text: A rural backwater, in the area of Cavdanhisar in a poor central Anatolian district of Turkey, a place and people whom elites around the country used as a yardstick by which to define their higher sophistication and culture; that was where Pashu's grandfather's generation had migrated and founded a village in the 1930s. Fellow expatriates would remark quizzically, mispronouncing, to Pashu at assorted dinner Sunday parties in UK suburbia, 'Carvanhisar, is where your family originated from in the 50s? Where is that?' He usually detected a tone of irreverence and mocking in their tone. He never knew where these civilised enquiries would lead and how much of their pre-conceived notions of him he could fend off without appearing hostile. He did not know anything about the family line before that village, what his distant forefathers did or where they migrated from. When drained by these onslaughts, his wife, as if on cue, privately stoked a blazing row and unleashed the heavy duty weaponry, aiming and firing 'El pulluğu çiftçiler (hand plough farmers) is where you come from ..' All Pashu's own achievements, a lifelong journey to define himself on his terms, against the odds, the private school education, the elite UK university degree, his father's business triumphs were just exceptional, never to be repeated outliers in a chain of unremarkable people and events, as she constantly reminded him. Even other areas of this backwater looked down on this cluster of villages. A backwater among backwaters. When growing up, all he knew was that his parent's were both from the same country. Life was simple, they were the same, and all from a monoculture worries about who or what was better than whom or what. Differences and problems resulting, were what he would have to face, he was warned, if he chose to spend his life outside the community fold. Now 7 years into his own marriage he came to the crashing realisation there is no shared community even if 2 partners are ostensibly from the same motherland. Class had come into the frame; farmer class brushing up against the bureaucrat class. The more recent urbanites who had emigrated as adults into Pashu's UK milieu were wary of associating with the earlier generation of peasant stock who had arrived decades earlier and even more wary that one of the peasants should come in friendship in the guise of an urbanite. He was thankful for the the draw of his wife's distant Persian ancestry to or how else where would he find connections to the people and event of past and present which the elite classes effortlessly adopted as their mascots and drawing others away from patronising scrutiny of his lineage. Here it was easy for a a man whose grandparents lived as subsistence farmers to be unconcerned by and even unaware of these status equations . Here he could kit out in the finest clothes,drive a lavish car and leave few outward signs of how differently his ancestors would have lived. A few outward signs however would always leak out. As his wife constantly reminded him when she noticed those signs or ascribed them to being the cause of negative traits in their children. If his forefather had not emigrated here and neither she, one could imagine the likes of him being a servant in the affluent household she would have maintained in Istanbul had her forefathers not emigrated. Here and now though,as the father of their children, at a point in his life where he could not bring in the income for a good lifestyle, in the absence of pedigree, there was not a single redeeming quality about him. The feeling that a chance decision by his dad to emigrate where so many others stayed put in their farming life put Pashu on a trajectory that ultimately led to this peasant marrying the offspring of illustrious Persian lineage was something Lona was always keen to prey upon. So many times she scoffed at the notion that one day she and the kids would visit Cavdanhisar, instead wondering how she could conceal this aspect of the family ancestry in the life ahead. 'In the end culture and class drill into us our expectations of what standard of life we give ourselves permission to expect, what social interactions we are entitled to and the power dynamics that plays out between people. It cannot be escaped', he conceded. Over time the mild teasing turned to goading, the goading to rage. At least initially Pashu thought Lona's rage stemmed from her dissatisfaction with him; later he would come to believe there were other issues in the background. How else could one explain a mother who wraps he fingers lightly around a 10 year old son's neck in mock threat when his behaviour reminds her of the base traits of the simple classes. Just the memory of this repulsed Pashu. More than once he had hear the refrain 'Die, why don't you just die. Go under the bus. You have no one else apart from me, no one would miss you. But then at least I would get my freedom' One Sunday afternoon after a typical raging argument had subsided, they attended a lunchtime gathering with the local expatriate families. By this time, he had learnt to claim falsely as his paternal ancestral village when others enquired, the village of his mother, which was widely known for it's more refined manners and achievements over generations. As the host and the chattering group nodded and nibbled around him, he was lost in a swirl of thoughts as he thought of his last visit to the parents at their Istanbul flat. 'Mum, you keep asking but how is it possible she will ever visit Dad's village?. She find the name of it detestable. Says it's people are 'El pulluğu çiftçiler (hand plough farmers), labourers and has seen enough of their sort in the form of my cousins, seen enough of their lifestyle and rural attitudes. At every turn she opposes me. If I say let's go to Sydney and see if it suits you better than England while I carry on working here, she says, 'I can't look after the kids alone. If I say 'Go to Istanbul, your class of people are there', she says 'People will talk. Your Dad will ruin my reputation spreading false gossip about me'.