Andrew Wessels on Migrations From Los Angeles to Istanbul & Back Again

At Literary Hub, Andrew Wessels, author of A Turkish Dictionary (published by 1913 Press), discusses moving between Los Angeles and Istanbul. The translator of Turkish poet Nurduran Duman, Wessels and his partner Zeliha left Istanbul after the city fell into chaos in 2017. "In the first days of 2017, in the immediate aftermath of the New Year’s Eve shooting at the Reina nightclub on the shores of the Bosporus, I watched my American friends populate my Facebook news feed with articles listing the series of attacks in Turkey in 2016," he writes. Let's pick up there:

The lists included bombings by ISIS and PKK, a coup attempt, and now a mass shooting. The idea, I think, was that this list could describe what living in Turkey was like, that it described my experience of my home. My friends read these lists and were filled with fear and trepidation. Istanbul and Turkey must be a police state, a war zone, a bottomless well of darkness and fear.

I stared at these lists as we prepared to move back to the US. Zeliha and I had already sold off our furniture, vacated our apartment, and completed our final days at work. We were to leave Istanbul in four days.

What exactly does a list like that mean or do? At their most basic, lists list things. Like data, lists present themselves as neutral. But also like data, they are not neutral at all: Who chooses what list to make and publish? Who chooses what information is included in and excluded from the stated list?

These lists about Turkey seemed to say: this place has become terrorized.

But why list this? Why not write and publish some other list?

Here is a list of 5 horrifying tragedies in the United States in 2016:

1. February 20, 2016. Kalamazoo, MI. Jason Brian Dalton, an Uber driver, kills six and wounds two while picking up fares. Dalton is apprehended alive.

2. June 12, 2016. Orlando, FL. Omar Mateen kills 49 and wounds 53 in Pulse Nightclub. Mateen is the 50th death.

3. August 13, 2016. New York, NY. Oscar Morel shoots and kills two execution-style in the early afternoon in Ozone Park. Morel is apprehended alive the following day.

4. September 26, 2016. Houston, TX. Nathan Desai, dressed in Nazi regalia, opens fire at a shopping center in the West University neighborhood killing none and injuring nine. Desai is the only death.

5. December 5, 2016. Albuquerque, NM. George Daniel Wechsler breaks into the home of his ex-girlfriend, shooting her and her children, killing all four. Wechsler is the fifth death, of a self-inflicted gunshot.

What meaning do we derive from this list? What does this tell us about life in each of these cities, about life in the United States? How does the information provided and left out of each entry change the list?

For most residents of the US, this list is easily contextualized: We have 365 days in a year, in a expansive country of hundreds of millions of people, with lax gun regulations, with societal issues rooted in isolation, racism, mental health, and poverty. Each of these tragedies can be given its own complex and convoluted backstory. Those events are things that happened, horrifying events.

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