I never used to understand why my mom would cry over something she saw on the news. I had an empathetic heart when it came to my friends, but I just didn’t connect to strangers’ tragedies in the same way she did - especially not when they flashed across the screen between budget cut stories and Jello commercials.
But apparently I’ve turned out just like her. (And I’m glad.)
Last night during the news, I couldn’t stop the sobs from coming as I watched a clip from the funeral of our police chief who was killed Wednesday while trying to wrestle a gun from a man who had held up a gas station. They played the moment of his shooting over and over, in true Turkish sensationalist fashion, and interspersed it with scenes of the family, his fellow policemen and government officials mourning at the ceremony.
What broke my heart was the image of the man’s eight-year-old son lifting his tear-streaked face from his mother’s shoulder and standing up straight to sing the national anthem. He started off strong and stoic, but a few lines in, he began to weep. Singing along with him, I dissolved into tears when he did and couldn’t carry on past the first verse. Still, he pushed on, through his “heroic race” and “the blood we shed for it”, bravely mouthing the words in between sobs as drops of grief coursed down his chubby little cheeks until, with the final proclamation of the “freedom of his God-worshiping nation” he crumpled into a puddle of fatherless sorrow.
(Click here to see the video.)
The scene reminded me of little girls who welcome their fathers home from Iraq and Afghanistan in caskets, standing courageously beside their mothers as they receive the star-spangled gift they never wanted, a three-volley salute echoing with cold finality in their hearts.
Whether a father is laid to rest under stars and stripes or crescent and star, grief looks the same on the face of any child.
A day later, I can’t get those tear-stained cheeks out of my mind. I think what affected me so deeply was the way he was unabashedly weeping for all the world to see. For a boy, I think that took more courage than it took to make it to the end of the song. If he can grow into a man without losing that mixture of tenderness and resolute strength, this country will know a hero of a different kind. And considering the life and death of his father, I’d say there’s a good chance it’s in his blood.
It was the cobblestones that gave me away.
As I left the bustle of the main drag for the narrow alleyways of the Old Quarter where I'd be spending my writing retreat, the sound of my suitcase wheels clattering over the newly-restored-but-still-nostalgically-bumpy streets broadcast the announcement: "Make way! Incoming tourist!" Just the sort of attention I love to draw to myself.
What is it that makes me react so allergically to being mistaken for a tourist? I know, I know, it's pride, plain and simple. It's just that I've worked so hard at learning Turkish and blending into the culture, so when I leave my neighbourhood where I am "the girl who hangs her laundry wrong, pronounces her "ü"s a little funny and still sometimes forgets to give her guests slippers but is basically one of us" and head downtown to where my blue eyes and confident gait immediately label me as "Lady, lady, yes please, I have a cousin who lives in Canada," it can be more than a little annoying.
Tourism is good for the economy. Tourism provides many of my neighbours with jobs. Tourism lets the rest of the world get to know this fascinating country that I love so much. And, heck, when I'm anywhere else but here, I am "that tourist" with the Lonely Planet in her bag, the camera around her neck and the wanderlust in her eyes.
I seriously need to get over my snobby prejudice against tourists.
Maybe it's just that I don't want to be lumped into the same group as the family I saw today bartering for Atatürk cigarette lighters in tank tops and shorts. All the Turks passing by - dressed, as Turks do, according to the date on the calendar and not the temperature of the air - turned to stare at these “misfits.” And I, bundled up in my winter coat despite the warmth of the sunshine, stared right along with them. This may be the Mediterranean, but one simply does not wear flip-flops in February.
It's the same fear of my own prejudice that kept me from riding the camels at the park down the street from my house for four-and-a-half years. A couple of times a month, I'd head to the park for homework or solitude. And every time, I'd stand outside the gate, turn to watch a bunch of Germans wearing matching wristbands pile off a tour bus and climb onto the camels, shrieking as those knobby knees straightened and lifted them high into the air. Then I'd turn back to the ticket booth, pay my "special local price" (which often means "free," depending who's working) and head inside to do my thing, as far from the camcorder crowd as I could get.
