Braving the swim parade in Bodrum: The data-driven put-down battle

Posted on August 13, 2011 by lizcameron

Women judging the unspoken "swim parade" with mercilous yet silent glee

I am mid-breath, and it is a deep one.  Although I am surrounded by blue sky and buoyant hot air of the weather type – not to mention buoyant hot air of the verbal type, I feel backed into a corner.  I am back down by the water, taking in the sun, which I must admit, feels amazing, although the commentary from the ladies I am meeting here is leaving a lot to be desired.

“Is it true that you eat two hamburgers with cheese for dinner every night? And french fries?” asks one lady friend of M.’s sister in law.  Another pipes in “Americans walk their children on leashes like a dog – they can’t run and jump for health.”  A third turns to me and asks “how did you gain all of your weight? You don’t have children, even.” Perhaps most shocking is the fact that they are so flat-affect-faced during and after these comments, that I actually begin to wonder if they are serious about what they are saying – and in fact do not mean to insult me.  Sometimes the verdict is out on that, sometimes it is more clear.

Mustering all of the “take-the-high-road” and etiquette-to-the-end behavior I can, I grin and bear it.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Whenever I turn to my blessed ipod for some Corsican chanting to calgon-take-me-away, I am usually pulled into the conversation again.  I finally start telling people that I have a cancerous growth in my stomach, which explains the slight bulge there. (No kidding, I really did this).  Of course, I got the idea from Karagöz, who has been repeating a few Run DMC lines for the past hour “Now you’re the flyest girl, in the whole school but they don’t call you fly – they call you fool Because you don’t go to class, you will not pass.”  Hacivad surprises me with his presence on the beach – “I feel the need to tell m’lady that while the jester-beast is quite repetitive today, the ironic humor of quoting a rap star with these particularly choice lyrics does make sense for the audience of a doctoral student surrounded by women without serious education or occupation.”   I can hear the chorus of dancing girls giggling from the opening into my purse, a cavernous one, filled to the brim with items designed to extricate me from lots of uncomfortable Turkish lady situations if at all possible down here on cement beach.

“Maybe your prince charming will come by for a swim!” I hear from the purse from a light, almost tinny-voiced dancing girl.  Another dancing girl, more frog-sounding but pleasant says “no, you must let him bond with the men, just hope he does not consider trying a Cohiba, it’s too stinky, but this is what the men do.”  Oblivious to the observations of the dancing girls who can, apparently, see through walls with their x-ray eyes, M. is locked in conversation with his brother and a circle of tea-drinking, cigar smoking men.  He ambles over once in a while, reads his art history book for a bit, spends some time with me – and we sneak off of sunbathing alley for a dip in the Aegean.  Over the weeks that we are visiting, I have gotten used to walking on my own as I take the occasional self-conscious walk from my chair to the stairs down into the sea.  The water is truly like silken sheets, hot in the sun, but just refreshing enough.

Whenever I stand up to go and cool off, the ladies eye me from their reclining chairs as I walk by.  The hats moved to the side, the sunglasses positioned just so – the newspaper down, the tea glass suspended in mid-air, the novel placed askance, the conversation halted ever so slightly.  There is the check of the hair, consideration of the  two-seasons old bathing suit brand, the assessment of the pedicure and lord knows what else.  I am not alone though, all the ladies are checking anyone who does this on-the-way-to-swim-parade- akin to the “perp walk” or the “walk of shame” for women in my country in various situations.  So much seems to ride on looks here in this gated community of heavenly hell.  “Really,” I think to myself, “you are truly being a bit dramatic here – this is hardly hell….hell, who am I kidding, this is hell on beach.” M. laughs at all of this – we notice that the women are more interested in checking out the other women – not them men.  “They have to assess the competition, I guess,” M. says, chuckling all the way to the water, “you ladies, I don’t get it.”

So,when I have mustered up the courage to do the “swim parade” – that or enough red-faced over-heated-ness – I just stand up straight, suck in my tummy and brave the cat walk.   At 5 feet 10 inches and 160 pounds in 2004, there wasn’t much to suck in, but still, a size 14 is considered “women’s” clothing in the States – a euphemism for fat, obese, overweight.  “So crazy,” the chorus of dancing ladies cry from their spot in the velvety inside pocket of my purse, “that you are considered obese – the Ottoman era men liked a little meat on the bones, you know.”  M. dubs it the “cat fight in the eyes” walk, and I laugh.  Forgoing the ladder into the Aegean, we run and jump into the water like energetic teenagers on a rampage of thundering fun.  Then we swim as far from the cement beach as we can, grab eachother’s hands, and start floating on our backs.

