Of Turkish tea, American coffee – and the Arabian Nights in the Bathtub

Posted on March 31, 2012 by lizcameron

Scheherezade?

Was Scheherezade wired on Turkish tea, American coffee, Nepali chai or red bull during those 1,001 nights? Who knows? (Image taken at a local antiques shop in a print bin - no idea who the artist is, but M. and I found her fetching and I knew right away she was my Scheherezade).

When I last left you, dear readers, I was wired out of my mind on Turkish tea in an effort to keep myself going on a stack of statistics exams.  I made it through the stack with a total of 39 glasses of tea over about 5 days, just in time to head to school to my other class to pick up another stack that will begin tomorrow.  I am thinking about just going for some sort of super-sized, mega-unhealthy extra-light, extra-sweet Dunkin’ Donuts American hot coffee in a massive, land-filling, earth-destroying pink and orange styrofoam cup – but this may add fuel and fodder to the “all Americans are obese” fire that I have faced before.  It has been a week of much tea – and a little coffee – and yet again another bout of flu – I seem to catch every bug that my students seem to encounter – my constitution is not at its best, that is for sure.  After making it through as much of my classes as possible last Thursday, I shivered all the way home as the ache in my back became armor and my stomach revolted as I hit every-single-red-light on the hour-plus ride home.

Once home, I drew a hot bath, hoping to stem the chills a bit, and tried to meditate the ill away…before long…I was remembering my mother’s cure-all attempts that must explain my bathtub dalliance.  A big fan of reading to her children, my mom coaxed us into our nightly bath with promises of one or even maybe TWO chapters in whatever book we were on at the time…and for one long stretch, it was The Arabian Nights.  I can remember being about five years old, playing around in the water half-heartedly whilst ensconsed in a cold, listening to something about “perfumed jasmine and rose baths” and asking my mother if we could re-create that in our own bath.  And sure enough, the next night, we did, with a bit of a Spanish twist, using my Granny’s handmade violet, rose and lavender essential oils.  It was heaven.  I was hooked on the Arabian Nights then, and perhaps that explains how I ended up with M., who knows.

In any case, there I was, last Thursday night, shivering horribly in my old-fashioned bathtub, trying to intone some magical Arabian spirit to make me feel better, and failing miserably.  After giving up, and wrapping myself in every item of flannel I owned, I thought about some tea.  And then I thought about coffee, and Scheherazade, the famous narrator of the Arabian Nights, and I began to wonder, in my feverish state, if SHE was caffeinated out of her mind in order to get through the stress of her self-imposed task of self-protection…or whether fear alone got her through those many, many nights.

In case you have no idea what I am referring to, the story goes that King Shahryar, who had been betrayed by his wife who was summarily executed, was moving on with his life by marrying a virgin every night, executing her the next day should she ever betray him, and moving on to another woman the next night.  Horrific, no?  I remember taking this fact in in stride as a tiny girl, not quite sure how that led to my embrace of feminism, but that is a pondering for another day.  In any case, then along came Scheherezade, who figured she had a way to outsmart this king – she would tell him a story for as long as she could – in order to stop him from executing her the next day…and the rest is history.  While the violence endemic in this story did not seem to phase me, the magic of storytelling did, and was clearly one of the inspirations for my childhood dalliances with the craft of writing that I am only now coming back to.

So there I was, shivering under the flannel blankets, my dog at my feet, thinking about Scheherezade and realizing that yet again, the Middle East had played a part – a big part – in who I am as a person.  Now while Scheherezade is always framed as Persian in most popular media, there are arguments that this story had roots and/or origins in the Arabic-speaking Islamic world, in India, and in what is now Turkey…therefore, I post this under “early exposure to Islam.”

So what led my mother to read to us from the Arabian nights in the bathtub?  Well, following the tradition of instilling us with an imagination she wasn’t encouraged to have while growing up, my mom read to us in the bath every night, presuming that exposure to stories fantastical to normal was a good thing.  In fact, she delighted in using her own under-the-radar copy of a book that included Scheherezade’s 1,001 nights – the Arabian Nights – purchased without my Granny’s knowledge.

