At dinner that evening, we talked about Turkey, my sister- and brother-in-law shaking their heads in wonder—and envy. They wished that India, in the same time period, could have made this much progress.

After living somewhere for awhile—or visiting a place multiple times—you start to develop opinions. I’ve been to India eight times, most recently this past month, and Turkey was my home from 2010 to 2013. Here, in an attempt to cross-pollinate, I present some comparisons and contrasts. Caveat: terrorism currently affects both countries, Turkey more so at this moment. That topic—and an evaluation of top leadership in both countries—is beyond the scope of this essay. So, please try to disengage from recent perceptions as depicted in the media.

Turkey, which emerged in the late 1940s from military dictatorship, strikes visitors as an orderly place. Turks enjoy smooth roads, clean air, and firm law enforcement. Few bars on windows indicate that the country feels fairly secure from petty crime. Turks revere the idea of government and laud the person who pays the most taxes each year.

India, with a democratic tradition also dating to the 1940s, appears chaotic. Garbage lies in the streets. Cities seem unplanned. The air in cities like Delhi is foul. Indians seem to expect little from their government. My husband long ago told me that his middle-class family does not vote. Why? Because their votes are swamped by the vast, poverty-stricken majority.

Turkey was never colonized. Indeed as Ottomans, Turks were themselves colonizers for centuries. India was colonized, primarily by the British, for over three centuries. Both countries, in throwing off their pasts, went through population exchanges. Turkey in 1923 expelling its citizens of Greek origin, and India in 1947, when Pakistan was created. Apprentices of the great Turkish architect, Mimar Sinan, helped design the Taj Mahal.

Nearly all of Turkey’s citizens are Muslims, and its Kurdish minority looks and worships just like the Turkish majority. By contrast, all religions reside on the Indian subcontinent: Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Sikkism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism. You can be on the steps of a Hindu temple and hear the Muslim ezan loud and clear. It is surely easier to govern, easier to get citizens to pull together, in a homogenous country.

Turkey is most impressive in that it accomplished so very much in the middle years of the twentieth century. While India has also made progress, what impresses me most about that country is the creativity and brainpower of the people it sends to the U.S. Surely no other immigrant group in the U.S. has been so dazzlingly successful.

Two countries with much to admire: India for its brilliant human exports and Turkey for its successful, up-by-the-bootstraps century.

I would rather live in Turkey than in India. But I do think that homogenous countries are at a disadvantage in today’s world. There is simply a dearth of different ideas, and citizens are not called on to be flexible and creative. Turkey should loosen up a little in order for the full flower of its people’s creativity to blossom. Now that you have mastered control, Turkey, start learning to embrace complexity and diversity. Open yourself to diversity, to messiness, and even to a little dirt. It will be good for your soul.

People from heterogenous countries are wizards of adaptability. That trait helps them as they go out into the world and that, I believe, is the secret of the Indian sauce. Nice work, Indians, but do try lift up those who work for your public sector. Without good government, life can be nightmarish.

The post Some Thoughts on India and Turkey appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

In the final months of our Turkish posting, I welcomed the arrival of a new attribute: competence. Competence, which I’d been so lacking only two short years before, which I had longed for and studied for and pressed people to try and achieve. Now it seemed within my grasp. A great deal of pride could be attached to figuring out a foreign city. And that pride was heightened in vast, complex Istanbul.

My newfound know-how brought back memories. In my last months in Yemen, I’d known Sana’a’s dusty, unpaved roads so well that my boss asked me to drive a new colleague around to look at rental units. In Costa Rica, shortly before we left, I had driven Angela all over San José, on roads that had previously confused me, to make sure she didn’t miss any end-of-the-school-year parties.

In Istanbul, my savvy didn’t manifest itself in expert driving; I had only used our car for Saturday and Sunday morning grocery runs. But I had successfully used buses, trams, boats, and the metro. I particularly loved riding Turkish buses. Unlike in the U.S., where buses are often ridden by those at the margins of society, in Turkey, it was a solid middle class that rode, quiet and contemplative.

Just like in Yemen and Costa Rica, as our tour in Turkey began to end, I was increasingly out and about, visiting people and places, trying to squeeze everything I could out of our remaining time.

One Saturday morning, Sankar away on a trip, I got up and bid farewell to two houseguests. I then changed the sheets and drove to the grocery store to stock up for two new guests who were arriving the next day.