As I float, I can hear my back adjusting into some sane, non-doctoral-student-stumped posture as I float there, salty sun on my face, cool silken water flowing around me with rivulets of warmth from the top of the sea that is simmered in the sun.  I remember my first medicinal float experience in South London, at a flotation center.  The walls were turquoise, the water super-salinated, the crick-cracks from my back intense – and here I am, getting a float for free.  I emerge so relaxed that I could care less about facing the unending gaze of the “swim parade” back to my seat.  The ladies coax me along from the purse each time, saying “c’mon girl, you’re as good as they are, and you don’t care about all that surface stuff – you care about the important stuff – and your man is happy too!”

One day, after returning somewhat renewed from the water and managing the swim parade without too much internal angst, I note that there is an article placed just under my “modern Turkish politics” textbook (my light beach reading goes over like a lead balloon with the ladies – that’s the dancing ladies in my purse as well as all of the beach ladies).  The article shows an impossibly obese baby and a range of quotes from the Centers for Disease Control on the prevalence and incidence of obesity in the U.S.  All eyes are on my in their bikini-skinny splendor, as I reach down to quizzically pick up the newsprint.  Some of the ink smudges messily onto my hands.  Feeling the sting of tears, I will them back to their tear-cave, and lift my head up smiling.  “Yes,” I say, not sure what will come next, “I am aware of this problem in the United States.  It is something we health care professionals take very seriously.”  My words fall on deaf ears as the tea man comes by – pointer fingers raised in unison into the warm blue air lead to the tinkly glass trinket cups being placed on tables all around.  I forgo tea, and opt for a David Sedaris recording instead.  “Calgon, take her away!” one of the dancing ladies cry, now hip to my 20th century references.

At the Internet cafe that night, I googled “Turkey and obesity.”  We had a good, cackling, gut-splitting laugh at the results, M. and I.  We really had a must-stop-laughing-this-is-embarassing moment, if you ask me.  And certainly it was a we-are-way-too-middle-aged-to-laugh-like-this moment as well.  In any case, according to a United States-based study, published in a peer-review journal, between 1994 and 2004, the Turkish population has gone from being 1/3 overweight to 1/3 obese, 1/3 overweight – which seems about on par with the U.S., at least approaching it, anyway.   I also find a Turkish-authored study, and I decide to pay the exorbitantly high fee for printing out the one Turkish-authored paper on the topic by Dr. V. Yumuk, the abstract of which reads as follows:

“Obesity and overweight are increasing in Turkey according to the field surveys that were carried out a decade apart (TEKHARF 1990 and 2000). The overall prevalence of obesity in adults was 18.6% in the year 1990. Ten years later in 2000, the prevalence was 21.9%, which shows a relative increase rate of 17.7%. As it is true for most of the countries, overweight is more common in men and obesity is more prevalent among women in Turkey.”

Glad to have some ammunition now for my smiling retort, I make sure to place this on the chair of M.’s sister-in-law as she is walking back during the swim parade – she gets the same stares, the same check-outs, but she walks with the confidence of the striking model Iman, crossing her legs carrot-like down a runway at breakneck speed.  As she walks up, I smile widely “I thought you might be interested to see that obesity is a problem in Turkiye as well,” I say, trying to sound open, feeling bad at being engaged in a put-down, but also secretly happy about it.  “Women are most dangerous, I think,” Karagöz says in his loopy, lingering voice, “when they are smiling during the ultimate put-down.” Hacivad is, as usual, ignoring Karagöz, favoring instead the academic musings of the moment.  “If the numerous satellite dishes and young men who are spending their afternoons in the Internet café playing video games instead of running on the beach and splashing in the lovely water are any indication of where this country is going,” he says, sighing, ” Turks should take note and not follow the United State’s ‘couch-potato-ism’ mistakes.  This is the term, no?”

