“If you’re happy in a dream, does that count?” – Arundhati Roy

Nothing ever seems to go to plan. Life seems to be like a set of scales that is impossible to balance, too heavy on one side and everything feels off kilter.

I haven’t posted in what seems like forever. I have over 10 unfinished, unpublished blogs that it feels like I will never finish. I have almost completed my first year of university, against all odds. It has been far from the experience I have looked forward to all my adult life; more a test of endurance.

Despite two long years of battling with the Home Office for my husbands residency card, we are still fighting a battle. A situation that takes up nearly all of my energy on a daily basis.

I have taken up tap dancing, something I have always wanted to do. I don’t believe in new year’s resolutions but I told myself this year I would do more, see more and say yes to more. I’ve done pretty well so far!

I spent 10 days in the USA in April, in Boston, MA and NYC. I intend to post a series of blogs detailing what I did there, it was an absolutely crazy 10 days – the best of my life!

Finally, thank you for reading my blog. I would love to know what you would like to see on here. Leave a comment and let me know!

If you want to follow me on Instagram, where I am infinitely more active you can find me at amymayamat 🤗

“Days in the sun, what I’d give to relive just one” – Beauty and the Beast

Sometimes I lie in bed at night and as I close my eyes I can remember so clearly what it felt like to be in Idil. I can feel it. The familiar feeling of contentment and uncertainty. Never knowing what the next day would bring but safe in the knowledge that someone would always be there to share it, the good and the bad. It’s almost as if I’m reliving it, I can see myself waking up in my lime green bedroom, no rushing, no stressing. And then I wake up and look around, these aren’t the shocking citrus walls I remember and the view from the window isn’t the mountain range that I miss so much.

It’s true that we always think the grass is greener on the other side, we live life according to this set of clichés. We don’t know what we’ve got until it’s gone. Although I’m not one for clichés, I have to say I do believe both of these are true. As humans we seem physically incapable of appreciating what we have until we have the threat of losing it or we have already lost it.

I know that when I was in Idil I longed for the familiarity of my hometown, all I wanted was a car and the freedom of going to different towns every day. I missed my friends, I missed the local children’s festivals, I missed Christmas. Some days I didn’t have the strength to leave the house only to have people question the sadness that I couldn’t quite explain but that would be written all over my face. I’d spend those days scrolling through Facebook feeds, envious of those who were with their family and friends and home comforts.

For my first year in Idil, nobody tried to pull me out of these depressed days, when I felt better I would become part of the community again. After a year of being in Idil, a woman who I had been acquainted with became my best friend. It’s been nearly 2 years since we said goodbye to one another with tears caught in our throats, having totally lost the ability to form words to explain our distress at having to part. I spent most days with her and when she wasn’t around I felt lost. We would spend all day together, our children playing whilst we made tea, crocheted and chatted til the early hours. Without a doubt the best days of my life were spent on her balcony, clutching a çay and laughing til we cried. If a day went by and she hadn’t seen me, she would come to my house and make some sort of invitation that I couldn’t refuse. I will forever be grateful to this lady, she made my last two years in Idil absolutely perfect, I have memories that I will cherish forever but all the same, it just makes me miss it more.

When the time came to make the decision to leave İdil, something I thought I had wanted for so long, I felt completely torn in two. A decision that wasn’t taken lightly and had us agonizing over the correct route  to take. Then one night the decision was taken out of our hands, it simply wasn’t safe enough and the flights were booked. Five days to pack up our home of three years and say our goodbyes. It still feels so raw, there was no time for long, drawn out farewells, no time to see distant relatives and no time for it to sink in before we were packed and gone. I hope that someday soon we can return to visit and finally accept that our decision was the right one but until then I will continue to dream  of the place that I once called home, the place that still has a piece of my heart.

 

 

 

“Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‘I’m possible’!” – Audrey Hepburn

It’s been over a year since I last posted. I have always been a sporadic blogger but this is most likely the longest break I have had from it. The truth is, I have far too much on my plate and although my blog is a fantastic outlet and one of my greatest passions, it has slipped down on my list of priorities.

We came back to the UK in April 2016, the job prospects in Germany for myself were – understandably – non existent with a lack of German and the childcare places few and far between. My job in the factory made us enough money to live on and to allow my husband’s residency card to remain valid, other than that it had no chance of progression and was hard work to say the least. We decided that in order for me to have any sort of career and for us to maintain the kind of lifestyle we had in İdil, we would come back to the UK to allow me to learn German and go to university.