It really is silly to live that close to camels for that long and never ride one for the sole purpose of "not looking like a tourist." One of them belongs to my language helper's landlord and he was always offering me a free ride. A more humble person would've taken him up on it years ago.
I am happy to report, though, that last weekend, accompanied by several friends who were delighted to share the experience with me (and who apparently don't suffer from the same "anti-tourist hang-ups" as I do) I finally gave in and rode my first camel. Now I know why the tourists pay to do it - it’s a lot of fun! (And now I know why they shriek, too. When my camel suddenly sat down, it really did feel like I was about to be catapulted off!)
May this be the first of many times when I let go of my silly pride, stop worrying about whether or not I blend in, and just enjoy this place that people pay thousands of dollars to visit and that I am fortunate enough to call "home."
Did you ever play that game as a kid? (Or a road-tripping big person?) It's the one where you start with the letter "A" and take turns saying, "I am going on a trip and in my suitcase I will take.....everything everyone has said before you, plus a new item that starts with the next letter of the alphabet.
Well, I am going on a trip (not far - just the forty minutes it takes to ride the bus downtown) and my suitcase is looking something like Apples (both the computer and the edible kind), Books, Chai, Dark chocolate....
I am going on a writing retreat! Not the kind where twenty people gather at a retreat centre for a weekend of yoga, inspirational speeches and alone time under a tree with a notebook. The kind where, thanks to the thoughtful generosity of a friend back home, I get two nights away at a guesthouse in the Old City, far from the distractions of laundry and menu planning and emails and neighbours to focus completely on writing and really let those creative juices flow. I've got a couple of half-baked stories that need tweaking and re-tweaking, and several ideas for articles I want to pitch to a local travel magazine, and I'm hoping that this time out of my everyday environment and "in the zone" will be just what I need to churn out some good writing.
So, you wanna know what else is in my suitcase?
A handful of Staedtlers - the only pen I'll ever love.
My other favourite writing utensil.
My passport - for calling to mind trips past and trips I'm still dreaming of....and because I need it to check into the hotel.
Snacks. For when I'm holed up in my room late at night and get the munchies.
The various writing notebooks I currently have on the go - you never know from which one inspiration will strike!
Oregon Chai. For whatever reason, coffee makes my heart happy, but chai makes me want to write.
My trusty travel mug. Starbucks should seriously pay me to do commercials for this thing - it's incredible! It's double-walled steel and keeps drinks warm for a good five or six hours! This way I can hunker down in my room and not have to worry about emerging for refills.
Reading material. One for fact-checking and memory-jogging as I write about my autumn trip to Mardin, and the other for when my hand hurts or my brain gets stuck and I just need to read what someone else wrote for awhile.
My wooly socks (in case the room is chilly) and my Vanilla Bean Noel Lotion (cuz we all know soft hands write better stories.)
Dark chocolate. I don't think I really need a reason.
My Starbucks card. Between freebies I have on here and the free drinks I'll get for the beans I'm going to buy to take home, all my caffeine needs for the entire weekend are taken care of. :)
Books by people who know much more about travel writing than I do. (I actually didn't pack these books, cuz they wouldn't fit in my already overfull little suitcase. I just mined them for writing prompts and ideas.)
There you have it - the ingredients for what I hope will be a prolifically productive weekend of pen to paper and fingers to keys. (And, yes, in case you were wondering, I did pack clothes and my toothbrush, too.) :)
"Don't you think daisies are the friendliest flower?"
I'd have to agree with Kathleen Kelly (of You've Got Mail fame) on this one. There is just something about daisies that makes me smile. We've had an unusually cold winter for the Eastern Mediterranean - the kind that makes me work from under my covers with the heater on full blast even in the middle of the day. So when I was walking to the grocery store last week, mittens on my hands and a fuzzy scarf tied tightly under my chin, and I saw a patch of white daisies bobbing their heads in the biting wind, I had to laugh at them. "Who told you it was time to show your faces?" I asked them out loud. "Go back to sleep until spring."
