The Unbearable Lightness of Being

Milan Kundera, who is one of my favorite authors, passed away earlier this month. This post is to commemorate him.

Warning: The post contains spoilers for The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

 

I bought my copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being at Shakespeare and Company in Paris in the summer of 2013. I was a fourth year PhD student then in Lausanne and visiting Illegitimate Daughter. It was our first time hanging out in Paris together, which would later become the first of many. We had Shakespeare and Company in our list of places to see because it is one of the places Celine and Jesse visit in Before Sunset. I didn’t have a plan to buy a particular book, but I wanted to buy one to commemorate the visit, which I usually do whenever I visit a bookstore that I deem important for the first time. After almost an hour of roaming and chilling at the bookstore, The Unbearable Lightness of Being ended up being the choice, for no reason other than being one of those books that I thought I should probably read one day.

I didn’t read that book until shortly after I moved to San Jose in 2015. Whenever I was reading it during my daily commute to work using the Light Rail in San Jose, it felt like drinking water after being thirsty for a very long time. I later read it again shortly after I moved to Copenhagen in 2018, and parts of it I read again and again in my first year there.

 

The book has three main characters: Tomáš, Tereza, and Sabina.

Sabina was the character that I was the most drawn to. She was on her own unlike Tomáš and Tereza who were a couple. She kept moving from place to place, whereas Tomáš and Tereza returned to Prague. I related to her unenthusiasm about the events that aim to create a nationality-based community for people living abroad. Toward the end, she created an alternative family for herself, but on a shaky foundation. …

But, most importantly, the first chapter where she is the character of focus, which is the third part of the book titled “Words Misunderstood” was one of the best things I had ever read in my life.

“Words Misunderstood” centers on the concept of words having different meanings to different people based on their background. This isn’t a new concept. Some may claim it is an obvious one. On the other hand, Milan Kundera’s rendition of this concept is the most beautiful one I have ever encountered. At one point, he relates it to composing, I assume because of his scholarly training in musicology. We form our life-compositions with people who enter our lives early on. Thus, we form a common set of words and gestures with them. When we meet people later in life, especially the ones who come from very different backgrounds, the same words and gestures may conflict or require over-explanation. In contrast, when you meet a good old friend, even after years of absence, things flow with ease thanks to our shared language/composition. On the other hand, he also mentions the possibility of creating a new composition with the people who enter our lives later if one makes the necessary effort.

 

“While people are fairly young and the musical composition of their lives is still in its opening bars, they can go about writing it together and sharing motifs (the way Tomas and Sabina exchanged the motif of the bowler hat), but if they meet when they are older, like Franz and Sabina, their musical compositions are more or less complete, and every motif, every object, every word means something different to each of them.”

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Part 3: Words Misunderstood

 

Lausanne was the first place I moved to that didn’t have the sea. Switzerland doesn’t have sea. It has beautiful mountains and lakes. That is what is engraved in the locals and many foreigners that live there. I, on the other hand, lived the first 21 years of my life in coastal cities seeing the sea almost every day. When I traveled, it was also mostly to other coastal cities. The sea was the most consistent part of my life. I knew the world is a lot more than its coasts, and the sea isn’t a big part of many people’s lives, but I had never internalized that fact before I moved to Switzerland. In Switzerland, the sea wasn’t a big deal. Or the relation to the water was centered around water sports, creating a more active state when interacting with the water as opposed to experiencing it as is. In return, I didn’t care that much for their beautiful mountains, skiing, or hiking. Turkey’s coast also has mountains, but to me the mountains came as an attachment to the sea. Later in life, I adjusted my composition to appreciate the beauty of the mountains and enjoy hiking with friends. That composition hasn’t had a place for skiing, though, and I don’t expect that it ever will. And I am afraid one day I will face deportation from Europe because I don’t hike enough.

I know this example may sound like a first-world problem. Last month I wrote about way more serious challenges people face when they move abroad. Especially in the context of The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the characters move abroad to escape the political climate in their home country. But even if you have the best conditions in your life abroad, seemingly very frivolous things can create a divide between you and the other people. With many words misunderstood the divide deepens. This is why it is very challenging to create strong bonds with local people when you live abroad unless both sides are willing to put the energy to create a common language/composition.

 

“Being in a foreign country means walking a tightrope high above the ground without the net afforded a person by the country where he has his family, colleagues, and friends, and where he can easily say what he has to say in a language he has known from childhood.”

The Unbearable Lightness of Being – Part 2: Soul & Body

 

The second part of the book titled “Body & Soul”, which focuses on Tereza, touches on the theme of living abroad as well, especially when your country of origin is the politically more complicated and socio-economically less privileged one compared to the country that you moved to. You end up being subjected to the top-down or black-and-white views of the people about you and your country. That contributes to the deepening of the divide substantially. In the book, our characters first move to Switzerland from Czechoslovakia. Someone in Switzerland shames Tereza for being dependent on Tomáš’s money.

I remember once a Frenchman I met at a wedding telling me “You can feel free now that you live abroad” when we were discussing issues related to my gender in Turkey. I was taken aback by that statement. How did he get to that conclusion? Sure, we were discussing serious issues women face in my home country, but how did he make this projection to freedom and the lives of all the Turkish women? How did he project that onto my life? Did I give him this impression? Or was this his entitlement making such bold statements about the lives of people he knew very little of? Did he not know that there are also many challenges women face in his own country, in Europe, in USA …? Did he not realize that my residence in Europe/US depended on my job, which by default made me less free than most people around me, and I lacked the very strong support system I had in Turkey when I was abroad? Plus, if I go down the rabbit hole, was anyone really “free”?

 

Milan Kundera was exiled to France from his homeland Czechoslovakia in 1975. He lived the rest of his life in France. He knew what it meant to live abroad, to come from a politically complex country, and to be persecuted for one’s ideas. I admire and appreciate him for analyzing concepts such as identity, misuse of political power, beauty, sex … using the almost archetypical characters he creates, but without undermining, overgeneralizing, or creating a caricature of those characters, so they all feel very human at the same time.

 

I would like to end this post by acknowledging the people who have contributed to forming the core of my composition early on back when I still lived in Turkey and who have been generous with me as I lived abroad so that I can keep enrichen my composition later in life. It is hard to list them all, but they are the ones that frequently appear in this blog. Thank you, and I love you!

