The strange life I lead

Ayelen and i have just returned from a girls trip to the UK. We enjoyed each other's easy company so much and did lots of fun stuff together. She is on a high now the eleven plus is over - she looked so small trotting off with the admissions officer to take the 5 hours of tests spread over 2 mornings, but she did her stuff and now we wait till March to know the result...

I did that bizarre mix of unconnected but vital things that ex pats often do in their home county visits -all at break neck speed according to list made on the flight over - bought Christmas crackers, parsnips(!) and puddings and other paraphernalia, drank mulled wine and listened to carols and marimba music in our towns late night Christmas market, picked up my mother's ashes and a document to say i can take them out of the country to sit on our hall table in Istanbul, swore an oath on the bible in the Crown court to prove I am my mother's daughter, took my own daughter to take tests for the next step in her life, had my hair cut, visited our new tenants in the farm house who are eighties pop stars and have turned our living room into a song writing and sound studio (Johnny Hates Jazz - hit single ' Shattered Dreams') . looked at the drainage situation in the orchard and walked with friends in the Devon countryside. Is there such a thing as normal life? Who lives one?

Going public…

I have taken to writing monthly articles for the International Women of Istanbul's http://www.iwi-tr.org/ magazine the 'Lale' (or 'tulip' in Turkish - this being the symbol used in much Ottoman imagery and ceramics). I know this is a blog cheat, but I may post a few of them here to make it look as though I am a more regular blogger! Here is one I prepared earlier but it is still true ......

I felt an insistent tugging at my shoulder. I had never believed this moment would come. Standing pinned between two young Turkish men, I was barely able to move to see who was assaulting me. During my travels in Latin America, I had been constantly on my guard, but in Istanbul the possibility of being robbed on a crowded minibus seemed remote. I jerked around to see the perpetrator – a comfortably-seated plump woman with colourful scarf and long skirt. ‘Bayan!’ she grinned at me – ‘Let me take off your coat!’. I had spent most of the journey on the stifling dolmus with my bag trapped on the floor between my feet and, unable to move my arms, attempting in vain to work off my heavy coat as the windows steamed up and my face grew redder. The men around me conceded to the older woman and granted her space to undress me – ‘The scarf as well, give it to me.’ She spread my clothes neatly on her lap and remonstrated with me for not having forced my way into a seat as she had done.

‘Pencereyi acar mısınız’ (open the window please) was one of the first phrases I learned for dolmuş rides in an attempt to persuade my fellow travellers that some fresh air would not kill them off instantly. In winter, nauseating waves of hot air blow out from the heating system over swaddled passengers whose stale breath is caught in this little tin box. It takes a lot for a Turk to feel overheated. This is where Brits differ – for us, cold air kills germs and is character building. It’s what toughens us up and got us where we are today. It’s also the only thing we know in our climate!

It is also not British to interfere in other people’s affairs and in the UK this incident with the motherly old lady would have left everyone dying with embarrassment. As a foreigner in Istanbul, however, I enjoy this friendly kind of meddling. It makes me feel part of the city and allows me to pretend I have an extended family. It is also one of the reasons that I use public transport. While it is very civilised to be in one’s own climate controlled space with music on hand and capacity to determine the velocity of your vehicle (which on a dolmus has only two settings – suicide and stop), I also feel too insulated from the reality of the world around me.

For my very first otobus ride the manager of my compound led me by the hand– pointing out the stop and waiting with me till the large municipal bus arrived ( ‘don’t forget - number 25c’). I observed other passengers press an akbil into the slot (the handy little disc that is charged up with credit for as many trips on municipal transport as you can manage). It was all very refined as I slid into my seat, steadying myself on the reliable safety bars.

Dolmuş are another matter altogether. These are the small, privately owned minibuses that conveniently pause at bus stops but also on street corners and wherever else you might persuade them to screech to a halt as you call out ‘inecek var!’ (‘Someone wants to get off here’!). Like hungry wolves they gather in packs at the bottom of hills near tea houses and kebab stands. Their drivers lean on the doors of their vehicles smoking and laughing until they lurch into their springy seats and hurtle off in hunt of prey. The willing victims go like lambs to the slaughter: happy to risk hanging precariously onto the back of someone’s seat, or leaning against the door, in order to enjoy a bumper car ride for a few lira that speeds them rapidly to their destination.