But today those precocious daisies are the ones laughing at me - good-naturedly, of course. The weather has taken a sudden turn for the warmer, and it's practically spring-ish outside! The sun's shining brightly - not the "liar-sunshine" that tricks you into wearing your autumn coat and then mocks you as you freeze at the bus stop, but the kind that means hot water for dishes and clothes that dry in just a few hours and cheerfulness itself streaming through the windows. I daresay the snow on the mountains has even receded an inch or two.
Perhaps it wasn't quite warm enough to keep the windows open all day long, but oh, that fresh air did my heart good! Carried on it were the sounds of birds chirping and children playing and the scent of hope and anticipation and fresh life.
See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come...
- Song of Songs 2:11-12
In the spirit of trying to be a more keen observer, to be more awake to the world around me and being able to write with more colourful details, I decided to keep track of all the smells I smelled today, from home to town and back.
- The rich aromas of my Turkish Mocha Body Scrub and Vanilla Bean Noel Shower Gel. (The bathroom smells like a coffee house when I get out of the shower!)
- The overpowering scent of our "new and improved fabric softener." (Mental note: never buy the "ultra" stuff again. The only thing that's concentrated is the smell!)
- Freshly baked bread as I waited for the bus outside our bakery.
- A whiff of floral perfume as the lady in front of me took her seat on the bus.
- Burning garbage as we passed by some kids who'd lit a fire on the side of the road.
- The tantalizing aroma of roast beef at Arby's (It tasted as good as it smelled!)
- The unmistakable smell of books as I leafed through several in the bookstore. (For someone who wanted to be a librarian as a kid, this smell is synonymous with happiness!)
- A sickeningly sweet orange smell from the sample of Vitamin C drink the lady at the vitamin store gave me.
- The homey smell of woodstoves in the Old City, mingled with the welcoming aroma of (filtered!) coffee wafting up from my cup as I paused for a break at a sidewalk cafe.
- Cigarette smoke in the air....pretty much everywhere.
- Exhaust fumes in the congested area where I waited for my bus home.
- The stench of body odour, bad breath, and stale cigarette smoke invading my nostrils as I fight to keep my footing amidst stinky men on the bus. Combined with this is the faint odour of mildew from clothes that never had a fair chance at drying in this wet winter weather.
- Someone else's yummy dinner cooking as I walked into the entrance of our complex.
- The visible smell of coal in the air as I went out onto my balcony and brought my laundry in. (Thankfully I rescued it in time before it began to smell like coal, too!)
This was the piece I wrote for an assignment for my writing course on "My hometown in 500 words." (I know, I know, Istanbul is not my "real" hometown, but I like to pretend.) :)
........................................
A chaotic choreography is performed daily on the streets of Istanbul. Every person, every vehicle has its part in the ensemble. I step out my front door and take my place on the stage.
I’m “home for the holidays,” spending the Sacrifice Festival with my “Turkish family.” It was on this street five years ago that I took my first wobbly steps in the dance. I’d like to think I’ve become more graceful since then, that I have improved my sense of Turkish rhythm and no longer have two cultural left feet.
The crisp November wind sends rainbows of laundry aflutter, carrying on it the smell of freshly baked bread and the lingering scent of the woodstoves that kept the neighbourhood warm last night. Yaşar Abi is selling roasted chestnuts on the back of his truck. “I’ll stop on my way home,” I promise. Accompanied by the clatter of backgammon dice and the low voices of the men huddled outside the cafe puffing away on their cigarettes, the junk-collector calls out a nasal “Eskiciiiiiiiii” as he lumbers up the street with his cart of broken treasures.
Wedging myself between a laptop, a grocery cart and the door, I punch my Akbil to pay my fare as my bus swings out and creates a space for itself in the morning traffic jumble. We weave our way through clouds of exhaust fumes down the hill into Kadıköy, braiding paths with overcrowded minibuses and grouchy taxi drivers, past the median where the pigeons congregate, the dilapidated wooden Ottoman mansion that I’ve always had a crush on, and the grey-haired pastry-seller who once wrote a poem about my friend Mandy’s blue eyes.
