O Mighty Crisis

2011-03-08T07:02:00.001-06:00

"O Mighty Move"

Hi--Jocelyn's friend here again. She's had occasional access to Blogger this past week, unpredictably and in about 20 minute increments. To regain some control over her blogging, she's created a new site (still under construction--can you hear the sounds of of her swearing?) at: http://omightycrisis.com

This site will be the blog's new home, so please, please, please redirect your visits to that location.

2011-03-02T07:15:00.002-06:00

"Blocking the Blog"

Hi--This is a friend of Jocelyn's, here to put up a quick post for her. Here's the deal: a few days ago, the Turkish government started blocking access to Blogger, so Jocelyn hasn't been able to get to her blog, post, or read comments; even worse, she hasn't been able to visit the blogs of anyone who uses Blogger. It's hard to say how long this block will continue...it could be days, weeks, months, years, eons. As she tries to riddle out a solution to her blogging woes, the most likely possibility is that she'll move her blog to a new Wordpress site. If and when that happens, I'll post a link to it here. For a bit more explanation of what's going on with the government blocking access in Turkey (the important thing to know is that it all stems from broadcasts of futbol; it's never been clearer that you don't mess around with soccer in certain countries), you can read the article below, first posted at http://www.bloggingpro.com/archives/2011/03/01/turkey-blocking-blogger-over-1-blogspot-blog/

2011-02-25T04:15:00.006-06:00

More than five months ago, my husband and I realized how aligned were our impressions of Turkey (this was terribly unusual, as our association up to that point had been typified by dramatic quarrels). Realizing that it could be fun to take the same subject, having me write up my usual drivel and having him come at it with his graphic talent, we decided to run with the idea of a vaguely-coordinated effort. Although it's taken some time to get to a final product, we do have one. You see it below: my post and his illustration on the same topic; we each churned out our own creations without looking at what the other had done. If you have a tidge of extra time, you can see the same over at his blog, but with his drawings first and my carrying on at the end: http://www.layingfallow.com/

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"Uniform Lack of Quality"

We moved into our house in Duluth nearly seven years ago and immediately began ruing the choices of the previous owners. There was the orange shag carpet covering the entire main floor. There was the peel-and-stick faux tile they'd laid in the kitchen, stuff that would grab on to the bottom of a bare foot and become a temporary flip-flop. But what really irked us was the bathroom.

Here's a little life lesson that's only really sunk in for me in the last 15 years: you get what you pay for.

With bathrooms, as with shoes, it's worth shelling out for quality rather than congratulating oneself for saving money and then ending up with a cheap toilet that grabs on to one's buttocks and becomes a temporary tushie flip-flop.

I mean, speaking of toilets and shoes or whatever.

In our Duluth house, the first year was spent dealing with a toilet that clogged with the faintest trickle of urine; with a tub that drained so slowly we wondered if Yanni had left off playing at The Acropolis in order to depilate in our shower; with a sink that dripped with the predictable constancy of Homer's Penelope.

With each repair that we made, we moaned about the cheapskate previous owners, sometimes summoning their ghosts by holding a Ouija board up to the cracked medicine cabinet mirror and laboriously spelling out, "W-O-U-L-D I-T H-A-V-E T-A-X-E-D Y-O-U O-V-E-R-M-U-C-H T-O S-P-E-N-D F-I-V-E M-O-R-E D-O-L-L-A-R-S O-N A P-R-O-D-U-C-T T-H-A-T A-C-T-U-A-L-L-Y C-A-M-E I-N A B-O-X W-I-T-H A R-E-C-O-G-N-I-Z-A-B-L-E B-R-A-N-D N-A-M-E O-N I-T?”

Then--replaying current history here--we made the choice to leave behind the small woes of our Duluth lives and hie off for some adventurous months that would be chock full of New, of Special, of Not My Problem.

We call that choice Turkey.

Unfortunately, we undermined the "leaving behind small woes" part of the choice by renting a house in Turkey.

Turkey is a country that falls on the Continuum of Development at a point called We Have Not Great Amounts of Money and We Love Plastic. A similar attitude can be seen in Central American countries, where an agricultural tradition has rubbed up against an industrial world, where people working with their hands have seen that life is immensely easier when there's an indestructible plastic bucket in the kitchen rather than a breakable clay pot. All the better if that plastic bucket is bright pink.

What’s more, because of where it is in terms of development, Turkey's workaday Allah is the plastic bag. Seen blowing across the countryside, wadded up in the trunks of cars, tied onto bicycles as flags, lazing around trash-strewn ruins, breezing out of every shop (even if one has merely purchased a pack of gum), plastic bags are both worshiped and ubiquitous—the perfect complement to all those pink plastic tubs, in fact. Tubs &; Bags are like Flatt & Scruggs, creating an aura of banjo music for all the Jethros, Ellie Maes, Mustafas, and Hayriyes twanging around the hillsides.

Despite its many uses, plastic doesn’t elevate the tone of a place or, ultimately, actually make life better.

The New Testament delineates it quite clearly: “Thus crap begat plastic, and plastic begat trash, and trash begat junk, and junk begat headaches.”

It turns out this line is the same in both the King James and the Qur’an. Junk gave us trouble back in our Duluth house; junk gives us headaches in our Ortahisar house. The upshot is that crap plastic trash junk, in its global applications, does not make for low-maintenance homes.

As it turns out, though, the cheap junk in our Ortahisar house completely trumps the cheap junk in our Duluth house.

Mostly because there’s this thing in Turkey named Every Last Bit of Our Plumbing Is Plastic.

As in, the pipes used to transport water to a sink, to evacuate a toilet, to drain a shower…are PVC.

Compounding this is the fact that the toilets in our house aren’t actually attached to the floor, even though they have holes where screws could go. Unattached, the porcelain is easier to move--so that when a significant leak runs out the back of the toilet and across the bathroom floor, the repair is straightforward. A person just tips the toilet forward, which then exposes the plastic pipes that need fixing. This is not unlike what one would see beneath a toilet in The States, but in The States there’s also a wax ring sealing off potential leakages. In The States, the toilet is moored to the floor so that the movements of users don’t cause the plastic pipes to crack. Not so in Turkey. Here, the toilet moves with every wipe-related lean, which, in turn, stresses the plastic pipes, which, thereafter, crack and release smelly runoffs. Most likely, the toilet isn’t screwed to the floor because the floors are made out of cement or stone, and it’s hard to drill a screw into cement or stone…

you know

unless you have the right drill bit.

Which is to say don’t get me started.

On the positive side, though, a constant breakdown of fundamentals in one’s household does create situational language lessons. By this, I mean that Groom had to learn how to say “I’d like to buy a hammer, please” mere weeks off the plane. This was before he knew how to say “Nice to meet you” or “That looks suspicious; will it make me ill?”

However, soon after we rented the old Greek house in Ortahisar, Groom tired of language immersion school in the hardware store. He hated spending several hours each day looking up vocabulary, walking around town, taking apart and reassembling bits of the bathroom. Even worse was when we’d report the problem to our landlord, who, quite responsively, would avow, “I’ll send my friend over. He’ll fix it.” The thing about Friend is that he’s the one who designed and installed the bathroom; he thinks the place is pretty nifty and that we should stop abusing the place through frequent urination. If we hydrated less, the bathroom would remain infinitely more intact.

Startlingly quickly, the exhaustion created by Plastic Failure and I’ll Send My Friend Over eroded our will into a preference for endurance over action. For example, we no longer expect hot water from the sinks…or necessarily out of the shower. When the kitchen sink started acting up, we had no problem shrugging and accepting, “Well, turning one of the handles still makes water come out. That’s good. Two handles are overrated. Let’s just leave that one valve stripped or blocked or whatever. If we fix it, we’ll just have to fix it again next month. At this point, it’s already habit to drop our brightly-colored plastic tub into the sink, fill up the little kettle on the counter to heat water, and do the washing up that way.” We don’t even blink anymore at what a time and energy suck it is—because there are no traps in the drains—that the kitchen sink is constantly clogged. We have a little teaspoon that fits just perfectly through the holes in the drain, so we do some poking around to dislodge bits of lettuce, and, with only a few minutes out of each hour devoted to the task, the trickle of cold water is draining again, just fine.

In this way, we have become Turkish. We look at the plastic, watch it founder, and shrug. Then we drink tea.

Our brains remain American, though. Even as I’m taking showers that veer from frigid to burning, my brain is pushing for an answer to the pounding question of why, why, WHY: “What in Smyrna is going on here? How can we be on a chunk of land that is one of the most inhabited places on the planet—that has had civilization after civilization come through—that had Romans, those masters of bathing and plumbing, on it two thousand years ago—that was ruled by the refined Ottomans—that seems as though it might have benefitted from all the layers of peoples and ideas—that seems as though it would have discovered copper (or some sort of hygienic) piping for the ‘potable’ water? What is going on here?”

Then I learned from a local anthropologist that the late-arriving inhabitants of Cappadocia (the Turks showed up maybe a thousand years ago and are, in some ways, still radically Middle Aged) had little means of benefitting from those who came before. According to him, the Turks who currently populate the landscape swooped down from Turkmenistan and discovered towns like Goreme, with all its cave homes and fairy chimneys, sitting abandoned. With the option of free housing in front of them, they discarded their nomadic lifestyles and settled in. Once I learned this tidbit, I started postulating that what we’re seeing now is the result of nomads settling; if a population’s cultural traditions are based around constant movement and not investing in a place permanently, then maybe they lack the context to question plastic household infrastructures.

Naturally, an easy answer can never be the whole answer.

Not soon after we started musing about the consequences of long-term wanderers settling down, we also started realizing that the issue of poor plumbing runs deeper than people on the backs of animals dismounting and cracking their backs with relief. Even further, we started realizing that we constantly see things analogous to poor plumbing, but in different areas of life. Grocery stores, too, feel like a riddle. Why, no matter the store or city, can we predict the products that will be for sale? Why does every store have exactly the same fourteen kinds of cracker, and why are none of these crackers actually very tasty? And on the roads: why does everyone drive rinky-dink tin can white Renaults? And why does every scrub brush’s handle snap off the first time I try to clean a plate?

Why, in this country of beauty and amazing architecture and admirable tolerance and consistently kind souls, is there so little variety in products, and why are the available choices so crappy?

Consulting each other in the befuddled manner common to couples in their second decade, Groom and I agreed it had to be more than a function of nomads deciding they wanted addresses.

The best explanation we’ve found so far is, indeed, historical—but more recent. To avoid writing a textbook on Turkish history (which would be even more riddled with errors than my descriptions of plumbing), I’ll condense things into a broad overview: Turkey sided with the Germans in World War I; that didn’t go so well, and after the war, Turkey became part of the spoils of victory, which meant that it was divided up amongst the victors; the Turkish people didn’t dig this action, and therefore they were delighted when a charismatic visionary named Mustafa Kemal (later renamed Atatürk, Father of the Turks) grabbed at power on the basis of reunifying and restoring his country. After Atatürk worked to modernize and secularize Turkey in the 1920s and 1930s, he wasn’t about to take any risks when World War II reared up, and so he kept Turkey out of the thing, opting instead to keep Turkey neutral and isolationist. A major side effect of this decision, coupled with worldwide shortages, was that Turkey came into its Industrial Age relying solely on homegrown factories and products. While such times can drum up new kinds of ingenuity, another reality is that such times also ask people who don’t really know what they’re doing to do things nevertheless, which begets limited and inferior products, which begets a citizenry that doesn’t know how to expect more, which begets a place that is perfectly satisfied with fourteen kinds of tasteless crackers and toilets floating around the bathroom.

If I could go back in time and have a sit down with Our Man Atatürk, I might--in addition to congratulating him for his hard-won republic--counsel him that, no matter what he feels he has to do during World War II,

he should consider bringing in scientists, designers, and manufacturers from, say, Germany in the 1950’s. I wouldn’t ask him to turn over the running of Turkish companies, oh no. But I would urge him to allow them to do some training and consulting, particularly in the realms of home construction and mass production.

Unfortunately, my time machine ran out of AAA batteries last week, so it’s up on blocks for the present (if, in fact, there even is such a thing…). Drat. Now I can’t have that chat with Atatürk. Consequently, Groom and I will continue to marvel at all the shoddy quality, most notably in the awe-inspiring bit of magic that Turkish workmen conjured when they plumbed our Ortahisaran toilet and bidet. Somehow, in a way that defies all logic but could potentially be remedied with the installation of a one-way valve, they rigged things up so that the water in the shower is often cold, yet the water in the toilet is often near boiling.

Hence, and with significantly less tragedy than the Greek/Turkish population exchanges of the 1920’s,

if a toilet user hasn’t been paying attention to the queer warmth of the porcelain that day and, unthinkingly, turns on the bidet for a quick cleanse,

it brings on the most unexpected language lesson of all, a chance to shout out with great force and conviction:

"Tuvalette çıkan borusudan simsicak su çıkıyor!" (The bidet is scalding my bunghole!)

(we're struggling to get Blogger to display the comic here in any readable fasion; it's much easier to see at http://www.layingfallow.com)

2011-02-17T18:29:00.001-06:00

"In Which I Delve So Deeply Into Lady Crap That I Alienate My Sole Remaining Male Reader; Truly, It's About to Get Girly in Here to the Point That Even Mentioning Futbol and Pork Won't Salvage the Situation, So I'll Merely Thank You, Dogged Male, for Hanging on This Long, Especially Through All Those Posts That Pissed on and on About Chocolate and Shoes"

A fleeting highlight of my early adolescence occurred when, one Halloween, a tipsy door-opener named Randy (a high schooler) squinted woozily at my Pippi Longstocking costume and slurred, "You're so cute. So cute like that. Pippi. Cute with freckles. Yer hair braided over a hanger so it'ssss all sticky-outy. Pippi girl. Cute. hic Hey, so, cute Pippi, lemme just give you a little kiss on the cheek here for being so freckle cute with that red hair, you Pippi girl."

Stepping forward in a state of shock and with no small awe at the hugely glamorous thing my life had suddenly become, I allowed his request. And then then he did it: he lobbed a kiss with a hic in my general direction.

It was my first such experience but certainly not my last.

That moment stands out, however, as one of the few times in my young life that anyone resembling a peer complimented my hair. Mostly, the orangey stuff topping my noggin served as a liability--as did my preciocious puberty, bifocals, and penchant for quoting The Good Earth in the midst of dodge ball tournaments.

So there I was, a big ole carrot-topped Montana clunker with boobies and cramps and an astigmatism and ponderous knowledge of Chinese courtyards--

not exactly anybody's idea of kissable (unless it was a holiday, and he was drunk...which, not incidentally, is also how I received my second kiss, for Santa surely do like to tipple the leftover nog).

Absurdly, the feelings of ugly that take root in adolescence prove impossible to weed. Even after I hit college and started to hear that my hair was pretty, even after some part of me genuinely started to believe my hair might be something like a gift, even after a big part of me went so far as to love my hair,

a knock-kneed Pippi still lingered inside, wishing she didn't have to plan her parties all alone.

