From Islamic feminism and the perfect demure nightgown to topless ladies on the beach

Posted on August 2, 2011 by lizcameron

A typical Turkish breakfast

One day over a Turkish breakfast feast in his breezy South Boston apartment, my boyfriend invited me to visit Turkey with him.   It was mid-bite – and a delicious bite at that – fresh, white feta-like cheese with sour cherry jam on whole wheat bread fresh from a nearby bakery.  My first response, while enthusiastic, was also somewhat garbled and crumb-filled. “Yes!” I spluttered, reaching for the black tea with sugar.

You see, I wasn’t really surprised when my boyfriend invited me to join him on his summer visit to Turkey – a visit, he was sure to tell me, was not a visit “home” as he considered the United States to be his home after 15 years as a citizen.  We were in the initial phase of a relationship when you can’t do enough talking – it seems there are scads upon scads of topics that need discussing into the wee hours of the night.  I wasn’t really surprised when I said “yes,” either, “yes, I will join you on this trip.”  We had known each other for three months at that point – and to complicate matters – I had initiated divorce proceedings with my first husband just a month before meeting my boyfriend for the first time.  It was a chaotic time. Nothing was supposed to happen when it did.

Love is, of course, very blind in this way – why not take a trip to a Middle Eastern country with someone you have known for three months while you are still engaged in divorce proceedings and need to write a doctoral dissertation?  Makes perfect sense, right?  Therefore, I was not at all surprised when my parents were taken aback at the notion of my summer plans.  Hardly a time to go traipsing around the Middle East with a newfound love when there were chapters to edit, legal fees to pay.  But most importantly, there were stereotypes to overcome.  Forget all of the questions from well-meaning friends and some family members about whether I would have to veil, to attend services in a mosque, to sponsor my boyfriend’s citizenship (usually just *after* I had explained that he had been a citizen for at least 10 years already) or to assume responsibility for his extended family members – the major question became – what will you wear?  I found this odd, as I am more of a dress and skirt type of person – and these days not so much of a mini skirt person as middle age sinks in.  This question of “what to wear” or perhaps “what not to wear” was the question of the hour.

The Karagöz puppets had not yet infiltrated their way into my awareness, but I sure could have used them.  They were to become the embodiments of my cultural confusion, cultural reckoning and attempts at cultural sensitivity, but at this time, I was all on my own.

One day as we wound our way down Boston’s Storrow Drive on the way to an Turkish restaurant, I gripped my seat at the latest lane-change, and attempted to cover up my fear of boyfriend’s driving by asking “are there any particular customs I should plan to respect, and, um, what should I wear?  Will your family expect me to wear something in particular?” My boyfriend let out a guffaw just before an errant lane changer got in in the way. After slamming the steering wheel with his right hand in perfect rhythm with an impossibly romantic sounding Turkish curse (only reserved for the very worst of traffic grievances, the rest just got the inferior American approach), he emitted something between a giggle and a snort.  “You want to know what my family wants you to wear?  Hah – um, how about Prada?  Or something fancy like that?  I wouldn’t worry about all that – don’t believe what you read in these books of yours about Iran – Turkey is Turkey – just be yourself. That’s why I love you.”  Needless to say, I didn’t get much out of that, and was certainly confused at the Prada reference.

Appreciating the support and individualism that had in many ways drawn me to my boyfriend was not enough for me, though, as I apparently I felt that I knew that I needed to prepare to dress in some particular manner – but not sure exactly what.  Ignoring what I knew were internal mental memos about social impropriety, ethical and moral duty to keep up appearances while finishing the latest dissertation chapter, I focused on preparing for the trip.  Looking back, I realize now that I was really clueless, no amount of reading Orhan Pamuk or Elif Şafak novels, travel guides, travel blogs, the Lonely Planet’s thorn tree posts or somewhat futile discussions with my boyfriend could really prepare me for what to expect or how to comport myself in the clothing department.

I am sure I had some romantic notions about the Middle East, Islam, kind old family ladies and veils – I think I drew on my experience of being grandmothered by a lady raised in Southeastern Spain at the turn of the 20th century.  She was old-fashioned in all ways, her slow, sun-infused lifestyle a constant in my growing up, as was the soft flush of her fan sending summer breeze in minute proportion over to me.  She wore a black lace veil to church for all the years after her husband’s death.  She kept it folded up in an empty cream-colored sugar bowl in the china cabinet in her living room.  I attempted to channel her sage advice on the matter, and as a result, I felt I knew what to expect, and in some cases, this was spot on.

