{"id":25701,"date":"2023-03-27T10:21:10","date_gmt":"2023-03-27T08:21:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/?p=25701"},"modified":"2023-03-27T10:21:10","modified_gmt":"2023-03-27T08:21:10","slug":"beautiful-ghosts-or-well-always-have-istanbul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/themarkaz.org\/oldmarkaz\/beautiful-ghosts-or-well-always-have-istanbul\/","title":{"rendered":"Beautiful Ghosts, or We’ll Always Have Istanbul"},"content":{"rendered":"

Looking for love and her father’s past, a Turkish American journalist haunts the streets of Istanbul before and after Covid.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Alicia K\u0131smet Eler<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

The sticky summer air sank into my skin as seagulls dove into the wavy blue waters of the Bosphorus Strait, the waterway that separates the European and Anatolian sides of Istanbul. My cousin and I sat on the hard wooden benches of the vapur<\/em> (ferry boat) as it drifted along. I hadn\u2019t been here in over ten years, nor had I ever been to Turkey without my dad, my baba. I\u2019d asked him to come, but he declined. He insisted that he wouldn\u2019t be able to keep up with me and my cousin, who also grew up abroad, as we roamed the streets of Istanbul. But I knew that was just another excuse for avoiding Turkey.<\/p>\n

On that windy summer day in Istanbul on the vapur<\/em>, I spotted an old man reading a pro-government newspaper, a middle-aged teyze<\/em> (an auntie) wearing a pink headscarf covered in yellow flowers, and a young blonde woman glued to her smartphone. As a queer person who grew up in America, I was used to being able to easily find my people. But since I\u2019d arrived in Istanbul, I hadn\u2019t seen a gay club, let alone a rainbow flag on someone\u2019s coat. Maybe queer people were hiding in plain sight, or maybe I just didn\u2019t know where to go.<\/p>\n

Maybe if I fell in queer love with someone here, I could experience the cultural reconnection that I was hoping for \u2014 that Baba had, in subtle ways, let me know he\u2019d never give me. I grew up knowing some Turkish, but took it upon myself to finally learn it for real as an adult. I found a teacher in Minneapolis, and he became my friend and the first Turkish man whom I didn\u2019t feel afraid of.<\/p>\n

Over time, I gained access to Turkish language and culture, something I didn\u2019t feel I had as a kid. Even though these days my baba and I speak Tinglish \u2014 a mixture of Turkish and English \u2014 and he\u2019d slowly started opening up more in his native language the more my Turkish improved, his Istanbul still felt like something buried deep in memory. If I cared to discover more about the country he left behind, that was on me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

Several nights later, I laid on a king-sized mattress in a heavily air-conditioned hotel room off a busy highway on the Anatolian side of Istanbul, frantically downloading dating apps. I\u2019d been banned from Tinder<\/a> for some reason, so I downloaded Bumble, but there weren\u2019t too many people on there. I chose men and women, and mostly swiped right. I was out of options after ten swipes. I asked a Turkish friend, F\u00fclya, which dating apps queer women used, and she told me to try Wapa<\/a>, but I didn\u2019t feel motivated enough to download another app. One was overwhelming enough.<\/p>\n

The next morning I matched on Bumble with R\u00fcya, who had three cute photos on her profile. In one, she wore a black turtleneck and was framed against a yellow-orange wall, rendering her awash in a soft glowing light. There was one of a very fluffy gray-and-white cat. In another, she wore a white T-shirt with rainbows on it, her arms around a boy with light brown hair and a scraggly beard. I had to meet her, this sweet butch girl who was visibly gay in a country where I couldn\u2019t find my people. In my mind, I told myself we\u2019d be friends.<\/p>\n

