By Connor Mendenhall

Turkish class. Students have just learned the abilitative mood. Ä°nce, the instructor, is holding up pictures of common household objects, and students are practicing their grammar by describing what they can and cannot do with them.

Ä°nce: A ball!

Kathy: You can throw it, but you can’t eat it.

Ä°nce: True. What about a pen?

Henning: I can write a letter, but I can’t write an email.

Ä°nce: Good job! A bowl?

Jennifer: You can eat soup, but you can’t eat a sandwich with it.

Ä°nce: A knife?

Connor: I can rinse it in a sink to wash off the blood, but I can never scrub away the human stain.

Ä°nce and class: …

Ä°nce: What about a  shoe?

By Connor Mendelhall

Ankara, Turkey

By Connor Mendenhall

The phone is ringing.

I throw off the comforter and stagger out into the living room. It
is cold, I am still sleepy, and the phone is stabbing my ears with
sound. I am wearing only my underwear; everything is underwater without
my glasses. I run to the closest source of noise: the black base of the
cordless phone. Nope. Handset’s gone. I dash back into the foyer,
narrowing down the source. There it is! Under the sweater on the big
chest.

I pick up the phone on what must be the last ring…and stare at it.
Now I’m facing a dilemma. Odds are whoever’s on the other end will not
speak English. I might be able to explain that I can’t understand them.
But what if it’s something important? What if a grandma died or a test
is positive or a library book is overdue, and all gets sucked down the
memory hole of my Turkish incompetence? No good.

Or what if it’s something worse? What if it’s the police, calling to
let me know they’re deporting me? Oh, God. That’s it. They know I
watched a YouTube video the other day. They know I ran my residence
permit through the washing machine. They know I wandered onto a
commando base on fall break. Holy crap—that’s three strikes. Do Turks
even play baseball?

It doesn’t matter. They figured it out. It’s the police on the line,
just waiting to tell the stupid foreigner to pack his bags and ship out
on the next freighter flight to the states. Better not answer. Better
pretend I’m not here. Better play it cool. I put down the phone and
take two steps back like it’s threatening to mug me.

All of a sudden, I grab it again. What if it is something important?
What if it’s a warning? The tranny hooker who works the corner by the
apartment went crazy and started killing the neighbors. There’s a
protest in Kızılay and I should stay away if I don’t want to get
bludgeoned or tear gassed or killed by a stray rock. It’s the embassy.
My family’s been killed by ostriches. Oh, God. That’s it. They’re all
dead, their eyes pecked out by the big gangly motherfuckers, probably
honking the entire time. Oh, God. I should pick it up. I should just
press the button, say “Efendim,” and get it over with.

Another ring comes from another room, and I realize that I’ve been
shivering in the foyer for five minutes, standing and staring at the
silent phone like some puzzling idol. My hair is oily and all messed
up. My skin is crawling with the early-morning itchiness of a night
spent in a cotton cocoon. My nipples are numbing and my fingers are
tingling and my cell phone is ringing its jangly jovial default tune. I
run to my room, fumble for it in the pocket of my jeans, and pick up.

“Efendim,” I say. I’m never quite sure if I’m getting a call from a
Turk or an American, so I play it safe with the all-purpose Turkish
greeting.

“Khan-UR!” cries the voice on the phone. It’s Ayşe, my host mom.

Most Turks have great trouble with the name “Connor.” At various
times, to various acquaintances, I have gone by “Joan-er,” “Corner,”
“Karen,” and even “Glasses-my-nephew.” But there is a special place in
my heart for Ayşe’s pronunciation. When she speaks, I am a Mongol
warrior, prepared to crush my enemies, see them driven before me, and
hear the lamentations of their women.

My sleep-crusted Turkish comprehension kicks in as AyÅŸe continues. I
can pick up every third word or so (and she knows to speak slowly,
bless her).

“Did you hear the phone?”