Asma Gull Hasan -see link for more information when you hover cursor over image

But truth be told, I still tried my doctoral student best to prepare anyway – “I-will-be-culturally-sensitive!” I thought, with a self-imposed superiority.  As a result of this self-set edict, I read up on as much Turkish history, politics and culture as I could muster, subscribed to an English language Turkish newspaper and dusted off two old favorites:  Tiffany’s Table Manners for Teenagers and Fatima Mernissi’s Islamic Feminism (on how Islam and veiling in particular allow women to be treated as respected equals, more on this another time).  I knew that both, in their own way, would help me to find my own way through the experience along with my boyfriend’s help.  I called on Mernissi’s work to decry friend’s concerns about dating a man from the Middle East -“Islam is empowering to some women – it is not all-consuming blue Burquas in Afghanistan and stonings in Saudi Arabia,” I would explain, “look at the Islamic feminism movement?” People did not seem to want to hear this.  The stereotype was more comfortable to stay with, I think.  The safety of the “other,” perhaps.

A controversial image of a woman in a burqa championing women's liberation

Interestingly, it was my boyfriend who rejected the validity of Islamic feminism the most. “I am so glad,” he said sweetly, “that you are reading a lot.  But you need to know that this is in a particular context in North Africa – it can’t and doesn’t happen anywhere that women feel empowered by Islam.  Look at Iran!  Look at Saudi Arabia!  Look at Qatar!  Look at what the Islamist movement is doing in Turkey – there were *hardly any* veiled people in Istanbul when I was growing up.  I support their right to wear what they choose, but I truly do fear the potential bad things about this movement.”  I later learned that the latter point he made was a common view amongst most secular Istanbullus I met.

I had been introduced, after all, to the notion of feminism, by Mernissi herself.  An odd angle for an American girl, but that’s what happened.  It just caught my eye in the library one day.  Before I could get back to a good second read, I had to contend with my parents at breakfast each morning, as I was still living with them during my divorce and dissertation-writing phase (God bless them for that, it must have been trying!).

Although I had more than an inkling’s worth of evidence that they were horrified by my relationship with this new boyfriend who was somewhat of a bull in a china shop, as they say, my stepmother stepped up to the plate in lieu of complete silence from my father who I think was trying to deny his way through it – and what father wouldn’t?  No stranger to international travel herself and no dummy when it comes to the need for cross-cultural concordance whenever possible, she announced that we needed to shop for a nightgown – and a robe.  “I am sure that something demure is in order,” she pronounced, “I am thinking about an old Turkish auntie, the matriarch of the family.  Definitely, a demure nightgown is called for.”  I supposed that my usual sweat pants and t-shirt combo were not going to cut it and went along for the ride.  Without protest – as I really had no idea what I would be venturing into vis-a-vis the meeting of the matriarch, I demurred and found myself in the lingerie section of Lord & Taylor.

Perhaps the only bastion left of traditional department stores in the United States, a matronly, be-spectacled auntie of sorts ambled up to me with a cloth ruler around her neck, stating more than asking “In the market for a bra measurement? Or can I help you with something else?”  Not missing a beat, my stepmother piped up “not in the market for a bra measurement, but in the market for a suitable nightgown and robe for meeting a boyfriend’s older aunt in the Middle East.”  Quickly erasing the comical image of me greeting a matriarch in a nightgown and robe for the first time while doing the Queen’s curtsey, I bit my tongue.  “Oh yes, of course.  Why don’t you start over here by the cottons,” she clucked, knowingly, as if people with Middle Eastern boyfriends going home for a first visit came in daily in this Boston suburb.

My demure cotton nightgown was something along these lines, but not as low cut 🙂

Whispering while Barbara was out of earshot, she surprised me with “Will you be sharing a room?  I doubt that!” Not knowing what to say, I began to compliment the selection of rosebud-patterned fabrics out this year from Lanz of Salzberg.  I suppose the sexual revolution had hit her too at some point.  I was mortified.  Before I could conjure up the right thing to say, Barbara called out from across the floor, her voice muffled from the padded bullet bras and wispy next-to-nothings floating languidly on their hangers around her.  “I think I have found a good candidate!”  It was a long, slightly baggy number, in white with blue flecks – accompanied by a seersucker bathrobe which reminded me of my Dad’s summer wedding suit.  It fit the bill.  “We just have to do the bend-over, see-through and sit-down tests now,” she indicated, marching us along to the dressing room for a modesty check.