\"\"
The author under the K\u0131smet sign in Kad\u0131ko\u0308y (photo Elif Kaya).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Over the next week, I hung out with my gay boy cousin and my 92-year-old babaanne <\/em>(grandma), eating cookies and drinking copious amounts of \u00e7ay <\/em>(tea). Babaanne recounted memories of her engagement to my grandfather, Kenan Bey. I wondered about how her stories flowed so easily, whereas Baba\u2019s seemed out of reach \u2014 but then again, she never had to deal with the trauma of immigration. She had always lived in Turkey.<\/p>\n

At night,\u00a0 I went out to dinner at seaside restaurants with my aunt, uncle, and cousin. I scanned the crowds for visible queers but still I saw no one, not even a tiny rainbow pin. Even though my cousin was also queer he, like me, wasn\u2019t from here. I began to fantasize about meeting R\u00fcya.<\/p>\n

R\u00fcya and I continued messaging on Bumble, but it seemed like k\u0131smet<\/em> (which happens to be the middle name that Baba gave me) was against us. When she was free for lunch, I was scheduled to meet with another aunt, my baba\u2019s sister, who later canceled on me because of unresolved feelings towards my baba\u2019s departure from Turkey, even though that happened over 40 years ago. I texted R\u00fcya to see if she was up for meeting, but suddenly she had to work. The next day I asked her to coffee, but she had some legal dealings with her landlord. I was sitting on a Turkish Airlines flight about to take off for Chicago, where I would\u00a0 catch my connection to Minneapolis, when she wrote to me. She\u2019d just gotten off work and could meet up.<\/p>\n

\u201cSorry,\u201d I wrote her, \u201cbut now it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet when I landed in Chicago ten hours later, exhausted and waiting in the mile-long U.S. Customs & Border Protection line, I texted her. It seemed innocent enough.<\/p>\n

Within a few days, R\u00fcya and I were texting non-stop, a constant stream of emotional vulnerability in my pocket. I desperately wished that we had met when I was in Istanbul, but realized that maybe this ardor was possible now because we\u2019d never met. We shared childhood photos and coming out stories, empathizing about work, friends, frustrations, and dreams.<\/p>\n

Weeks later, when I asked her to Zoom \u00a0\u2014 our first \u201cdate\u201d \u2014 I felt giddy with desire.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d had phone sex before, but never with someone I hadn\u2019t met in person. Didn\u2019t that intimacy need to be built physically before going virtual? Here I felt the opposite. As our emotional connection grew, I quickly discovered that I didn\u2019t care where we existed. I accepted the non-space of the Internet as ours. We went on dates, watched films and TV shows together, texted, sexted, and fell in love online.<\/p>\n

The only thing missing was R\u00fcya.<\/p>\n

Two months into our virtual relationship, I left the newspaper office in Minneapolis where I worked late one evening and meandered downtown towards a wide street reserved for buses and bikes. As I crossed, my ex-partner Alma got off a bus. They looked even hotter than a few months earlier; we had broken up right before I\u2019d left for Turkey. They\u2019d grown out their curly black hair, and their skin was slightly tan. I remembered how much I had missed them.<\/p>\n

Two nights later we were back at my place making love, our sweaty bodies intertwined between the sheets.<\/p>\n

\u201cI met someone in Istanbul,\u201d I admitted to Alma. \u201cExcept we never met.\u201d<\/p>\n

I felt an immense guilt about somehow \u201ccheating\u201d on R\u00fcya, but I needed my real life back. The next morning, I ended it with her. She lurked on my social media and I on hers, but I did my best not to reach out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n

 <\/p>\n

A year and a half later, Alma and I broke up again \u2014 this time for good. Not long thereafter, I received a WhatsApp message from Dilek, an LGBTQ activist in Turkey who was hoping to get coverage for an incident involving police attacking trans women<\/a>. When Dilek said they\u2019d gotten my number through R\u00fcya, I felt like my boundaries had been violated. I\u2019d told R\u00fcya not to contact me, and I figured that this extended to giving out my number. Although I really wanted to help on a professional level, I had already given her my contacts. As such, I had nothing more to offer. I had also blocked R\u00fcya, making things more complicated.<\/p>\n

