Midweek Moan: Mind Your Language

I have spent a good part of the last few hours effing and blinding and cussing like a sailor. And the reason for all the foul language? The very word itself: Language.

Mid last week I realised, halfway through my early evening snooze I had completely forgotten to renew my Turkish passport. It was a matter of urgency, considering I had already booked my ticket for 29 July. Hence, I jumped off the couch to run around the house like a headless chicken to gather all the required bits to send off to the Turkish Consulate in London and sat down to write a letter, which was not one of the requirements. I just thought it was courtesy you see rather than just sending the postal order and the passport. The letter printed, documents ready, I made my way to the post office the next day to send my passport off via special delivery. I was not worried about time constraint as I had been through the procedure about three years ago and it had taken them only a few days to stamp my passport and post it back to me.

When I got home today and found the special delivery envelope that the other half signed for, I was much pleased with the fast service on the part of an office of the Turkish government whose generous application of the red tape would make a civilian want to tear their hair out at the best of times and want to jump off the tallest building in town in an exasperated desperate bid to end all the suffering and waiting. Then I opened the envelope. It didn’t even cross my mind to check the passport until the other half picked it up, found a letter from the Turkish Consulate folded inside passport and announced that my passport had not been renewed. Not a speaker of the beautiful Turkish language, he handed the letter to me to read the lame excuse of their refusal to renew: On the proforma letter, they had actually inserted a hand-written condition stating they did not accept letters written in English. You can imagine the amount of ‘French’ that came out of my mouth, let alone the English…

Now these people are employed by the Turkish government as a select few who are well-educated and well-spoken, able to communicate in at least one language other than their native one. They are extremely able to decode any form of written or spoken English. Believe me, I know, I applied with a letter written English three years ago and my request was promptly resolved. Three years on, the employees of the Turkish Consulate in London must either have regressed in their language skills or must have lost a huge number of grey matter in their heads. I have sent my passport, my Turkish I.D. and a postal order which is written to the amount quoted for a two year passport extension. Whether my letter, which I remind you was only an act of courtesy on my part (Woe be me for actually showing manners and courtesy!), is written in English or Turkish, is irrelevant as far as I am concerned. For someone who lives in the U.K. and works at one of the most coveted posts available only to a select well-educated few, they are equipped with the skills to decipher the nature of my request, regardless of whether my letter was written in Urdu, Sanskrit or Yoruba… It is the act of extreme pro-nationalism that makes their own nationals suffer which frustrates me…

I have since voiced the very same request in Turkish in a letter that surprisingly contains no expletives which I think is a generous courtesy on my part. I will need to retrace my steps back to the post office and post the same documents once again and hope that this time they renew my passport before the 29th. Mind, I did include the words ‘Royal Mail’ in stating that I was enclosing a self-addressed Royal Mail envelope. If they send my passport back with another lame excuse, they will be hearing from me. And this time it’ll be all ‘French’.