Half of his Saturday class was conversation and today’s conversation was ‘Relationships.’ Anywhere else in the world, people would talk about their own relationships, the relationships of their friends or celebrities. But not in Turkey. In Turkey, a Muslim country progressive though it may appear is still a Muslim country, dating is the exception and not the rule.
All of the students choose their parents as the couple they would discuss for the exercise. They were to answer a series of questions like, “How did they meet?,” “How did they know they were attracted to each other?” and “Did their parents approve?,” so on.
While the students were filling out their workbooks he surveyed his class, thinking about how once again he had been hissed at in class for mentioning the Turkish Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk, who had been on trial for “insulting Turkishness” and had since fled Istanbul after the murder of a prominent Armenian journalist who spoke out about the Ottoman genocide of Armenians, a dark point in Turkish history and a still-contested issue in Turkish politics. Amidst EU negotiations, the teacher wondered how these people, this country could even consider joining the EU when ‘insulting Turkishness’ was punishable by law. When their violent nationalism was evident in all of their classwork and their conversations with him.
He noticed the students looking up at him with their blank stares, the English teacher’s sign that they were finished and ready for discussion. Every student chose their parents, in the same way that while talking about holidays the students chose their family holiday homes, having never left the country.
So, how did your parents meet? “They are cousins.”
How did they know they were attracted to each other? “They are cousins.”
Did their parents approve? “Of course! They are cousins!”
More than half the class was a product of first cousin marriages, even though modern Turkish legislation makes it illegal to marry within the family, a common trait of Muslim culture and what was at the time groundbreaking legislation for a Muslim country. The teacher turned his back on the class, shaking his head on the inside.
He had always thought his students in Turkey were slower than usual. Now he knew why.
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