Part V
The Belle Époque à la Turk Mostly Fond Memories of 1990s Turkey
Time Travel
I may have a long wait for the beloved Turkey of the nineties to emerge from what I hope is only a hibernation, but in the meantime, I do have one consolation. I know of one place, a computer repair shop in Balikesir I have been going to for over 15 years, where the owner and his friends all seem to be stepped out of the 1990s. In fact, the place itself, in its disarray and packrat appearance, fits right into that era. For me, it is as though the shop’s door is a wormhole providing space-time travel back to my beloved Bursa of the 90s.
There are a more or less fixed group of 10 people who drop by this shop at various times every day or two to chat and drink tea with Mehmet, the owner. Of course each of them knows me as the American living in Turkey with a Turkish wife and two boys, but the fact that Mehmet introduced me to a few of them with the approving words of “a very good man” seemed to put them at ease in my presence. In my eyes, they relate to me almost like one of the gang, except that, since most all Turks don’t believe a foreigner can really speak and understand Turkish, they converse more slowly and enunciate more clearly with me than they might with fellow Turks.* They are also always asking my opinion of some Turkish issue for the reason that, as a foreigner, I’m sure to have a different, interesting view. This, too, takes me happily back to my years in Bursa when the Turks I met showed a real curiosity in learning the thoughts of those on the outside of Turkey.
*In this regard, foreigners often speak of Turks having a "talking dog syndrome."
Be that as it may, I must admit I do really appreciate this tendency from time to time.
I could not feel more relaxed than I do when I am sitting in this dark, dusty and, most noticeably, “cluttered” shop. Places of this sort were quite prevalent 30 years ago and were generally dedicated to a repair service or the sale of items like electrical goods or hardware. When I first arrived in Turkey, I learned quickly that despite the appearance of extreme disorderliness, griminess and often penury, these shops had the most knowledgeable and competent proprietors, not to mention the lowest price.
After I moved to Ayvalik and began to set up house, I had a memorable encounter with this kind of shop. I went on a quest to buy of all things a hand-held kitchen utensil to make mashed potatoes, one of my favorite dishes. This is what my father used when he made them, his specialty, and I got it in my head I needed the same thing to mash my potatoes. Everywhere I went, showing a picture of what I wanted, I was told the only place to get one was Istanbul, and even they might not have any. Finally, one shopkeeper told me I only needed to go to a place in Ayvalik of a man named Yörük Ali. “Yes, the man has everything under the sun, and if he doesn’t have it, you don’t need it.”
Shops with merchandise piled from floor to ceiling have a long tradition in Turkey. (Photo: "Waiting for Bazaar Customers," 1959, © Ara Güler)
On the desk was the sole source of artificial light in the place, a 12 inch fluorescent tube in a desk lamp that looked like Ali had fashioned it himself out of miscellaneous parts. The main lighting in the shop was provided by three small windows, all of them filtering the sunlight through a brownish hue that comes from not being washed in perhaps decades. Thankfully, all of this gave enough illumination to keep you from tripping over the merchandise, at least when your eyes finally got adjusted.
Ali took one look at my picture and gave me the Turkish ‘no,’ signaled by a “tsk” sound and a simultaneous throwing back of the head. “Never seen such a thing,” he said. He did pull out something remotely resembling it, which appeared to have been custom made by a blacksmith- “Though this is for horse breeders, it looks like your thing” - but I declined. Then, as I said thanks and turned around to leave, processing the failure of my mission, Ali had some parting words for me: “Just wondering, why don’t you use a fork like everybody else?”*
*Later, I was dumbstruck by the beautiful simplicity of Ali’s ‘fork solution,’ and realized that I had missed seeing it before because I had all sorts of rigid and false assumptions of what I needed in my life. The list of those things was endless. Did I really need Jerry Redding’s coconut oil-based shampoo badly enough to get American friends to lug 12 bottles over on their visits? Wasn’t a Turkish marketed shampoo with almond rather than coconut oil for 1/10th the price good enough? Interesting how some of the more profound lessons come from places or people you’d least expect.
back workshop is perhaps the largest collection of various phone and computer cables in western Turkey.
