HOME • EV • घर

I'm homeward bound, although I have to confess, I'm not quite sure what that means...

After nearly a month of nomadic existence through the Nepali Himalayas, I am sitting in a hard metal chair at the Kathmandu international airport staring at a bright red boarding pass. Two boarding passes, in fact, the first of which will take me from Nepal to Sharjah, UAE and the second, again to Istanbul late this evening—two boarding passes which will be the first in a total of 5 or 6 over the next three days that will eventually land me back in the good ole US of A. From Istanbul, my plan is to hop an overnight bus straight from the airport to Balıkesir where I will throw my grungy Nepali gear into a larger suitcase, zip it closed, and haul it back on the bus back to the other Istanbul airport the following morning. To catch my next flight. İnşallah.

Picturing myself disembarking back into Istanbul is a little less climactic than I had previously anticipated. The minute I left Turkey (initially for a few days to Greece with my family, then again a few days later for Nepal) I had a hard time leaving my Turkish-self behind. Over the past year I had slowly but steadily worked to integrate myself more and more into the culture of the country I then called home. I learned Turkish, ate Turkish food, made Turkish friends, listened to Turkish music, followed Turkish TV programs.

By the end of the year, I was by no means Turkish, but my frame of reference for the world was firmly rooted in my Turkish-expat existence. I could participate in Turkish traditions and superstitions, sing along to the songs I heard on the radio, carry out small talk with people in the grocery store or on the bus, was a "regular" at a handful of restaurants and cafés, and had a passionate stake in who would win Turkish Survivor. Moreover, I had a slew of inside jokes and memorable experiences originating from this pseudo-Turkish-American-English Teacher persona that I shared with a network of other Fulbright colleagues and friends across the country.

The minute I crossed through exit immigration in Sabiha Gökçen, however, (only after successfully arguing with the officer that my visa was valid because my residency permit was expired—my last conversation in Turkish thus far) that perspective was suddenly irrelevant. Nepal was immediately a chaotic explosion of unfamiliar colors, sounds, and smells. It was exciting and overwhelming, and I was hopelessly at a loss. Normally I crave that feeling of being out of my element when traveling, but this time, after a year of painstakingly working to trade my "yabancı-ness" in for cultural integration, I couldn't help but mourn the loss of my insider-card. The Nepali people I met were kind, welcoming, and couldn't care less that I could carry on a conversation in a country thousands of miles to the west. They accepted my one word of Nepali ("namaste") with grace, and regarded me as what I was: a tourist.

The next three amazing weeks were spent trekking through the mountains and jungle, learning bits and pieces of Nepali culture, processing the past, wondering about the future, and boring my poor friend Kacie with stories about everything Turkish. My Fulbright friends went home to amazing jobs, or off on last-minute adventures themselves, and slowly I began to accept that the past year of my life, like all good things tend to, was slowly coming to a close.

Now, as I sit in the airport and try to picture myself stepping back into my apartment in Balıkesir, I feel a bittersweet twinge of displacement. In fact, the next few weeks will be something of a whirlwind of displacement—Kathmandu to Sharjah to Istanbul to Balıkesir to Istanbul to Amsterdam to Portland to Sacramento to Loomis to San Jose. One night in Balıkesir, the place I have called home. One night in Loomis with my parents, the only 'permanent address' I've had to list for several years. Then on to San Jose where I will immediately start my new job with nothing but a car full of suitcases and a spot on a friend's couch. Part of me is exhausted just thinking about it. Here I go again, starting from scratch, no house, no community, no clue what lies ahead. But the other part of me, the more significant, grounded part of me, knows I wouldn't want it any other way.

A lot has changed over the past year, but the thrill of a new place, new people, new job, and new adventures has never seemed to lose its appeal. In fact, after a year abroad, California seems just about as distant and exotic as anywhere I've been thus far—a land of kombucha and coffee shops, reliable wifi and endless toilet paper. Almost too good to be true.

More significantly, however, is the whispered voice that remains when all the excitement, anticipation, and uncertainty fade away. The same voice that I heard so clearly while staring at a different set of boarding passes—these ones also starting from a familiar place and ending in a strange city that I would soon call home—almost one year ago. It is the voice that says, "I know the plans I have for you, to give you hope and a future" and "I will bless you and keep you" and "fear not." That voice, so clear in the deep wilderness and mountain-top splendor of Nepal, is the voice I want to cling to as the hundreds of other tired, worried, stressed, or lonely voices flood in with the "real world." That is the voice I choose to trust. The voice of a God who was also both homeless and at home.

PANORAMAS

“If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.” 

– LEO TOLSTOY

YOU MIGHT BE AN EXPAT IF... (or, the trials and joys of living abroad)

Ayvalık ruins and my friend Senem.