Well, guess who took Pippi to an Italian salon today and raked those dumbass ugly roots straight into the compost?

(If you can't guess, then I believe our conversation here is over. Might I recommend you pick up a copy of some Pearl S. Buck and amuse yourself with that instead of reading on?)

Yea, that's right. Jocelyn was feeling blah about the whole Jocelyn look, so Jocelyn both took to referring to herself in the third person AND took herself, quite spontaneously, into a salon located on a cobbled street in Florence...

...whereupon she reverted to using the first person when the three women in the place managed to convey with their limited English that my. hair. is. to. dye. for.

According to their chatter,

no Italian has my color

all Italians want my color

I have never dyed

they all dye

and still I get to have my color, but they don't

and everything on my head is bella, bella, bella

and the truth is, all I ever wanted when I was growing up was dark hair and olive skin (okay, plus a date with Steve Perry or Daryl Hall)

and to be thin and sophisticated and know how to dress

and these women had all of these things,

but still I got to be the bella of their ball--

and at the end of an hour and a half, during which I'd urged them, "I just want something different, so do anything you like," and they enthused, "Meravigliosa!" and "Grazie!" while shearing huge amounts of what they termed "copper blond" off my head (to make a wig, I have no doubt; it looked like a fluffy dog named Lucille Ball had died on the floor by the time they were finished)...

I felt the slightly-cowed Pippi inside me toss her shoulders back and decide it was time to hoist a horse over her head before cleaning the kitchen by skating across it with scrub brushes tied to her feet.

This thing had happened. I would never have known at age 12 that it could.

But I went to a chic place full of women I envied,

and they wanted to be just like me

and it was healing.

as would have been a date with Steve Perry, I hasten to point out

The chatter of black-clad Italian signorine today assured that the next time a drunken Randy attempts a Halloween peck, I won't step forward with acceptance into his lurch. Rather, my Pippi will choose to step away, turn her back on the desperation, and head to the next house. After all, they might be giving out mini-Snickers instead of sloppy snogs.

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The photo gallery:

'Scuse my case of The Shinies. We'd been out in the rain for nine hours by the time these pix were taken...Normally, Pippi would have insisted on a quick buff of powder, but she was too busy scratching Mr. Nilsson's tummy to care.

The 97-pound stylist today told me she was going to cut my hair "in the Italian style," and I do rather think--to my delight--that my head came out looking like a gnocchi with a few oddball patches of bucatini dripping asymmetrically down my cheeks. What a meal I'd have been for A Deserving Randy. Alas, it is only one special Groomeo who gets to appreciate the crazy bowl of pasta that tops my skull (and the wine-soaked meatballs inside of it). I'll be sure to hand him a napkin after every tipsy kiss.

2011-02-11T05:52:00.001-06:00

"Nice Day for a White Wedding"

"You make a beautiful white wife," declared the 22-year-old clerk behind the counter, as he rolled each of my purchases into rose-festooned tissue paper before placing them carefully into the bag.

Confused and simultaneously flustered, I felt my brain start to spin. Me? A white wife? In what sense? Was he commenting on my general pastiness and overall demeanor of good wifery? I was, after all, presenting skin less olive than most Turks' and wearing all the plantation's keys on a chatelaine around my waist.

Or, rather, did he mean, em, that I could be a beautiful white wife for him?

When I opted for a studiedly neutral response of, "Pardon? I don't understand," he repeated his statement--"I say you make a beautiful white wife"--and blushed from head to toe, casting an embarrassed gaze at the counter.

Before buying time with another "Pardon? I don't understand," I quickly took stock of the situation:

--a young man in a liquor store was very friendly, helping me find the wines I was after, offering to help me carry my armful to the counter

--the same young man then struck up a conversation about how he has been in tourism school and loves tourists

--said young man then went on to ask about my profession; when I replied with "I'm an English teacher, and I have to tell you your English is so much better than my Turkish. I'm impressed!", he responded, "My English not good. You can help me sometimes?"

--I had showered that day

--Young Turks do not mind a foreign girlfriend, no matter how creaky her knees

--he was telling me, red-faced, alternately averting his eyes and then looking at me expectantly, that I'd make a spectacular white wife

The evidence all stacked up. Clearly, this was a proposal.

But how to extricate myself? I continued playing dumb--thereby further convincing him of my desirability as the female in his life--and repeated, "I'm so sorry. Pardon? I do not understand" while craning around to find my Groomeo. If only I could get him to come into the store and be Very Tall next to me, the entire scenario would be reframed, and the need for a response would fade.

Alas, Groom's fine form was leaning against a wall out in the corridor of the mall, his posture indicating that he was well settled into the mental state known as I Am Dreamy And Zoney As I Stare At People Walking By.

Dang. He had no idea I was doing wild "hep me, hep me" body language a mere twenty feet from his blanked-out state. Fortunately, though, my white self and his spacey self were clever enough about eleven years ago to produce a very on-top-of-things Girl. Quickly noting my "hep me, hep me" body language, she hied into the liquor shop and sidled up to my right hip just in time to hear a repetition of the exchange between my fiance and me.

"I say you make beautiful white wife."

"PARDON? I really don't understand."

Emitting a sigh that sounded only the tiniest bit like exasperation, she stage whispered, "Mom. He's telling you that you're buying a beautiful white wine. See the bottle he's wrapping up in that weird flowery tissue paper? He's saying it's a good choice."

Oh.

So he had been looking embarrassed because he was trying out his tourism-school English on me, and I hadn't understood?

Not because he was laying his heart and intentions out on the counter?

Oh.

As he continued the laborious process of wrapping each item in tissue paper (the six cans of beer, each rolled up with the kind of care and love I'd been basking in mere moments before, took a lifetime--a lifetime of half-expressed wishes and arrested possibilities), I rustled around in my wallet. Now I was the embarrassed one.

How silly of me to have thought he'd want me for white wife

when it's obvious I have such aptitude as bloodshot boozehound.

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(Speaking of me and wine: we're leaving tomorrow for ten days in Italy, so keep your eyes on the breaking news coming out of Europe. I'm pretty sure our antics will show Mubarak how one really goes about getting the attention of a crowd.)

2011-02-07T16:16:00.003-06:00

"Warm Slab"

When last we met, arctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott was penning his final words of "It seems a pity but I do not think I can write more,"

yet I was just getting started.

So, to re-cap, there is a design norm in modern Turkey that aims the shower head over the toilet. In turn, scatologically-inclined people must grapple with a compulsion to dry off the toilet before feeling comfortable enough to drop their nethers onto the hole and peruse a few articles in The New Yorker. Of course, since Turks in general haven't cultivated the habit of reading, they simply wipe down the toilet, or not, so as to feel comfortable enough to do whatever it is a person does when sitting on the toilet and not reading. As a written word lover, I'm uncertain of what this is. Would it be staring? Yes, probably staring. In my experience, Turks are remarkably adept at The Stare, clearly drawing upon thousands of minutes of focused practice that could otherwise have been occupied with ingestion of typeset.

In sum, toilets in Turkey are wet. People with pelvic needs either get wet or set themselves to drying the porcelain whilst clenching their legs together. Then they read or stare.

Or play solitaire on the wall in front of them, if it's a magnetized wall, and they have magnetic cards.

Or have a chat on their cell phones, genteely covering the receiver during moments of audible strain.

Or plan menus. No matter the day or recipe, it's probably true that they need to get yogurt. Or white cheese. Maybe some peppers. Cucumbers. Plus a passle of them shriveled olives.

Eternally, any mental picture of shriveled olives must needs be superseded by a thought of "Hey, Caesar, it's time to wipe, and not the toilet."

Yes. This is what I've learned in the past six months. First, there are olives, and then you visit the bathroom, and then there's a general wiping down.

This is how it is. I've got it, er, in hand.

When we moved in to our inn-sitting job at the fairy chimney, therefore, the bathroom in our room felt very familiar:

See the shower head? See the toilet? Like that.

Fortunately, all the rooms at the guesthouse have in-floor heating, including the bathrooms. Already, then, the bathroom in our room was superior to what we'd experienced elsewhere. The joint might get wet all the time, but thanks to the heat in the floors, the wet takes care of itself pretty quickly--it's absorbed into the rustic red clay and dried up by the warmth.

Don't go waving your hands in the air, though, and keep your high kicks to a minimum: the toilet seat isn't heated, so the porcelain still ails with water.

But somehow, it's better. As an added bonus, we can put wet mittens and hats on the bathroom floor, and they dry in no time.

Verdict is: we have stumbled into an okay Turkish bathroom.

HOWEVER, if you want a seriously groovy bathroom, just walk out the kitchen door, across the courtyard (careful of the 120 pound St. Bernard; he really likes lasagna, so if you look at all like a limp noodle, you'll be privy to the kind of wet that only comes from a bath in dog spit), and enter the guest room called Battal.

Because Battal has a hamam-style bathroom. A big one. As in, there's room for a toilet well away from the shower (which is built into an old tandoor oven pit). Furtherly cool is that there's the heated floor, plus a heated slab designed for post-ablution relaxation.

It doesn't take the clever inn-sitter more than a few days to figure out how to crank up the heat in the hamam bathroom, take a hot shower, follow it with a sit bath wherein bowls of warm water are tossed over the head, and top it off with some vigorous exfoliation and laid back slab time.

According Muslim tenets, men can take up to four wives. According to Turkish bathroom laws, Jocelyns can take up to two husbands. I already have me a Groom. Now I have me a Hamam. Put them together, and I have something sounding ever-so-appropriately like a "groom'em."

Here. Meet my new beau; admire his features:

Dry toilet smiles a welcome. Fish tank is placed in wall for easy whimsy. Two rolls of toilet paper are well able to keep pace with even the most extended visit.

Bathroom shelves are carved out of the local tufa rock. Homely wooden chair is conveniently located nearby to assist with emergency toenail clipping.

Antique pictures from Ottoman times hang on the walls. Elevated traditional hamam footwear rocks so hard that, in comparison, today's Croc sandals seem even more an oppugner against nature.

Two panels of marble separate the toilet from all other water sources. Two panels of marble keep marshal the warmth towards the bathing area. Big red clay slab beckons. Saucy thing.

Visitors to hamams past serve as role models for how to kick back languidly in the presence of multiple exposed breasts.

Rectangular indentation is a perfect perch for filling copper dishes with water and then dumping the contents over the head.

Marble sinks don't drain but serve as repositories for water of all temperatures. A ewer here; a copper pot there, and before you know it, you've forgotten that your family had a nine-day tour to Egypt planned for this week, a tour that has collapsed in the face of citizenry in revolt. Tour gets cancelled? Visit Hamam. He washes away all tensions. He helps you find the peace of mind to plan a consolation trip to Italy, departing this Saturday.

Shower hole (former tandoor oven) can be filled with water and used as a tub or used for a quick baptism into the religion of red clay.

Loofah scrubs clean both backs and attitudes.

All of the outfitting in the room is authentic...

the same stuff used in a harem hamam hundreds of years ago...

even conjuring up images from thousands of years before that, of a Magdalene washing the feet of a carpenter she fancied.

Well washed, heartily scrubbed, warmed to the core, visitors to Hamam run their hands over his fine paneling as they exit,

marveling at how right a bathroom can feel when wet and dry know their places.

2011-01-28T18:10:00.000-06:00

"Scat Illogical"

Travel is formidable; it takes our expectations and dumps them upside down. In our normal daily lives, because we're used to controlling our environments, we have notions of "I need..." or "In order to feel right, I'm gonna have to have..."--but then travel comes along, fails to deliver on our requirements, and forces us to cope.

In the process of coping, we have to hold each of our notions up to the light (incidentally, you should feel a little bit sorry for my ideas and notions, what with their first being rudely dumped and then scaldingly burned by a bright light; in truth, all the best ideas are sorely bruised after a day in my care), turn them around a bit, examine them from every angle, and then concede that, while they might have felt essential back home,

they actually, under the pressure of travel, can be shucked. We can be different when circumstances are different. It's one thing to realize that for the first time when backpacking in Austria as a 20-year-old. It's a bigger thing to remember it after some decades have passed, once the entrenchments of middle age have been dug.

For me, I've been living a life in which I know who my people are and what my circumstances are going to be--I have the right husband, the gift of all the kids I'm going to have, the job I hope to occupy until retirement, the house I would love to live in until my knees give out. With so much so settled, my brain and habits have permission to coast. Even worse, they have permission to become self-satisfied and complacent. They have permission to announce, "The way I do things is right, gol dern it. If I wasn't doing things right, I'd change 'em, now wouldn't I?"

Under the sway of such righteousness, we need courage to risk a challenge. Travel calls to center stage all the challenges and risks that have been shuffling around impatiently in the wings (ah, but do they realize their luck in not having been dumped and held up to the light?). Travel asks us to descry the beauty in discomfort.

Personally, in addition to creating in me an addiction for the flavors of red pepper combined with plain yogurt; in addition to reminding me that relaxation is the best strategy when on a bus with no idea of where to get off; in addition to convincing me that wild gesticulation and miming often equal precise language; in addition to showing me that males can be the driving social force in a culture; in addition to filling me with awe that there are aged muezzins who, although barely able to croak out a note fit for public ears, dutifully shamble to the mosque at 5 a.m. every morning in frigid cold to grab the microphone and burnish their faith in Allah; in addition to teaching me that staring isn't always judgmental...

in addition to all of these lessons, travel to Turkey has asked me to get over my belief that the only good toilet is a dry toilet.

At this juncture, your brain might be conjuring up an infamous Turkish squat toilet, a hole in the ground that calls upon one's willingness to hike pant legs, strengthen quadriceps, and deliberately ignore the half-inch of water covering the floor.

But that's not what I mean. A squat is what it is. Adjustment to its requirements is fairly straightforward: do a few limbering yoga poses, roll up pants, reach into bag for hunk of toilet paper, and then squat and stare at cracked ceiling in Directed Meditation until it's time to fill the pitcher of water to toss down the hole.

Rather, I'm referring to the kind of elevated porcelain bowl that is ubiquitous in the Western world. Just a regglar toilet like they sell at the Home Depot. Only wet, with no orange-smocked workers milling about, ready to help you mop up.

C'mon. You know where I'm coming from. Like me, you've walked up to a toilet, looked down at the seat, and recoiled viscerally at the sight of droplets of moisture dotting what should be a pristine desert plain. A small voice inside of you rationalizes, "Maybe this toilet is so hygenic that its vigorous flush splashes water up from the bowl, causing it to land on the seat. Maybe what I see here is simply a respectable bleach water." However, an insistent shouty voice inside of you overpowers that Small Dumb Voice with a beller of, "Don't. you. dare. sit. down. That is PEE. Someone else's pee, no less. Place not your buttocks near a stranger's pee, Elton, or I shall smite you across this room until your head hits the hand dryer, knocking you out cold, albeit with warm and shiney locks." The more intrepid of you, at this point, may grab a wad of tissue and wipe off the seat before resolutely sitting down for relief. The more squeamish of you may leave that stall and bang around the bathroom, looking for drier pastures. The hyper-phobic of you may seek out drier pastures and then still insist on lining the seat with a line of protective paper. The ultra No Touchy of you may deal with the situation by refusing to lower your body to the dry-pasture seat at all--instead choosing to hover over the seat, and if that's the case, why in the hell are you getting so prissy about a Turkish squat toilet that doesn't even have an anxiety-inducing seat built into its design?