I was reminded of lady in the wonderful contemporary memoir, Lipstick Jihad who had to dodge the fashion police – literally – the fashion police in Tehran who made sure that veils were covering the right amount of hair and that skin-tight versions of the required raincoat did not make it down their street.  These were my images of what I knew was the more extreme end of the spectrum with respect to dress and veiling in particular in the Middle East.  While I knew that Turkey was a secular country that did not require women to veil, well, I really didn’t know what to expect.  I had better go with modest.  The nightgown robe set, meanwhile, passed all tests – not too much cleavage, not too see-through and certainly no risk of revealing my personal bits upon sitting down, such as, at breakfast or during a late night tête-à-tête upon meeting in the hallway during the jetlag phase, I thought.

Little did I know that while the nightgown would provide me with much comfort in overly air conditioned rooms in Istanbul, the need for modesty at his aunt’s home was not at all an issue – though I wore it as socially-prescribed armor anyway.  The Turks, I have come to learn, have an odd mix of tradition laced with conservative notions and acceptance of ribald and open sexuality right alongside them.  For example, take Turkish commercials – for anything – candy, gum, cleaners, cars or books – the sexual references are blatant and bold.  Although I had seen them on cable TV before my first trip to Turkey, I did not internalize how absolutely explicit commercials that accompany all Turkish television shows.  All manner of cleavage, visual references to specific sex acts were eminently apparent on television at any hour of the day.

Example of an explicit ad campaign for Turkish jeans

Ever since my first glance at Turkish TV ads, I have had some sort of moral moment of shame involving a lot of blushing, say, when standing in front of a television in a Turkish café as dancers inevitably gyrated and grooved around the product of the moment while veiled village ladies or city mavens stood about in line.  It didn’t make sense to me, this veiling and sexual openness verging on vulgarity all in one fell swoop.  A product of the pro-sex generation of third wave feminists in the 1980s and 1990s, I knew that sex was not necessarily a bad thing at all – and that one’s sexuality should be celebrated and honored instead of shamed and ignored.  Why, then, I would ask myself, do I blush in this moment?  It made no sense whatsoever.  In retrospect, I do believe that this was me facing the reality of my stereotype about a somewhat Islamic country – I was so sure that from reading I truly understood what was going on in Turkey – that the reality which was never captured in anything that I had read was not possible as real reality.

Nowhere was this more obvious than on the beach on Bozcaada, a Northern Aegean island where my boyfriend’s aunt has her summer home.  One day, while walking with my boyfriend and his aunt on the beach, we walked by two women sharing a beach blanket – one edging up her tan, lying topless on her back while reading a pulpy magazine, and the other, covered head to toe in an “Islamic bathing suit” made of light track suit cloth, who threw a blanket over herself as we passed.  I wondered if the currents in the water would be more likely to pull her away with all of that cloth.  The image is emblazoned in my mind as a symbol of what epitomizes Turkey, the east and the west, the modern and the traditional, the ever-present conundrum that Elif Şafak writes about.  It is not at all abnormal to see a lady in skinny jeans and a tank top sharing a latte with her fully veil-covered sister – I have seen this many times.

My own photo of two women on the street in Istanbul (black whole body veils are pretty uncommon there, but the image gets the larger point across about veiling tolerance)

So, although I am glad that I had re-dipped-into Mernissi’s work on Islamic feminism before the trip as a starting point, it wasn’t much of a help.  Seeing the nightgown each night in my suitcase was more of a trigger for doing what I really needed to do, reflect on my experiences that day, match my assumptions to realities and talk it out into the wee hours after watching my gorgeous sister-in-law ascend to her bedroom in a stunning, low-cut mauve silk negligee and matching robe. I finally understood the Prada comment my boyfriend had made back in Boston.  This Turkish family, very secular, was more interested in Prada and  Dolce & Gabbanna than discourse on Islamic feminism.  I was stuck in “does not compute” territory, and it took a while to get out of that loop.  In the meantime, I took comfort in my Puritanical cotton nightgown.

