After the two hour yoga class and a hearty Turkish breakfast, many gather around the water to read, slip into the cool waters and glide along with the gentle ocean current; or nap under the slumping pines, hammock-set, to avoid the midday heat.
One student, however, lingers around the burlwood table, slowly going over the contents of her plate and reciting as best she can remember, Turkish names for each: egg, tomato, cucumber, cheese. Over and over, she repeats:
“yumurta, domates, salatalı, peynir… yumurta, domates, salatalı, peynir…”
All morning she had felt like a 4-year-old, verbally nipping at the Turkish speakers. Pointing at various objects, and with ears perked and ready for an answer, she’d ask: “How do you say this in Türçe? And this?” Her left finger flitting like a bird from item to item, her right hand busy scribbling in her notebook. “This? Tekrar söyler misiniz? (Can you repeat that?)”
By the end of breakfast she only had a list of a few words. She couldn’t write most down fast enough; and her experts seemed more interested in eating Tahini-covered watermelon than telling her how to spell “Allahısmarladık ögretmen.”
And so she now sits alone, resigned to rolling again and again across her tongue the round qualities of yumurta, domates, salatalı, peynir, yumurta-domates-salatalı-peynir, yumurtadomatessalatıpeynir.
Egg. Tomato. Cucumber… cheese. If only…
From behind the mosquito screen she hears a sweet murmuring, echoing her repetitions. She turns to look, and sees that the sounds come from Moustafa, who sits patiently coloring, with very rusty markers, the long slender ears of a bunny rabbit blue. He hums to himself as the dry pens make grooves in the paper.
The girl slowly lifts her small pad of paper removes her shoes, and enters the köşk. She kneels beside Moustafa and places her hands atop her lap. Moustafa looks up and smiles.
“Merhaba.” She says hello. He nods. She waits. He stops coloring, places the cap on the blue marker, and slowly slides it back into the plastic sleeve from which it came. He closes his coloring book, closes his eyes. He takes a deep breath in, deep breath out, and raises his eyes to her again.
He lifts the index finger of his right hand, and they begin.
It lands on the face of the coloring book, and he says, very deliberately, “kitap” — never taking his eyes of hers.
“What?” She looks at him questioningly. “I don’t — Bilmiyorum Türçe. (I don’t know Turkish). Do you want something?” Moustafa doesn’t move an inch. He continues to look right at her, raises his index finger two inches, still pointing downward, and brings it down again on top of the coloring pad.
“Kitap.”
The girl smiles, “kitap. Book.” She writes it down. “Ki-tap?” Moustafa nods and smiles.
The tutoring builds fury: rug, red, pen, ceiling, foot, hair, dog. The petite teacher recites item after item while she repeats, scribbles, confirms, and repeats again.
Then the student points to a color in the rug, asks “Ingelizce: brown. Br-own. What Türçe?”
Not sure to which color she points, Moustafa asks back, “kafe?” She nods, and says, “Evet, like coffee.”
“Kahverengi!” he shouts, satisfied. She dutifully records. He sees she’s misspelled is, corrects her, and closes his eyes, finalizing it.
Then they move on to animals. These seem to be Moustafa’s favorite words to teach, because there is nothing specifically to point to. To work around the language barrier, creativity is needed: he waves his hand at the student, and points, indicating she is to stand. She understands.
Charade-like, she stands in the center of the room, body-neutral. Then she says, “cow.” The teacher looks at her blankly. “Türçe, cow?” Her small teacher waves at her again, and so she spits out, “moo! moo!” and walks around, chewing invisible cud. The teacher explodes into giggles. She prances around the room moo-ing.
“Inek! Inek!” he says, pointing, and rolling on the floor. “In-eh-hek-ha-ha-ha!” She drops to the floor to record, while the giggles continue to fill the room.
The animal-charade-lessons continue. Then, just as quickly as they started, the teacher straightens his face, looks at her seriously, and opens up his coloring book. He pulls out a blue marker, and begins coloring without looking up at her.
She leaves the köşk quietly, thanking the 6-year-old boy with her lowered eyes.