At every stop, as the bus brakes just long enough to inhale more people than it spits out, a hierarchical reshuffling occurs. Texting teenagers in Converse give up their seats for old men with canes. Spots are swapped to prevent a covered woman from sitting beside an unrelated male. Those of us hanging onto ceiling straps with one hand and guarding wallets with the other struggle to move back a few inches without landing in any unsuspecting laps.
Wriggling my way to the middle door, I am ejected onto the crowded sidewalk. I join the crush of shoppers inching their way through the Fishermens’ Market, scouting delicacies to spread before their holiday guests. Miniskirts from Moda meld with headscarves from Üsküdar, bobbing and twisting to avoid colliding with henna-haired gypsies selling roses, hamals shouldering baskets full of old ladies’ groceries and çaycıs deftly swinging trays of steaming tea cups.
Sidestepping puddles of fishy water and ducking under strings of dried peppers, I dip in and out of the throng. At the Ecevitler deli, with its singing butcher and nineteen varieties of olives, I purchase smoked eggplant salad and cabbage dolma and pause to watch a shopkeeper toss a fish to a cat perched on a striped awning. The call to prayer momentarily silences the music floating down from the rooftop cafes, but the chattering seagulls and Bosphorus ferry horns pay no heed.
Several hours and multiple shopping bags later, the grainy remains of a Turkish coffee break still on my lips, the bus deposits me at my stop. I measure the rhythm of the evening rush hour, plotting the lane by lane dash that will get me safely across the street. Two others join me on the curb, and we share glances of “us-against-the-traffic” before charging into the first available opening. With a grand finale of “car-step-step, car-step-step,” I nod to my partners and exit the stage. Yaşar Abi trades me three lira for a bouquet of steaming chestnuts as my reward for surviving another performance, and with a mental bow, I head for home.
Any die-hard Veggie Tales fan knows that “usta” is Polish for “lip.” But upon moving to Turkey, I learned that it is also Turkish for “a man who is an expert in his trade.” Around our house, we use the word more loosely to mean “workman.” And, around our house, “usta” is something of a dirty word.
In the four-and-a-half years we’ve lived in this house, I would venture to guess we’ve had around fifty “ustas” parade through our house. Maybe sixty. Roofers, painters, window guys, air-conditioning guys, electricians, oven repairmen, washer repairmen, solar-heater repairmen, and, more than anything, plumbers. With as much lime in the water as we have here, pipes, faucets, washer parts and toilet innards are constantly being eaten up or breaking, and no matter how much lime-preventer and chemicals we dump into them, the end result is still often that we have to get them replaced. During the first few months after we moved in, we called one plumber so many times that he actually brought us flowers to say thank you for being his best customers! (Incidentally, he also had a lazy eye, and we never could tell which one of us he was talking to!)
Usta Days are kind of write-offs in terms of getting anything really productive done cuz these guys require constant attention. Not only do you have to hang around to supervise and make sure they are actually doing what you ask, but they don’t always come with things like ladders and tools, so you often have to stick around in case they need anything. You have to prepare things for tea breaks and Nescafe breaks, and order them lunch if they are around all day. Valuables are hidden, and, depending on the job, furniture haphazardly shoved out of the way. And then there is the post-usta clean-up.....
On the flip-side, the beauty of an Usta Day is that since you can’t do anything you actually need to do (i.e. visiting neighbours, working on the computer, anything that requires concentration) you now have time to do all the weird little jobs that should be done “eventually” but aren’t worth your time on a normal day. The trick is to have enough to do so that you don’t look like you are hovering (or like you’re a wealthy North American who has nothing to do but twiddle her thumbs), but nothing so involved as to steal your ability to keep an eye on them and be available when needed. Polishing the copper coffee pots, reorganizing the spice drawer, changing cupboard liners and throwing out all the leftover containers that don’t have lids are all Usta Day-worthy activities.
