“Look!”, I point at the TV, “I want
that red hair. It will match my green eyes”.
“Your eyes aren’t green,” Daniel said
quickly.
And we started to laugh.
The color of my eyes is our old
disagreement.
I think my eyes are green, but Dan
says they’re gray. And both statements are true.
My eyes change color depending on my
clothes.
“Look, I agreed with you that I’m an
Asian woman. So, you have to admit that I have green eyes”, I didn’t want to
give up.
We laughed again.
“You agreed? When?”
“At the presentation about Russia, I
publicly stated that my husband is right when he calls me an Asian (Eastern)
woman”.
The story is: Daniel knows the history
of Europe and geography well. When asked where his wife is from, he raises his
hand up for clarity and says “Tomsk is located just above China”. He believes
that since the area next to China is Asia, the people are Asians, respectively.
At first, I resisted this statement
and proudly declared that I was Russian.
But in the process of preparing for
the presentation, I realized that my husband was right.
It is believed that the Ural Mountains
divide Russia into the European part of the country and the Asian part
(including Siberia* and the Far East). There is no clear border on the map, but
from a purely geographical point of view, Daniel is right.
Also, my father’s last name is
probably Tatar. In Tomsk, only my grandfather and his few descendants bore this
name. But in the Republic of Tatarstan, this is a common last name.
From this it follows that I can be
Tatar (Asian) on my grandfather’s side.
Would you agree that both facts are
quite convincing? Therefore, during the presentation, I openly admitted that my
husband was right, and declared myself an Asian woman.
In our family, we don’t quarrel over
different points of view. Some disagreements turn into family jokes. My
nationality is one of them, and my eye color is another.
Today I tortured my colleagues with
the question of what color my eyes are. Two girls in a voice answered that blue
(!). What?
I wonder if you always know what color
your eyes are?
As soon as the bleached hair grows
back, I’ll dye it a little red. Maybe then my eyes will turn green forever.
Do you have any family jokes? Please,
share if you do.
*Siberian Tatars were one of a few indigenous
groups living in Siberia before Russians came
**my grandfather (died in the war), my
father and brother (both died a long time ago), my mother (also no longer with
us), two sisters and I (married and changed their names).
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