 

P.S. Special thanks to Illegitimate Daughter for remembering the dates of our visit to Shakespeare and Company.

Navigating the World with a Turkish Passport: The Good, the Bad, and the Visas - Part 0 & 1

 

Copenhagen has now become the city that I resided in the longest after my hometown. To celebrate this, I initially planned to write a love letter to Copenhagen; a sincere one, not a sarcastic one. Then, my cousin, who was the “baby cousin” in May’s blog post and is now 30 with a stable full-time job, was rejected a Schengen visa to come to Denmark to visit me. His visa rejection letter in short said “Currently, we don’t grant visas to people from Turkey unless it is a matter of close family and business-related visits.” This outcome is neither unique to him nor Denmark these days. I hear more frequent Schengen visa rejections for Turkish people including musicians wanting to travel for their concerts. In my anger and frustration, I realized that my love toward Copenhagen is doomed to be one-sided. As a result, instead of a love letter, I decided to write about the impact of my under-privileged passport on me as I dreamed of exploring the world as a kid and lived abroad as an adult. There will be some love still in the mix.

 

First, let me acknowledge my own privileged position here. I am an expat. I moved abroad because I wanted to not because I had to. While no foreign country welcomed me with open arms, this isn’t the same as seeking refuge abroad. In addition, while I am aware of the unique challenges some other passports have in the Western world, the challenges I describe here focus on the ones that come with my Turkish passport. I know people who can’t see their families for several years due to the harsh residence permit requirements of the country they live in or the unwelcoming conditions in their home country. I have never been in such a situation, and I wish no one had to be. The longest I had to be away from my parents was slightly over a year, it was very difficult, and it was due to a residence permit requirement. This being said, given my country of origin, I also have to acknowledge that this relative privilege may change at any time.

 

Despite living (and full-time working and paying taxes) in the Western world for over a decade, I am still in a disadvantaged position when it comes to my rights compared to the majority European people who are around me on a day-to-day basis. This is “thanks to” my Turkish passport. This world is not as open to me as it is to them. I am subjected to more visa and residence permit requirements, and therefore endure more challenges when I travel for work. When my family and friends in Turkey want to visit me, even at the place I now call home and was about to write a love letter to, we are at the mercy of a stranger granting visas. Except for a brief period in the USA and up until this year in Europe, my residence permit depended on my job and losing my job meant deportation. The welfare rules don’t apply to me with the same benefits. As a result, I also by default feel distant from most of the people who surround me.

 

But I want to start from the beginning. So, let’s rewind and dig. Since I lived in 5 countries (meaning I had to open a bank account in 5 countries), this story will have 5 parts, so I will post it over multiple months. This month comes Part 0 & 1.

 

Part 0: Turkey

Growing up in Turkey, one of my favorite TV events was the Eurovision. I didn’t care for the songs. I rarely watched that part. But I stayed up late to watch the voting part. I don’t know if it was an early interest in world politics or a very creative self-harm method. During that voting segment, while many of the competing countries voted well for their neighbors, we usually got the lowest scores from ours except for Azerbaijan.

Then, there was the Copenhagen criteria and Anders Fogh Rasmussen saga frequently on the news. The Copenhagen criteria are the criteria to enter the EU, the criteria that we have never been able to satisfy, and very likely we never will. Rasmussen welcomed 10 new countries into the EU as a conclusion to that saga. We of course weren’t one of them, and we never will be even if we could satisfy the Copenhagen criteria. If I describe the reactions my family members had toward Rasmussen’s news appearances in those years, this blog post might get an R-rating, so let’s just say that he was quite unpopular.

 

I was 15 the first time we planned to travel abroad as a family. It was to visit my aunt, who lived in Chicago, USA. We needed a visa to enter the USA. The closest US embassy to us was in Ankara, which is ~4 hours by bus from my hometown. It was early summer. The day of our visa appointment was very hot. We left the house of the family friends who hosted us during that trip with very light clothing. My mom, however, got a couple of jackets with her just in case, and my dad and I made fun of her for that. Then, we arrived at the US embassy shortly before our appointment time and were let in. We ended up waiting there for ~4 hours for our turn to come, and the AC was on at full blast. One of the people, also waiting, politely asked the security guard if they could turn down the AC. The guard yelled at her in return, and the AC was kept as is. At the 3^rd hour, my fingernails started to turn purple. My mom put a jacket on me. They granted us a 10-year visa.

 

The second time I traveled abroad was again to Chicago after graduating high school, as I also mentioned in previous month’s post. This time I had a visa. But when I was in Chicago, my cousins and I decided to do a road trip to Toronto for a concert. I needed a visa to enter Canada, unlike my cousins who are US citizens. One of my cousins and I went to the Canadian embassy in New York. It was a short visit. They rejected my application because I was 17 and needed a permission letter from my parents. The interviewer even asked, “How did you enter the US?”, to which I replied, “by plane.” He didn’t ask more. Our NYC trip was beautiful, though. After that rejection, I told my cousin that we didn’t have to go to Toronto, or they could go, and I could stay with my aunt. She said we should still give it a try. Then, my parents sent me a letter. One of my aunt’s friends was an official translator for these types of documents, so she helped us to make it official. This time with my other cousin, we drove to Detroit to retry our chances at the Canadian embassy there. With the permission given by my parents, Canada welcomed me. When I look at my old passport, I see a one-month Canadian visa. I vaguely remember that I actually received a visa for a week, but then the border control officer at Canada extended it to one-month saying, “I have a really good friend from Izmir.”, but I can’t see any evidence to back this memory up on my passport. Regardless of the visa outcome, the trip to Detroit was one of the best trips of my life. If you want to really bond with someone, do a road trip with them, especially driving at night. In Detroit, I was let into a bar for the first time in US despite being 17 because the owner was my cousin’s friend’s cousin’s friend (in Chicago, they didn’t let me in bars; in Turkey, they did), and I was introduced to an Irish car bomb, which became more Irish car bombs by the end of that night. Next morning, we went to Six Flags, which was a great way to spend hangover.

 

In contrast, when it came to traveling in Europe, I had one advantage compared to many other Turkish people back then. By extension of being my parents’ child, I had what is called a Green Passport in Turkey. It is a passport that gives you the right to visit Schengen countries without obtaining a visa for up to 3 months. It is typically given to people who serve in public office for a certain number of years. My parents have it because they were professors in a public university.

