“What did Hurrem do this time?” is the first thing I could hear just before 8:30pm every Friday from my living room, the women in my house gossiping about the new episode of Suleyman the Magnificent, talking about what they were wearing, they were saying, how they were walking. This chaotic Turkish ‘telenovela’ took over the last 13 years of my life, never seeing any episodes.

After 13 years, being pressured to watch the show, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the melodrama and the extravaganza of the plot, mise-en-scene, ‘royalness’ in which they spoke Turkish in comparison to the excentric character Hurrem Sultan who truly wished death upon all who would cross her.

But this put me to thinking: how can I, as a proud Romanian, watch a show about the man that conquered my native land? To put simply, I am a nosy person, it’s in my blood to want to know everything - and the show offers this. Yes, you learn about the history of the 10th emperor of the Ottoman Empire, but if I wanted to learn history, I would’ve opened a history book. I am more interested in the love story between Ibrahim (the Sultan’s right hand) and Hatice Sultan, rather than care about the tight alliance between the Vatican and the Ottoman Empire in 1541.

I was revolted by how much I enjoyed watching little Mustafa and his mother Mahidevran stroll around the palace’s garden, Mustafa trying to be like his father whilst playing with a wooden sword, Mahidevran plotting her next act against Hurrem and how she can get rid of her. Weirdly enough it reminded me of my brother and mother: my mother gossiping about my family whilst doing her nails, my brother playing with a tiny foam sword in our tiny ‘garden’ (it was a concrete square, nothing more).

The thing is that not only Romanians watched Suleyman: it conquered screens from the East to the West, making it the most-watched Turkish show in history. So, I am not the only one in the same dilemma of adoring the enemy, but it still bothered me – I try to keep my roots and upbringing close to my heart, the idea of ‘never forgetting where you came from’. These morals were shattered after learning that most of our traditional food comes from the Ottomans, our hit songs are stolen from Bulgaria, even our language is not within the Balkan ideals, it’s Latin!

So why am I still running around in my brain about a man that is 458 years old? I am a proud patriot and carry my nation and its stories with me.

I live in England, and for the past 9 years the distance between my house and my home is exactly 1,729 miles, it’s not too far but not too close: a 3-hour plane ride, a 3-day car ride, 502-hour walk. Being away from my native country made me homesick and longing for the life I never had there; I wanted to have a group of Romanian friends which listened to Romanian music, ate Romanian food, and lived the ‘Romanian’ lifestyle –

this did not happen. They are Romanian: but one is half-Turkish, one doesn’t eat meat, one cannot even speak Romanian. So why am I concerned about watching a theatrical history on my laptop whilst others have already lost their sense of belonging to their native land?

Even if all of us lost our true Romanian identity, the lands still bring us together and common experiences keep us connected by an invisible string – “you may run away from us but we will come after you into the depths of the earth”, the words of Larisa, my first and oldest Romanian friend.

Having said that, I will continue to watch the show, even if I was forced into watching it, to see how much land Suleyman can conquer, how many children he will have and which one of the wives will be the mother – I’ll mostly finish the show to see who becomes the “yüce sultan” (the supreme wife).

Suleyman the Magnificent is an example of how a simple show can make you question your own morals and ideals, and it gives you a sense of shame as you are siding with the enemy – the Ottomans. The history made almost 500 years ago no longer has a deep effect on my life as I am making my own history. The past is in the past.