You know you’re planning something illicit when you hesitate to tell people about it. I mentioned our trip to only a few friends, and said nothing to others, even when they asked.

We had cancelled it twice.  First in March, when our daughter, Angela, asked us to babysit our toddler grandson, Mattias, during his day care’s spring break. And again, in early May. Finally, as Minnesota announced store openings, and with Angela and Joe needing help as they packed to move from their apartment, we decided to drive to Denver.

Like many others, we’ve been bored and irritable at home. We’ve also spent time thinking of the Common Good and how to be responsible citizens. It’s hard to defend a road trip in the middle of a pandemic. To that, I plead grandparent insanity.

Our plans included a large dose of worry. Would it be possible to socially distance while stopping for gas and bathroom breaks? Was it safe to stay in hotels? And Angela and Joe lived in a tenth floor apartment; how would we avoid being jammed into a crowded elevator? Finally, what if we got into a car accident somewhere along the way? It would be impossible to socially distance if we needed emergency help–although at that point, Covid-19 would probably be a lesser concern.

I managed to plan my way out of most concerns. We’d wear masks at rest stops. We’d ask for first floor rooms at hotels. And we discovered we could simply pick up breakfast items in hotel lobbies and eat them in our rooms.

Setting Off

We left on Thursday, May 14. Our first stop was at a Kwik Trip an hour and a half south of Minneapolis, and I pulled on my cloth mask before entering. I usually try to buy something in exchange for using the restroom, but I noticed that none of the other people inside—at a glance, they appeared to be all males—were wearing masks. Perhaps I’m over-aware of mask politics, but I felt a distinctly negative vibe, like I was holding a “Hillary for President” sign. I hurried out.

I understand that some folks don’t want to appear vulnerable. And pressure from certain leaders and media outlets makes them ornery. Wearing a mask feels like submitting to government rules they consider arbitrary.

Unexpected Hospitality

We continued on to Ames, Iowa, where on last year’s Denver trip, we ate sandwiches in our car outside a coffee shop, and then purchased lattes. That shop, in Ames’ “historic downtown,” was closed, but Google informed us we could get a cup of joe at a chocolate shop on the same block.

What a find!  Chocolaterie Stam is a Victorian fantasy offering a delicious array of filled chocolates and nutty barks. The shop is just 25 years old, but the Stam family has been making chocolate for over hundred years, starting in the Netherlands. We were thrilled to purchase a box of their candy, several pieces featuring the Iowa State University logo. And the young clerk kindly allowed us to eat our bag lunches inside the shop, at one of two widely-spaced tables. We did so gingerly; although healthy, we’d been holed up for so long, we felt we were contaminated.

Spring colors along the way were lovely. Both Iowa and Nebraska were adorned in lacy lime green, and eastern Colorado as well.

Not Boring Anymore

Normally mundane aspects of our trip now seemed interesting. At the Fairfield Inn in Kearney, Nebraska (the town is a popular stopping-off place), we had to phone the front desk from outside double doors and answer questions about our temperatures and quarantine status in order to be admitted to the lobby. Inside, we stood behind a tape line and talked to a masked clerk through a plexiglass shield.

We had asked for a first-floor room and, from the noise in our corridor it seemed everyone else had, too. Thankfully, we only passed one man in the corridor.

Breakfast, the staff had assured us, would be provided, so we didn’t pack cereal and milk in our cooler. It turned out to be a mealy apple, a granola bar, and a stale pastry loaded with frosting.

Mile-High City

In Glendale, Denver, the Residence Inn lobby procedures were about the same as pre-pandemic, with the exception of a masked clerk. He gave us a third-floor room, which raised our eyebrows, but it was a quiet floor, and we were usually the only ones waiting for the elevator. The few times we weren’t, one or the other party kindly agreed to wait for another car. Nobody cleaned our apartment-like room during our five-night stay, but we could exchange towels at the front desk. For breakfast, the hotel offered little boxes of cereal, packaged pastries, and coffee. The best part was the price, down from $190 just months ago, to $110.

We formed a kind of Covid unit with Angela, Joe, and Mattias, who had seen very few people in the last two and a half months. Angela and Joe have been working at home, and Mattias has been with only one other child, whose parents do not leave their house, and a nanny who is single and lives alone.

My biggest concern, elevators in Angela’s building, didn’t turn out to be a problem. We were required to wear masks throughout the building, and nine out of ten times were alone in the elevator. Again, when others were present, they or we, politely offered to wait for the next car.

The overall patience and courtesy we encountered reminded me of the weeks after 9/11, when we all treated each other tenderly.

Mattias is an exuberant 20-month-old, whose language skills are exploding, and who loves trucks and buses. Their apartment looks down on the top of a parking ramp, which, from seven stories up, is like watching an animated movie. Paradise for a vehicle-oriented child!

When Mattias is out and about, he scouts the horizon for unusual vehicles and doesn’t hesitate to point them out. BUS!  DOZER!  BEEP! (pick-up truck)  GA-GUCK! (dump truck). After a few days, I also found myself pointing excitedly–even when Mattias wasn’t with us.

Mattias also loves animals, in particular “raffes” (giraffes), “wow-els” (owls), and walruses (he can actually say this word). He is building a collection of stuffed creatures.

Walks and More Walks

I emailed a friend that, in Denver, we “did no socializing, no restaurants, and no shopping except groceries.” At Safeway, I watched an unmasked guy ahead of me groan as he was turned away.

For entertainment, we walked. A few blocks from their apartment is a park with a rugby field. It is apparently one of the best in the country, and groups of men regularly practice on its artificial turf, using the odd, oblong rugby ball. Mattias went after a ball one afternoon and we laughingly picked it up and threw it back to a player, who introduced himself as from Fiji. He told us he played for an Argentinian group that practices there.

Just after that, a pretty six-year-old girl started skipping alongside Mattias. She told us her name was Tomra, and that she was from Macedonia. The next day at the same park, Mattias spent time chasing another toddler who was there with her father, both from Zacatecas, Mexico. It was one of Mattias’ last days in that neighborhood, and I felt wistful that their new community, more upscale, would likely have fewer immigrants.

Across the street from their new house (they picked up the keys before we arrived) is a park with playground equipment, but the slides and swing sets were wrapped in yellow crime-tape in fear of lingering virus particles. That wasn’t a problem for Mattias, who didn’t quite realize what he was missing. He instead enjoyed walking to a nearby field with huge climbing rocks, scanning grassy areas for butterflies, and picking up interesting stones.

The new house has a family room big enough to accommodate the large Fisher-Price toys–a food truck, a castle, a farm–he has accumulated, and he will have his own bedroom. Oddly, on the windowsill of the landing up to second floor was a tiny metal device that I recognized as a Turkish spice grinder. I’m not sure why it was left behind, but it was the perfect welcome for our Turkey-loving family.

Unexpected Tears

On a trip, one’s regular routine disrupted, allowing new thoughts. I realized that so far, this entire year has been one of unexpected change. In mid-January, my 91-year-old mother had a stroke, which precipitated moving out of her apartment of twenty years and into a nursing home. This wasn’t completely unexpected, but it did come suddenly, drawing us into a flurry of emotion-laden activity that didn’t settle down until mid-March, just in time for shelter-in-place. And how could I have predicted that the country would be convulsed with protests before May ended? The upshot for me is a renewed awareness that anything can happen at any time, and a reluctance to believe that any plans I make are completely firm.

Talking with Angela on our last day, I started to choke up because Mattias is changing fast, and I didn’t know when I’d see him again. Driving to Denver isn’t an easy task, and I don’t know how comfortable I’m going to be with flying. She feels the same way. So unlike last year, when I saw him every two or three months, I don’t know how much older he’ll be when we come face-to-face again.

The Drive Home

It was time for the final part of our Covid road trip. We left Denver early on May 20th, anticipating long and uneventful hours between Denver and Omaha. We planned to eat lunch at Subway, either in Ogallala or North Platte. That chain is fortunate to have an optimal pandemic model: food both easy to take out and easy to eat in a car. We chose North Platte, and found its Subway franchise inside a huge Walmart, where about half the shoppers were wearing masks.

As we waited for our sandwiches, we noticed a sizable eating area in which alternate tables were taped off. Only one couple was seated and Sankar said, “Why don’t we sit down?” It sounded like a good idea and so there it was, our long-anticipated First Post-Covid Restaurant Meal, at a Subway in a Nebraska Walmart.

The Unlikeliest Indian Restaurant

On our drive to Denver, just a half hour out of Kearney, Nebraska, we saw a sign on the north side of the road that read, “Taste of India.” It was 8:30 in the morning and we weren’t up for curries or samosas, but we noted the town, Overton. Now, on our way back, we were considering a cup of coffee when we realized Overton was just ahead. We pulled off and found, a few blocks from Route 80, an establishment called The Jay Brothers, “J” undoubtedly standing for some multi-syllabic Indian last name. It was a modest gas station, convenience store, and Indian cafe. Propped up next to the cash register was a hardcover book about Nebraska opened to a page spread about the Jay Brothers themselves who, the article stated, had arrived from India in the 1990s to take over their father’s gas station. The article lauded this very particular American dream.

We ordered masal chai, hot, milky tea containing ginger and cardamom, and walked out with two delicious drinks, shaking our heads in wonder at the range of the Indian diaspora.

In Omaha we stayed near Old Town in an elegant federal building converted to a Residence Inn. Restaurants there had opened, and the receptionist gave us a list of choices, so we decided against take-out. We chose a southwestern grill called Stokes, and made reservations, although we wouldn’t need them. There were only three other parties in the place, well spread out.

Our waiter was dressed in black, including a mask, and was helpful and prompt, although he didn’t stand six feet away, rather two or three. The food was fine, and the experience felt like a thrilling novelty, but also like something we didn’t need to do again for awhile.

Striped Hills

Conventional wisdom has it that Iowa is flat, but I can tell you that isn’t quite true. Heading east into Iowa from Nebraska, we saw what is surely a spring phenomenon: striped hills. These occur when fallow, brown fields are separated by ridges that have greened up. Kind of like mountain terracing, although more modest. These seemed to be a thing only in western Iowa, and they were lovely.