As usual, M.’s sister-in-law bursts my bubble almost immediately, with a nose-downward dismissive movement, she says “it’s all the peasants, you know, dear.  Not us.”  Although a bit deflated, it was still worth it, as I see her secretly reading the article while it is hidden inside a Cosmopolitan magazine.  I sigh and settle in to the afternoon’s readings on the origins of three of the main parties – the CHP (social democrats), the MHP (fascists, as I understand it) and the AKP (moderate Islamists).  Tiring of the beach scene, I leave early, climbing the steep stairs cut into the hill to go home and take a shower.  As I hang my towel on the line, I stoop to pick up a piece of trash – and find a plastic surgeon’s card on the floor.  On the back of the card ,there is a price quoted for what M. later tells me is a word that refers to liposuction.  The jig is up, she’s busted, but I never say a word.  The gentler and kinder me remembers that body insecurity seems to know no geographic boundaries.

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Tea at breakfast: Sweltering in my smile with Hacivad and Karagöz

Posted on August 13, 2011 by lizcameron

Strong shafts of heat hit my back as I walk up the stairs from the guest room.  It is not yet nine in the morning, and already dry-hot beyond my comfort level.  Sliding into a space next to M. after greetings in Turkish, I slide my tiny stainless steel tea spoon around the fine Paşabahçe tea glass.  (Paşabahçe is a Turkish company – formerly run by the government – that has lovely glass and ceramic products, akin to Crate and Barrell).  Crystalline ting-ting sounds are emanating from spots all across the table as everyone is doing the same thing.  Armed in my best sundress, in other words, the one I feel most thin and attractive in, I hope that the mealtime talk will not, once again, turn to the American obesity epidemic.

“Fat chance!!!!!!” Karagöz yodels from the buffet before making an impossibly long bounding leap over to my shoulder.  I am hoping that M.’s family did not see me flinch at the morning surprise that is the caustic and jesterly Karagöz , embodiment of my internal, sarcastic and somewhat base self.  They all seem absorbed in a very important discussion about their futbol (soccer) team – Galatasaray and the politics of the club’s inner circle.  I have become adept at adopting a pose of apparent listening with respectful intent while sending my mind around the block on a journey to gather all intelligence I can about everything else going on around me.  Today, I don’t make it around the block in my mind, but I do make it out the window, over the balcony and onto the massive, two-story tall red and yellow Galatasaray banner that M.’s brother has hung there.  It billows in the breeze like a sail on a sailboat – ready to launch this chalk-white dollop of a summer home over the hill and on across the Aegean to Kos Island, in Greece.

“Tell them you thought Fenerbahce was the best team!” Karagöz screeches into my ear, dancing with hilarity across my shoulder in a mock soldier’s dance.  “That’ll really get them.”  Hacivad sighs, tearing himself away from the morning paper, which he has magically tapped with his Chartreuse parasol in order to shrink it down to a readable size for a human-inhabiting puppet.  “You must remember, my dear canım, that Fenerbahce is actually the mortal enemy of the grand and gallant Galatasary Futbol Kulubu.  As Karagöz says – you must unsay.  As Karagöz walks, you must lie down.  It is black and white in this manner, and as for controversy, you must mind your manners, bide your time, and swelter in your smile, canım.”

“Swelter in my smile,” I think.  “Yes, somehow that is how I feel despite the antiquated English. ”  I recall friends who have had massive weddings and complained of sore smiling muscles from all of the photography and videography.   Although Bodrum has been lovely, the water warm and buoyant, the window into the family illuminating and the sun relaxing, I do still feel like a duck out of water.  No amount of salon visits, clothing shopping, walks on the boardwalk with the ladies seems to get me to a point of feeling at ease.  “This is not the life for me,” I muse, “but a necessary thing for now, and many would covet this time.”  I feel maudlin, but with no excuse to feel that way.  I have way to much time these days feigning interest in Turkish as I over-analyze everything.  As entitled and financially blessed as these folks are, I am equally so with all of this mental energy for analyzing everything.  I am entirely too inwardly focused.  “I must remember others would covet this,” I remind myself silently, “yes, they would covet it.”

