Esma sees jasmine vines, but Karagöz focuses on Coca-Cola consumption

Posted on August 21, 2012 by lizcameron

When I last left you, I had just gotten word from the U.S. that a trip home as soon as possible was warranted – as my Father was being admitted to hospice care.

At that time, there had been some confusion amongst the puppets about whether it was time to begin stirring the irmik helvası, a sweet semolina dessert traditionally served after the burial of a loved one.  After we got the puppets sorted, we started them on their packing preparations for their return to, as they put it, “the new world ruled by the Sultan of Nutcrackers.”  After all, the puppets mentally reside in both present-day Turkey and the United States (in my head) as well as in their parallel universe of a 14th Century Ottoman Sultan‘s court.  As the packing party commenced, we headed downtown in a taxi, to find a way to get home as soon as possible.

 As I waited outside of the Turkish Airlines ticket office in Taksim Square to change our tickets for an earlier date, I barely noticed the hot white light around me, as strong as the foot traffic of Taksim Square was thick.  I was lost in (mental) space, and could only hear Esma the hippie puppet narrate what was in front of me – she had honed in on the jasmine vine in our line of sight.  As she extolled the virtues of this ancient and much-praised vine, Karagöz the oppositional trickster puppet, as usual, was honing in on the potential for caffeine and sugar locked in the Coca-Cola vending machine…Truth be told, I could have used some caffeine to lift me out of my funk…

Concerned for my well-being, both Esma and Karagöz cocked their heads my way, unclear about what to do with the blue milky funk surrounding all aspects of my presence.  In order to enliven me, they decided to engage in a puppet battle – just another in the unending skirmish of the very same in my overworked brain.  Those puppets, so different in character, but so similar in camel leather construction, began to duke it out.

Placing an uncharacteristically impatient hand on her hip, Esma turned to Karagöz with a superior air masquerading as mellow “Karagöz, we must, you see, focus on what is LOVELY about the natural world that remains here in this ancient city – we must applaud and if nothing else just NOTICE the ancient architecture and plantings here!”

Snorting with the fury of a cat too long on a hot tar roof, Karagöz spoke through back flips from the side of his mouth “You are a hopeless romantic – look at how this city has been decimated by modernity – we need to forget nature, forget trees, forget crumbling architecture from times past, spit on Mimar Sinan‘s grave and move along with the consumption of Coca-Cola!  Red and white everywhere – and I do not mean the Turkish flag!”

Back and forth they went, mirroring, I am pretty sure, the types of more mellow discussions that M. and I have about my love of the ancient bits to be noticed in the city of his youth – and of the decimation of that same city in a string of Western-style box stores and pizza joints.

As I heard our number being called, I followed M. into the majestically modern rounded-cement office space, trying not to trip up the steps as my two puppet accompanist of the day were engaged in a red and white tug of war that was producing an increasingly dizzy swarm of jasmine blossom remnants and Coca-Cola drops the harder they pulled.  I let the battle play out in my mind without analysis or stop attempt – and commenced observing M. bargain for the change in our tickets.

We would be on the way home to see my Dad soon.

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Approaching death in a Turkish-American relationship: Is it time to stir the irmik helvası?

Posted on August 15, 2012 by lizcameron

Χαλβάς Σιμιγδάλι

A bit of irmik helvası (Photo credit: sofiagk)

Surrounded by the puppets and M. on the crinkle-comfort white couch, I listened to the filtered  sound of traffic in the windy streets of Nişantaşı coming in through the slanted, modern windows that opened towards me, as opposed to just the usual up.  It was a new version of “crack open the window a bit” as far as this old-fashioned house design girl was concerned.

Having received the news that my father would be moved to hospice, and that I should consider coming home, the swirls of thoughts rendered my mind as unclear as a demagnetizezd radar instrument.  Part of my brain recognized G.’s slow motion voice about where to change the Turkish airlines ticket, but the cacophony of the puppets peppered questions got in the way.

Kenne, Queen of Manners and Ladylike Behavior took the lead, shepherdessing the cengi dancing ladies as well as a reluctant to leave her mirror Safiye Rakkase (the vainglorious dancing girl) and the like into a triangle behind her.  “M’lady,” she intoned with great seriousness and caring, but also a wee dram of pomposity, “is it time to begin stirring the irmik helvası? Or is there a different tradition you wish us to learn?” I should add here as a side note, that Irmik helvası is a rich semolina dessert that while readily available – is also traditionally served after a funeral, when the Imams pray at the home of the bereaved.

Before I could consider how to answer Kenne, Perihan Hanim, my fairy godmother puppet, swung down from on high to whisper in her ear that it was too early for irmik helvası – explaining that hospice is a place where people go at the end of life, to bring some dignity to the dying process and to bring supports for the family into place.  Red-faced and teary at the thought of suggesting irmik helvası before someone had passed away, Kenne slunk away in disgust with herself, having failed her role as a traditional lady in search of maintained honor.  I heard her in the bedroom, pulling down her puppet-sized laptop, as she commenced thrashing the keyboard to produce another new chapter on cross-cultural etiquette in non-Ottoman eras.  I am sure it will be a best-seller.

Karagöz snorted and rolled his eyes, but out of respect for me, I presume, did not jump, flip or twirl about the room, as that trickster normally does.  Nor did he engage in taunting epithets hurled this way and that.  I think he really did not know what to do with himself…as if channeling this aspect of Karagöz himself, M. turned his mouth to my ear and reminded me “you are going to have to tell me what to do and what to expect as I do not know how you deal with this end of life in your country.  I will support you however you need.”

