My great grandmother was a Yörük woman who got married at fifteen to a man of another tribe. My great grandmother, Hafize, whose name I’ve adopted in the H of my pen name, wouldn’t even recognise the letters on this page. I lost her at eleven and one of the lessons I kept from our relationship was to never, ever depend on anyone for anything. My grandfather wasn’t even allowed to finish middle school before losing his right to an education to work while my great aunts had a very sporadic education and even that is a privilege though it came with the shame of “not bearing kids” at “the right time”. Neither one of them ever had children and I’m told both my great grandmother and great grandfather shamed them for it, telling them they had failed as women at any chance they could.
After she got married, my great aunt’s husband forced her to drop out of university. They had a very messy divorce, with my great grandmother shunning my aunt for having brought shame upon the family and the tribe. Desperate for work and cut off from her family, she started working at a bank where she slowly but surely got back up on her feet. My other great aunt was able to finish her studies but fell into a deep depression after the premature death of her husband. From them, I learned the importance of determination and the privilege that comes with education, how it allows you to keep your independence in a culture that pushes you to be fully dependent on a man.
“Never let anyone walk over you” they’d say. “Never rely on anyone other than yourself.” That is a lesson we as women are taught all while society places the expectation to bend over backwards for the needs of men on us. Even when there wasn’t a man physically in the room, his spirit would haunt the corners of our house and dictate the way the women in my family acted.
Don’t wear that, your uncle is coming over!
Cook something for your cousin, he’ll be hungry when he arrives!
Your grandfather would be ashamed of you if he were still alive!*
I DON’T CARE!! THESE PEOPLE AREN’T EVEN HERE!!!! **
Sometimes, this man haunting my family materialised as a fully set table in a house where the host had severe arthritis. Every time my family visited my great aunts, the table would be full of a variety of dishes, teas and desserts. “It’s because I love you,” they say, face twisting in pain as they set the plate of dolma in the centre. My mother always responded that she didn’t want to see them in pain, that she knew my aunt loved us. Of course, the only response we got was that it was their duty to be gracious hosts. Don’t be. Your bones are literally grinding against each other. Rest. Thankfully, we convinced them to lay back and let us set the table, to let us take care of them.
From this, you’ll know I grew up in a classic Turkish household. I’ve known how to brew tea since I could walk and was taught how to cook as soon as I knew the dangers of fire. I’ve always been close to my extended family with my cousins and I growing up like siblings. We saw each other every day, went to the same schools and all stayed at my grandmother’s house during the summer. I remember having sleepovers together and chatting late into the night, or being scared of going to the deep end of the garden because my eldest cousin would chase us with a ghost mask on. It was fun. All of that ended when I realised just how unequal our roles in my grandmother’s house were.
My grandmother is a French woman who moved to Türkiye in her early twenties. She was cut off by her parents for daring to marry an uncivilised, barbaric Turk, while my grandfather’s family rejected her for having “diluted” our tribe’s blood. “O bozuk kanlı” my great grandmother would say. She has bad blood. In retaliation, my grandmother became the most Turkish person I’ve ever known. She learned the language, organised a set tea time that we all respected, and only ever cooked Turkish dishes in the house. I just wish she hadn’t also adopted the archaic gender norms of our society.
Whenever we stayed over at my grandmother’s house, my sister “İpek” and I would be woken up at the ass-crack of dawn to prepare breakfast for my snoring cousins. Set the table, brew the tea, buy bread from the market, slice the cheese but not like that because your cousin hates it when the slices are too thick. A set of instructions barked over a lit stove paired with the smell of eggs I wasn’t allowed to touch until everyone was up wafting through the air and tickling my nostrils. This went on for years until İpek and I started refusing to stay at my grandmother’s in protest. It got so bad both my grandfather, aunt, and mother had to intervene to tell her that the boys can help set the table too.
My mother would tell us to leave some things for my cousins to set but my grandmother would do it in their place. Three times, my sister and I woke my cousins up to help set the table and that ended with my grandmother yelling at us until the house shook. At times, my grandfather would wink at my sister and I as he took the plate of sucuk from the counter and set it on the table, a quiet act of rebellion that I cherish to this day despite not having any impact on the problem at hand.
“Why should we be the only ones to set the table and cook for the boys? Why can’t they do it themselves?” I asked my grandmother in anger. This was five years ago and I’ll never forget her answer.
“What do you mean why?” she had said, “They’re guests.”
Well what the fuck am I? At this point, my grandmother would only ever see my sister and I once a year, sometimes once every two years because we had already moved out of Türkiye. How is it that someone she saw every day was a guest but the granddaughter she saw yearly wasn’t? And what do you mean “guest”?! We’re a family, everyone should do their part!
“Besides,” she started, “Your cousins don’t know how to cook.” By then, one of them was 18 and living alone while the other was 23. If they didn’t know how to cook, not only is it embarrassing, it also means that now is the best time for them to learn. My sister and I refused to cook for them and were kicked out. We walked home and told my mother what happened, she raised hell, nothing changed.
I’ve always resented my cousins over this, especially because they never intervened in the face of my grandmother’s misogyny. When I moved to France, I did my best to avoid them, I hated being in the same environment as them because on top of the grudge I held, one of them made me feel very inferior compared to him. He’s also a law student, in a better school, with better grades and he had gotten his degree without any setbacks— something my grandmother never let me forget. He hasn’t done anything to make me feel bad per se, he doesn’t act like he’s better than me or anything, it’s just my insecurity that makes me resent him like this because I’m jealous of his success and my inability to replicate it despite my efforts.
Last year, I decided to turn a new page. My cousins invited me out to drink with them and their friends. While we were drinking, they talked about the delicious breakfast my grandmother used to make and how it doesn’t hit the same anymore. “That’s because İpek and I were the ones cooking everything.” A mistake. I didn’t mean to reveal it— or maybe I did, I don’t know.
“What do you mean?”
“Grandma would wake us up to cook for you guys.” They didn’t believe me until they called my aunt to confirm, which she did.
“We never knew!” Said my cousin. A lie, told to alleviate his guilt I imagine.
“We did everything in front of you, there’s no way you didn’t know.”
“We really had no idea,” said the other, “But hey, at least you brew a mean cup of tea.” He then laughed harder than I’ve ever seen him laugh— shot his head back, slapped his knee and everything. A cup of tea. That’s what years of unacknowledged labor was equated to, a cup of tea and a shitty joke told over a cheap glass of wine. I watched as they ripped the new page I’d turned apart and pissed on it.
I want to give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they really didn’t know, though I find it hard to believe when it was such a huge source of tension in the house. Maybe a part of them knew but didn’t dig much further since the situation was beneficial to them. I don’t know, the entire thing has left a sour taste in my mouth and I miss my old relationship with them, I miss considering them my brothers instead of lazy, ungrateful brats who reduced my feelings into a joke.
I’m so tired of servitude being considered my only duty. My parents expect me to be in a relationship, expect me to get married, expect me to have children. My grandmother expects the same things on top of being my cousins’ caretaker and I don’t want any of it. I’m my own person, I have my own wants and dreams, I don’t want to serve a man or anyone for the rest of my life. Maybe some people will read this and think “Damn, this bitch really doesn’t want to help around the house.” And yeah, maybe that’s part of it. I wish we all had equal responsabilities but that’s not the case. All I want is my fucking degree, time to read my books, and some peace.
*This is just blatantly untrue, I was his favourite grandchild up until his death BECAUSE of my free-spirited nature but even if I weren’t, I don’t care.
© 2026 C. H. Gökdemir. All rights reserved.
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