Dolmuş, like their drivers, come in a number of varieties. The overall concept is similar: a minibus with a light on the top that advertises the line the bus runs and a notice in the front window listing key stops along the way. The earliest model is the instantly recognisable faded blue or cream variety. These are the old guard and frequently driven by gruff war-torn men sitting on bouncy seats that threaten to spring them out of the bus altogether and whose diet is mainly composed of nicotine. There are also upgraded variants in beige and a bright blue stripe. These boast air conditioning and are often driven by sparkier, younger pilots who politely go about their business. Then there are the crème de la crème – the turquoise or bright green newcomers with tinted glass, wide windows and something of an attitude. The passenger seats are well upholstered and floors lined with clean rubber mats. Climate control is sophisticated and the drivers carry an air of importance.

The difficulty is that you cannot choose your model – you just hop on the vehicle that comes your way and hope Allah will bless you. In the end it depends on the driver. Having studied their habits over the past 18 months, I have observed some interesting quirks revealing their personalities and the passenger’s likely destiny. Regardless of the age of the vehicle, some drivers take a pride in their profession: coin trays are tidily separated into compartments for each type of coin with a clean towel to wipe their fingers after handling dirty currency. Some have neat holders for their mobile phones and organiser trays for other tools of their trade such as window wipes and sun glasses. These drivers tend to make courteous announcements of their destinations, invite passengers to pay with a ‘buyrun, efendim’ and do not drive off while you are still boarding. At the other end of the spectrum are the drivers whose work station is a haphazard box of assorted coins and other debris threatening to tip over at any moment as the driver takes a corner while people are attempting to alight. Their approach is to do battle with traffic and passengers alike. They spy their victims boarding in their wide rear view mirror and bark at them to pay their fare – there is nowhere to hide in their ship. The steering wheel is usually covered in tape, as is the seat. The hub caps often bear spikes – just so other motorists know where they stand.

There is also an entire Dolmuş Passenger Culture. The most important person on the dolmuş, aside from the driver, is the passenger standing closest to him. This person will have the fares from other passengers impatiently forced upon him and be required to pass them, along with their mumbled destination, to the driver so he can decide the appropriate fare. It is then beholden on this individual to pass back the correct change to the right person. I have spent some rather active journeys as the co-pilot trying to keep a handle on this situation. There are many challenges in deciphering destinations and remembering who needs which change. It frequently develops into a Chinese Whispers game for passengers trapped at the back of the bus whose coins have to change hands several times on the way to and from the driver. However, I felt immensely proud of myself when I managed my first trip in this important role! Most passengers move away from the hot spot as soon as possible. For me it is good practice for my Turkish and develops a sense of passenger camaraderie regardless of how flustered I get.

Dolmuş riding is a necessity for many Turks. It is a fast, efficient and very cheap service. My regular journey from Tarabya to Metro City costs 1.45 TL. Parking alone would cost at least 5 TL if I took the car. And it is much more of an adventure. The final word on dolmuş culture should rest with the motto inscribed on the back of many vehicles ‘Allah Korusun’ – literally meaning ‘God protect us’! Not a bad idea when you travel this way….

Not every entry a piece of art.....

PREAMBLE (SHAMEFACED): I have to accept that if I am to blog I cannot make every entry equivalent to an assignment for my creative writing class. The problem is my model blogger is my (ex) wonderful creative writing teacher from Chester (ex teacher, not ex wonderful) who writes inspirational and artistic pieces every time. I am more mundane... But short can also be good : another of my lessons for life, as anyone who has heard me recount a funny story will know (lesson not yet learned).

The International Women of Istanbul (IWI)  printed a piece of mine in their magazine about my very first day in Istanbul and it reminded me, as I edited it, that our family has really come a long way since then. The thing that fascinates me about opening my eyes and ears in a new country is the way that everything startles your senses - everything you smell, touch, taste,see and hear makes you feel alert and alive - although its not always pleasant. You cannot believe it will every be commonplace and form the well worn backdrop to your more stable inner world.

On my first morning in Istanbul I was overloaded with the unfamiliarity of everything - from the higgledy piggledy buildings with barnacles of air conditioning units stuck to them, to the shape of the bread and smell of the Bosphorus winds. It felt as though my whole body was being reprogrammed to some new scheme. Nothing was familiar or could be done on auto pilot - buying water, how to post a letter, where to buy a phone and how to use it.... Every small purchase or objective achieved was a challenge - sometimes a triumph , sometimes a knockback disaster of frustration. 

