VOICES columnist Amy Idem, originally from a small market town in Lancashire, is now living with her husband and three children, in Idil, in Turkey’s south eastern province of Şırnak. She writes about her cultural and life experiences here, and on her blog:

https://memyselfandidil.wordpress.com/

İdyllic İdil?

Sometimes life in İdil is less than idyllic. Since before Ramadan began, we have been suffering in the 40 degree desert-style heat with no airconditioning.

We rang Vestel, who promptly turned up, possibly for the first time in the history of my living here, and blamed the problem on our dodgy electrics.

So we called the electrician, who came at 1am to change our fusebox to one of a higher voltage. We waited with baited breath anticipating the machine to whirr into life and as we turned the new fusebox on… nothing.

The next attempt was to call a different electrician for his opinion and he pointed us right back to the beginning to Vestel.

They were back to their usual tricks and it took several calls and trips to their office before they arrived and announced the motor had burnt out and took it away for repair. After two weeks of no sleep due to being so hot I was convinced at some points I might spontaneously combust, we were still without aircon.

I was making a birthday dinner for our middle daughter a few days ago, when my husband rang me to inform me he had a surprise for me and that it was on its way, I stood at the cooker glancing out of the window every now and then expecting the workmen and heard a knock at the door.

Cursing the fact that I was preparing raw chicken and had filthy hands, muttering to myself about them always choose their moments I went to open the door. I stood back and saw several of the inlaws crowded round and stood to the side of them was my Mum.

I stared for a moment not knowing what to say, then let her in with her huge suitcases in tow. The children immediately jumped up and went to cuddle their Nana, while I was questioned by the inlaws as to why I hadn’t informed them of my mum’s arrival, and I told them that I was also completely unaware.

We sat down and as I thought back through some things, it all started to make sense, although she had covered her tracks really rather well to ensure that I didn’t guess that she was on her way.

My husband had been in on the whole thing and had been sworn to secrecy. The only thing he did let slip is that I would be having a surprise but he didn’t tell me when or what.

I half expected a visitor but didn’t ever think for a moment that it would be my mum, although being a heat lover, she also loves having  a swimming pool to cool off in and that is something we don’t have anywhere in İdil.

I had to tell her that aside from not having any swimming pool, we don’t even have any running water. Our water pump had broken that very day and wasn’t working and nobody could fix it.

So we spent the evening moaning about the impracticalities of washing up using jugs of water and the difficulties of flushing the toilet using water collected from the well outside.

After almost 24 hours of travelling and no sleep, she was less than impressed to be told that she wouldn’t even be able to have a shower due to the lack of water but took it all in her stride, claiming it to be all “part of the experience”.

Afterall, there’s nothing quite like a holiday in the middle of summer with no aircon and no water.

I am pleased to announce that we now have a fully functioning airconditioning, a brand new fan with an ionizing mist function and we do have running water, even if the water tank needs manually topping up every evening. It’s just all part of the İdil experience.