The tricky thing about ustas is that you never know exactly when they’re going to come. “Tomorrow” is a very loose term. We’ve had many a week where our house stayed in a perpetual state of disaster for days because the window guy who was supposed to come in the morning didn’t show up til evening when we had plans to be out, and then couldn’t come again for four more days. This makes planning anything tricky cuz you have to be home, but you don’t know for how long. And it always seems to happen that the big jobs we save up for a time when the weather is right (or the power is on) end up getting delayed and delayed until right before we have a guest coming to stay, meaning a frenzy of activity and cleaning all crammed into a few hours in order to have the house ready for company. (This is how two of my very gracious best friends ending up arriving in the middle of a new window fiasco, just in time to scrub floors and wash curtains along with me just so they’d have a room to sleep in that night!)
This week, we’d called for someone to come install an air-conditioner/heater unit in my roommate’s room (which will hopefully remedy the persistent mold problem in there), and after us having rearranged our schedule several times as they waited for parts to come in, two guys showed up bright and early yesterday morning. They were young - one in his teens and one in his twenties - but they worked hard and knew what they were doing. In situations like this one, most of the interaction is left to my (twenty plus years my senior) roommate and I stick to making and serving the tea. You know, so they don’t arrive back the next week with their whole family to ask my hand in marriage.
Yesterday, the tea must have been particularly good, because when they returned after having taken our two AC units into the workshop for cleaning, they smelled like they’d both taken showers in cologne. And when, several hours later, my room still smelled like “boy-trying-to-impress-girl,” I thought to myself, “One more reason I need to get married off soon.”
I really hope he’s a handyman. :)
“As Thoreau famously said, it doesn't matter where or how far you go - the farther commonly the worse - the important thing is how alive you are. Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.”
― Pico Iyer
It’s been three months since we returned from our Great Southeast Adventure, and I am still working on the same stories as I was the week after we got home. I had grand notions of writing up all my anecdotes by Christmas, but instead I am still sitting here with a hard drive full of photos, a mind full of memories, and a whole pile of half-finished pieces in front of me.
This feels like the story of my “travel writing career” this far: a lot of great ideas, but very little to show for them. Sometimes a blinking cursor on a blank white screen feels like an invitation to greatness, but more often than not, I get the feeling it is mocking me. Between neighbours and crises and laundry and lessons, even if I manage to find an hour to write, inspiration and free time rarely seem to coincide, and I too often find myself closing the lid to my laptop to move on to the next task having only written a sentence or two.
This will never do.
It’s been a battle of a journey, this process of coming to see my writing as a calling instead of just a hobby that I dabble in for kicks on the weekend. Even the phrase “my writing” has sounded so pretentious to me that I’ve been hesitant to call it that for fear of sounding like one of those starving artists who lives in a loft in New York City, eating Ramen Noodles for dinner every day and dreaming of that elusive “big break,” but never producing more than a few creative obituaries.
Thankfully, over the past year, I’ve come to a place of recognizing that writing is a gift and a passion that has been deposited inside of me to be used, not just dreamed about, and I am ready to put in the hard work that it will undoubtedly take to carry me from “someone with potential” to “someone who is regularly published.” Before Paul Theroux wrote “The Great Railway Bazaar” he had to take a whole lot of notes on a whole lot of trains over a whole lot of months. And even before that, he had to exercise his ability to see the stories in the world around him, and work his “describing muscles” to the point that he actually had something to say that was worth reading.
I am ready to work my muscles.
"I only write when inspiration strikes...Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp."
- W. Somerset Maugham
Several of my “New Year’s Anticipations” centre around carving out a place in my life and my schedule to develop my skills as a writer. Much as I like the idea of inspiration striking at random moments when I just happen to have the time to sit down and let the words flow, it has proven to be highly unrealistic. The only way I’ll become a writer is to write, and the only way I’ll write is if I set aside (and fiercely guard) specific time devoted to writing and then....write. Instead of waiting for the dream to somehow magically evolve into discipline, I need to start with the discipline that will pave the way to my dream.
For me, the first step (besides giving value to this endeavor in my own heart) is to make regular time in my schedule to write. I’ve decided that if I can set aside one afternoon a week to write for three hours or so, I will consider myself a wild success. Besides the fact that that is about as much time as I can realistically spare right now, that is also about as long as I can solidly write before my creative engine starts to sputter. At least for now. (I intend to strengthen that muscle!)
