The Battle of Irmak

In the summer of '74, my mother, the 20-year old black sheep of a conservative Turkish family, ran away from home. As a young political activist with modern views, she was feeling oppressed by her authoritarian family, who forced their traditional values on her. After she had been gone for three months, her father took out big ads in national newspapers. They said “Zeynep, your mother is very sick. Please return home.” She came back, found out that her mother was actually fine, and struck a deal. My grandparents agreed to let her be herself, and live however she wanted to live, as long as she stayed under their roof. It wasn't easy for them, but the pain was unbearable otherwise. They loved her.

Six years later, she married my father, another political activist with a magnificent mustache, who had narrowly escaped arrest and torture during the recent military coup. Together, they made me, their only child, and my grandparents’ first grandchild. When I was born, my grandparents wanted to name me.  It's tradition, after all. They wanted to call me Mehmet, because they are religious, and this was the name of a local muslim leader they admired. My parents are NOT religious, and therefore hated this idea. They wanted to call me Irmak, because it means river, and isn't that nice? The fight over my soul between my modern parents and my traditional grandparents began the day I was born. My parents won this first fight with a clever flanking maneuver. They let my grandparents name me Mehmet, and settled for a measly middle name, a footnote when it comes to names. My full name is Mehmet Irmak Sirer. Yet nobody calls me Mehmet, I go by Irmak. After realizing she had been beaten, my grandmother just started telling everybody that Irmak referred to the rivers in heaven.

I grew up deeply loved by both parties. My grandparents had a house with a garden, where I spent a ton of time playing. One day, when I was six, I was playing in that garden when my grandparents brought in the cutest animal I had ever seen. It was a lovely, fluffy sheep. I immediately named her Fluffy the Cloud in my mind, and decided within three seconds that she was my best friend. I petted her and fed her. I could see in her eyes that our love was mutual. Now, I should tell you why I was at my grandparents' place. It was one of the two "Eid"s, or Islamic holidays. Specifically, it was the greater Eid, also called the Feast of the Sacrifice, a five-day holiday. The Feast of the Sacrifice commemorates Abraham's willingness to sacrifice his son Ishmael. To honor this, each family sacrifices a goat or a sheep, then shares its meat among the poor, their neighbors, and themselves.

 
I of course was not making any connections between these things until the next day, when my grandfather called me out to the garden. My whole family had gathered. Even Fluffy was there. A stranger was also there, next to Fluffy, wearing a white apron and holding a knife. My grandmother said a prayer, and we all said “Amin”, I had recently learned that this is what you're supposed to say at the end of a prayer. Then the stranger took the knife and cut Fluffy's throat. Rich red blood started gushing out. I turned catatonic, my mouth open, my eyes wide, my brain unable to process this information. When the deed was done and Fluffy was no longer moving, my grandmother dipped her finger in her blood, and marked my forehead with it to bless me. I did not have words. My mother held my hand and gently led me inside, caressing my head. In the evening, the whole family gathered around the dinner table, and meat was served. I ate Fluffy that day. And I know that you expect me to have been a vegetarian since then, but this is where things get complicated. Fluffy was delicious. I still eat and love meat. This tradition may have traumatized me, but it also had its attractions.

The battle between my parents and grandparents continued over the years. My parents enrolled me in a ballet class to break gender stereotypes. I was the only male student. My teacher, excited to have a ballerino to work with, put me up front and center in our show. All the girls were dressed in chicken costumes, and I was dressed in a rooster costume, as they all danced with and around me. My grandparents, on the other hand, enrolled me in a Quran course, without telling my parents, when I was vacationing at their remote summer house. I gathered with the other students in a mosque, and an Imam taught us how to read Quran in Arabic. This is the most religious activity you can imagine for a child that age, and people like my parents think it force-feeds Islam to young minds. I loved it. I quickly became top of the class! Not because of the religion, it was a bit late to pull me into that, but I loved learning a new language, complete with a new alphabet. It wasn’t so much the content of Quran that I enjoyed, but the puzzle of deciphering these characters into meaning. When my parents found out, all hell broke loose. I was taken from the class and sent back home. I was starting to mature enough to understand why they reacted so strongly, but also to start thinking “It’s ok, guys; I’m not going to suddenly turn into a completely different person, I just like being an Arabic codebreaker.” I wasn’t mature enough yet to say it out loud.

Ultimately, I arrived at a point every Turkish boy dreads. In Turkey, circumcision is a huge part of the culture, but unlike in many other cultures, it is not performed shortly after birth. It is performed just before puberty. It is seen as a rite of passage, a transition from boyhood into manhood. The time had come for me to become a man. There is a ritual done in the week leading up to this painful milestone. The kid to be circumcised gets dressed in an awfully gaudy outfit adorned with jewels, a matching fez, and even a scepter to hit the phallic point home. A giant banner saying "Mashallah" in sparkly embroidery crosses this outfit from shoulder to hips. Mashallah loosely translates as "magnificent", but it has a masculine and congratulatory tone to it. For example, in rural areas, if your neighbor has a strong, healthy bull that impregnates many cows without difficulty, you may nod and say "mashallah" to congratulate its magnificence. Once the child is dressed in this garb, he is paraded around the city, and people yell "mashallah" to his proud family. As the time drew near, I was stressing out about the operation, and my parents were stressing out about how to get me out of this parading business. My grandparents were of course immeasurably excited about it, but to my parents, it was an embarrassing tradition they needed to save me from. When the time came, they found out to their enormous surprise and horror that I was 100% into this idea. Dressing up like a prince and being treated like a prince by an entire city? Sign me up! Together with my cousin, who was also to be circumcised on the same day, I got dressed in an all white outfit with fur and sparkly details, and proudly walked the streets of Istanbul with full confidence. I was the White Prince of Circumcision. This one was a solid victory for my grandparents.

After the operation full of fear and pain, my cousin and I were brought to my grandparents' home, and laid side by side on our backs in a giant bed. We were once again wearing our fancy outfits---without the pants, of course, as they would irritate the operated area. So, the fez was strategically placed right on top of the sensitive zone. There we were, on a bed, prince up top, naked in the bottom, with hats on our scepters. We were joined by our entire extended family, who was there to celebrate our newly gained manhood. We were surrounded by about 60 people, many I barely knew or hadn't even met. One by one, each of them patted our heads, shook our hands, and presented us with gifts. When it was my grandparents' turn, we received one of the best gifts I have ever received: an Atari 2600 gaming console. I was in pain and scowling up to that point, but the day ended up with two kids in bed, with joysticks in hand, hats on their nether regions, smiling like madmen having the time of their life playing video games. There it was again: unbearable suffering and true delight hand in hand. If only you could dress up and play video games without turning into Fluffy the Cloud yourself, but that’s not how the world worked, at least at that age, as I was realizing.

In the end, my worldview ended up much closer to the one offered by my parents than my grandparents. I am not religious in the least bit. Nor do I strongly identify with my nation, or any nation for that matter. A lot of Turkish people that travel abroad to study seek out other Turks in their respective foreign cities to stay close to their culture. I didn't. Yet, for the first time I have a Turkish colleague at work, Doğan, and I find that I cherish every moment of running into him in the studio. I love speaking with him in the language of my parents and grandparents. I didn’t pursue ballet, and I went with deciphering mathematical notation and programming languages instead of Arabic. But both worlds I grew up in are an inseparable part of my identity. Finally, as I’ve become an adult, I’ve taken all the charms and absurdities from my parents and grandparents, and fused them into my own absurdities. I can’t wait to impose them on my own kids someday.

You can watch me read this story at the IDEO Stories VIII event right here.