Everyday Treasures

I’m not normally a “check your email first thing” person, but during the Olympics, I play by different rules.  I opened my computer to see what sort of overnight smack-talk had appeared on my Facebook wall, and was greeted by the message:  “You are not connected to the internet.”  A flip of my light switch confirmed my worst fear:  NO ELECTRICITY!!!

I had to laugh at the irony.  A couple of years ago, I played an April Fools joke on an Indian friend here, telling him that I’d seen on the news that on the 1st, the day of a huge India-Sri Lanka cricket match that we all planned to watch together, there was going to be a city-wide power cut.  He laughed once he realized it was a joke, but then much to my horror, there was a massive thunderstorm that day and the power really DID go out where they live!  (Thankfully, we still had power at our house, so we just moved the party over here and my friend didn’t have to hate me forever.)

Were the electricity gods having a go with me?  Was this payback???

A desperate text to the friend at whose house we’re going to watch the game set my heart at ease.  They still have power.  Whew!  We can bake the mint Nanaimo bars.  We can cook the fries for the poutine.  We can watch our guys win the gold.

I’ve lived outside of my “passport country” of Canada for going on half my life now.  Half of that time away was spent in the States, and the other half has been in Turkey, still living mostly with Americans.  So, much as I love my country, it’s easy to feel “North American” in a general sense, or, perhaps more often, like a “citizen of the world.”  But during the Olympics, particularly when watching a hockey game, my red and white blood starts to pump through my veins.  It’s all about the maple leaf. 

My recent trip home gave me the chance to stock up on some “National Pride Snacks”, like these great maple leaf Ritz crackers.  I’d saved all my hockey banners from the 2010 Olympics, on a hunch they might come in handy, and they did.  :)  And with a stack of Canadian t-shirts in my closet, I’ve got my Olympic wardrobe all set.

These last two weeks, I’ve been so incredibly grateful for things like (mostly constant) electricity, the internet, texting, and Facebook.  I’m not normally a “glued to my phone” person (I don’t even have internet on it - gasp!), but during the Olympics, technology has allowed me to be connected with the world - to be a part of something happening hundreds of miles away and share the experience with my countrymen thousands of miles away. 

During the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, we watched everything on Eurosport.  We were the only ones of our friends with a satellite dish, so our house became Olympic Party Central.  This time around, the only station covering it was a local one, and they are happy to drop Sochi the moment there is a football game, so it’s kind of unreliable.  (Besides that, Turks don’t exactly make for the most lively curling commentators!)  But thanks to live coverage on CBC.ca I got to join with the rest of Canada in screaming for joy when Jennifer Jones and the girls guided the last stone to gold and holding our breath in awe as Scott and Tessa danced and glided to their silver.  (And thanks to Google Amca - Uncle Google -   the answer to “What in the world is a ‘twizzle’?” was right at my fingertips!)

Trying to follow the hockey puck on a tiny laptop screen isn’t the easiest thing in the world, so much of our Olympic viewing has taken place at our friends’ house on their big screen TV.  Thanks to having a VPN, we can decide between Canadian and British coverage.  (CBC has annoying commercials, but a British voice doing the play-by-play for hockey is just...unnatural.)  We’ve become big fans of the BBC’s snowboarding commentators.  They’re seriously more entertaining than the events.  (Classic quote when a French snowboarder got some incredible amplitude:  “He had time to serve an inflight meal up there!!!)

Being able to watch things online is great for those days when you have to actually work during events (!) cuz you can catch up on what you missed later.  The tricksy flipside is that everyone else has already seen what you’re watching, and it becomes unsafe to turn on the computer or answer your phone.  Text messages are carefully ignored, hands used to block all portions of the screen that might give something away, and calls started with, “Don’t tell me anything, I haven’t watched the game yet!!”

