The apartment

Mustafa's books lean into one another; they climb - like vines - up, up to the ceiling. The free ones embrace those locked inside the three standing bookshelves. The books are all in Turkish, mostly Marxist texts, books about philosophy and Kurdish history, but there's also some poetry, one Barbara Kingsolver novel, a copy of Stendhal's The Red and the Black.

On the night I moved in, the wind blew one panel of siding right off the roof. The rain came in through a disarmingly large L-shaped chasm in the ceiling. Occasionally, the sound of gravel rolling down plastic alarmed me. A large water stain clouded the far corner of the living room. Pools of water collected on the stairwell.

From what I could see, the Kurdish people in Tarlabaşı liked their apartments cluttered. They liked dark furniture, dark patterned blankets, rugs covering every surface, TV sets on. In front of the set, the Kurdish fathers recline, wrapped in mismatched floral print blankets. On cold days, the streets reek of burning coal.

The first thing I did in my room was get rid of the old and dusty mustard yellow and navy Persian rug. I wanted to hang my simple green IKEA curtains, but apparently, my bedroom wall cannot support the stainless steel rods from my old apartment. Mustafa and Onur's rooms still have dark Persian rugs, all the dark floral prints, all the mismatched, heavy furniture, the style I remember from those Tarlabası apartments. The smell of cigarette smoke and dirty clothes from Onur's room makes me want to take flight. Mustafa's room also smells, but at least he does not smoke.

The neighborhood is known to be conservative and religious. The bakkal (grocer) on the corner, for example, listens to the Imam's sermon on Sunday evening. Last Sunday, when I came in to get groceries, I heard the speaker use the words "Yahudiler" (Jews) and "Hiristiyanlar" (Christians). To me the voice speaking sounded like Tayyip Erdoğan's. I asked if it was Erdoğan speaking. "O Erdoğan değil," he answered. That's not Erdoğan. "But it sounds just like him," I said. "Yes, it does, effendim." The shopkeepers always use terms of respect like "effendim" They are always polite, but I still don't trust them completely. Not after the men selling köftes and his buddies laughed off the art gallery incident. "No, abla, it isn't like that. Don't believe what you read in the papers. It isn't like that, we're not like that." Ha-ha. A neighborhood mob uses sticks and stones on art gallery attendees taking a smoke break. Five art lovers are sent to the hospital. Afterward, the köfte-makers have a giggle.

But if you think of the art gallery incident, you have to also think of the lovely covered woman in our building, following her son to the door with instructions. We do not converse, but she nods at me as if in acknowledgement of our common womanhood and smiles as she shuts the door.

Across the street, in an internet cafe, the neighborhood boys play video games. The clerks are eager to show you they know more than the numbers in English, even if you speak to them in Turkish. Then when you counter with a question in English, they usually can't understand you. How do they feel about us? Do they hate us or love us? The cab drivers like our money and our tips. The clerks at the internet cafe use remote access control to print my pages for me. The cursor moves across the screen, even though I have not asked it to.

Now that I am living with Mustafa, apparently, Yağmur will not come to the house anymore. The other day I found her petite singlets on the laundry rack. What could I do? I just folded the clothes, put them to one side, and hung my stuff on the line. How enormous my things looked next to hers, especially those damned maternity jeans!

This evening when I came home Mustafa was busily washing all the dishes. He and Onur had put in the DVD of the Julia Roberts' film Eat Pray Love, and were watching it intently. Mustafa did not grumble once about the pile of dishes, even though it took him over an hour to wash all of them. After finishing the dishes, he made dinner for all of us, and even sat down to watch the film without even one complaint.