On minor prejudices

The English department at my school is possibly one of the most multinational spaces I've ever frequented. About half the department is Turkish (or native, as we say). One would assume that the other half would be, well, English. Or American. Or Canadian. British?

One would be wrong.

There is, admittedly, one Canadian. An American teacher drops in occasionally, but she's not actually part of the English department; she teaches in the preschool. A Scottish couple also lurk around, but he teaches music and she teaches math; mostly they stop by to use the computers. No, the non-native faculty in the English department consists of teachers from Russia, Poland, Bulgaria, Canada, and Kosovo (formerly Yugoslavia).

This odd fellowship occasionally leads to equally odd conversations. Today, for instance: a perfectly friendly discussion of national prejudices.

Poland: So, are Americans as snobby as everyone says?
America (me): We're not snobby...just a bit isolated. And generally alarmed as we become less isolated. But I think we're getting better - I don't think we've tried to invade Canada for the last century or so...right, Canada?
Canada: I'm from Quebec, don't ask me about Canada.
America: Right, sorry. So, Poland - your little prejudices?
Poland: Oh, we hate the Russians.
Russia: Hey!
Poland: It's nothing personal, dear. We love you.
Russia: Thank you.
Poland: And the Germans. Poles aren't fans of Germans.
America: Sucks to be a buffer state, doesn't it?
Poland: Yes, it does. Would anyone like some coffee?
Canada (or Quebec): With sugar, please.
Russia: I don't think Russians hate anyone...
Poland: You've never been occupied. And you spent decades forcing my country into Communism. Kosovo, who do you hate?
Kosovo: Everyone. Has anyone seen my pen?*
Russia: I think it's by the computers. What about you, Bulgaria, who do you hate?
Bulgaria: (pause; quietly) Turks.

*Kosovo's bad mood was entirely justified in this instance. Due to Kosovo's declaration of independence from Yugoslavia in February of 2008, his residency permit in Turkiye is no longer valid. Until a new one is reissued, he can't leave the country, and therefore will not be spending Christmas with his family in Kosovo. I'm fairly sure that he - and Kosovo - don't actually hate anyone, although I imagine that his emotions toward Turkish customs officials are hardly warm and fuzzy at the moment.

Kurban Bayrami

Before I start this, you're going to have to dredge up something that doesn't get mentioned too often: that the Christian Old Testament, Jewish Torah, and Muslim Koran are all fundamentally the same words. Interpreted differently, to be sure, but there's more in common than there is different.

Anyway...you'll remember the story of Abraham and Isaac: that God told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isaac, and that Abraham got pretty close to doing so before an angel swooped down and told him that no, a sheep would work just as well. Sunday School was generally pretty mute regarding the conversation around the dinner table in the tent that night, but I always imagined that Isaac at least got a new tricycle out of that ordeal.

In the Muslim world, there's a holiday to celebrate the event. In Arabic, it's "Eid al-Adha" or "عيد الأضحى," but in Turkish, it's the far more pronounceable (in my opinion) "Kurban Bayrami." Those who can afford to do so purchase a cow, goat, or sheep from one of the thousands of improvised stockyards set up around the city and slaughter it. One-third of the meat goes to the poor, one-third goes to family and friends, and one-third is kept to be consumed throughout the year.

I spent a twitchy week or so trying to delicately ask my family how, precisely, we were going to do this - were we just going to lead a goat into the back parking lot with a bread knife? Stranger things have happened - but as it eventually transpired, on Monday morning, the menfolk went to mosque and then took the cow to a ritual butcher to be, well, ritually butchered. There are prayers, and then the animal is slaughtered according to the halal method - by slicing the jugular (bloody as this sounds, research suggests that halal slaughter is far more humane to the animal than many other methods. Sorry, it was a rainy afternoon and I was poking around Wikipedia). Of course, things don't always go according to plan. Throughout the day, there were periodic commotions in the street below as escaped animals pranced through the streets. Most were quickly apprehended, but I understand that there are a few unclaimed goats wandering in some areas.

