up a free clinic in Taksim to treat protestors, I decided to volunteer.

  “Whatever you do, don’t let your grandma hear about this,” Demdem whispered to me in the kitchen.

  I sneaked out of the house. The main boulevard had been blocked off by the police, but I followed the back streets to Taksim and found the clinic.

  There were no formalities. When I told the young woman in a white coat who opened the door that I’d started studying medicine, she cut me off and said, “Follow me.” We rushed to a room at the end of a long corridor. There were several people inside. Someone was giving a man on the floor CPR. Another patient was wearing an oxygen mask. A third was leaning against the wall with his arm above his head. Blood was dripping onto the floor, and his shirtsleeve was soaked.

  “Take care of him,” the woman in the coat said. And then she was gone.

  I went over and looked at the man’s hand. A rubber bullet had pierced his finger, just under the nail. The laceration on his arm was bleeding heavily. I found a medical kit and pulled out a bandage, a tourniquet, and a needle and thread. Once I’d stitched up the wound, I pulled the scarf off my neck to make a sling.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “I’m Esra.”

  “I’m Tarık. Thank you, Dr. Esra.”

  “No, I’m just a med student. But I hope to be a doctor one day.”

  “You’ll make an excellent doctor.”

  “Thanks. Tarık, you’ve lost a lot of blood. Try to find a place on the floor to rest for a while. I’ll be back in a minute with something for you to drink.”

  “Actually, I’d like to buy you a drink.”

  “I’m a little busy.”

  “I meant when you’re free. What about this evening? Please. Let me thank you with a cup of coffee or a glass of wine. Whichever you prefer.”

  “Rest for a while. We can talk later,” I said.

  I knew I should have refused him outright, but something stopped me. Was it that he reminded me of my father, of all people? We’d barely met, but I felt at home with him. He was good-looking, with an easy charm.

  I went to the large room at the other end of the corridor. At least a dozen more patients had come in. A middle-aged woman was crying as she scanned the crowd for her daughter. I went to the nurse sitting by the front door, told her I’d stitched and bandaged the man with the rubber bullet wound and gash on his arm, and asked if we had any painkillers and antibiotics.

  “You’re in luck,” she said. “A pharmacy just made a donation. See that box on the floor? If we have anything, it’s in there.”

  “Do you know anything about that patient?”

  “You didn’t recognize him? He’s a war correspondent. I know him from a weekly news show called The Front Line. Tarık Azak.”

  “I don’t watch much TV these days.”

  The nurse had moved on to the next patient and wasn’t listening to me. I rummaged through the box, found what I needed, got a glass of water and a glass of tea from an adjacent kitchen, and went back to the small room.

  “Drink this tea, and then you can take these pills,” I said. “You should stop by a pharmacy when you leave here. You’ll need to take antibiotics for at least three days.”

  “Where do you live, Dr. Esra?”

  “Tünel.”

  “Great. There’s a rooftop bar at a hotel there with an amazing view. Shall we say seven?”

  “I don’t drink.”

  “I won’t be drinking either, not while I’m on antibiotics. But we can always have sparkling water. Please come. I’d like to thank you.”

  “There’s no need. I was just helping.”

  “I’ll be waiting there at seven. I hope you can come. But if you don’t, thanks again.”

  I left the room without another word. Every time I thought about leaving the clinic, another wave of patients arrived. I finally got home a little after five.

  I couldn’t decide whether or not to meet Tarık. I was just thinking that this was one of those times when I wished I was more like my moth
er when the door opened and my grandma poked her head in.

  “What’s going on?” she asked.

  I blushed. “What? Nothing. What do you mean?”

  “You can’t fool me. Come on, spill the beans.”

  “It’s nothing—I was just wondering what to wear. I’m going somewhere this evening.”

  “Going where? And with whom? Don’t look at me like that. I can’t help you pick an outfit unless you tell where you’re going.”

  I told her everything, every detail of my work at the clinic and my encounter with Tarık.

  “This young man sounds a little like Korhan.”

  “He’s nothing like my dad!”

  “Mm, maybe a little. A younger version, but with combed hair. And more ambitious, too.”

  “Su! Please.”

  “Wear your red dress tonight. He sounds like the kind of man who likes bold women. And the image of that girl in the red dress has been all over the front pages. You know the one. That photo of the girl being teargassed by a cop. Wash your hair, and I’ll help you blow it out. Get going; it’s after six!”

  Su sent me off that evening with a kiss on the cheek and a knowing wink.

  I got to the hotel at exactly seven and went straight to the ladies’ room on the ground floor to touch up my makeup and stall a few minutes so I wouldn’t seem too eager. When I finally took the elevator to the rooftop bar, it was a quarter past. He wasn’t there. I was wondering whether to hide out in the ladies’ room again or go home.

  “If you’re looking for Tarık Bey, he’s expecting you on the upper terrace,” a waiter said.

  I followed him up a staircase, both in awe of the view and annoyed with myself for not knowing about it.

  Then I saw him. Tarık. He was still wearing my scarf as a sling. As I approached him, he reached out his good hand and squeezed mine. I sat down on the white cushion next to him. We both ordered sparkling water with a slice of lemon.