Things I like better in Minnesota:

-Female hairdressers

-Enough parking spaces for everyone

-Target! Sometimes I think of all the magnificent, glorious, historical buildings in Turkey and then I put them all up against being able to walk into Target store and buy a stylish version of just about anything I need at a low price. When I think that way, Minnesota wins the comparison. But when I think of the fact that probably that Turkey could obtain Target stores, but Minnesota will never be filled with Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman treasures, Turkey wins.

< -Lending libraries -Clothes-washing instructions in English Things I liked better in Turkey: -I never, ever felt afraid: People were always watching and concerned. I didn’t realize I was so protected until I’d been in Turkey about a year. One evening I was walking up from the Sea Road to my apartment through the historic village of Arnavutkoy. At intervals on the sidewalks, foot-high pillars had been installed to prevent people from parking. Not paying attention, I swung my leg right into one of them, crashing my shin against the cement. The pain did not distract me from hearing a kind of collective “Owww,” from unseen voices all around me. People are always watching in Turkey. -The prayer call. It marked the passage of the day and reminded me of God. Things I no longer have to think about now that I'm back in Minnesota: -Twisties -Ziploc bags Foods I miss: -Eggplant: This wonderful vegetable was available in so many different forms in Turkey: roasted and mashed to form a smoky-tasting hors d’oeuvre; grilled with kebab meat; stewed with lamb; roasted and then eaten cold in salads; and cooked with ground meat to form a delicacy called imam bayildi, the imam fainted.

-Freshly roasted, low-cost pistachios

Foods I’m glad to be reunited with:

-Jicama

-Baby back ribs

-Excellent bread in many varieties, including bagels.Somehow I think this relates to diversity.

Chez Arnaud bakery in White Bear Lake

Black Forest rye bread from the general store at Marine on the St. Croix

American habits that now perplex me:

-Assuming kids hate vegetables.At a recent gathering I attended, sandwiches were offered to both adults and kids, but for children, the lettuce and tomato had been removed.

-Eating alone in restaurants. This is something Americans, including myself, don’t mind doing, but I think it would seem pitiful to Turks.

Some statistics:

-Number of days back in Minnesota before someone asked, “Weren’t you scared living in Turkey?” and then refused to believe me when I answered no: Five.

-First catalog company to find me here in MN: Orvis.(I wonder how long before the deluge.)

Ways to keep Turkey alive for me:

-My little town of White Bear Lake is soon going to have a Turkish restaurant called
The Black Sea

-There is a Turkish/Iranian cafe and grocery store near the University of Minnesota.

-My friend, Patti, has a Turkish housemate who I will soon meet.

-I can order Turkish products at Tulumba.com. Unfortunately, they are not cheap. Price for a package of Turkish tea: $9.99. Shipping: $9.61.

It is fun to do this kind of tallying. I guess what I’m really trying to do is decide which place makes me the most happy. Right now my answer would be: Both!

The post Turkey on my Mind appeared first on Sue's Turkish Adventures.

Trabzon, formerly Trebizond, was the place in which the last Roman loyalists took refuge in 1453, after Constantinople fell to the Muslim Turks. I had been wanting to see this region, known for lush greenery, tea plantings and dramatic history. Legend has it that Jason led his Argonauts along this coast in search of the Golden Fleece, and some say the Amazon race of women warriors hails from this area.

We arrived to overcast skies, apparently quite common, and the play of rain clouds on the city’s numerous concrete buildings was dispiriting. Our rental car, which we had to obtain from a shifty-looking man in the airport parking lot, was a beatup Hyundai with a funny odor inside. The gas meter was on zero, so our first task was finding a petrol station. After that, we navigated contradicting advice on how to reach our hotel, ranging from “Turn left at the first light, and it is right there” to “It’s fifteen kilometers away.” (This estimate was immediately lowered to eight kilometers when my face registered dismay.) Alas, the hotel turned out to be far from any historic city center, a boxy cement structure on damp stretch of coast north of town.

Checking in, we were surprised and taken aback to see scattered around the lobby and restaurant, women draped in black, their faces covered save for the tiniest of slits for their eyes. They were accompanied by short, stout men with long, frizzy black beards and disapproving countenances.