Now, a cow is not terribly cheap, all things considered, and most of my host dad's family lives in the same apartment complex, so the whole family pooled their money for the cow, and divided up the meat accordingly. Which is why I came home from wandering around Beşiktaş with a friend, walked into the kitchen to get a glass of water, and found roughly one-quarter of a cow laid on on the kitchen counter. In pieces. The kitchen windows were open, and it was really, really cold. For refrigerative purposes, apparently. My host family explained that the meat had to rest for a day or so (My host mom: "It has to sleep!") before it could be processed.



Anthony Bourdain: beat this.

Later that evening, the host family and I trooped upstairs to my host dad's parents' - my host grandparents' - apartment in order to "process" their meat.



Which mostly seemed to involve cutting it into small bits. I offered to help, and my host dad declined: "You will get your hands bloody!"



As a deterrant, it may have backfired. They don't know me that well yet. I kept pestering until someone finally handed me a knife.

We took periodic breaks from slicing and dicing to fry up bits of our sacrifice in olive oil and eat. You know how those kid-comes-of-age-on-farm books invariably contain a scene where the main character drinks fresh milk and reflects that this is probably the freshest milk s/he has ever tasted? Yeah, I got that, but with meat. I chewed and reflected on how the thing had only been mooing a few hours ago. It was good beef. We processed the fat similarly, and then the fat was fried in olive oil, too. And eaten.

You know, I'm not sure that it qualifies as heart-healthy if it's fat that you're frying in olive oil.

I took a break from the slicing and dicing to go hang out with a friend, and discovered when I arrived home that all of the meat had been cut into one-inch chunks and frozen. Not a steak remained. I nearly cried. I am a child of the midwest, after all, and that is not what you do with a good steak.



My host grandmother took a look at my face and handed me a plate of baklava.

A plate of baklava makes everything better.


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In case you're so inclined, this article does quite a good job of explaining the roots of Kurban Bayrami; it's a short read and I really do suggest that you take a look.

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This first picture came from my host grandparents' balcony (I had to step around raw meet to get to the window):


This was taken with a 15-second exposure out my bedroom window at about 1:30 AM local time.

Temptation!

There are Star Wars action figures in toy stores here that I never even knew existed.

Before I left, people told me that this country was dangerous, but I don't think this is what they meant...

All right, so perhaps Dad had a point all those years ago.

I am a talker. This is a well-known fact. I would make the worst undercover agent in the history of anything ever. They'd never have to resort to coercion to get me to spill; they'd just have to sit me down with tea and biscuits and away I'd go.

And I speak really, really quickly. And quietly. For a fair amount of my elementary school days, before I got out of the car in the school parking lot, Dad would say, "Have a good day! Remember to speak up and enunciate!"And I'd bare my teeth and get out of the car, and that was that.

Today, I had a conversation with my host mom's brother - I suppose that makes him my host uncle. He was speaking English (to improve his English) and I was speaking Turkish (ditto). I was in the process of trying to explain that his sister's birthday is on "yirmi yedi Aralik" (December 27) when a supremely puzzled look came over this face. I paused. "What?"

"I understood all the parts about my sister, but why are you talking about Megadeath?"

How he got "Megadeath" out of "yirmiyedi Aralik," I don't know. I'm starting to wonder if all my Turkish sounds like that. What a scary thought.

Toast!

I made French toast tonight!

In part because there was a ton of bread leftover from the Thanksgiving feast, and in part because French toast just sounded good. Unfortunately, Host Mom gave me the green light to begin cooking before checking with Host Dad to see if he was hungry. He wasn't.

Carrying an egg in one hand and mixing bowl in the other, I stuck my head in his office door. "Pisiriyorum," I said. "I'm cooking. You better be hungry."

A little while later, Host Mom peered over my shoulder to get a look at the skillet. "Oh, I know what that is," she said. "But it is a breakfast food."

"Well, yeah," I said. "Except when it's for dinner."

(This sort of exchange happens frequently enough that it doesn't really perturb her too much anymore.)

And true, you can't get maple syrup in this country without paying an arm and a leg for it, so we had it with strawberry jam, and we had it in between the soup and the salad, which was kind of strange. And egg yolks are startlingly orange in this country (I shrieked the first time I cracked one), so it was hard to tell when the toast was finished cooking.