There used to be two criteria to keep the Green Passport through nepotism for a daughter: (1) being unmarried and (2) being unemployed. For a long time, I only knew about the first one and not the second. One day, I think in my early teenage years, I told my dad “I won’t get married.” I didn’t elaborate on the fact that this was to keep my passport rights. He didn’t ask for a reason. He said “That is OK. You can still live together with the person you love. You don’t have to get married.” I became aware of the second rule around the time I was preparing to move to Switzerland. Being a PhD student was going to be my first grown-up full-time job. And while I gave up my prospective spouse without thinking twice for a passport, I was never going to give up my economic independence.

In the end, the only time the Green Passport was supposed to be beneficial for me, it ended up being a disadvantage, and we will delve into that in Part 1.

 

Part 1: The Netherlands

Third year of my BSc at Koç University, thanks to my supervisor Serdar Taşıran, I and two other students in the department was accepted for a two-month summer internship at University of Twente, Enschede, The Netherlands. Since this was a visit of less than three months, I was supposed to be covered with my Green Passport. However, the Twente-side told me that since this was a paid internship, I should still apply for a visa.

I did and got rejected. The Dutch embassy in İstanbul told me that “We cannot give you a visa for this because you do not need one.” There was so much back-and-forth between me and Twente. I had to visit the embassy several times and the staff started to greet me with a “You again! Hi.” At least the Dutch embassy is at İstiklal Avenue, which is one of my favorite places on Earth. All the other embassies I have been to are at locations that I wouldn’t go to otherwise. My parents also went to that Dutch embassy once on my behalf because I had classes. During that visit, my mom developed a crush on one of the cute embassy staff who identified my case as a “nightmare”. To this day, whenever we reminisce about my Netherlands days, she gives a shout out to that guy.

The other two students got their visas quickly and they were set for the internship. My situation was unclear up until last week. Eventually, the Twente-side gave in.

In Enschede, the university found us a place to live, which I really appreciated. I lived in a house with five boys and a mouse named Elizabeth. I was also the only girl at the department I interned at. All the boys/men were nice, but I really missed my college roommate, a.k.a. Illegitimate Daughter, who has a love letter dedicated to her somewhere in this blog. It was with those emotions I started watching Gilmore Girls, which she always insisted that I should watch. This action was the start of a very important tradition for me, which is to watch Gilmore Girls whenever I move to a new country.

Besides Gilmore Girls, I was often unsure about what to eat, so I ended up eating too much stroopwafel. The trash in the house was somehow always overflowing. People often told me that I don't look Turkish. Someone threw up in front of me on the street in Amsterdam. I did all the rides in Efteling. I was able to go to the Dutch edition of Sister Blue’s wedding, which required two trains and a bus ride (pre-smart-phones) that brought me to a place in the Netherlands where some people couldn’t speak English. We were only 3 representing the bride’s side heavily outnumbered by the groom’s family and friends. I guess the Turkish edition of this wedding had the opposite outlook, but I wasn’t in that edition. They assigned the task of recording the wedding to me; a tip: don’t comment on things while recording a wedding even in Turkish, since some foreign spouses end up learning Turkish.

Overall, the internship at Twente was both productive and fun, and an encouraging experience just before deciding whether I should go abroad for my PhD, which we will delve into in Part 2 next month.

Losses

  

In March’s post, Rejections, I mentioned that two of my close family members were battling cancer. They were my uncle, mom’s brother, and my aunt, my dad’s sister. They both passed, in late March and early April. My dad was the one who gave me the news of my uncle’s death crying on the phone. 13 days later, I was the one on the phone crying giving him the news of his sister’s death.

In January’s post, My Grandmother, I wrote that the grief that came with my grandmother’s loss wasn’t wrapped up in anger. Losing a loved one to cancer, or even watching them battle it, on the other hand, makes you want to torch Olympus at times.

 

Once a colleague, when we were talking about the losses in the family, said “We don’t have a big family, so there haven’t been too many losses.”

It is true that the more beloved ones you have in your life, the more losses you will experience, unless you die first. For Turkish standards, I can’t say that I have a big family, but I do have a sizeable family.

It is also true that not everyone has to be close to their family, but I am.

 

My uncle was cool. He was The Rolling Stones cool.

I didn’t want to let go of him when I was a kid, and whenever he was around, I had his full attention. Later when he had his own family, I had to make my peace with sharing him. It wasn’t easy in the beginning, but I loved his partner quickly and my baby cousin was the cutest thing I had ever seen.

When I was in college in Istanbul, Istiklal Avenue was a spot I visited often in my leisure time, as it was for most college kids I knew in those days. My uncle’s workplace was close to Istiklal Avenue, so I sometimes met him either at his work or somewhere in Istiklal. We drank either beer or coffee. We talked about many things including whether there was hope for the Turkish left [1], which still is a prominent question in the light of the upcoming elections in Turkey [2].

Then, I moved abroad and my interactions with the family in Turkey, except for my parents, became less and less. I saw my uncle almost every time I visited Turkey, though. During COVID lockdowns, we started talking more regularly over the phone. Around the time the lockdowns started to get more relaxed, he got diagnosed with cancer. Toward the end, he didn’t have the energy for a phone call.

 

My aunt was a force of nature. She gave the impression that nothing could beat her. Then, she had cancer.

My aunt lived in Chicago, USA with her husband and two children. Because of that I didn’t get to see her much beyond their brief and rare visits to Turkey when I was a kid. My real relationship with her began after I graduated from high school. That summer my parents gifted me a flight ticket to Chicago. After I was done with my university entrance exam, I flew there to spend a month with my aunt and cousins. During that time, I got a chance to form a strong lifelong bond with all three of them. Later, when I lived in San Jose, I frequently visited them in Chicago, since I felt at home in Chicago, even though reaching Chicago from San Jose is more difficult than reaching Istanbul from Copenhagen. 

I loved having big family gatherings at my aunt’s place with my cousins and their growing families. She and I drank Turkish Raki together during some of those gatherings. Neither of my cousins and none of my friends in the US liked that drink, so sharing it with someone who also appreciates it as much as I did was something I cherished.

I also loved spending evenings at her house drinking tea from her tiny Turkish tea glasses and eating bitter mint-flavored chocolate. Even though I am not a big tea drinker, I kept a tiny tea glass at home in case she visited, since she had a high preference toward drinking tea with such glasses. She only got to visit my place in San Jose, and I unfortunately broke that tea glass a while back in Copenhagen. Now, I no longer need one.