“Where are these folks from,” we asked a waitress in the restaurant.

“Saudi Arabistan and Qatar,” was the answer.

It was the last of a string of less-than-pleasant surprises. The silent women made me feel as if something was wrong with my clothes. And that evening, after a quick trip to the lobby, when I found myself alone in the elevator with one of the men, he promptly turned and stood facing the corner. “It’s like we stumbled into a Taliban convention,” I grumbled to Sankar.

We got up to a cloudy sky Saturday morning and set off a bit grimly for the area’s major attraction. The Sumela Monastery is a series of ancient buildings cut into a steep cliff by 4th century Greek monks. The Turkish goverment has created a national park around this structure, and we arrived in the late morning and began climbing up toward it.

The microclimate reminded me of the Pacific Northwest: great pine trees and moist undergrowth, tall hills, rocky clefts and high humidity. We walked up and up, the path never leveling off (later I decided that was perhaps by design, to avoid standing water that would breed mosquitoes). Our guidebook said the climb would take a half hour, but it took twice that because the air was so thick I kept having to stop and catch my breath. Toward the top, a cloud moved in and we continued in the mist, our feet slipping on the rock pathway.

Finally we got a glimpse of the monastery, clinging to the face of the mountain. That gave me a second wind and soon we were at the top, paying our entrance fees and passing through the set of metal turnstiles that are ubiquitous at every Turkish tourist attraction, no matter how remote.

Inside the monastery walls, one goes up and down steep staircases to peer into chapels, a rock church, a library, and small cells that served as the monk’s bedrooms. The church’s inner and outer walls are decorated with frescoes of the Creation and Christ’s life, dating from the 12th century and open to the elements.

A group of us moved through the monastery together, standing and gazing at the still-colorful paintings, and trying to capture them electronically. I glanced at the others around us. They were mostly Turks, and not-particularly-fit-looking, yet many were holding toddlers that they had apparently hauled up to the top. I was amazed. Could they be members of Turkey’s minuscule Christian population? Perhaps, but the headscarf ladies were certainly Muslim. And there was a Saudi couple, he with shaggy hair, she slender, her silky hem caked with dried mud.

What were the people around me thinking, I wondered. What had drawn them up this rugged path? There seemed to be two impulses at play here, one toward solitary devotion that keeps the outside world at bay, and the other a larger, harmonious spirituality. What would the Greek monks, who built this remote residence to live apart from the world, think of the diverse people now standing in their monastery? And how do we reconcile these opposing instincts in our modern world?

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After leaving the museum, we did some window shopping, walked to a new restaurant for dinner and then returned home by cab. Our day involved crossing and recrossing Taksim square three times. Less than 24 hours later, the place was attacked by a suicide bomber, with 32 people injured. It is domestic terrorism, not religious or anti-American in nature, but a long-standing ethnic conflict. We were warned a year ago that in Turkey, “ever so often a bomb goes off.”

On Sunday morning we drove to Edirne, two hours west, to see Turkey’s most magnificent mosque. The road was excellent and we passed barren fields that had been radiant with sunflowers in the summer. For a few miles the misty, blue-gray Sea of Marmara came into view, but we were mostly among rolling plains and sparse vegetation.

There was little traffic on the road, but we did pass a truck that had something written on it about Iran. I sat up and wished I had looked more closely. Then its twin came into view. Yes, it was from Iran, carrying a load of goods to Europe, sanctions be damned!

We arrived in Edirne about 1 pm, or so we thought. Turns out Turkey had changed from daylight savings time the night before, and we didn’t know it. Another one of those little occurrrences we routinely miss here.

The Selimiye mosque dominates the center of the little town, although several other mosques stand nearby. The weather was warmer than Istanbul and the light more intense. We had heard liver is the specialty of the town, and indeed all the little restaurants seemed to have the word ciger printed on their outside boards. We went into a cafe and ordered some. It came heaped on a plate, thin slices, deep fried and delicious.

The proprietors seemed surprised to have foreigners in their restaurant and wanted to make us happy. After our meal, we were asked if we wanted tea. We receive this question quite often at restaurants and usually say no thanks, but I often wonder if that is a faux pas.