A nautlus shell - if this were my brain, I would be withdrawn into the tiny compartments during today's breakfast

Karagöz snorts as he somersaults over to Hacivad’s shoulder “Covet this time!  Use them for all its worth – this is a jet set lifestyle – you don’t have a maid at home – look at your life here – you should live like this!  Listen to yourself.”  After expelling Karagöz with a gentle shove, Hacivad raises his left eyebrow and looks at me straight in the face.  “Listen to yourself, canım dear, you sound ridiculous and pedantic.  These people are not your cup of tea, perhaps, but it is time-limited, and you must reap the silver linings of this lovely spot despite the glitter and glitz. As your Yankee father would say, “stiff upper lip” and as your much more reasonable Granny would say “be polite and appreciative” and as your stepmother would say “pretend you are an anthropologist, trying to understand this new culture.”

M.’s sister in law -taps me on the elbow, repeating something I cannot yet focus my mind on, as it is still too deeply whirled in the inward spiral of the Nautilus shell that appears to be my brain right now.  I have been sweltering in my smile too long. “Sorry,” I lie, “I was trying to pick out the verbs and the adjectives in Turkish, what was that?”  “I am wondering, my dear, if you need your full American breakfast today,” M.’s sister says.  “I have just had one almond, one dried apricot and non-fat yogurt along with my tea, but I am sure you are used to something more. What can I have Kalinka make  you?” The air sucks out of my lungs, and I find myself speechless.  Kalinka, hearing her name, hovers her way over to the table, anticipating the orders from the lady of the house.  She winks at me and smiles as her bare feet make an imperceptably silent plip-plap sound on the marble floor.  “Buyrun, efendim,” she says, and I understand this to mean “please go ahead, ma’m.”

“Woo-hoo!” Karagöz yells as he stomps on the table, “now what are you gonna say to this b-word lady!  Look at how she slid that insult in there!  You have to think of a good one.”  Hacivad doesn’t even look up from the paper, saying “just go easy.  First meeting with the family and all, she may be trying to be nice.”    “Umm, ahh, well,” I stutter and splutter as my face shades from pink to as red as the Turkish flag fluttering next door, “I was just hoping to start with a bit of tea – you don’t have any milk, do you?” Shifting in her seat, her cigarette held high above her head, diamonds glinting in the sunshine, she responds with an eager glimmer in her eye “Dear, of course we don’t have milk, not good for the health in the summer, and certainly not on a day when one eats fish, don’t you know.  Why not the Turkish way?  It might help your regime some (regime=diet).”

I blushed so much, I wished for a turtleneck in the Bodrum heat

Karagöz screams “don’t let her get away with it!”  I ignore him, focusing instead on placing my cool hands on my cheeks to hide some of my blushing, which I know is a losing battle.  I begin to wonder if it some sort of lady game, this one-upsmanship at all moments.  Maybe I am really just not ever going to be accepted into a family as a non-Turk.  I wonder what I would have to do to endear myself to her, how much hazing I would have to take.  Maybe she doesn’t mean to hurt me so – maybe I am just so easily hurt, overly sensitive, maybe I am making this up in my head.  As M.’s sister in law is calling over to Kalinka, the Moldovan maid, M. puts his arm around me and squeezes my shoulder in recognition of what’s going on.

As M.’s sister-in-law angles herself lithely out of her rattan chair to take a mobile call, Kalinka delivers my Çay with a side glass of milk, extra sugar and with a wicked wink, says to me “what a bitch” in Russian, our shared language.  My gratitude knows no bounds and I could hug her, if it wasn’t against the protocol of the moment.  We beam at eachother in some sort of knowing sisterhood that transcends language and culture.  M., his brother and his sister-in-law have no idea that the Moldovan put-down has just landed.

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Cue the dancing girls: They finally emerge from my purse for a moon dance

Posted on August 9, 2011 by lizcameron

There is a rustling and a jingling somewhere on the floor.  Sleep holds in gravity against my eyelids, which are leaden and deeply in stasis.  I think “scorpion on the floor.”

Karagöz giggles mercilessly in my ear, causing my adrenalin to rush, “think again, missy!” he hoots as I jump to attention.  Irreversibly annoyed, as I am a heavy sleeper and grumpy awakener, I was less than amused to see my jestery friend, miss him though I had. He seemed to be permanently stuck under his aluminum foil-constructed self-tanning mechanism, working hard on tanning his bald head for the last week or so.  Paying no mind to my mood, Karagöz engaged in his usual rhyming madness at the top of his lungs “Scorpion, my ass, what to think of the ring around the glass?  Be a smart lass, there moving out, en masse!”