Long hours in the car again gave me a chance to reflect. Although I’ve felt whiplashed by recent events, Mattias’ life is truly a blur of change. His daycare situation collapsed in March due to the pandemic, taking him away from most of his little friends, and it will likely change again in August. He is moving to a new house, and will soon forget that magical parking ramp vista. It’s anyone’s guess what vehicles or animals will steal his heart next — who would have predicted ga-gucks and wow-els? Yet he marches on each day, encountering nearly everything with delight (we’re all entitled to a tantrum now and then!) Maybe I, too, can start to better appreciate newness.

Another few hundred miles, two more Subway sandwiches in Clear Lake, Iowa, and we were arriving home. Our Covid road trip had ended. Purple and white tulips were in bloom, a flyer attached to our front door promoted a nearby two-for-one pizza special, and the grass needed its first mowing. It felt great to be back.

The post Minneapolis to Denver and Back: How to Take a Covid Road Trip appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Berlin was at a disadvantage. That’s where we were heading after four surprisingly sunny, whirlwind days in London. I feared that the Germany half of our December trip, organized to use soon-to-expire hotel points, would be a disappointment. And I knew that part of the problem was my stereotype of Germans.

In London we ate pappadums and paisam with Sankar’s cousin and family. We strolled along the Thames with old friends, Matthew and Louise, photographing landmarks such as, “the walkie talkie,” “the cheese grater,” and “the London Eye.” At the British Library, we peered at manuscripts ranging from the Magna Carta to Paul McCartney’s jotted Yesterday lyrics.

I thought ahead to Berlin. I’d long perceived German people as stern and humorless. Exacting, and demanding. Waiting for an Agatha Christie play to start on our last evening, I commented to our friends, with only a bit of hyperbole, “I’m afraid I’m going to do something wrong in Germany. I’ll break a rule or something, and people will yell at me.”

“I don’t think so,” Matthew replied

As we carried our suitcases through Paddington Station the next day, I felt the kind of fatigue that indicated a cold was coming on.

My Stereotype of Germans Goes Way Back

I’d spent just one day in Germany over twenty years ago, and had no significant interactions with Germans. But back in the eighties I’d spent a year working for a German boss who was temperamental and disapproving. I’d found German foods—sauerkraut, dumplings, pickles—lacking.

I also have a kind of psychological back story with Germany. I guess every American does. Although the country has done an admirable job of reconciling its 20^th century history, how can it counteract the near-continuous onslaught of Holocaust-related books, films, and television programs? It can’t. I’d been saddened and horrified more times than I could count.  

Thus, my perception of Germans. I had actually been known to proclaim that I had no interest in visiting Germany. It’s not difficult to make that kind of statement at age 64, because there are so many countries to visit and so little time.

One thing I never did, however, was connect my proclamations about Germany with my irritation over the question, “Aren’t you afraid to visit Turkey?” that Sankar and I receive whenever we travel to that country.

So why, then, did Sankar and I choose Berlin over, say, Bruge or Amsterdam? Well, we felt Berlin was a cosmopolitan “world city,” with fascinating Cold War and World War II sights. A place we really should see. We also knew Berlin had a Turkish neighborhood that might evoke the wonderful years we spent in Turkey. And I think a tiny part of me knew that my stereotype of Germans was ridiculous, and that it was time to challenge it.

A Rainy Start

It was drizzling when our plane landed in Berlin. We caught an Uber to our hotel, just three blocks from the Reichstag. The city appeared spread out, almost suburban. The Tiergarten, adjacent to our hotel, looked more like a forest. Aside from the regal Brandenburg Gate, most buildings appeared modern and undistinguished. They reminded me, disappointingly, of downtown Minneapolis. War—and the Soviet emphasis on functionality—had apparently erased most of Berlin’s charm.

A Worldly New Friend

We checked into a comfortable hotel room at the Marriott. There was a coffeemaker on the side table, but no water bottles, a nice nod to the environment. When we visited the lobby for information, the concierge, to our surprise, was a slim, neatly groomed Turk named Oğuzhan. We were so happy to meet someone from Turkey that we greeted him like an old friend.

Oğuzhan told us he had grown up in Germany, his parents Gastarbeiters, guest workers, who arrived over fifty years ago. When we lived in Turkey, I met several offspring of Gastarbeiters. My elegant supervisor, Dilek, fluent in Turkish, German, and English. Several 3M Turkey wives, well-educated and secularly inclined; their mothers had worn the headscarf, but they did not. One, an engineer, worked for a German company that sold chemicals to Iran, which she told us was the makeup capital of the world. “I go there every month.”

Oğuzhan was warm and eager to help, hardly my stereotype of Germans, and I realized with some envy that growing up trilingual would make a person quite cosmopolitan. He smiled when we told him we had, several years ago, spent a night in his ancestral town of Afyonkarahisar.

Oğuzhan gave us a map of a dozen or so Berlin Christmas markets, and we walked to the nearest one, in Gendarmenmarkt Square. Gendarmenmarkt contains the 19^th century Berlin concert hall and the 18^th century French and German churches, all of which, I later read, were restored after the Second World War. In the center of the square stood several dozen holiday shops in white tents with pointed tops. Some had open sides, but many were enclosed by clear plastic, and even heated. Shopping delights beckoned.

Christmas Galore 

Gendarmenmarkt stores were bursting with colorful ornaments, wooden candle carousels of all sizes, leather wallets and purses, hats, gloves, scarves, and hard candies in long, pointed cellophane bags. Close to a dozen establishments offered refreshments: glühwein, various bratwursts including “currywurst,” which sounded slightly alarming, and dishes involving noodles, potatoes, and pork. I was curious, but not quite ready to dig in.

History Lessons

Over the next two days, we walked through the extensive and up-to-date German History Museum. We learned that Germany prior to unification under “Iron Chancellor” Otto von Bismarck, wasn’t much more than a disparate collection of provinces, each with its own ruler. After an hour and a half, which brought us up to the twentieth century, we sat down for tea in its formal, but somehow cozy café.

The next day we visited the Pergamon museum, located on an island in the Spree river. It was a dazzling (but shameful) collection of artifacts from other lands, including the gates of Babylon and the market gate from Miletus, a Roman site in western Turkey.

Nearby was “Pergamon Museum. The Panorama.” This new site featured a three-story, multimedia diorama that put viewers in the middle of the ancient Roman city. With dramatic background music and evocative lighting, we watched Romans emerge from their homes at sunrise, worship at temples, shop at agoras, and gather to view performances in the evening.  It was a don’t-miss experience. 

On our last day, we toured the Berlin Wall Memorial, a sober, informative remembrance strung out along a quarter mile stretch of former Wall.

Tall, sometimes slightly plump, but rarely fat, Germans dressed in earth tones, wearing sensible shoes and warm-looking jackets. They appeared casual, confident, and unpretentious. I felt the comfort of looking similar in appearance, something I’ve missed in our travels to Latin America, southern Europe, and Asia, where Sankar has blended in.

It was odd, but as soon as I arrived in Germany, I got so caught up observing and interacting that my stereotype, alive for years, seemed to exit my mind. It was like when you imagine a place, but find that when you get there, the old image becomes difficult to recall. New impressions were quickly writing over my old ones.

Patriotic Immigrants Were Not my Stereotype of Germans

We climbed into an Uber early one day with, “Good morning,” only to hear an emphatic “Guten tag,” from the driver. This was the one and only reprimand we received in Berlin, and it was given by a Turk. A recent arrival, he told us in Turkish that he liked Berlin, particularly its manageable size and ease of getting around, and jotted down for us the name of a popular restaurant in Kreutzberg, the Turkish neighborhood.

A-a-a-choo!

The rain kept falling and my cold kept getting worse. Sankar and I both felt tired, and with no social engagements, we found ourselves dozing off in mid-evening and sleeping late in the morning. That felt good, but we were wasting precious sightseeing time.

We had forgotten to bring decongestants, so we stopped at a pharmacy. The woman at the counter was the pharmacist herself, and to my surprise, I had her attention for more than five minutes. “How much congestion do you have?” “Do you have a cough?” “Would you describe it as a lot, a little or not at all?” “Do you want to take something dissolved in water, or would you prefer a pill?” Again, not my stereotype of Germans. The Grippostad she sold me for less than $10 made me feel a bit better, though I longed for Sudafed.

A Splurge

The night after our Gendarmenmarkt visit, I woke several times, thinking about a small black purse I’d seen there. The leather on one of its sides had been worked into a lovely flower shape. We went back to the market and ended up buying it. The vendor was also the artist, one Karin Scholz, from Dusseldorf, her card read, perhaps fifty years of age. After we finished the transaction, to my astonishment, she came out of her booth and gave me a long, tight hug.

Seeking a light lunch, we sat down at a picnic table in a market café warmed by heating lamps, and ordered noodle soup. We were surprised to find ourselves beside four travelers from Guatemala, and enjoyed a lengthy Spanish conversation.

We returned to the market another day, this time for chocolates and candle holders. After making our purchases, we sat down in another café, whose menu highlighted goose products, and ordered potato soup. It came full of various herbs and weiner slices, delicious, but not overly fatty. It was only 2:00 pm, but daylight was fading. We lingered in the warmth of the cafe, feeling a glow of companionship with the other patrons.

Unexpected Kindness

The Marriott charged thirty Euros for breakfast, so each morning we headed to a coffee shop across the street from our hotel, whose counter displayed a tantalizing array of pastries. I can say that German croissants are every bit as good as French ones. On our second morning, with no hint of their availability. Sankar asked if they had eggs. I was a little surprised he’d asked (but it didn’t occur to me to wonder that he—or we—would get yelled at). The young clerk admitted that they did have eggs. In just a few minutes a plump, beaming Fraulein emerged from the back kitchen and placed in front of him a generous plate of scrambled eggs topped by herbs and accompanied by a green salad. 

It was pouring the afternoon of the weekly market in Kreutzberg so, sadly, we gave up on visiting the Turkish neighborhood. Late that afternoon, the sky still dark, we were resting in our hotel room. We had 5:30 Reichstag reservations, made online back home, which had generated official-looking confirming paperwork. But we couldn’t motivate ourselves to put on our rain gear and venture out.