In the afternoon, I set off to meet Joan, the adult daughter of a friend from home. She and her husband had just arrived in Istanbul for a visit, and my friend had asked me to give them some travel tips. I walked down to the Bosphorus, took a twenty-minute bus ride to Kabataş, and then caught the tram to Sultanahmet. On the tram I met a British woman who was traveling in Turkey by herself. We chatted, got off together, and walked through Sultanahmet. I then picked Joan and her husband up at their hotel, and we walked to a nearby restaurant with an enchanting view of the Hagia Sophia.

We talked about the sites they planned to visit and made a date to tour the Grand Bazaar later in the week, when my incoming guests would be out of town.

After this, I headed, via tram and funicular, to Istiklal Avenue. Istanbul’s historic “Tunel” funicular lets ascending passengers off on a sloped surface, and as I got off, I felt dizzy, as if I was stepping off a boat. I walked a few blocks north on Istiklal to a meyhane, a traditional Turkish tavern, where the American Women of Istanbul group had reserved a table. Sitting down among friends, I nibbled some traditional mezzes—slices of white cheese and smoked eggplant dip.

The head of the consulate, Scott, and his wife, Jan, neighbors and fellow ARIT travelers, sat down across from me. At that point I realized I was too tired to make conversation. It was out of character, and even a social faux pas to sit without contributing, but all I could do was try and silently process the hectic day. Thankfully, Scott and Jan were also leaving early, and I got an official (driver plus security detail) ride home with them. The next morning, refreshed, I got up and welcomed new visitors.

My progress with Turkish had seemed to stall during the year I taught, because of a dearth of study time. But I had heard quite a bit of Turkish around me in the office, and that had apparently been positive. Now, when I went out with Linda, I was often able to follow her fluent words. A complete sentence or two of Turkish would come through to me as clear as a bell, and at the same time, I would have the brain space to say to myself, “hmm, she is using the first person plural here.”  I was finally decoding the language, and it was every bit as thrilling as it had been back when I was 22 years old in Puerto Rico and hearing my first authentic words of Spanish.

Waverley and I and the remnants of the Monday Ladies (a couple of the Ladies had moved away) still met regularly. In the fall of 2012, thanks to an obscure couple of sentences in the Bazaar Quarter guidebook, we began visiting one of Istanbul’s major hans (ancient inns dedicated to particular craftsmen),The Büyük Valide Han. This, the largest han in Istanbul, dated back to the late 17^th century, and had been used for textile weaving.

Over the next six months we would make many trips to this han. We would locate it in the dense tangle of buildings outside the Grand Bazaar. Then we’d enter its huge, iron-plated doors and climb darkened stairs to the second floor, which formed a balcony around a large courtyard. Lining the balcony were workshops and deserted storefronts. We would pass a place where glass lights sold in Grand Bazaar were “antiqued,” and glance into a small takeout restaurant that delivered kebab lunches to han workers. We’d pass rooms where we could hear men pounding on sheets of metal. Finally, we would locate a retired weaver mentioned in the book, named Mehdi.

Mehdi had a key to the roof, and we’d greet him and point our fingers upward inquisitively. He would nod and walk with us to unlock a dust-covered door at the end of the corridor. Then, after tipping him and climbing up uneven stone steps with the dirt of the ages ground into them, we’d find ourselves on a rooftop, sticky with pitch and scattered with small, protruding domes. An attic room off to one side was full of debris and a haunted-looking old loom with ghostly gray scraps of fabric still hanging off of it.

From the roof we could gaze out at the Golden Horn, the Bosphorus stretching off to the north, and the distant shores of Asia. Nearby were the Nurosmaniye Mosque, the New Mosque (completed in 1665) alongside the water, and the Beyazit Mosque. If we had timed our visit just right—and we knew to do this by checking the Internet for the day’s prayer schedule—we could be up on the roof in time for the prayer call. It was mesmerizing to hear the melodic words coming from all the mosques of Istanbul, echoing off the old buildings and the water. We felt like privileged, intrepid insiders (and also oddly proprietary, casting doubtful glances at the few other tourists doing exactly the same thing), and dubbed our experience “surround sound prayer call.”

Even during these days of pride and accomplishment, embarrassment still remained a possibility. Something as simple as laundry could reveal my shortcomings. It had started when my conscientious cleaning lady, Ayşe, decided to take down my lacy living room curtains and wash them. I hadn’t noticed that their white was gradually turning to gray.

When Ayşe left for the day, the drapes washed, dried, and back up on the windows, I noticed that my washing machine was now set to “B.” I had never messed with the settings after making the decision nearly two years earlier to set the knob on the picture of a tub full of wavy water. But now I stood staring at the knob as if I hadn’t seen it before. Hmmm, “B.”

