By the time I went back to Istanbul, I was pretty disconnected from Turkish culture, partly because I simply hadn’t been there in so long, and partly because I wanted to be disconnected from it. However, I didn’t realize the gravity of this until I tried to give directions to a cab driver in Istanbul, and I must have had a pretty heavy accent because he asked me if I was a foreigner. The question hit me like a punch. Me, a foreigner? In the city that I grew up in? I admit I was quite offended at first, but it was just what I needed to start to evaluate the past few years and reconsider my relationship with my home country.

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