We didn’t even want to leave our hotel, so for dinner we decided to splurge at our hotel’s “American-style Steakhouse.” The menu was limited and expensive, and the waiters a bit snooty, but I was able to order barbecued pork ribs (I think pork is on every menu at every meal in Germany) and Sankar a ribeye. After our food was served, we were surprised by a visit from another smiling Fraulein, whose job seemed to be to make her way around the restaurant asking every diner how they liked their food. She was delighted when we told her we were pleased.

Debriefing

Our Berlin guidebook opens with the phrase, “Berlin is a city of leafy boulevards.” It goes on to say that, “Berliners love to hang out in parks and along riverbanks, as if enjoying a continuous open-air party.” Clearly, the city is at its best in warmer weather, and I don’t really recommend it in the winter. For Christmas markets, we might have chosen a smaller, more picturesque German city or town, although we probably would have experienced rain there as well.

Back home, my cold lingering and combining with jet lag, I slowly completed my Christmas shopping and house decorating. I didn’t download my photos for a couple of weeks, nor did I reflect on my travels. But then a friend asked, “How was Berlin?” and my quick answer, “Fine. The people were really nice, friendly and helpful,” made me realize that my perceptions had changed.

Immersion—even one as brief and lackluster as our four rainy, half-sick days—had produced positive emotions—gratefulness, warmth, feelings of connection and inclusion. And these emotions had replaced my stereotype!

Everything, it seems, boils down to emotions. And now I began to understand “Aren’t you afraid to go to Turkey?”  It’s a stand-in for emotions surrounding decades of sad and horrifying news from the Middle East. But it is also changeable.

Over our three years in Turkey, we hosted 26 visitors. Some hesitated to make the trip. But as they left, they all had the same comment. “Wow! What a great place!”

For additional reading about Berlin, go to: https://www.fodors.com/world/europe/germany

For more on unexpected kindness, go to: https://suesturkishadventures.com/unexpected-kindness/

For more on stereotypes, go to: https://suesturkishadventures.com/perceptions-and-illusions/

The post Is My Stereotype of Germans Fair? appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

I like to get some background on my students, and so, on the first day I handed out a brief questionnaire. It asked how long they had studied English and how many years of education they’d received, both in their country and here in the U.S.

My Somali students hesitated on the years of education question. Instead of writing anything, Halima, with huge, expressive eyes and a big smile, told me, “Well, my brother taught me the Somali alphabet.”

“Okay,” I replied. “And what else? How about school?”

“No.”

“No school?”

“None.”

Ayan, my youngest student, nodded at this and wrote a zero down on her paper. Fatima did the same.

I collected the questionnaires in a funk, wondering how I was going to teach students who were so different from me.

Minnesotans have expressed negative feelings toward Somalis. Some years ago, it was reported that several Somali taxi drivers complained about Minnesotans returning from vacation with bottles of liquor; they didn’t wish to transport alcohol in their cabs. This caused an uproar. A small number of Minnesota Somali youths have returned or tried to return to Somalia to rejoin the war there, in violation of U.S. laws. Some people find the hijab annoying. These negatives are counterbalanced somewhat by news that several Minnesota Somalis have become community and state leaders.

Later in the class period, we were going over comparative words like “better,” “smarter,” “stronger,” etc. The words “nice” and “nicer” came up, and then the phrase, “Minnesota Nice.”

“Do you know what that means?” I asked. They didn’t. I explained that it refers to how Minnesotans usually present a calm, pleasant demeanor, but might be hiding negative sentiments. And that Minnesotans tend not to go out of their way to make new friendships. Both are generalizations.

Halima raised her hand. “Teacher, we are supposed to get to know our neighbors, but my neighbors close their doors and I don’t see them. So I don’t know them at all.”

“Are your neighbors Somali?” I asked. I was picturing all of Minnesota’s 20,000 plus Somalis living together in the same apartment complexes.

“No,” she replied. “There are only two Somali families in my building. We want to know the people living near us,” she went on. “Because if they’re in trouble, we have to help. If they don’t have enough money, we have to offer it to them.”

Ayan interrupted, “Our religion says we have to do this.” The others murmured their agreement. Clearly this issue was bothering them.

“Well,” I said, “if you see someone in your building and they look sad, you could say, ‘How are you doing?’ or ‘Are you okay?’ That would be good.”

My students nodded, but my answer didn’t satisfy them. They weren’t talking about visual clues. They were completely unfamiliar with the people next door to them and had no idea if problems existed. “In Somalia, everyone knows their neighbors,” Fatima told me. “We all help each other.”

I observed these same kinds of generous impulses during my years in Yemen and Turkey. And also the openness. Here I was, a brand new teacher, and my students were already asking me for help with a problem. Help, I realized, in dealing with “my” people.

“I can’t just go and knock on my neighbor’s door,” Halima continued. “They might not want to meet me.”

“Yeah,” I agreed, trying to think on my feet. It occurred to me that perhaps new State Representative, Ilhan Omer, and Minneapolis Council member, Abdi Warsame, are also trying to help their neighbors, but are doing it in a more formal, indirect Minnesota way. But what about my students?

“I know. What if you made some sambusas [little fried meat and vegetable pies], maybe for a holiday, and brought some of them to your neighbors. Would that help?”

Halima thought for a moment and then nodded.

“You know, we Americans are really hungry,” I quipped. But really, I felt touched. My new students are amazing! How sad that hijabs and headlines are so much more visible than hospitality.

The post This is Islam appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Turkey had given Sankar and me an unexpected gift. Living there, we had uncovered a strong mutual interest in history, something that had lain dormant throughout our marriage. After visiting historic sites in nearly all parts of the country, in late summer of 2012, we were heading out to see something very much in the present.

The war in Syria was in its eighteenth month. What had begun with high hopes as part of the 2011 Arab Spring, had turned into a savage struggle. For sixteen months, with no resolution in sight, Syrians had been fleeing the violence, crossing into neighboring Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. At this point, Turkey had opened three refugee camps along the Syrian border and was planning for  seven more.

The Turkish government had contracted 3M to design and install an automated system to help the refugees move in and out of camps and to provide them access to modest resources. There was one in place now, at Turkey’s largest camp near Kilis, alongside the Syrian border. The project team was planning an evaluation visit, and Sankar, who was responsible for government business, asked me if I‘d like to come along. I jumped at the chance; it was the closest I was going to get to a conflict that had the world’s attention.

On a Friday morning in August, I took a forty-minute flight with Bahar, a 3M engineer, from Istanbul to Gaziantep. There she and I met up with Sankar; systems expert Fatih Bey; and Sean Bai, originally from China, an executive for 3M’s Cogent subsidiary in California, which had designed the system. We drove a half hour south from Gaziantep to Kilis, where we stopped for coffee and tost (grilled sandwiches).

I knew Turks were concerned about the huge influx of foreigners and the growing amount of resources being spent on them. Still, I didn’t expect to hear a team member voice the “welfare queen” complaint, “I would like to be given a free house to live in and money so that I wouldn’t have to work.”

From Kilis, it was only a few kilometers to the camp. Syria lay to its south: rows of green plantings the height of corn, and a dry-looking, distant mountain. No fighting was evident; at that time much of northern Syria was in rebel hands, and ISIS had not yet appeared on the scene.

Built for 20,000 people in a large field, the camp looked more like a tidy, high-security trailer court than the tattered, pungent place I’d imagined. It was surrounded by sturdy layers of green, wire-topped fencing. Alongside a thirty-foot high metal arch that spanned the road, a cinder block administration building greeted visitors. Military guards waved our van in after Fatih presented identification. Several refugees, slim, with dark hair and sun-darkened skin, and dressed in T shirts, baseball caps and jeans, were filing through a turnstile embedded in the fence. They looked no different from Turks, but I felt a vast, almost unfathomable chasm separating my privilege with their desperation. I recalled my yearlong confusion after moving to Turkey—and these Arabic speakers would have the added disadvantage of a new script.

3M had installed fingerprint readers on the upright posts of the metal turnstiles. These identified each person entering or leaving the camp. Why this identification? It turned out that many refugees wished to take jobs outside the camp during the day because of an agricultural labor shortage in the area. Turkey, concerned that the camps didn’t become conduits for terrorists, needed to verify that the same people returned each evening. The country had a simmering conflict with its Kurdish minority, and several weeks before, a bomb had gone off in Gaziantep, killing nine people.

Some refugees needed only temporary shelter, and an id system could also accommodate that. A recent Zaman newspaper article had stated that at camps in Jordan, which lacked identification systems, residents complained of not being allowed to leave, even though some had relatives in that country willing to care for them.

Although the camps housed the refugees for free and gave them basic foodstuffs, inhabitants also needed personal and household incidentals. So Turkey provided each refugee—man, woman, and child—with a smart card loaded weekly with twenty Turkish Lira, about $13.00. The fingerprint scanner and the smart card system were linked to the same database. This cash, multiplied by a growing number of refugees, was surely a boon to the sleepy local economy.

The team’s main goal for this visit was to assess the fingerprint system. We watched as people used it. A woman entered the administration building and stood waiting to have her fingerprints recorded. I noticed tears rolling down her cheeks. A young couple, both with startling green eyes, walked in to register their baby. I was pleased I could come up with the Arabic question, “Is it a boy or a girl? “Walad, a boy,” the husband replied, with a wan smile. I tried to imagine their panicked, cumbersome journey and the anguished family likely left behind.

The fingerprint readers sat in the hot sun all day and tended to overheat, resulting in malfunction. Bahar and an on-site technical person set examined the devices to see if some kind of case could be fitted over then, or whether they could be moved to a shadier place. Sean and Fatih went into an air-conditioned back room to look at the server while Sankar and I waited.

East of the admin building were dozens of neat rows of pale gray, oblong fiberglass dwellings. These were the refugees’ homes: new-looking shipping containers retro-fitted into houses with electricity, running water, toilets, and kitchens. We walked out onto the grid of streets formed by rows of containers. The temperature wasn’t particularly hot, but the fierce sun and lack of shade were harsh. I was struck by the complete absence of any litter or garbage. Order in public spaces is a major priority in Turkey (sometimes we foreigners poked fun at this official Kontrol) so it was not unlike what we normally experienced. But it was impressive given that the camp had been hastily constructed and held increasing numbers of traumatized people, and I began to view the orderliness as a balm. Crossing into Turkey was indeed crossing to safety and I loved Turkey for its sturdy substantiality.