“Yes, we are sleeping. I not-slept but the first phone sound completed early…I have a cell phone.”

“Do you have class today? Did you…shower?…breakfast.”

“Okay. Yes, I have class. Okay, yes-no, they did not shower. I ate one unit of cornflakes plate. Also, with a banana.”

“Oh, okay. The water…hot.
Bathroom…broken. I closed it. Kitchen. Find the big white machine. Do
you see the big white machine in the kitchen?”

I rub my eyes, put on my glasses, and wander past the bathroom into
the kitchen. I look around for what feels like five minutes, searching
for anything big and white. Nothing. I’m looking so hard that I forget
about the phone, which is five feet away from me, face down on the
countertop.

This is a problem. There are no clear candidates for “big white
machine.” There is a refrigerator, which is a big machine, but
distinctly off-white, the color of the leftover milk at the bottom of a
bowl of Cheerios. I open the fridge anyways and dumbly plumb its
depths. There are a couple bottles of water in there. Should I, I don’t
know…boil them? Put them in the microwave? We don’t even have a
microwave.

This is ridiculous, even to my muddled morning mind. I slam the door.

“Khan-UR? Khan-UR?”

A distant tinny voice is crying out. I’ve forgotten the phone, and I snatch it from the counter.

“Excuse me. I look. Okay, it is in the kitchen. Okay, two minutes. I am seeing.”

“It’s a big white machine. It has a button.”

“Okay. I understood this thing. Yes, okay. He will see.”

The washing machine is big and white. As I walk by, my eyes settle
on a prominent button, right on the front. But it’s not in the kitchen,
so it’s right out. When I get to the kitchen, my eyes flit over the
placemats on the table, up the wall, and across the countertop. There’s
a radiator, big and white and menacing—but button-free. There’s a cute
little Japanese rice cooker. It’s got buttons, but “big” is a stretch.
I settle on the electric kettle. It’s larger than normal, I guess. It
says it holds two liters, which must be about a gallon or something.
Right?

Suddenly It all comes together, the sort of miracle eureka moment
that sets me furiously erasing in the middle of a math test: I’m making
tea. They drank all the tea this morning, and if I want fresh stuff
with breakfast, I need to boil hot water myself and make a new pot. The
electric kettle—how stupid could I be? I grab the phone again.

“Oh, I understand. I regularly can make new tea.”

“Hmm. You did not understand.”

“No, okay, I understood this thing. New hot water, new tea. White machine in the kitchen. Okay, I understand.”

“No. You didn’t know what I said. Big machine. On the wall. In the kitchen.”

Guess not. I frown.

“Okay. I go back. Repeat I am looking.”

Again, I look across the table, over the counter, up the wall. But
this time, I catch the water heater, stuck there right in the corner
where the wall meets the cupboard. It’s big, it’s white, and it’s got a
whole host of buttons scattered across a pearly panel. How the hell did
I miss that? The smack resounds as I slap my forehead and rush back to
the phone.

“I understood! I understood! Hot water.
Big white machine on the wall in kitchen. If he wants hot shower, we
are opening the machine!”

I’m laughing and excited and filled with Christmas morning joy—after
eons of frustration, I’ve finally figured it out. Ayşe
can’t see (Allah’a şükür), but I’m smiling and doing a little dance around the kitchen in my boxer-briefs.

AyÅŸe laughs.

“Good job! Okay…go to the big machine, find the button, set it…different seven degrees…turn…open…but don’t do the hungry.”

“I understand! Hot water!”

“You understand?”

“I understand! Hot water big white machine. Okay! Thank you so much! Okay, see you later!”

“Okay, see you later! Good luck!”

I hang up the phone, and relish its little beep, cherry on my
double-fudge comprehension sundae. After a long sigh of relief, I go to
the big machine.

I find the button.

I set it.

I turn the dial, but what about the hungry?

I cringe when the cold water hits my skin.

—-

Cross-posted at Connor Mendenhall