My husband found a job within a week, our eldest was settled at school, middle daughter settled at nursery and the youngest remained with me at home. It was bizarre having been away from “home” for so long, it felt as though nothing had changed in that way that only hometowns tend to have.

Shortly after we arrived I decided to put the idea of going to university to one side, I was going to concentrate on finding a job or perhaps an apprenticeship. I got a job at Sainsbury’s at night time stacking shelves. It wasn’t particularly difficult but it was easy and fairly enjoyable, I soon found that childcare is hard to get and even harder to keep. Reluctantly, I resigned from my job. I had only worked there for one month but the gap was hard to fill, at least whilst I was working I had the idea that my career was going somewhere, albeit perhaps not very far. I spent a month toying with the idea of completing one of the online courses we see marketed everywhere, appealing to stay at home mums who haven’t the time to go back to full time education. I found it difficult to stay motivated and quickly realised that it wasn’t to be. It was around this time I was discussing going to university with a friend of mine’s mum, she was shocked that I had decided not to go to university as it would take me “too long” to qualify for a job in that field and reminded me that I was still young and to never give up on my dreams. I applied for an Access to HE course that very evening, I was enquiring for 2017 entry but somehow I managed to get an interview for the following Tuesday. I attended an assessment and an interview and went for my first day at college on a Wednesday in early October and the rest, as they say, is history.

I was thrown into a whirlwind of Sociology, English and Criminology, assignments being fired off left, right and centre. Such is the nature of a condensed course. My love for learning has never truly gone away, whether it be through life experience or sitting in a classroom. By the end of 2016, I had completed my UCAS application and applied to both Lancaster University and UCLan to study Linguistics. Since a young age I have always been interested in language, always wished I was bilingual (wishes do sometimes come true!) and was truly fascinated by those who had the ability to speak in multiple languages. Despite not having the best of times at school I always enjoyed my French lessons, partly due to my excellent teacher – shout out to Barbara – and partly due to my seemingly natural ability to make sense of foreign words. I am pleased to say I got 4 university offers, two of which I have accepted and continue to strive for the best grades I can get in order to attend in September.

The above may perhaps explain my absence, I have been weighted down with assignments and have had no time to write for pleasure. I intend to keep the blog updated as much as possible. I still feel a connection to İdil that I can’t quite explain, it can be a picture on Facebook or a snippet of a song and I am transported back to the beautiful town quietly perched in the middle of nowhere. And although my story is perhaps not yet that of success, it is important to remember that anything is possible.

“Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was.” ― Jodi Picoult

I seem to have hit a wall, a wall that feels so high I would never be able to climb over it, so wide I cannot simply walk round it and so strong I have no chance of breaking through it. Rarely, if ever, have I been confronted with such a wall before. In my mind, the wall has large, bold letters written on it, they spell ‘homesick’.

I meet people sometimes, that are in awe of all that I have been through whilst I am still so young. They marvel at the fact that I upped my life to somewhere I had never even visited when I was only 18. They ask me whether it was a hard decision to make, whether I was torn between leaving and staying. I could say it was a heart wrenching decision that tore my heart in two to make, but it would be a lie. The truth is, staying never even crossed my mind. I was so ready for a new adventure, a new life somewhere completely different, which is why my current predicament puzzles me so very much.

I have never been one to wear my heart on my sleeve, causing some family members to pronounce me cold. Of course, as a human I do have emotions and for someone who doesn’t show them as much as maybe I should, my emotions are extremely strong ones. When I am angry, I am simply livid. When I am sad, I am devastated. However the only emotion I felt upon leaving my hometown, in which I had lived for 18 years, was hope.

Such a stark contrast to what I felt when leaving Idil, my heart was heavy and full of doubt. I remember hugging my best friend goodbye before getting into the car, I struggled to speak as my throat was thick with sobs begging to escape, we both nodded in understanding and I stepped into the car. Keeping my eyes trained on the road infront of us, not feeling strong enough to look at the sad faces waving us off. Even now just writing about this brings tears to my eyes and for those who know me, will know that that is no mean feat.

For the last few months I have avoided speaking to anyone from İdil on the phone. I have exchanged messages and kept in touch, I felt that perhaps talking to them on the phone would make this homesickness I was feeling grow to an unmanageable size. I feel as though I have a wall infront of me and with time I begin to climb the wall but everytime something triggers a memory, I lose my grip and slip, ending up right at the bottom.

