Saturday, September 25th, 2004

It was quite a day today; my first real glimpse at Turkish life. I awoke at 5:00 am to the first call to prayer of the day. I’m living in a guest house directly across from a mosque, so the call was quite clear. The prayer is beautiful, albeit a strange thing to wake up to so early in the morning. I listened until it was done, then drifted back asleep rather quickly.

Waking again at 9:00, I decided to drag myself out of bed. I slept for over 13 hours… not a bad night’s rest! I began the day by trying to figure out how to flush my toilet. This is a task easier said than done! Traditional Turkish toilets are holes in the floor with downward sloping edges that one squats over and attempts to aim into. In my room, I have what Prof. Evren referred to as an “American-style toilet”. I wish I could take a picture of this thing!* There is a bowl, with a tube sticking downwards from the back. The tube connects to a thin pipe which leads to a tap on the wall. If you open the tab, water blasts out of the tube at somewhat high pressure. I assumed that this was how you flushed the thing, so after my first dump in Turkey I sprayed away. This resulted in my one turd turning into five or six smaller turds. Great. They began to sink away, so I figured that perhaps this was as good as it got. Later on this evening, I tried again (peed, that is), and decided to turn a different valve on the wall that I had been afraid of earlier. This resulted in something a bit more similar to what we would call “flushing”. Aha! I will have to try this again.

* My digital camera broke before I left, so I am without any way of taking pictures. Hopefully it will be repaired and sent to me here, so I can update this with photos the best that I can.

I went down for breakfast, and after feeling quite stupid with the guy at the front desk, managed to mime an eating action and got myself a breakfast. This consisted of bread with various spreads and lots of çay tea. Selahattin and his younger son Alparslan picked me up at about 10, and we ventured into the city. I met the rest of his family at their flat. The Selo family consists of Selahattin (the dad), Nermin (the mom), Alperen (the older son), Alparslan (the younger son), and Hatice (Selahattin’s mother). All of those names are pronounced basically the way the are spelled, except for Hatice (Ha tee je). In Turkish, the “c” is pronounced like our “j”. Their version of our “c” is “ç” (note the squiggly thing on the bottom of it). Except you pronounce it as “ch”. I don’t know if there is a straight “c” sound or not. I’ll have to ask.

The family is great. They are loud, very touchy, laugh a lot and are incredibly generous. It seems like they embody the Turkish way of life quite well in these ways. They appear to be quite well off too. Selahattin refuses to let me pay for anything, even things like shampoo. Their apartment is very beautiful, and has recently been redecorated. They are very proud of this; Selathattin has explained the next step of getting a larger tv and a digital satellite feed. My family back home doesn’t even have cable! The main activity of the day was taking me around town and introducing me to everyone. Selahattin’s friends seem all seem to be businessmen, and most seem to be quite well off. We stopped by a used car dealership, an ice cream shop, a clothing store, a pharmacy, and a household items shop with things like televisions (we compared models for the next family purchase), appliances and furniture. At each stop we were all given scented oil for our hands and served çay tea. I don’t even know where this tea comes from. I assume a shop around the corner, or maybe some places serve their own. I never notice where it comes from though; suddenly someone will just appear with a platter full of tea, one for each person sitting around the table. Hehe, another thing… there is always a table, and we always sit around it. Allowing a guest to stand is very bad form.

We also visited a hospital, where a family friend was staying after falling off a roof and breaking his leg. We then went out for lunch. By we I mean myself, Selathattin and another family friend Mehmet (or Memo for short). Memo is a year older than I am, is a large guy and very jolly. I wish I could communicate with him; I think we would get along quite well. The kids stayed home, and Nermin and Hatice were off doing other things. We ate a tasty meal at a restaurant… I wish I remembered the name of my dish. It was thinly sliced beef layered over some sort of spongy bread, served with salad and yogurt, and of course çay afterwards.

After arriving back home, Sebahattin demanded that I take a nap. Although I didn’t feel tired I slept for two hours! This jet lag thing is crazy. Following the nap, Selahattin and I went back out on the town. The streets are so busy all of the time. Each block consists of apartment buildings maybe 10 stories tall. Almost every ground floor consists of shops, ranging from convenience stores to butchers to spice shops to clothing stores, and everything else in between. We headed to the market area, located very close to the Selo residence. There are two markets in town: the Selo market is open on Wednesday I think, and the other is open on Sunday. It was evening, and people there were preparing for parties. One was a wedding party for a bridegroom, the other a circumcision party. I’ll explain each.

Before a Muslim wedding, the bridge and groom each hold a separate party. These consist of live music, dancing, eating and general merriment (but no alcohol). At the one I watched for a bit, the groom sat at a head table with his friends, while many older men and one young boy danced in a circle, shuffling from side to side with their arms out and snapping to the beat. Selahattin told me that they were performing the traditional folk dance of Çankiri. The guests were served çay and some sort of pastry-like snack. It seemed fun, and Selahattin promised that we would attend a friend’s wedding party in a few weeks so I could participate!

The circumcision party looked similar, but was being held for a different reason. At the age of five a Muslim boy is circumcised. If he is not, he will never be allowed to marry as no woman will have him (Selahattin was very relieved to find out that I have been circumcised!!! I hope he’s not planning on marrying me off!!!). Friends of the family come to the party and bring gifts of money or gold coins (not sure what these are exactly) and wish the boy well. Then he gets doctored up and everyone rejoices. I hope they give him some meds… otherwise I’m sure the kid remembers it!

We returned home in time for dinner, which Nermin had prepared. It was fantastic. We started off with a soup called Tarhana, made with tomato, flour, yogurt, mint, and some random hot spices we could add as we liked. We ate it with bread (a staple with every meal). This was followed by an unnamed dish of chicken, potatoes, and a few other things that I cannot recall. And finally, we had dolma, which you may have eaten. This dish is grape leaves stuffed with rice and various spices and stewed in tasty broth. I have seriously not had a bad bite to eat since I have arrived here!

After dinner, we goofed around and ended up playing an ok game called… OK! It really was just ok, but I enjoyed playing with the family. It basically consisted of drawing these tiles of four colors ranging from 1-13 and trying to make sets. I was very bad at it, mostly because the rules were hard for them to describe. But we did enjoy ourselves anyway.

The weird moment of the evening came when I had to convince them to take me home. They wanted me to spend the night, but I did not have any of my things! I also really wanted the privacy for a while, which is something that they did not really understand. Sebhattan did not get it at all… I think it was a combination of cultural differences and him being used to getting his way. But in the end, he brought me home. I have no hard feelings… I’m worried that perhaps it is an honor to be asked to spend the night, and that I have slighted them by refusing. Culture clash is a weird thing… normally I would be so much more assertive, but I feel like I should tread lightly, especially since they are so generous with me. Ah well… what fun would it be if there weren’t any challenges?