The Golden State

But now I’m selfishly mercifully distracted because the air has that indescribably wonderful summer feeling that used to make me feel like I could go anywhere, do anything, have sex with anyone. The thing I miss most about a city is the feeling that something is always happening, a festivity at all times, a restaurant with people eating, a place to hear music, even if I’m not doing any of those things, maybe I could be. But now that I have Honey the possibility is functionally zero and when she is old enough to be left alone for days at a time assuming I could ever find someone I would trust to watch her for days at a time I will be too old to go to a rave meet someone at a bar look really good have sex with a stranger, not to mention that I am married.

But on balance I have been so lucky, not only did I once meet an objectively beautiful man at a bar in a beautiful city but I married him and he gave me a beautiful child who will speak two languages, maybe more. And maybe one day when his papers are sorted and our finances are more in hand I will go and do yoga lose the weight around my middle and get a good haircut buy some nice makeup have someone put it on me buy a good dress and Engin will think Aman what a beautiful woman I married even if she is a neurotic woman from a benighted country.

Thinking about Engin gives me the customary pang of guilt that I am not speaking Turkish to Honey; not speaking Turkish at all. She’s got those dazed half-open eyes she gets when she’s rolling in the stroller and she’s had hardly any nap today and I think it’s a good time to try and let her take in her father’s tongue. “Honey my love,” I say to her in Turkish. “Your mama is going to speak to you in Turkish a little.” She cranes her head back to look at me.

“Since your daddy is a Turk he speaks Turkish,” I say to her. “Your mama is American but I am speaking Turkish. She speaks Turkish rather.

“In Istanbul live your grandmother and your paternal aunt and your uncle. In Izmir lives your paternal grandfather.” I hope I have these right, there are parent-specific names for relatives which seems excessive although I guess in English we spend a lot of time saying “My mother’s sister,” etc.

“In the summer we will go with Daddy to visit your paternal grandfather and we will sit on the pier and have Coke and pumpkin seeds. Won’t it be nice?” I say.

“Your paternal grandmother in Istanbul misses you very much. She wants us to come visit her. When we go your daddy will take you to get a fish sandwich and to see Miniatürk.”

I am floundering. The distance between myself pushing a stroller along the side of the road in Paiute County and Ayşe and Mini Turk World feels apocalyptic.

“Your daddy loves you very much,” I tell Honey, and then in English for emphasis.

“And your daddy loves cats very much. He likes to draw and cook and he makes delicious salami and cheese sandwiches. When you were in my womb”—gross but I love that word, rahim, must be Arabic, no vowel harmony. I pause to think if there’s a more modern word than this, and then realize that’s a problematic way to think about it, latent anti-Arab prejudice rising forth, rahim it is—“I ate one almost every single day.” We cross the railroad tracks with a bump.

“He loves to watch movies and when we watch them…” I stop here to parse the grammar because in Turkish you have to know what you are going to say before you start speaking, since the end comes first, or what is the end in English anyway. I think about trying to explain this to Honey but feel exhausted. “… when we watch them if I get either scared or bored and look at my phone he gets mad.” It takes me nearly two minutes to get this out. I can’t believe that something once so relatively easy is deserting me now.

I wonder if Engin is bored when he talks to me. Learning Turkish is no less than what’s expected if you are for example a Chechen and you immigrate to Turkey but it’s a bonus if you are American, Americans having managed to forge a dual impression worldwide of hopeless stupidity and national superiority that exempts them from learning other languages. Turks are also convinced that Turkish is an impossible language to learn, although English is the one that has no inherent logic and is all irregular verbs and phantom letters and bizarre plurals. Engin doesn’t ever talk to me in particularly complex English sentences and that doesn’t bother me so hopefully the reverse is true too.