Each container was about twenty-five feet long by ten feet wide, with two narrow windows on each long side, but none on the ends. They looked hot, but we were told that they had strong ventilation systems, and that some families had installed air conditioning units. Not all refugees were penniless.

On chain link fencing behind some rows of homes, clean, colorful clothing of all sizes was spread out to dry. To create shady patios, many families had stretched patterned quilts and coverlets between their roofs and back fences—or in some cases, just fence poles—that separated each block of homes. This homey touch helped individualize the dwellings and somehow the printed fabric reminded me of Eastern Europe, not the sands of Arabia.

The refugee camp had an appointed mayor, a middle-aged Turk from the town of Kilis. We gathered in his office, in another small cinderblock building, for formalities. Feeling out of place, I sat in the background, thinking about the overheated readers, and trying desultorily to understand the man’s words before Fatih translated them. We also met the camp superintendent, a woman from central Turkey who was introduced as a refugee expert.

The Turks we were meeting spoke both Turkish and Arabic. Since the 1923 birth of the Republic, the country had been strict about teaching Turkish only as a first language in an attempt to solidify national identity. The Turks I knew in Istanbul responded with grimaces to my early, well-intentioned comments that a particular Turkish word was the same in Arabic. So why the dual languages here? It turns out Turkey’s border with French-controlled Syria hadn’t firmed up until the late 1930s, so many Turks in this region had parents and grandparents who spoke Arabic.

We peeked into the clean, empty hospital and dental clinic, both made of fiberglass shells covered with stretched canvas. We walked into a three-story cinderblock school building (elementary, middle and lycee,) and talked with two male teachers, themselves refugees. The minaret of a brand new mosque, featuring a decorative blue balcony, emerged from behind a block of homes.

We stopped at the bustling market, the size of a large American convenience store. It had a sign in Turkish and then, in Arabic script, the word, subermarket. A small pickup truck full of bags of potatoes and peppers was being unloaded. Inside were several Coke and Pepsi cases, a frozen foods case, piles of watermelon, green beans, grapes, and apples, and shelves with sandals, children’s clothing, shampoo, and household cleaning products.

The people walking the aisles, mostly slender women dressed in long robes with headscarfs, looked grim, their movements slow and hesitant. We watched as they used their smart cards at several cash registers.

Near the school building , groups of camp inhabitants, mostly women and children, were out walking. Adults appeared impassive, kids energetic and curious and in excellent health, although surely any sick or wounded kids wouldn’t have been walking around for us to see. Even in the midst of crisis, Islamic dignity ruled: clothing was neat and clean. No rags, no inappropriate skin. The weeping woman at the admin building was the only openly emotional person I observed, people’s anguish was nearly as hidden as women’s hair.

As we walked, Sean told us that the Cogent manager for the project, an American, had been slated for the visit to Kilis. But that gentleman had refused to consider a trip to Turkey, declaring it far too dangerous, so Sean, his boss, had made the trip. Back home on visits, we were often asked the “aren’t you scared” question, and had tried, often with little success, to explain that living in Istanbul was no cause for fear. We had to admit, however, that the phrase “Syrian refugee camp” could legitimately strike a nerve. But as we looked around at the flat, empty terrain and the guards posted at nearly every corner, we rolled our eyes.

It was pure joy to see young boys, eight, ten, twelve years old having a good time. As classes had not started yet, groups of Huck Finns ran around the camp at will, hopping up on ledges, improvising games of tag, spying on groups of girls, and kicking battered soccer balls down the straight avenues Despite the tragedies that had uprooted their families, these pre-teens, too young to work in the pistachio groves, but old enough to run unsupervised, were in a safe environment that had just enough nooks and crannies to be interesting. Their energy and exhilaration were a great reminder of the resilience of youth.

We were seeing the Kilis camp at a point in which Turkish planning was ahead of Syrian tragedy. Would the camp turn into an overcrowded, raucous mess as the number of refugees in Turkey ballooned from 25,000 to (as I write this in 2016) over two million in twenty plus camps, and as long years of war more thoroughly decimated families? I looked online and was pleasantly surprised to see that much cleanliness and organization remain. Refugees live in the same containers, but the units appear to have been moved closer together so that back patios no longer exist. Residents instead sit on front stoops made of single cinderblocks and, at the edges of the camp, scores of informal vendors sell bags of nuts and sweets, and household incidentals displayed on wooden pallets.

The trip to the Kilis camp would be my last visit to southeastern Turkey, with its mash-up of cultures and civilizations. It was a fitting end to the journey Sankar and I had been on these past few years. I was trying to better appreciate the work he did and resent less the effect his travels had on me. We had been able to see important work: while the camps were a political representation of Turkish hospitality, his company’s automated system allowed Turkey to manage this hospitality.

In the end, I wasn’t sure which had been most interesting, the camp itself or the chance to observe a problem-solving team. I like puzzling over the big picture, in this case, moving key Syrian and foreign players around in my mind to try and resolve the crisis. But that thinking can easily spiral toward futility. On this visit, I saw how satisfying it was to cross over to the more mundane, to focus on a small, controllable part of a larger situation. It was a reminder that a seemingly faceless organization—workaday and patient—can apply its expertise to make a difference. When I thought of the problems Sankar was helping solve in Turkey, I felt proud.

The post From Syria to Safety appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

We are spending three days in southeastern Turkey, gliding from the Roman era back to pre-history and then forward to the Biblical period of Abraham. The occasion: another American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT) tour. Our itinerary: the World Heritage site of Nemrut Daği with its larger-than-life sculptures; the Neolithic excavation of Göbekli Tepe; and the town of Şanliurfa, birthplace of the prophet Abraham.

ARIT, that fusty-sounding club I signed up for at the international women’s meeting a year before, was turning out to be a real winner. Every two or three weeks the group offered a trip to an interesting, off-the-beaten-track site, as well as access to an interesting group of Turks and expatriates.

I had toured Istanbul’s Seventh Hill with ARIT one Sunday while Sankar was out of town. Fascinated by all that I saw, my dismay at spending a weekend alone had vanished. That was the first time Turkey had dazzled me out of my mundane problems, but it wouldn’t be the last.

Sankar and I both attended the next ARIT event, “Ottoman Tombstones,” standing in drizzle high above the Bosphorus looking at graves dating back a hundred and fifty years. We learned that Turkish graves employ both head and foot stones, and that the Ottomans sculpted turbans on male tombs and floral reliefs on those of women.

Another ARIT trip took us to what would later become the Istanbul Naval Museum. There we gazed at an eye-popping assortment of “caiques,” narrow, decorative wooden boats that Turkey’s sultans used for Bosphorus excursions and ceremonies. Their slender prows intricately carved, these fairy-tale crafts were up to forty meters long, but only two meters wide. As many as two dozen rowers powered the boats while the sultan and his retinue lounged in cabins of ivory, tortoiseshell, and mother of pearl.

I had long been skeptical of group tours, thinking them either for the timid or for those who couldn’t be bothered to do their own planning. But ARIT was introducing us to parts of Turkey we’d never heard of. And in some cases, it was giving us access to places like the Naval Museum, which wouldn’t open to the public for several years. Another reason we enjoyed touring with a group was that, after over a year in Turkey, our social life was still rudimentary.

Sankar and I had gone out to dinner a few times with my friend, Annika, and her husband, whom we both liked. But the evenings were always a bit negative, as they were not enjoying life in Turkey.

Felicia and I saw each other every month when we rode the bus to our book group. But her husband, Andy, an English teacher at Robert College, had an array of smart, interesting colleagues, and they were often busy with that group.

Another potential friend was Mia Preston. A friendly Texan about my age, she had moved to Turkey from Dubai with her partner, David, an oilman. David was always traveling to Iraq and other hot spots, and had lots of insights (presciently in 2011: “Yemen is coming apart at the seams.”). We’d had dinner together several times, but they maintained an apartment in Dubai and were often away.

Thus we stood eagerly one Saturday morning with the ARIT group at Sabiha Gökçen, Istanbul’s Asia-side international airport. After a short flight, we landed at the sparkling little airport in Şanliurfa, a small city not far from the heavily guarded border that separated Turkey from Syria, six months into civil war. We had glimpsed Şanliurfa, on a day trip from Gaziantep a year before with Gökhan and Burcu,

Named Edessa by Alexander the Great, Şanliurfa has been a part of recorded history since the 4^th century BCE. The city was known as Ur of the Chaldees and then Urfa. To honor its resistance to the French after Turkey’s 1920s War of Independence, Urfa was allowed to attach şanli, meaning glorious, to its name. Despite the military prefix, the town’s history is actually peaceful. In addition to Abraham, the prophet Job is also believed to have been born in Şanliurfa.

We boarded a small tour bus, taking a seat in front so we’d be sure to catch everything our guide had to say. As we set out, she introduced herself: Çiğdem (the word means crocus) Maner, a pretty German-trained doctor of archaeology.

Through the bus windows, we peered at the vast, open landscape of southeastern Turkey: dry grassland interspersed with barren patches of soil. Brown mountains reclined in the distance. The ground was pale, but where crop remnants had been burned, it was the color of chocolate.

Çiğdem explained that we were on the land between the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers. She told us that in Greek, the word “between” is meso, and the word for “rivers” is potamia. Thus our location: Mesopotamia.

Mesopotamia. Cradle of civilization. The word held mystery and romance in its very syllables: Me so po TAY mia! A place of DRA ma!

Çiğdem commented on the barrenness around us, telling us that the ancient Romans and another group, the Commagenes (the name means “cluster of race or offspring” in Greek) had cut down Mesopotamian forests for charcoal and timber, and had overgrazed their flocks. The result had been severe erosion that, she told us, extended south and east into Syria and Iraq. When rivers silted up with eroded soil, floods became more likely. According to Alan Grainger of Leeds University, a human-caused flood occurred in Ur in about 2500 B.C. Eroded soil, or  silt, also caused rivers to become higher than the land around them. Water then overflowed onto fields and when it evaporated, it left mineral salts in poisonous concentrations. This was recorded on Mesopotamian cuneiform tablets.

