Something I said?

Those who know me will understand when I say I'm not really mistaken for anything but American when I go abroad. I wear like a badge of honor the few times that someone has spoken to me in say German, when I'm in Germany. My wife Ladan, on the other hand has the opposite problem. Other cultures seem eager to welcome her and accept her as their own. In Mexico, Spain, India, Greece and of course Turkey, folks speak to Ladan like a native, that is until she gives them a polite little laugh and tries to explain that she doesn't understand. That's when it gets interesting and you can almost see the wheels turning in their heads. Option 1: Disdain. "Is she refusing to speak anything but English?" We've seen that one before in Mexico and India and we just move on since it's pretty much impossible to get served after that. Option 2: Identification. "Is she somehow just waiting for her American husband to leave so she can get down to real business?" Of course I'd be happy to leave but it wouldn't help much. Option 3: Suspicion, especially from street vendors. "Is she trying to hustle us somehow? Because we're trying to hustle her and the big redhead so what sort of Jedi language trick are they playing? Option 4: Disbelief. She just doesn't speak her own language? Impossible. Perhaps if we just say it faster and lean in closer with flying bits of spittle she'll remember her ancestry.

And so it goes, with almost every restaurant, car rental agency and street vendor here in Turkey. I start the conversations with a few words of Turkish and when we've reached the limits of their English and my Turkish, which is pretty fast, they look to her for help. Even if they believe in the end that she doesn't speak Turkish they look at her imploringly as if some ancient shared heritage might have allowed her to understand the conversation better than her plodding husband. And in the end, when we walk away which we often do, I have to say that it's with an odd sense of pride that I put my arm around the woman they think I must have coerced to leave their country. And yes, we're hiring a Turkish tutor asap.