I asked my Turkish teacher about this last week and she said no, it is perfectly okay to refuse tea in a restaurant. So we told the young waiter, hayir, tesekkurler. A few minutes later, however, an older guy, stocky and with salt and pepper hair, obviously the owner, emerged with a smile and “asked” if we wanted tea. The Turks are like this, strong-minded, and we knew not to refuse.

Two tiny, complimentary glasses immediately appeared on saucers with a couple of cubes of sugar each. Then a plate with wet wipes for our hands, a pile of cloves and some tiny, wrapped hard candies. We enjoyed the treat and paid the bill. As we left, the waiter standing at the door (there is always someone there to thank customers and wish them well) motioned for us to wait, and squirted lemon-scented lotion onto our hands. This is an ancient custom, something we’ve only seen once or twice in Istanbul, but we walked away feeling very well cared for.

The mosque is stunningly beautiful, built by Turkey’s renowned architect Sinan, in the mid-1500s. Inside, it doesn’t soar as much as the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, in fact its bright, splendid dome gives the impression that you can reach out and touch it. My photos don’t do it justice, but google the Selimiye mosque in Edirne if you’re interested.

While we were walking around inside the building, a young Turkish woman heard Sankar say something in English, saw the guidebook he was holding, and approached us with some questions. In perfect English, she told us that Mimar Sinan left a signature tulip design on every mosque he built. Also, Sinan’s work was considered so perfect that out of respect for God, he also left a small, intentional error somewhere in each building. She was wondering if either of these was discussed in our guidebook. Together we paged through our book, but found no mention, and we thanked her, saying she had given us more information than we had given her. A few minutes later she came up to us again and exclaimed, “We found it!” She and her architecture student sister had located the tulip, carved in marble near the base of a fountain inside the mosque. Didn’t find any error, however!

Mosques are carpeted and you leave your shoes outside. We saw a man who had brought his young son, perhaps six years old, with him to pray. They were, of course, both stocking-footed, and apparently the carpeting was just too much of a temptation, because they soon began laughing and “rassling” around on the floor with each other. It was a charming moment, true to the spirit of religion and also to the playful genius who built the masterpiece.

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My day starts with Nestlé, the Swiss company that in the 1970s promoted infant formula in developing countries in which clean drinking water was unavailable. That company somehow has its name on a majority of the breakfast cereals here, including those that carry the Quaker brand in the U.S. At first I vowed to continue my lifetime boycott of the company, but few other cereals were available and I am a conservative when it comes to breakfast, and I soon caved. I suppose I could have switched to a Turkish breakfast: tomatoes, cucumbers, olives and white cheese. Interesting, isn’t it, that Turks take in their breakfast nutrients in natural form whereas we Americans consume them as additives?

On my morning “Nesfit” flakes goes long-life milk, which tastes the same as pasteurized milk at home, yet consists of a mere one tenth percent fat. Coffee is from Costa Rican beans brought from home; despite the famed Turkish coffee, this is a country of tea drinkers, and when you order a regular cup of coffee at a restaurant, you are inevitably brought (grrr) Nescafe. Sometimes we toast bread. I have a jar of luscious raspberry jam that has Turkish, Cyrillic and English characters it, the Cyrillic making it marketable in Bulgaria, Russia, Azerbaijan and some of the “stan” countries. As I spread it on my toast, I picture a misty, densely wooded area near the Black Sea, and women in long scarves picking fruit.

Before lunch I often walk down the hill to a little bakkal where I find unwrapped loaves of fresh bread stashed in a wooden bin, for only one Turkish lira, about 60 cents. A lunch favorite is tuna salad from a recipe my Libyan friend, Zack, gave me. I call it “knock your socks off tuna salad.” It contains tuna (Dardanelle brand, another geography lesson), cilantro, tomatoes, cucumber and hot sauce, and I will send you the recipe on request. Peach season seems to be ending here, and we’re getting varieties of grapes, including some small green ones that are surprisingly sweet.