This is what you see as you enter Mehmet's shop. When he is sitting in his chair, he will swing around and pull out from the shelves, like a magician reaching into his hat, practically any computer part you ask for.
Once in 2012 when I needed a charge cable for a 1998 flip phone I wanted to give to my youngest son, not only did he actually know exactly which type of cable I needed but he picked it out from his collection without one false motion.
In front of his desk (just out of frame) are three chairs and a stool crowded around a small table. The table serves primarily as a repository for glasses of tea, the drinking of which is almost compulsory when you sit down.
One of the things living in Turkey has taught me is that a simple, very inexpensive activity like tea drinking can be extremely satisfying and enjoyable. It’s a social event, one that anybody, even the poorest person, can bring about just by inviting someone to have a glass. The tea itself takes less importance here. If the tea has stayed on the stove too long and is bitter, as often happens, it really doesn’t detract from the quality of the social event. (Photo by Peter Nybak)
Although it is true that the shop with all its disarray and dust attracts you just as a male bastion, in the same way that you are drawn to hang out in your friend’s grungy, cluttered garage as he disassembles his car engine, it is also a refuge of sorts from the slick, Europeanized marketing that took over Turkey this new millennium. In my book, with its total lack of pretense, Mehmet's shop, and the many others like it that still exist, are pleasingly antithetical to that.
This man has to be crowned the king of clutter, disarray, griminess or what have you, a proprietor in Mardin of God-knows-what kind of shop.
But like many other places of this genre, if the guy had what you wanted- and he probably would -he'd be able to locate it and pull it out from a pile all the while blindfolded. (Photo © Billy Dinh, 2021, used with permission)
But other pluses abound. He is, while being extremely intelligent and a mathematical whiz, totally unassuming and unpretentious. He also has a great deal of “world knowledge”- hands down more than most college graduates in Turkey, despite coming from a small village and never having gone beyond high school. Even his expertise in electronics is mostly self-taught.
I also learn a lot from him. Just recently he introduced me to Portuguese Fado music and also to some Iranian musicians who are quite remarkable. This is more unusual than it sounds as most Turks listen almost exclusively to Turkish music, with perhaps the occasional western rock piece allowed on the side. Finally, he has, for a Turk, an unusually objective grasp on what Turks are like. This includes a humorous take on his compatriots, in the self-deprecatory fashion that I so miss, but also a critical, often less than flattering one that I find redemptive in its honesty.
This is at the other end of the spectrum- a good example of clean, ordered, floor-to-ceiling clutter. (Photo: "Grand Bazaar," 1965, © Ara Güler)
Cat Stevens became a Muslim in 1977, but for those of us that grew up with him and were fans in the earlier years, lending his cachet to Erdoğan in a photo op is disheartening indeed. (Photo from Google Images)
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Even if my explanation of what was happening in the bus is overelaborate, my main point, that many Turks lack the most basic democratic reflexes, is no exaggeration.* For most of the population, ordinary democratic rights, such as the right to free speech, and examples where they are breeched by the government are not a topic of interest. For those people, democracy only means voting, and being able to vote is a sole and sufficient condition for democracy to be said to exist.**
Although, as I have said, Turks are in general a very self-aware nationality, Mehmet is in my book a full level above this. I can be totally open with him whenever I am feeling disillusioned, fed up or otherwise pissed off from one of my dealings in Turkish society. Moreover, when I do vent myself I needn’t fear touching a nationalistic nerve, as I have regretfully done so often with other Turks I know. Once when I figured I had been overcharged for some sand paper and was ranting in his shop about being taken advantage of simply because I was not a Turk, not only did he validate my feelings but immediately took it upon himself to act in my defense. He returned the sand paper to the hardware store and got my money back, which was only the equivalent of about 50 cents, but also lectured the owner, as he told me later, that taking advantage of foreigners* was just as dishonest, and wrong for Muslims, as overcharging fellow Turks.