 

I lost other beloved members of my family and some family friends to cancer before. I also have some family members and friends who survived cancer. I know all the options are on the table, and one should ideally never give up hope. On the other hand, sometimes it gets to a point where you realize the end is nearing. Your prayers or wishes for the loved one start shifting from “please let him/her heal” to “please stop his/her suffering.” In March, despite my best resistance, that shift happened for me. When some colleagues asked me about whether my family members were ok after the earthquake in Turkey, I often wanted to make the terrible dark joke of “They were safe from the earthquake, but we have cancer to compensate for that.”, but I held my tongue. I was often in a bad mood almost waiting for death to happen anytime and ate more and more lunches alone at work instead of going with other lab members. Not that they weren’t extremely kind and supportive, one of them even gave me a much-needed strong hug the morning my uncle died, and I was supposed to give a lecture in less than an hour.

 

I traveled to Istanbul for a week the day after my uncle died. I especially wanted to be with my mother, who experienced the loss of a sibling for the first time.

It was the right choice since being with the family was helpful to cope with the situation.

I was back in Copenhagen when my aunt died. I thought about going back to Istanbul again for a few days to be with my dad, who lost his last remaining sibling, or going to Chicago to be with my cousins. At the same time, I felt like crawling into a cave and staying there uninterrupted. My dad told me to take care of myself first, so I stayed in Copenhagen.

It was also the right choice since I needed time for myself.

 

I know I am writing all these from a place of distance still. I live abroad. I experience everything that happens to my family from abroad. These losses created a lot of grief for my family and close family friends. Yet, it is not my place to write about anyone else’s loss or grief. I can only do my best to put mine into words, and this is it. In the end, I am grateful that both my uncle and my aunt were an important part of my life despite our residence across different countries, and the memories are here to keep.

 

[1] My uncle belonged to the left-wing student groups during the 1970s political uproar in Turkey, which led to the 1980 Turkish military coup, and had to leave the country briefly to live abroad since he was receiving death threats from the right-wing groups.

[2] I voted on Friday, and I am hopeful.

The Banshees of Inisherin & Midnights

 

Friday evening, lying on the couch struck by my period cramps, I ended up watching Directors on Directors: Taylor Swift & Martin McDonagh. My initial plan was to watch Martin McDonagh’s short film Six Shooter, which was recommended by a friend the night before while we were discussing Martin McDonagh’s work. My YouTube search for Six Shooter also brought me the Directors on Directors episode with Taylor Swift and Martin McDonagh.

At a first glance, it looked like an odd pairing: a 53-year-old playwright turned into a filmmaker known for his tragicomedies and a 33-year-old ex-teenage-country-singer turned into an incomparable popular artist. Plus, neither makes me think of a “director” first, since the former’s writer identity and the latter’s popstar identity are more prominent.

Upon a deeper glance, I was completely on board for this pairing: the writer/director of the movie that I have revisited the most and the artist of the album that I have listened the most so far in 2023.

 

I must admit that Martin McDonagh was not a filmmaker in my radar before I watched The Banshees of Inisherin earlier this year. I missed In Bruges when it came out, put it in my “to-watch” list, but it fell through the cracks. I watched Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri on a plane, thought it was one of the more interesting movies of that season, but didn’t think much about it afterward.

I was on the road till mid-January this year. When I came back to Copenhagen, The Banshees of Inisherin (will call it The Banshees for short from now on) was one of the films widely shown in cinemas. I found the trailer interesting. Sister in Movies wasn’t so interested in watching it at the time, so I made plans to watch it by myself after the first lecture of the new semester. Despite the big audience that day for the film, I was somehow the only one in the last row of Grand Teatret’s big room. After the film ended, I left Grand thinking “I am glad I lived to see this gem.”

I love watching things that are very funny and very sad at the same time, e.g., Nanette, Fleabag, Russian Doll ... It is very hard to strike a balance in that tone, but when it is done well, the end product gives you a lot to reflect on if you wish to. If you don’t, you can just take in the funny parts and run away with them or you can complain about how sad and depressing what you just watched was. The Banshees masters this tone in my opinion.

The film also has multiple stories well-juxtaposed. There is the personal story as we watch the interactions of the town people, the historical story with Irish civil war going on in the background, and the fable story with the several animals having almost three-dimensional characters and the banshee figure. You can take all the stories in or just follow one based on what you prefer. Either way, the film’s value doesn’t diminish.

When it comes to the personal layer, it is also rare to be able to relate to multiple characters in a film even while watching it for the first time. In the case of The Banshees, without major spoilers, I could feel Colm’s despair and self-destructiveness, Pádraic’s grief over being dumped by his best friend in a drastic manner, Siobhán’s need to leave, and whatever Dominic feels when he says, “there goes that dream.”

I finally watched In Bruges three days after I watched The Banshees and loved it as well. People are keen on comparing the two since both has the same main actors and are written and directed by the same person. The consensus among the people who are old-time fans of In Bruges seems to be that The Banshees isn’t as good as In Bruges. I disagree, but I also think that the comparison is unnecessary. I am glad that I didn’t have to bring any In Bruges baggage to my viewing of The Banshees.

 

I must also admit that I have never been a Swiftie.

Shortly after I moved to Bay Area in 2015, I volunteered to visit a primary school together with my then manager Guy Lohmann to promote Computer Science among the students. At that time, Guy was at IBM for 30 years, and I was there for 3 months. We were our own odd pairing. In my presentation to the students, I had a picture of my one-year-old self in front of a computer with a date on top of the picture. One of the male students in the classroom reacted to this picture by saying “Wow! You are the same age as Taylor Swift.” Technically, I am one year older than her, but this is not the point of this story. That was the first time I had to acknowledge the real-world impact of Taylor Swift.

Since then, I didn’t keep up with Taylor Swift much beyond the occasional songs I got exposed to by the popular culture, until Fall 2021. Taylor Swift was the musical guest in a Saturday Night Live (SNL) episode around mid-November 2021. She played All Too Well for 10mins, which was unusual for SNL. It was the first time I heard that song. I thought it was a very beautiful breakup song and form of storytelling. Then, I got into the wormhole of the internet to read about what she has been up to. I learned that she started directing her own videos (“Respect!”) and re-recorded her old albums to assert ownership of her own work over her old record company (“You go girl!”).