I have mentioned before about my relationship with my inlaws, for the most part they are some of the strongest, most amazing people I have ever met. Particularly my father in law and my husband’s eldest sister. They accepted me and welcomed me into the family with open arms from the first time we met and since then they have never let me down. They became a constant source of comfort and support for me when I had no other family or friends around me. I haven’t spoken to either since we moved, I felt I needed the distance and time to adjust to our new lives before speaking to those we left behind.

I spoke to my sister in law on the phone yesterday, just to hear her voice so full of warmth was a comfort to me. I worried that my husband’s family may resent our choices to move so far away, but deep down I knew that most of them would never be anything for happy for us if we were happy ourselves. As I spoke to her, happy memories flashed before my eyes, I remembered sitting in her garden so many times and being so at peace just looking out on the beautiful scenery İdil had to offer. I cannot wait for the day when I can look on these memories with feelings of happiness, rather than feelings of loss and regret.

I do not know how I can beat this wall, I can go for days looking forward to the future, not dwelling at all on the past. Then I will see a photograph taken in our old house, receive a message from a friend or hear a song that I can remember dancing to at a wedding and I am transported back to İdil and the feeling of homesickness settles once again in my stomach. I suppose as with everything, it will take time and patience. With time the memories will become less vivid and the triggers less frequent.

 

 

“We don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone. Freedom is like that. It’s like air. When you have it, you don’t notice it.” – Boris Yeltsin

As humans, we are naturally flawed. It’s in our make up, in our DNA, there is no human on this earth that has never made a mistake, there is no perfect human. For me, perhaps the biggest flaw is that we don’t realise what we’ve got until it’s gone. I consciously make an effort to try and enjoy what I have when I have it but I still complain, I wish it away and only when it is gone do I realise what a mistake it was to try and hurry that time along. When all I should’ve been doing is basking in it.

My time in İdil seems such a big part of my life at the moment, a big influence on me and my choices. My personality and who I am. In reality, I was in İdil for three years, soon enough it will seem like a distant dream. It is with regret that I realise that my time in İdil makes up such a short amount of my life, I lived in my hometown for 18 years before I moved and whilst I feel a strong connection to my roots, it doesn’t quite equal the way I feel about İdil. Perhaps it’s because that was the first time I had true independence, my own house and space. It was all such a big adventure, being thrust into this larger than life family, a new culture and language.

The first few weeks in İdil were hard, it was so different from the Turkey I had known and loved. I remembered sunny days in Bodrum, swimming at the beach and enjoying ice cold Fanta Lemon. Having breakfast on the balcony in Didim looking out to sea. Everything in İdil seemed so bleak, no sea for hundreds of miles, there were none of the big supermarkets I had come to know and love, none of the big clothing brands. It was like being in a completely different country. I was yet to appreciate the beauty of the mountains that provided the backdrop for our little town, I didn’t know how stunning the fields behind our house would become when the grass grew and the poppies bloomed. Just thinking about how I wished that time away now, fills me with an overwhelming sadness. I wish I could look over to those mountains and immediately feel calm as I had done so many times before. Now all I see when I look out of the window is houses and the supermarkets that I coveted for so long.

I would do almost anything to have my life in İdil back, I miss everything about the town, I miss going to the market and seeing endless stalls of fruit and veg. I miss the easy cameraderie with my best friend. I miss the large gatherings we would have for no particular reason. I miss a life that I was all too ready to say goodbye to, a life that I was anxious to leave behind.

When in İdil I craved independence, I desperately wanted a job and time I could spend being myself rather than at the children’s every beck and call. I got my wish, I now work part time in a factory, the only job that was available to a foreigner with no knowledge of the local language. Now I miss the days where I could spend all day in the sun with friends and family, days that were so laidback and relaxed and the best plans were made last minute. So far from the structure which frames my life nowadays.

This is turning out to be quite a melancholy piece of writing, but it is writing from the heart. It is telling of the regret that I feel every time I remember how very nearly perfect my life was. I find comfort in the fact that I couldn’t have prevented the circumstances which prompted our move here, I know now that we were right to do so after seeing the extent of the devastation in İdil. But unfortunately that doesn’t lift the feelings of pure remorse that I wished my time away.

As I said in the beginning, as humans we make mistakes, it can only be hoped that we learn from them and refrain from making the same mistakes twice. I found myself getting anxious to leave Germany, fed up of being a foreigner, I wanted to be back in England with my family and friends. I had a sort of epiphany earlier this week, I sat in the park watching the children play in the sunshine whilst eating a pretzel and made a conscious decision to stop wishing my time away. I need to learn to take everyday as it comes and enjoy the small things in life. Although I still yearn for the comforts of my hometown, I do not wish to carry yet more feelings of regret with me if I ever do return to England, I don’t want to regret wishing my time in Germany away. So for now I need to be content, and remember that the grass is not always greener on the other side.

