This is the problem with having limited Turkish. I went to buy lipsol and the shop assistant sat me down and gave me a make-over! Actually I was quite proud of myself because I could use some words and a few sentences and I could understand some of the things she was saying. Having recovered quickly from covid, Mark and I are back in the swing of language school. There are over twenty of us in the class and we are all jammed behind tiny desks into a too-small classroom. To ensure a seat you have to get there early but it is always an interesting experience. Apart from the lady from Ukraine who has just joined us, we are the only Westerners. The class comprises mostly of a mix of Africans and Middle Easterners. Our language teacher, Melike literally writes on the board for nearly the whole time. We do, fortunately, have three breaks in the four hours of lessons. Its mostly about chanting in repetition and copying from the board but we each got to speak three sentences on Friday. One of Mark's sentences was 'My wife can't cook'. The Sudanese ladies were horrified. I am learning that one cannot presume!!! The Somalian lady that sits next to me does not know how to turn off her phone, so the other day she just answered it in class. She hasn't got a clue what we are doing. She has some English so we are able to talk a bit....even though Melike will say 'only Turkish' if she hears us. It turns out that this poor lady's husband was killed two and a half years ago and she finds herself in Turkey with her children. There are two Iraqi refugees who are very warm to Mark and I. They seem like rogues and Melike calls them lazy because they don't do their homework. The youngest Sajad sits on my other side. We can't really communicate because he has no English, but with the help of google translate, it turns out that these wide boys are the only members of their large family to have escaped Iraq. They are looking after the older brother Ali's three year old boy, whose picture they proudly showed us, as his wife has died. I'm pretty sure that this is not all the tragedy that the people in our class have suffered. Learning language is a humbling experience, getting tongue-tied in shops and not being able to say what you want to say and sitting in a language class with lovely, vibrant and humorous people who have suffered so much.
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