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

Obama on the left, McCain on the right.

By Connor Mendenhall 

It’s currently 2:20 AM in Turkey, and I’m watching election results from a party sponsored by the U.S. embassy and the Turkish-American Association. There’s free coffee, reliable internet, and a big screen streaming CNN, so I’ll be spasmodically blogging into the wee hours.

With a full zero percent of precints reporting, I’m calling Turkey and awarding its zero electoral votes to Barack Obama. The crowd here is about 60 strong, split between Turks of all sorts, Anglophile expats, and college kids, huddled like Wright’s philosophers around a projector throwing the fleeting, frantic visage of Wolf Blitzer up on a big screen. Everyone cheered moments ago when the networks called Vermont for Obama, but for a better barometer of the mood here, see the above image. John McCain buttons have gone untouched all night, save for a few foreign service officers wearing one of each in the spirit of professional nonpartisanship. As for the Obama buttons, a staffer just refilled the basket and folks are passing them around for the second time.

Of course, there’s no Barr, Nader, or McKinney schwag, but I did get a chance to stuff a Bob Barr ballot into the party’s mock election box. I am much more likely to cast the marginal vote, but in the end, my fake vote will doubtless have as much significance as my real one.

Cross-posted at Connor Mendenhall's personal blog.