I have decided that, to a large extent, being an expat living in a country where you do not know the language is strangely similar to becoming a child again. Anyone who has been in this position will tell you that within the first few weeks you may find any of the following regressions part of everyday life:

1. You go throughout your day mumbling badly mispronounced words with caveman grammar.
2. You get used to people talking ‘at’ you rather than to you, gesturing extravagantly, and reacting with surprised enthusiasm when you do manage to say something recognizable.
3. You are frequently sport a doe-eyed, deer-in-the-headlights expression; have that “they’re talking about me, but I have no idea what’s going on” feeling; or laugh even when you don’t get the joke.
4. You need at least 15 people to help you do even the most menial tasks (and it still might not get done.)

Also like childhood, expat life is ridiculously sensitive to the ups and downs of life. Every little thing becomes laughably inflated, leaving you feeling either undefeatable-on-top-of-the-world or temper-tantrum-angsty.

For example, you might find yourself feeling like the most incompetent human on the planet after any number of deceptively common-place circumstances:

-    Like when you wake up early and put the kettle on the stove for tea, being extra careful not to wake your roommates, only to have a shrill alarm erupt from the gas line both inside and outside the apartment… leaving you to stand there helplessly in your pajamas as a stream of Turkish neighbors, then the landlady, come to point, gesture and cover their ears until it turns off… leaving you deaf and tealess, with three woken roommates.

-    Or that one time you attempt to exchange money, so after being directed to the giant bank in the middle of town, you get a number and sit in the waiting room for over an hour, next to a sweet Turkish grandma who cannot understand anything you say or vice versa, despite multiple attempts at making small talk on both sides… only to finally have your number called and find out, with the help of two random strangers’ limited knowledge of English, that you cannot exchange money there without a Turkish residency number, which you still do not have.

But then for every frustration, there is almost always an equally commonplace event that brings undue feelings of satisfaction and triumph that make you giddy as a child:

-    Like the time you bought a cloth closet and attempted to put it together in your living room floor… only to find that the pieces don’t fit together as they should, and the directions consist of tiny, pixilated diagrams with insightfully translated English captions like “Put bars like picture”... but after an hour of pounding, twisting, constructing and reconstructing in your air condition-less apartment you finally have something resembling a closet and officially stop living out of a suitcase for the first time since April.

-    Or the first time you and a roommate came back home, exhausted after a long day of running errands and attempted to open the two locks on the front door of your apartment… and after a good five or six minutes of struggling with both sets of your keys (at times even simultaneously) you are about to collapse in the hallway and give up, when it finally decides to work… and after another few minutes of experimenting with the open door you figure out the strange pattern and forever-afterward get a spark of triumph when you lock or unlock your door.

After a long first two weeks of ups and downs, I had started to get frustrated by the rollercoaster of this childlike existence. Then, two of my roommates and I took a weekend trip to Ayvalık, a beautiful coastal city on the Aegean Sea. There, wandering through the crumbling ruins of an unnamed old church, I came across Senem and her two sisters. Senem, fearlessly scampering over the stone walls with a white bandage covering her chin, was clearly the ringleader of the little trio, while the younger two bounced around in her wake. It turned out that my impossibly limited Turkish was a perfect match for their shy but eager banter, and so we exchanged smiles, laughs, and they served me leaves on stone platters at their cardboard restaurant. 

I suppose it takes meeting someone like Senem to remember the beauty of being open and vulnerable to life, of being able to see the potential of every hidden adventure in life, of being a little kid again.

SWEET&SOUR

Packing my bags this weekend feels strangely like the tail end of a grand adventure as much as the start of one. The past two weeks have been a happy marathon of my favorite places, people, and activities— hiking through redwoods, riding the Big Dipper, drinking good coffee, kayaking with dolphins, beach worship, wedding celebrations, stargazing, and wine tasting, with friends and family, both old and new.

Nevertheless, in visiting all these places and people— each of which at one time or other encompassed in my idea of “home”— I had the strangest feeling of displacement.

It seems anything good is always somewhat bittersweet: catching up lost months with best friends from childhood, giving an old roommate a housewarming gift for her new apartment, getting a tour of my ‘baby’ brother’s new apartment for his sophomore year of college, watching a new class of freshmen take over the school that I felt so much ownership of over the past four years, sleeping in my room at my parents’ new house where the majority of my things remain stacked in cardboard boxes, happy reunions followed by goodbyes as we all drift into the amorphous void of the future.

I have a similar feeling every time I find myself at a loss for words trying to explain the dizzy, vague excitement of moving to a country I have never been to, where I know no one, and can speak next to none of the native language to the hundreds who ask “Are you excited? Are you nervous? How are you feeling?” The place that I will very soon call home.

And it is the same overwhelming sense of bittersweet that feel as I pack item after item into suitcases, envisioning myself finding a spot for each in my new apartment, and all too soon cramming everything back in to leave a place I love after the adventure of a lifetime.

Perhaps that is the beauty of life, which, as one of my favorite professors used to say, is like Chinese food: sweet and sour. I like to think that the bittersweet is a testimony to a life fully lived, a love fully given, and a community fully invested in— a feeling to be thankful for rather than mournful of.

It is a feeling I pray to have ten months from now, as I sit staring at these suitcases.