Kyrgyzstan: On My Way

Monday, June 28, 2021

Prague -> Istanbul

I love flying. 

On an airplane, I mean. 

I love the feeling of being obligated to just sit still and be for a while. Nobody to talk to, nobody talking to me. Just me myself and I. It’s a little Sabbath Day right there in the sky. A chance to just sleep, read, or think. Or, just sit there and do nothing. My mind can go blank and, for some brief moments, is free of worries: nothing to do, nowhere to be.  

I enjoy being suspended in the air between two cities. In that moment on the airplane, I am leaving the life and responsibilities of the departing city for a moment, while the unknown and exciting possibilities of the arrival city hang in the air. I can almost taste the expectations and wishes for the destination and its opportunities that lie waiting for me there. 

There is a meditation I learned for airplanes. You connect with your breath and close your eyes. Every time you have a thought about the past, you tag the thought with the name of the departing city: Prague. Every time you have a thought about the future, you tag the thought with the name of the arrival city: Istanbul. It’s a fun game to bring awareness to your thoughts about the past and future, with the two cities standing in your mind as symbols of what has passed and what is yet to come. 

I am always delighted when I board an international flight and the announcements are in multiple languages. The announcements are usually in the language of the departing city, the destination city, and English (**cough** legacy of imperialism and colonialism **cough**). For me this time, it was Czech, Turkish, and English. 

I was surprised by how much of the Turkish I could understand. Of course, Uyghur is a Turkic language, but I didn't realize how similar the two languages were. Uyghurs were always telling me how similar the languages were. 

But like a lot of things that Uyghurs told me, I had my doubts about their validity (people had all kinds of stories about how the Uyghurs invented pizza and bagels--that one might be true but I'm not sure--and other claims about Uyghurs role in culture and history.) Uyghur and other Turkic people had told me different things—from “the Turkish and Uyghur languages are almost identical” to “the languages are 10% similar” to “the languages are very different but just with similar grammar structures.” 

Honestly, I’d never really spent that much time listening to Turkish while I was in China, so I didn't really know (and, being that I'm not a linguist, I still really don't know how similar the languages actually are). Uyghurs watch lots of Turkish soap operas and listen to Turkish music, but I was always so focused on learning Uyghur that I never really paid attention to those things. And I’d never been to Turkey. 

But sitting on the airplane and listening to the announcements, I could pick out words and the grammar structures—the suffixes were similar, and many of the verbs, numbers, conjugations, and vocabulary was the same. Since I knew Uyghur, it didn't feel so foreign to me. However, I was going from white washed Prague to Istanbul, and I was in for a bit of a culture shock going from the colonizer's land to the colonized.

The first thing that happened on this white person’s journey from the Global North to the Global South was that they didn’t have a vegetarian meal on hand. Ok, I know I’m spoiled. Previously, I had always requested vegetarian meals, but in the last five years or so, there was always a vegetarian option already on the main menu of international flights, so I had forgotten to request it when I bought the tickets this time. 

This time, there was only one option: chicken. I asked the flight attendant if there was a vegetarian option and he paused for a moment, processing my request. 

“No,” he said after a moment's hesitation. 

I stared back for a moment, processing his answer. I think he saw my pleading and desperate eyes. 

“I can go check for you, though,” he said. 

I thanked him and he came back 10 minutes later with some pasta. 

“I found you a meal,” he announced. 

He had “borrowed” it from the first-class section. The meal set was all fancy with porcelain dishes instead of plastic.

I thanked him profusely, reminded of my privilege that I get to be picky with what I eat, whereas other people are grateful for whatever they can get. Many consider meat a delicacy and a luxury that you would be crazy to turn down. 

In my privilege, I get to “save the Earth” by reducing my meat intake. For me, it’s about claiming sovereignty over my body and it’s empowering to know that I get to choose what goes in it. For me, the ethical, moral, and environmental implications of eating meat is something that my body can’t sit with anymore. I have the privilege to have access to enough calories and protein through other means, and so I can refuse it. But for others, a vegetarian diet may be a privilege that they may not have access to. For others, I am being picky. 

To be continued...