The glass bottle is as ethnic as it gets: royal blue and gold with images of pashas stamped all over it. What's more, I don't know that it serves any other purpose as a household item other than making me deliriously happy whenever I look at it. "Wow," said my (British) husband as I placed my new purchase on the shelf. "I don't know if you realised this, but with each year that passes, you're becoming more and more like your parents." God, I hate that he's right.
Growing up in Sydney's western suburbs, I always felt I was living in two world simultaneously. Outside, our street was as Australian as it got, all bottlebrush trees, swooping magpies, pet dingo and even a boyfriend who made up what he lacked in footwear with a seriously spectacular mullet.
Once you got through our front door? Behold the decor that could only ever be described as 'Anatolian taverna'. My mother's love for scratchy fabrics and intricate design knew no end, so kilims - both on the floor and as cushions on the couches - stretched as far as the eye could see. On the walls, classic Turkish instruments such as the saz and the baglama hung in between Kűtahya porcelain clocks and palette knife paintings of donkeys enjoying the Mediterranean sun. As for all the nonsensical copper and brass grand-scale ornaments stationed in every nook and cranny of the common rooms? Let's just say I'm surprised Rio Tinto didn't come knocking on our door for first dibs.
On the walls, classic Turkish instruments such as the saz and the baglama hung in between Kűtahya porcelain clocks and palette knife paintings of donkeys enjoying the Mediterranean sun.
"Why are you doing this to me?" I would plead with my mother whenever she wheeled out a new copper breakfast table (yes, the entire tabletop), or yet another antique rug that looked as though it was pulled - last minute - from a house fire. "You never see this kind of aesthetic in House & Garden," I complained. The response - when it came after a long puff of her cigarette would always be the same. "One day you'll get it."
Dear reader, it took me a long time to 'get it'.
When I first moved out of home, I was so keen to get away from the Ottoman decor of my family home, that I went full Wall Street, my inner city apartment gleaming with so much glossy metal and glass that I can still hear the theme music to Miami Vice whenever I think of it 20 years later. Vases? Stainless steel. Dinnerware? Black matte. Art? Black and white and everybody's naked. I was so obsessed with this all-new 'clean lines' way of living that I forgot to impart any personality into my living space - a mistake I continued when I partnered up and redecorated so that our rooms looked like one big IKEA catalogue. Without a single nod to my heritage, anyone could have been living there.
Vases? Stainless steel. Dinnerware? Black matte. Art? Black and white and everybody's naked.
The change was as sudden as it was unexpected. Walking through a shopping centre one day, I glimpsed a bedspread called the 'Bosphorus'. Decorated like an Iznik tile in shades of blue and burnt orange, it was unlike anything I would have looked at before, yet immediately - I fell in love. Looking at it, lying in it, even washing it, I soon realised, made me happy and filled me with a feeling I couldn't quite put my finger on. Like an addict, I wanted more.
Over the last few years I have steadily filled my home with relics from the home country. There are classic stained glass Ottoman lamps on our bedsides, Kűtahya porcelain cats on our bookshelves and etching of the Istanbul skyline all over our walls. Do I have kilims on our floors? Let me put it this way: pre-COVID, I treated our annual holiday to Turkey like a buyer's trip, our luggage transporting 120kg of hardcore decor with every return journey.
Writer, Dilvin Yasa Source: Supplied
It's taken a pandemic and 18 months of staring at the same space for me to finally understand what my mother meant all those years ago. In times of struggle, the familiarity gives me comfort, and knowing I'm unlikely to see my family (or Turkey) again for a very long time, it also serves as an anchor.
My home finally feels like home, in every sense of the word.