But my Host Dad, whose appetite had been lacking only twenty minutes before, mysteriously recovered enough of one to have seconds, so all in all I'd pronounce it a success.

On Thanksgiving

The exciting parts of yesterday started not to long after I'd dragged myself out of bed, pulled on my school uniform (no, I'm not posting pictures. Not yet, anyway), and was midway through making breakfast, coughing gently all the while. It was possibly this coughing that prompted my host mother to sleepily poke her head into the kitchen to inform me that I'd better go back to bed, as I'd been coughing badly in my sleep and she was taking me to the doctor this afternoon. I protested that it was just a head cold - admittedly a head cold that'd hung on for a week or so, and didn't seem to be getting any better. Host mother wasn't having any of that, put the milk back in the fridge and sent me back to bed.

Later that afternoon, she and Host Dad bundle me into the car (wearing two T-shirts, two sweaters, and a parka) and drive to (the inaptly named, as it turned out) Universal Hastanesi, or Universal Hospital. Where I present my insurance card to the triage secretary, who promptly hands it back, shaking her head. I point to the phone number on the card, indicating that she should to call that number. The insurance that Rotary exchange students are required to buy is taken everywhere. Nope, they won't call. Why? Because it's an international number. Yes, of course it's an international number, I'm an American exchange student and my insurance is from the US. This is "Universal Hospital," what do you mean you aren't authorized to make overseas calls? Look, it'll take two minutes, just call the number. Please? No.

I call my Rotary adviser. She talks to my host mom. My host mom barks in Turkish before digging out her cell phone to call a friend who works in Radiology. Radiology Friend and her supervisor come find us. They talk to the triage staff. They go and find the manager of the triage staff. Nope. No can do. Rotary advisor curses over the phone. "Your insurance is valid in Bangledesh, for heaven's sake," she says. "This is ridiculous. What if you were bleeding or something?"

"Yeah. I know."

Rotary advisor sighs. "Amy was in the hospital with dystentary earliler this year. Let me see what hospital she went to. They might be easier to deal with."

In September, Amy came down with a particuarly nasty local version of Montezuma's Revenge. I'm glad my sickness is nowhere near that serious. Host family and I spend the intervening minutes exchanging glares with the staff of Universal Hastenesi.

Rotary advisor calls back. "Amy was at Florence Nightengale Hastenesi. Mention her name when you give them the card so they can check their records. Good luck."

It's a short drive to Florence Nightengale, and once there, the process is remarkably fast. The insurence is no problem. Amy? Yes, they remember her. Copay? Deductible? No, of course not. Need to see an ENT? Certainly, he's right upstairs. Want to see what the inside of your nose looks like? We have a handy endoscope right here!

My host mom and I joke that, now that she's seen the inside of my nose, ears, and throat in close detail, we have no secrets anymore.

In the end, they diagnosed a common cold, advised rest and fluids, and wrote a prescription for some (delightfully fizzy!) cold medicine. Well, that was comparatively easy. Also, the guy working the Emergency Services desk was cute in a David Tennant kind of way, but without the skull. Fortunately.

From the Royal Shakespeare Company's current production of Hamlet.

Image courtesy of cerysromana.livejournal.com

From the hospital, we made our merry way to a local mall (this city has malls the way some cities have, oh, park benches. I've never heard of so many Swatch stores per square kilometer), where Host Mom and I stopped at a pharmacy to fill the prescription and from there swung by a Starbucks. Yeah, I know. Drop it. "Where's host dad?" I asked.

Host mom stirred her coffee. "Grocery shopping. Do you want a brownie?"

Yes, in retrospect, that was the best possible way to distract me. The brownie was good, too.

Once we got home, host parents hustled the groceries into the kitchen before shutting and locking the kitchen door.

Well. That was unexpected.

I tapped on the door. "Can I come in?"

My host mom opened the door a crack, grinning fit to be tied. "No. We are being sneaky!"

I started to clue in when the guests started arriving an hour or so later. There was probably a smell to give it away, too, except that I was so congested it was a miracle I was still breathing at all.

The roast turkey on the table, though, was a dead giveaway.