The night of the intense gold medal women’s hockey game between the States and Canada was a classic example of this. We started watching the first period when the live game had just eight minutes left in the third.  Immediately, my phone began to buzz - harassment from my American friends in other places, no doubt.  I purposely didn’t look, not wanting to burst that delicious bubble of suspense as we watched our girls MIRACULOUSLY bring the game up from 2-0 to a 2-2 tie in the last three minutes of regulation time.  Only when Marie-Philip Poulin scored that incredible goal in sudden death overtime did I look at my phone and revel in my Yankee friends’ glum messages of defeat.  (And, yes, I did a fair bit of gloat-texting myself!)

Hockey, as we all know, BELONGS to Canada.  It’s what we do.  So, obviously, there was a lot riding on the men’s semi-final against our age old rivals, the USA.  One would go to the gold medal game, and one would go home with a bronze, at best.  The night of the game, I was people out from too many Olympic gatherings, so I opted to watch it at home alone.  But the great part about technology is that, while I got to have my “introvert recharge time”, I wasn’t really “alone” at all.  A group of American and Swedish friends were all watching the game together in another city, and all three periods were punctuated by smack-texts back and forth with the Americans and messages of fear and trembling from the Swedes, who quickly realized they would be facing us in the gold medal game.  And then, after we soundly defeated our rivals, the message light on my phone and the little red Facebook notification button were flashing the rest of the night with conversations like these:

Swede:  We’re taking you DOWN on Sunday!

Me:  Just like you took us down in curling?  Oh, wait.....  :)

Swede:  Blah, blah, blah, whatever.

Me:  Abi (big brother), it’s ON!

Today I’ll be watching the game with a Canadian, his half-Canadian kids and his American wife (who becomes an honourary Canadian for the Olympics) as well as a smattering of other Americans and an Indian, who might just decide to spice things up and cheer for the underdog.  It’s Poutine vs. Pickled Herring, and my Swedish friends and I are ready to face off.  The poutine will be hot, the texts flying, the national pride so thick you can taste it.  It's on.

To all of you back home who have set your alarms for 4:00 AM to get up and cheer, I’m proudly waving my flag along with you from over here.  (Though in a slightly less bleary-eyed state, I’m sure!)  

We are the True North Strong and Free.  

We are Winter.  

WE.  ARE.  CANADIAN.

When I was little, I was way into Care Bears.  I had a stuffed Cheer Bear, the pink one with the rainbow on its belly.  At one point I couldn’t find her, and was much distressed.  After looking and looking, we decided she must have fallen out of the car in the 7-11 parking lot and was gone for good.  And my sweet Mom bought me a new one - identical to the first, though with significantly less matted fur.  And then, a week or so later, we found the original one - and suddenly I had twins.  :)

My temporary separation from my Cheer Bear is my earliest memory of what it feels like to experience a loss, but certainly not my last.  Oh, that healing the ache were as easy as buying another teddy bear!  (Or, better yet, finding her again!)  

Fast forward almost twenty years to a grown-up me, chaperoning a pile of teenaged girls at a youth retreat in Gatlinburg, TN.   On the last morning, I was in charge of rounding up the girls and making sure they hadn’t left anything in their hotel rooms.  All heads and suitcases accounted for, I herded them into the van and we headed for home, completely unaware that my stuffed koala, Theodore - my beloved companion through childhood nightmares and twenty-something world travels - was still lying tangled in my hotel bed sheets.  I can still feel the ache in my stomach when I unpacked my suitcase and realized he was gone.  Phone calls to the hotel yielded no results, and I could only hope that he ended up in the loving arms of some maid’s little girl and not in a trash bag on the side of the curb.  Perhaps it’s because I was an only child, but Theodore was a real friend to me, and the loss of him still makes my heart hurt.

Over the years, numerous other losses have left various-sized holes in my heart.  Some are seemingly trivial things, like the discontinuation of my favourite lipstick - Eva’s Caramel (I’m sparingly making my way through my last two tubes) or the recently-discontinued blue and yellow Staedler pens that I’ve used for every school paper, thank-you note, journal entry and creative musing since I was thirteen.  (They had a perfectly fine point and a hard lid that I could chew on to my heart’s content without risk of those nasty blue bits that get in your teeth when you chew on a Bic pen.  I only have a few left in my stash and wonder how I’ll ever write without them.)