Of course! Beyaz means white in Turkish. Ayşe had set the machine on whites!

I looked at the other letters and realized I might want to finally figure out what they meant. I didn’t have time to ponder them because I was heading off to meet Turkish teacher Ferda for class, so I wrote them down to ask her.

Ferda patiently explained. “R” was for renkli, colored. I knew that word. And “N?” That stood for narın yikama, delicate wash.

So what about the wavy water icon? I drew a picture of it for Ferda. “Ne demek?” What does that mean?

Ferda tried to explain using the word, durulamak. I didn’t know what that meant, and she didn’t know the English for it. But then she said sadece su, only water, and I finally got it. “Only water,” meaning Rinse Only.

For heaven’s sake.

For two years I had been washing all of our towels, sheets, and clothing on the rinse cycle. No wonder nothing ever seemed to get completely clean; I had thought well, ‘Turkish washing machine . . . maybe the quality isn’t so good. . .”

Turks place a great deal of emphasis on cleanliness—language books devote chapters to dialogues and vocabulary describing weekly housecleaning that includes removing draperies and rugs from the home; shopkeepers regularly scrub the sidewalks in front of their stores, making huge soap bubbles; and bus drivers wash their vehicles each morning. Although Ferda was too polite to say anything or even raise her eyebrows, I imagined she was inwardly shuddering, wondering why it had taken her student two years to get her laundry operations straight. And where, I wondered, had all the soap gone?!

Humbled again! Well, there was nothing for me to do but look down at the page of case endings we were supposed to be reviewing and change the subject.

Ferda was a great go-to person  for language and for information about Turkish culture, but now Sankar and I had a new and unusually insightful friend. The company had recently hired Emre, a marketing manager who had lived in both Western Europe and, for over a decade, in the U.S. Emre was one of the only Turks we met who was able to step back from his own cultural perspective, giving credit where it was due and criticizing his own country when merited. Sankar and I hit it off immediately with Emre, and began to rely on him for insights into social and political trends in Turkey.

Non-religious, Emre nevertheless felt that Turks who had been marginalized by Atatürk’s secularization needed to be integrated politically and economically. We had found the religious-secular divide so absolute in Turkey that his sentiments astonished us.

With Emre, like other Turks, we initially felt compelled to launch into a paean to Turkey’s greatness. We complimented Turkish roads, praised the overall quality of public services, and raved about the delicious food and the warm, hospitable people. Emre listened and nodded, but then volunteered, “You won’t notice this unless you stay in Turkey for ten years, but actually, Turks are not all that nice to each other.”

Really? That was a surprise! I did realize, however, that Sankar and I tended to evaluate Turkey only in terms of our own treatment. Could these pleasant and welcoming folks actually be employing a kind of selective niceness? When I managed to turn the lens away from myself, I began to see that what Emre said was correct. Fellow teacher, Yasmin, a non-drinker, was considered secularly suspect by the teachers in power, her bids for promotion ignored. When Waverley had a first communion brunch for son Isaiah, a Turkish manager and his spouse stood stiffly, refusing to converse with the only other couple in the room, Taner, the family’s driver and his wife. And I recalled Ümit regularly dismissing my praise for Sankar’s secretary, Beyza, insisting she really was neither talented nor creative.      

 I hadn’t seen Beyza for quite awhile. The two of us had gone out for lunch a couple times—I found it both flattering and unusual that a secretary would show an interest in getting to know me—and she had come over for pizza once. When Istanbul had a slight earthquake tremor one evening and Sankar was out of the country, Beyza had immediately phoned to see if I was okay. In early 2012, she got married and we attended her wedding reception. She looked stunning in her white strapless gown—slim and elegant, her almond eyes sparkling. Her husband, Marco, was from Italy, and his fellow countrymen entertained us with stylish, jazzy dancing.

On Angela and Greg’s first visit to Turkey, Beyza and Marco had invited the two of them for drinks at a fashionable spot on the Asia side. I was floored by this thoughtfulness; I would have shied away from extending an invitation like this out of fear of awkwardness. But we rarely observed reticence in Turks. And of course Beyza had taken care of all of our newcomer needs as well as helping me get my job.

After my first six months I hadn’t needed Beyza’s help much any more. I was busy with work and sightseeing. And Sankar was often away, traveling in other countries. When he was home, we were increasingly busy with other activities and friends. In fact, Burcu had recently commented to us that we were “living fast.” Normally a homebody, I was traveling outside Istanbul at least twice a month, for ARIT trips or sightseeing tours of our own in addition to spending four to six weeks each year in Minnesota. And it wasn’t just the travel; it was planning, packing, organizing, and then nurturing the new friendships these trips sparked.

