NOSTALGIA
One’s country or one’s beloved?! While nostalgia for one’s homeland is being sung about in various ways by Turkish writers and singers, making it into a universal emotion, it turns out that for Selma (48) the perspective changes unexpectedly and dramatically once she remigrates with her family to her beloved Turkey.
While Selma feels like a fish out of water, her husband is perfectly happy after 28 years of living as a homesick immigrant out of love for her. His deepest wish has been fulfilled now. And their nine year old son has assimilated with the new culture quicker than everyone expected.
Although in the beginning Selma is highly lyrical about Turkey – smells, colors, noise at night and welcoming warm people –, soon she is missing even the rain in Holland! And what is life to her without her daughters and her mother who stayed behind in Holland? She feels lonely and angry. Turkish family life and a big newly built house in a suburb make her into a hostess and a housekeeper most of the time. In Holland she was seen as an individual. Dutch culture gave her so much space and possibilities to develop her own style. Should she really be the one now to make a sacrifice?
Destiny has separated us.
Nothing one can do about that.
Patience will bring us together again.