This reminds me of Raffy sniffing the non meat shepherd's pie I whipped up from an Unidentified Frozen Object (probably soya mince) this evening, while trying to watch Obama's inauguration. It was a new concept reflected in both my cooking and the 'remaking of America'- a combination of known elements  (tomato salsa, mashed potatoes) with unknown consituents (the UFO) into a wholly novel dish. Every faculty was awake to this new sensation and informed a discerning opinion from my youngest son : 'this is disgusting'. 

Hopefully the verdict won't go the same way with the new US President.

CANINE ISTANBUL

The street dogs of Istanbul are notorious and omnipresent and have been around since Ottoman times. Today's packs are descendents of classic woolly Anatolian sheepdogs mixed with European breeds that roamed the streets of old Constantinople. They are a mottly bunch also interbred with abandoned pets of all kinds of descent. Front end lab, back end...hmm who knows? We see them staring mournfully at us from every street corner and rubbish skip - a dirty white pelt with a sooty nose and a tail that looks too long for the body. Not totally cute, but you get fond of them.

Some are fierce and scare the daylights out of poor Ruby: the gormless lab whose 'lets make friends' attitude doesn't always pay off with the leader of the local gang. But a lot of them are soft and lonely and crave some human attention. Many of them get it, as Istanbulites are frequently kind to their canine neighbours. The Ottomans saw them as street cleaners - part of the recycling process. Today they are part of the furniture although there are also stories of cruelty and not all are as well fed as our pups. On our first trip to the city - in searing August temperatures - we were amazed to see a woman recklessly stop her car on a busy roundabout to give a dog a drink of bottled mineral water. Actually, now we have seen drivers hurtling the wrong way down dual carriageways I suppose we would rethink 'reckless'and see this as quite routine. Funny how your definition of 'normal' shifts....

I digress....now we are practically Istanbulites ourselves we have aquired some canine contacts too. We are particularly friendly with 3 orphan pups whom we have watched grow up in their little camp beside the wall we clamber over to enter the forest near our house. They are the typical model but with some patches of brown and black that make them distinguishable one from the other and lend them the names the kids have given them - 'patch', cinammon' and 'siyah' (turkish for black)They have survived the first 6 months of life and a harsh winter courtesy of cardboard boxes for shelter and margarine tubs of puppy food provided by kind people living in the apartment block across the treacherous dual carriageway.



They adore Ruby, whom they see as a surrogate mum, and while they retreat into the woods at the site of most humans, they bowl over each other to get to us in that typically puppyish way involving big paws and long tails tangling with each other until they are a mass of writhing tummies angling for the first tickle.

The 2 boys are very timid. The bitch, who is lighter and smaller and obviously the runt, has always been sociable and bold. I am ashamed to say that Ruby's interest in them is largely dedicated to trying to steal their half eaten scraps of food and bones. She cheerfully ignores their playful advances in her attempts to trample them down en route to a good scoff.


Who is the starving street dog here? Far from being hungry and poorly cared for these pups are watched over by local people who even arranged for a vet to vaccinate them before winter set in. They have fresh water and food every day - even after snow fall. They are free to bound about the forest chasing each other and the lizards. No cooped up apartment block for them with a turn around the block once a day.Maybe not such a bad life....

We wondered whether we should bring them in to our home during the harsh winter - but to what end? Piles of poo for us and street dogs gone soft - how would they ever be returned to the wild after being domesticated. And who would want them as pets? So we enjoy the trip up the hill to visit them and are rewarded by seeing how quickly they are growing into their huge paws. Soon they'll be bigger than Rubes and we wonder how the pack will organise itself between the two males. My greatest fear is that they may stray onto the busy road, but they - like us -have to learn to cope with the fairground bumper car tactics that constitute the rules of Turkish driving. Good luck to us all!

The Wild Side

Having just got back from a swift trip home to Devon, I can make a comparison with the home country and securely use the old traveller's cliche to say that Istanbul is a 'city of contrasts'. Having to explain your new life and the place you live to people who haven't been here (yet!) is always a challenge. Where can you possibly start and what do people really want to know about? Not really the tourist attractions and what we did on holiday, but how is daily life? What's different to the UK and specifically to rural Devon? Well, here's what's different.