So, um, you know what I mean about a wet toilet.

What travel has brought to me, however, is an entirely new kind of wet toilet, this version blissfully pee-free. You see, invariably in Turkey, "modern" bathrooms are built with the shower hanging over the toilet (a fact that makes it remarkably easy to pee in the shower). What this layout means is that every time someone takes a shower, the toilet gets a drenching. Hypothetically, that should make me feel good: "Hey-hey-wow-wow, this toilet is insanely clean! Three people today have showered in here, which means this toilet has had three showers, and what could be more pleasant than a thrice-douched toilet?" Ironically, though, I have enough of "could be urine" worries culturally built into my psyche that any time I see a freshly-showered toilet, I feel a rush of hesitation. The porcelain may be slippery with Pantene and not someone's bladder expulsions, but I have to fight to get past my conditioning. A wet toilet, no matter what's coating it, doesn't appeal. In fact, I've become very good at wiping down well-showered toilets (speaking of the unexpected side effects of travel). And I've gotten better at accepting the water for what it is, as it coats the lid, the seat, the base, the floor around. It's, small ewwww, just someone else's dead skin cells floating in a tepid stew that slicks over the place where parts of My Nekkid are intending themselves. What's to cringe at, really?

The good news is that travel not only makes us cope; if we hang in there with it long enough, we encounter situations that--wait, how did I start this post?--dump our expectations upside down. That is, if you can stand me using the word "dump" in a heavily-toileted bit of writing. If it helps at all, carry on with the knowledge that I intend to spritz all readers with lemon cologne (the Turkish version of rubbing alcohol) upon exit, as is the practice at every public restroom. So you may feel dirty now, but never fear: I'll layer some pungent anti-bacterial over your smells before we get to the final period.

Oh, heavens. Now I've gone and mentioned periods, just when you thought you'd had your fill of bodily expulsion imagery.

But, okay, let's just level with each other here: out of every single person's privates come yellow things and brown things and, for half of us, red things, and if we're being honest (why stop now?), that's the ultimate lesson of travel, isn't it? Some of us have darker skin while others of us lack distinct pigmentation; some of us wake up early with Allah in our hearts while others of us lounge all day with Kierkegaard on our minds; and some of us dither around the toilet bowl while others of us drop our pants behind the nearest bush; yet all of us discharge the yellows and browns and reds,

and so maybe the part of travel that delights me the most is the lesson called Just Get Over It Already.

And maybe the part of this post that is tickling me the most--outside of my promise to spritz y'all with lemon cologne before you go (because that's. just. fun.)--is that I've written all this rambling blather and haven't even gotten to the whole reason I started typing in the first place. When I opened this window in my browser, it was with the thought that I'd toss out some photos of a really awesome room at the inn that we're minding.

It happens to be a bathroom.

Which is pretty much how we all got to this point together right now. I thought "bathroom," and suddenly, whoa baby, here we all are, piddling on wet toilet seats and evacuating our bowels together in some sort of fuddled Coca-Cola commercial about teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony.

The whole thing leaves me wondering:

Quizzes by Quibblo.com

2011-01-27T04:46:00.002-06:00

"Myopic"

"Towery city and branchy between towers; Cuckoo-echoing, bell-swarmèd, lark-charmèd, rook-racked, river-rounded."--Gerard Manley Hopkins

The first indication that I'm not a visionary came when I rocked the PSAT in high school. No one had told me it was coming; no one had explained its purpose or meaning. All I remember is that a class of us was herded into a room small tables and given No. 2 pencils. For the next hour or two, I lazed through the math problems and had pencil sword fights with my pal Susan.

Who knew there'd be results for that test reported to the guidance counselor? Who knew I'd go on to take the SAT the next year and would do well enough to get some big, happy financial rewards thanks to the combination of PSAT and SAT? Even more of who knew happened a few years later when I took the GRE test--this time quaking properly with stress--and it turned out my ability to stay inside the lines with a No. 2 pencil reaped me significant gains throughout graduate school.

Who knew that

even though it pains me to roll out of bed before 10:30 a.m.,

even though I can't control the direction of a vehicle when driving in reverse,

even though I have to shriek a little and make pitiful whimpering sounds when lighting a fire,

even though I can't stop myself some nights from eating a Snickers bar before the Oreo course,

even though I recently started doing a jigsaw puzzle that depicts the cacophony of Times Square, with its traffic and billboards and branding, and had to announce to my husband, "This 1,000 piece puzzle is going to be easy for me. It feels exactly like the inside of my head"

--indeed, even though all these things are true,

who knew I'd be good at filling in the bubbles on multiple choice tests?

Trust me, I'm not bragging. Rather, the fact that I excel when faced with limited options and restricted thinking could be considered a foible. This shortcoming has been highlighted for me this past week during our time of inn-sitting. The owner of the inn, Andus, is a German anthropologist who did his dissertation on the homes and living spaces of Cappadocia. When he first came to Cappadocia some 30 years ago, it was for academic work--but then his imagination was caught by the caves and fairy chimneys that dot the area. Eventually, he ended up spotting Just the Right Bit of Ruins and, in a true act of vision, renovating them into a most-charming bit of modernized antiquity.

As I've stood in the kitchen at the inn, looking at the "before" photos, from the time when Andus first rented and then bought the place, I feel positively sheepish that I'm able to fill in bubbles accurately with my trusty No. 2 and, when in doubt, choose the Letter C. In contrast to this pedantic gift of mine, Andus' creative ability to see what was there and what it could be makes me want to poke graphite into my eye and then eat the eraser as a means of assuaging the pain of having graphite in my eye.

If you, too, would like to feel abashed and diminished with regards to what you've done in life, take a look at these photos:

Here's the inn when Andus first spotted it:

Here's the inn today (oh, all right: two days ago), from the same aspect:

Here is the kitchen of the inn before renovation:

And here it is now:

Seriously, I look at these changes and can't imagine imagining them. However, if anyone ever constructs a Cappadocian Fairy Chimney Living standardized test (the CFCL), I assure you

I will blow those bubbles out of the water

2011-01-23T16:36:00.000-06:00

"Two Degrees of Separation"

If you're able to lift up your pasty face from your work long enough--and just look at you there, triturating your keyboard, plunging your hand repeatedly into a bag of Doritos Late Night All-Nighter Cheeseburger Flavored Chips, hacking away at your deconstruction of Apple's missteps in releasing its iOS 4 during the summer of 2010 before posting your Apple-Is-A-Weenie synthesis in the Dribbleware chatroom--

you may want to pay attention.

Because I'm about to mention a Monty Python cast member. And I know how important that kind of stuff is to you.

Even better, I'm going to mention that Monty Python cast member at the end of a rousing round of the hit parlor game of 1994: Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. Of course, because the point here is Monty Python, we're not going to mention Kevin Bacon at all (outside of noting that he did well when he married that Kyra Sedgwick twenty-two years ago). Rather, we're going to play Six Degrees of Michael Palin.

It's going to be a quick turn, this game.

First, we start with Jocelyn. I'm sorry. I know she's a piece of work. But we have to start somewhere.

Next, draw a line to a Cappadocian couple (you choose if you want to poke your lead into the husband or wife, depending on your personal poking preference). The husband is a German anthropologist, and the wife is a Turkish spitfire. They own an amazing guesthouse of restored cave rooms called The Fairy Chimney Inn.

From them, draw a line to Michael Palin, who stayed at The Fairy Chimney Inn in 2007 when he was shooting his travelogue called New Europe (and writing his book of the same name).

Hey, wait. That's it?

Yea, that's it. There are two degrees of separation between Jocelyn and Michael Palin, which pretty much means I'm famous.

You see, I, Jocelyn, am sitting in the Fairy Chimney Inn right now, typing this post. Thanks to a delightful confluence of events (the owners wanted to go to Germany to visit family, and we were, um, in the area, looking bored), our family has been invited to inn-sit until March...basically keeping the furnace going, feeding and walking the massive St. Bernard, and reveling in the perks (hot water right out of the taps, in-floor heating, wireless Internet, a three-foot television, an oven big enough to bake a cake, and a Call to Prayer so remotely sung that inhabitants can sleep past sunrise). Currently, there are no guests staying here, it being the low season and all, but if anyone shows up or calls, we're on duty to turn out a morning breakfast and to fluff their pillows (which, I believe, Palin identified as a highlight of his visit).

So mostly we're baking and feeding and walking and Internetting and sleeping. Plus, sometimes the kids take turns ringing the intercom down at the gate and buzzing each other in...or taking each other's orders for onion rings.

And all of this unforeseen fun is taking place in the midst of one of the world's most spectacular settings.

No, really, it's staggeringly cool.

Just ask my friend Michael Palin.

------------------

(or take a look at this slide from a New York Times article: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/12/23/travel/20071223_WHY_slideshow_index.html?ex=1199595600&en=c27ab52b638b4190&ei=5070&emc=eta3http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2007/12/23/travel/20071223_WHY_slideshow_index.html?ex=1199595600&en=c27ab52b638b4190&ei=5070&emc=eta3)

(or you can look at these photos I took yesterday out the back door...):

2011-01-17T13:47:00.005-06:00

"Remembrance of Donkeys Past"

This whole endeavor has been harder on him than the rest of us.

Seven years old, shy, sensitive, creative, averse to expectations, retreating in the face of pressure,

Paco has not found the move to Turkey an easy one.

Some might make the case that it could have been easy. He has his most enthusiastic supporters circling him; he's well fed, hugged, and loved; he is safe; it is beautiful here, he gets to wear his pajamas four days out of every seven. He got a crossbow for Christmas, for heaven's sake.

His immediate reaction to this place, however, was one of, "Why can't we just stay for a little while? Why does it have to be for a year?" Equally frequently, he's moaned, "I just don't like it here."

Since that notion was asserted, there has been no revision. Travel is said to be a great revealer of character, and one of the primary traits that has emerged about our second grader is that he's incredibly stubborn. As my friend Pamm noted when she visited, "I say this with all the love and experience of someone who raised two boys herself: you have a seven-year-old who's acting amazingly like a thirteen-year-old." She was right. Paco's bouts of sullenness make us want to give him a drumset, usher him to a wood-paneled room in the basement, and ask him not to come up until he's ready to tour colleges.

Even though it's been hard work to jolly along a recalcitrant kid, a big part of me has to concede, regarding his attitude, "Fair enough, really." Coming here wasn't his choice. Staying here wasn't his choice. Nor was being plunked into a backwater where conversation stops when he walks by or, worse yet, smelly men with cracked yellow teeth grab his cheeks and pinch them with a vehemence that doesn't feel remotely like affection. He didn't want to leave his posse of pals back home. He didn't want to see his toys put into storage. He didn't want to enter a new country in the midst of 110 degree temperatures with no air conditioning and Ramadan drums waking him up every morning at 3:30 a.m. before the first Call to Prayer blasted an hour later. Lonely, scared, overwhelmed, confused, unbelievably fatigued, he had every right to his feelings.

Woefully, though--from his point of view--his parents, though sympathetic, don't believe in handing over the deciding vote about family matters to someone who learned to ride a bike and then announced, "I don't want to do that anymore." (and he hasn't)

So this has been tough on him. By extension, it's been hard on all of us.

Fortunately, it's only rough going when he remembers to maintain the stance that he hates it here.

When he forgets to paint himself as a tragic, much-put-upon figure, he has more fun in an hour than my cattle-ranching grandma Dorothy had in her entire lifetime. Because inside his head? Is a prodigious, fluid, magical, charismatic expanse of terrain where kaleidoscopic marbles hit against battling Lego light-saber-wielding minifigures who leap atop paper towel tubes that explode with confetti which then showers down upon a herd of giraffes who walk upon an ocean in which jellyfish sleep on peanut butter rocks.

He may be a butthead, but he's more damn fun than anything.

Case in point: yesterday I dragged the kids (who, many days, are still reluctant to leave the house) out for a walk. As we descended into the nearby canyon, Paco looked over his left shoulder at an ancient cave house and noted, "Hey, that looks like the thing that dangles at the back of your throat." Indeed. Had I ever before seen a better example of Uvula in Nature?

As I watch Paco simultaneously pushing against and thriving in this situation, I mull over the fluctuating nature of memory and wonder how this year will lodge within him over the long term. When I think back on being seven, there are only brief flashes of what was--nothing coherent or sustained: I remember Miss Hertzler catching me counting with my fingers under my desk and telling me that I was smarter than that so I had best sit on my hands during math from then on; I remember my mom not picking up me and a friend at the end of the school day, so we waited and waited out front of the school until a teacher came out to check on us and said she was sure Mom would be there "in three shakes of a lamb's tail"...after which my friend and I decided we had to find a lamb of some sort and pull its tail; I remember my sister telling me, with a strange sneer of superior knowingness, that my parents had signed me up for piano and ballet lessons and not informed me.

Anything beyond that is abstracted and could have happened at age 6, 7, or 8.

As I review my meager cache of memories and read over psychological articles pertaining to autobiographical memory, it becomes clear that Paco won't retain much from this year. On the other hand, the memories that seem to stick with people are those revolving around heightened moments, trauma, pain, extreme sensory stimulation, or difficult emotional challenges.

Uh-oh. If that's the case, Paco is likely to recollect every single minute of this year, from the first time our neighbor dismayed him by grabbing him around the waist and trying to foist him up onto a donkey...to the moments when he embraced tavuk donor (a sandwich made with shaved, peppered chicken), tavuk shish kebap, and grilled chicken wings as his go-to travel foods. When everything is remarkable, what can be forgotten?

The good news is that my reading and life experience also tell me that many of our childhood memories are reconstructed. We think we remember Uncle Dusty dropping a cinderblock on our toes, and then two months later we lost a toenail, but the truth is that the preservation of that memory comes from the story of Uncle Dusty's clumsiness and our subsequent two-hour meltdown being retold at every drunken Thanksgiving for the next twenty years. We hear the story again and again, and the myth becomes real. Even more forceful is the accompanying photo of the dead toenail in a jar, pulled out of Aunt Janice's wallet after her third gimlet. We're told what happened, provided with the viewpoint. We're shown the pictures, and, thusly, absorb Cinderblockgate into our brains as something remembered firsthand.

If, then, there exists the potential to affect memory, I'm all over the power of that manipulation.

So pour me a gimlet. Bring me my Paco. I have a story to construct.