In those days, I had my own struggle with asserting ownership for my work and funding resources. My struggle ended with me losing part of my work and resources. I felt devastated by it, since I still don’t feel that I am at a stage in my career where I can spare any resources or work. I blamed myself for not asserting things earlier with a higher level of self-confidence.

While I found Taylor Swift’s battle inspiring, I am also old enough to know that some battles aren’t worth it. If I had entered a battle, and that would have been more natural for my overall stubborn self, I could have lost it all. I needed my energy to maintain the remaining parts of my work and resources in the long run.

Nevertheless, I decided to follow Taylor Swift’s work beyond just random exposures. She released a new album, Midnights, last fall. I gave it a proper listen at the end of this January. Then, I couldn’t let it go. I tried her previous albums as well, but none of them stuck except for a few songs here and there. I wrote to Academic Sister, whom I usually go to punk concerts with, how much I loved listening to Midnights and questioned “maybe something is wrong with me.” She replied “No, you are just open to mainstream music.”

Midnights is an album that highlights becoming more self-aware, which to me is the best part of getting older. I think that is why I love listening to it so much.

 

I had a lovely Friday evening watching the conversation between Taylor Swift and Martin McDonagh. It was a genuine, constructive, and inspiring conversation between two accomplished people whom most people wouldn’t imagine in the same room. Whoever thought of this pairing, I appreciate it.

  

Rejections

I have recently received two paper rejections within a 10-day period.

Academics are among the people who face frequent rejections in their lives. We also reject other people’s work quite often. Thus, one might say, it is karma.

I wish I could tell my students things like “You will get used to having your work rejected by others”, “It gets better over time as you get more and more rejections.” But that would make me a hypocrite, so I instead tell them a version of “It comes with the job.”

In fact, since I became a professor, rejections became harder to face. When I was a PhD student or at IBM Research, they didn’t upset me much.

During the first year of my PhD, I had to change advisors twice [1]. When I joined Natassa’s group, my main anxiety was about possibly getting fired again [2]. After a while, it became clear to me that Natassa had no intention to fire me, and my lab-mates valued having me around. Whenever I received a paper rejection, it wasn’t a big deal. At the end of the day, it wasn’t as big of a rejection as getting fired. I still had my nice job, could pay my rent, and could keep my residence permit. Those were the important things. At IBM, this attitude just persisted.

So why now, as a tenured professor, as privileged as one can get about job security in this world, I feel the impact of a paper rejection more? Did I get spoiled?

 

The main reason I love being an academic is the interaction with the students. That interaction isn’t always perfect and has its ups and downs just like any other human interaction in life. But it is a good enough reason for me to wake up in the morning and want to go to work.

The most fulfilling and impactful interaction you have with a student is when you are that student’s PhD advisor. In Denmark, it is uncommon for a professor to have dedicated PhD funding from the university funds. Therefore, you depend on external funding for PhD students. It took me roughly three years, and several grant rejections, to get such funding. I started noticing signs of me getting bitter as I was approaching that third year, which scared me. I never want to become bitter. I understand that that possibility comes with being human as well, but hopefully for only short periods of time, not long-term.

Now I have two PhD students and am expecting to hire a third one this year. PhD students are a must-have in my research field and are wonderful to have. They erase all the bitterness. They help you do independent research. They keep you in an actively-learning state. They force you to evolve and mature. Plus, you can take them to amusement parks.

My primary anxiety now is going back to the days where I had no PhD students as a professor. To prevent that I need my future grant applications to be accepted, which very likely depends on me maintaining a good publication record.

My secondary anxiety is, even if I am tenured, I would like to have options. Even though I am happy where I am now, I may want to switch to a different university or move to a different country again either for professional or personal reasons. Without a good publication record, I won’t have options.

 

In computer systems research, it takes time to create a decent conference paper submission, because of the time it takes to implement systems, run non-trivial experiments, and interpret the experimental results thoroughly. With each paper rejection, you are likely asked to do more experiments, which lengthens the time further. The PhD duration in Denmark being only three years doesn’t help with that.

Furthermore, I ended up slightly changing my field of research. From my perspective, things haven’t changed drastically. I still work on data-intensive systems on modern hardware. However, from the perspective of my research community, I am somewhat an exile now since the data-intensive systems I focus on these days are machine learning systems and not database systems. The kind of papers I write aren’t considered a good fit for the database community, which is the community I feel belonging to. Even though I love the systems community and have always been adjacent to it, I am not as familiar with submitting papers to their venues and being part of their conferences.

These two challenges combined with my work anxieties make me now more worried than I used to be when I receive paper rejections.

 

Which brings me to dealing with work-related rejections.

I know these challenges and anxieties sound like first-world problems in a world where many people don’t have the basic job security and horrible things happen every day, but I am trying to ensure the best life I can for myself, just like everyone else.

Last Sunday, around early evening, I first received some back-to-back bad news about two close family members, who have been battling with cancer the past year. In short, their conditions weren’t getting better. About an hour later, I received the email for the second paper rejection, the second of the two rejections I mentioned at the beginning of this post. The paper rejection of course wasn’t important in contrast to the news about my family members. However, it still felt like the final blow of the day given the state I was in.

In Greta Gerwig’s Ladybird, there is a scene, where the character Kyle belittles Ladybird’s sadness by comparing it to the Iraq War. In return, Ladybird yells “SHUT UP. SHUT UP. Different things can be sad. It's not all war.”

A paper or grant rejection, even though relatively unimportant compared to many other sources of sadness and grief in life, can be a source of sadness. There is significant amount of time and hard work put into any piece of rejected work, which comes as a result of many compromises in life. In addition, for a researcher, this work is very likely something you are passionate and opinionated about, so someone not finding the work as exciting and important as you do naturally hurts as well.

The easiest way to get over any rejection is to let yourself feel the emotions that comes with it without feeling shame for them and belittling them, but also realizing that those emotions are not here to stay. They will go away, because there is a relatively easy solution for a paper/grant rejection, unlike a solution to cancer, war, earthquakes, etc.  Just pick the next venue/call to resubmit to and list the changes to be done till then based on the parts of the reviewers’ feedback that you find constructive. Also, remember that statistically speaking (which means nothing coming out of my mouth, since I don’t know statistics well), it is normal to get more rejections than acceptances, since once something gets accepted, the counting ends for that thing.

