Adventures in Cursing

I was in the repair bay at my cousins’ auto repair shop. The summer heat was stifling, so I sat in front of a small but powerful mini fan to cool myself. The guys all worked on different cars throughout the shop.

One cousin, Dikran, was in the far corner, shifting through his voluminous amount of tools, then out of nowhere yelled “Amina koyim!” Seconds later his brother, Harut, yelled back with an “Amina koyim!” of his own.

 

The workers then erupted into a chorus of “AMINA KOYIM!”

This was not the first time I heard them yell this phrase. It would happen all the time, throughout the day, including occasions of driving away after work. I asked Dikran what it meant on multiple occasions and he always found some way to deflect the answer. 

I asked again anyway; but again, he would not budge. I asked Harut next, who laughingly said “Fuck if I know, that’s his thing,” pointing back at his brother. 

So I picked up the phone and called my mom. I knew it was Turkish, and I knew it was bad, but I trusted that if my mother knew she would tell me. She answered, and I asked, and she responded “Ooof! Why do you ask me these things?" before swiftly hanging up on me.

My cousins laughed at me, but I decided I would not be deterred. I called my mom’s sister next and asked again. She yelled to her husband who must have been in the room with her “Kami wants to know what amina koyim means,” followed by loud laughter from both of them. “I don’t know,” my aunt said, “ask your mother.” and then hung up.

The next day my cousin Sandro and I went to visit our grandmother, the only grandparent I had ever known. We were standing outside her apartment building on the small lawn below her window. As usual, my grandmother had a scowl on her face.

"Nene," I said earnestly, "what does amina koyim mean?"

She slapped the glasses off my face.

“You don’t speak to your grandmother that way!” she responded. I asked her to please explain what the hell it meant. “No.” she said, walking down the small concrete path, past the mailboxes, up the stairs, and far from me. 

From the moment of the slap until she walked away, Sandro laughed at me. After he stopped laughing, he suggested I call his father. So, standing on the lawn, we called my uncle Joseph who provided a muddled “It’s about a woman… and sex, and something about entering caverns, and I don’t know Turkish well enough to explain. Ask Arpig.”

Arpig, the oldest of my dad’s siblings, was a former teacher and someone who I hoped would finally help me unravel this mystery. So again I called. I explained to her my exposure to the phrase amina koyim. the series of events that led me to call her. I emphasized I was not joking, and in turn she provided me with something no else would, a straight answer.  

Arpig proceeded to very clinically explain a very graphic insult.

As she was explaining, I remembered something my father told me my grandfather apparently used to say, “When I curse, I do it in Turkish because God doesn’t understand Turkish.”