Posted in Cross-cultural learning moments, Gendered moments, Turkish Food!, Turkish-American Matters | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Karagöz daydream #2: Flying from west to east with Khadijah and Kenne, my first female Karagöz shadow puppets

Posted on August 1, 2011 by lizcameron

A string of Karagöz shadow puppet characters

The shadows are back.  They exist beyond my boyfriend’s South Boston apartment, I think.  Not sure this is a good or bad thing.  This time, it is a man in western Ottoman-era dress with a pince-nez and a lady in the red dress of household helpers.  Even in my dream I can’t bring myself to say “servant.” Their hands are touching gently enough to reveal the love between them.  They gaze, mesmerized by eachother’s eyes, with only tree and cloud puppets moving around them on the white screen behind them.  The flickering of the candle behind the screen brings a warm, glow, almost as if illuminating a secret, but I can hear pots and pans clanging in the background, thanks to the puppeteers, who are creating thunder to indicate an ominous mood.  The camera pans to me, the narrator of the dream, “who knows if a mixed race couple was an unlikely couple in Ottoman times,” I note with reserve, “there was so much cultural mixing, and besides that, they seem really in love, but I wonder why the thunder?” 

Behind the scenes of a Karagöz puppet screen

The hypnotic mood is broken by a clash of thunder, a crack of bright white light – and the appearance of Karagöz and Hacivad.  “Eee gads,” Hacivad declares, “you most certainly may not continue this improper behavior!  Stop at once, Khadijah, back to the servant’s quarters! And Celebi, I should expect such from a dandy such as yourself, but really, what of the girls of good breeding? We must conference at once.  It is one thing to have an affair with a lady of the house and another to propose marriage.”  As Hacivad is delivering this dictate, Karagöz is amping him from behind, making faces behind his back and generally striding about in preposterously exaggerated poses.  He takes his chance and creates the fray he is simultaneously jumping into “Oh pooh – fahgeddaboutit, let love live, viva love!  Look at the love and tender looks like so much rose syrup flowing over the soft curves of the poached quince and kaymak.” 

As Karagöz is camping it up, the white stage fills with spectators – the lovers are still touching their hands in that gentle manner, but they have turned away from each other, back to back, looking alternately downward in defeat at being found out and defiant in their love and the very rightness of it.  Addressing the growing crowd, which now includes his parents, the owners of the red dress lady who are tugging on her arms – and any manner of other folk, Celebi stands forthright and declares his love for the woman I now realize is named Khadijah.  “I intend to make this wonderful woman my life – we may come from alternate ends of the earth, accustomed to different practices and stations in life, but we are willing to learn eachother’s ways, and find a happy medium together, if you will allow us to take this modern route, and make a life together.” 

Khadijah - my name for one woman çengi dancer in Karagöz puppetry

The crowd bursts into an uproar, with cries of “what of her customs? They are not welcome here” and “she is ignorant, as are the race in her country, not sophisticated.  Do you want an Egyptian child?”  Khadijah tilts her chin up “judge me by my actions and not my words,” a tear slides down her face, “do not stereotype me.” Celebi announces “she is a wise woman, do unto her as you would do unto yourself.” The crowd continues with sure-footed commentary along the lines of “he will tire of her, and seek another wife, who will be none too pleased to be second wife to Khadijah” and “but they follow different religions – she the dark ways of North Africa and he Islam – it is not possible.” 

Celebi responds with confidence and disdain “I respect but do not embrace Islam as my religion, I, as the Sultan, believe in science and the power of the earth – not the idols of man – but I accept her religion, it is her doing, not mine.”  The lovers stand firm, their right hands holding the left, and the left right on the other side, they are firmly back to back now as the crowd comes closer and closer, their admonitions like flames in the fire of a witch burning, they begin to spin, and fade into the view of what is becoming the pinhole, the angry crowd’s voices become a cricket chorus as their size lessens…I am spinning, Khadijah’s red dress is spinning, Celebi’s hands are spinning, I wake up in the dark, dizzy.

Turkish teaglass - no milk around!

I awaken dizzily to the pilot’s voice in my headphones, a disruption to the Sufi chanting that has lulled me to sleep.  I wonder if the lovers made it out alive.  “Will this be us,” I wonder, “will we be resisted this way by our communities, or will things settle down? Will we find acceptance and find ways to bridge the differences for our families? Perhaps,” I think, “I am just being too melodramatic.  This is, after all, not Romeo and Juliet, and it is just a visit to meet his family, a first visit.  Why am I so worried?”