Realizing that this was not just the rumblings of my personal puppet madman, I rubbed my eyes a bit more.  Sneezing from intense air conditioner exposure, my eyes inch towards adjusting to the blue light of the room.  The strong-willed crescent moon was peeking in the side of the window with a vengeance.  “No scorpions here,” I realize, “it’s a visitation.”  I begin to see the little ladies – my personal troupe of Karagöz puppet dancing girls who have assigned themselves to be my traveling Turkish girlfriends.  The ladies are dancing out of my purse in a slow motion infinity twirl -as if they can’t quite stomach leaving the purse for good.  Hands and arms akimbo with a collective grace that matches the swirling of their opaque but shimmery fabric pantaloons, veils and tops, they swirl and gesticulate with the most graceful gestures, clearly hearing their own music, from an oud, perhaps, something like this quiet and contemplative music from an Iraqi oud player with a Turkish name, perhaps…

I wake with more intention now, trying not to disturb M., who is snoring away, oblivious to it all.  I am surprised that the cacophony of snores do not unsettle the little ladies.  While they have ventured onto my shoulder or earrings in an emergency, they usually hustle for the purse as soon as I am back within range.  This is quite a treat.  So far, I have mostly heard their views on my need to dye my hair, be a good wife, not help with the dishes – that’s for the maid, be sure to think of England” for the waxing torture and generally not be so academic and more ladylike.  They were happy to hear that my Granny taught me that “a lady is not a lady without her lipstick.”  Hands waving up and down in their slow-motion circular moon dance, I become transfixed by their collective grace, light steps, and translucent beauty.

As my transfixed-ness ensues, I reflect on how uncomfortable I have felt.  Trying to fit in, to meet the expectations of some impossible-to-attain Turkish femaleness, much of this is some crazy expectation I have for myself, not M.’s  expectation, certainly.  He has been rolling his eyes and sighing at me for buying in to his sister-in-law’s views and for feeling so insecure about my looks.  No matter how many times he has reassured me that he likes me as I am, I am constantly not feeling good enough, thin enough, pretty enough.  I start to realize that these are my own internal negative messages that are triggered by being exposed to what I can glean of the expectations for a Turkish woman.  While the dancing girls play into it some, they are stuck in Ottoman times, circa 1350, so they won’t be too much good on the empowerment front.  What of this moon dance, then?  Why now?

As if divining the meaning of my furrowed brow, the closest dancing girl to me comments mid-twist, mid-turn, saying softly “we re-connect with the moon several times in a month, to remember who we are – as individuals and as a group.  You must do the same, we think, so we decided to come out of the purse for the first time tonight.  You don’t have to join us, you would probably crush us, but consider us here as your reminder to check in with yourself – and to be that sort of girlfriend or sister cohort for you, while you are so far from home.”

Before I can answer, I see that they are waning, the dance is slower, the infinity ring of dancing progression is slowly making it’s way into the purse again.  “So,” I think, “the task is to check in.  Maybe I need to cut myself a break, maybe I need to set my own limits.  Maybe I don’t need to spend the day at the beach with the ladies, talking about cellulite creams, microdermabrasion, the latest in bikini styles and diets – and the like.” Without further ado, I make plans for a pre-breakfast conversation with M. and craft the right words “I know you are so enjoying your brother – can we ask him to take a day trip tomorrow or the next day, to his business down in Dalyan? Do you mind?”

The next day as the brothers are planning a day trip over breakfast,  I will learn from a google search that the dancing girls have an important role in Karagöz shadow puppetry traditions – they always finish the show with a grounding dance – but not much more.  I also learn that karagoz.net that their garments are referred to as a ferace made of “two pieces of fine muslin or tarlatan called yasmak, folded and pinned in such a way that one edge covers the mouth and lower part of nose and the other passes across the brow above the eyes, while the rest hangs behind. As the veil is very thin, the features can be quite-clearly seen. They wear a blue bonnet called hotoz, patent leather or velvet slippers on their feet and each carries an umbrella.”  I saw no umbrellas last night, though, they must have left them behind in the small nooks and crannies of my purse – no need for protection in the moonlight, I suppose?

Looking up from my laptop, I wonder when the dancing ladies will emerge again, and whether this is more of a function of the moon or a function of their hard-wiring to my confused self bereft of close girlfriends and/or sisters on this trip.

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