I passed the ¾ year mark here a couple weeks ago, and am thinking that a big part of managing here (and in any new place) is simply knowing what to do and what not to do.
ACNOWLEDGE THE SNEEZES. . .
It is quite necessary here in Turkey to offer a blessing when someone sneezes. The Turkish saying is “çok yaşa,” choke yasha, which means lots of life. Last Tuesday I proctored a 3 ½ hour final exam. The students were quiet for long stretches, sweating over verb forms and straining to understand recorded English passages. But every time somebody broke the silence with an achoo, the others in the room looked up from their papers and murmured, çok yaşa. It was amusing to hear a sneeze break the tension—and the sneezy-sounding çok yaşa was a perfect, droll follow-up.
. . . BUT DO NOT MAKE FULL USE OF THE KLEENEX
Last fall, I signed up to host a neighborhood ladies’ coffee morning. Among my guests was Tish, a woman who has lived in Turkey for 45 years. What a treat to chat with this Agnes Scott graduate from Georgia, who married a Turk in 1965 and moved to Tarsus. She is slim, with steel-colored hair, and I’d have to call her prim. If you met her, you might peg her as a small-town librarian. But what an interesting life she has led.
Not wanting to miss an opportunity for cultural advice, when the conversation lagged, I made it a point to ask Tish if there was anything Americans did here that just drove Turkish people crazy. She and another woman replied immediately: “Never blow your nose.”
Really? I shouldn’t blow my nose? Yes, Tish insisted, Turks find this act exceedingly rude. (Turks would not be happy in India and China, I reflected wryly, where noses are blown without the benefit of tissues.)
Okay. As I went forward, I tried to take note of how Turks handled colds. In December, my new boss was outlining the terms of my employment, and as I listened to her, she dabbed at her nose, wiped it, and even held a tissue across the lower half of her face with both hands while talking, but did not actually blow her nose. < This past week I had my first cold in months. Here was my chance to have a culturally appropriate upper respiratory infection! Busy with exams and group work grading papers, I found myself doing a lot of discreet wiping, dashing to the bathroom over and over again, and popping decongestants. Occasionally, when nobody was in sight, I let rip into a Kleenex. I wonder if I will ever again blow my nose in public without wondering if there is a Turk around! DO NOT DOT THE I When I began Turkish language study a year ago, I learned that Turkish has more vowels than English. Eight, to be exact. There is a regular-looking “i” which makes the eee sound, and there is an undotted “ı” which makes the sound uh. Fine, easy to remember, but I defy you to try, my non-Turkish-speaking friends, to write without dotting your ı’s.
Go ahead—here are some words to try: tatlı (dessert), ayın (month or moon) ılık (warm), takımı (team).
DO KNOW WHAT YOU’RE DOING IF YOU PUT ON A HEADSCARF
A few weeks ago, we had plans to meet another couple for dinner at a seafood restaurant just up the Bosphorus, a 30-minute walk from our apartment. It wasn’t very cold out and with parking options slim-to-nonexistent and an urge to get some exercise, we decided to walk. There was only one problem, however. If I walk alongside a body of water for any length of time, my hair gets frizzy and stands up on end.
What to do? I didn’t want to flatten my “do” with a stocking cap, so I took out a thin black, patterned scarf that I bought downtown White Bear Lake, wrapped it loosely around my hair, and we set out.
“I hate to say this, but you’re getting some strange looks,” Sankar commented when we were about halfway there. It was then that I realized I resembled a “headscarf lady,” one of those controversial, conservative Turkish Muslim women.
DO HUG PEOPLE ON THEIR BIRTHDAYS
It is difficult to pretend something is instinctive when it isn’t.
I had only been on the job two weeks when one of my officemates, a pretty, stylish young woman named Selen, had her 25th birthday. As the work day started, Turkish birthday customs began to become apparent as every female colleague in the vicinity approached, kissed and hugged the birthday girl. I watched as a stream of colleagues came in, one after the other, and offered warm embraces and effusive wishes. Mesmerized, I didn’t realize that I was gradually becoming the only one who hadn’t offered my affection. Then self-consciousness set in and I found it difficult to get up do the deed.
I pondered this all morning, my Scandinavian temperament battling my deep admiration of Middle Eastern warmth. How was I going to resolve the situation? I certainly didn’t want Selen, who had asked me to lunch on my very first day at work, to think I didn’t like her.
At noon, Selen was led away on some pretext, after which a lovely cake appeared in the office and more people filed in. As she re-entered the room in (mock) surprise, the perfect opportunity arose for me to offer that hug. It wasn’t difficult at all, and I prefaced it with a quip that those of us from northern countries aren’t used to hugging. Hope my tardiness didn’t cause any offense.