Paco? Tootsiepop? You're eight today. This morning, you were the most excited Birthday Boy I've ever seen. You grabbed the piece of yarn tied next to your bed and traced its winding path, as is our family tradition on any continent, under furniture, above moldings, out the door, through the courtyard, down to the guest room, and there you found your stack of Lego sets and a new DS game. Knowing that you wouldn't want to do schoolwork on your big day, you chose to work through it yesterday; this freed us to take the dolmus to Urgup this afternoon, where we got you an eclair and some of those cool umbrella-shaped chocolates and went to the shop where the lady gives temporary tattoos (nice Phoenix on your arm, by the way) before going to the Internet cafe so you could play games on the Lego site and talk on the phone with Oma and Grandpa Jay. You wanted tacos for dinner, and Dad made them just as you like, with a soft tortilla full of beef wrapped up in a piece of aluminum foil at the bottom, so it doesn't leak. All day long, you monologued about the new Ninjago lego sets, and you wore your new Lego Hero Factory shirt, and people called to sing to you and sent emails and You Tube links, and your energy was boundless.

So what I want you to remember about turning eight in Turkey is that it was awesome, and you were healthy and beautiful and innocent and happy and goofy--

just as you were all year long, as you played with your sword, hung with your sister, lifted weights, ate sesame bread, slept hard (on occasion), blew bubbles, painted grapes, taped your face, recorded your Doric column count, made art at the Black Sea, took pottery lessons, played chess, laid on cushions and tables and hammocks, jumped off walls, tussled with sister, chopped kindling, listened to history, touched The Louvre, stood in front of the Mona Lisa, robot danced in front of a classic, took a family portrait near the Eiffel Tower, hammed it up with Mommy, laid on a suitcase in Reading, ate edamame in London, sat on a Camel in Windsor, slept more, did some finger knitting, pretended to be a beast in front of a castle, drew a picture of yourself on a rooftop, jumped across your personal Grand Canyon, built cabins out of pretzels, scrambled around white stones, made a snowman, shot your crossbow, pretended to be a monkey, considered mosaics, viewed a volcano, burned treasure maps, and practiced "ice bending" beneath a cliff wall carved out five thousand years ago.

Bubs? Pip of my heart? May your every year be as awful as this one.

2011-01-14T16:46:00.003-06:00

"Otantik"

On the rare occasions when I have walked into and through a Wal-mart, I've invariably hit the parking lot a half hour later feeling like I need a shower. The aisles feel grubby; the clientele appear unhealthy; the toxins projected by thousands of square feet of plastics induce malaise; the merchandise for sale only poses as "real."

Hand me the soap already. I'll be needing the loofah, too.

In dramatic contrast are the feelings I had this past week, as we traveled around the Hatay cities of Adana, Iskenderun, Antakya, and Gaziantep, places where we zig-zagged the streets in a fashion that increased the odds of of stumbling across a homespun bonanza. We would wander into a bazaar, see nothing but the usual factory-churned, interchangeable shoes, hoodies, brooms, saucepans, knives...and then we'd keep going. After a bit, after turning twelve more corners, something would change. Things would become less predictable. We'd see a man throwing loaves, glimpse a head bent over a shoe sole, hear the tick-tick-tack of a coppersmith imprinting a pattern.

One night, just after the sun fell and bitter cold started weasling its way into our bones, after wandering past temptingly-lit shops, we took Just the Right Turn, and suddenly my eyes were caught by something entirely novel:

Nowhere else had we seen this mother-of-pearl inlay being sold in a shop. Never before had it occurred to us that mother-of-pearl inlay might appeal to a couple of plain-is-better types like ourselves.

But there it was. Fancy. Intrictate. Ottoman. Appealing.

Wading our way into the crowded shop, we were greeted by the proprietor, Ahmet. In short order, he was demonstrating the technique of sedef, from the hand-drawn design to the chipping away of the wood to the laying down of the copper wire to the shaping of the mother of pearl. Perhaps more affecting than his clear skill and focus was his ability to explain it all in Turkish in a way that we, with our one hundred words of vocabulary, could comprehend.

So quickly, the situation was free of complications. His words and hands synergized into a wow.

As we listened and attempted to keep our hands from coveting every item in the shop, I whispered to Groom, "This seems like the right place for you to use your birthday money and finally get that backgammon board you've been wanting."

Instead of the five-thousand-fifty-five prefabricated sets we'd seen everywhere else, this shop only had five--each of them slightly different from the next. Quickly, Groom differentiated them and found The One.

A day later, again as night fell and frigidity seeped beneath our fleeces, we pushed open Ahmet's door. With a broad smile and an "iyi akşamlar," I walked in to his shop, looked again at the tea tray propped against the wall--a tray using a design Ahmet retired after one use (take that, Dora the Explorer!)--and told him, "I'm back for that."

Even though he didn't understand me, he understood me. Not even standing up from behind his table, he asked, "Would you like some tea? Coffee?" Oh, yes. We would.

Half an hour later, much warmed, having discovered that his father also did sedef and that Ahmet's favorite place in Turkey is a city called Mardin, which he favors because it's a place where Muslim, Christian, Jew, Armenian, and Kurd all live together, shoulder to shoulder, in harmony, I pointed again to the tray. "Can I buy this from you?"

Of course I could. But first, Ahmet wondered if I would like to have my family's names inscribed on the bottom of the tray, as a special memento. Inlaying our names took twenty minutes, after which he knocked ten lira off the price of the tray.

Pushing our way out in to the darkness and clutching the tray to my chest as protection from the wind, I thought to myself,

"Time to lose the soap and shelve the loofah. This place, this man, this experience...I may never shower again."

2011-01-09T16:18:00.001-06:00

"We All Have Our Gifts, and One of Mine Is Being Juvenile"

We went to the mosaic museum in Antakya yesterday, where I found my attention riveted by a piece entitled "The Happy Hunchback." Thoughts of "Why was he so happy anyhow?" and "How cool of the Romans to make such a quirky and unique mosaic" ran through my head.

But mostly, I noted that he may have been a hunchback, but the deck wasn't stacked entirely against him.

Happy, indeed.

2011-01-05T16:31:00.007-06:00

"Public Intimacies"

Realizing that a change of scenery in January is never a bad mental health strategy, we've launched ourselves on a somewhat loosey-goosey week-long trip around the Hatay region. Think Southeastern Turkey. Think near Syria. Think Mediterranean. Think renowned for food. Think no hotels booked in advance. Think buying bus tickets as we go.

We left Ortahisar yesterday at 8:30 a.m., took a mini-bus to the nearby town of Urgup, got tickets for the one-hour bus ride to the larger city of Kayseri, waited in the bus station for a couple of hours, and then hopped on a five-hour bus ride to one of Turkey's largest cities: Adana.

Once off the five-hour bus ride, we had a half hour mini-bus ride to the center of the city and then a slightly shell-shocked twenty minute walk (rolling bags behind us as we fought through rush-hour foot traffic) to the first hotel listed in the guidebook. It was nice enough, but not completely "budget" in price. Fortunately, despite their assertion that their rates are fixed, we talked them down twenty lira, a drop which, when coupled with fatigue, worked the charm of securing our stay.

So we checked in, wandered over to the nearest restaurant, and spent an hour wading our way through approximately fourteen plates of food, only six of which were ordered. But they kept setting down bread and appetizers and garnishes and desserts. We could hardly tell them to stop.

No, literally. We could hardly tell them to stop. With our meager Turkish, we couldn't possibly have asked them, had we the desire, to stop. The only polite course of action was to continue stuffing our craws.

Three hours later, Groom lay sacked out on the bed, pants unbuttoned, rubbing his belly and burping.

It was an auspicious beginning.

Today, we walked along the river, goggled at one of the Middle East's largest mosques, found a McDonald's (speaking of needing to loosen one's waistband), and spent a few hours trailing after the kids as they worked their way through several acres of playgrounds in the city's main greenspace. On the way back to the hotel, we bought bus tickets Iskenderun, a port city on the Mediterranean, leaving tomorrow.

And then, still picking our way across the city, we ran across a "movies in 5D" storefront, and before we knew it, we were strapped into moving seats, being showered with fake snow, fighting off whiplash as we screened a short feature entitled Snow Ride. I only screamed a little bit when fake bats fluttered around my ankles during the abandoned mine sequence.

Lately, I've been yawning a lot, ready to sleep 'til noon each day. Groomeo has been joshing me that I was bitten by a tse-tse fly. My response to such joshing is a fierce and valid, "My. senses. are. very. stimulated. As a sensitive sort, I find I am very tired. So hesh up and go buy more bus tickets already, Mr. Unflappable Hardy Steady."

As you may have gathered, both from this litany of Things Done and from the quality of prose you've just soldiered through, blogging energies run high in my heart and mind but low in reality. Thus, rather than reaching for anything of substance to close this out, I will leave you with two photos taken today, as the kids romped the playgrounds. For always and ever, I am most fascinated by the people around me--not the least of which were this lovely young woman and her companion. His reclining position implies a recent meal at a Fourteen Plate Restaurant.

Perhaps the pink bucket by his head does too.

Anyhow, it's so rare to see men and women interacting casually, talking and relaxing in public, that they held my attention.

Until the next thing did.

2010-12-27T16:21:00.000-06:00

"Compulsory"

Responding to the waving arm of a village woman clad in the traditional clothing of shalvar pants and long white head scarf, the dolmus driver pulled over. As the door to the mini-bus rolled open, the woman leaned inside and asked in Turkish, "Is this the bus to Urgup?"

"No," responded the driver, "This is the Nevsehir bus. The Urgup one is coming along soon."

"Ah, okay," the woman said as she removed her foot from the step, backing away from the bus. At that moment, a buzz went through the first two rows of seats, amongst other traditionally-garbed women. Suddenly mutters of "Not the Urgup bus?" and "Going to Nevsehir?" and "Whoops, wrong bus. Lemme off!" accompanied the bustle of several other women packing up their bags, re-adjusting their scarves, and making for the door.

Not even rolling his eyes with the exasperation to which he was due, the driver waited while they disembarked, wished them a good day, and propelled the dolmus back into gear.

As it turns out, Groom and I sorely lack that kind of placid lenity. We are card carrying eye rollers, in fact, and our club privileges kicked in during those few rustling moments of "whaaazuh?" and "huzzabuzz" and "wherewegoin'?" In fact, by the time the last woman had slipped her feet back into her sensible slides and exited the bus to wait on the roadside for the imminent Urgup dolmus, I actually had to take off my glasses and rub my eyes for a second. Feeling a bit wonky, I blinked real hard-like until focus was restored. Then I dared a glance at my husband and gasped. Who knew he was so damn cute?

Such are the dangers and benefits of Acute Ocular Elliptoid Circumvolution. The eye roll--that bewitcher!--dupes one into certainty of superiority...even when one has been having a quiet cry over a plate of toast while bemoaning belly fat mere hours earlier.

Once Groomeo and I stopped with the eye whirls, we marshaled the energy to speak.

"How come," I choked out, "every time we get on the bus,"--and here I stopped to wheeze a bit, simply for dramatic effect meant to punctuate nothing--"this happens?"

Running with it, His Groomishness chimed in, "I know. We're here in the village, picking up people who have lived here their whole lives, heading to one of two possible destinations, and there's this vast confusion about which bus to get on. Women hop on, get to chatting about how their knees ache, only to discover six minutes later that they're on the wrong bus..."

Seeing my moment, I broke in with a, "...WHICH IS SO WEIRD, WHAT WITH THE DESTINATION BEING PRINTED ON THAT BIG OLD PLACARD IN THE FRONT WINDOW AND ALL..."

'Tis true. The dolmuses from our village either head to Nevsehir, or they head to Urgup. In the front window of every dolmus is a big sign that says either "Ortahisar-Nevsehir" or "Ortahisar-Urgup." Even I, legally blind, myopic bi-focal wearer, can decipher the six-inch letters when the bus pulls up.

So, as they kids these days acronym so effectively, WTF?

Although I can lay out myriad explanations for this syndrome of the ladies not knowing what bus they're getting onto--theories that range from Women In the Middle of a Good Gossip Are Oblivious to Vehicles...to They Are So Sheltered and Well-Watched After That They've Never Had to Pay Attention for Themselves--

the reality is all too easily explained:

Until relatively recently, Turkey's requirement for mandatory education was built around five years of primary education (now students are required to finish out 8th grade, however). Factor into that a lack of busing, families that didn't approve of educating girls, and overcrowded schools that offered half-day sessions so that a second set of students could come in during the afternoon hours,

and it's amazing that these women are able to find the bus stop at all.

As the slightly-emptier bus rolled towards Nevsehir, and Groom and I reviewed our notes about the history of compulsory education in Turkey, Girl piped up.

"So, wait. What are you talking about?"

Quickly, we briefed her. In a final parental attempt to drive home the scope of this issue, I said to her ten-year-old self, "So basically, a whole bunch of people in Turkey, unless they were lucky enough to have special intelligence or a family with the means to send them on, stopped going to school after 5th grade. Think of it this way: imagine how much you wouldn't know if this year of school you're doing right now were your last, if you never again had to sit down and get your head around fractions and decimals, if you never again had your brain spin in the face of simple versus complex sentences, if you never again got to learn anything academic. Imagine if 5th grade were the end of your learning. That's what we're talking about: people for whom 5th grade was the peak."

For just a beat, one perfect beat in 4/4 time,

Girl was silent.

She looked out the window at the garbage blowing in the wind. Her eyes took in the crumbling houses, already eroding although only half-built. She flashed back to hours spent in waiting areas, times when we muted the collected crowd by opening our bags and pulling out books. She recalled that these hours in waiting areas took place in a governmental building to which her parents were required to make repeat visits because, with each visit, different workers offered up different versions of "I don't exactly know the answer to your question. I need to make a phone call," and when the phone call ended, said worker offered up an entirely new explanation of what needed to happen. Her active brain remembered all the times the cash register at the grocery store indicated we owed 12 lira, and when we would hand over a 20 lira note, it would take a minute of finger counting under the counter before change was made. She blipped to the street repair outside our house, when the entire lane was dug up to fix some pipes and then, a week after that job, dug up again to fix a few more. And, of course, she riffled through the many instances of women getting off the well-marked bus once they realized where it was headed.

That single beat later, Girl's sponge of a brain--so ready to absorb any input--had processed the information about Turkey's former educational requirements, and her eyebrows shot up. Matter-of-factly she noted,

greeted by our hoots of laughter,

"Well, that sure explains a lot."

2010-12-24T05:47:00.001-06:00

"Hippy Hollyday"

At the start of December, we made an advent calendar, a way of counting down to the Big Day. Each of us took a little time to paint, draw, and glue our contributions.

Groom's little cartoon panels were my favorite addition to the calendar, so I asked him to scan them in and compile them. If you haven't been visiting his blog of our time in Turkey, do head over to http://www.layingfallow.com/:

In the last few weeks, as we've counted down the days, opening a new door on the calendar each day, we've also gotten together with new friends and made crafts, done some secret shopping, mailed off letters to Santa requesting specific gifts (Paco sent Santa, under separate cover, a question: "What is your favorite kind of cookie?" Santa replied a couple weeks later, surprising us with a note tacked to the fridge: "Sugar!"), and put up the most hilarious fake Charlie Brown Christmas tree ever. As someone who doesn't particularly like the tree-mounting and tree-undoing aspects of the holiday, I was delighted to hang only a handful of ornaments on a tiny little bit of Not Much.