Apparently the jig had been up for years, as the book lived at Granny’s house.  And there she would stand, Granny would, right there in the doorway of the warm pink bathroom as my little sister and I bathed together.  Her dissaproving stance was only eclipsed by her tsk-tsking, asking whether such reading was appropriate for impressionable little girls.  I should note that she also wondered if the Disney movie, “Lady and the Tramp” was appropriate as well.  Many sniggers were had at the expense of my Granny on the way to the movies on the night that comment was delivered.  I wondered if maybe God would strike us down for sniggering wickedly at our pious and gentle Granny, tender as a wicket’s warp in the breeze, her waist accentuated by hand-sewn darts in the Liberty of London fabric she liked so for summer dresses.  She was a lady, just-so at all times.  She was not sure that the tawdry sex-subtext of the Arabian Nights was OK.  You didn’t talk about that.  Perhaps my mother left any X-rated parts out, I’m not sure!

But hear the tales we did – sometimes more in a night than one.  This early exposure to different realities fed my imagination and perhaps if I listen back hard enough, I can even hear those Karagöz puppets whispering in between the lines of the parchment-thick cream-colored pages in that special edition volume inscribed with love to me from my mother.  What was it about the Arabian Nights that enraptured her so?

Arabian Nights (1942 film)

Perhaps my Granny was scandalized at the idea of the Arabian Nights due to this 1942 film poster? (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I suppose it was her hatred of the hum-drum, as she might have put it.  Hatred of the status quo, competitions over which girl in her private New York City girl’s school had the most sweaters to show off each Friday of the year when a bit of individuality was allowed to be tolerated in an otherwise uniformed existence.  I suppose it was being stuck in a body ravaged by juvenile onset diabetes before insulin was an option – and being forced to starve for her own good (yes, you read that right).  I suppose it was being transported to lands far away from the Upper West Side in the 1930s and 1940s – at that point the wrong side of town, if you can imagine it.  Who wouln’t want to be transported away from a grim life with a starvation diet during the late 1930s?  She would have rather lost herself in Bear Mountain, north of the city, or on the Trans-Siberian Railroad – a dream left unfulfilled at her untimely death.  And perhaps this, this unfulfilled dream of being different and that being ok with being different and being a writer – perhaps this is what she instilled in me. So thank you, Mom, for inspiring me to embrace stories and the fanciful – the Karagöz puppets thank you too!

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Of Turkish tea – and t-tests

Posted on March 27, 2012 by lizcameron

It’s been a grading bonanza this weekend and on into this week.  As I turn the pages, make my comments, labor over assigning grades (I hate them) and figure out how to turn my responses into a meaningful learning moment for some of my struggling students (blow to my ego), I am constantly up and down, refilling my Turkish tea glass  with the strong dark brew hewn of Assam and Rize tea leaves.

I learned this mixture from watching M.’s Teyze (maternal aunt) mix proportions of Rize tea (from the Black sea region) with Assam tea (from, presumably, India).  She swears by the mix, as does M.  Once, I tried to supplement rose-petal infused Assam for just plain old Assam, to no good result and the protests of the aging matriarch who was visiting at the time.  “It tastes like soap,” she was reported to say.  Oh well, so much for creativity.

In any case, this weekend, I am getting the tea myself, instead of relying on the little chorus of dancing ladies, who are usually lovely about delivery, as I have exhausted them – “m’lady,” one of them said the other day, “you are drinking SO much tea, is it healthy?” I finally told them how much I appreciated their efforts, but that I could make tea for myself. After much consternation and debate, the little lady puppets decided to let this be as my skills, they tell me, have improved significantly.  Quipping to them with the best of my statistical humor, I asked them if it was statistically significant.  They drew blank looks.  I reminded them that I am grading exams about “independent samples t-tests” and “paired samples t-tests.”  They again drew blank looks and I let the topic drop, but not before Hacivad Bey asked me if I was referring to the Istatistik-i Umumi Idaresi – the Ottoman Empire-era statistics agency who conducted the census between 1891 and 1914.  I just said – “yes, something like that.”  I teach enough statistics in my university, I’d like to give it a break at home, not going to be teaching these puppets statistics anytime soon unless I get another breath of workaholism.  While my tea consumption during this grading phase might be an indicator of workaholism, I would like to think of it more as an endurance-oriented coping mechanism.

TEA...