Others are more symbolic - losses felt more because of what they meant than the value of the objects themselves.  Funny text messages from my Turkish uncle - the last few he sent me before he passed away of lung cancer - unknowingly erased by a friend who borrowed my spare phone.  My Akbil (Istanbul transit thingie) - my faithful sidekick through five years of exploring the length and breadth of that great city, gone forever from my keychain when I was forced to exchange it for the “new, improved” Istanbul Card.  The beautiful gold necklace my mom bought me for my thirtieth birthday, stolen from my luggage in a hotel room - worth plenty in and of itself, but even more because of the femininity and grown-up-ness it represented to me.

Two Saturdays ago, I stood crying by the graveside of my dear Grandpa.  He was the last of my grandparents to pass away, leaving a hole in my family that cannot be filled.  Besides the fact that I’ve lost someone I’ve loved my whole life, along with him perish a fisherman’s tall-tales, memories of our city when it was all dirt roads and ditches, and stories of what it was like to court my Grandma.  I’ve got photographs of my first fish caught in his little row boat, trophies from bullhead derbies and grand prix wooden car races, a handcrafted dollhouse in storage in my aunt’s attic, and a lifetime of memories of trips in the motorhome and canasta at the kitchen table.  He will live on in “remember when” conversations with my cousins and the card games and fishing techniques I’ll teach my children.  But I’ll never beat him at Five in a Row or hug his skinny frame or see him tip his cowboy hat as he drives away again.  

Standing in a tight circle around Grandpa’s grave, my family shared memories and thoughts about what he meant to us.  And then, in a fitting farewell, my mom and her sisters set to “twanging.”  This was a favourite tradition at family gatherings - all of us females gathered around Grandpa at the piano, singing the oldies - Grandpa’s fingers flying and a particular aunt’s nostrils flaring, my cousin Jen and I joining in with the lyrics we could remember.  This final tribute of “Are You Mine?” and “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine” had us dissolving alternately into laughter and tears, one sister carrying on while another’s voice wavered, all of us feeling the absence of our beloved piano player, yet smiling at the memories of him that will stay with us forever.

Some losses come by choice - the favourite childhood toy wistfully sold at a garage sale or the relationship lost through a wise but painful break-up.  Others that come against our will - the pink slip presented with a mumbled apology, the photo albums lost in a fire, the picked lock accompanied by the missing family jewelry, the car accident that takes the life of a friend - leave us decidedly more bereft.  Along with people and possessions, we grieve the loss of the sense of security, familiarity, and intimacy they brought to our lives.  And we’re left with sepia-toned memories and crackly recordings that, while comforting, can never quite replace the flesh-and-blood versions of the ones we miss.

As all these losses have been rattling around in my heart, so has a thought that underscores them all, made all the more clear with the most recent loss of my Grandpa:  we were never meant to cling tightly to this life, this world, or all its shiny trappings.  All the love, the joy, the aliveness we experience here on earth are only a shadow - a reflection of the eternal.  Clasp our fingers around our treasures as we may, they were never meant to fill our hands or our hearts.  All the loving, the cherishing, the holding dear that we do in this life are meant to leave us wanting more.  That incompleteness, that almost-but-not-quite-ness, the itching and the wanting are gifts that invites us to point our desire higher to the One who fills us to overflowing and the Home where we are meant to dwell forever.  

Each loss, painful as it is at the time, is a chance to wrap my arms tighter around the one permanent Love in my life and rest my soul in the knowledge that my place with Him is secure.  All the missing and aching I do on this earth causes my heart to long all the more for the day when I’ll be united with my true Love in my true Home, and never have to say goodbye.  

I think of all the hurt and hardship my Grandpa experienced in his lifetime, and I know he’s finally tasting of the life that was always just out of reach.  I marvel at the thought of the One he just barely knew here on earth now wiping every tear from his eyes and showering him with the abundant love and overwhelming joy that are his for all eternity.  He has met Love Himself, and he has forever to get to know Him.