I haven’t found that I do so well writing at home, as the voices of the washing machine, my roommate, the phone, the doorbell, and my internal to-do list never fail to call me from my place of creativity and steal those precious minutes of focus. Leaving the house and going to a specific place, on the other hand, lets me feel more like I am “going to work” and gives me the opportunity to ignore everyone around me and focus, and not feel the least bit guilty about it.
My chosen “office-away-from-home?” The back corner table at Starbucks.
On the bus on the way here, I listened to a “Writing Excuses” podcast that was, “coincidentally” bang on for where I’m at today. The guest speaker’s challenge was to see whatever time you set aside for writing as a job that you show up to, punch your time card at, and give your undivided attention. If you were to work at a bank, you couldn’t just “not feel like going in today” or allow a million distractions to steal you away from the task at hand. In the same way, a writer must see their “shift” as a non-negotiable and give it their all accordingly.
I was really encouraged to hear the guy say that most writers, unless they’ve really made it big and write “full-time,” work another job and write in the evenings on the weekend. If the average writer writes a solid 200 words in a concentrated hour, and they spend an hour a day writing, five days a week, that’s 52,000 words a year. If the average novel is 100,000 words, that’s half a novel in a year. Not phenomenal, but not bad either. Considering that what I’m going for right now is not a novel, but travel and culture-related articles, I should be able to crank out several dozen this year if I really give myself to it.
And so it is that I spent a solid three hours today over coffee with characters from my trip to Mardin. Peder Yakup was there - the priest who lovingly tends the restored Syriac church in the village of İzbırak despite the fact that there is no congregation. And Maria, the nun, with her gum boots and shalvar and her cigarette. And what’s-his-name (whose name is written safely in my notebook at home) our guide at the ancient and soon-to-be-underwater city of Hasankeyf. At 692 words of what I daresay was inspiration, I’m gonna call it a day.
I am happy to report that, I showed up for work, I sat down at my desk, I stared that blinking cursor in the eye, and I won.
A Turkish family tree is a thing of complicated beauty. Whenever I ask a friend to show me how they are related to so-and-so, I usually get lost at the part where one cousin marries another cousin and their uncle becomes their father-in-law. To make matters worse (or better, once you’ve figured it out) there are specific names for every member of the family according to how they are related, so your brother’s wife is called something different than your husband’s brother’s wife, and your maternal uncle is different than your paternal uncle, and your uncle is yet another kind of uncle if he is married to your actual aunt. There is even a special word for women who are married to brothers.
Some of these “relative names” are also used when interacting with others in public. The words “abi” (older brother) and “abla” (older sister) might be used when, say, trying to get the attention of someone working at the veggie pazar, and you’d use the word “teyze” (auntie) when giving up your seat to an old lady on the bus. They can convey a sense of familiarity amongst friends and neighbours, or a sense of respect between strangers. You would most certainly never use a person’s first name without tacking on one of these titles, unless you were using a more proper “sir” or “ma’am.”
I recently caught a comical glimpse of how deeply this system of “respectful address” is engrained in the Turkish heart. On the news, they showed security footage of a man robbing a gas station convenience store. He burst through the doors, held a gun to the cashier’s head and said, “Abi (big brother), give me all your cash!”
You can terrify a man and steal all his money, but always, always do it respectfully.
In my language lessons the past few months I've been reading through a book called "Bir Zamanların Istanbulu" - "The Istanbul of Another Time." It explains in colourful detail the daily life of "old Istanbul" in the days after the Ottoman Empire crumbled and the Turkish Republic was being shaped. It's slow going, as each page has at least ten words for me to look up, many of them Ottoman and no longer in use. But for someone like me who has a huge crush on the Imperial City, it's a treasure trove of fun information. It covers topics such as which areas the various ethnic groups lived in, how household staff were organized, superstitions and legends, coffeehouse life and how marriages and festivals were celebrated back then.
Just today I learned that in the hamam (Turkish bathhouse) there were various patterned wraps worn to distinguish workers from customers, and people of one station or religion from another. I also learned a very useful phrase - "postu sermek." It literally means “to spread out an animal fur” and carries the connotation of a guest staying on and on with no apparent intention of leaving." Having been held prisoner by many a guest who was too comfy on my couch for my liking, this new vocab elicited an amused groan.