*Unfortunately, many Turks in business charge foreigners more than the “correct” price. A two tier system, one for Turks and a second for “others,” even has had some precedent in government operations, where, for example, some state museums have charged foreign tourists more for admission than local ones. When my family buys something with no price sticker attached, I most often wait outside the shop- this, on the advice of both my wife and father-in-law - so that the proprietor won’t get wind that a foreigner is involved.
His insight into the character of his people was well demonstrated when he advised me how to get a bank manager to solve a problem I was having with receiving money from abroad. I had repeatedly complained to this manager with no long lasting satisfactory result, but Mehmet suggested I work in some compliments about Turkey on my next visit as a way to motivate him to actually solve the problem. I was well versed in using compliments to manipulate events, as I described in my Bursa teaching days, but strangely it had never occurred to me until Mehmet's suggestion to use them outside school.
Then Mehmet got more specific about what I needed to do, and it certainly rang a bell, “Tell him something complimentary, but casually,
like Turkish women are the most beautiful in the world. Nothing gratifies a Turk more than praise of his country or people coming from a foreigner.” Although when I actually did this it might have appeared to the bank officer as an obvious ploy to get on his good side to manipulate him, it didn’t matter. My extolling the beauty of Turkish women* did in fact turn out to be the force that moved him and was the permanent solution to my financial problem.
*"I married one of them. What better praise could there be?" is one thing I said which hit bullseye.
The fact that Mehmet is the person I like the most in all my years in Turkey might seem improbable to you if you knew each of us well. Whereas I am pretty much an agnostic when it comes to religion, he is a pious Muslim who closes his shop several times a week to pray. My lack of religion is not an issue for him, however, because he seems to regard- again, uncommon for Turks - the practices and formalities of religion as a mere dressing on both good and bad people. As he has often said to me, “It’s what kind of person you are inside that matters when God decides if you go to heaven, not how often you go to the mosque or church.”
Although he gives me a pass for my agnosticism, and pretty much leaves me alone on the subject of Islam, over the years he has not been completely silent on the topic. Once he asked me to go to Friday prayer with him. I was touched, and actually considered going, but declined finally because I thought my necessarily insincere participation in the prayer would be disrespectful. In another instance, I was sitting in his shop chatting when he came out of the back room holding a small carton. Extending his arms out as though he was offering the box as a gift, he said that it contained some pamphlets explaining the Islamic faith, but, he was proud to say, in English. Having had a lot of uncomfortable experiences in Turkey with people preaching Islam to me, a well-worn little red “oh-oh” flag popped up in my brain as I took hold of the box and set it on the table. I glanced through some of the 25 or 30 booklets*, trying to look as appreciative as I could, but I was betrayed by a look of apprehension on my face, reflecting my certainty that I would never read them and, when he found out, offend Mehmet.
*The titles were incomprehensible in their nonsensical English. Two that I still have in my bookshelf, kept as remembrances, are “Faith Were Very Going to Paradise” and “Laid in Tulips God’s Hat.”
As it turned out, I never had the chance to feel guilty for not reading the pamphlets. Sensing my discomfort when he gave them to me, Mehmet explained a few days after he presented me the box that he had only thought I might want them because they were in English and said that if I wanted I could just toss the whole shebang (“bütün mesele”) in the closet. I did in fact do exactly that, and, thankfully, he has never made mention of them since.
Most experiences of someone pitching Islam at me in Turkey have been those where I was the target of my students’ rehearsed speeches, sometimes even as I was right in the heart of my lesson. Once, about 15 minutes into a long-practiced explanation of the Present Perfect verb tense, when I felt I was in that teaching ‘zone’ and reaching inside the students’ brains with my authoritative and self confident teaching persona, a girl raised her hand and started waving it impatiently. Expecting a comment about what I had just gone over, which I was certain almost no one had understood, I gladly stopped my train of thought and called on her. But instead of a question related to the time aspects of verb forms, I heard these words: “Teacher, the Bible, as you know, has too many versions, but the Koran has only one. So it must be the true one, isn’t it?”
I have also had encounters with proselytizing Turks who “just happened” to bump into me as I travelled through the country. The pitches have usually been in English because, seeing that 99.8% of Turks are Muslim, the majority of heathens will be tourists or resident foreigners like myself.
One of the most frequently used approaches involves rattling off of names of famous people who have changed faiths to Islam- Anthony Quinn, Jacques Cousteau and Cat Stevens were the names used in the nineties - and asking if their having found Islam to be the true way isn’t reason enough for you yourself to consider converting. Unfortunately, my standard retort has done nothing more than bounce off my interlockers. This has been to argue that for matters of religion, like other endeavors of the intellect, one could do worse than following the example of Albert Einstein, who, it happens, was an agnostic Jew.
But perhaps the more flagrant mismatch in our relationship is the fact that Mehmet is an Erdoğan supporter, and a staunch one at that. In 2013 the subject of the then prime minister first came up in our conversation when there was a huge money scandal in his government, one in which the man himself and his family were implicated by some of the press. Mehmet had begun to explain why Erdoğan had probably been framed by the political opposition when my displeased expression, which was really one of fear that the subject would cause us to have cross words, prompted him to stop cold in his tracks and bring up something less contentious. Since then we haven’t mentioned the name “Erdoğan,” even though the topic of him, by virtue of the day’s news, may be the elephant in the room. We both understand that maintaining our friendship is more valuable than convincing each other of our politics.
You may be wondering how I can be praising Mehmet and at the same time describe him as a supporter of a government which in the last decade has shown itself to be very autocratic. If I don’t discuss or even mention that which I see as the violation of democratic rights in Turkey it’s because I don't see agreement on these matters possible. I see our enormously differing perspectives on the subject as a natural outcome of the fact that I was raised in California, part of a young country that was born a democratic republic, and he in a culture steeped in Ottoman authoritarianism. I don’t think he would change his thinking on the matter of the State versus freedom of expression any more readily than he would drop his preference for Turkish lahmacun and assume mine for New York style pizza*.
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*Truth be told, Turks sometimes seem to me, one still solidly of American temperament despite all my years abroad, as though they could be from a different planet. In spite of what some people say, that wherever you go people are basically the same, I would argue the contrary, or at least that they are different in more ways than they are similar. If you just look at what people think is funny in, say, Thailand, you'll be scratching-your-head incredulous.
In all the countries that I have visited, I have been able to name only as many as two things we all have in common: The propensity to write “Wash Me” (or Lave-Moi, Beni Yıka, etc.) with one’s finger on a dusty car, and, secondly, the habit of keeping a cup on one’s desk filled with an assortment of old ballpoint pens, not one of which writes.
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Democracy in a Bus
Mehmet and, from what I gather from all my years in Turkey, the majority of Turks*, fall short in our expectations of participants in democracy because coming as they do from six centuries of autocratic rule, they just don’t have the full set of beliefs and attitudes that are necessary to lubricate the workings of a full-on democracy. Even though Turkey has been a republic now for 100 years, it appears shaking off your legacy of autocratic rule is no easy feat, as we saw after the fall of Communism and the subsequent struggles and failures to adopt democratic reforms.
*Here in the educated, liberal minded (and Levantine) west, you will meet just as many democratically "hip" folks as you would in Europe, but as I've tried to underline, the west is not representative of the whole of Turkey. Their political views would make up only about 25% of a national vote.
Early into my Turkish residency, I confronted this divergence from American or European behavior when I was struck by the passive behavior of Turks in a circumstance where I felt they should have asserted their rights.
Just a few months after my arrival in Bursa, on a 12-hour bus trip to see the Whirling Dervishes in Konya in the dead of winter, I witnessed an unforgettable example of what I have to call 'zombi-esque' submissiveness to an untenable situation, as well as the self-inflicted suffering that went with it. It seemed peculiar enough to me to write a blog post about it called “Democracy in a Bus” to share with some of my friends in the States.
In the beginning of the piece, I recounted what was for me very unusual human behavior:
“We were traveling in blizzard conditions and the heater had been on in full force for too long, so much so that men had stripped down to their athletic undershirts, fanning themselves with the sport pages from the newspapers they had long given up reading in the sweltering hot house of the bus. I was unbearably overheated myself, but because I considered myself a newly arrived guest of the country who, in any case, didn’t know how to speak Turkish, I waited for a Turk to ask the bus steward to turn off the heat.“But it just didn’t happen. The bus steward was walking up and down the aisle, but no one was expressing the slightest discomfort to him, only asking for more water. I was especially concerned about the Muslim women, wrapped in overcoats and headscarves, as is the custom when they are outside the home. They could not remove articles of clothing like the men, but I also knew because they wouldn’t consider it their place to complain to the steward, they were pretty much trapped in hellish conditions.“So finally, sure that no one else was going to act, I motioned the steward over, and, with the gesture of fanning my face, said very loudly, “Very hot! Please turn off!” To which he smiled and said “Otomatik…otomatik!” and shrugged his shoulders to indicate that there was nothing to do about it.
"After 90 minutes more being trapped inside the hellishly hot bus, we stopped at a small station to collect more passengers. It was going to be a ten-minute break, so most everybody, including me, stood up gleefully as we wheeled to a stop to get out and stick their face in the frosty night air. As I passed the driver, who was still in his seat busy writing something in a log, I turned to him and made the same fanning gesture I had made to the bus steward. When I added “very hot,” he replied- in English – “No problem, my friend” while reaching above and flicking off a switch.
“For the rest of the bus trip, as men put back on their shirts and coats and returned to their sports pages, I began to wonder why no one had had the courage- that seemed to me the correct word here – to say what they wanted with a simple request.”
Back in Bursa, I discussed the matter with the directors of the school, who, despite being Turks themselves, I thought had an extraordinarily objective take on Turkish people. What they said, in fact together at the same time, was “Peter, Turkish people are like sheep!” It was said by both with a measure of disgust in their voice, signaling to me that I wasn’t the only one who had noticed the Turks’ tendency toward passivity.
But it was also less of an explanation than I had hoped for, and so I tried to work one out for myself by getting the opinion of most everybody I knew. What I began to put together is that the overheating incident in the bus had happened in what, if we were disposed to highfalutin language, we would call a microcosm of authoritarian society, this particular one being Ottoman branded. In this instance, the submissive attitude of the passengers had been occasioned by six centuries of rulers who succeeded in large part by breeding their citizenry to be passively silent.
The padishah in this microcosm, making it more symmetrical to an actual sultanate, was the bus driver- who, by the way, is tellingly referred to as “kaptan" (captain) by Turks. In our bus, he was separated from the row of passenger seats behind him by a plexiglass divider, on which, to further make the point, was a sign saying “Do not speak with the driver,” both in Turkish and English.*
*Perhaps even more revealing about the dynamics of the driver-passenger relationship was what happened in 1997 when smoking began to be prohibited in all public places, including buses. Although passengers, facing a hefty fine if they lit up in the bus, refrained from doing so- and for chain smoking Turks, holding out between stops could be painful -the drivers seemed to think they were privileged and would have a cigarette several times during the journey. When I saw this happen, and just to make a point, I would often ask the bus steward if I could light up too. The answer of course was no, but why only the driver could smoke was never adequately explained. Answers I got most often were that drivers need to smoke to combat stress from traffic, or that it’s OK because the driver cracks open his window, or, my favorite, that the law applies only to the public, not to the driver. (Photo from Google Images)
*Nowadays, 30 years after my Konya bus trip, you would see the same passivity reign in the bus, except that now, in a little show of progress, there might be five to ten passengers out of sixty, probably male, who would have the gumption to speak up.
**In this vein, Erdogan once made a statement about democracy that underscores the simplicity of some Turks’ views. What he said was a bit strange and perplexing, but mainly discouraging in how misconceived it was. In an interview when he was mayor of Istanbul, he remarked, “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.”
Mehmet, had he been on that Konya bus, would surely have made the driver aware that the heater should be turned off. But if he has finer democratic reflexes than most other Turks, it's because they have been nurtured from a practiced businessman’s belief that paying for something, even in Turkey,* gives you certain rights. In the case of the bus, he, unlike many other Turks, regards it as understood that buying a ticket entitles you to a comfortable environment for the journey, no less than it assures you of your own seat.
While you are riding the bus and appraising democracy in Turkey, look out the window and you will probably see, as you pass through a city, shiny, new and expensive cars parked on the sidewalk. This is a vestige of the thinking that wealth gives privilege. If you don't believe that, try the parking on the sidewalk stunt in a 2005 Fiat.
These are the computer cases and things that line the path from the front door to Mehmet's desk. (Photo by Peter Nybak)
*Although things are improving vis à vis consumer rights in Turkey, it is still difficult to return an unsatisfactory purchased item. If they suspect you used it at all, or if you have damaged the original packaging, they generally decline. In my most aggravating experience, I was trying to return to a well-known supermarket chain a liter of ice cream that once opened at home proved to be crystalized and tasted horrible. The cashier claimed- as ridiculous as it sounds- that because I had taken a spoonful, I had started eating it and therefore, she implied, was trying to trick the store into getting free ice cream. This outraged me and raised my voice by 50 decibels. Luckily that attracted the manager, and he refunded my money just to get me out of there.
Here a guy has parked on the sidewalk so that he can use a bank's ATM.
I think the rule people follow is that the shinier and more expensive the car, the more it deflects the police. (Photo by Peter Nybak, 2023)
Outside of consumer rights, Mehmet would be less adamant in his support of such things as freedom of speech or assembly. He would say Turkish citizens had the right but only so far as it doesn't jeopardize the security of the State. There’s the rub: the term “security threat” has assumed a whole new meaning in the last twenty years. In that time, as we said, the government’s propensity has been to charge a seemingly inordinate number of people with terrorist related offenses, often sending them to jail, when sometimes the justification for the charges has remained elusive to outsiders.
Mehmet feels no sympathy for people prosecuted for possibly dubious reasons because he, like many other Turks, believes the government's characterization of them must be correct- the line of thinking being “We have no reason to challenge the State on this matter. It knows what it's doing.”
Since debating these matters would undoubtedly cause a rift between us, instead of politics Mehmet and I talk endlessly about matters in philosophy and ethics, subjects for which we happily have a lot of agreement. Mehmet is a humanist with moral principles very much like my own- though sometimes they seem even more elevated than mine - and while I don’t understand how those principles can co exist with his politics, at the end of the day one has to see him as a very fine human being.
So now let’s take a step into Mehmet's shop
The date is early December 2022.
It’s a day too cold and rainy to be walking on the street so I head for shelter at Mehmet's. I’m not thinking of a heated room so much as I am of a glass of tea. This is because the shop has no heating to speak of and, anyway, the door- and this was an annoying habit hugely pervasive in Bursa in the 90s -is always kept open*, even during snow storms, so as not to discourage potential walk-in customers.
I enter Mehmet's, retracting my umbrella and scrunching up my body so as to not to drip on the computers stacked next to me.
Mehmet: Welcome, Peter Bey! Please sit and have some tea.Me: (closing door and nodding) Thank you! (Actually, in Turkish, I say ‘We find you well’ as a response to ‘welcome.’)
Now, once sitting down, rubbing my hands together to signal how cold the shop is, I see across from me the faces of Ali and Can, both city street sweepers decked out in fluorescent green slickers. I figure they are thankful that the windows are steamed up so that no one can see that they are shirking their duty. There is also a guy I don’t know, whom Mehmet says is Osman, a general contractor. After some small talk…
Mehmet: We were talking about inflation, a very depressing subject.Osman: Peter Bey, you probably don’t know, but in the 90s inflation was worse, always 100% and more. It may be by small degrees, but Turkey is getting better.
Now, I’m thinking to correct this fellow, not just for his assumption that I don’t know about the 90s but for his statement that inflation was worse during that epoch. Granted it was perhaps at a higher percentage, but friends and I recently figured that the current real inflation rate of about 80%- you can always add 20-30% to the official government rate - though less than the 100% of the nineties, can actually be more hurtful to the average Turkish family. This is because in the nineties, many folks prepared themselves habitually, almost without bringing the subject of inflation to mind, to meet what was to be next month’s harsh reality. In those years, they had gotten so used to price increases- which were occurring in some realms at a weekly rate -that the subject even ceased to be interesting enough for everyday conversation.