Grainger writes, “It is no coincidence that many ruins of great temples and palaces are today found amid sandy wastelands. And as I looked at the terrain, I recalled the words of New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who believes that environmental distress and degradation are the cause of many world conflicts.

The eye searches for exceptions. I noticed that whenever there was a small farm or a tiny pool of water, the land was a bright, luxuriant green. Otherwise, the tan of the grasses washed to butter yellow in the sun and, in rare patches of shade, darkened to orange-brown. Scrubby brown vegetation covered the mountains, rubbed away in places to reveal white rock. I had to look twice to convince myself it wasn’t snow.

From time to time, spindly, brittle-looking trees came into view, planted in diagonal rows. Their trunks seemed barely able to support their crowns, and the ground between them was a bright coppery brown. These were pistachio trees. I wondered how they got the water they surely needed. We passed fields of low green plants covered with white tufts: cotton, and olive groves were also roadside companions. A flock of shaggy black and brown goats trotted across the highway, kicking up dust and urged on by an elderly keeper wielding a stick.

And then like a mirage, a bright blue, startlingly translucent body of water. It looked like a medium-size lake, but its far edge extended into a valley and then disappeared. It was the Euphrates, river of life, site of Eden. This river begins, Cigdem explained, in the mountains of southeastern Turkey and makes its way through Syria and Iraq before emptying into the Persian Gulf. We stopped talking and stared.

The contrast between liquid and near desert was stark. It was difficult to imagine this land as it had been two millennia ago, shady and fragrant, lush and damp.

Back in the bus a few minutes later, we pulled off the road at a sign that proclaimed, “Neşet’in Yeri [Neşet’s Place] A Restaurant by Lake.”  The proprietor and his family greeted us and we sat down at tables along the water’s edge. Then they began bringing out plates of food on enormous metal trays: charcoal-grilled chicken and lamb surrounded by curly-leafed lettuce, parsley, and tomato slices. Plates of flat bread. And sliced onions roasted in shallow clay pots, their tops blackened from the fire.

Now we had a chance to talk with our tourmates. John Chandler, headmaster of Robert College, and his wife Tania. Elaine and Peter Graham, South African-British retirees, both carrying impressive cameras. Hugh Pope, a handsome, young-looking writer—later I’d discover he’d published several histories of Turkey—along with his wife and three young daughters. Laura Sizemore, a congenial thirty-something New York lawyer who visited Istanbul on business every month. How, I wondered, had she found her way to ARIT? Laura had been sitting behind us on the bus, reading the previous Sunday’s New York Times and kindly passing sections up to us. Alison Stendahl, a sixty-something blond from Edina, Minnesota, who had lived in Istanbul for over a quarter century. Neil Korostoff, a professor of landscape architecture from Penn State, who had just arrived on a Fulbright scholarship. Linda Caldwell, a vivacious embassy retiree who spoke fluent Turkish. Linda had already recommended two books on Turkey.

Experience and language skills are coins of the expatriate realm, and many of these new acquaintances had lived for years in Turkey. Sankar and I were, by contrast, mere infants, and our faces shone with admiration. Sankar was likely to display his enthusiasm by calling out, “Hey, Sue, come over here and meet . . . !”

Busy now with jobs, Sankar and I had passed the stage of guilt and resentment that plagues new expatriates. But sometimes Sankar’s enthusiasm overflowed into hyperbole. When he was asked what he did and proclaimed, “I have all of the Middle East and Central East Europe, as well as South Africa,” I cringed, fearing his boasts would put off potential friends.

Now, as we sat and ate, Sankar was busy talking with people on his left side. To my right, Peter was holding forth in his British accent, and Neil was joining in, his responses academic. I half-listened, taking in the dazzling river and the simple, splendid food.

Finished with lunch we headed for Mount Nemrut to see statuary and graves built by the Commagenes. The name Nemrut refers to King Nimrod, grandson of Noah, a proud, vengeful man mentioned in the holy books of all three monotheistic religions, whose rule dated back to about 2,100 BCE. In about 883 BCE, the Commagenes appeared from the east, fighting off the Persians and Alexander the Great. Finally, in 109 BCE, they became independent under King Mithridates, ruling an area the size of Switzerland.

Mithridates’ son, king Antiochus I, ruled for 33 years and traced his ancestry to both Alexander the Great and the Persian Seleucids. To commemorate this, he chose Nemrut, the highest mountain in the area, and built a mountaintop terrace, leaving space for his own grave near its peak. Then, on three sides of the mountain, he erected enormous, seated throne-like statues weighing up to nine tons each, out of limestone. One side depicted his Greek heritage, another his Persian ancestry, and a third is indeterminate. He also added animals—lion and eagle statuary—and inscriptions.

The bus took us halfway up the mountain, and then we set out walking on a gravel path. The air was dry and comfortably cool as we headed toward the Eastern terrace, made of shale. There are six heads on this terrace, including Apollo Mithras; Zeus Oromasdes; Antiochus I himself; Heracles-Ares, and two others, assumed to be lesser Greek gods. Each head is about eight feet tall and rests right-side-up amidst rubble. The carving is both simple and skillful, the faces attractive and strong-featured. Atop most heads are conical hats, some of which have lost their points, and the men have curly beards. Our guidebook referred to these huge stone heads as “Turkey’s answer to Easter Island,” but the simple, clean lines reminded me of Scandinavian sculpture.

I wondered what Antiochus had put his people through to build these statues. What kind of arrogance drove him to order their construction? But thanks to him, two millennia later, evidence of his plucky tribe was still here for all to see. I couldn’t help but admire that.

After viewing the sculpted heads, we climbed up to view the row of six bodies they had originally belonged to. There they sat, frozen obediently in place near the barren summit, their heads, cowed and tumbled, below. An ironic result of the passage of time—or perhaps the work of iconoclasts.

As we wandered the ruins, the sun began to set, breaking up in pinkish-yellow rays that bathed the statuary. The air began to take on a chill and both the sky and the creases of the nearby mountains turned a deep, almost navy blue. The ground itself became the color of cocoa.

Another day on the mountain, just like thousands before it. We stood in the sunset for some moments, surveying Mesopotamia, and the Euphrates, a shining ribbon in the east. The lengthening shadows and chill were bringing our time on the mountain to an end, and I felt a pang of regret for the larger passage of time. How I wished I were twenty years younger so that I could develop some mastery in this part of the world. Or that I had another lifetime that I could devote to studying Turkey and Turkish, and figuring out all that had happened on this land. Was some of Antiochus’ lust for immortality in the mountain air?

The sun finally dipped below the horizon and we walked down the chocolate hill toward the warm, waiting bus.

The next morning in the hotel, we sat with John and Tanya Chandler for a Turkish breakfast of tomato slices, bread, and honey. John, a regal, silver-haired man, had led Robert College for seven years, and before that had directed highly-regarded Koç high school. In only a few months, he would retire and leave Turkey to set up house on the coast of Maine. As we talked, Tanya grimaced in anticipation of the transition ahead, but I guessed the move—particularly the shedding of professional identity—would be harder on John.

After breakfast we drove to Göbekli Tepe, an archaeological site dating from the Neolithic Era (10,000 – 2,000 BCE). Göbek means belly in Turkish, and tepe means hill. Göbekli Tepe was discovered by German archaeologist, Klaus Schmidt, in 1994, when he noticed a hill with a bulge in it. I guessed that the bulge might have been more noticeable because of deforestation, but how, I wondered, does a foreigner go from noticing an unusual shape to getting the permits and workers to start taking it apart?

Over the years, archaeologists had removed layers of debris from Göbekli Tepe, revealing twenty circular arrangements of T-shaped stone pillars. Carved of limestone, each pillar weighed about ten tons, and many featured reliefs of dangerous animals: lions, foxes, snakes, scorpions and vultures.

Göbekli Tepe pre-dates Stonehenge and the invention of writing by about six thousand years. It contains no evidence of human occupation—no dwellings or cooking debris. Schmidt and later archaeologists surmised that Göbekli Tepe was a kind of Stone-Age place of worship: a holy place or “cathedral on a hill.” If so, this would make it the world’s oldest known religious sanctuary.

Çiğdem told us that, prior to uncovering Göbekli Tepe, archaeologists believed that humans constructed religious sites only after they had settled down into farming communities. They believed that mere hunter-gatherers neither had the time nor the skills to produce monumental complexes. Göbekli Tepe changed that. Now archaeologists believe that efforts to build holy monoliths—organizing and dividing labor, and obtaining resources for spiritual purposes—pre-dated and laid the groundwork for the development of more complex societies.

Wooden boardwalks surrounded the site, and ladders allowed workmen to move between the levels. Schmidt having retired, the site leader was now a handsome young German with wild curly hair, wearing a leather vest and leggings. He stopped and explained to Çiğdem in German what was currently going on. We stood in the midday sun as she translated for us, trying to imagine the sanctuary full of Neolithic worshippers. Alas, it was easier to imagine the dashing scientist engaged in Indiana Jones-type exploits.

Then we headed back to Şanliurfa, where we’d started out.  ARIT tours often involved visits to provincial archaeology museums, and we now paid our respects at the small Sanliurfa Archeology and Mosaic Museum, standing politely and listening to a stiff speech by the museum director before wandering through rooms of artifacts. After that we were given some free time.

Glad to be on our own, Sankar and I headed toward the El Ruha hotel, a lovely former palace and Old City landmark that we’d noticed on our previous visit. The complex comprised a series of golden tan stone buildings with flat rooftops and arched windows, portions of upper stories cantilevering out above the ones below. We noticed Alison sitting on an outdoor terrace with a cup of coffee, and joined her.

Allison had come to Istanbul in the 1980s to teach, and now worked as a dean at the Üsküdar School for Girls. Sankar and I were happy to sit down with her; we loved talking to experienced expats and sharing our own impressions. Now we quickly found ourselves talking about Turkish pride, a topic that had been bothering us. The issue was that in social situations with Turks, Sankar and I often hung our heads over our own country’s mistakes, but never witnessed any corresponding Turkish humility. Instead we always felt compelled to issue streams of compliments about the Republic. It was as if we needed to provide loyal reassurances as evidence of our friendship.