And now it's Christmas Eve, and Paco swears he won't sleep at all tonight. I assure him, in a vaguely threatening tone, that Santa doesn't come unless kids are asleep. Our Girl is several years past Santa belief, so we anticipate she'll conk out nicely. As Paco riddled out how Santa is going to get down one of our chimneys, what with them being blocked by soba pipes ("Oh no! Santa is going to get sucked into the soba pipe and get burned up!"), it occurred to us that, because we have two tons of the stuff to fuel the sobas, there has never been an easier year to put a lump of coal in someone's stocking.

Note to self: line stocking with plastic bag.

------------------------------
For our pagan-leaning family, the celebration is as much about The Solstice and sharing gifts and appreciating darkness and light and eating cookies as anything else. However, despite my heathenish spirit, I find myself contemplating the power of Christ:

This week, as we sat in a government building in a city near our village, filling out form after form, walking from one office to another, paying fees, getting help from some friends with translating, chasing down our residency permits, we heard a voice ask our friend Gulcan, in accented English,

"These people you are with, where are they from?"

Gulcan answered, "They're from America."

I lifted my head from an application form and saw a beautiful seventeen-year-old girl sitting a few chairs down. While she had the exotic coloring and bearing of a Middle Eastern female, she wore a cross around her neck. This poised teenager continued, "If they are from America, why are they here?"

Gulcan filled her in: "They are applying for residency permits so that they do not run into any visa problems in the next few months."

"No," clarified the girl, "I mean why are they in Turkey?"

"Well," Gulcan told her, "They want to learn about the country and culture and learn some language."

The girl, still a bit confused, gave a small chuckle. "So they came here on purpose and left America? Are they Christian?"

Gulcan checked in with me (because it was nearing the end of the work day, I kept at my task of hurriedly copying down passport numbers onto four forms before the offices closed) on the religion question and then explained, "They are not religious. They will go back to America after some months here, but, yes, they chose to come here. Why are you here?"

At that point, this girl gestured to her family, who were sitting all around her, "We are Iranian, and we are Christians. We had to leave. With secrecy and great difficulty, we have made it into Turkey and have gotten this far. Now we are trying to get a refugee status so that we can be safe and try to make some money. Our goal is to get out of Turkey and one day, God willing, get to America. All we want is to get to America so that we can worship freely. That's why I can't believe there are people here today, in this same place, who left America on purpose."

To her everlasting credit, Gulcan (the owner of an inn) moved closer to the girl, wrote down her phone number, and, in a complete "there's room at the inn" moment, had a quiet conversation about being paid under the table.

That day, as the lights overhead flickered off--the workers were trying to clear the building--we turned in our paperwork to get permission to stay in Turkey, and this Iranian girl and her family turned in their paperwork to get permission to stay in Turkey.

Eventually, our year here will end, and we'll head to America.

Eventually,

and this is my wholehearted Christmas wish for these Christians on the run,

so will they.

2010-12-20T17:17:00.001-06:00

"Unleavened Barn Raising"

Only five months later can I comprehend the shock that overtook me when we arrived in Turkey. Had we first stopped in Istanbul, the landing might have been softer and felt more gradual in terms of West-to-East, but since we flew straight to Cappadocia (one hour flight from Minneapolis to Chicago; ten hour flight from Chicago to Istanbul; one hour flight from Istanbul to Kayseri; one hour shuttle ride from Kayseri to Goreme) with only small lulls in between each leg, we showed up in this Land of the Past feeling tired, excited, expectant...and found the place vibrant and laid back and full-of-more-yet-less and crazily-foreign and HOOOOOOOOOOT.

Indeed, I only feel just now that I'm recovering from that August heat and the weird, off-kilter sleep deprivation. It's like the 110 degree temperatures, unrelieved by air conditioning, sauteed any rational or predictable reactions. Even now, still in the midst of the experience, I can look back on August and think, "Who was that woman, stumbling around the broken cobblestones, attempting to orient herself and hone in on some sort of context while mopping the sweat out of her armpits? She was a leeeetle bit scary."

In significant ways, I'm still that woman, but at least now I'm wearing long sleeves and the odd pair of mismatched socks. Perhaps more importantly, the sleep deprivation has eased since I generally wake up for about half an hour with the first Call to Prayer and no longer have to count myself as Awake for the Day Starting at 4:30 a.m.

But here's the part of the process in which I'm reveling: we're at the point of acculturation where we can say there are things in the villages of Cappadocia that we know we'll miss intensely once we return home.

Trust me, the Call to Prayer at dawn is profoundly not one of them. Nor are the aggressive flies that triangulate their trajectories straight towards our retinas.

However, we've come attached to this volcanic, tufa-rocked, accordion-pleated, beige, hollowed-out landscape in ways that alter our heartbeats. We've had our breath arrested by the beauty that lives inside simple souls who may struggle to write their names but who would never leave us standing on the sidewalk in the rain, waiting for a ride that isn't going to show up. We've seen our historical compasses become re-aligned around a region that has been more continuously inhabited than most others, that has hosted Hattians and Assyrians and Hittites and Phyrgians and Lydians and Persians and Romans and Seljuks and Ottomans and Turkmen. We've felt the whap of our jaws hitting the ground as we've peered into the thousand-year-old cave rooms beneath our 400-year-old Greek home. We've felt our knees weaken from the basket-view of several hundred meters high, inside the vantage point of a hot air balloon.

We've eaten fifteen kinds of peppers. We've seen women in their fifties who only recently have adopted a head scarf as daily wear--because they are certain, under the current government--that their sons in the military may live to see another day if they, as Mothers, adhere to conservative Islamic notions of dress. We've seen families making pottery in the same shops as their great-great-grandfathers. We've been touched by the attentive way young men in their twenties take stock of who is stepping onto the bus, hyper vigilantly moving their seats so that women and older men are assured of a place to sit down. We've spent long stretches of time in the nut and dried fruit shops where the owners scoop out sample after sample, insisting that we have at least a taste of every single of the seven varieties of hazelnuts. We’ve stretched our arms to the ceiling with delight when we step into one of our two heated rooms and feel the warmth smother the chill of the kitchen tiles.

And.

We’ve grown a little addiction to a thing called yufka.

Circular, several feet across, thin enough to see through, yufka is an edible purse. Fill it with cinnamon, sugar, and walnuts, and it’s breakfast. Stuff it with cheese, and it’s lunch. Roll it around ground beef, and it’s dinner. Swipe in some Nutella, and it’s dessert.

Swaddle an infant in it, and he sleeps through the night.

Oh yea, it’s amazing stuff. Along the lines of phyllo-meets-tortilla, yufka is a versatile staple of village cuisine. It can be bought factory-made, in a package, or from a specialty shop where capable men wielding long wooden dowels roll the stuff out and sell it by the kilo.

But it’s best of all when made by the village women themselves, which we found out first hand one Sunday afternoon when we stopped by our friend Christina’s house. Her courtyard was full of women—her landlord’s family plus neighbor ladies, all working together for several days to lay in the year’s supply of yufka, stacks a few meters high—

Rolling, patting, clacking, chatting, stoking, cooking, flipping,

and sharing.

By virtue of standing around and watching, we each scored a huge, warm, hot-off-the-griddle piece of yufka folded into a wad of newsprint.

Moments later, though, back to tending their fires and sharing gossip, the women swirled around their communal task, hardly noticing us in the corner,

wiping the melted butter off our chins.

2010-12-16T02:26:00.001-06:00

"Saturated"

Every. single. day.

I think anew,

"I don't foresee ever getting over this place."

All of these pictures were taken within four minutes' walk of our house. Just imagine the delights if one were feeling particularly hardy and ventured a five minute expedition.

2010-12-10T06:47:00.004-06:00

"Open Book, Open Wallet"

At twenty-six, with a newly-minted graduate degree in hand, I got a full-time job teaching writing at a four-year university.

My salary was $17,000 per year.

It wasn’t for nothing that one of my esteemed college professors characterized the teaching of composition as “working in the armpit of the university.”

However, having never been quite sure that English majors ever earned any income at all outside of what they made behind the wheels of taxis, I thought $17,000 seemed fair enough compensation for 60+ hours of work per week plus the bonus Emotional Hardiness Training that came from reading student essays which asserted “people with AIDS deserve what they got.”

It’s like I was overpaid, really.

After three years at that university, my pay (No benefits! No retirement fund!) ballooned to almost $19,000 per year. Because I’d struggled to make rent and often exceeded the budgeted $25 per week for groceries, my credit card debt was on par with my salary.

Realizing I was on a slippery slope, financially, I made the move to Minnesota and the community college system. I was hired into that system with a 90% raise.

So there I was, twenty-nine, a slightly-tarnished graduate degree in hand, having just scored a huge raise, suddenly hitting the national average salary—for high school graduates.

Because I never graduated from high school, though, it was impossible to gauge what a reasonable compensation for my years of study and time in the classroom should have been. None of the “predicted income by education level” charts had a column for Graduate Degree Sans High School Diploma. Moreover, it seemed presumptuous to imagine that following one’s inclinations and enjoying one’s work assured a higher tax bracket.

Now, fifteen years later, that 90% raised salary has grown by another 75%, and if you’re able to parse out those percentages, you’ll know the upshot is that, well, I’m more fortunate than most but less fortunate than many. Work in the fact that this Average-ish Salary also supports three dependents, and you’ll understand why we eat a lot of lentils and keep the thermostat set at 56 degrees.

In the States, all I have to do is tell someone I’m an English teacher, and they immediately have a sense of the lifestyle that affords: comfortable, but Lamborghini-free. Pretty quickly, I know anyone spending time with me isn’t after the dosh.

In Turkey, however…

It’s occasionally disheartening to know that the welcome we receive has undertones of “Money. Gimme some of your money. Money. How about the money?” Now, I don’t necessarily mind this attitude when I’ve willingly entered a place of business; fair enough, really. And I get that our income, while nothing major in the U.S., is well above the average Turk’s. I get that much of the eye contact aimed my way is more about “You can help me with a cash infusion” than “You look like a really interesting person I’d like to talk to.” Despite this, it was still hard to stand there as my friend Pamm got vastly overcharged by a Turkish businesswoman whose shop I have patronized faithfully. Still, it’s hard to contact a young Turkish woman who said she’d be happy to give our family Turkish lessons (“Even though I’ve never taught Turkish and couldn’t really explain the grammar; but I could help with vocabulary and answer your questions”) and hear back from her that she’d be glad to teach us for 50 Turkish Lira per hour. Contrast this number with the 25TL charged by the professional potter who gives our kids lessons that last for several hours, “until we feel like we are done.” Ultimately, when smacked with blatant overcharging, my nose gets out of joint, but I also realize it’s to be expected because tourism trains people to get what they can from the yabancı (foreigners). I also have a snortle (the sound emitted when a nose joint is out of alignment) over the idea of my hard won average American income as admirable.

It’s just that, as much as I understand that Turks want our money, there’s unexpected stuff that keeps sideswiping me. Most surprising is that the sideswiping comes from the expats…who, one would think, might serve as havens from the experience of “Money. Gimme some money,” who might provide the welcome and comfortable counterpoint of making us feel like bona fide fellow human beings.

Who knew my most startling lessons this year would come from attempting to navigate expat culture? Compared to icy British blondes who can’t be bothered to return a “hello” at intimate dinner parties; compared to Kiwis who can’t get through an evening without multiple bottles of wine (each); compared to married couples who make a life’s game out of deceiving their partners; compared to the general “junior high didn’t work for me the first time around, so now I’m doing it again as an adult, and I’ve decided I’m a power player this time” modus operandi of many expats—

a culture of isolated women who cover their hair so that only their husbands are privy to The Reveal; who rarely leave the street where they live; who never get behind the wheel of a car…feels positively honest and sensical.

Cuz, Poodles? The expats is kind of crazy (and trust me, I generally like me some crazy; my only requirement is that The Crazy be accompanied by a dose of self-honesty and deprecation).

Over the last few weeks, after several expat social interactions during which it became clear my role was to listen, nod, listen, say “That’s amazing,” listen, try to insert a question asking for more detail, and then listen, I got a little sad. I realized that I’d met these people a handful of times, spent hours in the same room with them, yet I wasn’t sure they even knew my name. I was fairly certain they had no idea about what I do for a living. I was completely positive that they had no interest in any personal history I might bring to the table, that the role newcomers are cast into here is to reflect back to the actors an image of themselves that they are purposefully creating. They perform; we are to applaud. At the end of one such evening, freshly tapped out of standing ovations, I left the dining area and walked into the living room, where Groom was attempting to amuse the kids—you can bet no one was talking to them!—and whispered, “Wow, I don’t believe I’ve ever felt so socially useless before. Mostly, I’ve realized I like you, and that’s about it.”

We had a little moment there, when we realized we were far enough into trying to be “open” and “friendly” that we could make some decisions about the ways we would spend our time during the rest of the year. It was time to implement a policy of Social Winnowing.

How fortunate, then, that we’d had some genuinely fine evenings with one particular couple—first meeting at a party, then having them over for dinner, then spending an afternoon at their place, rounded out by the menfolk having a lovely morning hike together. Quickly, it had gotten to the point where they invited us to take some time this winter—“One, two, three weeks; whatever you like! You’d only need to cover electricity and incidentals. Since we’ll be leaving soon for our travels, just email us if you’d like to use the place”—and have a stay in their house down on the Mediterranean while they spent a few months sailing around the Middle East. After the third time they mentioned this possibility, Groom and I decided it would be a great mid-winter option and that we should avail ourselves of the offer.

So I emailed them this past week and said we’d love to take them up on their proposal, would be happy to cover all related expenses, and hoped to firm up some dates. A day later, the reply came in: “Lovely! It will be 100 lira per night, along with 100 lira for the cleaning woman, which you can leave on top of the fridge before you go. Just let us know which weeks you’d like to be there.”

That silence you read in the empty spaces above represents my reaction. There might have been a tiny gasp, too.

I still remember so well the years of making $17,000, praying I didn’t get sick because I couldn’t have paid the bill, thanking the nice check-out guy at the grocery store for letting me take my bananas and lettuce even though I was a dollar short (“Don’t worry, sweetie: you’ll get me back next week when you come in”),

that I forget to see myself as I am here. When I read that email, I had forgotten my role as—laughably, really—Bulging Wallet.

Yea, okay then. So no staying in their house. And sure as hell no more morning hikes. Plus, maybe there was a little bit of stomping around for a few days, accompanied by mutterings of, “I just don’t like anybody here. If I were back at home, where there are more choices of company, you can bet your Mastercard I wouldn’t have most of these people in my life. Let’s further the strictures of our Social Winnowing Policy so that we now adhere to If You Wouldn’t Make the Cut Back Home, You Don’t Slide In Here, Either, Horace.”

The beautiful thing about a snit is the way it gets pulled up short mid-wail: you’re standing there in your crib, shifting pajama-clad feet back and forth on your mattress, batting the musical mobile out of your eyes, peering over the edge of the bars, about to hurl a glow-in-the-dark caterpillar towards the diaper changing table, when Mommy walks in with a ‘Nilla Wafer,

and, sheepishly, you let the caterpillar drop to the floor with a soft “plop.”

