Asholashek!

Mom was a blond non-Turk kook, but she grew up in Turkey due to the family business, married a kook Turk, and bore two half-Turkish children, both, oddly enough, kooks. As we shall see, it would seem she embraced at least some of Turkish culture rather handily.

While Mom and I were very close and kindred spirits in many ways, I was precocious and rebellious. She was an autocrat with a hair-trigger temper. So, we often clashed. Those clashes would generally involve her cursing at me in Turkish and calling me names in various languages, English included.

Based on that, plus experiences with other Turks, I'm about Turked out. If you are Turkish, I wish you nothing but the best, but that best necessarily entails staying far, far away from me forever.

Mom Be Throwin' Dat Shade
For years starting at around age 8, I was a child in great emotional pain. Mom's way of reacting to a child acting out was with rage, ridicule, and shaming. These were Mom's preferred epithets to spew at me when I upset her.

HA SIKTIR BOK PEZEVENK was her go-to phrase. Ha siktir = "fuck off," bok = "shit," and pezevenk = "pimp."

So, “fuck off, shit pimp,” indeed a most curious epithet.

For minor annoyances, I'd just get the “fuck off” part; when she wished to be more abusive, the whole phrase would be unleashed. In one especially weird, unfortunate episode, that utterance managed to wreak havoc on my young life for years.

ANTIPATHIA - someone completely undeserving of sympathy - it literally means “the opposite of sympathy”. It has a Greek origin (αντιπαθεια) and is the source of the word “antipathy”.

I find it starkly ill-advised to call a young child such a thing.

ASHOLASHEK - either “asshole” or “stupid donkey”, depending on who you ask. Perhaps it means both. I can't help but wonder how one would refer, perhaps to a livestock veterinarian, to a stupid donkey's asshole.

That asholashek's asholashek doesn't look quite right, Doctor.

DISGUSTING THING - means, um, “disgusting thing,” I'm quite sure. That was Mom's favorite English name to call me when I upset her. She did not call me obscene names in English, only her native Turkish, and was resolute that doing so somehow made such abuse acceptable even though I knew the meanings of her words.

Perhaps she chose to also involve my native English to ensure I was suitably impacted by her rage. Thoroughness is important to a job well done, I suppose, and her goal was attained – it still hurts to remember my mother's voice shrieking “disgusting thing” at me.

It Gets Worse
I've heard it claimed that Turks are the masters of the creative, vulgar insult. Evidence supports that. Children less fortunate than I may have been subjected to:

Ananın amını eşşekler siksin - may donkeys fuck your mom's pussy.
Girsin gotune keman yayi - may a violin bow enter your ass.
Amýný götünden sikerim - fuck your pussy from your ass.

I try to be efficient and thorough, so combining those gems seems the way to go:

May donkeys fuck your mom's pussy with a violin bow from her ass.

Ah, yeah...THAT'S the stuff. Finally, that nightmare I had in which a donkey with a violin bow was chasing me around the doctor's office makes a bit of sense.

Mom's alleged mother, Mutchie, also spoke Turkish but I never heard her say such things and never did she yell or curse at me. She did, however, quietly refer to her other grandson, John (The Golden Psycho), as “bamya.”

Short of Grandson Cock Standards
Decades later while researching this work, I learned “bamya” means “guy with a small penis.” That fits, for, greatly partial to Neila and not very fond of John, she often ridiculed him behind his back for having a tiny cock as a child. Given that little kids tend not to be real well-hung (never did I think I'd write such a thing) and she had no male children or siblings I'm aware of, I can't help but wonder what the bloody hell her frame of reference was.

So goes yet another bizarre fact about my family. I've known many a grandparent but have yet to stumble across another one who repeatedly ridicules the contents of their grandchild's underwear. But, Mutchie was abnormal, to put it mildly.

I'll say it again - in many ways, my early life was like being trapped in a Borat movie on endless loop. And, after seeing the descriptions by frustrated parents and teachers, plus the behavior of many children now, it strongly seems that I was actually a pretty cool kid trapped in a surreal world of toxic dysfunction.

Return to Appendices

An American Child's Guide to Being Cursed at in Turkish