This will be the last post for a few days. Thanks for letting me spam you with my heartache recovery process. Back to weekly or bi-weekly posts as of Monday. 💖
You Taught Me How to Say My Name
“Teach it to me,” you insisted. I shyly pronounced it in English, “Nuh-DEEN Ah-ROXY Dis-lee-OG-loo.” “No, teach it to me the way your parents named you.”
So I spoke it softly, feeling uncomfortable, Like being back in elementary school and asked my name Only to have it butchered in the mouth of another.
I don’t hate them. Their ears were untrained for the beauty of rolling Rs and hard Ks, for the gentle hill of the “oğlu” we got from the Turks, for a 38-letter alphabet—31 consonants and 7 vowels that landed like God’s whisper in Mesrop Mashtots’s dream.
(But the shame of being different. The wanting to be like the others is hard to release, even years later.)
Determined, you rehearsed and repeated, calling me by all three of my given names until they flowed like molasses into tahini.
Sticky, sweet, swirling, you whispered, hot, searing, “I love you, Նատին Արաքսի Տիշլիօղլու.”
I remembered my own name—its power. I returned my pretty white surname through marriage, grateful for the doors it had opened, ready to own who I am.
Now I make them say it; correct them when they get it wrong. I patiently explain that the KS sounds like an X And I would have liked an X, but there’s no X in the Armenian alphabet. “I love you, Նատին Արաքսի Տիշլիօղլու.”
~ Nadine Araksi/Նատին Արաքսի