Same for the mound of mashed potatoes, the roasted vegetables piled around the turkey, the tureen of pumpkin soup - sweet honey mustard, they made pumpkin soup. My dad's specialty, which I'd mentioned in passing maybe a week and a half ago, and they remembered enough and cared enough to make it. And tracking down a turkey couldn't have been any easy feat, either. And there was pilav, and dolma, and carrot salad, and probably more that I'm forgetting. Sweet roast pumpkin with walnuts for desert with Earl Grey tea.



I'm not going to say that I cried, but I will admit to tearing up a little. The only thing missing was the Macy's parade on TV, and let's face it, there are only so many times you can watch a giant Snoopy balloon drift past buildings before it loses its thrall.


As at every Thanksgiving, I gave thanks. But I don't think I've ever meant it more.

Of course

I have been in this country for just over three months. I have learned many strange and wonderful things:

• Hookah is in fact pretty boring
• Traffic in Turkiye obeys the Cartoon Laws of Physics
• Pomegranate trees look pretty silly when in fruit

However, there are somethings that I am simply never, ever going to remember:

• Doors of commercial establishments open inward
• Stair treads are roughly half an inch taller here than in other parts of the world I have traversed

These latter two have inflicted bruises. You'd think I'd remember them by now.

Attack of the Killer Vegetables!

I think that Lela was amused, if not terribly surprised, when, having been sent to the corner market for bread and yogurt, I came back with bread, yogurt, the world’s largest cabbage, and a sheepish grin along the lines of “He followed me home. Can we keep him?”


Is this, or is this not, the most humongous cabbage you’ve ever seen in your life? You could play regulation basketball with this sucker. And they’re all like this. I vaguely recall a biology teacher attempting to convince small snot-nosed freshmen (including myself) that back umpteen million years ago, the Earth was richer in oxygen and things simply grew bigger: ferns the size of Douglas firs, turtles that could peer through a second-story window. I do vividly remember an illustration of a badger the size of a Ford Focus.

If these cabbages are any indication, monster badgers are just around the corner. Keep your eyes peeled.


This is Lela in the pictures, by the way. She's pretty awesome.

Le Grande Bazaar (or something like that)

When they decided to call it “the Grand Bazaar,” they weren’t kidding. Actually, same goes for when they decided to call it “the Covered Bazaar,” (guidebooks use the term interchangeably), but frankly “covered” has a decidedly less impressive ring to it. Seriously, which one is going to get your attention?

A: “Hey, let’s go to the Covered Bazaar!”
or
B: “Hey, let’s got to the Grand Bazaar!”

Yeah, it’s going to be “B” every time for me, too. Unless it’s really hosing down rain.

I have no idea how extensive the Bazaar really is, mostly because I haven’t thoroughly inspected my guidebook that closely, and for all I know, I missed an entire section. But I can say this: it’s big. Big on the macro scale. And positively labyrinthine, to the extent that the paranoid little voices in your head start whispering furiously about OSHA and firetraps. Or maybe that’s just me.

Incidentally, another set of voices start thinking about how Lara Croft should be able to have a pretty wicked fight/chase scene here. There’s stalls hawking everything from massive nargile contraptions and precious jewels (or so the signs would have it) to daggers and antique pistols (inoperative, one suspects). Come to think of it, this one might be unique to me, too. Huh.

Anyway, the strangest thing is that if you didn’t know the Grand Bazaar was there, you just might miss it. I got off the tram at the correct stop, and stood on the sidewalk, trying to stare in multiple directions at once. Surely one would expect…well, grandeur, or at least signage, for something called the Grand Bazaar.

I looked for a hotel, but didn’t see one (when lost, find a hotel. The concierge are usually more than happy to help. Sometimes they’ll even give you a map). I tried my second most-preferred method, Follow the Obvious Tourists, but was unable to definitively pinpoint anyone as an out-of-towner. I loitered near a juice stand for a few minutes, feeling pretty stupid and wondering what would happen if I asked the guy manning the kebab station “Bazaar nerede?” when I saw a discreet stone arch, nearly camouflaged between the T-shirt stands, money-changing stations, and Prada knockoffs that form around tourist draws the way that atolls form on reefs. I took a peek.

Oh. So this was where all the grandeur was.