Meanwhile my boyfriend is handing negotiations with the flight attendant for some milk to go in my tea, which does not compute, as this is not done in Turkey, no milk in tea.  All I can understand of this are the words he has taught me “çay” (“chai,” for tea), “süt” (sort of like “sooht,” for milk) and “lütfen,” (“lute-phen” for please).  Shaking my head to awaken, I am disoriented enough about the crescendo of discussion around the milky tea but more disoriented as I am trying to remember my vivid dream.

Here I am, I think, I am still in the airplane, my face pressed to the side of the oval window to the clouds, I can already feel the sleep-derived dented groove along my forehead and cheek.  I am a deep sleeper, and these dents take hours to fill back in.  I turn to my boyfriend, who laughs at me and kisses me with the kind of new-in-love enthusiasm that ignores the dent.  “We’re about to land, sweetheart, and you have a mark on your face!”  As if shot with adrenalin, I bolted over him and made for the bathroom to try to get the sleeping dent out with a bit of home-style microdermabrasion.  I was not relishing the inauspicious start to the arrival from the aesthetic, self-centered standpoint, so I broke my usual rule of visits to the airplane bathroom only at last resort.

Celebi and Zenne (yes, her boobs are showing as is the tradition, apparently)

I knew I looked ok in my outfit.  It had already taken me over a week to decide what to wear on the airplane with multiple movements of outfits from closet to body to bed and back to closet before starting again the next day.  I had finally settled on black Capri pants, black patent leather sandals that highlighted my freshly-pedicured metallic coral-pink toes and a smart black top that seemed to work well with my hair, styled just an hour before leaving for the flight by my hairdresser.  I could not take a chance on frizz potential – I went for full-on straightening.  It was my New York style at its best, and I hoped it would suffice as conservative enough, yet also stylish enough.  I knew my boyfriend’s family were secular Turks, but I couldn’t be too sure and wear something too revealing, I thought.

Once standing face to face with myself in the cramped but shockingly not really malodorous privy by now filled with the  crumpled brown paper hand towels of the entire airplane’s human cargo after over nine hours of flight time, my heart was beating fast and butterflies were way too quaint and dainty of an animal to describe the Neolithic dinosaurs battling it out in my stomach.  I hate to admit it, but I am very insecure about my appearance and meeting new people – especially the new people of a boyfriend from a different culture – sends me into anxious orbit.

My vision of my stylish self was nowhere to be found.  My hair was flat and stringy from the pressurized air.  A white smudge graced the front of my new shirt from where I had spilled my airplane dinner’s odd, chalky pudding.  I had discarded any interest in eating if after just one bite.  I was sweating in the way that only airplanes force one to sweat – a sort of smell exuding in the controlled air that highlights and ferments normal sweat.  And, of course, I thought, to top it all off, I have a dent across my face, and no amount of cold water pressed on with paper towels is going to change that in time.  “This can’t be happening,” I complain to nobody in particular in a fit of teenage-like angst, “I can’t meet his family looking like this!”

“Why yes, ma’m, you certainly can, and you will, with your head held high!  Nothing to be ‘fraid of – you are a lovely lady, pay that mark no mind, it’ll disappear right quick.” The southern-sweet voice rang out behind me and I questioned my sanity with increasing alarm.  Looking up and down the length of the bathroom mirror, I notice her first by the shadow illuminated along the back wall of the bathroom.  She is the lady in the red dress, the one who got yelled at by her mistress for doing something wrong in my dream.  “I remember you,” I stammered, “you had some kind of goo on you.”  “Oh, you remember your dream, we weren’t sure you were aware of us yet, my mistress didn’t like my kine work,” red dress lady sighed.  I remember that kine is a green henna paste used to make drawings on women’s hands before weddings but I don’t recall the details.  Not crucial knowledge at this stage, I think to myself, but I must look this up.  Still sighing, the red dress lady is explaining on – “she never liked mucha anything I do, and there are just some people like that, you just gotta deal and say ‘bless their hearts’ is what my momma told me. And why on earth do you care what somebody thinks?”

“Who are you, I mean…what are you?” I stammered, thinking I must still be asleep, “what the hell is going on – have I had some sort of airplane-induced psychosis?  Ignoring this, the red dress lady paid me no mind and continued on. “You know, you are likely going to meet some fancy ladies who may not like your way of dressing – and that hair!  They’ll fuss about the grey that you call silver,” she laughed with an easy manner.  “It’ll all be just ok.  Just be proud, be you and don’t worry so much!”

