Things are not always what they appear to be. The same goes for people. Take me, for example. I am an American. Since my grandfather was born in Ireland, I am able to be a citizen of Ireland, hence legally Irish. Yet through birth I was always of Irish descent, whether a citizen of Ireland or not. Citizenship is a legal formality. My great-grandfather was German. So I am also of German descent, though to a much lesser degree. I was baptized Catholic as an infant, an event over which I had absolutely no control. Accordingly, I was enrolled in a mixed-gender catholic elementary school named Saint Barnabas. (I remained ignorant of who this Barnabas fellow was until I came to Turkey and learned that he was from Cyprus and preached in Antakya). I served mass as an altar boy, thus memorizing much Latin. In my last year of elementary school, I won the parish Christian Doctrine competition. One Saturday in May, I competed at the city-wide level. I hurriedly finished the examination in order to get to the Polo Grounds in time to see the New York Giants play the Brooklyn Dodgers. Both the Giants and I lost that day. I was very upset about the Giants.
My teachers in elementary school were all women, mostly religious nuns. I went to an all-boys catholic secondary school. My teachers in high school were all men, mostly religious brothers. My grades were good throughout. My close friends were mostly Christian due to my neighborhood. We competed in sports against Jews and African-Americans and Puerto Ricans without incident. We traveled freely through their neighborhoods. We rode subways and buses without fear. We played basketball in Harlem in a playground next to the Polo Grounds. My boyhood athletic hero was Willie Mays, the black centerfielder for the baseball Giants. I went to university at the United States Military Academy at West Point, then all male, including the faculty. And then I graduated and another life began. I never went to these “homes” again. And now I live in Turkey, as a Turk, since my wife is Turkish. And since my last name ends in –yan, I could nominally be mistaken for an Armenian.
What are we? What’s your story? There is an old saying about this question. “If it walks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck then it probably is a duck.” So what are we, “probably?”
Hurry up now, decide. People are dying by the thousands because of what they are or appear to be. They are dying by the thousands because they are “different.” Am I different? Are you different? Different from what? From whom? What does “different” mean?
And now, again the question! So what am I? A Christian? Irish? An American? A CIA agent? A radical? A tree lover? An agnostic? A revolutionary? A military man? A New Yorker? A Marxist? A book lover? A Turk? An Armenian? A non-Armenian? A non-Sunni? A non-Alevi? A non-Jew? A non-Turkmen? A non-Syrian? What am I?
A prime minister! A prime minister, for his background, fortunate beyond belief, spews hate speeches, incessantly orders destruction of the environment, covets wealth and power, despises differences, sneers at the hope-filled enthusiasm of youth, orders them maimed by gangster police. He is never happy, this prime minister. He divides like a Samurai warrior cleaves. Finely, precisely, he slices and minces and dices, all people, all things, all ideas not his own. His ill repute stifles. Criminality and lawlessness describe the ruined landscape, the waste land, that is Turkey. His face tells the story of his ruination. This torment of the spirit cannot be effaced. What does his mirror tell him? Does anyone tell him? Someone should. What is he? His is the story of Dorian Gray.
And me! What am I? I don’t know. Today, looking to the coming catastrophe that is the political system of Turkey, I consider myself a duck.
James (Cem) Ryan
Istanbul
9 August 2014
Picture of Dorian Gray Ivan Le Lorraine Albright (1897-1983) As seen in the 1945 film.
