The Voice Diary — Sesli Günlük

When Selin was accepted for an exchange semester at a university in Cork, the whole family came to the airport to see her off. Her parents gave her advice about money, her brother gave her a power adapter, and her grandmother gave her a bag of dried apricots and a long, silent hug. Her grandmother, whom everyone called Nene, had never learned to read or write. She had grown up in a village near Malatya, a long way from the nearest school. Messages and emails meant nothing to her, so before leaving Selin made her a promise. "Every evening I'll send you a voice message, Nene. I'll tell you everything."

She kept her promise from the very first night. She described the tiny room in the student residence, the rain that seemed to come from every direction at once, and the strange habit Irish people had of thanking bus drivers. She told Nene about her flatmates: Aoife, a cheerful medical student from Galway, and Mateo, a Spanish engineer who cooked enormous omelettes at midnight. Since she spent all day speaking English, more and more English words slipped into her Turkish messages. "Today the lecture was really interesting, Nene, but the deadline is next week and I'm so stressed." She often noticed it only after sending the message, and laughed at herself. Nene couldn't possibly understand those words, but she never complained. Every morning Selin's mother sent the same short report: "She listened to it four times."

The semester was harder than Selin had imagined. In October she failed her first presentation because she was too nervous to look at the audience. In November she caught a cold that lasted three weeks, and she began to miss home so much that it hurt. On those evenings her messages were short, and sometimes she simply said that everything was fine. But somehow, from two thousand miles away, Nene always seemed to know. On the worst nights, Selin's mother would call and say, "Your grandmother wants me to tell you to eat some apricots and go to sleep." It was ridiculous advice, and it worked every time.

Little by little, things improved. Aoife helped her practise her presentations in the kitchen, using Mateo as an audience. Selin taught them both to make menemen, which led to a serious argument about whether onions belonged in it. In December she gave her final presentation and received the highest mark in the class. That evening she recorded her longest message yet, almost ten minutes, full of excitement and English words.

Two days before her flight home, something unusual happened. For the first time in four months, Selin received a voice message from her grandmother's phone. She assumed it was her mother, using Nene's phone by mistake. But when she pressed play, she heard her grandmother's voice, slow and careful, with an accent that made Aoife look up from her book. "Hello, Selin. My name is Nene. I am fine. I am not stressed." There was a pause, the sound of someone whispering, and then: "Congratulations on your presentation. I am very proud." "Your deadline is finished. Come home. I have apricots."

Selin played it again and again until she could hardly see the screen through her tears. Then she called her mother, who finally confessed the secret she had been keeping since October. Every morning, after listening to Selin's message, Nene had asked what the English words meant. At first Selin's brother had explained them, but soon that wasn't enough for her. She wanted to say them herself. So twice a week, Selin's brother had been giving his grandmother English lessons at the kitchen table, using Selin's messages as the textbook. "She's been practising that message for a week," her mother said. "She made us promise not to tell you." "She says that if her granddaughter can learn a new life in a foreign country, she can learn a few new words at eighty-two."

On her last night in Cork, Selin recorded one more message. This time she spoke slowly and clearly, and she spoke only in English. "Thank you, Nene. I am coming home tomorrow. Please don't eat all the apricots." The next morning her mother's report was a little different from usual. "She listened to it eleven times," it said. "And she understood every word."