What you do to feel and get over the emotions stirred up by the rejection is up to you, as long as you don’t act on them in a way that harms another person. Everyone is different. People used to tell me to go out and drink after a rejection, but I don’t find that useful for myself. My happy places are cinemas and the beach. I try to hit at least one of them. When I got the email for my second big grant rejection, I wrote the people at work that I wouldn’t come to work the next day. I went to the cinema that evening (the movie was X-Men: Dark Phoenix). After the movie, I ran into two colleagues, one of whom also had a grant rejection email that day. Their approach was to hang out and drink together to acknowledge the rejection. I joined them for one beer before going back home. The next day, I went to the beach. It was June and warm enough to swim for me [3]. This was time very well spent overall. After the beach, I was ready for my resubmission plan. Following last Sunday, this Monday, I took a walk to the beach and spent some time there, this time no swimming due to cold weather. The picture at the top is from that walk. Fingers crossed for the resubmissions.

 

 

[1] PhD Defense – Part 2: The Public One – Or from Amazonian Queen to Idiot to Humility and Fierceness

[2] Back then, when I talked about this experience, some people very opinionatedly objected to me saying “You weren’t fired. You were just on a trial period at that lab, and you simply weren’t accepted into the lab after the trial period. It is wrong of you to use the word ‘fired’.” Some others, including one from the corresponding lab, used the word ‘fired’. For me it was like being fired. Whatever you wish to call it, it was a big form of rejection either way.

To be clear, it was the right decision both for me and for the lab. I wasn’t a good fit there and that lab wasn’t a good fit for me. I have a lot of respect for my advisor and several of my lab mates from that time. I can neither deny the technical skills I learned there and the positive long-term impact of that “firing/unacceptance” decision in my career, since that is how I ended up with Natassa, nor undermine the damage of having such a big rejection that early in my career and that early in a foreign land on me in addition to certain unconstructive attitudes I received in that environment. This topic is not black & white. This is why, it comes up in several blog posts from different angles and in my conversations with people about the PhD experience.

[3] In Denmark, some people swim all year long, but I prefer some calm time at the beach after swimming.

 

Earthquake

 

I know many people have already written about this on various forums, but there is need for tremendous help in the regions impacted by the earthquake in Turkey and Syria. This has been the most awful natural disaster in Turkey at least in my lifetime. The death toll is nearing 20000, and the people who survived the earthquake in the region have to face the aftermath under terrible weather conditions, the worst/coldest part of winter in a year. If you wish to help, here are some of the places you can donate to.

AFAD is the official disaster and emergency management office in Turkey. They have information about the accounts where you can donate in TRY, EUR, USD on their website.

AKUT is a voluntary organization that assists search and rescue missions. They are also transparent about how they spend the donations. The info for the accounts where you can donate in TRY, EUR, USD is on their website. They also allow donations using credit card, which could be more convenient for people living abroad.

AHBAP is another trustworthy voluntary organization that has been very active in the regions impacted by the earthquake. Similar to AKUT, they have account numbers where you can do a bank transfer in TRY, EUR, and USD in addition to the option of donating using a credit card.

 

 

When I woke up on Monday morning, after I wrote my usual “good morning” message on the WhatsApp group chat I share with my parents, I noticed another message from a friend in Denmark asking “Hey, is your family alright?” Since my parents replied to my “good morning” message, I at least was certain that they were alive. I continued my morning routine and arrived at work. I wrote to my parents again.

Me: Has there been another explosion in Istanbul?

Dad: No.

Me: Has there been a bad impact due to the heavy snowfall?

Dad: No.

Me: A friend asked if you are alright. Did something happen?

Dad: There has been an earthquake. There is a lot of damage.

Mom: Many people died.

I decided to check the news. I normally avoid checking the news at work to prevent distractions. I sometimes check Danish news while taking a break because they tend to be so boring that they make me want to get back to work. For Turkish news, I wait till I get back home from work, since they tend to make me either sad or angry or both.

When I checked the news, I realized the gravity of the situation. I froze in front of my monitor for a moment and then started crying. I wrote to my parents again. My mom informed us of some of the losses of close family friends. I wrote to a bunch of friends to see if their loved ones are doing alright. I received some more messages from people asking if my loved ones are doing alright.

 

Turkey is an earthquake region. My hometown in Turkey, Zonguldak, isn’t harshly impacted by the earthquakes. But I witnessed mild earthquakes in the past, and I am, like any Turkish person, unfortunately used to hearing earthquake news and losses.

The previous earthquake that was closest to the scale of this one in Turkey was the one on August 17, 1999. I was in primary school back then, still living in my hometown. It was at night. I suddenly woke up. I saw a white light fill the sky followed by complete darkness. I got scared. Something was not right. I don’t remember the feeling of being shaken, but maybe that is why I woke up in the first place. The darkness was due to all the lights being gone as a result of the earthquake. I sat in my bed for a bit. Then, I got up and walked toward my parents’ bedroom trying to see if they were up. They were sleeping. I walked a bit more in the house still scared eventually waking up my parents to my noise. My dad asked, “what’s up?”. I told him “I need to pee, but something is wrong, it is too dark.” He said, "Turn the lights on." I said, "There is NO lights, neither at home nor outside." Then, my parents told me not to worry. I wasn’t a kid with smooth sleeping behavior, so for them me being awake at night wasn’t that alarming. I eventually went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. After a while, we heard a knock on our door. It was one of the neighbors. He informed us of the earthquake news. He was very nervous while delivering the news, because he knew my mom’s family lived in Istanbul and Istanbul was one of the cities with the most damage. We tried reaching out to my grandparents and my mom’s siblings. We couldn’t for a long time. The phone lines were down. We eventually learned that everyone in the family was ok, but overall Turkey wasn’t ok.

The year following this earthquake, we witnessed several milder ones. I remember one on a day I was hanging out at my mom’s office after school. She was having a phone call with someone. The guy said, “We are having an earthquake.” Mom said “Again!?” A few seconds later mom’s office started shaking. It stopped after a while, we weren’t hurt. I remember another one when we were at the movies. The screen started shaking. Everyone got outside. After a while, we got back in and finished the movie. I don’t remember what the movie was, but it definitely wasn't worth going back to a movie theater after an earthquake. But for me, movie theaters have always been my safe place, so it made sense to go back. 