“The history of liberty is a history of resistance” – Woodrow Wilson

I will never forget today. 16th February 2016. The day we suspected was coming for a long time, the main reason that we left our home, İdil is going under curfew. I will never forget the moment in which I was told that at 11pm tonight, the town I once called home would be going under an indefinite curfew.

Then I started seeing the pictures and videos of seemingly endless amounts of tanks being driven into the town. Anyone would think that they were going to war with another country, a huge army, rather than civilians and ill equipped teenagers.

In my mind’s eye I can see our apartment block standing there, towering over the surrounding houses. I can picture us all sat in that garden, laughing and joking whilst the children run freely around us. Now I imagine it to be quiet, deserted, nothing more lively than your average ghost town.

Most of my husband’s immediate family has already managed to leave İdil, but a few members of our close family, large amounts of relatives and family friends remain. There’s no telling what will happen in İdil in the upcoming months. I just pray that İdil will not be destroyed in the same manner that Cizre has. After a long curfew in Cizre, which cost 100s of civilians their lives, the town is nothing but a scene of devastation and destruction. I hope that our house will not become a bullet punctured shell, completely devoid of the happy memories it once was home to.

I know that some may find some of the topics that I talk about controversial, some people may not agree with some of the things I say, the Turkish-Kurdish conflict is one that stirs strong emotions and opinions in most people. I know that what I write is the truth, I have no doubt that there are many who will agree with me and many who will not.

If you want to keep up with me and what is happening in İdil more regularly, please pop over and like my Facebook page.

 

https://www.facebook.com/memyselfandidil/

 

“When in doubt, choose change.” – Lily Leung

I feel I owe everyone an apology. I am guilty of seriously neglecting my blog but there have been major changes in my life, some of you may be aware and some may not. I hope to briefly explain in this blog and intend to continue writing some more in depth pieces in the near future.

If you have followed my Voices blogs, you will know that my family and I are no longer in İdil. I never imagined that it would come to what it has, I truly never expected that we would have to leave our home.

To put it simply, İdil became too dangerous for us to stay. We were the first out of our family to haphazardly pack up our house and move out of the town. Followed shortly by my best friend, who moved to be with her parents in a safer part of Turkey. We spent 5 weeks in Didim and Bodrum, some time was spent applying for visas to Germany, most of the time was spent having a lovely holiday attempting to put what we had left out of our minds.

At the end of October, we relocated to Germany ready to begin the next chapter in our lives. I honestly didn’t think I was expecting to feel as comfortable as I do here. Everything just seemed to slot into place. We were so busy there was no time to think of how quickly our lives had changed and what the move would mean for our future. There had been no time for us to come to terms what we had been through, no time for us to get our heads round it all.

It comes as no surprise to me that now we are more settled. The seriousness of what happened is hitting home. When we lived in İdil, we lived in a neighbourhood with around thirty of my husband’s close family members, and many more of his distant relatives. There are now four of them left. All of them have moved out of the town to wherever they consider to be safe. My stomach lurches at the thought of our once full of life apartment block standing almost empty. I feel a lump form in my throat at the memories of our family picnics, barbecues, wedding celebrations and festivals. I can remember it all so clearly, I can remember the celebrations we had when HDP got into parliament. When I think of the hundreds of people, fingers linked, dancing to live Kurdish music celebrating that at last there may be some  justice for Kurds. A few short months later, the first curfew was enforced in Cizre, and civilian blood was spilt. Bodies in freezers, an old man shot for attempting to buy food for his starving grandchild, a wife murdered on her way to her neighbour’s house so she could contact her husband, a sick baby denied access to the hospital despite pleas from the desperate parents.

Now the second curfews are still going on, most notably in Sur, Diyarbakır and Cizre, Şırnak. Many more lives have been lost and my heart hurts everytime I hear news of more deaths. I know that this will not be the end, this is merely the beginning.