Last week, my language helper Ayşe Abla** and I were reading from the portion of the book about "misafirlik" - the rules and traditions surrounding visits and the receiving of guests. Books like this are always both enlightening and guilt-tripping, because they reveal how far short I fall from the high standard of “the Turkish hostess.” If Turks are famous for anything, it's their hospitality, and that is one of my favourite parts about living here... but it comes with its difficulties, too. While I may have learned “the right way to do things” (and believe me, there is a “right way”) I cannot say I adhere to the Turkish belief that “a surprise visit is more of a blessing than a planned one” or that “it’s up to the guest when they come, but it’s up to the hostess when they leave.” (As a guest, I’ve been held captive by that one on many occasions, and as a hostess I’ve often wished it worked in the “Go, go!” direction and not just the “Stay, stay!” one.)
I often marvel at how delighted my Turkish friends are when I show up unannounced, because I often have quite the opposite reaction, though I try not to let it show. Don't get me wrong - I love my neighbours, and I genuinely do enjoy showing love through hospitality. But sometimes putting on a second pot of tea while talking about recipes and ingrown toenails when I have a million things that need to be done by the evening is just unbearable. To my shame, I'll even admit to (once or twice) working in my room with the lights off and ignoring the doorbell if I'm in the middle of something I just have to get done. Apparently the task-oriented side of me is still very Canadian.
Loosely translated, here’s a sample of one portion we read in my last lesson:
“The host or hostess is obliged to greet a guest with a smiling face. Sometimes a guest may arrive in the middle of a day when you have so much work to do, you don’t even have time to scratch your head. You have a mountain of laundry on the go, you are in the middle of dusting and vacuuming, and your daughter and son-in-law are fighting up a storm. But they mustn’t let it show on their faces. Even if they’re out for each other’s blood, they must smile like they’ve just had a cup of sweet punch.”
The message is clear: guests take precedence over anything else you might be doing, and saying, “I’m not in the mood for company,” really isn’t an option. No matter what’s on your to-do list for the day, you must open the door with a welcoming smile, invite your honoured guest into the parlour and give them all your attention, just as if the queen had popped in for tea.
So here’s the kicker. Just as we’d read this bit and I’d begun to tell Ayşe Abla what a bad Turk I am because I of the way I cringe when the doorbell rings in the middle of a crazy day, there was a knock at her door.
“Just leave it,” she said. I continued with my reading.
“Ayşe Ablaaaaaa!”
“Are you sure you don’t want to get it?” I asked. “I don’t mind.”
“It's Güler.** I saw her as she came down the lane. If I let that woman in, she’ll interrupt our lesson, talk my ear off for half and hour, and criticize everything in the room. I’m not in the mood. Just ignore her - she’ll go away.”
Again , “Ayşe Ablaaaaaa.”
Finally she stopped calling, and we assumed she’d given up. Just then, Ayşe Abla told me to look out the window to where the Güler Abla was coming up the side of the house. “It’s reflective glass - she can’t see us. All the school girls use this window as a mirror to fix their hair on their way out.”
Güler Abla approached the window and, apparently not convinced that no one was home, called out again, “Ayşe Ablaaaaa!!!!” She knocked on the glass. Seeing the guilty look on my face, Ayşe Abla reassured me, “Don’t worry, she can’t see us.”
I turned to look just as Güler Abla cupped her hands over her eyes and leaned forward to peer through the glass. Whipping back around, I whispered through my teeth, “Now she can!”
Her eyes mischevious, Ayşe Abla slid her 60 year old frame ever so slowly lower in her chair and whispered “Don’t move! She’s looking at the back of your head.”
We sat there, frozen, until she finally either understood the situation or assumed we were pieces of furniture, and then dissolved into giggles as she walked away.
We laughed until our sides hurt, and when I finally caught my breath, I asked her, “What was that about never sending a guest away?”
“There are always exceptions,” She winked. Now, back to our book.”
**Names have been changed.
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