A Turkish double tea pot (Photo credit: lorises)

But in any case, back to tea.  Gone are the days when I struggled to execute the perfect brewing of Turkish tea (you can read about one such hilarious learning moment here, where I was caught unawares by an early visitor whilst still in my nightgown, and ended up using once-boiled tea only (Horrors! The yabancı gelin (foreign bride) couldn’t make properly brewed tea).  All I have to say is, for someone like me who hates grading as much as I do, the ability to just run down the stairs to refill my glass is a wonderful option to keep me going.

Any guesses about how many tea glasses worth of tea had to be drunk to get through this stack of tests?

Thirty-two.  More than two per test for this class so far, inşallah it will end soon!

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In search of manupecten pesfelis: Ak Deniz or bust!

Posted on March 25, 2012 by lizcameron

In real life, this is a tiny manupecten pesfelis – a treasure to be found on the Ak Deniz for sure, M. tells me…

As the summer sun wends its way farther and deeper into our life itinerary, we have decided to make a journey to the Ak Deniz coast (Mediterranean Sea). We plan to visit ancient sites and interesting towns this yabancı gelin (foreign bride, in Turkish) has yet to see (i.e. Kalkan, Kaş, and the like) and M. hopes have not transformed TOO much into tourist hell from the recherche du temps perdu his mind harkens back to. The chorus of little dancing ladies “ooh” and “ahhhh” at this news, already searching for their bathing costumes and planning for mud baths in Dalyan, where we will stay for a week in Haziran (June).

But for M., the resident malacologist, a visit to the Ak Deniz region wouldn’t be fun if we didn’t also plan to search for mollusks.  Yes, you read that right, mollusks, as in shells, and in this case, primarily land snails.  I think M. knew he had found a true comrade when in the process of making plans to meet Alan (of Archers of Okçular fame), the aforementioned explained that he already had specimen containers ready to go for collecting and documenting the land snails in the Kara Göl or Black Lake area in Okçular and environs.  Hopefully this will be part of an effort to preserve what sounds to be a lovely area of Turkiye at risk of what I understand to be the perils of ever-encroaching development.  Mercan Bey, the quiet but observant spice trader puppet from the Arabian peninsula perks up at this, suggesting that he too should bring some specimen jars, in case he finds some new herbs or spices to consider cultivating for sale.

And this reminds me that I should tell you a bit about what it is really like to either walk on the beach or sightsee in Turkey with my M.  Now, you might think that most couples would relish a walk on the beach, perhaps at sunset, holding hands and feeling free and in love.  In my relationship, however, it doesn’t quite work like this.  Sunset, you see, is not the optimal time for beach walking, as the light is no good.  And you need light, you see, in order to see shells that have washed up on shore.

Generally, when walking on the beach, M. walks with his head down, almost hunched over, scanning the sand for minute specimens that he picks up seemingly out of nothingness.  I am usually a few paces behind, kicking my feet in swirls of warm water, feeling the crunchy ooze under my feet.   Kenne, the Queen of Manners and Ladylike behavior, purses her lips in considering this curious behavior on M.’s part, thinking it is not too romantic, but approves of the few-paces-back walking stance I refer to.  Hacivad Bey tells me “you know, you cannot get in the way of the scholar, and why would you want to?” and of course, I agree.  Although M. wears glasses, I am always amazed at the miniscule treasures he pulls out of nowhere – the term “needle in a haystack” often comes to mind.

Several years ago, he spent an entire week at our dining room table on Bozcaada, looking at a pile of sand dredged from a particular spot offshore by fishermen friends for this very purpose.  Using a tiny magnifying glass squinched into his eye socket and a pair of fine, scientific tweezers, M. sorted through every single grain of what was in that bucket.  I knew better than to disturb M., and instead, lazed around reading books, working on my ayran-mixing skills and napping in the noon-day sun.  At the end of the week, M. pronounced his findings – evidence of shells from the Indian ocean right there in the Dardanelles, a product, perhaps, of global warming. Within minutes, he was on the phone to other shell-collecting colleagues and friends, explaining that he had discovered that two families of mollusks are here in island waters for the first time.  Think: lots of excited gesticulations while speaking in Turkish on the phone.

While the focus of this year’s Ak Deniz trip will be on freshwater mollusks, I wonder what it is M. will find this time.  I look forward to the latest malacological hajj of sorts in the making!

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