Dear Dad,

I took down the US flag today that was hanging in our window. I still have the Canadian flag that you sent me hanging in the other window, but I might take that down as well. I had also made a Turkish flag which we decided not to put up. Mustafa wanted to put it up, but Ali thought that it might not be a good idea to have a flag from a Muslim country hanging in our apartment window. We had put them up for a number of reasons. We wanted to show support of our adopted homeland. We wanted to show a pluralist perspective, Canadian and Turkish as well as American. Musty and I both feel like New Yorkers. We have after all been living here for 5 and 6 years respectively. I think there is a saying: after you live here for 5 years you are a New Yorker. I may have gotten the number of years wrong but my point is: we are New Yorkers. We may be New Yorkers but we are still not Americans. I think that Mustafa in some ways feels more at home in the US than he does in Turkey. I always joke with him that if there was a sign that said “Line up here for your American citizenship,” he’d be beating down the people in his way to “stand on line” as fast as he could. What is with that “stand on line”? So New York!