This road is almost too perfectly paved to be a country road. I’m on a trip that is not exactly ideal for a girl who has little to no connection with her father’s side of the family. My dad, my two aunts and I are moving towards their hometown together: Çalçı, a small village that is about two hours from Eskişehir.
Well of course the infamous conversation begins, why haven’t I gotten married yet. My father does not care about these things, he stares out of the window, I most probably am driving, and my aunts chatter endlessly, jumping from one person’s life to the next as soon as a topic is exhausted.
I think we are all going to the Annual Village Reunion, which inevitably means that we also need to cook something to share. The strongest candidate is “stuffed (vine) leaves”. It is crystal clear to me that I have to be a part of this cooking process; there’s no resisting the combined force of these two aunts. Fine then, stuffed leaves it is. If I’m going to put in the effort, I might as well spend it on one of my favourite dishes.
Being a single, educated and working woman in her 20s is not something that resonates greatly in rural areas. You are not understood by anyone really, the safaris you have done, the expos you have been to, the events you organized does not mean anything here. The conversation keeps dwelling along the same lines: “Still not married? Oh dear, such a shame…” They pity you almost, so well educated, still not able to find a proper husband…
My dad is indifferent to all this conversation. He went to university, became a teacher, resigned, started his own business, got married at forty, became a father at forty-five, traveled the world as much as the times allowed, drank, had fun, chose his own path, and lived his life to the fullest. And this free spirit has not really been a problem for him in the village. However, it is not the same for her daughter. The people in the village ask about her age, her marital status and kids if any. As men “mature” with age, women are considered “too late”. And so the daughter, as a city girl, doesn’t want to come to the village. She doesn’t like it, finds it suffocating, uncomfortable. This visit is just for her dad, as he loved both his hometown and her dearly. Whatever, she thinks, I’ll just smile and nod.
We arrive at my father’s childhood home, the one he had completely renovated years ago when I was a kid, disappearing on us for weeks without a second thought. As I park the car, I feel a flicker of anger again – this village never complained when my father drank with his friends on the balcony until dawn, never questioned a man living on his terms, away from his family, but here it is now, silently criticizing me. Anyway…
We rush into the house with over thirty bags and sacks of various sizes, and in a chaotic way, place them, open the windows, let the house be aired out, plug in the electronic devices, make sleeping arrangements. I surrender myself to my aunts’ instructions and do whatever they tell me: put the cheese in the fridge, that bag goes inside, whatever, you sit down on the balcony, we’ll handle the rest…
Time moves strangely in the village. It slows down, bends, softens, quiets. After a while, I can’t say how long, it’s time to roll the stuffed leaves. My two aunts sit me down on the floor next to them. Each has prepared their own unique filling, and I, as the sole member of the Stuffed Leaves Support Unit, am ready to assist both sides. In front of us is a small mountain of vine leaves, aunts’ unique fillings, and two pots. Each aunt offers me their own tips and tricks, and I listen carefully, striving to achieve the perfectly rolled stuffed leaf with each new roll.
In my newly appointed role, which I’ve begun with a grudging nod, I’m slowly filled with a deep sense of peace. Our only concern is whose stuffed vine leaves will turn out better; there’s a playful and competitive atmosphere in a lighthearted way. For the first time in my life, my aunts and I are this close; we joke, we laugh and have fun together. It’s the very first time I am consciously present inside their world. I listen to what they say, I understand what they have gone through, why they do what they do, and I notice how they feel. They each have their own unique concerns, troubles, and traumas they haven’t even realized. As they roll the leaves, they relax, and as they relax, they share more of their stories.
As I listen to them, I begin to think that the real challenge isn’t being a single, educated, and working woman in her 20s in a rural area. Every version of being a woman is challenging. It’s difficult to be a 75-year-old woman with five children and eight grandchildren, married in an Anatolian village, and it is difficult to be a free-spirited young woman living alone in Canada, working, doing sports, traveling the world.
We always expect too much from ourselves and from other women. We want to be everything on our own terms, and when we fall short, we judge ourselves and each other harsher than anyone else ever could. Even if society no longer says the words out loud, its values are so deeply ingrained in us that we’ve taken over the job ourselves.
Am I going to die alone, I wish I could find a partner. Did I study all those years for nothing if I still haven’t become a director? Everyone’s second child is already in elementary school, am I making a mistake postponing having kids? I’ve moved too far away, I can’t take care of my parents properly, am I a bad daughter? I’ve gained 10 kilos in the last 10 years, I’ve let myself go, this can’t go on, I need to diet and exercise immediately. The lines on my face have increased, which day & night cream I should start using, I’ll ask the girls right away… Together, we could easily fill 180 US letter–sized pages with anxieties unique to women.
The famous tirade in the Barbie movie has already perfectly summarized this constant state of never being enough, neither for society nor for ourselves.
And all the while, we’re trying to live without provoking a giant monster. We sometimes adjust the length of our skirts, sometimes the tone of our voices and sometimes even make our bigger decisions, just to avoid waking that monster and not give it an excuse to hurt us. And this monster is everywhere in the world. In some places, it’s well-fed and aggressive, wreaking havoc openly. In others, it lurks silently underground, whispering in our ears at night, occasionally emerging to swallow a woman or two before returning to its underground headquarters.
Patriarchy…
Although our ways of dealing with that monster may differ, its traces show up in every home, every table, every sentence.
I get angry at myself. For criticizing my aunts, for judging the women they had to become while struggling to exist in the impasse society has forced them into, without considering external factors. For not really caring for them without even trying to understand them.
While their two brothers studied and became teachers, their option was to get married and have children. Paths never opened up for them, they had to carve their way forward even just to be able to improve themselves a little. The bumps and the obstacles of the path are not very different from what I have been facing in corporate life. Yet until now, I’d always assumed those closed roads were of their own paving. I’ve simply criticized them without thinking.
“Wrap them a little tighter, or they’ll fall apart when cooked and everyone will say that Halil’s daughter can’t even roll a stuffed leaf properly.” The giggling of my aunts pulls me back from my ocean of thoughts. Well, no one should be able to say that. I start rolling them as tight as I can. After all, we need to be best at what we do – whether as the free-spirited, university-educated city girl, or the well-behaved girl who rolls the finest leaves in the village.
And just like that, I forget all the social criticism I just made. I surrender myself to the codes embedded in my subconscious and focus entirely on making that perfect stuffed leaf.
For all the following years, I remembered that day simply as “the most peaceful and beautiful day I ever spent with my two aunts”. And until I started writing this piece, I did not even recall my underlying thoughts.
I thought it was just about pieces of stuffed leaves. My great-aunt’s, my little-aunt’s and my own pieces of stuffed vine leaves.
But in fact, it was never about one piece of stuffed leaf.
It was of all the stuffed leaves in the world…