The walls of a seemingly endless hallway were lined with jewelry stalls and recessed stores. Salesmen in suits stood in the doorways. I took a deep breath and stepped in.

Here’s the thing about shopping a bazaar: it’s like running a gauntlet. You will not make it through unaccosted. Chuck Norris could put on his best “Don’t Mess With Me” face, adhere it with Gorilla Glue, and play the Walker: Texas Ranger theme for good measure and he would not make it ten yards through the bazaar without smiling offers of conversation and apple tea from salesmen looking to butter a potential customer up. That’s the other thing about a bazaar: all the salespeople want to be your friends. They want to know where you’re from. They want to give you tea. They want to show you this rug, this necklace set, this statue. They’ve never shown anyone else; it’s only for you, mademoiselle, only for you.

Although they probably wouldn’t call Chuck Norris “mademoiselle.” You don’t get to be a merchant in the Grand Bazaar without a decent sense of self-preservation.

Needless to say, it’s exhausting.

Having no set agenda nor sense of direction, I wandered aimlessly for a few hours, dodging boys with tea trays and particularly enthusiastic merchants: “You! Pretty girl, where are you from? Finest silver! You! Madmoiselle? Why do you not speak to me?” I walked in circles more than once, doubling back when a hallway dead-ended or emptied into a surly-looking side street. In many cases, the stalls and shops continued beyond the roof of the bazaar, lining the streets for blocks beyond. Some streets contained only costume shops; some, only leatherworkers. Inside the bazaar, some merchants recognized me as I passed for a third or fourth time. A few waved. One boy, who must have been about my age, grinned and said, “Hello again, wandering lady!”

If only I’d needed an elaborately mosaiced lampshade such as he was hawking, I would have bought one from him right there.

Ultimately, I bought a hair clip and a pair of earrings, but only from merchants who didn’t seem to care; they sat in their stalls reading a newspaper and looked surprised and gratified when I pointed to an item and said “Kaç para?” (How much?). The man I bought the earrings from was kind enough to explain how to get from his stall back to the tram, as well. By that point, I’d been in the bazaar for several hours and was ready to head home – but had no idea at all how to get back to the side I’d entered from.

I admittedly took no pictures while there – didn’t even bring my camera. Nothing says “Pickpocket me! Pickpocket me!” like speaking pidgin Turkish and brandishing a fairly nice camera. Which isn’t to say that I won’t take pictures in there eventually; I’ll just wait until I can get someone with a nicer camera to go with me. This works under the same principle as the hobbit and the dragon parable: you don’t have to outrun the dragon, just the hobbit next to you.

…Hey! HannahSam! Want to come to Turkiye?

In the meantime, the Internet has kindly coughed up these images. They don’t do the Grand Bazaar justice – don’t even come close, actually – but they do give you some idea of the scale.




Yeah. It’s pretty cool.

There is a moral to this story.

ALLOW ME TO PAINT YOU A PICTURE WITH MY IMAGINATION BRUSH.

Supposing you are walking home from the bus stop.
On the sidewalk!
It is roughly 8:00 pm.
There are streetlights.
While you are wearing a dark sweatshirt, you are nonetheless clearly visible because you are by happenchance texting while walking (a skill you have, incidentally, only recently mastered) and your phone glows bright enough to be seen from space.
Suppose you should hear the distant whine of a motorcycle behind you!
And see its approaching headlights coming up from behind.

DO YOU:

1. Despite being roughly ten feet away from the road (this is a wide sidewalk) and despite the fact that said road is completely clear of all other traffic, take a running leap for the nearest ditch on the off chance that the motorcycle is on the sidewalk?
2. Look cautiously behind you to make sure that approaching motorcycle is in fact on the road and not, say, driving on the sidewalk?
3. Keep walking in your merry way, comfortable in your knowledge that the universe is a sane and rational place and there is no earthly reason why the motorcycle would be driving on the sidewalk.

If you picked option 3, I am sorry. You have just perished. Or, in my case, escaped with a minor bruise after getting sideswiped by a handlebar going approximately 3,457 mph (at a conservative estimate) and abruptly acquired gray hair. Option 2 would have been a much better choice, although at the speed that the sucker was going, you'd have been better off with option 1.

Such is the life.