 

You can see some of my blogs for the Voices newspaper by clicking the link below.

http://www.voicesnewspaper.com/amy-idem-my-little-idil/

You can also follow Me, Myself and İdil on Facebook by clicking on this link – https://www.facebook.com/memyselfandidil/

“Nobody can give you freedom. Nobody can give you equality or justice or anything. If you’re a man, you take it. ” – Malcolm X

This morning, the 7th of June 2015, I woke unusually early for me and despite all my attempts I could not get back to sleep. The excitement in the weeks before the election had been mounting and this past week has been all everyone could talk about. There was talk about celebrations if the party of our choice, HDP – People’s Democratic Party , managed to get over the 10% needed to form part of the parliament.  There was also less talk of what would happen if they didn’t manage this, although this was less frequent and not dwelled on for any length of time.

I have never voted before, I left the UK shortly after I turned 18 and never got the chance to vote in my home country. I was excited about casting my vote, but also worried I would do it incorrectly and my vote wouldn’t count. In this election, every single vote counted. We set out to the local school, myself, my husband and some friends, I felt myself get increasingly nervous as we got closer but thankfully my husband said we were to cast our votes in the same room so he would help me. Although I do speak fluent Turkish, this sometimes suffers in high pressure situations and I find myself stuttering and stumbling over my words. So I was grateful that he would be by my side throughout the process.

As it happens it was incredibly simple and soon we were on our way home, full of optimism and determination that this would be the day that changes things in Turkey. I spent a day feeling fairly restless and found myself willing for it to be 5pm when the polling stations would be closed and the votes would begin to be counted. We spent a day anxiously waiting the evening time when we would learn the fate of our party and people.

I will never forget the moment where the screen showed that HDP had risen over the 10%, all of a sudden we heard cries of joy come from outside and women making the shrill, high pitched noise of celebration that is native to this country. There were guns fired, fireworks were let off and people were dancing outside. Despite the head of HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş, calling for celebrations to be put off until everything was confirmed. The people could not contain their excitement and the harsh, sharp sounds of the guns could be heard intermittently, mixed with the sound of women singing and men chanting.

As I write this, the celebrations are ongoing, we are still hearing guns, fireworks are still exploding in the sky in all their technicolour glory, cars filled to the brim with excited people are still going up and down our streets hooting their horns as they go. I feel honoured to have voted in this election, to be a part of these celebrations and to be a witness to the joy that people are expressing as a result of their voices finally being heard. At this moment in time, my heart is filled with hope and positivity for the future here in Turkey.  It is one of those times where I feel without a doubt that this is where I was always meant to be and that fate brought me here, as only fate knows how.

“Happiness is not in money but in shopping” – Marilyn Monroe

As I pulled my latest purchase out of the bag, my husband looked at me with disbelief. “You have a problem.” He stated bluntly. I immediately made a mental note not to show him the one I had bought earlier in the week, or tell him about the two winging their way from the United Kingdom via airmail. “I don’t think I have a problem, I could stop any time I wanted, but when they’re so cheap it makes sense to buy them when I see one I like, and you can’t say I don’t use them!’ I retorted, really rather defensively. “It has to stop, it’s getting ridiculous, you can’t possibly need that many!”. But what do men know when it comes to these things?

I admit, I do have a lot – 33 to be precise. Which compared to some is actually a modest collection. Can I really have too many? Could I really stop whenever I wanted to? I’d never considered these things before, but he certainly got me thinking. It’s an automatic reaction when I see them there, on their hangers, silky and sleek in all the colours of the rainbow. I feel myself being drawn as if I’m being pulled by an invisible string, before I know it I have one in my hand and I’m asking the price.

I find myself playing about on my phone in the evenings when the children go to bed, I click on the ebay icon, and soon there they are in all their technicolour glory. Different materials, designs, lengths, styles. So much to choose from and soon enough I’m thinking to myself how many of them I could really do to add to my collection. I justify it by the changing of the seasons or needing one to match a certain outfit. Generally I find a decent excuse.

After my husband accusing me of having an addiction I made a promise to him that I shall not buy any more for now, or at least until I’ve given a fair few away. So here I am, on a headscarf buying ban, trying to avoid walking past certain shops in town and ignoring the fact that I could really use a coral coloured scarf now summer is here. I haven’t searched Hijab on ebay for about a week and I’ve even given away a couple of scarves I no longer wear. I am on the road to recovery!

“Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” – Benjamin Franklin

Something that recently inspired me to start writing again, was being asked to write for a popular expat newspaper in Didim. In my 3 months of living in Didim, I was hooked on this newspaper, rushing out to buy it everytime there was a new issue. Now I’ve had this amazing opportunity to write for them and my first article has been uploaded onto their website. I hope you will go over to the website to read it and support me on this new journey.

http://2014.voicesnewspaper.com/index.php/2014-01-28-21-53-58/national-news/728-my-little-idil