Knowing that pressing charges would lead to three years of lawyers and court appearances and would result in nothing but the thugs’ exoneration and no jail time for anyone, but would bring repeated aggravation to my wife and I and to her parents, I saw an opening when the cop asked us if we wanted to proceed. I took it. I talked my wife down and persuaded her to drop the charges so we could go home and forget about it.
When we got back home to my wife’s parents’ house, my wife’s mother served us tea and snacks and tried to soothe our rattled spirits. She, too, though, was shaken. She knows her daughter better than anyone else on this planet. She knows how headstrong her daughter can be, and she knows that there have been, and will continue to be, times when that strength will become a weakness that puts her daughter in harm’s way. She also knows from decades of experience with her daughter that there is absolutely nothing she can do about it. But because she was angry and scared she scolded her daughter anyway, wagging her finger at her and reminding her that this was not her country, that it belonged to the magandalar, to the uncouth ruffians, and that she should never, never forget that.
Before I move on to the next chapter, I need to say something else about this incident…
When I look back on that day I have very mixed feelings about how I handled myself. When my wife was attacked, I tried my best to protect her, but my best was not good enough.
Then when we were at the police station and she was deciding whether or not to press charges, I used my knowledge of her to talk her down from her principles and steer her in another direction.
You see, I knew that the only thing that would trump my wife’s desire for justice was concern for her parents, and in the police station I played on that concern to get her to drop the charges.
I reminded her that her parents lived right around the corner from that neighborhood market. I told her that if we pressed charges, the case would drag on for years, and then, this being Turkey, we would lose. That meant for years, her parents would have to live around the corner from someone they had an open criminal court case against, and then they would have to spend the rest of their lives living around the corner from someone whom they had pressed criminal charges against, and then lost to.
Looking back on that moment in the police station, I think if I had to do it all over again, I would handle myself in the same way. I would be the compromising voice of reason using my knowledge of my wife to talk her down from her principles. It did not make me proud to seek anything less than justice, but I think there are some situations in life where no matter how we act, we will never be proud of ourselves. Sometimes we get caught between a rock and a hard place. We never forget those times, and we rarely get over them.
[This is an excerpt from the chapter “Don’t call the cops” in A Tight Wide-open Space.]