Feeling Foreign

Feeling foreign is a strange fenomenon (that is actually the correct spelling in Spanish). Some days I confidently hop on and off the dolmus (mini van bus service) and make my way about town like an Istanbulite, exchanging 3 word phrases in Turkish here and there with supreme ease ('Metro please'; 'How much are your bananas?'; 'Nice weather we are having'). Hah... this is quite easy. I am almost a turk. Other days I am buried away in my study with Westnell work and Radio 4 'listen again' online and I only speak English to the kids and other parents as I pick them up from scouts. Istanbul? Are we really in Istanbul?

Then there are those days when I really know I am not from round here and have no clue about how to behave. I have just had two of those days in a row. Here is what happened on the first one. On Tuesday I organised a year 4 parents' get together at a cafe in a small forest village near the British school (I am class parent). It was the first time I had called a meeting and since I am a newcomer compared to most of the other parents, I was trying hard to get it right. I had struggled to find the appropriate venue that was strategically located, but also big enough to accommodate us all. I thought it was all very clear - Yasemin at the cafe was fine with 20 women driving 4 x 4s up to her restaurant and gabbling away in English for an hour while sipping tea from tulip glasses. I mentioned that they would want to eat cakes and since they don't sell them at the cafe she was fine about me bringing some brownies (there has to be chocolate). She mentioned that they have typical deserts - baklava soaked in litres of syrup and milk puddings. I had, I thought, made it clear that while typical turkish deserts are very tasty, probably not many women from the British school would partake of rice pudding at 2pm just before the school run. Baklava is one of those things that you are quite keen to try when you first arrive, but soon realise that your teeth ache from the mere sight of its sugary, fatty layers. I would have understood if she had declined to make space in her (quite empty) hostelry for such an occasion, which would obviously be somewhat unique for this country business, but she seemed enthusiastic when I made the arrangement and quite fascinated by my proposal.

Hmmmm.... We duly congregated around a pan of brownies and several glasses of tea on the appointed afternoon and all seemed to be going quite well until Yasemin came on duty, parted the crowd and made her way to face me across the long table. The chattering stopped. Her eyes narrowed as she addressed me in rapid Turkish: 'How much baklava do you want? What about the milk puddings?' Err... I saw out of the corner of my eye some screwed up faces ('milk pudding - yuk!') but also some sympathetic ones from women who had obviously been on the wrong side of custom before. 'Just buy a few portions of baklava - we can give it to the teachers', came one helpful response. I ordered some portions (lucky teachers). But it became clear that I had insulted Yasemin deeply by not ordering 20 portions of rice pudding or a whole tray of baklava (around 80 pieces). If the ground would only have opened up (well it nearly did in Ankara..) or the school secretary rung to say the children had plague.... maybe I would have been saved. But it did not. The final insult came when we asked for the baklava as 'paket' (take away). Were we not going to eat it within their sight? I have barely felt as chastened since the days when I visited elderly aunts for tea and could not face seed cake after a long journey in the back of a Morris Minor with no windows open.

The second reminder that I am an English woman abroad came the same day later in the evening. I had again used my very best beginner's level Turkish to arrange for a man called Aslan to come and clean one of my carpets, and my neighbour's. I felt quietly confident as he had been to the house before and we had exchanged pleasantries on the phone. I had seen his machine and his work. At my house all went well and the rug was cleaned thoroughly. Aslan was accompanied on this visit by a little wizened man with a beard whom he eventually introduced as his father in law. He appeared to be mostly decorative rather than functional as he perched on the edge of an armchair. But at 5pm Aslan abruptly reached for a blanket we keep on the sofa and asked if it was clean. Well, not really.. but what? Did he want to vacuum it too? Had the dog been near it? Well yes... probably drooled on it a bit. No that won't do then... I was perplexed.. and Ruby hovered uncertainly near her blankie, tail between her legs.

I guided the two men and their machine to my neighbour's house. Her toddler son was entranced by the proceedings and particularly by the granddad. 'Hoh, hoh hoh' the little boy announced . He had only seen Santa once in his life but was convinced that this was his reincarnation. I suppose many infants wonder where Santa goes for the rest of the year. Here was the answer. He is in the upholstery cleaning business. He has a day job. Fortunately the men saw the funny side of it and were delighted with the little boy.

But the elderly man was still unsettled. Finally I asked Aslan to explain. It was prayer time and his devout father in law needed a mat. Dogs are very unclean creatures. Even Ruby. How could I have been so stupid? The muezzin had been rasping incantations from the 3 local mosques - all in competition 5 times a day - since we have lived here, but this was the first time I had met a practising muslim in Turkey. Almost all turks I meet are vehement Kemalists (after Kemal Ataturk the founder of the Republic) and strident secularists. The huge furore about whether girls should be allowed to cover their heads in the universities here is a manifestation of this. But these quiet working men - perhaps from outside Istanbul and its cosmopolitan ways - were diligent in their work and their religion and I had served them tea in glasses but not understood their spiritual needs.

I bustled Santa back to our house, found a freshly laundered towel and continued to do Raffy's spellings with him in whispers in the kitchen while our living room became a make shift mosque. I found it soothing to have this gentle man saying prayers in our home. 'They must have felt comfortable with you', a friend remarked today when I told the story, searching for understanding. She is a German woman who has lived in Turkey most of her life and is married to a turk. She has seen a lot. I took this as a compliment.

When Aslan comes back to extract 12 years of dust and memories out of our old sofa, I will remember this, serve them tea and make sure we have fresh towels available. I wonder if Santa likes milk puddings..