Expat or Exile?

It was a regular Saturday afternoon. Evren and I had slept late. We were just stirring and deciding on what to do for brunch when the bell rang signaling someone was downstairs wanting to be buzzed in. Evren hurriedly threw on some clothes and ran to hit the unlock button. My brain emerged from the fog of sleep and I realized that this could only be one person. The person we’d been waiting for all week–the UPS man who would bring Ev’s passport with the anticipated U.S. residency visa. Evren opened the front door and yelled back to me, “This is it!” He came to the bedroom and tossed me the plastic envelope and then went back to the door to pay the delivery guy. I was in the process of ripping it open when Ev swooped back into the room, grabbed the envelope from my anxious hands and ran into the living room with it. “They denied it!” Ev shrieked. He’s joking with me, I thought. They told us everything was Ok at our interview.

When he appeared at our bedroom door with a crestfallen face, I knew it wasn’t a joke. He handed me the paper and his passport. It cited some minor convictions that Ev had from his college days in the states almost a decade ago. I was in utter disbelief and slowly leafed through the pages of his passport thinking that a mistake must have been made. The visa must be there.

The news hit me slowly like a backhoe burying me alive. I was suffocating. We’d sold the car, notified our landlord, and had jobs waiting for us on our arrival. My family was so excited. They hadn’t seen us since the wedding a year ago here in Turkey. My only brother’s first child had been born in my absence. A beautiful daughter that I had only met over a web cam. I was finally going to be able to show Ev my childhood haunts and have him meet the people that meant so much to me. I watched these hopes turn to smoke with a few phrases on a green sheet of paper.

We were in a daze in the days following that moment. However, we were able to consult lawyers who only confirmed that there was very little we could do and that we would also be refused from Canada and Australia.

It’s now been just a week since we got that news. The news that will take us on an entirely different path. This blog will follow that path.