I have a feeling twanging together around the Throne is going to be a whole new level of amazing.  :)

I’ve always preferred giving homemade Christmas gifts over store-bought ones - partly cuz I like the personal feel and partly cuz crafting and creating brings me so much joy.  This year, I was super excited to be able to do all homemade edible gifts.  After a crazy busy fall where I was travelling pretty much every other weekend, sequestering myself in my “Elfing Workshop” for several days was just the recovery I needed.  Besides, that, my roommate was in the States for the holidays, so I was free to wreak havoc in the kitchen without driving her insane!

I kicked off the season well into December by watching It’s a Wonderful Life while decorating the little tree in my room, as per my mom’s and my tradition.  I love to quote the lines along with the actors - “A man doesn't get in a situation like this every day.....not in Bedford Falls, anyway” - and I always put the ornaments down to give the swimming pool scene my full attention.  :)

The kids in my life came over, as they do every year, for a cookie decorating party, unleashing their creative fury in a whirl of frosted fingerprints gingerbread giggles, flinging sprinkles into every corner of the living room inaccessible by vacuum.  Each year they get even more skilled with a piping bag and I marvel at their patience in making pupils in icing eyes and using sprinkles to form tree garland on their masterpieces.  

Between trying to get my Christmas cards across the ocean sometime before January (which didn’t exactly happen - mail seemed extra slow this year), making presents as well as snacks for various holiday parties, and all my other regular activities (when you live in a country where there’s no Christmas, life doesn’t exactly stop) I had to make myself a stack of lists and schedules to keep it all straight.  The dining room table became my “command centre” and helped me stay on track and finish everything on time.

I made little bags of goodies to give away for hostess gifts, Christmas presents and stocking stuffers.  Episodes of Old Time Christmas Radio on iTunes made for a great background to my chocolate dipping and finger licking, and every available surface was covered with pans of decorated treats.  Thankfully everything dried in time to package it up and get on a plane to the city where I spent Christmas with friends.  (I may or may not have done the dishes before I left!  Shh, don’t tell the neighbours!)

Here’s what was in the bags.  (Drool if you must.)

Chocolate covered spoons to stir into coffee or hot chocolate.  

Chocolate dipped marshmallows to add a little fun to a mug of hot chocolate.

Salted vanilla bean caramels.  (This was my first time making caramels and I was super happy with the results.  Here’s the recipe if you want to give it a go.  They were amazing.)

Gingerbread biscotti.  Yum.  And yum again.

Also, not pictured, were a couple of jars of balsamic fig chutney that I gave, along with cheese and crackers, to some of the healthier folks on my list.  

All in all, it was a delicious Christmas!

Trying not to stare.  Trying not to stare.  Really wanna take a picture.  Being polite and focusing intently on my screen instead.

It’s one of those “sleep in the Atatürk Airport Starbucks” kinda nights.  I have an early morning flight home to Canada in a few hours and since I wasn’t keen on spending 400 TL for a few hours in the airport hotel, two armchairs pushed together was the next best option.  Having done this multiple times before, with various combinations of friends, it makes me feel kinda nostalgic, actually.

I rolled in at just after one this morning, got myself a mint tea in hopes of it making me sleepy, tucked my carry-on safely underneath me, and settled in with earplugs for an attempt at a few hours of shut-eye before the long trip really begins.

And...sleeping just became rather difficult.  Apparently they are also using this Starbucks seating area as some sort of transfer lounge, and about half an hour ago forty or so Middle Eastern men descended upon the area in a rather exuberant way.  I finally gave up, called the two hours of sleep I’ve had “enough” and got coffee to keep me awake through the next bit until I'll go through security and passport control.

And - no joke - the man in the chair across from me has just taken off his shoes and socks and is rubbing some sort of herbal cream very meticulously on his heels and between each of his toes.  In between swipes, he grabs swigs of coffee.  Ew, ew, ew, ew, ew!!!

