Basements
Basements, like attics, often serve places to store objects, storing items where there is no other place in the house to fit; some basements are finished, serving as an entertainment room with games/sofas, while others are unfinished — bare yet full– containing boxes, within them items that oft go forgotten or unnoticed. My parents’ is the finished kind, containing the typical billard table.
Over the years, a mishmash of other items in piles of boxes unable to fit elsewhere in the house have made their way down here, too.
Beyond the pool table and boxes, all around me in my parents’ basement is an additional spin—my mom had originally intended our basement be a family museum, containing cultural artifacts showing where our roots trace to in lieu of the usual framed family pictures on the wall—our family’ history explained through a series of maps of Central Asia, miniatures of Sultans; a
painting of an impressionable Timur Lenk, referred deridingly as Tamer the Lame, whom to me resembles King Midas as he’s donned with a crown and draped in wealth; bejeweled daggars,
stacks of dusty books on shelves, posters on the wall of flags and historical empires, silk cultural dresses, pinned hats; teapots and assortment of other momentos as well some colorful mats on the floor.
Being in the basement is like I’ve sunk into the underlayer of memories among some dust and cobwebs; as a question mark, it’s precisely why I’ve come here to retrieve answers regarding who I am.
The Return Home
I waddle around, tea in hand—if I were to have some
clipboard in the other, purveying
questions on a form titled, “Who are you?” I imagine finding the ones commonly
thought to be markers of identity….Name: I’d skip past that… (too
complicated of a story to mention here..) check the age field.. 28.. sex…F
marital status.. M; occupation, wishing there was “misunderstood creative” in
lieu of unemployed.. but check the latter.. then I’d reach the question whose
answer I’m on my quest here to find, “Question Number 5 Ahh..Ethnic identity..”
I’d check that as “other..” under the Explain field: scribble Turkic, followed
by flipping to a page in the back of the form, fill in the lines under family
history as I jotted down the stories behind these cultural heirlooms.
Everywhere in the basement is a memory of my grandfather, a
community
leader, who had imparted lessons to his children, clearly my mom, about the
importance of knowing one’s ancestral history —especially given the sacrifices
he and millions of others took in fleeing from their homelands during the red
terror of the 1940s (their escape from communism). I imagine what it must have
been marching from his native country Uzbekistan in Central Asia, through
frosty woods , hilltops, and mountains at age 9 among a caravan of others who
creeped beside each another silently. Mothers had to stuff their bundled
infants’ cheeks with opium to keep them asleep as to not risk them waking up to
cry for fear of getting murdering or captured by the communist guards lurking
nearby, their hidden shadows masked behind an ideology.
These people escaped from countries represented by their
respective flags on
of these posters…. Kyrgyzstan… Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan,
Eastern Turkistan–all one prior land, translating to Land of the Turks (that
included Azerbaijan and series of other territories too..) ; lands that to the
west appear as a bloc of inconsequential stans but to us represent a linkage to
my family’s past.
Over the course of 20 years both sides of my family, my
paternal and
maternal grandparents escaped to non-Turkic countries whose borders the arms of
the communism hadn’t reached–India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, lastly to settle
in Turkiye, a
Turkic country with customs and language similar to their own, the exception
being my paternal grandparents who moved to the US in 70s, along with my
parents. My maternal grandparents remained in Turkiye, with maternal grandfather returning to Uzbekistan for the final time in the
1990s, when I was five years old. We traveled from the US to Turkiye after
hearing on the news of the communist bloc having collapsed to join my
grandfather on his return home after being estranged from it for 70 years.
The first item I reach for, removing it from its pin on the
wall, is one of
my grandfather’s square black hats with white designs. I bring my nose into its
opening and sniff; pulling in his crisp, clean scent still buried in them from
the 1990s, and now it’s 2016.
I remember as a little girl at the airport, looking up at my
wise grandfather
as I held his hand, his cane in his other. He was wearing another version of
the that I hold. He was certain, peaceful–excitement twinkling in his brown
eyes. He was ready. In fact, he’d always been ready.. Five years before the
episode in question , shortly after my birth, my mom had awoken from a troubling dream
where it appeared he’d passed away. She picked up the phone frantically dialing
a long-distance call to Turkiye at 2 am, there being a 7 hour time difference in
between, relieved at hearing his voice on the other line, as he calmly said,
“my dear, know that I will not die until I taste my last sip of water from my
homeland.”
Upon landing in Uzbekistan, we set out from the doors of
the airport,
pulling our luggage, wide-eyed, not understanding any commands barked in
Russian by the airport officials, but their stern glares letting at us know
that we “foreigners” the ones who had fled big ol’ bad daddy Stalin’s decree
were unwelcome, as we set foot into the warmth of sun’s glare around noon.
In place of the reverberations of the hooves of horses
strode by some of the
mightiest conquerors in history, we heard the horn of a communist style minibus
pull up; we mounted, peering out the window at the passing scenery; my older
sister and I were surprised at not seeing the green mythic pastures as described to
us by our parents, instead we were witnessing a country undergoing
recovery, trying to remember itself, what it once was in order to rebuild
and adjust to a new world. Then, we learn our parents had only shared with us what they’d been told by their own parents, through my grandparents’
nostalgizing of vatan.. (Homeland..) their recollections of a land they
couldn’t return to until then…now