 

I am well-aware that I am writing this post from a place of privilege when it comes to earthquakes. This doesn’t mean that it has been an easy week to go through, this has been the biggest natural disaster in my home country in my lifetime. But my challenges in facing this disaster from afar are nothing compared to the ones of the people who are in southeast Turkey and Syria right now. I appreciate everyone who reached out to ask how I am doing. I send my condolences to everyone who got impacted. I am grateful to all the volunteers working in the region. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, there is a lot of work to be done and help needed to reduce the awful impact of this disaster. If you wish to help, please consider donating.

 

Take care all!

My Grandmother / Ananem

 

On December 23, 2022, I lost my last remaining grandparent, my mom’s mom. It was what my mom refers to as “death by the natural order.” My grandmother was almost 90. She lived a full life with all its beauties and terrors. While she lost her usual strength especially in her last year, she was still receptive to her surroundings and senses. She died of natural causes. In a world that we will all die eventually, her kind of death is the kind that I wish for everyone. It is still a loss. There is still grief. But this grief isn’t wrapped up in anger.

 

I wrote about my grandmother before in Girls’ Education in Turkey: Three Generations. In short, the post was about how my grandmother never got to have an education but fought to make sure my mom had one. I felt conflicted about it afterward, because while I want to be true to my family’s story, stories like that tend to cause the western world to romanticize our challenges.

In one of the Danish class reading materials, I remember one-page snippets about immigrants from different origins in Denmark such as Polish, Turkish, etc. In the one about the Turkish, toward the end, there was a sentence that reflected on two different generations of Turkish women in Denmark that said, “The mothers were homemakers, but their daughters work in equal footing to men.” The text talked about a mother, the first-generation immigrant in Denmark, who was a homemaker and her daughter, the second generation, who had great education and achieved economic independence. In a way, it had parallels to my grandmother and mother’s story, and probably to many other women’s stories across similar generations. While I liked the story, I felt uneasy with that ending reflection. It felt like the stereotypical top-down look from Europe to the region that I come from.

When I wrote that blog post back then, my goal was to instead pay respect to my grandmother and her rebellious spirit. I have never viewed my grandmother as someone whose status I should improve upon. In my eyes, she was a Black Sea Amazonian Queen. I admired her generosity when it came to sharing her home with others. I admired her fierceness and stubbornness even when it gave all of us a hard time. I wanted those qualities for myself when I grow up. Maybe my view is also romanticizing, but of a very different kind.

 

For the remainder of this blog post, in no particular order, and hopefully with no romanticization, I want to list some of the joyful things that I will remember my grandmother by.

 

As part of an online questionnaire that I did during college in order to procrastinate on some homework, there was the question “Who would you take with you to a bar fight?” The first person that appeared in my head was my grandmother. My grandmother knew how to defend herself physically and how to use weapons, unlike me, thanks to her upbringing at the east rural Black Sea region, where the houses are far away from each other leaving you on your own if you actually need to defend yourself against an intruder.

 

Everyone in the family was afraid to buy her bread because she found them under-baked most of the time. Every baker in close vicinity to her Istanbul apartment were also afraid to sell her bread for the same reason.

 

I loved to watch her cut up a pumpkin, not for Halloween, but to make pumpkin dessert. Especially when the pumpkin was quite stubborn, the variety of knives she skillfully used to deal with it amazed me.

 

She told everyone that I was a very well-behaved child, except for one instance, where I put her vacuum cleaner into the water puddle I was playing with in the bathroom causing it to suck water.

 

She gave me my potty training. After my parents had been unsuccessfully trying to free me of diapers, one week, they left me with my grandmother, while they were off to a work trip. When they came back, I was a changed toddler no longer in need of diapers thanks to the training of my grandmother. I of course have no memory of this but love the story.

 

Once I offered to cook for her. I was in college and didn’t have high goals in terms of cooking. All I wanted to prepare was a very basic pasta. Still throughout my cooking process, she stood near me in the kitchen to make sure I wouldn’t screw up the pasta and gave me instructions at each step. She did this to everyone who entered her kitchen, so I wasn’t offended. But the next time I wanted to cook for her, I didn’t let her know in advance, and I made sure she was sleeping while I was cooking.

 

During a Skype-call with her and my aunt back when I lived in Lausanne, Twin Sister was sitting next to me. It was the first time my grandmother saw Twin Sister, and before I had a chance to introduce them, my grandmother turned to my aunt, pointed at Twin Sister, and said “Look! What a sweet girl!”

 

One day, I was watching a Jean-Claude Van Damme film on Turkish TV at her house to pass the time, and at one of his heroic scenes, she said “What a good man!”

 

One day, I was watching The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring for the Nth time at home, and my grandmother was sitting next to me. At the scene where Aragorn’s horse saves Aragorn’s life, she said “My mom used to say, ‘I wish I had a horse instead of 9 children.’ How right she was.”

 

She talked to her plants while watering them in loving tones but also let the plants know if she was frustrated with their over-/under-growth.

 

She kept feeding the pigeons that came to her balcony even though she constantly cursed them for pooping in her balcony.

 

I called her every Sunday since I moved abroad, regardless of which continent I was at, unless I mixed up the time due to time zone differences or I was on a flight on Sunday.

 

Today is Sunday. It feels like the right day to post this. 

********************************* 

 

23 Aralık 2022'de ananemi kaybettik, annemin "sıralı ölüm" diye tabir ettiği şekilde. Ananem neredeyse 90 yaşındaydı. Tüm güzellikleri ve üzüntüleriyle dolu dolu bir hayat yaşadı. Özellikle son yılında eski gücünden eser kalmamış olmasına rağmen, çoğu zaman hala çevresine ve duyularına hakimdi. Ölümü doğal ölümdü. Eninde sonunda hepimizin öleceği bir dünyada, onun ölümü herkes için dilediğim türden bir ölüm. Bu kayıbımızı ya da kederimizi azaltmıyor, ama öfkeye ya da isyana yer yok bu kederde.

 

Daha önce Türkiye'de Kız Çocukları Eğitimi: Üç Kuşak'ta ananem hakkında yazmıştım. Yazının konusu, ananemin nasıl hiç eğitim alamadığı, ancak annemin bir eğitim alması için nasıl mücadele ettiği hakkındaydı. Daha sonra bu yazıyla ilgili çelişkide hissettim, çünkü ailemin hikayesine karşı dürüst olmak istesem de, bunun gibi hikayeler batı dünyasının bizim zorluklarımızı romantikleştirmesine neden olabiliyor.