This is just what happened to me mere days after my “I don’t like anybody here” funk. ‘Nilla wafer crumbs dotting my chin, I emailed with a lovely woman (hi, Vicky!) who had left a comment on this blog about the dearth of books in English in Cappadocia (and, even more, the dearth of book sharing amongst expats with control issues). We met at a café so as to pass her a bag of books but, more importantly, to compare experiences and Talk Life. A day later, I took a phone call from a delightful German anthropologist. He and his Turkish wife invited us over for dinner. He insisted on picking us up, as “I have wheels, and you don’t.” That evening, they fed us an amazing meal, engaged us in conversation, offered to help us in any way they could. Two days after that, we got a call from a Turkish doctor, a woman who wondered if we’d like to go to a jazz night with her and a friend. They picked us up, spread a feeling of good humor, introduced us to a little-seen subculture of music and nightlife, bought the kids chocolate, refused our offers to buy them something to drink,

and went far in redeeming our belief that we are more than walking Lira Notes.

----------------------------------
Having written about some of my disgruntlement to our friend Christina, she who just returned to The States after 7 years in Turkey, I received the following wonderful, helpful, spirit-bolstering reply:

Honey, honey, honey. Turkey took me by the ankles, turned me upside down, and shook me like a son of a gun when I first arrived. It can be hard, hard, hard. Every expectation, co-dependent habit and belief system clattered from my pockets to the ground. And then it twirls you around by those ankles until you can't stop giggling, puts you down, and gives you that pony you always wanted. It can be full of love, joy, and laughter.

I think there's a wall that has to be hit. You let go of all the expectations you didn't even know you had, play with the bag of seemingly broken and half missing marbles, and make yourself up a completely new game. Call on your faith, whatever that is. Doing this with 3 other people makes it sooo much easier, you have your island - and sooo much harder, because you're an island for them and its harder to make those slashing adjustments when they feel like they come up. Remember your favorite piece of art from home and "Hang in there" babe.

Consider your family a handful of beautiful agates that have been thrown into the polisher for refinement - turning your worlds around and upside down. I guarantee you'll all be shinier and even more beautiful people at the end of your journey.
-------------------------------------------------

Indeed.

But I’m going to maintain to the finish that it shouldn’t cost even the roughest agate 100TL per night to sleep in an empty house while the owners sail the Red Sea.

2010-12-03T11:28:00.002-06:00

"Songs of Experience"

The (semi) Romantic poet and artist William Blake is certainly no Mary Oliver to me, but I do enjoy the fact that he could invite someone over to "look at his etchings," and he'd actually have something to show that visitor upon arrival that was, you know, etched. I also like that he taught his wife to read and write--and that his peers largely regarded him as mad.

Even more, I appreciate that his writings--although they strike this modern reader as a bit simplistic in some cases--explore the idea that it takes oppositional forces to create something that is Whole. Blake wrote about innocence and experience, heaven and hell, corporeal and spiritual, ultimately making the case that you've got to have the two sides to have anything at all.

I agree, yet this year in a new environment is highlighting the fact that many don't. Maybe it's natural for inhabitants of a leisure culture, but it does seem like a lot of caring people want every day to be "good," want every thing to be "a great time," believe that if something is periodically flat or unhappy then maybe it should be rethought.

I've been mulling this over in regards to our experience here because I'm very, very glad we have days that are challenging. If we started out with "it's so beautiful here" and then moved to "the people are amazing" before ending with "we've never had more fun," then we'd be having a one-dimensional experience, free of layers or complexities. In other words, I'm really grateful that I feel sad and lonely sometimes. I find it delicious that, especially when so much of my life is "set," I get to feel constantly off balance here.

The thing is, the tough days make the happy, wavy days all the richer.

When it comes to the melancholy that has set in each time visitors from the States have left us to return home, it's a beautiful bit of heart piercing because it means we have people we love, and they came to share in our adventure, and they had compelling reasons to return home. It's wonderful to feel bereft when they leave. Because an empty heart means we've been very, very lucky.

This is just how I feel a day after our good friends Pamm and Ed have left us to fly back to Minnesota. They came, and each day was sun dappled and conversation filled. Then they left, and we felt empty, missing their laughter and wonder and card playing. The pull of opposites, reminding us of the abundance of our lives, was positively Blake-ian.

2010-11-26T15:44:00.004-06:00

“Principium Contradictionis"

Our Minnesotan friends Pamm and Ed have been touring Turkey the last week or so and are on their way to spending a few days at our house. Based on Pamm’s quick emails of update, I’d say they’re getting the full Turkish experience, wherein everything they expected hasn’t been delivered, which then makes space for them to be surprised by what delights them. More than anything, for good or bad, they’ve been struck by some glaring inconsistencies—which we, after four months here, make us nod our heads knowingly. For Pamm, she couldn’t believe that they were staying at a luxurious 5-star hotel that only served instant coffee. For us, we have remarked that:

--The tenet of Islam pertaining to purity and cleanliness apparently extends only to the body (ritualized ablutions are a part of every prayer and must follow all intimate relations, not to mention the ubiquitous use of Lemon Cologne, an 80-proof rubbing alcohol poured over one’s hands multiple times a day) because it is no rare thing to see a man in a skull cap cradling his prayer beads as he tosses an empty cigarette pack to the ground. Recently, on a landing next to the mosque across the street, someone tossed out six rusty stove pipes. At least it's a place where their disintegration will undoubtedly be hastened by the blistering decibels of the Call to Prayer. The entire landscape is littered with empty olive oil cans, plastic bags, rotting squash and loaves of bread, broken ironing boards, unwanted bed frames, shattered beer bottles, partially drunk liters of Coke, cracked cinderblocks, abandoned shoes, dead trucks, and ripped hoses. The first time I gave Groom directions as to how to find a nifty ancient church that I’d stumbled across, a key point to those instructions was, “When you encounter the big pile of mildewing sweaters in the middle of the road, you’ll know you’re on the right track.”

--Our 70-year-old neighbor who wears at least one, if not two, headscarves at all times and is always covered from head to toe in modest draping handed my husband the gift of a bowl of home-dried raisins covered with a newspaper. On that sheet of newspaper was a scantily-clad Warrior Goddess model with her Fierce Lady Bosoms exposed to the readership--and to raisin eaters who can’t help but imagining they’re chomping into nipples with every bite.

--Turkey, in particular the Cappadocia region, is one of the most continuously-inhabited pieces of land on the planet, a fact that might lead one to expect a that modern-day Turks would have a command of history and an elevated civilization in terms of music, art, literature. However, and with many exceptions, most Cappadocians rarely read (outside of the newspaper), think of mass production as the height of art, and have never touched a musical instrument. Even more surprising is the disconnect between the evidence of previous inhabitants and the knowledge of who they were or what they were doing. Certainly, there is a general sense of the various eras of history (the Hittites, the Phrygians, the Byzantines…), but those seeking a comprehensive archeological explanation are stymied more often than not. When our family hired a spendy nationally-licensed guide for a day tour around the region (we knew he was the real deal because he sported an ID card on a lanyard), he earned our respect due to his unwillingness to fabricate facts, as so many of the unlicensed guides do. When we toured the underground city of Kaymakli, which is thought to extend for eight stories under the earth, the guide was well able to shine his flashlight and point out rolling stone doors, rooms where fires had been used heavily for cooking, spots where grapes had been stomped…but as to the overall purpose of the underground city, he, like all authorities, was uncertain. Such cities might have been built for protection from invaders. Or possibly for storage. Or maybe for some-time usage. Or, alternatively, for long-term usage. Perhaps in the winter. Or summer. In truth, the lack of certainty about these underground cities is refreshing, as too often archaeology seems to lean towards the satisfactions of pat storytelling over the ambiguities raised by science. On the other hand, when the guide pointed out a doorway full of sand and noted, “It’s thought there are many more levels below this one which have never been touched or looted, which might be full of eye-opening artifacts, but no one is certain,” it was all I could do not to holler, “Give me a shovel and a month, and I’ll make a huge dent in deciphering this joint, Mustafa!”

As we exited Kaymakli, Groom pointed out, “We seem to run into this again and again here: it’s like the realization that something could be opened up for tourism took priority over the need to figure out the place first. If each site were properly excavated, made sense of, and then packaged into presentable information for visitors, we wouldn’t always walk away with more questions than we came in with.”

Of course, he was an anthropology major, so it’s in his training to crave pottery shards.

What surprises me more than anything is that this country existed under refined Ottoman rule for hundreds of years, and then the forward-thinking Ataturk came along and “modernized” things, yet there’s not a bookstore to be seen for three hundred kilometers.

--The men wear suit coats when they work in the fields. (I know this can be seen in countries around the world where formality intersects with the need to hoe, but it still makes me wonder why the ill-fitting suit coat can’t be hung from a nearby tree while the hoeing takes place)

--We live in a region that’s just emerging from subsistence living, yet it’s amazingly hard to find a whole grain. Semi-relatedly, can we just take a minute here to chuckle over the fact that it is possible to find brown rice (par for the course, it’s nearly inedible) in a few Turkish stores, but it’s called “diet rice”?

--The New York Times ran an article last summer touting Turkish food as a “world cuisine,” but our experiences in restaurants have been, by and large, deeply unsatisfying. Or, as my pal Pammy put it in email, the food “beggars description.” Fortunately, she didn’t let that daunt her and went on to attempt description of the challenges of tourist food for a person with a deadly allergy to anything in the nightshade family: “One night the only thing left on the buffet after the Germans and Russians went through that wasn't smothered in eggplant or bibers (peppers) was french fries, spaghetti noodles, and white rice with some fragments of honey drenched desserts and bread. All cold and all bad.”

Ultimately, highlighting contradictions begins to feel like condemnation, and that’s not my purpose. In point of fact, I feel defensive of Turkey and think pretty much everyone’s lives would be richer for having experienced it.

What’s more, as soon as Pamm half joked that Turkey leads with contradictions, my first reaction was to agree…but my second reaction was to think, “Yea, but what place isn’t? Personally, I come from a country where physical fitness is an obsession but where obesity rates are rising. Riddle me that one. Then there’s the fact that the U.S. prides itself on individualism, yet its most popular sports are football, baseball, and basketball: team sports one and all. And how about the trend of environmentalism which is laughable when pitted against the millions of cars on the roads? What about loudly-protesting Christians who spend more time in Walmart than reading to the blind? Want me to show you a ‘foodie’ in the drive-thru line? How about a doctor whose income trumps the Hippocratic Oath? Volunteerism for pay?”

This whole discussion highlights the intangible gains of travel: it reminds us that nothing makes sense, that there is beauty in the gaps between “should be” and “is,” that logic is inherently illogical when pitted against humanity’s vagaries.

In sum, it can be a drag.

But it’s also really, really fun.

2010-11-20T15:04:00.004-06:00

"...gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder" ~G.K. Chesterton

Dear Aunt Ethel and Uncle Frank:

Thank you so much for the lint remover. I didn’t know such a thing existed! Maybe because I’ve been really busy combing my feathered hair with a huge plastic comb under the disco ball at Skate City! Before your gift, I didn’t realize how much all my sweaters needed de-pilling! And trust me, since it’s 1980, I have a serious number of velour and cowl-necked sweaters that need shaping up before Pat Benatar will ever ask me to be in one of her videos!

So thank you for the most radical Christmas present ever, except for when my mom gave my sister and me matching teddy bear nightgowns last year, and do you think she knows I’m 13 now? Enuf of the good times; gotta get to de-pilling—

You better watch out--you better not pout! Because video killed the radio star!

Love,

Jocelyn
-------------------
Clearly, even though Aunt Ethel and Uncle Frank are, in fact, real, and they did give me a lint remover one time, I never actually wrote this particular thank you card.

Number one, I hardly ever went skating at Skate City except for every weekend, and, number two (haha! “number two”!), I never genuinely wanted to be in a Pat Benatar video, unless you count “We Belong.” Oh, plus “Love Is a Battlefield.”

I can’t be faulted. You saw the gloves La Benatar wore. You saw that toilet paper-looking skirt. Without question, you would have elbowed me in the solar plexus—(wherever that is! But remember that grade school song about the cat on the roof top, “Señor Don Gato,” who was trolling for the lady cat that was “fluffy, white, and nice and fat,” and that song had “solar plexus” in the lyrics, which was a pretty hilarious thing to be singing out loud in elementary school?)—to take over my role in the video, if it meant you got to wear a toilet-paper skirt, too.

Bitch.

Soooo. My point was that I never wrote that thank you card, but at the same time, that’s exactly the thank you card I wrote for about 15 years. The idea that every gift deserves a formalized expression of thanks was inculcated into me, gently, at a young age, by my mother. Christmas would come. Gifts would be opened. I’d spend the next three weeks scratching out one painfully-wrought line after another until the space inside the card was full enough that I could sign off. Virtually every thank you card I wrote throughout adolescence started with a salutation followed by “Thank you for the _______. I will use it ________.” Then I would vamp for a few lines and get the hell out of there so I could meet my friend Joni at the mall for an Orange Julius.

It was only when I stopped feeling the pressure to write thank you cards that I became truly grateful. There are several ways to read the previous sentence, but what I mean is this: when one sidesteps the burden of engraving gratitude in response to something gifted at least partially with the expectation of receiving thanks, what emerges is room for Real.

If I am not clawing at wrapping paper and simultaneously strategizing, “I hope I can whip out a thank you note by next Monday because I have essays coming in that afternoon, and I can’t even pretend to be excited about a doily Kleenex cozy when I have 50 papers to mark,” then I am free. I can like the gift. Or not. I can send on a note at a later date. Or not. I can feel what I feel, with no obligation to the exhausting politeness obliged by etiquette.

Rather, I can wait three months and then pen a long note full of random nothingnesses, ending with a “You have no idea how profoundly the book you gave me has affected my thinking. With one quick trip to Barnes & Noble, you set something in motion inside of me that won’t find answer for years to come. Because you were thoughtful and invested something of yourself with me in mind, I will never be the same.”

Alternately, I can wait five years and never go beyond hanging my jaw open at the fact that someone saw a poster of a kitty hanging onto a tree with the words “Hang in There” on it and thought of me.

I can allow my reaction to flow, unadulterated, unconcerned with proper form, out of my heart.

Which is exactly why I’m finding it so difficult right now to placate the pounding within me that demands I shape into words some of the most boundless, heartfelt gratitude I’ve ever experienced. That the recipient has no desire for my thankfulness makes its expression all the more natural.

You see, the person who gave direction and inspiration to this sabbatical year for our family has just left Turkey and returned to life in the United States. Last Spring, when four different possibilities for living abroad had fallen through, and we were feeling discouraged and without hope, we followed a random connection and sent a woman named Christina an email, telling her that we were willing to head most anywhere, but with children in tow, we’d feel profoundly more willing to plop down somewhere if we knew we’d be greeted with a welcome and some help with the transition. Traveling “blind” is an easy part of the adventure as a singleton, but with young kids, we hoped to leap towards a tightrope underwritten by a safety net.