My anger unwittingly led me to take the first step towards reconnection: I unblocked her on Twitter to tell her that she should have asked me before giving out my number. She said she would have but that it was an emergency, and then she apologized anyway. I could have left it at that but instead, suddenly charmed by her apology, I struck up a conversation. We moved from Twitter to Instagram to WhatsApp and Zoom, as if no time had passed.<\/p>\n

After several months and two attempts at dating people locally, I booked a flight to Istanbul. I had to meet R\u00fcya after all this time, but suddenly things felt too serious again. Her anticipation seemed almost over the top, so I panicked and canceled the flight, and then returned to Dating IRL again; I met and fell hard for someone who was also of Middle Eastern descent. Yet, even though we lived in the same city, dating her felt impossible.<\/p>\n

R\u00fcya and I didn\u2019t talk again for awhile, but when we reconnected, I told her I was coming for Christmas and New Year\u2019s. My aunt and uncle happened to be with their grandkids in London, so I would have Istanbul all to myself for the first time ever. I made plans to stay in the city with two artist friends, Sevil <\/a>and Sena<\/a>. Then I booked the flight and scheduled a Covid test.<\/p>\n

\"\"
A street in Kad\u0131ko\u0308y, Istanbul (photo Alicia K\u0131smet Eler).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll believe you when I see you here, in Istanbul,\u201d R\u00fcya said. She was understandably salty, but then again, we\u2019d still never even met.<\/p>\n

The day before my flight, Sena and Sevil told me they\u2019d been in contact with someone at an art opening who tested positive for Covid, and suggested I book my own Airbnb for now. The day I arrived in Istanbul, R\u00fcya did not text me \u201cHo\u015f geldin!\u201d\u2014 the customary welcome message. \u201cFinally,\u201d she wrote. I did not feel welcomed.<\/p>\n

Yet for two weeks in Istanbul, my friends stayed home feeling ill, and R\u00fcya and I spent every available moment together. At night, we chowed down on cheese-filled vegetarian pide<\/em>, sipped \u00e7ay and ate so\u011fuk<\/em> (cold) baklava at outdoor caf\u00e9s, cooed over fluffy friendly street cats, and crossed the Bosphorus together. When she was at work at a restaurant in Kad\u0131k\u00f6y, I\u2019d come to visit, quickly becoming a fixture of the hip artsy queer scene there. I would hang on her arm during her cigarette breaks, kissing her sweetly between puffs. Because of the Covid scare, I\u00a0 saw my other friends only twice.<\/p>\n

I felt strangely in place yet out of place, a ghost in this country that most of my family had either left or were buried in. Yet I was finally speaking and understanding the language that warmed my heart.<\/p>\n

My baba had left Istanbul in the early 1960s, when the United States was offering student visas for chemical engineering. His father insisted he go and his older brother Semih stay in Turkey and join him in running the family business, a baking flour factory called Karak\u00f6y Un Fabrikas\u0131 (Karak\u00f6y Flour Factory). After ten years, Baba had gotten acclimated to the American way of life. If he set foot in Turkey, there would be certain family obligations \u2014 plus he would have had to do his askerlik, <\/em>his mandatory military service. So he didn\u2019t go back, and by the \u201980s, the Turkish government revoked his citizenship. In its place, he became an American. Over time, family ties loosened, and the distance between America and Turkey grew farther apart.<\/p>\n

Growing up in suburban Chicago to a Turkish dad and a Jewish American mom, I always felt the tension between his desire to be in America and his longing for what he left behind in Turkey. It was most palpable when I\u2019d catch him watching Turkish films in his basement mancave late into the night, talking with his younger brother on the phone in Turkish, or emailing old classmates from lise<\/em> (high school) in Istanbul. Many of them had returned to Turkey, but he stayed in America.<\/p>\n

