The Distinct Struggle of a Foreigner In U.S. Lockdown

My partner of ten months is from Turkey. He moved to the US three years ago. Two-fifths of our relationship has been under quarantine. During that time I have seen how quarantine has affected him differently than others I know.

When quarantine began, everyone turned to their screens for comfort. Characters on Netflix were their new friends in lieu of those they could no longer visit. For my partner, there are Turkish shows and movies on Netflix, but the selection is much more limited. And in times where emotional needs are harder to meet, forgoing hearing your mother tongue just doesn't match the comfort of feeling truly talked to. Thus the escapism keeping many of us afloat looks different for someone who can speak English, but doesn't wish to when they relax.

A friend of his was stuck overseas for five months while quarantine took effect. That friend was stuck paying US rent while earning no money because he was unable to return. For those of us whose furthest relative is states away, the idea that being with family causes your own lockout from the country you live in sounds like a nightmare.

It might feel as though the distance of a visa holder here from his parents in Turkey would shrink due to the worldwide dependency on video chat during the Covid era, but the impression is exaggerated. I have experienced varying levels of fear about going outside or to stores, but in the lapses of that fear I have ventured to see friends and family, and doing it just a few times keeps me going for weeks. There is no such possibility for those with strongest ties across the ocean. The single reprieve that can lend normalcy to our collective struggle is not available for him.

In the same vein of Netflix entertainment, Americans have so much news and media catering to them for the simple fact that it is in English. For a Turkish citizen, reading the news about the coronavirus response requires an extra amount of mental labor dedicated to discerning if the news is in fact government propaganda. Thus, with news being limited to that in the Turkish language, and this added caveat on top to deal with, the amount of things happening in the world seems very small. Not much happens in the US, but even with videos showing what people are doing at home to keep us going, we have so much more available to us than those from smaller countries. English is a universal language, so even the bounds of our own country's media doesn't encompass all that is handy for us.

In seeing my partner's struggle in this time, I have wondered at how he might be experiencing this differently from me, even though we are right next to each other on the couch. We may both live here, but his world is not my world, especially as far as the Internet is concerned. Anything I may assume to be a comfort may not be at all to him. Realizing this has helped me learn to extend grace and patience to him as much as I can.