Since the Ottoman royal harems were filled with women from both the Mediterranean and the Baltic — Italian families even casting their daughters on the Adriatic to be picked up by the sultan’s sailors — my Turkish husband jokes he finally brought me back to Istanbul where I belong.
I don’t know, in the span of history and forgotten connections of family, anything’s possible. My Lithuanian family name, echoing a town and river on today’s Belarus border, also sounds a lot like the imperial Turkish bloodline of Osman.
family name derived from this town
As a fourth generation immigrant, I’m so far removed from who and where I come from I’m visited by ghost urges from genes and culture long ago severed. Today I post at expat+HAREM, the global niche about how the mysteries of our extended lineage often crop up as synchronicity, wanderlust, and quirks of taste.
For instance, why does this Northern California girl raised on turkey burgers crave the beet soup borscht? When I feel kinship with my Ukrainian, Estonian, Jewish, Italian and Greek friends, what do their wide brows or brown eyes, their stoicism or talkative personality, remind me of? Do they mirror the mix that is me?
What ethnic or regional mystery reverberates in you?
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Anastasia Ashman
2010 Capital of Culture monthly feature of best Istanbul links
great question. I don’t know exactly when my first ancestors left Ireland for Australia. But I do know that the ancient land sings in my blood.
Whether it be a simple thing like a pint of Guinness or a bottle of Irish Whiskey.
Then comes sport, when the Irish are playing, that is my number 1 team (well after Australia).
As for Irish food, well I’m not so big on that. I will stick with the SE Asian flavours and Japanese cuisine which I have come to love.
Thanks for your comment Chris.
I was just talking with a friend on Twitter about these ethnic stirrings…for many of us it seems nationalism has been a way to calm those feelings by lumping us together with others who happen to share passports or places of birth — but ultimately it’s superficial to who we are.
nice to read. i often had those kind of thoughts myself both while living in turkey and after having left it. being norwegian probably i should blame it on my viking genes..? or was i a harem girl in a ‘previous’ life, if you believe in those kind of life circles..🙂 well, in the end on a somewhat deeper level, i think there often are unconscious reasons also for why we become attracted, drawn to and subsequently attached to a very different culture from the one(s) we are brought up in. at least that is how i see it from my experiences. i ‘even’ challenged my curiosity about the various muslim cultures and settled one year in the uae, in dubai, where i had the chance to see all the emirates as well as some neighbouring countries. my curiosity having found its own answers, steered me back to the mediterranean countries and later on back to my ‘roots’ here in scandinavia. this is such a wide/extensive topic, but it is nice to be able to share this little fraction, here.🙂
Thanks for sharing Kari! Yes, if curiosity is the soul searching for answers, where we choose to wander has meaning on levels deeper than we may be aware…