Turkish henna/kine drawings on hands for a wedding - thanks to The Lotus at Flikr

No sooner could red dress lady offer this kind advice than blue dress lady showed up too.  I had a half-second warning as her shadow figure was illuminated on the back wall into my mirror as she made her way up my other arm.  “Why now what kind of advice is that, Khadijah! I not in the mood as you are just about on my last nerve after that kine incident.  You know damn well that in Turkey, ladies dye their hair – NOBODY has grey hair and look at all of this mess on her head!  She’s about to walk into a hair disaster zone!”

“OK,” I muttered to myself, “red dress lady is Khadijah, blue dress lady is apparently histrionic.”  Khadijah stood firm, her face didn’t crumple like mine would at that talk – she seemed as strong as the feeling of a finger traced around the inner part of a 24 carat gold ring – smooth, but strong and stalwart, ready to withstand, unbendable.  “She pops a gasket, as they would say in your century, at pretty much anyhting” Khadijah winked over to me in sotto vocce, “you just have to let it roll over you and get on with your task.”

Blue dress lady appeared in front of me now, by the soap dispenser.  She was jumping with all of her might on the handle, trying to wash her self-described ‘disastrous hand kine’ off of her hands with modern-day soap.  “Disgusting, the way people leave their detritus and goo around just anywhere on airplanes,” she opined with disdain, “but you really must fix your face before you get out of here and meet his family! Don’t you have any foundation? Powder or mascara? Don’t you depend on this one, Khadijah messed up my pre-wedding henna hands by using the wrong henna, such an embarrassment, I tell you, I will never get over it.”  As she delivered her dictates, she warped and bended her tiny waxy-paper doll self, catching just enough of the bathroom’s bright light for quite a show on the bathroom wall.  “Call me Zenne, that’s Zen-neh, there’s a right and a wrong way to pronounce everything in Turkish, and you must learn it post-haste. Pronounce every syllable, but don’t call us A-rahbs, please, because we are not.”

“Now look,” Zenne said, “Khadijah and I may have our differences, she is, after all, from the nether regions of Egypt, far from the glorious capital of Osman’s empire in Bursa where I hail from, but we agree, you have to be both a little bit carefree and yourself and a lot rule bound and observant to their ways when you meet this man’s family – even though they are a non-religious lot like so many there.”  My head was spinning already – how was I supposed to do what seemed to be an impossibly imbalanced task?

Someone pounded on the door, speaking, presumably, in Turkish.  “Time to go, canım, (dear)” Zenne said, “mind your manners – remember that book I guided you to – you didn’t know it, but it was me who sent your hand to that book, the one on Turkish etiquette. Your man doesn’t like it, but what does he know, that Karagöz-inspired giant is a bull in a china shop indeed! Bye Bye!” With that, Zenne folded herself up, making me realize she was some sort of wax paper illuminated apparition and before I knew it, she had wiggled her way under my clothes and back inside my psyche.  I could hear her humming a bit as she walked to her Iznik tiled fountain room – “don’t worry,” she called out, a bit faint now, “I will come to your aid when you need me.”

Khadijah followed suit, folding herself up and into me, but not before saying “you are wonderful just be yourself, and it will all be alright.  Just go with the flow when you have no other options, like me.”  I wanted to hug her and thank her but she disappeared too quickly as I was extricating myself from the bathroom.  A line of raven-haired middle-agers like me waited in the aisle, looking at me impatiently, their Balenciaga, Prada and Berkin designer bags resting on their arms as they awaited their turn to freshen up before landing.  I held my breath and slipped back into my boyfriend’s cocoon, hoping for the best at landing.  “Well,” I thought to myself, “it’s nice to meet some female puppets at least, I may be losing my mind, but at least it is a gender-balanced world in there.”

Posted in Karagöz puppets in dreamland, Visits from the Karagöz puppets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 9 Comments

Stereotypes where you least expect it: Turkish breakfast for colleagues

Posted on July 29, 2011 by lizcameron

A freshly-cracked walnut

Placing the lovely, fresh walnuts on a baking pan to roast, my husband remarks “why are you spending all of this money on breakfast for your colleagues – do other people do this?”  We are making ezme, a purée akin to hummus that consists of red peppers, lemon juice, walnuts, garlic, tomato and pomegranate syrup, etc., well, that’s how I make it anyway, there are lots of variations across Turkey.  With a big sigh, I finish mincing the garlic and reach for the pomegranate syrup.  “I want them to learn a bit about Turkey – whether they want to or not – you know, like Malcolm X, by any means necessary.  I am troubled that the Middle East is some big ‘other’ that can be generalized into some vitriolic mullah or blue-sheeted lady in pain.  I want them to know more and this is my stealth way of doing it – most people bring coffee and donuts, but I wanted something healthy and interesting too.”