Within ten hours of our initial email to Christina, we had a response, full of enthusiasm and willingness to be our go-to gal. In that first message, she combined wisdom (“I think anyone who wants to spend extended time here needs to be prepared to be relaxed, easy going, persistent, and ready to learn a whole new concept of what those things even mean.”) with zest (“…choose Cappadocia, it's fantastic!”). Her attitude felt like magic; we bought tickets to Turkey within days. Later, when the time came, and we showed up in Cappadocia, it was Christina who met us at the airport in a huge van she’d booked specially to help accommodate our luggage. Because our arrival happened at night, in the middle of a heat wave, she had us in the pool at our pension within two hours of landing while she hoofed off to buy us gözleme (a kind of village food—sort of like huge tortillas stuffed with spinach, cheese, potato, or Nutella) for dinner. In the ensuing weeks, she let us stay at her house, worked her every connection to find us a home, introduced us to sixty-eleven people, taught us to negotiate the transportation system, helped us outfit the house with furniture, and, most importantly of all, made us feel seen in a place where we were invisible.

In recent months, seven years after she first moved to Turkey, Christina had been realizing that part of her personal journey required leaving the Near East and re-meeting the places, relationships, and Western culture she had willingly left behind in her mid-thirties. Quite astutely, she framed this step by saying that she had been feeling as though she and Turkey been running hot and heavy with each other for some years, but at the same time, they had started getting the sense things were over between them and that it was time to find the courage to end the relationship, an act that required self-honesty, a certain amount of melancholy about good times past, and a willingness to look forward to a bidding future.

I knew how spot-on her decision was when even my inner Raging Toddler could only whine sleepily that she. didn’t. want. Auntie. Christina. to. leave. Mostly, my awake adult self had to applaud—had to support a healthy decision made by someone I loved. So we helped her toss things into the trash can, marched away with her bottle of vanilla extract (among seven hundred other bits and bobs), and only cried a little bit the day before she left.

What I didn’t know how to communicate to her, as we stood near the trash can that last day, exchanging Turkish kisses and American hugs on the eve of her departure while intermingling tears, was a proper thank you. What’s more, in this case, unlike with the lint remover, I was buffeted by a tempest of gratitude that I couldn’t tame into a tidy note—although no one would have appreciated a Pat Benatar reference more than Christina, Fellow Child of the ‘80s.

How to articulate the feeling deep in my gut?
----------------

If I were 13 again, my best effort would probably yield little more than a

Dear Christina:

Thank you for the motivation to move to Turkey. I will use it for the rest of this year.

Before your gift, I didn’t realize how much I was ready for a perspective shift! And trust me, since it’s 2010, and I listen to mainstream news sources, I have serious perspective issues that need shaping up before Jon Stewart will ever ask me to be on his show!

So thank you for the most radical sabbatical year present ever, except for when I gave birth to Paco last time around, but who wants to have a baby every seven years, especially when she’s in her forties? Enuf of the good times; gotta get to listening to the Call to Prayer—

You better watch out--you better not “Maşallah”! Because Allah had his ekbar!

Love,

Jocelyn
-----------

In point of fact, that immature note does the job.

By the time I was 30, I could have added in:

P.S. You have no idea how profoundly the confidence and welcome you gave us has affected my thinking. With one quick email from Turkey to Minnesota, you set something in motion inside of me that won’t find answer for years to come. Because you were thoughtful and invested something of yourself with me in mind, I will never be the same.
---------------

However, 43-year-old Jocelyn also insists on one further post script:

P.P.S. You know how you always talked to ten-year-old Girl like she was your best friend, and you couldn’t wait to be with her? You know how you always insisted on getting in Paco’s face when he was feeling scared and shy and out of his element—on giving him both a bad time and Turkish kisses? You know how you provided me with a much-needed external processor so that I had the solace of a girlfriend? You know how you were able, so often, to be the Person in the Know so that Groom didn’t always have to? You know how you hollered down that slimy cab driver after he cheated me for double the fare? You know how you, on the sly, ordered out for a birthday cake for Groom’s early 40th celebration? You know how you found closure with people whose personal damage had caused them to cut you to the quick? You know how you went on that yoga retreat and suddenly realized that you’re on the verge of meeting your new self for the first time? You know how you embraced our wayward little family and launched us on a year of discovery? Once you know all that, then there is only one thing I can say:

Teşekkür ederim, sweetpea.
------------

Now enjoy Madison. Enjoy the hot water coming right out of the tap. Can’t wait to see you next year. We can go roller skating and comb our hair under the disco ball at Cheep Skate together. I’m totally asking you to be my partner for Ladies’ Choice.

2010-11-16T09:11:00.001-06:00

"Occidentally on Purpose"

Returning to Turkey after a few weeks away caused in me neither joy nor dread; it was just the next thing we were doing. I did discover, though, that it was jarring to hear Turkish again after readjusting my ear to more familiar languages. Within a couple of hours, though, I felt happy to be back “home,” where we can have more control over food, heating, clean clothes--and where the kids are occasionally in a different room.

Now, a quarter of our way through this year abroad, when I have a feeling for the culture already but have recently stepped outside of it, there are a few back-in-Turkey-related thoughts tumbling around my noggin that could come in handy for the teeming masses of you who plan to come visit (Riots at the Passport Office!). Based on my first three months in the Near East, I can file the following reports:

--Observation: If I’m in a hotel in Istanbul, I will be awakened at approximately 3 a.m. by some miserable sod’s retching. The sounds of repeated heaving into the toilet will last until nearly 4 a.m. Once the drunkard/sick person finally collapses into bed, I will remain awake until the early-morning Call to Prayer, after which I will lapse into fitful sleep for 45 minutes before giving up on further rest. This unsatisfying sleep experience will cost me more than $100. Of no consolation is the hotel’s breakfast of shriveled olives and soggy cucumbers.

Actually, having now stayed in three hotels in Istanbul, I can admit that this is true only 66% of the time, for in only two of the hotels was my sleep disrupted by The Barfing. At the third hotel, no one actually vomited, but a Dutch girl in the next room did prove her race’s ability to achieve multiple peaks of pleasure. Loudly. Her example makes one muse, “How fortunate to have a notion of how Van Gogh must have sounded!”

Recommendation: Istanbul in all its forms causes the senses of visitors to be overwhelmed. Bring industrial-strength earplugs.

--Observation: Turkish plumbing is abysmal. Because of this, most women in the know: roll up their pants before entering the ladies’ room (one way to keep clothing dry when wading through a ½” of standing water); prepare to squat over a hole full of the previous “tenant’s” emissions; anticipate no available toilet paper, and after they pull a stash out of their bags, remember that they can’t toss it into the toilet, as the pipes can’t handle any matter beyond fecal; count on zero paper towels for drying their hands (which clearly demand some no-nonsense sterilization after what they’ve just been through); and are certain, during their three-minute visits, that at least one of their fellow restroom visitors will heft her feet up into the sink (for religious ablutions) and scour unthinkable, dark, grainy matter only partially down the drain. It would be infinitely more logical for such women simply to take off their shoes and wade through the standing water, of course, as a means of abluting. For this rich experience, bathroom visitors will pay roughly $.70 per visit.

Recommendation: Cauterize your bladder before voluntarily entering a busy public Turkish toilet.

--Observation: I had to tone down the expectations of my grown-up tastebuds, as the wine in Turkey is made by non-drinkers who simply mix all the varietals into one big batch (but I do thank, nightly, the Muslims who kept up any production after all the Christian boozehounds were sent back to Greece in the early 1920’s), and the java is lame. In fact, it’s hard to find coffee in Turkey that isn’t Nescafe. This is particularly troubling if one has just come from a place like, say, Italy or France that esteems good beans.

Somehow, though, despite European influences in the Western part of Turkey and the presence of famed “Turkish coffee,” instant coffee has achieved widespread acceptance and is what one is given on the plane, pays for in a restaurant, and finds at the grocery store. If ordering a Turkish coffee, one should be aware it generally isn’t made the traditional way, which is a fairly intensive process, and so the quick, tourist-oriented version will be bitter and leave the mouth full of grounds. The best option is to have tea, which is served by the liter in every possible venue and is the basis of all hospitality.

This ubiquitous tea, however, is Lipton, so don’t go getting excited.

Recommendation: Much energy will be saved if you shut up and drink what you’re given. This is, not incidentally, how I first tried sloe gin.

--Observation: There are no screens on the windows, and flies abound, at least in rural Cappadocia where sheep and donkeys staff the Neighborhood Watch Program. Even now, in November, we’re awaiting the hard frost that will zap the annoying buzzers to oblivion. Because we enjoy the sensation of fresh air (and, per previous observations about abysmal plumbing, have to let some of the bathroom stink escape our environs), we open the windows for brief periods. Resultingly, there are usually a hundred and twelfty flies somsersaulting around the house. As a rule, I make myself go kill 83 of them in the kitchen before bed, but yet and so, I still have been awakened every single morning in our house being dive bombed by whining dive-bombing insects.

Recommendation: Learn to sleep with a sheet over your face. The feeling of vague suffocation that accompanies this technique, plus industrial strength earplugs and a liver soaked with bad wine, all help you wake up in just the right frame of mind to appreciate a steaming mug of Nescafe.

--Observation: Village women wear trousers called “salvar,” loose pants a la M.C. Hammer in his “Can’t Touch This” era. Such pants make up for in practicality and comfort what they lack in visual appeal. Even better, they feature an elastic waist and are one-size-fits-all, which would make them a perfect gift for all one’s female family members back home, from 300-pound Grandma Mabel to 98-pound Cousin Tiffany.

Recommendation: Buy 'em. One-stop souvenir shopping frees up time for fly swatting.

--Observation: People in more refined countries—shall we use France again?—drink quality wine, toss toilet paper in the loo and bid it au revoir, sport tight and chic clothing, gaze upon manicured lawns through screened windows,

and treat visitors matter-of-factly at best, with scorn at worst. The feeling they convey—the feeling we in the United States convey—is mild interest underwritten by clinical detachment. In France, in the U.S., in England, in most places I’ve traveled to, I can ask a question and have it answered. I can express a need and get directions as to how I might fulfill it. Mostly, people treat each other with a “Here’s the information, and good luck with that, then.”

In contrast, our first night back in Turkey, when our worn out family checked in to the hotel in Istanbul (so charming before the vomiting began!), I asked the clerk behind the desk if there was anywhere nearby we could get a couple of beers to drink in the room. Taking one look at my frizzed hair and slumping posture, he replied, “Beer? Of course. But you must let me get it for you. I will go get it. You go to your room and take some rest, and then I will bring you beer.” Moments later, his colleague realized we would need to be on the shuttle to the airport at 7:10 the next morning and that breakfast wouldn’t open until 7:00. “I will go in early and put out the breakfast. Come at 6:50, so you can have some food before you fly.”

The next day, after only a few hours’ sleep followed by an early-but-then-delayed flight back to Cappadocia, we pulled in to the main square in Ortahisar aboard the airport shuttle van. It was just past lunchtime, and the early-morning breakfast was long digested. Our heads were drooping, our spirits were flagging, and our hands were raw from dragging our bags across continents. Before my foot hit the ground, the owner of the liquor store, Murat, a man who’s declared we have to ask for our purchases in his store in Turkish so that we learn the language, had come over to wish us “Hoş geldiniz” (Welcome!) and to offer, gesturing at our luggage, “Can I help you?” Even though it meant he would have to leave his store unattended or close it up, just to drag a suitcase for us, I was fatigued enough to say “Sure.” At that same moment, though, one of the local benign crazies, Mithat, came over and started wrestling three pieces of luggage towards the lane leading to our house. Waving off Murat and all words of thanks, Mithat said, “You are tired. I can help. You are tired. It is nothing for me.”

As we rolled and trudged down the street, following Mithat’s perky steps and inhaling smells of sheep manure, we were spotted by our neighbor, who has so little English she can only communicate by hollering the Turkish for “Neighbor!” every time she claps eyes on us. “KOMŞU!” she squalled. “Hoş geldiniz!” As usual, she continued with a long stream of unintelligible well wishes, and I returned her greeting with “KOMŞU! Hoş bulduk!” Seeing me loaded down with bags and thus unable to exchange our habitual Turkish kisses, she glanced down into her hand at the handful of pumpkin seeds she’d been snacking on. Pressing all eight of them into my palm as a spontaneous gift, she insisted that I take them home to enjoy after my long journey. Simultaneous to her wishing me good eating, a second voice echoed down from two stories up. It was Hulya, another neighbor, calling out “Hoş geldiniz!” as she batted the dirt out of hanging carpets and attempted to keep her toddler from toppling down the staircase.

Once in the house, Mithat deposited our bags, wished us a happy return home, and backed out. We set to opening the windows so that the crisp autumn sunshine could offset the cold staleness of the long-empty rooms. As I shoved and yanked against one poorly-constructed window, I noticed our landlord’s mother, one of her arms well swathed in bandages, sitting out in the courtyard in her salvar pants, plucking dried grapes—now hefty raisins—off their branches. Within an hour, we had a bowl of the raisins on our kitchen counter, a “Hoş geldiniz” gift from her. “I fell,” she told my husband in Turkish he could decipher. “My arm is cracked, and I will get plaster on it. Enjoy the raisins in good health.”

Recommendation: Come to Turkey.

All you’ll need are

earplugs,

a brave bladder,

nondiscriminating taste,

mosquito netting,

a love of elastic waistbands

and an ability to accept hospitality so unalloyed

that it dwarfs your bumbling attempts to express gratitude.

2010-11-13T08:02:00.001-06:00

Then

Now

Begging the forbearance of long-term readers here, as I re-run a post from one year ago, originally written in honor of my tenth wedding anniversary. Now, as we hit #11, here it is again.
-----------------------------------------------------

"Bestill"

My dad was the person who taught me to be comfortable with silence. We could get in the car and drive for twenty minutes without a word being spoken. While his and my mother's relationship ultimately cracked under the weight of that silence, for me, the daughter, his quiet felt benign, reassuring, a safe place to be.

Even more, when he did speak, his words carried weight. A handful of my favorite memories, in fact, center around moments when he engaged in verbal expression. One time, after I'd won a forensics tournament out of town, returning from the meet late at night, I left my trophy on the dining room table. By the time I woke up later that day, my dad had left me a note, telling me he was so proud, he was "busting his buttons." Another time, after I'd behaved badly, he sat across from my hungover self and told me he was "deeply disappointed." Many years later, during the night when a bat flew into my house, and I had a fairly apeshit "I'm all alone, and the bat is trying to kill me" meltdown for three hours in the bathroom, I managed to grab my phone (with the bat only gnawing off one of my fingers above the knuckle as I reached for the receiver) and call my parents, over a thousand miles away. When I sobbed and sobbed that a killer beast was out there, and all I had were tampons for friends and nail files for weapons, my dad, casting about, counseled, "What you need to do is try to reach way down inside yourself now and find something you don't think you have. Dig deep, and you'll find something you need." He was right. We hung up, and I dug deep, finding inside myself the numbers 911, which I punched into the phone with great bravery.