Okay, now he's got his shoes back on but he's taken off his shirt and is only wearing a wife beater and is rubbing the cream (foot cream - I saw the label) all over his neck in a very methodical, eyes-closed-and-breathing-deeply-to-relax sort of way.  Under each strap, at the base of his skull, on his temples.....

People are watching with great interest.  I’m very curious as to where he's from.  Earlier, he asked me in Aussie-ish English if he could sit in that chair, but looks more light Middle Eastern or Eastern European.  Can't ever imagine a Turk doing this.....

Shirt's back on.  He's tied a striped scarf around the top of his head, sorta like a turban, and is now resting like it's a pillow....

And now, the scarf is around his waist, baseball cap on, and he's off to board a plane.  Or perhaps to cause someone else's stomach to turn.

Tomato paste is a key ingredient in a lot of Turkish recipes, and the homemade variety is definitely preferred over the store-bought kind.  At the end of the summer, women load up on kilos and kilos of tomatoes (either from the pazar or their own fields) and then the tomatoes are chopped, strained, and either dried in the sun for a few days (if you live in the village and have the luxury of a flat roof) or boiled on the stove (if you’re a city dweller confined to an apartment) and then stored in glass jars (or sometimes pop bottles) to be used all winter long.

Olives are a must on the Turkish breakfast table.  The olive grove behind our house has been picked bare, the olives now being cured in large reused plastic water bottles full of brine, olive oil and thyme which will be kept in the dark through the coming months.  Last year I got to help with my first olive harvest.  Olives are high on my list of foods I’d love to avoid for the rest of my life, but I sure did enjoy climbing all those trees!

An Anatolian woman’s pantry will be bursting with canning jars at this point in the season.  Pickled cucumbers, peppers, carrots, onions, tomatoes and cabbage line the shelves.  Homemade jam comes in every variety from “familiar” flavours like strawberry and apricot to more “creative” flavours like carrot, rose and, yes, even eggplant.  (No joke - it’s found on the shelf of any big market.)  Turks are also big fans of pekmez, a cousin of molasses made from either grapes or mulberries.  A great antidote for anemia, it’s known as an “internal heater” that will keep you warm and free of colds during the chilly months.  A few years ago I got to witness “pekmez making week” in Cappadocia - I marveled at the arm muscles it took to be able to stir the grapes for seven or eight hours in a massive cauldron over a campfire!

In the warmer months leading up to winter, women here hollow out red and green peppers and eggplant and then string them up like colourful necklaces on the roof or balcony to dry.  These will then be stored in a dry place and pulled out during the winter and stuffed with a mixture of rice and spices (and sometimes meat, pine nuts or black currants) to make dolma.  (My favourite!)  

Most evening meals here begin with a bowl of steaming soup, and tarhana çorbası is a winter must.  A variable mix of veggies (usually onions, red peppers, carrots and an assortment of greens) are cooked and pureed.  Yogurt is added, then a whole lot of flour, and the mixture is kneaded until it forms a soft dough.  The dough is separated into balls and left to dry for several days, then broken down into marble-sized bits and dried some more.  When it’s dried through, it’s crushed into flakes, either by hand or in a blender, and then stored in jars to be made into soup at a later date.  I only recently learned how involved the process of making tarhana is, so I shall be more appreciative from here on out when a bowl is placed in front of me. 

While most families will buy several loaves of bread (think French bread) a day from the neighbourhood bakery, a homemade flatbread called yufka is also a popular accompaniment to dinner.  When the weather is nice, groups of women head outside (in our case, to the olive grove out back) and set up their bread-making assembly line.  Dough is mixed in large plastic tubs and then rolled out paper thin on a low wooden table.  The large round yufka is then cooked on a saç (a huge concave metal pan) over a fire.  After a long day’s work, each woman will go home with a stack of flaky yufka that will be covered with a cloth and stored for up to a month.  Come dinner time, they just flick it with drops of water until it softens and, voila - bread.  (And if I’m lucky enough to happen to pass by on bread making day, the offer always comes for me to go grab some cheese from the house and have them fry me up some fresh gözleme.  Yum!)

