Postcard: Mind your language

As far as post offices go, the one in the centre of Adapazari is a bustling hive of activity. Housed in a fairly nondescript grey building, as they often are, the space is teeming with women arguing and gesticulating wildly at sales clerks, and men behind the counters ashing all over the documents they're photocopying for you. As with everywhere else in Turkey, almost everyone is taking tea and chain-smoking so that the room is so thick with smoke, you can no longer see the "No Smoking" sign.

The only place in town that has a working public payphone, this space has become my lifeline to Australia and every Monday at 4pm, I am here to treat my parents back home to the soap opera that has become my life: "I'm in love with a local and I'm staying indefinitely!”; “Surprise! I'm engaged!”; “Er, long story but I more or less just got married in an Islamic ceremony.” The reactions are justifiably uncomfortable but I soon discover something even worse – a dedicated audience.

Word has got around the nearby English school about the crazy Australian and her phone conversations so every week the students turn up to listen in and try to decipher exactly what it is I'm yelling at my parents exactly before I slam the receiver down repeatedly in a dramatic fashion. Whether they are just eager to practise their new language skills or just plain curious, I don't know but once I realise they're all listening in, I become self-conscious and monosyllabic. Seething silence at $2.30 a minute. My parents seem to prefer my silence to any shocking new revelations I might have in store for them.

But then, an idea. What if I spoke 'Strayan? Not good-old fashioned, easily decipherable English like I have been speaking, but pure, unadulterated Ocker? The next time I ring my mother, I give it a whirl. “Owyousegoin?” I inquire when she picks up the phone. “Dilvin?” Her voice is crackling down the line. “Why are you speaking like that?” “Coz I'm sick of da flamin' natives stickin' their beaks in when I'm gabbin, kay?” “Oh”. A few minutes of this and it becomes clear that not a single person in that post office can understand what I'm saying any longer – my conversation, for all intents and purposes, has become private once more. Having won the battle, I am triumphant and from that day on, at 4pm every Monday at the post office I morph from an articulate, well-spoken young woman to a cross between Crocodile Dundee and someone who has spent their formative years fashioning weapons out of wood in Juvie. The locals eventually lose interest and I continue stomping on my parents' hopes and dreams for me with tales of love and travel.

Eventually I become homesick. My weekly “convos” are no longer enough to keep me satisfied and I return to Australia, my relationship falling apart soon afterwards. A few months later a monster earthquake hits the town, killing some 17,000 people. That was a long time ago. I've since married, had two children and built up a career, but even today, after I've put the kids to bed, I sometimes lie awake at night and wonder what happened to those people. I hope they've survived, rebuilt and prospered. But more than anything, I hope that right now, someone, somewhere in that great land is putting on a spread for their esteemed guests and proudly telling them to “avagoaddit”.