Month: July 2015

Adventures with Portuguese: “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM”

“I did nothing yesterday,” I said to Kris, emphasizing “nothing.” Kris was my new friend in San Miguel de Allende and we were lounging on the grass at La Gruta hot springs. It was the second week of my writing workshop and I was feeling anxious for not having written five novels already in 14 days. “Me neither,” Kris said dipping her chips in the guacamole. Our beers were barely chilled but I couldn’t care less. Sunbathing with good company in Mexico not writing was better than staring cross-eyed at my facebook newsfeed not writing. The truth is I was lying—I had done something the day before. “Well, I did translate a song from Portuguese to English,” I said. Kris laughed: “Of course, you did!” “I don’t speak Portuguese.” “Of course, you don’t.” She laughed some more. After listening “A PELE QUE HÁ EM MIM” on repeat for two days, I copy pasted the lyrics into Google translate. It was awful; made no sense whatsoever. But I was obsessed and no matter what, I had to understand …

Mexico City with Suruç in My Mind

Something about Mexico reminded me of Turkey. It wasn’t just the taco joints at every corner grilling what any Turk would recognize as döner: Mexicans call it al pastor, prepare it from pork, and serve it on corn tortillas. In Istanbul, I woke up in the middle of the night from an acappella of muezzins from different mosques using megaphones as if competing with one another; in San Miguel de Allende it was a mix of church bells and firecrackers celebrating each night a different Saint’s day that disrupted my sleep. The daily advances of my neighbor Carlos, who spends his days staring at a construction site atop a disintegrating 1960s Volkswagen beetle, reminded me of many Mehmets and their sweet, polite creepiness that make me smile rather than run screaming. A drawing of the face of a young student missing since the mass kidnapping in Iguala, Mexico (September, 2014), reminded me of Berkin Elvan, the boy who died from a can of pepper gas fired by Turkish police and became the symbol of Turkey’s …

Mexico, Francis Alys, and Brotherhood

I would have never imagined that Francis Alÿs’s exhibition “Relato de Una Negociacion” at Mexico City’s Tamayo Museum would have such an effect on me. I wasn’t even planning on going there. I had left my AirBnB room that Sunday morning with the intention of going to the Museum of Anthropology—one of the city’s “musts”—and that’s where I had gone. But before I purchased a ticket, some sort of a protest art in the museum’s palatial lobby caught my attention. As I stood there trying to figure out what the lines of empty chairs with photos of faces on them meant, a lady who I later learned to be a history professor named Angelica, handed me a flyer. She told me that the chairs represented the 43 students who “disappeared” almost a year ago in Iguala while protesting the government’s discriminative policies in teacher placement. The demand of the protestors, of which there were two, was simple: the disclosure of the location of these individuals, dead or alive. “Since this museum is part of the INAH research …

My First Spanish Lesson in Mexico City: Difunto

Difunto. It means deceased or plainly dead. I am aware that this is not the most pleasant word to learn while traveling. Besides, my Spanish is pretty good and I already knew this literal definition. It’s the metaphorical definition as used in Mexican slang is what I learned on my first week in Mexico City that I am focusing on here. Just bear with me. My Spanish teacher during my days in La Roma and the woman who is credited with teaching me “difunto” was Eva, my AirBnB host. Eva is a woman in her early 50s and lives in the first floor apartment of an old building with neighbors she describes as “traditional.” Eva is by no means a traditional woman. She makes kambucha and kefir, composts her organic waste, and has a turtle living in the back patio. Teamed up with her neighbors she greets by saying “hola, vecina,” she created a little garden by the sidewalk. Eva spends her days doing all kinds of community projects in the neighborhood she loves. Her …