Last but not least comes the category which I’d call “fruit snacks.”  (Like Fruit Roll Ups, but way healthier!)  People who spend the summer in their hometowns out east often have vineyards and fruit orchards.  Those with grapes and mulberries will boil and strain them, then set the juice out to thicken in the sun and use it to make things like pestil (thin fruit leather) and cevizli sucuk (literally “walnut sausage”), a long stick of “fruit snack” with nuts inside.  They’ll also do up a bunch of strings of nuts, grapes and chunks of the fruit leather to be pulled out, along with dried mulberries, for snacks when guests come over.  

I have so much respect for the hardworking women around me and definitely love being able to partake of the fruits of their labour.  Since moving here, I’ve learned to do without most packaged food and make pretty much everything from scratch (I’ve come a long way from the days of importing Bisquick for pancakes, let me tell you...) but I’ve still got nothing on them!

We’re into those in-betweeny weeks of the twilight of autumn. During the day, it’s still a gorgeous 25 degrees outside, our laundry still dries on the line within a few hours, and we can have brunch on the terrace in bare feet and t-shirts, as we did for a friend’s birthday on the weekend.  But I’ve definitely started wearing slippers in the house, and at night it’s been cool enough to turn on the heater in the living room and make me think about pulling out my electric blanket.

Winter prep around our house has involved a host of outdoor projects.  Last week we had a guy come and cut down three trees on the perimeter of our complex in an effort to prevent a repeat of the horrible flood episode we had last year when pine needles plugged up our next-door neighbours’ terrace drains (they live in France most of the year and aren’t around to clean them) causing over a foot of water to collect during one crazy winter storm.  It poured into their upstairs kitchen through a massive gap under the door and then made its way through the walls until we discovered that we had a lake in our entryway and “rain” falling from our kitchen ceiling.  I had to risk my life climbing over our adjoining wall to clean out the drains while hail fell and lightning flashed all around.  The carpets were a mess, the paint and plaster in our stairway turned all bubbly and the smell of the mold didn’t leave us until summer....

The whole tree-chopping day was quite a neighbourhood event, with the gardener and his son as well as a few other men pitching in to help the (approaching elderly and unfortunately rather vulgar) man who arrived “ready to cut” with a chainsaw and a curious lack of rope, ladders, or anyone to accompany him.  The womenfolk showed up to watch (free entertainment!) and I supplied the tea to workers and spectators alike.  There were some dicey moments, like when the gardener tied the rope around his waist as ballast against a five storey pine (I could just picture him sailing through the air...) and when it looked like said pine might just go crashing down onto the Frenchies’ house (“Sorry about your roof, Metin Bey...But on the bright side, no more clogged drains!”) but thankfully, in the end, all turned out well and everyone involved went home with enough firewood to keep their woodstoves going for at least a month.

In the years we’ve lived in this house, I’ve become something of a plastering usta (professional/expert/handywoman), and I’ve been putting my skills to good use regrouting the tiles and joints on our terrace (in hopes of preventing my roommates ceiling from turning a fuzzy, cough-inducing green as it has done for the past several winters) as well as cementing cracks and redoing the plaster around several of our windows. Keeping an eye on the weather report, I was glad to be able to get those spots repainted before the promised rains arrived this weekend.  

And now, with the cooler weather moving in, it’s finally starting to feel like fall.  Tomorrow, the Thanksgiving turkeys will be bought.  (It's hit and miss here, so we get our orders in early!)  I'm taking my cues from the kids and starting to gear my head towards Christmas gifts.  All around the neighbourhood, people are beginning to get their sobas (woodstoves used for heating) set up.  And I’ve got visions of cozy living rooms and hot soba-roasted chestnuts dancing in my head....

I recently entered a photo contest called “Dört Mevsim İstanbul” (Four Seasons in Istanbul).  It was fun to walk down memory lane as I scrolled through my (thousands upon thousands) of Istanbul photos, trying to narrow it down to just four per season to send in. 

