Summer nights in Turkey are the most beautiful, especially that Time between the sunset and midnight. The call to prayer echoes across the fields of overgrown golden weeds. A tradition that’s been around since forever, they see it as ordinary. But the Arabic turned Time backwards, to places that I know only the fibers of my being have been before.
In Turkey, I didn’t understand a lot of the things elders say, not that my Turkish isn’t fluent, but there are so many idioms and sayings and jokes and words that go way over my head. I felt a little – a lot – out of place there. I would make forts with my sister and sit in my make-believe castle and read the books that I could find. This was odd to them. Time passed by too quickly in my domain, and, when I would peek from beneath the patchwork knitted quilt, it was dark. I checked the Time and the sun said 8:42.
In my grandparent’s neighborhood, us kids would play soccer barefoot with an old ball that hurt our feet whenever we kicked it, but we played anyway. I scored a crazy goal, the ball soared in the air and Time slowed down. A hundred years later it landed in one of the improvised goals we made. My team won. I would go to McDonald’s with my uncle, which is a big deal there because McDonald’s is American. He said I’m growing up fast but I thought I was this old forever. He bought me little house building models, which I would make for the stink bugs that populate my grandparents’ backyard. I would pick them off the cool terracotta stairs, and make them guests at the homes I built for them. They did not like it. My sister and I would go exploring around the neighborhood and venture as far as we could into the abandoned houses where rumors amongst us kids claimed there were ghosts. I went into that house for an hour, and when I came back it was still 8:42. I would play cards with my grandmother at night and her cigarette smoke would blow right in my face.
The day in America is done at 6:30 pm. But there is no such thing in the depths of Anatolia. Pouring the scorching hot tea for guests, always visiting, dark red in the small glass cups, I would carry the tray cautiously, my hands shaking. The dark would hug me as I walked outside barefoot on the ochre-colored mosaic, which cooled my feet against the warm breeze of the night. I could hear loud, red voices and laughter from every home, illuminating the black sky. Special relativity tells me that Time witnessed by different observers is all relative. There’s no universal clock that has an absolute four digit number that represents Time.
It’s been four years since I last visited. I go upside down in Time whenever I smell cigarette smoke as I’m walking down American streets. I can close my eyes and close them again and I’m in Turkey. I hear the voices in my heart, loud with laughter.
I read all these things about physics that not a single piece of DNA in my bloodline has heard before. I feel as if I’m not only teaching myself, but every ancestor, on the physics of the universe. I ask everyone, anyone, I can find, about my million questions. There is no face like mine, no name like mine, no language like mine in the world of physics. And when I feel like an outsider, I ask Time. People do say that only Time will tell.
I check the clock. It’s 8:42 again.