As we move to the counter to peel the charred skin off of the red peppers, my husband chuckles, telling me “this is one of the reasons I love you so much, you are such an idealist in this way – usually you are more of a cynic.  I want to be honest, though, I do not think most people will get it.”  Feeling deflated, Hacivad tells me to keep it low and slow on the emotional front, but I am pissed.  Karagöz is needling me, poking his pointer finger into my shoulder over and over, ready to make me engage in some sort of angry outburst about how wrong my husband is, insisting he learn about cultural sensitivity trainings “the authentic way.”  All I can muster is “Rome was not built in a day, and neither was Istanbul.” Smirking in the loving manner only he can do, he just turns to tending the roasting walnuts and making sure that they don’t brown too too much.

It is 2009, I am making ezme for a Turkish-style breakfast I am offering at work during our monthly meeting.  In my idealistic mind, it is a small way that I am trying to raise awareness of Turkey, of the Middle East, of the culture (if it can be lumped into one) that I have become a part of or the culture that has touched me some.  I am carrying brown grocery bags up the hill into my building, hoping to race the rain so that the glass jars of home made ezme do not fall and crash on the asphalt.

Hacivad, indelibly marked by his non-stop academic attitude and commentary is right along with me on my shoulder, supervising the entire breakfast-spread preparation process.  “You have to set up the educational Powerpoint on Turkey next to the cheese, not the jam, this will be the most effective spot.,” he pronounces.  Karagöz is nowhere to be found.  I am feeling proud of my effort – and perhaps at the same time a little too full of myself today – doing this good deed for the knowledge of my colleagues.  It is for the latter reason that I am surprised that Karagöz is not screaming in my ear and highlighting this insecurity with wild enthusiasm like he normally does.

Running back to the parking lot to get more of my breakfast prep stuff, I realize where Karagöz has been – I hear him before I see him.  “Well, looky here,” he whoops in a cowboy drawl – perhaps picked up from the spaghetti westerns filmed all over Turkey’s Anatolia region – “looky here I got me sum ‘Mericans what for you to edjudicate!”  I sigh, knowing I am in for something now.  “This one over here,” he motions with a long, pointed finger and his long pointed shoe, “he’s about to spring a doozy on you – I can read minds, did I tell you?”  Ignoring Karagöz, I greet my colleagues warmly – they are some of my favorite folks to work with.  The morning starts to sour immediately as one explains that the educational PowerPoint presentation I sent out the previous night (about Turkey, the middle east and Turkish breakfast in particular) clogged the person’s mailbox.

As start to explain what the file contained and why I was sending it, Karagöz whispers in sotto voce“it’s a LOST cause, man, give up the ghost – don’t even try – whattayagonnado – fix the ugly American in them?  Not gonna happen, boyee!”  I continue my studious effort to ignore Karagöz, wishing for Hacivad to weigh in, but he is silent, watching the whole thing unfold with his head cocked to the side and a chartreuse silk parasol twirling over his head.  As we walk in the door, one of my colleagues turns to me and says “so, is your husband’s family arguing for him to have another wife yet?”

Stereotypical image of a Muslim man with many wives

I am floored.  Karagöz screams with delight at the immediate representation of ugly Americans right here in New England.  “Who knew,” he croons, “they can even be ugly about other cultures when they are still IN the United States.”  Hacivad drops the parasol and it rolls into the gutter in front of our building immediately becoming caked in mud.  This is an educated, thoughtful human being whose teaching and activism I respect tremendously. Stammering, all I can get out is “Turkey is a secular country – that is not allowed – and he’s not from a religious background.”  Karagöz is in his element now, speaking in an exaggerated, slow and almost whiney tone, he scoffs “up to your eyeballs, it only gets worse from here – the point of no return!”

“Oh,” says my colleague with a confidence that re-confirms his previous comment was totally serious, “I am sure if they don’t want it now – it will come along soon enough – I have heard this from all of my Arab clients.”  Hacivad is trying to act like a shadow puppet teleprompter, telling me what to say, strategizing on response, but my hearing is in slow motion.  Karagöz is whooping and rolling around the top of the grocery bag now, running victory laps.  “Well,” I offer in a somewhat defeated voice, “Turkey is not an Arab country and my husband likes to joke that I know more about Islam than he does – as he was not raised in a religious family.”  As if I have not even spoken, my colleague, an experienced professional trained in the art and craft of listening to people carefully effectively ends the conversation, saying “well, culture comes out whether you like it or not – you’d better be careful.  Remember Sally Field in Not Without My Daughter, yes?”