“Why can’t Turks be more balanced about their history?” I asked Allison. “Why can’t they talk about good and bad things in their past?” The Turks we knew considered themselves liberal and detested the Ottoman period, but refused to acknowledge what had happened to the Armenians under those same Ottomans.

Alison had a quick answer. “It’s too young a republic,” she told us. “It’s just too young. Give them a hundred years and it’ll be different.”

True: the Turkish Republic was only seventy five years old, less than a third of my republic’s lifespan. Ataturk’s struggle against four nations out to divide Turkey was still in living memory. It was a good answer.

Leaving Alison, Sankar and I walked through the dusty streets to the same covered bazaar we had visited with Gökhan and Burcu a year before. The market was maze-like, its only illumination seeming to come from the brightly colored and often sequined fabrics for sale. After a number of twists and turns, we reached a brighter central courtyard and sat down among locals, mostly men. Most were wearing Arab-style head coverings and traditional baggy pants rarely seen in Istanbul. Crowded and noisy, the atmosphere was evocative of the Arabian Nights, but we had been here before and knew that, even as odd-looking tourists—or perhaps because we were odd-looking tourists—we were safe.

Saying no to several waiters offering tea, after a few minutes we got up and headed back toward El Ruha. The sidewalks were choked with street vendors, and one young man was standing at a wooden cart piled high with what looked like small pink almonds. His sign read “Fistik,” and we realized we were looking at freshly-picked pistachios, the pink a rubbery membrane over hard shells. Here was the rose-colored harvest of those dry, spindly-looking trees. Entranced by their appearance we bought a bag.

We sat down with our purchase alongside Şanliurfa’s biggest attraction, the Sacred Pool of Abraham. Abraham is the most important Old Testament figure for Muslims, who revere his unwavering faith and the obedience that led him to agree to sacrifice his son to God. The commemorative pool, built in the 1500s and about twice the size of an Olympic swimming pool, is surrounded by graceful arched columns topped with decorative crenellations, and full of koi fish that are considered sacred.

On the bus, Çiğdem had told us the pool’s legend. It had started as a spring of water that arose to protect Abraham when King Nimrod threw him into a fire. The spring’s fishy denizens had held Abraham up, saving him from being burned.

Rows of men squatted beside the pool’s edge, their arms stretched over their knees. Local families strolled along the water’s edge munching on snacks in small paper bags. When someone tossed a sesame roll into the water, it writhed and boiled with hungry fish. The afternoon sun gilded the arches and shimmered off the water, a scene of golden peacefulness.

A Turkish gentleman of perhaps fifty-five was sitting near us with his family, and he turned to us, stuck out his hand, and introduced himself in Turkish as Aram. He had a strong, handsome face, receding gray hair, and a thin moustache. He asked where we were from. Turks often thought Sankar might be Turkish, but my presence confused them.

With our reply, “America,” Aram smiled broadly and, after asking us whether we had any children and whether we liked Turkey, he exclaimed, “I want to invite you to my house to stay and have dinner!”

On his other side sat the female members of his family, an older woman, perhaps his mother or his wife’s mother; a younger woman—maybe his wife, though she looked twenty years younger; and a little girl who looked to be about five. Although they hadn’t been consulted (were they now thinking, oh my god, what will we feed these people?) they beamed at us.

Though Turks are indeed friendly, the invitation was reminiscent of the more extravagant hospitality I’d experienced in Yemen. I recalled being told that in Turkey hospitality increased as one moved east—into more religiously conservative territory. What would Aram’s house look like? What kind of dishes would we be served? But alas, we couldn’t linger; our bus was leaving within the hour.

After declining as politely as we could, we asked if we could take a picture of the family. Aram agreed, and his wife pulled out a cell phone to take ours as well. “Gel, gel,”—“come”—he called to his little daughter to get her to stand still, and we repeated, “gel, gel,” imprinting that important word in our minds. Then we said goodbye.

Back at the Sanliurfa airport, my thoughts lingered on the land called Mesopotamia. The sites we visited–Gobekli Tepe, Nemrut Dagi, the Abraham pool–had been majestic, but temporal; all could be dated to particular eras. What had instead seemed timeless was Mesopotamian patriarchy. Men had always called the shots in this part of the world. Men were responsible for the aching grandeur of Mesopotamia. But they were also responsible for its destruction.

SOURCES

1. Human Interaction with the Environment from Ancient Times to Early Romantic: Nature and the Stereotype of the Oriental, paper delivered at the National Endowment for the Humanities Institute on the Indian Ocean, July, 2002, by Josephine McQuail of Tennessee Technological University.

2. Collapse: Why Do Civilizations Fail? Annenberg Learner

The post Men of Mesopotamia appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

This is an excerpt from my upcoming memoir. . .

The wings of the plane tilted, and with it, my stomach. I stared out the window and saw a jigsaw puzzle of land and water. Turkey has about 5,000 miles of coastline; I had located the Aegean, Mediterranean and Black Sea on a map back home. Now, a bird’s eye view confirmed how water-bound Istanbul itself was.

The sea cut a north-south path through the city. From the plane it looked like a shiny thread. The water massed further north (pale blue mist) and south of the city (a vast sheet of sunlit water). This was the maritime terrain the Eastern Roman Empire had inhabited seventeen centuries ago. These were the waterways whose shores the Crusaders had plundered and, a few centuries later, the Ottomans had captured, bringing an end to Byzantium.

The plane took a sharp southerly turn and now my view was entirely of water. We dropped and landed at Ataturk International Airport. It was January, 2010, and we had arrived for our company-sponsored look-see visit. As we taxied I saw planes from the neighborhood: Emirates Airline, El Saudia, Aeroflot.

Disembarking, Sankar and I trudged through a huge, ultra-modern terminal, picked up our bags and headed to the Hertz concession to meet our company-hired driver. I waited next to a flower shop while Sankar filled out Hertz forms, and memorized the word for flower. Çiçek. My first word of Turkish.

We followed the coast toward the city, driving on a smoother, wider boulevard than I had imagined Istanbul having. The sea beside us was as gray as the wintry sky. A three-story remnant of crenellated masonry layered in tan and reddish brown appeared on our right between the road and the sea. Then another piece. These, Sankar said, were 1600-hundred-year-old ruins of the walls that had surrounded Constantinople, making it impregnable.

Taller, more intact walls with similar striped layers appeared on our left. Some had tiny business establishments—one looked to be a fish restaurant—built into their lower layers. The Old City, ancient-looking, crooked dwellings and occasional low minaret, peeked from behind these walls. Then we turned away from the sea, curving around what I would learn was the Golden Horn, the point at which the Bosphorus and the Sea of Marmara meet, forming a sheltered harbor and a narrow, curving peninsula on which Constantinople was built. We crossed a bridge and craned our necks to see dark-clad men holding fishing poles over the edge. “The Galata Bridge,” Sankar commented. I had read about that.

Continuing alongside what now looked like a river, after a mile or so, the driver turned into a U-shaped courtyard.

The company was putting us up at the Four Seasons Hotel Bosphorus. We had arrived too early to check in, and sat down in the restaurant to wait for our rooms. Sankar ordered a sandwich and I ordered a bowl of soup from an English menu. I received a rich pumpkin-colored lentil concoction flecked with herbs. It was so savory that I asked the waitress to write down its name in the little notebook I had bought to record Turkish words. The first entry: Ezogelin çorbasa, bride’s soup.

After we ate, the day manager, a striking man with black hair and eyes, and pale skin, led us down a lush, carpeted corridor past cases that held bejeweled Ottoman caftans and embroidered Oriental rugs. The king-sized bed in our junior suite was heaped with white pillows and comforters, an antique-looking desk at its foot. A sitting area featured silver trays of nuts and fruits, bottles of wine and sparkling water tucked alongside. We didn’t stay in hotels this plush back home, and I was both astonished and delighted at these enticements.

If we looked at an acute angle out the window, we could see the cold, gray waters of what I now realized was the Bosphorus, separating the city’s European and Asian sides. We were on the European side: I dubbed it the east coast of Europe.

Our First Glimpse

In the late afternoon, we ventured out into the wintry twilight to explore our surroundings. The area, despite being adjacent to the Bosphorus and thus presumably high-rent, was undistinguished, mostly small shops—a copy center, a café selling fresh-squeezed juices, a simit bakery (simits are sesame encrusted, bagel-like rings Turks eat as a morning snack)—that catered to Bahçeşehir (bah chey sha HEAR), a commuter university.

We walked tentatively down the main road on which we’d come, amidst drab-looking concrete buildings darkened with precipitation. An iskelesi, or port, lay a few blocks further south, and we headed there and watched the flow of dark-clothed, serious-looking people striding across the Sea Road to board ferries to Asia.

When I can’t speak their language, people appear inscrutable. It’s like looking at a book written in hieroglyphics. I knew that as soon as I learned some Turkish, I would feel kinship with these folks—and I knew that would remain; I still felt kinship with Arabs because I once spoke their language. But for now the Turks were alien.

Next to the iskelesi was an expansive cement square with a huge iron statue of a man named Barbaros. According to the plaque, he was a pirate turned mayor of Istanbul. There were also several tea shops and a couple of restaurants catering to people in transit.

How central and familiar this location would become to me. I would have weekly Turkish conversations with a beloved teacher in one of the restaurants, accept an invitation for tea at one of the little çay shops, and routinely meet friends at the Barbaros statue. I’d catch the spanking clean city bus heading north along the Sea Road after Turkish class each week, and every time I passed the Four Seasons Bosphorus, I’d think about how timid we’d been “back then,” how complicated and mysterious the city had seemed.

As we headed back to the hotel, it began to snow.

We walked down to breakfast the next morning dizzy with jet lag. It was a lavish buffet attended by a half dozen impeccably dressed staff members who greeted us with slight bows and faint, proper smiles. It held several Western cereals—flakes and chocolate puffs—and an array of pastries, fresh fruits, and omelets-to-order. Nearby were what I surmised were Turkish morning favorites: peeled tomato slices, cucumbers, olives and various white and yellow cheeses. A giant honeycomb stood upright, from which one could scrape fresh honey, a round table held a dizzying selection of jams and jellies, and a huge, cut glass bowl held by far the creamiest, most delicious yogurt I’d ever tasted.