Beyza was now expecting a baby, and seemed to be experiencing a lot of illness. For the last few months, whenever Sankar mentioned her name, it was in the context of “Beyza is out sick today, so she can’t help me with [whatever].” Sankar would generally follow that with a sympathetic comment like, “She has been having back pain, and doesn’t know what to do about it.” Or “she’s having some sort of pregnancy problem.” When I asked if it was serious, he said he didn’t think so.

Sankar wouldn’t think of questioning female health problems or asking for a doctor’s note, standard procedure in Turkey. Instead, over and over, with Beyza’s absences, he shook his head in incomprehension and threw up his hands. Typically, I didn’t pay much attention, but after awhile it seemed like her absences were starting to make his job difficult. Although he didn’t seem overly concerned, I was annoyed, and started to wonder whether, at least some of the time, he was being duped.

In the space of a week in the summer of 2012, with Angela and Greg again visiting Istanbul, the situation blew up. Sankar once again told me Beyza was out sick, but my Facebook newsfeed showed her at the Madonna concert in Istanbul.

Immediately after that, Beyza again “wasn’t feeling well,” but photos of her sunning on the Aegean in Çesme appeared.

I abhor lying; to me it makes fools of the people being lied to. It challenges my judgment about a person and makes me angry at both them and myself. I called Sankar over to my desk and showed him the screens picturing Beyza. He looked for a long moment, and then nodded, his jaw tight. The next day, he went to the head secretary with the news, and she phoned me to ask for a screen shot. The posts had already been taken down, but it didn’t matter: Beyza was questioned and the following day she was asked to leave the company.

Sankar and I were surprised by how quickly things had been resolved, but it seemed that Beyza had precipitated her own demise. We had done the right thing.

Beyza quickly un-friended me. We would no longer be privy to her family happenings.

Within a few days, I began to have regrets. I recalled Sankar telling me months earlier that all was not well with Beyza at 3M. She had not been the head secretary’s choice for the job, and though she’d been hired more than two years before, it seemed the office women had never accepted her. There was some of that behavior Emre had told us about.

Now I thought back on the initiative and creativity that Beyza had showed when we were new. That first summer, when our apartment pool wasn’t working, she had actually called the neighboring building to ask if I could swim in their pool. When, not knowing that this item wasn’t available in Turkey, I had asked her for notecards to make flashcards, she had taken the initiative to locate card stock and have them custom cut just for me. And she had written job letters for me, locating all the right recipients and using just the correct tone.

I recalled my own feelings of uselessness when I arrived in Turkey, and how they had eaten at my self-esteem. Now I thought about Beyza. When Sankar was out of the office, he placed few demands on her, and as I became settled, I had fewer and fewer questions for her. In an unfriendly environment, called upon less and less frequently, had Beyza also felt useless? Had it become easier and easier simply to stay at home?

Beyza had probably thought that all of her personal kindnesses toward us would have counted for something. Looking back, I now felt that they should have. Wouldn’t the right thing have been for Sankar, or for both Sankar and me, to meet with her, listen to her side of the story, and explain how things looked from ours? If we’d stopped and thought, if we’d pushed our anger aside, we probably would have done this. But we were busy. We hadn’t even considered doing that.

Our failure was partly cultural: we hadn’t fully recognized the importance of the personal here in Turkey. It was partly typical: we were busy, overly booked Americans. And it was partly idiosyncratic: instead of waiting to cool down—there was, after all, no real hurry to confront Beyza—our emotions had gotten the better of us.

You really can’t help but be who you are. You can try to function differently in a foreign country—and that kind of effort is generally commendable—but inevitably incidents will occur and you will revert to type. And that is when your true self will emerge.

Time is an excellent judge of what is right and wrong, and three years after we moved home, I still regret how we treated Beyza. I had been feeling so competent in Turkey, but it turned out I was poorly equipped to handle a complex, personal situation.

Clearly there are levels of expatriate expertise, kind of like levels in a video game. I had only passed Level One here in Turkey. And I wouldn’t have the chance to try and go any higher. It was time to think about leaving.

The post Living Fast 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

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Maybe it would be best just to leave Turkey alone, to leave it as we remembered it.

But I guess we are optimists down deep, so off we went. The Delta flights through Paris went smoothly, and we arrived in Istanbul at approximately 7:30 pm on Sunday, October 20. Our neighborhood would be new: Ortaköy, a few miles south of where we’d lived. As our cab wound through its extra-narrow, dark streets trying to find our little hotel, I felt my sense of adventure awaken. Maybe in addition to revisiting friends and monuments, we’d learn something new.

