Hediye came to the US in 2012 from Turkey to study for her PhD in English Literature. When we spoke in May 2019, she had recently defended her dissertation and was preparing to return home.
Was coming for school your first time in the US?
“Yes. My first flight ever, yeah, was coming to IUP. I had to take a flight from my hometown to Istanbul. From Istanbul to New York. From New York to Pittsburgh. […] When I look back and then think, I was like I couldn’t do that right now. Like what I did seven years ago, I find it a little bit crazy. I was excited, nervous. It was terrifying at the same time. I know the language but it’s not like that, when you speak to people it’s different, totally different. So it was a little terrifying. [whispers] A bit scary.”
How does your family feel about you being so far away?
“My mom is always worried. She’s happy too because she wants us to be educated, especially my sister and I. She said we need to be financially stable. We should have a job. We should be strong, we should get education. That’s what’s make her bear the longing. But I think definitely they miss me. They think of me every day. And worried.”
“I call my mom every other day. My sister, we text each other usually. And like whenever I call my mom, my dad is there so I can talk to him. But whenever I call my dad he gives my mom the phone.”
Do you think being in Pennsylvania has changed your perspective on American literature or teaching English?
“I think the best way to teach English is through movies, videos with some cultural activities like Halloween, Christmas. It was interesting to see, to live those experiences from the books I taught. So, what is Halloween? It never made sense when I was teaching it. But here, it makes sense and when I see the stores, you know, they changed the the decoration based on Halloween or Christmas. And Christmas is a big thing, I didn’t know that’s a really big thing.”
Has your religious practice changed since coming to the US?
“My ideas about hijab changed when I came here. I thought that’s not as important as salah (prayer), for example, or as important as being good to someone. You know, gossip, ghayba, it’s worse. I can’t judge. But I felt like how you look is not that important. How you act, what you say is more important. That’s why I feel like the hijab does not comes first right now. It’s not a priority for me right now.”
“Back home I only prayed in mosque. Certain areas that is specifically designed for prayer, you know, at school, or on campus you have some rooms, or definitely there’s a mosque on every campus, so you can go to mosque and pray, or little masjids. You don’t pray in library because there’s a masjid here. But here, since there’s not like a designated place, there is like in the library but sometimes the classes we have 5 minutes break, so I remember I prayed in the aisle or in some of the empty classes. I can pray wherever I want here, so I felt I like this freedom and nobody says anything, hey what are you doing? But I try to pray somewhere that people can’t see me because I can focus more and I don’t want to show off, hey I’m praying. So I like it. That’s one thing I changed. I would love to do that back home.”
How would you describe the Muslim community in Indiana, PA?
“Diverse I would say, from different countries. It’s interesting to know their practices too. So what we practice in Turkey can be different than what they are practicing in Saudi for example. And I feel like, or Indonesia or Malaysia. It was nice to see those diverse experiences in people like leaving Islam in different ways. I like it. And then when I look at us as second, so Arabic is not our first language, I always felt bad, because I can’t pronounce Arabic as as good as them. I mean, we pray together, but it’s feels like, I still feel connected with these people because we share the same religion. Not the nationality, but I think it’s, we came together under this religion like sisterhood or brotherhood, like Islam. I don’t know, I like that feeling. I like it. Like from Pakistan, from India, there’s only one thing that brings these people together, which is maybe praying or fasting are having the same religious ideas or faith. It was nice to find something in common with these people. Like maybe we have totally different ideas. We may have totally different language background, or whatever, but there’s one thing that can bring us together and that’s the religion.”
What was it like going from a Muslim-majority place, like Turkey, to Indiana, PA?
“Weird, but I like it being Muslim in Indiana, PA because I found the community. It’s interesting, it’s like magnet, I don’t know how it is, it’s you get together somehow. I don’t know how I met these people. Okay the mosque, you know, I met people in the mosque. From halaqa groups. Or, you know, since I wear hijab, it’s so easy to spot me, you know to approach and know I’m Muslim. I like it as long as I am with my community, my Muslim community. But if I’m alone, it feels lonely. When I walk on the street, I always think what they think. Especially in summer when it is so hot. Are they going to see something bad? Or am I going to be…especially in these days, be concerned. I’m really curious about how it feels if I don’t have hijab. I wish I had some kind of social experiment. Is it any different or am I just assuming that it would be different? Probably would be different right? It’s not an assumption, I guess. How people treat you, how people see you.”
There’s a lot of anti-Muslim rhetoric in the world right now, particularly in the US. What’s that like for you?
“It’s really scary. The more I study, the more I read news and see things, I feel like I can’t change anything. I became more pessimistic. At first I was thinking that I can make a change, I can change things. But right now I feel like this is, there’s a huge power that I can do nothing about that. […] We did small things like the awareness, the clubs, and things like that and I feel like this work is so small. How can we fix this bigger problem, and is it the only way to fix the biggest problem, like with this small work? So it’s scary. It’s just scary.”
“When I go to iftar [at the mosque] I remember the shooting in New Zealand and I was like what if this happened today? And I was I defended my dissertation, so I’m good [laughs]. I defended it, I uploaded it. Wallaha, seriously, I was like I have nothing behind, I don’t owe anybody. Nobody owes me. I hope. […] I went there and I was like okay, if something happens it happens anywhere. But it’s just scary.”
Muslims in PA 