Despite visits to Turkey as a child, I felt unresolved about my own relationship with the country and the language. There was something more I needed to discover for myself \u2014 something lost after all the time that my baba spent away from Turkey. To him, Turkey seemed like a memory, but to me it was a mystery that I longed to unravel.<\/p>\n

One evening while hanging out with R\u00fcya, I happened to meet Cansu Y\u0131ld\u0131ran<\/a>, a queer non-binary Istanbul-based photographer whose work I had admired from afar. Later, R\u00fcya and I went out to karaoke with some random friends of hers, and I filmed them dancing and singing to Turkish songs that I also knew, but not as well as they did. My body learned their moves. I felt like I could see myself living here, even. I felt at home.<\/p>\n

The only thing missing, again, was my baba.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
“We’ll always have Paris” \u2014 a classic line from the 1942 Hollywood film Casablanca<\/em> (movie poster courtesy Warner Bros.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

On New Year\u2019s Eve, R\u00fcya and I didn\u2019t gaze up into the black sky as shots of light exploded; instead, we watched Casablanca<\/em>, one of her favorite films, and FaceTimed with my best friend from Minneapolis, Shirin, who was in Paris visiting her sister who had immigrated to France from Iran. As we peered at each other through screens, I started to get the sense that something wasn\u2019t right about my journey to Istanbul. After we hung up, I decided to ignore that thought; then R\u00fcya and I went back to watching the film.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ll always have Istanbul,\u201d she told me, mockingly, updating Rick\u2019s famous line, \u201cWe\u2019ll always have Paris.\u201d<\/p>\n

My eyes filled with tears. I felt like I was falling in love with her for the second time, but what if this was the third act, rather than the beginning?<\/p>\n

I cried about being able to take her to the places in Istanbul that were meaningful to my family rather than talk about them as some faraway mythical place to someone back in America whose knowledge of Turkey consisted of falafel and a college study abroad trip.<\/p>\n

We went to my grandfather\u2019s old office building in Karak\u00f6y near the Golden Horn, the street where my family\u2019s summer home used to be in Kad\u0131k\u00f6y, and grandfather Kenan Bey\u2019s old apartment building in Ni\u015fanta\u015f\u0131. I even went to Kenan Bey\u2019s grave. We walked through G\u00f6ztepe Park near my now-deceased babaanne\u2019s apartment \u2014 the visit in 2019 with my cousin was the last time I\u2019d see her. Although Baba had visited Istanbul ten years earlier, he never got to hold Babaanne\u2019s hand again. I knew they\u2019d had a complicated relationship \u2014 she was his stepmom after his father divorced his mother and then remarried. Divorce in 1940s Turkey was uncommon. I wondered what other family secrets he was hiding from me. Still, I wished that he\u2019d come with me, and that we\u2019d visited all these places together, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have more of a connection to Istanbul than I do, and I\u2019ve lived here for almost fifteen years,\u201d R\u00fcya said to me one day.<\/p>\n

But did I? If I did, why was my connection to Istanbul surfacing as something I began to think of as \u201cmemory tourism\u201d? I texted Baba photos of all these familiar familial places I had visited, and his responses were sweet but felt faraway. \u201c\u00c7ok iyi ettin, k\u0131z\u0131m<\/em>,\u201d I\u2019m happy that you did that, daughter\u201d he\u2019d say. He seemed distracted and distant, but that distance was the same feeling I remembered from when we were in Turkey together as a kid. Although I caught glimpses of how happy he seemed to be when we were here, they were often quickly drowned in alcohol.<\/p>\n

I started to wonder if I was actually just a tourist of his memories: a person, lurking in someone else\u2019s past, who wanted to be forgotten. What was I doing here? Then my flight or fight response kicked in.<\/p>\n

I needed to get out.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"
Baba’s early days in America, from Babaanne’s photo album (courtesy Alicia K\u0131smet Eler).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