Our little hotel was on Müvezzi Sokak, steep and straight as a pin up from the Sea Road at the point where the Çirağan Palace sits. We had a small room, but it offered a nice view of the Old City, the Bosphorus and even the Kiz Külesi (Maiden’s Tower, far left in the photo) in middle of the harbor.

A buzzy jet lagged strangeness hit us on day one. We went down to breakfast and were reminded of the Turkish habit of drinking Nescafe, not “filter coffee” in the morning. The buffet’s Western selections encompassed some nondescript flaky cereal, lukewarm milk, and orangeade. Alas, we weren’t quite ready to embrace Turkish breakfast items like tomatoes, cucumbers, and olives.

Our first outing was to the Istinye Park shopping mall. I know this sounds shallow, but Sankar was after some new pairs of slacks—Turkish designs fit him so much better than those in States—and they would require time to alter. While he shopped, I wandered around looking for a gift for Angela, buying susamli fistik (peanuts with honeyed sesame seeds stuck on them) for Greg and some cifte kavrulmuş (twice roasted, nutty) Turkish delight for gifts.

We ate at our favorite food court restaurant, Kaşik-La (With Spoon), although I didn’t enjoy it quite as much as I had hoped because my biological clock registered 4 am back in the U.S.

Istiklal is hopping even on a Monday evening.

Which milky pudding looks best to you?

I ate the whole thing.

It was late by the time we got back to the European side.

Muffin papers, anyone?

Hittite relief at Yazilikaya, about 3,300 years old.

 

Beautiful roads throughout Turkey

The underlayment that makes them possible

Back in Istanbul, Sankar and I decided to do some poking around behind the Topkapi Palace to find an ancient pillar we’d read about. We located the pillar, which was put up in the 400s CE to commemorate a Byzantine victory over the Goths:

After taking this photo, we noticed a fleet of white vans lined up, all with Japanese writing on them. Sankar greeted a couple of the waiting Japanese drivers in their language, and we walked away, puzzled. Later we realized that this was the day the Marmara Project, a railway tunnel underneath the Bosphorus, was to open. A Japanese construction firm has been working for years on this ambitious project. On this day, the Japanese Prime Minister and a number of other dignitaries were in Istanbul for the opening ceremonies.

We sat for awhile and drank tea in this obscure part of the Old City, enjoying a wonderful view of the ancient walls and the Sea of Marmara.

Poking around, I believe, always leads to something good.

Our trip finished on October 29, Republic Day. We sat in Levent Park and talked for an hour (in Turkish!) with our former cleaning lady and all-around wonderful person, Ayşe Alemdar.

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Returning to our hotel room late in the afternoon, we noticed our window had been draped with the Turkish flag.

In the evening we walked to the Beşiktaş pier and watched a twenty-minute firework show that we both agreed was “Fourth of July times five.”

Our friends had been the same, and the sights, both old and new to us, had been inspiring. It was a wonderful trip!

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Like many other members, I generally ignore this machine, a mechanical extension of the Turkish custom of taking off shoes when entering someone’s house. After crossing my apartment sidewalk, which is usually in the process of being hosed down, parking in a spotless underground garage, and ascending four flights in new shopping mall elevator, my shoes carry little residual dirt.

Today, however, the locker room attendant approached me with a pair of booties and “asked” if I’d like to wear them.

What could I say? I pulled the papery things over my shoes, then turned around and took my shoes off to don my running shoes. (Exercise shoes are exempt from the bootie requirement because it is assumed they are not worn outside.)

I have noticed that Turks leave their bootied street shoes outside of their lockers. I usually throw everything in, but today, chastened, I lined my shoes up neatly under a bench near other people’s footwear, and headed to the treadmill.

When I finished my workout, I returned to the locker room, put my bootied shoes on, and then walked the five meters or so to the locker room entrance. “Where should I put these?” I asked the attendant, pointing at my booties. She pointed to two bins.

I didn’t really think my booties were dirty, but I behaved myself and put them in the “dirty” bin.

Don’t get me wrong. I like living in a country where people wash their windows and shake out their rugs on a weekly basis, wipe down their cars and buses daily and scrub sidewalks with soapy water. Granted, I was a bit surprised when I attended a cooking class and the teacher washed the eggs before cracking them (“When you think of where they come from. . .” she remarked). Turkish cleanliness is a way of showing not just love of possessions, but love of country.

But ever so often things go just a bit too far and I have to roll my eyes—or write a blog post.

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