Autumn is by far my favourite season, and besides Tennessee, with its brilliant foliage and “smoking barns”, Istanbul is my favourite place to experience it.  The city just does fall so well.  It’s not that there are really all that many trees (as the Gezi Park folks made us well aware) to make the city change colours, and there aren’t really any seasonal events to speak of - at least nothing that resembles pumpkin carving or hayrides or bobbing for apples.  :)  For me it’s more about the way that rain seems to suit the hüzünlü (melancholy) city, the way the few leaves that DO change stand out so brilliantly against the grey backdrop of the ancient metropolis,  the excitement of the appearance of the roasted chestnut carts in the squares and along the waterfronts, the warmth of a cinnamony cup of sahlep on the Bosphorus ferry, and the cozy smell of coal and woodstoves that fills the air as the nights get chilly.

I spent a weekend in Istanbul at the beginning of November, proudly accompanying my Turkish mom to the book fair where she was presenting the book she just published (!) and I’ll be up there again the last weekend of the month for my “little sister’s” isteme (when her boyfriend’s family will come to officially ask for her hand in marriage) so I am getting my happy fill of autumn goodness there this year.  

Here are some of the “final candidates” for the photo contest, as well as a few favourites from my time there last weekend.  İyi sonbaharlar!  Happy fall!

Surprise bursts of colour around the city

Where I come from, “thou shalt not audibly impose yourself on your neighbour” is something of an unstated rule.  Loud mufflers, honking instead of knocking on the front door when picking up a date, and causing someone else’s house to vibrate and shudder while you party til all hours are considered bad form.  Shared air is quiet air.  The tinny melody of “The Entertainer”  - that summertime anthem that causes kids to drop what they’re doing, raid their piggy banks (or their parents’ pockets) and run for the ice cream truck - is one of the few welcome exceptions.

But in many parts of the world, what might be considered “noise pollution” somewhere else is simply “the music of life.”  

When I lived in Guadalajara, Mexico, I always listened for the sound of the trash collector ringing his bell con gusto as he made his rounds.  (It was a sound you depended on - no garbage collection if you missed him!)  The water guy, too, had his own distinctive call - a very nasal, “Aguaaaaa!  Agua, señooooor!”  When I spent a summer teaching English in China, the patriotic music and exuberant counting of “Yi, er, san si!” blaring over the loudspeakers of the school next door as the kids did their morning exercises made for a reliable, if not slightly irritating, alarm clock.  And here in Turkey, as in much of this part of the world, the ezan, or call to prayer, denotes the rhythm of the day for both those who rely on it as a cue to perform religious duties and for those, like myself, for whom it is simply a familiar part of the soundtrack of our everyday lives. 

In my neighbourhood, as well as pretty much every other neighbourhood around the country, yelling or playing music from a loudspeaker on top of a vehicle are perfectly acceptable forms of advertising.  And while I can’t always understand what’s being said (due more to garbled speakers than my lack of language), I’ve always found the “mobile marketplace” aspect of life here rather entertaining.

Several times a day, men will roll down our street pushing carts piled high with recyclable materials and “old things” yelling, “Eskiciiiiiiii” (“Collector of old thiiiiings”) or “Hurdacı, hurdacı, hurdacııııııı!!! (Junk mannnnnn!!!!)  Then there are the “portable carpet fixing vans” that play their spiel about sewing up frayed edges “on the spot.”  (I’ve lugged a carpet out and used their services before - quite the experience!)  Depending on the time of year, the watermelon man and the onion man make their regular rounds. For the months leading up to an election, campaign-mobiles troll the streets blaring catchy tunes about the candidates and inviting people to rallies.  Even the guy who delivers our gas and bottled water has a jazzy theme song.

Perhaps my favourite “commercial on wheels” is the one played by a van that seems to show up mostly on weekend afternoons.  A chipper, almost game show-worthy male voice proclaims, “Attention, attention!  Great deals are here!  Great deals have arrived in your neighbourhood!  Come uncle!  Come auntie!  Come sister!”  For all his promotional exuberance, I half expect the vehicle to be filled with exotic circus animals instead of just bath mats and clothespins.