 <\/p>\n

As my departure date quickly approached, I cried every night thinking about being away from R\u00fcya, and how impossible our relationship felt, especially as the Turkish lira plummeted. Then, because of an error in the Turkish Airlines system, I missed my return flight.<\/p>\n

We were gifted a few more days. I stayed at her apartment instead of random Airbnbs, and suddenly we\u2019d entered the \u201cliving together\u201d phase, a fast-forward into a future of something that could never be. Before I left, she insisted I take a house key with me. She said that she gave a key to a lot of her friends, and, if nothing else, wouldn\u2019t we remain friends? I felt nauseous about the uncertainty of it all, yet she wore a relaxed fa\u00e7ade.<\/p>\n

On the flight to Chicago, and then on my connection to Minneapolis the next morning, I held out hope that we would figure this out and be together.<\/p>\n

Back in Minneapolis, I observed my immigrant friends from Iran, Italy, Colombia, and other far-flung locations long for their home countries. I wondered why I would want to return to a distant place that I imagined as home, but where I was a ghost, a tourist of my baba\u2019s memories.<\/p>\n

Within two weeks, I ended things with R\u00fcya. After having finally met, the fantasy of what she represented for me was over and our very painful long-distance reality had set in. The prospect of not being able to see each other again for at least six months, and the fact that I\u2019d known her in-person for only two weeks, didn\u2019t feel like a healthy foundation for a long-term relationship.<\/p>\n

The Turkish part of me wondered if I was denying the existence of k\u0131smet, of my fate with R\u00fcya, whose name means \u201cdream.\u201d What if I was being overly American about it, trying to determine my own destiny? The Turkish and the American parts collided. Was this how Baba felt when he didn\u2019t do his askerlik<\/em>, and chose to stay in America despite missing his family, language, and culture?<\/p>\n

And what about R\u00fcya? I had to believe that in some ways, things with R\u00fcya were over before they began, and the best parts of our affair happened at the beginning, virtually, and at the end, in person. But for me and Baba, it felt like I\u2019d started to crack open the door to his Turkish past. He may have decided not to return, but what if I did, in some form? What if the ghosts weren\u2019t there to haunt, but to gently nudge? What if I ended my tour of his memories and started my own?<\/p>\n

R\u00fcya and I talked sporadically, but over the next year it became clear that our romance was over. My solo trip to Istanbul did bring me closer to Baba. My Turkish improved, and I felt like I made more connections with people my age in Turkey.<\/p>\n

This year, Baba turned 82. He survived a cancer scare and subsequent surgery. He made peace with his older sister Esin who wouldn\u2019t meet with me when I was in Istanbul. This summer, he wants to go to Turkey, and now he\u2019s the one who keeps bringing it up. We speak Turkish together all of the time. He recently told me I\u2019m the only person he regularly speaks Turkish with, and how it\u2019s good to keep speaking it so that we won\u2019t forget. It\u2019s a radical change from his previous desire to forget.<\/p>\n

Even though he didn\u2019t teach me Turkish as a child, I forgive him \u2014 I had to find it on my own, and since I did, it\u2019s become another layer of our special father-daughter connection.<\/p>\n

My continued interest in Turkey has brought him around to telling me more stories about his childhood, his memories of his grandfather\u2019s flour factory Karak\u00f6y Un Fabrikas\u0131<\/a>, and his early days as an immigrant to America. Maybe we will go to Turkey this summer after all, in\u015fallah<\/em>. In the meantime, back in Minneapolis, I\u2019ve made friends with more Turkish people and immigrants from other countries, and found myself in a space of acceptance and healing about my baba. He did what he had to do by staying in America, and I did the same but in the opposite way \u2014 by going back to reconnect with my Turkish roots.<\/p>\n

Maybe memories don\u2019t have to be painful. Maybe they live among us, even when we aren\u2019t consciously thinking about them. Maybe they are our beautiful ghosts.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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