1.   

Böyle bir şeyi nasıl yaparsın?
How could you do such a thing?

(She adores me at first, although her son married me without permission, on infidel soil. I've learned her language in just six months, which shows intelligence, commitment, and respect. Also, I make her laugh. It doesn't hurt that I'm blonde and blue-eyed, either. She's already picturing her Nordic-inflected grandchildren. I address her as "anneciğim" (mother dear), as good Turkish daughters-in-law do—it would be offensive to use her first name.)

2.   

Tencere dibin kara seninki benden kara, değil mi?
Isn't that like the pot calling the kettle black?

(The trouble starts with an accidental insult. I didn't mean to wound her in front of her friends—my Turkish is a clumsy implement disguised by the shine of good pronunciation. I only meant to tease; instead, I've bludgeoned her. She laughs with the others, but I sense the invisible internal damage, the creeping bleed. Later, I realize the trouble would've started regardless, from something else—some unintended oversight; some self-preserving disobedience.)

3.   

Bahşiş atın dişine bakılmaz derler.
They say not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

(The first grandchild arrives. Her joy is boundless. She abandons her home, her life, and moves into mine. I make room. Who am I to refuse such selfless generosity? Never mind her husband the captain—he's off at sea. Always at sea. She raised their children without help through the embargo years, enduring bread and coffee lines, life-threatening fevers and broken bones and a thousand other woes that preclude me from saying no to her. Also, there's my guilt at leaving my children all week to go to work. If not with me, shouldn't they be with someone else who loves them?)

4.   

"Kişisel sınırlar" derken neyi kastedisin?
What do you mean by "personal boundaries"?

(Sometime after this, she stops asking my opinion. I put my three-year-old daughter in a pink dress; she changes it for blue overalls. I spend hours picking the perfect duvet set for the bedroom; she declares it unsightly, replaces it with something she bought at the thrift store. I hang a picture in the living room, carefully, with a thick nail; she rehangs it in the hallway with a thumbtack that bows ominously under its weight. She did such things before, too, but at least with advance negotiation, sometimes letting me prevail. For example, if I'd told her one year ago that overalls could be hard for a toddler to manage in the bathroom, she might've listened.)

5.   

Bazı insanlar kefaretin hemen ötesindedir.
Some people are simply beyond redemption.

(Even with all the work she does—both vital and useless—she finds time to peck as sharply at my small sins as at my large ones. My botched scrubbing of a pot demands the same attention as my unwillingness to convert to Islam. If I overlook a few crumbs on the countertop, I'm lazy; same thing if I suffer any dust beneath the dust ruffle, or fail to have tea ready before she gets up on the weekend, when I'm home for a change, and expected to atone for all the time I've spent away, taking it (presumably) easy at my (undoubtedly) cushy desk job.)

6.   

Bu seni ilgilendirmez.
That's really none of your business.

(Then there are the constant questions. Questions that usually aren't questions at all, but disparagements, upturned and pointed like fishhooks:
   •  Did your mother never teach you how to clean floors?
   •  What kind of woman doesn't know how to make soup?
In return, I ask:
   •  How can I clean floors if you throw my mop away?
   •  What good is soup if it's full of three-day-old rice and chicken bones?
My Turkish, and her English, are fluent enough only to torture each other slowly, years passing, each new misunderstanding reopening and re-poisoning an old injury. Neither of us can construct the delicately-calibrated phrases that could achieve clear victory, or bring the healing flood of understanding.)

7.   

Kimsenin bu kadar inatçı olabileceğini bilmiyordum.
I never knew anyone could be this stubborn.

(It's her fifth Ramadan here when we have our first and last real fight, out in the open instead of under the surface. I'm terribly afraid God will punish you for your faithlessness, she says, hunger-raw from fasting. And I say, with a bitterness I know will sink deeply in starved flesh, Don't worry, mother dear, God is punishing me already. Those are my last direct words to her. Even after she seems receptive again, ready to entertain an apology, I avoid her when I can, ignore her when I can't. The sound of my name, from her lips, no longer moves me.)

8.   

Allah ruhuna merhamet etsin.
May God have mercy on your soul.

(It turns out that my silence is the one thing more unbearable than my words. Before she retreats to Istanbul (by choice—I demanded nothing), I catch her watching me as I read to my children. There's a prayer in her eyes that Allah will, one day—fledglings safely fledged—give me what I deserve. But behind the prayer is a shaken, crumbling heart unable to bear this failure, this subversion of the order of things. She's been cheated of her due. She was supposed to rule me, as she once was ruled. She envisions the solitude that awaits, fingering prayer beads and drinking tea in front of the TV, waiting for her husband to call from Shanghai, Buenos Aires, or some other marvelous place. She'll never admit she might've done certain things differently. To do so, I think, would kill her.)

.