Danca dil kursu okuma materyallerinden birinde, Danimarka'daki farklı kökenlerden gelen göçmenlerle ilgili bir sayfalık kısa yazılar vardı. Türklerle ilgili olan yazının sonlarına doğru şöyle bir ifade vardı: "Anneler ev hanımıydı ama kızları da erkeklerle eşit şartlarda çalışıyordu." Metin, Danimarka'da birinci nesil göçmen olan ev hanımı bir anne ile iyi bir eğitim almış ve ekonomik bağımsızlığa kavuşmuş ikinci nesil kızından bahsediyordu. Bir bakıma, metinde, ananem ve annemin hikayesiyle ve muhtemelen benzer nesillerdeki diğer birçok kadının hikayesiyle paralellikler vardı. Metni sevsem de, bu cümleyi garipsedim. Stereotipik tepeden bakan Avrupalı yorumu gibi geldi.

O zamanlar bloğuma o yazıyı yazdığımda, amacım ananemin asi ruhuna olan saygımı dile getirmekti. Ben hiçbir zaman ananemi statüsünün üzerine çıkmam gereken biri olarak görmedim. Benim gözümde o bir Karadenizli Amazon kraliçesiydi. Evini başkalarına açmak konusundaki cömertliğine hayrandım. Bütün aileye kök söktürmesine rağmen güçlülüğüne ve inatçılığına da hayrandım. Büyüdüğümde ondaki bu niteliklere sahip olmak istedim hep. Belki bu da bir romantikleştirme ama bambaşka bir bakış açısıyla.

 

Bu blog yazısının geri kalanında, belirli bir sıralamaya tabi olmaksızın, ve umarım romantikleştirme olmadan, ananemi hatırlayacağım bazı neşeli anıları listelemek istiyorum.

 

Üniversitede ödevlerden kaytarırken zaman öldürmek için yaptığım bir ankette şöyle bir soru vardı: "Bir bar kavgasına yanında kimi götürürdün?" Aklımda beliren ilk kişi ananemdi. Ananem, doğu Karadeniz'de kırsal bir bölgede büyüdüğü için fiziksel olarak kendini nasıl savunacağını ve silah kullanmayı bilen bir kadındı. Evlerin birbirinden baya uzakta olduğu öyle bölgelerde insanın kendini nasıl savunacağını bilmesi önemliydi.

 

Alınan ekmeklerin çoğunu pişkin olmamakla suçladığından, ailedeki herkes ananeme ekmek almaya çekinirdi. Ananemin İstanbul'daki dairesine yakın her fırıncı da aynı sebepten ananeme ekmek satmaktan çekinirdi.

 

Ananemin kabak tatlısı yapmak için balkabaklarını oyuşunu izlemeyi çok severdim küçükken. Özellikle balkabağı sertse, ustaca kullandığı bıçakların çeşitliliği beni büyülerdi izlerken.

 

Herkese önce benim çok uslu bir çocuk olduğumu söylerdi. Sonra “ama tek bir yaramazlığını hatırlıyorum” diye eklerdi ve nasıl bir gün elektrikli süpürgesini banyodaki leğende oynadığım suyun içine sokup süpürgenin su emmesine neden olduğumu anlatırdı.

 

Bana lazımlık eğitimimi ananem verdi. Annemle babam, beni bebek bezinden kurtarmaya çabalayıp pek yol katedemedikleri dönemde, bir iş gezisine gidecekleri bir hafta beni ananeme bırakmışlar. Geri döndüklerinde, artık çocuk bezine ihtiyaç duymayan bir çocuk bulmuşlar. Elbette bu olaylarla ilgili hiçbir şey hatırlamıyorum ama bu hikayeyi çok seviyorum.

 

Bir keresinde ananeme onun için yemek yapmayı teklif ettim. Üniversitedeydim ve yemek pişirme konusunda yüksek hedeflerim yoktu. Tek yapmak istediğim çok basit bir makarnaydı. Buna rağmen makarnayı batırmayacağımdan emin olmak için mutfakta yanımda durdu bütün pişirme süreci boyunca ve her adımda bana talimat verdi. Bunu mutfağına giren herkese yaptığından, alınmadım. Ama bir dahaki sefere ona yemek yapmak istediğimde, ona önceden söylemedim ve yemeği yapmaya başlamadan önce öğle uykusuna yatmasını bekledim.

 

Ben hala Lozan'da yaşarken bir gün teyzemle ananemi Skype’tan aradım. Doktoradaki bir numarali yoldaşım sevgili Duygucuk yanımda oturuyordu. Ananem Duygu’yu ilk kez görüyordu. Benim onları tanıştırmamı beklemeden, ananem teyzeme dönerek Duygu’yu gösterdi ve “Sevim bak! Ne kadar da tatlı bir kız!” dedi.

 

Bir gün ananemin evinde vakit geçirmek için televizyonda bir Jean-Claude Van Damme filmi izlerken, Jean-Claude Van Damme’ın oynadığı karakter için “Ne kadar iyi adam!” dedi.

 

Bir gün evde, bilmiyorum kaçıncı kez, Yüzüklerin Efendisi: Yüzük Kardeşliği'ni izlerken, Aragorn'un atının Aragorn'un hayatını kurtardığı sahnede ananem “Annem eskiden derdi ki, '9 çocuğum olacağına keşke bir atım olsaydı.' Ne kadar da doğru bir söz.” dedi.

 

Bitkilerini sularken onlarla sevgi dolu bir tonda konuşurdu ama aynı zamanda bitkilerin büyümesinde hoşnut olmadığı bir durum varsa bitkilere bunu da iletirdi.

 

Balkonuna kaka yaptıkları için sürekli onlara küfür etmesine rağmen balkona gelen güvercinleri beslemeyi hiç bırakmadı.

 

Yurt dışına taşındığımdan beri, hangi kıtada olursam olayım, saat dilimi farklılıklarından dolayı saati karıştırmadığım veya Pazar günü uçakta olmadığım sürece, her Pazar onu aradım.

 

Bugün günlerden Pazar. Bu yazıyı paylaşmak için güzel bir gün.