Two weeks ago we had no school on Monday and Tuesday because we were under a foot of snow , by Friday it was 20 degrees centrigrade and sunny and only the soggy Fenerbahce scarf on the lawn indicated we had made a snowman. In the morning I can be 15 minutes drive away from home in the glitziest shopping mall you can imagine, surrounded by famous brand names ( that I have no desire to buy) while designer dressed cosmopolitan Turks throng Starbucks and Gloria Jean's buying cappuccino at around £3 a cup. In the afternoon I can walk in my wellies 5 minutes up the hill from our compound past the huge Toyota showroom into what I imagine is the kind of terrain best known to old Istanbul - or Constantinople. The city is built on forest sliced through by the Bosphorus strait and more recently decimated by the dwellings needed to both horizontally and vertically house 15 million people; but there are still large areas of pine, oak and beech state-owned forestry that give a clue to how the city once was. No one from the chattering middle classes uses the forest much (they are in their expensive health clubs) but Ruby and I regularly meet with the other population of Turkey - ordinary folk and street dogs.

More of the dogs later (they need a separate entry). My fellow forest walkers at 8am tend to be traditional Turkish women wearing the original headscarf - long and triangular and tied at the back, rather than the trendy shiny numbers with fancy pleats and ties that the politicised younger women wear. They are often older women with long grey coats or full skirts and thick sweaters against the cold. They have weathered faces and gnarled hands but are surprisingly nimble at shinning up the strawberry trees to gather berries. According to the season, they also gather blackberries or dig up wild flowers or herbs - often to sell I suspect. In the bigger forests they are huddled with their families picnicking on Sunday. Sometimes they are just taking their constitutional walk and admiring the view down over the city. We exchange greetings and are on our way. I see these same women tending lines of vegetables in market garden plots near the children's school. They are hard working country people who can carry huge sacks on their backs and are used to harsh conditions - they seem a million miles removed from their city cousins who currently fight for the right to wear the headscarf with their fashionably fitted suits in the workplace and university classes.

Just as the division between conservative and secular versus religious and radical is confusing to us in western Europe, the existence of these stark contrasts - cheek by jowl- is unfamiliar. But both are faces of Turkey and reconciliation of these opposites is part of the quest to enter Europe. It is an interesting time to be here...

Backside issues

There is something about learning which word to use for the nether regions that brings you to a critical moment in a new language and has a real impact on your fluency. Mis use of the cruder terms in inaproppriate situations is a frequent misdemeanour among non native speakers. For example our sweet yoga teacher, who actually speaks very good English, last week asked us to 'put your foot up your arse please'. Now, not only were we startled at the use of the term, but also hesitated for a moment in our trajectory to the 'dancer' position wondering if this was anatomically possible - even for an experienced yogy(or indeed a dancer). We know her well enough to point out a phrase with better karma.

My first brush with the requirement in turkish came when Ruby the lab had a problem under the tail. The vet's assistant assured me that one of the vets at the practice had a good grasp of English and when he called me back would be able to decifer my embarrassed attempts to describe concisely why I needed an appointment. I started politely - 'it's her bottom' ('Mrs Debra, I don't understand'), her backside ('pardon?' ) 'under the tail (the ear is hurt?), errm... ok, since this is a vet now I start with more biological terminology: 'anus', 'colon' ('I don't underst...'), 'back passage' (silence), 'poo, faeces?' (nothing). Of course then I was forced to go into the more medium grade school boy epithets, but to no avail. I was by now finding it too hilarious to continue so we decided I needed to bring her in and, well, point it out.

I realised I needed to tackle the problem straight on and ask for a lesson on back end turkish from my teacher. She took it seriously as always - 'Kopeğin kıçı, but the suffix depends on what is the problem - is it indeed ON the dog's bottom or IN the dog's bottom'. I was trying to write it down in my phrase book for use at the clinic; my class mates had to be picked up off the floor. 'Where are you going to put that suffix??'

Does any other culture find these words as difficult (and hilarious) as the English? Does every nation have so many possible terms and so many connected jokes? My turkish is simply not good enough to know this yet.

But I was glad that I had the appropriate term to enlighten Raffy's dry slope ski teacher on Thursday. Seeing Raf looking very tight lipped coming much too fast down the astroturf conveyor belt I drew nearer to hear the dudey-looking guy instruct him (in English) to 'keep your backside ooopppen, now close your backside up'. Well, I guess on the real slopes he may need to kick in the turbo, but I think the snow plough may be more useful .....

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..