Blogging
From Abroad

The other day I went out to Boğaziçi Üniversitesi’s campus (my school from my exchange where my Turkish lady, Aydan, goes to school) for a good old Turkish time; eating cheese and olives, looking at a spectacular views of the Bosphorus. We went to meet Aydan’s friends at the manzara (remember that word?) and shoot the breeze for a while. Shortly before arriving Aydan informed me that she really didn’t like one of the people we were going to meet, Ceyda, because she “talks too much”? mind you, it is pretty atypical for any Turk to say something like this, Aydan included, so I knew it must be bad. Sure enough we meet up and the girl talks entirely too much. Ceyda was definitely quite rude to me from the get go and I was happy I knew the score before I arrived.

About an hour after meeting her Ceyda said something extremely rude and ignorant to me. I won’t repeat it here because what was said is not important. She spoke in Turkish so I was not entirely sure I caught all of it but Aydan later translated for my and I pretty much had it, which made me happy. Anyway I knew I had been insulted and had pretty much the same reaction I have when people insult me in English (“Really, maaan? Why?”).

Anyway the reason I thought this was interesting is that it demonstrated to me something that I thought to be true but was never really sure about because I don’t speak any other language well enough; that in every culture and language there are jerks. And not jerks in some kind of different way, no, jerks in the everyday, classic, in-your-face ignorant aggression way. I guess this is pretty obvious in hindsight but I think it highlights a broader thing that learning Turkish has taught me; that everyone in the world is essentially the same. There are undoubtably cultural differences and everyone might speak a different language but there is a incontrovertible truth that there are jerks all over the world.