The diners surrounding us were eclectic: European businessmen, several older, distinguished-looking couples speaking what sounded like German, a table of white-clad Saudis, some young men from India, who got up after eating and went out onto the terrace to throw clots of newly fallen snow at each other. With my damp hair and modest sweater and slacks, I felt underdressed; I supposed one should spruce up in a hotel like this.

Under the Facade

By our second day, I felt self-possessed enough to smile at the breakfast attendants, and I commented to one, a stocky young man with large features, how much I was enjoying the yogurt. He surprised me with a wide grin and, as I turned back toward the food, he leaned toward me and whispered conspiratorially, “I can show you special Turkish way to eat yogurt.”

I watched, half-filled plate in hand, as he hurried off toward the kitchen. After a few moments he emerged, a small bowl of yogurt in one hand and a rough, earthenware pitcher in the other. He set them down at our table and I peered into the pitcher. He told me it was molasses. “In my village,” he said, “this our breakfast. It help your blood.” Yes, molasses is rich in iron.

He drizzled the molasses generously over the yogurt, and then gestured to me to stir. The mixture turned an unappealing reddish brown, and I hesitated, but he was waiting for me to try it. The taste was surprising: rich and tangy, and as I savored a spoonful, he stood, beaming.

I beamed back. If this was any indication of Turkish friendliness, I would be in good hands.

The company had hired a guide to take us to the Old City, and we set off alongside Elif, a pretty, impossibly petite divorcee with flowing light brown curls and elegant knee-high leather boots. Rattling off information and occasionally stopping to smoke a cigarette, she hustled us through the 6^th century Hagia Sophia, the 400-year-old Blue Mosque, and the 500-year-old Grand Bazaar.

The Hagia Sophia. What were my first impressions of this architectural wonder? Thousand-year-old, glittering mosaic panels adorned the entrance to this church-turned-mosque-turned-museum. Inside, its cavernous sanctuary glowed in grays and golds, dwarfing even large groups of visitors. It is said that the Statue of Liberty can fit upright under its roof.

Painted high above the sanctuary, were frescos of angels and the Virgin Mary. All around the main dome on huge medallions, however, were the calligraphed Arabic names of the Muslim prophets: the Hagia Sofia is one of few buildings in the world that honors both Christianity and Islam.

When Elif mentioned that the structure we were standing in dated from the late five hundreds, I tried to imagine what a typical 6^th century dwelling was like, and what awe this church must have inspired. Later I read the words of Prince Vladimir of Kiev upon visiting the Hagia Sophia in the tenth century:

We knew not whether we were on heaven or earth. For on earth there is no such splendor or beauty, and we are at a loss how to describe it. We only know that God dwells there among men, and their service is fairer than the ceremonies of other nations. For we cannot forget that beauty.

Vladimir immediately converted to Christianity, and soon his fellow Russians did as well.

Next to the Hagia Sofia along the Divan Yolu (Divine Road) was a structure nearly as large as the Blue Mosque. It was like no other functioning place of worship I’d ever seen. None of the dark crevasses and sharp, pointed surfaces of cathedrals of similar age, its walls were adorned with tens of thousands of pale blue, geometrically patterned tiles, trimmed with lacy stonework, and supported by a series of voluptuous sunlit arches. Its central dome and four half-domes let in ample light despite the overcast sky. Radiating ease and optimism, it made me feel like I was inside a cloud on a sunny day.

Elif also took us briefly through Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar, a 500-year old warren of ancient guilds covered over into a hectic, patchwork shopping mall. There, a maze of stores overflowed with glossy silk scarves and rugs, silver and gold jewelry, and gaudy ceramic plates and bowls. She took us into the silver bedesten, the oldest, innermost arcade of the bazaar, where we stopped to have tea served in tiny, tulip-shaped glasses, and then turned a corner and entered a tiny, cluttered shop called Nick’s Calligraphy. There a stocky, balding older man with a gentle expression on his face spent his days writing words of wisdom—in various languages: Arabic, Hebrew, English—on leaves. His work, adorning the walls of his shop (along with paeans about him from various world newspapers) was, he told us, an effort to promote world peace.

The day had been overwhelming, and it was hard for me to grasp the significance of what I’d seen. I was finding it difficult to fit the new information into any existing mental schema. What events were occurring, what was going on during those centuries in other, more familiar parts of the world? Had I given it a bit more thought, I would have realized that the Grand Bazaar was built just a few decades before Columbus reached the New World. The Blue Mosque was constructed as The Mayflower arrived in New England. And the Hagia Sophia? As it was being built, the Mayan kingdom of Central America was at its peak, the Middle Ages were beginning, and the legendary King Arthur was fighting his last battle. But for now, the new facts remained unmoored in my mind. It would take many visits for me to start fitting them into a coherent whole.

The next day, we embarked on a whirlwind of lunches and dinners. We spent a morning at the company’s offices, in an ultra-modern complex just over one of the Bosphorus bridges and into Asia, meeting various managers, and the head secretary, Belma, who had grown up in the U.K. We had a nice evening with Managing Director Karim and his wife, Lamia, both from Algeria, that led to an invitation from Lamia to me for a day at an elegant mall north of the city. That complex featured a luscious, eye-popping, indoor fresh fruit and vegetable market. What a contrast to home where mall food offerings centered around Cinnabon and Panda Express.

We had a meal at the home of marketing manager Ebru, located in a new high-rise adjoining an urban mall built to resemble a canyon (Google “Kanyon Istanbul” for interesting pictures). We ate dinner with several young company managers and their wives.

One inevitably makes gaffes when dealing with new people and cultures. Many, perhaps most, people brush these off as inadvertent. I would need to fight my tendency to dwell on my mistakes, letting them sour my mood. At Ebru’s apartment, I used the term “river” to refer to the Bosphorus. Ebru instantly snapped, “Don’t call it the river. It is the sea.”

At another dinner, this one on the glassed-in rooftop restaurant of the Galata Hotel, adjoining the fabulous seven-hundred-year-old Galata Tower, I oh-so-casually mentioned my familiarity with the writing of Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s 2006 Nobel Laureate. Burcu, the pretty blonde wife of company business manager, Gökhan, had a curt response: “Try another author. He’s not for us.” I was taken aback, but any unhappiness Burcu might have felt didn’t seem to linger. Later I learned that Pamuk had commented publicly about the 1915 Turkish massacre of Armenians, something for which most Turks do not believe Turkey was responsible.

I could have mulled over these mistakes, chastising myself, but I didn’t have to. Something about the immediate rebukes (uncommon where I come from) followed by brisk, cheerful changes of topic, seemed to indicate I was already forgiven, and obviated the need for self-admonishment.

The myriad of social events was exhilarating at first, but then it grew tiring. After a week, the weather was still dark and wet, and Sankar and I were exhausted and enervated. “Do you think I could go home now?” I asked Sankar. “These meetings are more relevant to you than to me. Nobody will mind if I’m not here.”

“No,” he replied. “Absolutely not. People will feel bad; the Turks will think you don’t like them or their country.” I argued back, but then realized he was right.

In Costa Rica I had felt completely insignificant, with little purpose in my life. Mired in these sentiments, I had failed to recognize that I indeed had a role to fulfill, that of the wife of the Managing Director. Although I had no intention of giving a poor impression, no desire to hurt Costa Rican feelings, I later realized that my lackluster demeanor had been noted. Thus an unhappy, self-centered person can be unconsciously inconsiderate—or worse.

Now, in the privacy of our room, after indulging in a bit more self-pity, I settled down for a nap, and then decided to rally.

A Room with a View

We had to find a place to live. “If you don’t get an apartment with a view of the Bosporus, you’re doing something wrong,” Sankar’s boss had told him before we left. So we set out with a view in mind.

In tiny Costa Rica, our rent had been taken out of the company’s profits from that country. I had felt uncomfortable renting an expensive house, and so we had selected something relatively modest. Now, Sankar’s salary would be paid out of profits from the entire region—fifteen or so subsidiaries—so our expenditure wouldn’t burden any one country. “Let Saudi Arabia pay for our apartment,” I announced. I was perfectly willing to rent something top-of-the-line, partly to compensate for the upheaval of moving us to Asia Minor, and partly because after working—and traveling—for the company for almost thirty years, I felt we deserved it.

Off we went early one morning with company realtor Yuksel, a handsome, shaved-head man in his thirties. We had to pick our way down icy steps to reach the first place, a large, oddly configured house on the slope of a hill. I pictured myself inside it, nobody around. Too lonely.

Our subsequent stops were at apartment compounds in suburban neighborhoods, groups of tall, modern buildings arranged around walking paths or tennis courts. Apparently there were many of these in newer sections of the city. The hallways leading to the units were invariably darkened and hushed, and in the dimly lit lower level of one building, I watched a foreign woman swimming languid laps alone in a pool. I shuddered, picturing myself doing the same thing, day after day. Too isolating.

Just after noon we saw a place that looked more promising. It was a bright, airy apartment located in a three-story building at the crest of a hill about ten miles north of the Old City.

The apartment’s walls were spanking white and clean. There was an ample living-dining room, a narrow, gleaming, kitchen, and three bedrooms. The thought of hosting visitors wasn’t far from our minds, and the two bedrooms and bath located in a wing off the kitchen seemed a cozy, private space for our anticipated guests.

The unit itself had two levels and both had large, east-facing windows that overlooked the Bosphorus. We walked upstairs and out onto the balcony off the master bedroom. It had snowed the night before and the trees were frosted with white, the water far below gray under leaden skies. All around us, lights twinkled even though it was just after noon. The effect was both familiar and bewitching. We looked down on a point of land that jutted into the water. From where we were standing, it looked like we were at the prow of a ship. I later read that this was the Bosphorus’ narrowest point.

I could live here, I thought. Sankar agreed. We told Yuksel to go ahead with a rental agreement. Our address would be Bebek, which meant “baby;” the area, only a few years before had been a fishing village, just a baby compared to Istanbul. For the next five months until I moved to Turkey, I’d have this apartment as a touchstone, a cheery place to mentally decorate and subliminally move into. Something to look forward to.