The other day I saw large black raisins packaged on Styrofoam trays covered with plastic. I bought a pack, but then, driving home, realized they might have seeds. Most of the grapes here have seeds. “Yes, they do,” Umit replied. “But they are so good for your bones—and for your blood.” Umit is my unofficial nutritionist. I looked it up and indeed grape seeds are high in antioxidants. So our raisins go crunch, but it’s all texture; the seeds don’t have any flavor.

That day I also bought some poppy seeds. I had thought they were unavailable in Turkey. “Mavi” means blue, and the label, kind of alarmingly, reads “hashhash mavi.”

We haven’t been very adventurous about supper yet; perhaps that is part of our adjustment: we are tentative even about what we eat. Lots of rice; chicken or beef or sometimes fish (levret, fresh sea bass is a treat). My convection oven does an incredible job of roasting cut-up potatoes (coated with olive oil and garam masala), something I would cook on the grill at home. Can you believe my nine-year-old oven back home has the convection feature, but I have never tried it?

We were about to buy a little gas grill and figured we’d put it on our apartment’s small back balcony, but then wondered if that kind of thing might be considered a fire hazard. We didn’t think we could really grill meat in secret. We asked our uber neighbor, the one that kind of runs things in our building, and he suggested placing it down in the apartment garden. The idea of running up and down from the third floor, plates of food and utensils in hand, kind of killed the fun, and I think we will do without.

Ramazan (the Turks use a z) ended a couple weeks ago. It was an interesting month. Back in Yemen thirty years ago, I felt sorry for the women, who fasted but also had to cook the big iftar meal at the end of every day as well as the meal eaten just before sunrise. That while also feeding and caring for young children, who don’t fast until adolescence. Well, in Turkey, women are working outside the home and are quite assertive. Ramazan is the month of fasting, but, you heard it here first, it is also the month of takeout. We discovered this when the kids arrived and we went to get some wonderful, grilled chicken from a nearby specialty market. Nothing doing: the fasting Turks had beaten us to it.

It was funny to see commercial establishments hopping on the Ramazan bandwagon. Down by The Boss I came across a big, lighted sign urging Turks to come to Pizza Hut for iftar and listing all the great “value items” on its “special menu.” But I can’t really blame them: what restaurant wouldn’t want to attract customers who haven’t eaten for fourteen hours? And 3M gave each of its employees a cheesy, corporate-looking box of candy for the holiday that follows Ramazan, so much like company Christmas gifts in the States.

It was also nice to see nuance, which is the great benefit of being on the ground in a Muslim country. The man who, to the dismay of his parents, refused for years to fast, but now in his mid-thirties makes it his only religious observance of the year. The couple we know that disdains anything religious in public life and does not favor extending full rights to women who wear the headscarf. . . yet the husband was the one of only a few at his company that did the fast. Just like us, people here are inconsistent and unpredictable in how they let religion into their lives.

A few weeks ago we took a vapor (ferry) over to the Asia side and went with some Turkish friends to a restaurant called Ciya that was written up in The New Yorker this past April. The restaurant is reviving Turkish food from several generations ago, and it is said that Turks sometimes burst into tears of sentimentality as they eat food they recall from their grandmothers’ or great-grandmothers’ kitchens. We drank the thyme tea that was mentioned in the article, but our conversation prevented me from noting down the various dishes we were eating. We will go back.

Here in Turkey, I often feel like I come from a country with no history, that the past somehow broke off for all of those who made the move across the ocean. I yearn in vain to be part of some continuous, ancient lineage, heir to some traditional wisdom. But a rare good deed I did during these months of self-absorption helped me think differently. When Umit’s birthday came around in mid-August, I assembled the ingredients and baked him and his parents a carrot cake. Baking is not a tradition here; homes have up until recently not been equipped with ovens. Commercial bread bakeries exist, but for desserts, Turks traditionally eat baklava-type sweets that don’t require baking.

I wanted to produce something from my own country—and also use those hard-won measuring spoons. The cake turned out well, and Umit and his family raved about it. Hearing their compliments, I realized I did indeed have something to be proud of, and I was pleased to inform him, “My family has been baking for at least a hundred and fifty years.”

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