Hacivad Bey (the learned sufi elder) and Yehuda Rebbe, (a Jewish wise man puppet) those senior statesman, nodded their approval at this utterance while Mercan Bey, the spice trader from the Arabian peninsula snuck out to the Mısır Çarşısı for a last load-up of pul biber and baharat before the long flight home to Boston.  Esma the hippie puppet just began to massage my always-aching feet with rose of Damascus oil as Tiryaki Bey, the opium addict, blew smoke in my face to hasten some sleep before the hard days to come.  It was the only way he knew how to help.

And as my mind pixellated  in grainy chunks like so many slow-Internet connection bits, I recognized the rose scent mixed with Tiryaki’s pipe smoke wafts, I let the reality sink in. This was “it,” my Dad was going to die soon. We were heading home to the United States to spend time with Dad in his last days.

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The grassy keyboard and the glass shards remaining

Posted on August 14, 2012 by lizcameron

So submerged was I, that it wasn’t until the fiftieth glass shard ratta-tat-tattled tinkety way down into my lair below the typewriter keys and on down past the steel spines with noted curvature to the grass roots nestled just below me in the dirt there that I even stirred much.

As I stirred, the warmth of dark healthy soil furled up into my nose before I even remembered my Father’s death and the new world up there somewhere above what was now my grassy typewriter.  I didn’t want to wake up and deal with it.  Why not sleep in the clean-smelling dirt for a bit more.  But the shards made an interesting metallic “tink” on the steel spines of all of the unwritten words around me, and so I began to consider the cocoon exit.

Let me catch you up.

When I last left you, I was broken out of a box of blue that had taken my voice into a veiled smoky place with no exit.  That box was a bout of post-tenure depression probably combined with what in retrospect was likely the pre-grieving of my Father.  The box-breakers to be thanked for this gift of mercy are none other than the Karagöz puppet troupe that resides in my brain during my own cross-cultural marital road trip.    Yes, those Karagöz puppets did break me out of the blue glass box this past June, but as I unfurled myself like a sunflower growing from a green bump, I could only watch bits of images fly by as I stood up and into the  dim light, changed again one more time.

Once out of that box, the puppets paraded my çay up the bed and into my mouth.  That çay, it was strong, but that box, you see, it was strong too, even broken to bits, it held a permeable membrane around my mind.  So, yes, it broke, thanks to the puppets, but I still sat in the ruins.  At the time, there I was, back in a modern block of fancy in Istanbul, in the home of our dear friend, drinking imaginary sweet limonlu çay brought to me by Esma and the lady puppets in their usual chain gang style.

Even with that tavşan kanı çay (such as the tea I wrote about here) I felt bent and crumpled like a morning glory on the vine for weeks after a windy Nor’easter flew about the tiny streets of Provincetown.  Just imagine that morning glory in that merciless wind, whipping the humid fog about with it and exhausting me despite my almost neon plum purple blue aura.  My mind felt fuzzy and my heart felt as though it specialized in the shallow end of the pool even though it knew it wanted to express more about the interesting goings on about me.

Rumpled morning glory or human being aside, there I was amidst the large shards of that aforementioned blue box which had since fallen to the white stone floor and rattled around a bit, and as they rattled slightly, I saw some interesting things reflected in their movement…

  • Standing with M. in enraptured delight slash horror as three tiny deaf schoolboys circa age eight engaged in what can only be referred to as monkey-like behavior as they swung about on the moving parts of the old fashioned trolley, hopping off and on during and after stops – and shocking people with their pointer fingers tapped at just the right moment with a “boo” as the trolley spun by the sun-weary pedestrians.  Priceless was that ride along Istiklal Caddesi on the trolly whilst in motion from Tunel to Taksim Square.  The ride brought a deep dent of a smile to my face with the after-school shenanigans of those grey-eyed boys…
  • Walking behind two color-coordinated sisters through the Mısır Çarşısı – one in a toga-like shirt of peachy pink with a brown border as thick as her heels were high – and the other veiled in the same colors, as demure as her sister’s cleavage was not…a duality often noted by me in Istanbul
  • Riotous laughter at my attempts to communicate my ideas about the swarm-like in honey traffic while crossing to the Asian side.  I waved my hands and said to my friend who was driving, “tas gibbi,” trying to indicate that the traffic was like stone.  Little did I know that this is a term for a statuesque woman…
  • The sheer joy of sitting with the Archers of Okçular in deep inky blue night and neon yellow light by the side of a Turkish highway near Dalyan drinking a simple soup and making personal connections we had hoped would be present, but were not sure, as we had never met in person before that night…
  • Noticing the lack of pain in my arthritic feet after soaking in a sulphur spring for a time – but surely outdone by the Russian-speaking babushka submerged for so many hours that a hammam scrubber might have rendered her to wet, frothy dust…

…and while there were many more reflections, in many more shards, the shard that hit hardest of all, the memory of hearing the phone ring in the living room, and knowing that this was the beginning of my Father’s body’s end.

It’s been a tougher couple of months than I could have imagined, dear readers.  With all of my professional and personal experience around the end of life, I still was not prepared for the havoc of it all.  Slowly by slowly, though, I am once again coming out of it.  Perhaps the keyboard grass will have a run for its money, but for now, it’s time to carefully place all of the glass shards down in here with me aside a bit, so I can stretch my legs some.

Thanks to all for your support.

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