(Click on film name for info about this film on a custody battle in an American-Iranian marriage during its dissolution.  The film has been heavily criticized for unfairly portraying a demonized version of a Muslim husband but may also get at some of the truths of some people’s experiences).

Hacivad’s mouth is agape, and Karagöz is cheerleading on my colleague’s shoulder, whispering things into his unconscious ear. Once again, I am astonished at how many people feel they have the right to tell me about my life, how it is and will be, and seem to have lost their ability to listen or channel new information in to their brains to augment, supplement or replace existing knowledge and/or stereotypes.  Deflated for a moment, I force myself to lay out the rest of the Turkish breakfast spread – strong black tea in tulip-shaped glasses, green and black olives, fresh bread, white farmer’s cheese, rose and sour cherry jam, my ezme, and a salad of fresh tomato and cucumber with soft red pepper flakes and dried limon kekik (lemon thyme) picked by ancient looking old ladies on the hills of Behramkale near the Temple of Athena, overlooking the Isle of Lesvos from the western Turkish coast.

Athena is still revered in Turkey as a symbol of feminine power and strength, and I wish that this image could balance the stereotyped images that abound about women in Turkey (dominated by men, living pure gender inequality, not valued, treated as chattel, etc.) These are stereotypes for a host of important reasons as I am sure this is present in many Turkish communities, but what gets me is that this certainly not the whole truth for all communities in Turkey – and I have witnessed this firsthand.  Hacivad pronounces his great pleasure at my thinking on this topic and commends me for my reasoned analysis whereas his jester colleague has started snoring at the bottom of the bag, exhausted from those laps.

Suddenly, I am conscious of some other voices out there – and I turn to see two Ottoman era women clapping and hooting at me.  “Bravo, bravo,” they cry from the olive plate, “you are getting it just right about women in Turkey.  I am Aglaia, the wife of your jester, and she is Zenne, Hacivad’s wife.  We have to go to the hammam (communal baths) now as it is the woman’s hour and we have business to attend to there along with bathing, but we’ll be back to talk more – for now you can entertain our husbands and keep them out of our hair.  Hee hee!”

One image of the wife of Karagöz

As my colleagues wander in one by one, I welcome them and walk them through how Turkish breakfast is eaten – a bit of fresh cheese on the bread and a dollop of rose jam with tea.  People loved the food and asked lots of questions, I felt a bit like I might be beaming but Karagöz was kidding me about my pollyana-ish thinking, “try,” he says, “not to be too earnest-wernest about your adopted culture.”  Maybe my sneak attack on cultural knowledge provision is not a total failure.  “That’s the spirit,” Hacivad remarks, “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.  Change is a slow process, the prophet once said…”

Tuning out of his historical commentary, I sit down and take time for breakfast of my own, and let the process just be what it is.  Exposure to my husband’s “eastern ways,” as he calls them, has helped me to slow down a bit in this regard, but its been a long journey.  I remember my Granny’s use of the proverb “patience is a virtue,” and I add another sugar cube to my tea in just the right amount of time to tune back in to Hacivad’s impromptu lecture as Karagöz begins his latest round of interrupting to quote the Sufi prophet Rumi:

“Many people don’t think, Those who think, think that they have arrived! They think, you know! There are people who think and go mad! I don’t want to think.  There are people who already thought for us. If we can learn from them, we can live even thinking!”

Karagöz makes sense for once, I realize, in what is masked by his nonsense wording.  “You know, Karagöz, for once you have me.  I am sure that I think I have arrived, figured it all out.  And so does my colleague about the many wives.  All of this thinking does make me go a bit mad.  Maybe it is time to go back to reading.”  Hacivad nods his head, concurring – a very rare occurrence for the two to agree.  Karagöz is agreeing while he is spinning silently on one pointed foot so fast that his cap falls off, revealing his balding head.  His silence makes way for me to focus in on the start of our meeting – the topic of which is “how to think about cultural responsiveness for social work education.”  Well, there it is, the universe working in mysterious ways. Time to read.

Posted in Cross-cultural learning moments, Visits from the Karagöz puppets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments