The other side of this national identity card lists my home town as Malatya, or more specifically the village of Haciabdi, where my wife's father and mother come from. The photo has been airbrushed, as is usual in Turkey, and it is the same one used with no objection in my passport.
“All of Life is a Foreign Country.” – Jack Kerouac
Some of my friends in the States call me “Peter the Turk,” but this identity became a whole magnitude truer when in July 2007 I received bona fide Turkish citizenship. I had applied about a year before mainly at the urging of my wife who, quite correctly, figured it would make our life a lot easier with the police and other bureaucracies.
The approval process I went through required a background check, fingerprinting at the central police station and, in June 2007, an interview by a panel of 6 high city and military officials. You can be sure I had prepared myself for the interview. The one question which I thought surely would be asked was, “Why do you want to be a Turkish citizen?” I wrote my answer out well in advance, memorized it like a high school valedictorian and, on the morning of the interview, sat waiting to be called with sweaty palms and dry mouth.
Imagine how slighted I felt when, as we left the courthouse, the only question I remember being asked was, “How long have you lived in Turkey?” At their request, my wife had been present during the QA, and after giving me the above token question, they directed all their interest at her. What fascinated them was why instead of her having applied for American citizenship, here was me, an American, requesting Turkish citizenship. They asked her twice, “Don’t you plan to go and live in the U.S.?” but didn’t seem to believe the no answer. (Their intonation in this question was the same as that in ‘Are you crazy?’) I think at first they really suspected I might have an ulterior motive in my request- though what that would be is hard to imagine- but after realizing the citizenship idea was nothing but for our family’s convenience, they decided to take down their guard.
Believe it or not, until very recently, when Turkey started to straighten up its act to get into the EU, foreign applicants for Turkish citizenship had to change their name to a Turkish one. Bob Smith would become Mehmetcan Iskenderoğu, for example.
I had heard of this requirement several times over the years and always thought it was a joke. But just before beginning my application I brought the issue up with a lawyer friend to be sure. It’s then that I learned that a bit earlier it had indeed been quite real, and my thinking that it had to be a joke was apparently a case of cultural myopia. I see now that it reflects the strong preference for cultural homogeneity in Turkey (there are no followers of multiculturalism here) and would still be in effect if not for the meddling of the European Union.
Lucky it wasn’t in force when I applied because it would have been a deal breaker. I have learned to bend a lot of ways by living abroad, but I could never stop being Peter, Pete and Petey. Still, I have amused myself thinking of Turkish names that might fit me: Zeynullah.... Abdurahman...…or just plain Ali?
As I look at the red and blue national identity card above, it is no small surprise when I consider the card as a marker of where my life has gone. This can’t be written off, as I may want it to be, as just a formality and a way of avoiding headaches of foreign residence. The fact is that there is one sobering result of my dual citizenship. As the webpage of the American Consulatesays: dual citizens are, while residing in Turkey, subject to the same laws and punishments as Turks.
But since we already know, after watching films like “Midnight Express,” that even tourists ought to heed the law of the country they are visiting, I think the Consulate is really saying something else. This is that, if one is arrested, one shouldn’t expect any help.
If I read the Consulate correctly, it means that if I am picked up in Istanbul because I look like I could be a fugitive remnant of the Baader Meinhof Group, there isn’t going to be any midnight call from the U.S. State Department to vouch for my California pedigree.
Although this may not be unfair, it’s a little scary when you consider that Turkey still has some “undemocratic” laws on the books A well-known example is the law giving prison terms to people who “denigrate Turkishness.” It has been used to silence journalists and writers with views opposed to the state’s. Most notably Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk was intimidated with possible imprisonment when he talked about his views on the Armenian genocide. I have no plans to do so, but if I were to write about that historical period on this blog, should I, I now ask myself, be wary of possible scrutiny?
The comforting flip side to this is that under the terms of American-Turk dual citizenship, I am, when in the U.S., subject only to American laws. I could give the razz to the Turks and remain pretty untouchable. I keep this in mind when my imagination gets over-active.
The truth is, however, that after living here 18 years I feel quite comfortable and secure. If I didn’t, I’d be long gone. The fact is, I plan to stay on.
This beckons the question that I set out to answer in this blog. It’s a question that has been repeatedly asked over the last 18 years by my American and European friends, but more by the Turks. It is in various spins, “Why do you live in Turkey?”
Because I enjoyed living in France for 5 years before Turkey, there are really two questions I have to answer. Besides explaining why I decided to finally settle in Turkey, I should also explain what caused me to leave California for Paris and what made me decide not to come back.
............................. A River Runs Through It .........................
In 1984, I felt stuck in a rut. I didn’t seem able to change my job or anything else about my life. At the time- in almost a simpleton’s terms- I thought of life as a course of a river. I pictured the numerous and futile attempts I made to change things like throwing myself into the river but winding up repeatedly on the same uninteresting little shore. This, it occurred to me one day in a mini-epiphany, was because the currents didn’t vary much and, because I always jumped in at more or less the same spot, I was always deposited at the same disappointing little beach. I never could figure out how to jump from a different point along the river, but I did get the idea that perhaps what I needed to do was find a new, unfamiliar river. Thus I had the idea to move out of the country and cast my fate to the wind, or, in keeping with the metaphor, to uncharted waters.
Sometimes the ride gets a little rough.
I decided to move to France. I chose it because since childhood I had had a fascination with everything French. My best friend when we were about ten went to live in Provence for a year with his family. He came back with what in my eyes was an aura of mysterious sophistication and an objectivity about American culture that I envied. If in 1984 I was myopic and provincial and was sleepwalking through my life in California , I was convinced that slapping myself in the face with the unknown in Europe would be the way to get my life back on track.
I readied myself for the big move for about a year and a half. I tried to prepare myself for every eventuality and talked my plans over with anyone who knew anything about France. In fact, when I actually arrived in France in December 1984 I had correctly anticipated almost every problem or need I would have during the first weeks of my entry. I had considered more than a few bits of wrong advice, however. For example, a family friend had told me to buy eyeglasses before going because, he said, opticians were few and far between in Paris. Another, noticing that I liked to drink milk, warned me that I might have to change my drinking habits because fresh milk was difficult to find in France.
When I first started walking around Paris, I noticed that, far from being scarce, opticians were so prevalent that in some areas there were two or three for every city block. And they were much cheaper, which caused me to regret heeding my friend’s advice. The caveat about the rarity of fresh milk was with a little reflection after my arrival a pretty ludicrous statement: the inventor of fresh milk as we know it, Louis Pasteur, is French. He is also a national hero. By the way, not only is fresh milk available all over France, but it is much better tasting than the watered-down stuff you buy in American supermarkets.
I mention this because after about a year in France I began to see that much of my friends’ wrong advice, though mostly innocuous, was born purely of a cultural arrogance. “Watch out for those backward French,” they seemed to be saying to me. “And in a country where the telephones probably don’t work all the time, let’s hope you can keep in touch with the civilized world.”
After a little reflection on my countrymen’s condescending attitudes toward France (including those I overheard from many Americans in Paris tourist venues), it was a small step to realize my own arrogance and narrow-mindedness. The coup de grace, so to speak, was an instance of embarrassing ignorance on my part.
In 1985, I bought a TV and developed a penchant for watching American films, which are played all the time and in original version. I enjoyed seeing some of the best of our films, but was put off constantly by the fact that the French didn’t project the film like we did on the full TV screen. Rather, they used just a band across the center of the screen. One night I was watching a film with a friend and complained about this:
“Why don’t the French use the technology to fill out the TV screen with a film?” I asked, thinking really that they just didn’t have it.
“You mean to say, ‘Why don’t we ask for American help and get our film projection right?’ “
“No, of course I don’t….”
“Maybe the Peace Corps could come over and give our TV stations a hand…?”
Even though this was 10 years before the prevalence of DVDs and the now common knowledge of letter box format, I felt truly chastised. My friend taught me that showing a theatrical film on full TV screen distorts it and lops off about 20% of the original image, which the French, as the world’s most erudite film enthusiasts, could never tolerate. He was right on in accusing me of cultural condescension, and it led me to examine a lot of the assumptions I had come over to France with.
........................................I and Thou.........................................
When I left for France, my friends had given me some books on French language and culture. One of them that I remember listed slang expressions interspersed with comments and suggestions about living in the culture. Here is one of the tips:
“The French expect a high register of politeness even in everyday transactions. Instead of saying, like an American, ‘Can I get some bread, please,’ you should, on entering a bakery, look directly at the shopkeeper and say in French, ‘Bonjour monsieur/madam. Comment allez vous? Je voudrais un pain, s’il vous plait.’”
I think you would agree that this kind of advice, though true, would be of little value in your long term survival as a foreign resident. It may get you the fresher loaf of bread more often but it won’t get you past the first year, when cultural shock begins to set in. It won’t help you in transactions with your boss, landlord or the police, all on which keeping alive will hinge.
The knowledge that you really need will come from your own experience. It is the interaction between you, with all your peculiarities, and the people of the foreign culture that provides you with an internal guidebook that will allow you to maneuver successfully in the society.
In this way, the wisdom for survival is tailor made. An outgoing, Pollyanna ex-pat will learn something different than a dark, brooding cynical type, but both will learn what they need to survive.
Imagine, for example, that when you are due to renew your residence permit- which is by the way something you have to do nearly every six months in France- you don’t have any money in the bank, and that a letter from your bank is necessary to prove your financial solvency.
When I myself faced this problem after about a year, I was almost resigned to losing my visa. But then I had a revelation about myself and the French which put me back on track.
I had tried for several months to get a work permit but had been refused, and it suddenly occurred to me that I was my own worst enemy. My penchant for honesty and directness was leaving the bureaucrats no choice but to disqualify me. If they asked me how many hours I spent every week as a student (you need to be a student to get a permit), I answered truthfully, below what I suspected to be the minimum, thinking that, like in America, the virtue of honesty I exhibited would command enough respect to be rewarded: “Well, you surely don’t qualify, but seeing that you’re so upfront with me, I’ll overlook....”
The revelation was that the single biggest obstacle to my getting a work or a residence permit was my American way of thinking. We’re so basically honest and rule-oriented we’re at a disadvantage when we step across our borders. When I finally saw it the French way, which is- wink, wink- that we will respect you and grant your Carte de Sejour if you’re clever enough to work up (and express in rehearsed French) an elaborate but not too obviously phony story about how you are presently waiting for money from recent sale of possessions in California and have a fake letter from someone to prove it, it was an eye opener that made life abroad henceforth a whole lot easier.
My re-education has been a slow and sometimes painful process. Even now, over 20 years later, the surprises, both good and bad, are almost as frequent as they were in my first years. But all the better, because what sustains me and what drives me along living in a foreign culture is this very process of learning about the hosts and, along the same route, learning about myself, which might come down to the same thing. As I’ve said elsewhere in this blog, learning who you are requires understanding who you are not. Living abroad gives you the opportunity to do that.
“Own only what you can always carry with you: know languages, know countries, know people. Let your memory be your travel bag.” -Alexander Solzhenitsyn
This expresses my sentiment exactly, except, if possible, I would also like to own a black Porsche 911 Carrera.
................ Adieu, La France - Merhaba Türkiye..............
After five years in France I had learned a lot, but I wasn’t about to give and go home. I wanted to go somewhere outside of Europe for a little more challenge. But not too far out, mind you, and it seemed that Turkey, the gateway between Europe and Asia, was a good compromise. My mother, who had traveled a lot in Turkey, also recommended it.
In 1990, I flew to Istanbul, from where a few days later I planned to continue to Bursa for my new job. I thought I might be a little savvy about wrangling in a foreign country, but, even on my first day, I saw that I was back in square one, where I had been five years before on my arrival in Paris.
I had been walking a lot around Istanbul on that first day, and while resting on a bench on the grounds of at the Blue (Sultan Ahmet) Mosque, a man jumped down from a garden wall behind me and sat on my bench. He said hello and then (in English) asked me if I was interested in buying a carpet. His uncle had a shop, he said, and he could arrange a good deal for me. It was obviously a hustle- if you’ve traveled here you may have heard the same come-on- and I declined politely. But he continued on with his pitch, and I at several pauses tried to be assertive and convey with finality that I didn’t want to buy one: “No, I don’t want a rug, so I’d appreciate it if you went on your way.”
Although what we Americans know from the pop psych movement as “assertiveness”- the technique of repeating “no” and not showing the slightest weakness in one’s resolve to reject the offer being made- always worked for me in Europe, it didn’t seem to have any effect in the garden of the Blue Mosque. The lad wouldn’t give up, despite even my raising my voice in anger at him. The only thing I could think of to do was to get up and go into the mosque. Surely he wouldn’t follow me there.
I thought he had stayed behind, but 5 minutes later as I stood in the center of the mosque taking in the panorama, he appeared on my right. Thinking that I surely had the moral high ground at this point and that he wouldn’t dare restart his spiel, I couldn’t resist getting a poke at him:
“Oh, so I guess it must be only shame that can silence you.”
“What shame…and who’s stopped talking?”
“This is a mosque. Even you know better…”
“Jesus and the moneymen is your story. It’s not in the Koran.”
“So you’re saying that Islam wants people to do business inside a mosque?
“Why not? I’m breaking no rules. I think you’re the one with the problem.”
Now, with a slight smile, he took a gleeful stab back at me, “So, if
you bring me one of your friends to the carpet shop, I’ll give you 50% off on
your own rug.”
I was able to separate myself from this hustler only after he spotted some fresh victims, two backpack toting girls looking at a foldout map in front of the mosque entrance
These days I’m so familiar with the values carried around by my rug-salesman friend that I could shake him in a minute. This may lead you to ask whether, after 18 years here, my Turkophilic obsession shouldn't have waned even in the slightest.
Not really. Sometimes I feel I know next to nothing about Turks and Turkey, and even less about Middle Eastern Islamic thinking, and that my mission hasn't even got off the ground. My desire to figure out the Turks is still ever-present, even if sometimes it may only be running in the background as I, like you, pursue my daily chores.
I can hear some of my readers’ comments that the inconveniences of living in an almost-third-world country, including its opaqueness, the lower standard of living and the lousy standards in general, the vulnerability one assumes to war, pestilence, for example, all these are surely negative considerations which outweigh the value of- excuse me while I snicker- learning about a culture. Wouldn’t I really rather come back to the States, drive a Prius and be up on the Lost series? Or at least, wouldn’t I prefer to live in Europe? Even eastern Europe might be preferable; at least it's Christian.
It’s true that after 24 years abroad I’m sort of tired and that I haven’t got the gumption to move to a radically different country. I’m also married to a Turk and have a son. But all the same, Turkey has been good enough to me so that I would choose to live here even if I were single and 20 years younger.
Turkish Rocky
In the 1970s, before the prevalence of TV here, these kind of films were the fare.
These days, where Turkish production standards approach or meet those of Hollywood, Turks might find this just as comical and bizarre as you do.
They would also watch it feeling some nostalgia, however. There is, in fact, a TV station in Turkey devoted solely to showing films from the 70s and 80s.
There were several things that happened right after I arrived that formed a bond, so to speak. They didn’t have immediate impact on me nor “seal the deal”, but after some time I began to appreciate what they indicated about the values of the people.
In my first week in Bursa, on a Sunday, I went out to buy a newspaper and found that I had locked myself out my apartment building. My boss didn’t answer his home phone (he had gone to his summer house) and since I was the first teacher to arrive for the summer term, there was no one else to ask for help. As I made a lame attempt to jimmy open the entrance door, several of a group of taxi drivers who were sitting on a bench 10 feet away came over to see what was going on. Shortly, the whole group of 8 or so had come over and were all busily sizing up my predicament. After a while on one of them indicated to me through mime and a pencil drawing that I needed to get a metal rod about three feet long and bent at about 90 degrees. It also had to have a hook at one end! This, he indicated by acting it out, could be slid under the door and wielded to hook a chain that when pulled would release the door latch. I gave him a big shrug, not having the slightest faith that I, or even God, could turn up such an article at the moment, but he pointed me in the direction of the main street, and, not wishing to offend my new friends, I went off on my quest.
I didn’t know where to go and doubted that anyone would understand me, the foreigner with the slip of paper, but the first place I decided to go to was just down the street. It was a little kebap restaurant where I had already eaten twice. The owner and his workers greeted me loudly- they even called me by my first name- as I walked through the open door. This lifted my spirits considerably as I felt I had some friends now to support me through my first major problem in Turkey.
Sitting behind the cash register was the owner, and I handed him drawing that the taxi driver had made. When he shrugged to me, I went over to a back door and acted out a person locked out. He lifted his finger and smiled to show he had got it, and then barked something at one of his counter boys. The boy went out the back door and about twenty minutes later came back with what would have to be exactly what was drawn by the taxi driver, right down to the small hook at the end.
Whether he had found or produced it I don’t know, but I was feeling ever so proud when I brought it back to my taxi drivers. Thinking they would be impressed that I had actually brought back the exact thing they had drawn, they rather seemed impatient that it had taken me over a half hour to bring it. No matter, because as soon as the apparent leader of the rescue operation took the bar and started to finagle it under the door, everyone got excited about whether the thing would actually work and watched intensely.
It didn’t go according to plan. After about a half hour, during which all eight drivers tried and failed, I grudgingly let go of what had been a new belief in miracles. I eased myself back into the terrible reality that I was stranded on the street in a foreign country and didn’t know a soul to help me. I had almost started to believe that there was some sort of magic going on- the immediate rescue of the foreigner by the eight taxi men, the miraculous appearance of the exact tool we needed- and Turkey, after all, was just a stone’s throw from the land of Aladdin.
Just as I was about to ask if there was a locksmith around on a Sunday - or more accurately, try to mime the question in some way- a loud click sound followed by some cheers turned my head around. By sheer luck, after about 45 minutes at that point, one final effort had snagged the chain. Now, a driver held the door open, smiling proudly. I shook hands all around, went back into my apartment and got my keys (luckily I hadn’t locked my apartment) and, wanting to announce our success, took the bar back to the restaurant.
They seemed greatly pleased that I had opened the door. When I asked (by so many gestures) where they had found the bar, they wouldn’t give me an answer. In a typical Turkish gesture, they shrugged and said it didn’t matter. In fact, I never found out, and now, 18 years later, have came to think of it as a little miracle in my first week in Turkey.
On my way back to my apartment, as I was crossing the street in front of the kebap restaurant, an impatient taxi driver who had stopped for a group of pedestrians began to move toward me menacingly as I crossed in front of him. Even though I was in a crosswalk with a yellow flashing light for oncoming cars, this man seemed to think I should have paused to let him proceed, and he nudged me out of the way like I was some goat blocking the road. When he lurched forward so far as to threaten my balance, I gave him a big slap on the hood. I also said something like, “Watch it, motherfucker!”
This set off the taxi driver into a state of rage. Instantly, he shouldered open the door of his tiny Fiat and, with outstretched hands, started chasing me around the car. He was a giant guy, taller than me at 6’ 2”, with a huge beer gut hanging over his belt. He yelled (as I found out later from a girl in a bookshop across the way who worked also a translator), “I’m gonna knock your head off, you motherfucker.”
This is when some of the shopkeepers who had come out to see what was happening ran over to the taxi driver and grabbed him. Three of them tried to hold back the guy but they had to take him down to the pavement to restrain him. (Apparently, they also shouted traffic lessons at him.) Another shopkeeper grabbed my arm and escorted me up the street to get me away from the hotspot. When we got near my apartment, my group of taxi drivers hurriedly ran over and accepted charge of me. They laughed at the shopkeeper’s report of the incident. When my adrenaline subsided, I, too, couldn’t help but see the humorous side to it all. But I also felt impressed.
Though I'm told I don't really need one, I got a passport just for the thrill of it.
It had been a very long time since I saw such a display of social responsibility and connectedness. Maybe I had seen such a thing in my childhood in a small town in California, but certainly not in big city life, of which Bursa, the fourth largest city in Turkey, is a prime example.
The incident struck me profoundly because of a contrasting event that had occurred in Paris just about 3 months before. I was taking the train from Versailles to Paris and I noticed that the man a few seats in front of me was reading a newspaper upside down. I looked at him for a few seconds out of curiosity but then went back to reading my Herald Tribune. At the next stop he got up and, while exiting the car threw a solid punch into my left eye. He yelled in French at the same time, “Why were you staring at me, asshole?”
The train was moving again by the time I fully realized what had happened. At this point I was pressing my palm against my eye, which was bleeding profusely from the cut made from my eyeglasses. I was wondering if I had actually lost my eye, and I was pretty frightened. My first thought was that I should get to a hospital, and I looked upward with my one good eye to survey the car for a person to ask for help. Of the 15 passengers facing my way, all seemed to be purposefully not looking at me. The message was clearly that no one wanted to get involved. So I looked at the lady sitting across the aisle from me. Surely, I thought, if I spoke to her directly she would have to help me.
This woman of about 20, who I will always retain a perfect image of in my head, looked at me with raised eyebrows but said nothing to my plea for help. Instead, she gave the gum she was chewing a big pop, then boosted the volume of her walkman as if to completely shut me out. Talk about social disconnect!
I got to a hospital in the end, though the woman who took me up to the street fled back down into the underground station as soon as she pointed out the building, saying, “The last thing I want to see right now is a policeman.”
I was pretty angry at the French for a few weeks, but I suppose I really shouldn’t have been surprised by my fellow passengers’ withdrawal when I was attacked. We read news reports all the time about people everywhere not wanting to get involved. What happened to me in Paris could have happened in Berlin, London or New York.
That first week in Bursa redeemed humanity for me a couple of notches, and probably accounts for my deciding to stay in Turkey the first few years. But by my fourth or fifth year here I was thinking of leaving, possibly to return to France. Life here is harder than Europe and after a while it just wears you out.
But I didn’t leave. On the balance sheet, there is something here which keeps the plus column longer than the negative for most of the time. It’s now 18 years since the taxi drivers and the storekeepers welcomed me and I haven’t seriously considered leaving in 10 years.
At home, watching TV, and enjoying my new nationality. So maybe I am planning to stay on this shore at this bend in the river. If so, it would be a good time to take a look at the present state of my life.
Here are just a few things that cross my mind:
1. I am a Turkish citizen with a Turkish passport. Even when hold it in my hands I can’t believe it.
2.I am eligible to vote in, and have already registered for, the next election in Turkey. This means that I, Peter Nybak, who was born in Hollywood and played in a surf band in the 1960s, will help decide the destiny of the Turkish Republic.
3. I am married to a Turkish woman, a Moslem, and have a 6-year-old son who speaks Turkish better than me.
Many times I have to look up a word he uses in the dictionary.
My wife has pointed out that he speaks Turkish to me more slowly than to her, enunciating more carefully.
Recently it occurred to me that I will have to improve my reading, writing and speaking of Turkish. In the coming years of his education, I wouldn’t want my son to be ashamed of me (like of a father who still talks of and lives in the old country).
The fact is that although I am American to the core, my son has grown up to be culturally Turkish. What is more surprising perhaps is that this is totally OK with me.
4. I have adopted many Turkish gestures with my face and hands. Whereas in France many of the gestures I adopted over the years were essentially affectations, the little things I do in Turkey are generally unself-conscious.
5. I presently have only a sister and one cousin in the States, but even when many of my relatives were alive, our family never visited them. I never felt connected to any of them.
In Turkey, my wife’s family, of which I am a bona fide member by my marriage, has at least 100, not counting the second cousins. A couple of years ago, in Malatya, in eastern Turkey, we visited half of them. They all seemed to feel I was family.
My privileges are pretty much those of any other family member, but so are the obligations. One of my wife’s cousins in middle Anatolia, whom we have not met and probably never will, asked me to send him a spare LCD computer monitor, which my father-in-law told him that I had. Because he is from the poorer side of the family, it was a solemn duty.
6. Recently my wife, my son and I went on a picnic with her mother and father and her brother and his wife (whose family adds more to ours). After I had gone up to the top of a hill to get some firewood for our barbecue, I looked down and saw them all begin to dance oriental style to music (from eastern Turkey) on the car stereo. For all of them it seemed a natural thing to do to have fun. There was also a cultural connection they were making through the music and dance, with which, as a middle class Baby Boomer Californian who grew up with the Beach Boys, I couldn’t help but be impressed. It was an instant when I was struck by just how different my life had become- one of those moments where reality sneaks up and startles you. This was my family.
Even though I've always been the type who has to first work up courage to step on a dance floor, when I came down from the hill I joined in without reservation. I felt that I was lucky to be a part
There are a myriad of other things I could mention, but I hope even this incomplete list will convince you of the unconventionality of my life.
Making this inventory has turned out to have another purpose, however, apparent as soon as I began it. Writing it has, really for the first time, given me the occasion to see for myself how my life has changed 23 years after I set foot in France. I’m not exaggerating when I say that after taking stock, I’m just a little bit astounded.
In Paris, I threw myself into a new and unknown river, wanting to get to a different and unpredictable place in my life. Really, could I have hoped for more satisfying results?