We had spent ten days in Istanbul’s least inspiring weather. But the visit had done its job. Our luxurious accommodations and the steady beat of kindness and hospitality had kept me optimistic. We had seen a bit of the city, and I had also caught a glimpse of myself as Trailing Spouse 2.0. It helped that I had set out with—and mostly maintained—a positive outlook. I was pleased with myself.

I still didn’t know how I would spend my time in Istanbul, but I knew there would be other women like me looking for friends. Turkey had long been a place for wanderers seeking their fortunes. I guessed a path for me would open up as well.

The Turks I’d met had been surprisingly assertive, yet eager to abandon formality for personal connection. My impression was of dark sumptuousness—the dark mainly because of the soggy weather; I’d learn that in other seasons, Istanbul basked under sunny skies—and of fortunes being made here even while my own country was mired in recession.

As I packed my suitcase to leave, I tucked into it gifts I’d purchased for friends at the Grand Bazaar: bars of olive oil soap, tiny patterned ceramic bowls, Turkish hand towels. They were cheap representations of a place I couldn’t begin to fathom, but they were a start. I couldn’t wait to tell my friends all that I was discovering.

The post An Istanbul Introduction: What to Look Out For, Surprises, and Where to Go First appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

White Bear’s Black Sea restaurant will be the second link in a local chain run by Turks Çiğdem (pronounced CHEE dem) and Tolga Ata. The original Black Sea restaurant is located on Snelling Avenue across from Hamline University.That restaurant has been in business for 12 years.

< Cigdem and Tolga met while she was studying for an MBA at Hamline. Theirs was a Minnesota romance, and they have stayed here as newlyweds, serving Turkish food to Minnesotans. Cigdem is from Ankara, Turkey’s capital city, located in the center of the country. Tolga is from Trabzon, located on the Black Sea. Most of the tea Turks love to drink is grown near Trabzon because the area is cool, damp and hilly: superb for tea plantations. Their small, spanking clean St. Paul restaurant bustles with Hamline students and faculty at noon, and in the evening people from the neighborhood and expatriates from Turkey and the Middle East dine there. The place is rated highly on Yelp. The White Bear Lake Black Sea restaurant will serve customers from nearby small businesses as well as interested residents. Turkish food is different from Arabic food, closer to Greek and other Mediterranean food. Very healthy and flavorful. One specialty is soup, and Black Sea has a superb red lentil soup called mercimek (pronounced MARE ja mek). Every Turkish family makes this soup a bit differently, but suffice to say that in addition to lentils, it contains onions, bulgur, tomato paste, pepper paste, butter, and spices.

Black Sea has a Turkish salad with olives and white cheese on the menu, and plates of lamb and chicken doner either stuffed into pita bread or served with bread on the side.  Overall, Black Sea restaurant offers 7 appetizers, 4 salads, 10 kebab choices, 4 veggie platters, 6 sandwiches, two soups, two burgers, and two desserts. There are a number of vegetarian choices.

 

I asked Çiğdem what she thinks of Minnesota. She says the long winters are difficult, and right now she misses Turkish green plums, called eriks, which are in season. But she likes Minnesotans and feels that the Twin Cities are pleasant and peaceful.

Stop in and eat at Black Sea in St. Paul or—starting in mid-June—in White Bear Lake.

737 North Snelling Avenue, St. Paul
1581 East County Road E, White Bear Lake (just east of Highway 61)

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]]> https://suesturkishadventures.com/turkish-food-comes-to-an-american-town/feed/ 6 https://suesturkishadventures.com/a-surprise-gift/ https://suesturkishadventures.com/a-surprise-gift/#comments Tue, 02 Apr 2013 18:01:00 +0000 https://suesturkishadventures.com/a-surprise-gift/ Three years ago today I was visiting Istanbul, where Sankar was already hard at work. We decided to take a day trip to one of the Prince’s Islands, a popular destination in the Sea of Marmara that features well-preserved Victorian homes. As we sat on the ferry waiting to leave, a family arrived and sat down next to us: mother, father and three daughters. The mother and two older daughters…

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Three years ago today I was visiting Istanbul, where Sankar was already hard at work. We decided to take a day trip to one of the Prince’s Islands, a popular destination in the Sea of Marmara that features well-preserved Victorian homes. As we sat on the ferry waiting to leave, a family arrived and sat down next to us: mother, father and three daughters. The mother and two older daughters wore scarfs on their heads, not an uncommon sight in Istanbul. But when we began talking we realized they were not Turks. The family was from Iran.

They introduced themselves in excellent English. The father was a hand surgeon, the mother a scholar of world religions. Their oldest daughter was about to graduate from the University of Tehran in electrical engineering. The middle daughter was studying medicine, and the youngest was a squirmy, artistic eight-year-old.

We had a three-hour boat trip ahead of us, and we ended up chatting with them the entire trip. They offered us sweet, dark Iranian dates and we discussed the recent movie, Avatar; U.S. graduate schools (of great interest to the engineering student); 3M surgical products the father used even though sanctions prohibited their import; and the country’s recent, failed Green movement.

It was exhilarating to talk with “forbidden” people. Kind of like encountering citizens of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But I had to stop and compose myself several times so I didn’t start to weep. I was aware of what my country had done to Iran. The U.S.-sponsored coup that removed its democratically-elected leader in 1953. Our support of the repressive Shah who kept our oil prices low, but sparked the widespread outrage that led to fundamentalist rule. Our assistance to Saddam Hussein during the 8-year Iran-Iraq war. What did these friendly, exquisitely polite folks think of us and our country? 

It was a fascinating day, more because of our congenial new friends than our quiet island destination. 

Three years ago. We were poised at the beginning of our time in Asia Minor, with dozens of interesting experiences ahead of us.  Now our years in Turkey have ended. We are back in Minnesota, and the gray snow and long winter months have done their work. We have learned to be “normal” again. We have learned to talk infrequently about our experiences. Minnesotans are good at prodding us back into place.

But I still think of that day, my 55th birthday. I wish I was back on that boat. Back at precisely the moment when five strangers sat down beside us.

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]]> https://suesturkishadventures.com/a-surprise-gift/feed/ 11 https://suesturkishadventures.com/re-set/ https://suesturkishadventures.com/re-set/#comments Fri, 10 Feb 2012 08:03:00 +0000 https://suesturkishadventures.com/re-set/ A brief trip home after completing a year of teaching. I needed to see Angela in Minnesota and finally visit Greg, who has been in New York for a year and a half.                                     Greg and Angela wearing Christmas sweaters bought in Istanbul I was not very social. To make time for this…

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]]> A brief trip home after completing a year of teaching. I needed to see Angela in Minnesota and finally visit Greg, who has been in New York for a year and a half.

                                    Greg and Angela wearing Christmas sweaters bought in Istanbul

I was not very social. To make time for this visit, I had declined to sign another teaching contract, and I needed to come to terms with the transition this had initiated. I missed my dear colleagues, but not  the hectic schedule, and wondered what might occupy me next. My life is a series of restarts.

The weather, though overcast, was mild, and our house was in fine shape. No ice-encrusted roof, no invading mice (despite the absence of our cats).  “We are having such an easy winter,” everybody exulted. A scant few inches of snow covered the ground, and roads were clear of ice. I watched a deer munch the brown grass outside my living room window one afternoon; perhaps he too wondered what season we were in.

                                                          Not my perennials, buddy!

I no longer feel the need to stock up on American treats, but I bought a few — corn muffin mix, which I think Turkish friends will enjoy, and Buttermilk Ranch dressing for Sankar (nobody does “ranch” like Americans).

I appear to have acquired some Turkish characteristics. First, I was cold whenever I was out of doors, no matter how balmy the temperature.  It wasn’t that I believe (as Turks do) that a cold breeze can cause illness. The air simply felt uncomfortable, and I turned down several chances to go for walks.

The second night I was home, Angela and I ate at a Tibet-Nepali-Indian restaurant in northeast Minneapolis. Our waitress was friendly and the food was good and reasonably priced. But I left feeling somehow bereft. It didn’t take me long to figure out the reason: nobody had been at the door to smile and wish me goodbye. This is standard at every Turkish restaurant, just like when you leave a friend’s house and your host bids you farewell. I chuckled at this new expectation, but caught myself seeking this ritual again and again.

Seeing Greg in his new habitat was a treat. He has built a life for himself: a full-time job, an apartment with three congenial friends, a blog that is growing in readership. His neighborhood, Murray Hill, just east of the Empire State Building, is full of low brownstones and quiet commercial establishments that give it a village-y feel. A section with Indian restaurants is dubbed Curry Hill.

Greg and I rode to the City Hall subway stop in lower Manhattan to see his workplace. His agency is the Office of Contract Services, and deals with all the vendors that do business with the city, from grass cutting and snowplowing to carving inscriptions onto memorials.

Pride

Afterward, we wandered through the grounds of nearby St. Paul’s chapel, built in 1766, with a yard full of wafer-thin, sinking gravestones dating from the early 1700s. Across the street is Ground Zero. Several in-progress buildings are visible, but construction equipment blocks the view of the planned park. We stopped at Takahachi,
a Japanese bakery (two words I seldom think of together) for delicious sweet rolls, and shopped for apartment necessities at Bed, Bath and Beyond.

St. Paul’s Church, and the not-yet-completed One World Trade Center

Soon the trip ended. I flew back on Turkish Airlines, reputedly Europe’s best carrier. Thanks to all of Sankar’s miles, I was upgraded to business class, and settled delightedly into a seat that reclined completely flat!

The food was excellent, particularly the seafood and vegetable mezes (appetizers) served family style. Turkish airlines has a chef on every flight. Ours was one of many Turkish men I’ve seen whose strong facial features could appear menacing, but instead translate as tender and caring.

Back in Istanbul we’ve had three days of snow with more to come. Cars can’t climb hills, and pedestrians slip on icy inclines, so I am mostly homebound. The winter won’t last long, though, and soon I’ll be out exploring and enjoying to the fullest this most hospitable place. Happy to be back!

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