This, I want to argue to Osman, contrasts with the present, where people, confused by the government’s constant underreporting of the inflation rate and “good” news about the economy, find that they have to sell their savings in gold and foreign currency at month’s end to stay afloat. But I decide not to voice any of this because I’m not in the mood to engage in a discussion that will certainly lead to one about current Turkish politics. In Turkey, with a stranger, political topics are to be pursued with risk. I would prefer to keep things jolly.
Me: You know, Mehmet Bey, coming in here from the rain and sleet to smiling faces and hot tea is like…(My compliment stalls, my Turkish vocabulary insufficient to produce the desired simile, though when thinking about it later, I didn’t know how I’d finish it in English either.)Mehmet: (looking at a message on his cell phone) Sorry, Peter Bey, everyone, I have to leave to check a server at a factory. You can wait here if you like but I won’t be back for an hour or so….
Ali, Can and Osman stand up and announce that they had better get back to work. Then, they and Mehmet, having worked themselves to the door, all turn around and look at me, still sitting with my glass of tea in hand.
Mehmet: So, are you staying?
I’m not sure Mehmet feels at ease with leaving me alone in his shop while he’s away, but I haven’t any desire to go back out in the rain.
Me: I’ll watch the place for you while you’re away. I sort of feel like sitting here. OK? I mean, I’ll just tell people you’re going to be back in around an hour.
Actually, I am mentally preparing myself to spend the whole afternoon in the shop, as the expression “in an hour or so,” as anyone who has been in Turkey for a while knows, means 2-3 hours at a minimum.
Mehmet: Wonderful! See you soon.
I am both relieved and flattered to see he is genuinely relaxed about the idea of leaving me alone in the shop. I can’t help but feel I have achieved a breakthrough- a promotion in my rank as a foreigner in Turkey, if you will.
The first thing I do, after gleefully closing the shop door, is order another glass of tea. When it arrives, I slip a newspaper out from under a collection of keyboards on the desk to read while I drink. I notice that the paper is over three months old but, no matter, I turn several pages to a Turkish journalistic mainstay of the reported sightings of pop stars and socialites in Bodrum and other resort towns. I am having a fantasy located in a warm, sunny seaside town when a cold gust of wind lifts my newspaper off the desk.
This is a typical page reporting on the activities of the elite in summer vacation playlands- here covering a 'White Party' (whatever that is) in Bodrum, celebrity and socialite events in Çeşme, and, at bottom, some wealthy businessman finding 'Love in Alaçatı.' All three towns are coastal resorts and for the rich and famous currently very chic and hip destinations.
Most Turkish newspapers have graphics like this throughout as well as having the majority of pages in color. There are only one or two major Turkish papers- out of 180 national ones!- that are black-and-white "serious." (Photo from Google Images)
Me: (eyeing what looks to be middle aged man with rained-on hair and black overcoat in the opened doorway) Mehmet Bey will be back in an hour. If you like, I can phone…Recep: No need. Say, you’re the American, Peter, aren’t you? I’m Recep, old friend of Mehmet from his village (sticks out his hand to shake). He has mentioned you.Me: Pleased to meet you. (He sits down, and I feel both surprised and flattered that he knows who I am) Let me order some tea.
Now after exchanging some small talk, which includes me telling him, at his beckoning, a brief history of my time in Turkey, Recep smiles and asks
Peter Bey, I can’t help but wonder (now that famous Turkish curiosity is welling up, and his eyes are glimmering), why would an American decide to stay in Turkey all these years? I mean, you even lived here all through those terrible years in the 90s…and now it must be over 30 years that you’ve been here. Unbelievable!
Me: Well, let’s see…how to explain…when I first arrived here in 1990 from France, it was like, you know, I was just captured by it all. The landscape was beautiful, and the food, all of it absolutely delicious. The warmth of the Turkish people was unbelievable, a greatly welcome change from France. But as for the women...just WOW!Recep: (Breaks into wide grin)
Links in the Blogger sidebar to some parts of this blog are not always readable- this is an html problem beyond me -so to begin easier navigation, go to Part I First Half click here .
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