Translated material
Girl named "Eggplant"
In my opinion, in patriotism, the main thing is not to mix anything and, for God, do not shake anything
“I am happy to say“ I am the Turk ”,” I joke with a quote from Ataturk to any questions about nationality and kind of occupation. Which is actually not quite true, because I do not have a Turkish passport. But no one asks him. Turkish people are just glad that I also want to be a Turkish man.
I was lucky to be in a country, a nationality in which is no more difficult to accept than religion. Can you sing a national anthem? Turk! Do you bargain in the bazaar, like a lion, pretending to be a modest sheep? Turk! Do not cook a single dish without salch, that is, tomato paste? Turkishka! We hug!
The best example of how Turkish people boil, I have all the time before my eyes - my own children in their Turkish kindergarten. Last week, for example, they had a week of Turkish products. Dasha was asked to learn the poem about this content: “My name is eggplant, who will love me, will not forget, eat eggplants with meat, drink Ayran - Obeling.” The teacher sincerely did not understand what I came up with the question of whether it was possible to come up with something less cannibalist. And every morning we cheerfully started with "my name is eggplant." I even felt why the song of the Barysh Mancho “Domates, Biber, Patlican” (“tomato, pepper, eggplant”) can be considered an unofficial anthem of the nation. This is about ours, about Turkish. Almost a metaphor for death for the homeland. Martyrdom, but voluntary. Generously with a naked Ayranchik.
Photo: from personal archiveIn the same place, at the week of Turkish products, the child was taught to check on a barcode, a product was made in Turkey or not. And now, before eating something, she checks if this is Turkish, and if the product is not Turkish, then everything, “lie down”. Have you ever seen the child voluntarily abandoned the kinder-surge? I can show. “Dad, why did you buy not a Turkish kinder-surprise?! I said that we are buying only Turkish! ”
It is a pity for vegetables from the market not to check the bar-code. But no one claims sausages brought to me as a gift from Germany.
No matter how much I imagine myself, I can’t overtake my children. For example, November 10, the day of the death of Ataturk. At the time of his death, at 9.05 in the morning, all life in the country rises. In the news by direct inclusion, the Bosphorus bridge is shown where the movement stops, people get out of cars and sob. The line is sobbing to the ataturk memorial in Ankara. I sob and I. I was enough for seven years of life in Turkey to cross in relation to Ataturka from “This is some of their local dictator” to “Father for whom you left us!” Only the President of Turkey R. E. Erdogan, who is annually venerating the memory of Ataturk, does not sob, as if Putin forced Putin to honor Nemtsov on February 27 on February 27.
Photo: from personal archiveMy children have the first two months in the kindergarten of a continuous ataturk. They went to the Ataturk summer house in Floria and enthusiastically tell me about this for several weeks in a row. “Mom, we saw Ataturka Pajama! We saw an ataturka crib! We saw Ataturk robe! And we also saw the Ataturka toilet, mom. ” And, of course, "Ataturk loves us very much, mom, you know? All children love Ataturka, and Ataturk loves all the children. ” The children's song “Father, Mustafa Kemal Pasha, to whom you left us” we perform ten times a day, especially when guests come to the house (before they managed to take off their boots and ask for tea). And instead of leaving the house of November tenth, I put them in the morning in front of the TV: now, children, we will watch how Ataturk will die. To which the eldest child squints at me reproachfully: “Ataturk has not died, mother! He always lives in our hearts. ”
When I just arrived in Istanbul, and the writer Owen Matthews still lived on the island of Buyukada, he said that his children were staged at the school of the life and death of Ataturk, and when I halved something indignant, was surprised: “What confuses you?” And now almost nothing confuses me. I am rather pleased that patriotism is supplied in three different trim levels, and I can choose the one that is the least disgusting to me.
I am pleased that patriotism comes in three different trim levels, and I can choose the one that is the least disgusting to meFor examples that really embarrass me, do not go far. Right on the way to school, I will go through a kindergarten, so to speak, pro -erdoganovsky. Children are brought to him by a bus that depicts an attempt by a military coup in Turkey on July 15. Flags, lifted in a cry, the wounded and inscription about eternal glory to the martyrs falling to the ground. Once again - this picture is completely covered by a kindergarten bus.
Photo: from personal archive Right opposite our garden is a religious secondary school “Imam Hatip” for girls. The decades come there in complete vestments, closed, in school uniforms, in scarves. Once I blurted out my daughter that she would never study there, and she sobbed: "I want to study with the girls." The son of our nanny went to the religious kindergarten - at four he came home, took out notebooks and read the Qur'an with an expression.
Until recently, I was surprised when my friend took her daughter from the kindergarten, seeing that there were “closed” religious teachers in him, although the director swore and was afraid that never. Now I myself am monitoring possible deviations from the secular course. The previous teacher of my daughter, for example, made a little more necessary for traditional Muslim values. Once Dasha began to pray before meals, and I almost got down with a heart attack. Another time, she was taught that it was necessary to kiss adults for the holiday, the child left the class and grabbed my hand to kiss it, I pulled my hand off with a cry: “Ay-ah, what you are doing, stop immediately”-to the very horror of the teachers at once.
At first, in Turkey, I was not embarrassed by the side effects of education, all sorts of prayer rooms and mandatory religion lessons there. Being a child of the 80s, I managed to go through poems about Lenin and October Stars at school, and through such underground Orthodoxy of family friends and relatives. Since then, I have been convinced that a conscious rejection of my own beliefs is one of the best experiments that can be obtained in life. The revelation that the state, religion and the school together powder your brains are becoming the best vaccination from Fake News, not to trust the best motivation, but to check, to subject the world to healthy skepticism. It also helped me not to survive a teenage rebellion against my parents: I was too busy with a rebellion against the rest of the world.
Photo: from personal archiveEverything is so, but I also understand that patriotism does not have to be about consent with the line of the ruling party. That is, perhaps, a couple of decades ago, patriotism was about consent here, and for disagreements it was probably quite disgusting. But now, every representative of the Turkish nation can choose a patriotism that suits him, screening him with scrapers, undoubtedly connecting the whole Turkish people (as Olivier fasten us for the New Year): Xin Bosphorus, simple, but piercing songs of the central Anatolia, tulip glass of strong tea for a spreading Turkish breakfast.
In general, our patriotic recipe is as follows: do not mix anything and, for God's sake, do not shake anything. And so you suddenly find that you yourself sing patriotic marches and have nothing against patriotic performances. What to be a patriot does not have to support the state in all its undertakings, but it can still mean to have hopes, dreams and own beliefs and believe that your state will someday return to the best version of itself.
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