Having written a few poems now reflecting life from an expat’s point of view (and I might add, not necessarily mine), I thought it might be time to weigh in myself and talk from my own perspective.
First, though, I must clarify what I see as three distinct types of ex-pats: the first being the ones who fell in love with a foreign country while visiting it and decided to uproot themselves and move there; the second being those people referred to as “backpackers” who have a sense of wanderlust and are essentially going from country to country, living and working in each for a specific amount of time till that wanderlust kicks in again and they are off to another country and another series of adventures; and the third are those that really have no opportunities in their home country and have heard they can make a living by teaching in foreign countries since they are native speakers and thus have a value in a foreign country they do not have in their own country because they possess nothing intrinsically special except they can speak and write in English. They even, in some cases, believe they are experts themselves and develop a sense of entitlement (bordering on arrogance) about their worth.

The third group does not interest me, the second group I envy for their youth and sense of adventure (wishing I had been able to do that at their age but the turbulent 60s got in the way), but the first group, well these people I understand for there is much to fall in love with in countries outside the US, and even much to prefer: a sense of history, respect for education and educators, the lure of the exotic, and an opening of the mind, the heart to other lives, other cultures far more interesting than one’s own.

I, unfortunately, do not fit comfortably into any of those categories, though I do have more in common with the first group, but have other reasons for the self-imposed exile, as a friend calls it, that I find myself in. However, that isn’t what I have chosen to write about. Instead, I find myself thinking about what it feels like, for me, to be here.

The hardest part is being away from friends and family, people who know you for who you really are and who you have shared values, interests, experiences with. The people at work, for instance, are always texting or checking their facebook accounts or email on their smartphones even while supposedly conversing with you. And there you sit, with a dumbphone, no one to text or to be texted from, and emails are 7 to 10 hours away. As you watch their fingers glide over the keys of their phones, you feel immense sadness settle in. You long for someone to talk to about the things that matter to you, about art, literature, poetry, film, music, beyond the world you are in because your reference points are so much broader than the space you find yourself confined in. You envy them, but also know you cannot be them. You will always be a foreigner in this land. Always the other, condemned to not belong.

You find the one place you are most comfortable is your neighborhood. There are few people there that speak English but somehow you communicate with your limited Turkish, their limited English, and sign language on both sides. There are genuine smiles, looks of recognition, warmth from your barber and his assistant, the waiters at your favorite restaurants, the dry cleaner, the two guys who help you when you go to buy CDs at your local music store, Hakan at your DVD store, the vet for your cat, the pet shop owner and his friends who work there, the people at Rind where you get the bottles of alcohol when the need arises, the people in the pharmacy you go to regularly, the men behind the counter at the two groceries you frequent, the owners of the restaurants on your block where you get take-out meals and where, on Maureen’s first night in Istanbul you sat with her and ate anchovies, salad, drank raki and watched her share a cigarette with the two guys who wanted so desperately to connect, and it’s here, in this grid of blocks that you wander, that you feel at home, that you forget you are an alien on another planet, in another time, far, far from wherever it was you were and from wherever it is you are headed. But at least, for the moment, you breathe in air that feels right and there is peace, momentarily, in your heart.

So here I am, both in and outside this city, this country, this culture. I understand much of what I see, have read the history and though the names, like all names foreign to our tongues, are difficult to remember and at times impossible to pronounce, I still find there is so much more to learn, to grow accustomed to. At work I say half seriously that I’ll change my name if and when I become a citizen to a Turkish name: Levent. And I say half seriously because I am half certain of my future. At times I think of getting a place in a Black Sea town because apart from Izmir, that is the one place I think I could settle. There’s something about the people I identify with, though perhaps it’s the Calabrese half of me that identifies with them and the half from Salerno that feels most comfortable in Izmir. But like those two opposite halves, I am split, am always divided between things, places, lives. The writer/educator, the city dweller who longs to live by the sea, the cat owner who misses his dog, the solitary man who misses the company of his friends, the New Yorker who longed to return to California, the expatriate who still hasn’t quite found a home. I can renounce a country but I find I still can’t quite embrace one. The expats who adjust here best are those that marry into the culture, that have Turkish wives or husbands, new adopted families, children, a home. And that has always been something lacking in my life since those Sunday dinners of my youth.

There are probably four neighborhoods in my entire life I’ve felt most comfortable in: the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Santa Monica, CA, Sunnyside, Queens, and here in Moda. Yet as comfortable as I feel, there has always been something missing, which probably explains why I spent so much time in my younger days moving around. My mother would complain I took up too many pages in her address book but I just couldn’t find the right neighborhood, the mix of people, places, restaurants, pizza parlors, and bookstores to make me feel comfortable. I did in two of those neighborhoods I mentioned: the Upper West Side of Manhattan & Santa Monica, CA, but in Manhattan I had the first bookstore I worked in, 3 very close friends within a 5 block radius of my apartment, Central Park half a block away for my dog, and two of my brothers within walking distance, well 80 blocks away but still within walking distance, and in Santa Monica I had 5 very close friends nearby, my bookstore which was my second home, and the Airlane Bar and Tampico Tilly’s across the street. I mean, both places were like heaven. Sunnyside was different but I had my car and drove everywhere and the apartment was big, the top floor of a house, and I was only a few blocks from the Long Island Expressway and only a few subway stops outside Manhattan. And Moda, well I already described Moda, and the only thing lacking here is an English language bookstore. My fantasy is maybe one day I’ll open up one here and give this teaching thing a rest.

But back to being an expat. I think maybe I’ve always been an expat but just didn’t know it. I was always living somewhere else even when I wasn’t physically but was in my head. And my heart was sort of looking around, scoping out the terrain, thinking maybe here, or maybe over there, or collecting boxes to start packing up again. Maybe being an expat is really a frame of mind. That mindset that hasn’t quite settled into being a resident, a citizen, of finally saying this is home now. I’m settled. So until I do find that place where I hang up my shingle for good, then I’ll continue to be an expat. Without a country, searching for a place to belong.