Recently, another itinerant salesman has joined the ranks.  We have a new milk man.  I say “we” in the loose sense of the word, since I have yet to purchase anything from him.  (My neighbours are forever extolling the glories of fresh milk, but “It smells like a cow” is not a positive attribute in my books, and since I am too lazy for the whole “cook it before you drink it” process, I stick to the long-life stuff in cartons from the supermarket up the road.)

My ears were first introduced to the sound of the milk man early one recent sunshiny morning as I sat on my balcony having my quiet time.  The air was silent, except for the distant sound of hammers clanging at a construction site, the twittering of a few birds and the rustle of the leaves of the grapevine below me, when suddenly the stillness was pierced by a rather long blast of a car horn coming from our complex’ parking lot.  

Now, around here, horns are used rather more liberally than they are back home - as a part of a wedding celebration or to indicate that a light is about to turn green and you’d best get a move on, for example - so at first I ignored it.  But it quickly became apparent that this particular horn was meant to get the attention of everyone within earshot when it was followed by a shout of, “Sütçüüüüüü!!!  Sütçü geldi!”  I leaned over the balcony to see a middle aged man sporting a moustache and a beret leaning out the window of a shiny white car alternately honking and yelling, “Milk maaaaaan!   The milk man is here!”

Feeling irked at this violation of my beloved morning peace, I turned back to my book.  But this was no drive-by-seller.  After a few more taps on his horn, he got out of the car and began to walk up and down the paths between the houses, announcing his presence.  

Aggressive, I thought, as he continued to call out every few steps or so.  Maybe it’s just because he’s new and he’s trying to drum up business.

When he made his way past our house, he called up to me, “Sister, do you need any milk?”  I thanked him and told him I didn’t, and (to my relief) he moved on without pushing.  

I never actually saw anyone come out and buy any milk that day, but he must have assumed that our complex was a good fishing pond, cuz two days later, there he was again with his horn and his bottles of milk.  

In the weeks that followed, I found my normally patient self getting increasingly irritated each time I saw that little white car pull in or heard the milk man announce his arrival.  Did he really need to honk his horn first thing in the morning?  And if people really were buying his milk, couldn’t he just go straight to their doors and knock instead of disrupting everyone’s breakfast with his yelling?

I find the shouts and ditties of all the other sellers charming, but somehow this one got under my skin.  I think it was because everyone else says their bit from out in the street, and if no customers come out, they move on.  But this man’s tactic felt invasive, like some kind of audio-trespassing.

Then one day, I was moaning to my roommate about how rude I thought the milk man was and how I had to forgive him on a thrice weekly basis, and she said something that completely changed the way I looked at the situation.  

“What if,” she said, “the reason he doesn’t go knock directly on his customers’ doors is because he knows that the men are already at work, and he doesn’t want to bring shame upon the women or make them uncomfortable by standing on their stoop when he knows they are alone?”  

Well.  That was something I hadn’t thought of.

It amazes me that I have lived in this country for seven years now and supposedly know a thing or two about how the culture works, and yet can be so clueless about what’s really going on underneath.  Of course I know that everything is connected to a person’s honour, and that appearances are more important than what’s really going on.  And it’s true, those jokes about kids who look more like the milk man than their father must have been rooted in a bit of truth somewhere.  But sometimes I feel the daily outworking of the whole “honour-shame society” thing is still an area where I’ve just barely scratched the surface.

Maybe our milk man isn’t rude and inconsiderate at all, but is actually the exact opposite.  Maybe he’s simply a man of honour who values not giving the appearance of evil over not waking up the neighbourhood.  Maybe by announcing his presence from a distance, he's giving the women who want to buy milk the chance to come out with their empty bottles and fill them in plain sight instead of opening themselves up to gossip.

It turns out I still have a lot to learn.

I still buy my milk in a carton, and I still don’t see the need for the horn, but I'm happy to say I no longer have to repent for my attitude when I hear the words, “The milk man is here!”