Perhaps my fondest conversation with my dad occurred about a decade before his death. Chatting on the phone, we stumbled across the subject of my sister and me and our many differences. Trying to qualify the nature of the differences, my dad remarked that my sister took after his side of the family, where a certain dourness and pessimism sometimes manifested itself. “She reminds me of myself,” he noted, continuing, “and you don’t. You’re more, well, effervescent.”

There it was: one of those moments we hope for with our parents, those moments when they give us a word, an adjective, a feeling of being seen, and it signifies everything. It signifies that our parents see us as separate, as differentiated beings, that they have thought about us, that they have taken stock of us, that we are far enough away from them that the space has cleared everyone’s vision. Because such words, such adjectives, are born from the lifelong process of symbiosis to independence, they have power. Plus, anytime someone describes me to myself, I believe him.

It wasn’t even so much that I wanted to think of myself as “effervescent”—although it was a welcome label—but rather, it was more that I wanted to think of my dad thinking of me that way. Sometimes, from then on, I effervesced just for him.

It surprised me, then, to learn—repeatedly--that a pipping personality didn’t reap greater rewards, in the larger scope of the world. Certainly, I didn’t expect to be voted into office on the Effervescence Platform, nor did I expect the medical field to approach me, asking me to donate to the Effervescence Transfusion Bank. But I did think being smiley and liking sunshine might have snagged me a boyfriend.

Fer damn crap smeared on a thrice-read Jane Austen novel.

Oh, all right.

I did date a guy through my 20’s, and then I truly, madly, deeply dated another guy—one who left my two liters of effervescence out on the counter with the cap off and made all the bubbles go flat. He de-carbonated me in a way that no one ever had before, not even the boys on the high school bus who moo-ed at my sister and me.

He made my sizzle fizzle.

And then my grandma died, and the doc found a lump in my breast.

I was thirty-one.

Thirty-one wasn’t my favorite year.

Fortunately, I still had girlfriends who called, just when I was pacing the circle of my small kitchen for the 123rd time in an hour, gnawing on my cuticles, and they opened with, “Oh, honey. I just heard. Talk to me.” Even when I would have to set down the phone to grab another handful of Kleenex, they would stay on the line, shouting things like, “From the amount of snot you’re emitting, you do seem well-hydrated. And that’s something, right?” Also, I had family who knew how to circle ‘round gently and never look me straight in my teary eyes. Instead, they gave me food and invited me to participate in the yearly post-hunting butchering of the deer, and they talked at and around me.

Eventually, the molasses movement of seconds turned into minutes finally adding up into hours and days, and then months went by. My grandma was buried; the lump was benign; the former boyfriend had a new girl.

Just after the new year, one of my hunting cousins sent me an email, asking if I’d like to drive North to come visit them and, by the way, if I would be at all interested in letting him serve as my “agent in the field,” romantically.

Flattened, completely without zest or hope, my response was worthy of my father’s side of the family: “Go ahead, if you want to, but I won’t expect anything from it.”

Turns out my cousin already had someone in mind, a 28-year-old guy he worked with in a very small town of about 300. One day, sitting in the office, looking across at this 28-year-old, my cousin started musing, “How’s Guy ever going to find someone in this bohunk town?” A moment later, he thought back to Thanksgiving and the deer butchering and the conversations we’d had, which resulted in, “For that matter, how’s Jocelyn ever going to find someone in the bohunk town she’s living in?”

His head swiveled back and forth, and his thoughts rammed into each other. He approached Guy, who agreed, “Sure, you can be my agent in the field. But this cousin of yours, since she lives more than five hours away, she’d have to really knock my socks off for me to start seeing her.” Fair enough. Next, my cousin approached me.

It was agreed: I’d drive the five hours North and, while visiting my cousin’s family, meet Guy. In the past, imbued with effervescence, I’d greeted any opportunity to meet a potential partner with gusto and a knee-jerk, involuntary planning of our lives together. This time, I didn’t think much of the whole thing.

So we’d see.

That February, over Presidents' Day weekend, I visited. I got to hold my cousin’s baby a lot and watch his 4-year-old ice skate. One afternoon, we swung through the campus where Cousin worked. As we drove away, he said, casually, “Oh, that man back there who was leaning down, talking to people through their car window? The one in the red hat? That was Guy.”

Cousin, perhaps, didn’t understand that such information would have been welcome, say, two minutes earlier. Cousin is a man.

That night, the guy in the red hat strolled into Cousin's house, there for The Meeting, there for dinner. He carried a six-pack of homebrew.

I liked him already.

In short order, I learned that Guy not only wore a red hat and was quite tall. I also learned he really liked making bread, reading the Atlantic Monthly, and running on trails. I learned that he was an anthropology major who'd minored in Environmental Science. I learned that his Desert Island food would be cheese (dropped from a helicopter once a month, to supplement the fish and coconunts he would be living on otherwise); his Desert Island album would be Van Morrison's Moondance; his Desert Island book would be some sort of reference book, all the better if it contained maps.

I learned that, while the idea of him hadn't infused me with bubbles, the reality of him was creating a few tiny pops.

Dinner lasted five hours. As soon as he left, my previously-cool cousin and his wife, who had discreetly retired to the kitchen 8 feet away after dessert, were all nerves. They gave me all of thirty seconds after the door closed behind Guy before yelling, "SO? SO?????"

My response was positive, but guarded. He seemed nice. I would see more of him. If he wanted to.

But all the little broken pieces inside of me weren't quite realigned yet. I wasn't going to put myself forward this time. I couldn't take another dashing.

Fortunately, a few days later, Guy asked my cousin for my email address. It had been mutual. Apparently, his strongest first impression of me was that I had a lot of hair. He thought he "could get lost in it."

What ensued was a modern epistolary courtship. For three weeks, we sent messages back and forth, discovering that writing is an excellent way to get to know someone: the small talk is non-existent; the conversations get to meaty matters right away; there is no body language to read or misread, no annoying laugh to cringe from.

After three weeks, Guy announced he was ready to "jump off the comfortable dock" and into the potentially-frigid waters of face-to-face. Thus, during my Spring Break in March, I headed North again, for our first real date.

As we sat in a dingy bar, having burgers and beers, conversation flowed. Snow fell.

Like 14" of it.

When it came time to take Guy to his house before driving back to my cousin's place, my car got stuck. In the snow. At Guy's house. He didn't seem to mind. His roommates were friendly. I stayed over.

I had no choice.

What I learned in those days of my Spring Break was that Guy liked to listen to me read aloud--and if that's not an activity of the infatuated, I don't know what is. He also proved that he's very good at snogging.

And, about three days in, after he'd had a bath one night, Guy came back into his bedroom, where I lounged. "Brrrrrr," he exclaimed. "My feet are cold!"

"Why are they so cold? You just got out of the bath tub," I noted.

"They're freezing because. you. knocked. my. socks. off" was the answer.

Suddenly, right then, right there: there it was. The effervescence was back, the flatness banished.

It was all going to be all right.

Not too long afterward, as I stared very hard at the ceiling, I admitted I had fallen in love. He had the right answer.

By the end of my Spring Break week, five days after our first date, we had talked about what kind of wedding we wanted.

Four months later, one July morning, as I slept on a futon on the floor, he crawled in with a plate of pancakes and a Betsy Bowen woodcut entitled "Fox on a Journey."

And he asked me to marry him.

In quick order, we planned a wedding for the following May.

In even quicker order, like, the night we got engaged, I got pregnant. Three months after that, I had a miscarriage. Four days after that, we found out I'd been carrying twins, and one was still hanging on.

We moved the wedding to that November 13th, not nine months after we first played the Desert Island game over dinner. Guy became Groom right there at the environmental learning center where I'd first not-quite-spotted-him in his red hat. The bleeding from the miscarriage had stopped three days earlier. I sobbed through the vows.

Four months later, Jocelyn and Groom became Jocelyn and Groom and Girl.

All of that wonder unfolded in 1999. Not given to dreaming about the future before then, I have since been granted beauties I couldn't possibly have imagined.

He likes to touch me. He likes me to touch him.
He cooks dinner every night.
He has been our stay-at-home parent since Girl was born.
At promptly 8:00 every night, he brings me a drink.
He is unfazed by my random bursts of tears.
He is whimsical. He is dry. He is perceptive.
He sees that my ability to talk to people is as valuable as his ability to do everything else.
He likes to play cribbage.
He knows how to give me directions that make sense, like "go straight until you see the big rock shaped like Richard Nixon's head."
He moves to foreign country and ends up drinking tea with the guys who deliver our drinking water.
He deciphers the public transportation system in every major city.
He draws pictures that say what words can't.
He takes my ideas and makes them happen.
He still brews beer.

Like my father, he is gentle. Like my father, he has a thousand-watt smile.

Like my father, he is given to quiet, most comfortable in stillness.

Thus, eleven years in to the marriage, we often sit and watch the world flit by

holding hands in companionable silence.

2010-11-09T17:08:00.000-06:00

"You Know How People Broadcast Images of Glowing Fires on Their Television Sets, Rather Than Sitting in Front of an Actual Fireplace? Right About Now, I'm Left Feeling We Could Have Broadcast Images of The Eiffel Tower on the TV, and Our Kids Would Have Enjoyed It Just As Much"

So let's see:

one overnight trip on a bus from Cappadocia to Istanbul;

a day in Istanbul of visiting an ancient church with tremendous golden mosaic remnants on the walls;

one night in Istanbul;

five days in Paris, replete with macaroons, The Eiffel Tower, The Louvre, an on-and-off bus tour of the entire city, some hours at Sacre Coeur watching buskers perform, a trip around Monmarte to view artists at work, an afternoon in the historic and jaw-dropping spaces of Versailles, an after-dark hangout in front of Notre Dame so as to watch the shadows dance amongst the gargoyles and filagreed architecture, shopping along the Champs Elysees, repeat visits to street crepe stands, a passle of hours in Paris' floral park (a place featuring no less than four playgrounds), unlimited passes to public transportation;

a trip under the English Channel;

a night near the station where Paddington Bear gained legend;

three nights in a hotel with a swimming pool and breakfasts of Rice Crispies and Cumberland sausages;

two days of rides and fireworks at the much-hallowed Windsor Legoland;

another night in London to sleep in a room with bunkbeds and then take in the science museum, ride the London Eye, and visit the home of The Queen;

another trip under the sea by train;

multiple experiences with Subway sandwiches, KFC chicken, Starbursts, Skittles, Ritz Crackers, tortilla chips--all tastes of home not experienced in Cappadocia;

another night in Paris, during which the final Hannah Montana episode is watched;

then again to Istanbul for some big city hustle;

finally a flight back to Cappadocia.

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In reflecting on the trip in its entirety, the kids are in agreement:

the coolest thing of all was the toilet on the Eurostar train through The Chunnel. See, you flush it with your foot, by pressing down on a button on the floor.

And. that's. just. awesome.

Totally better than Versailles.

------------------------------------------------------------
Put another way:

for less than a quarter of the cost of the whole vacation, we could have installed a new toilet in our house, one that flushes with a press of the foot, and given the little buggers a daily thrill surpassing an up-close-and-personal view of The Mona Lisa.

Having kids redefines Buyers' Remorse.

2010-11-04T18:14:00.000-05:00

"The Women--With the Exception of Your Humble Author--Truly Are Chic, and the Fact That Nearly Every One of Them Was Wearing Knee-High Black Boots Almost Blotted Out the Fact That We Couldn't Find Internet Access Fer Nuthin'"

All apologies to the complex and fascinating country of Turkey,

but when we got off the plane in Paris, it was like the start of five days of shore leave. We were giddy. Suddenly, it felt like we'd been shipped away from a barren outpost and dropped into a city of twinkling lights, crusty bread, layered pastries, stacks of books, straight streets, even walkways, sophisticated fashion, neon-leafed trees--a place with a sense of plan, organization, elegance.

*Exhales sigh of heady romance*

Our first afternoon in Paris, we figured out the train system enough to get to our hotel; because the city is prohibitively expensive, especially for a family of four on one partial income, we had put in hours trying to find the cheapest option. Eventually, we happened upon the chain of “Hipotels,” specifically the one near Joinville le Pont, which, fortuitously, turned out to be a charming section of the city much like the Linden Hills area in Minneapolis. After checking in and appreciating firsthand the spare reality of “basic accommodation” (ah, but towels were provided, in contrast to our recent Istanbul hotel), we headed out for a meander around the Joinville area. First we passed the green grocer (Endive!); next the cheese shop (A mind-boggling palette of fromage!); then the first boulanger (Pain au chocolat!); followed by the second, third, fourth boulanger (Macarons! Baguette! Tartelette!); then the hair salons (Should one desire une coiffure tres jolie!)...and on and on until the grocery store (Crackers! Applesauce! SALTED BUTTER!).

Mon Dieu. What's more, the wine cost under 5 Euros a bottle.

Between the chocolate and the booze, it's like they invented the place just for me.

The interesting part is that I've been to France a couple of times before, and it left me shrugging with a noncommital, “Eh. It was okay.” I had been put off by getting terribly lost the first visit and then being treated snootily the second time. This time, though? I was smitten.

Thank you, Turkey, for the perspective that allowed me to leap around gaily, doing high kicks all the way from L'Arc de Triomphe to the Place de la Concord.

As we rode the on-and-off double decker bus the first couple of days, and as we used our five-day Metro passes to get around, and as I felt like dancing a la Gene Kelly in ANCHORS AWAY, I thought about how easy this year would have been if we had chosen—if we could have afforded—to live in a country like France. I'm glad we didn't and couldn't. While Turkey is a relatively Western and familiar-feeling culture, compared to, say, Iran, it still stretches us. When we are in Turkey, I feel disconnected from everything that makes me feel easy inside: in our daily lives, we aren't surrounded by people who read books, who drink espresso, who have a vigorous Life of the Mind, who sit--genders intermixed—and converse for hours over intricate food. In Turkey, men get up, leave the house, and don't come home until they feel like it, often after 10 p.m. In Turkey, men love children but spend little time with their own. In Turkey, our village's main street and square are completely the domain of men who drink tea and gossip all day (this is them at “work”). In most of Turkey, no one goes out for a run. In rural Turkey, life for the women is about scraping and roasting seeds out of squash, about putting up tomato paste, about making pekmez, about doing handiwork. In short, in Turkey, we can never fully relax because we are outside observers and queer objections of observation ourselves.

I'm deeply grateful for this. I'm hugely glad we landed in a place that is further down the “foreign” continuum than, say, France. In France, we would be more comfortable, plunked into a place that makes easy sense. However, simply moving from one leisure culture to another would have yielded lighter rewards than a year in a place that feels less natural.

Thus, these last few days, as we've gasped from the top of the Eiffel Tower, oohed at the gilt of Versailles, moaned with pleasure at every bite of ham, marveled at the array of talent on display at Monmarte, ahhhed at the Mona Lisa, and gone goggle-eyed with people watching on the trains,

I've not only thanked Turkey for making me ripe for shore leave in France.

I've also thanked France for renewing my gratitude toward Turkey.

Except for the part about there only being unsalted butter in Turkey. That's always gonna suck.