Turkish tough-guy meets comb-over car salesman

Posted on March 10, 2012 by lizcameron

Yesterday, the puppets and I celebrated International Women’s Day – focusing on women’s empowerment and how said empowerment can impact hunger and poverty.  I had good talks with my students about that…and I also introduced my students to the fact that there is a vibrant feminist movement in Turkey – which was shocking to many of them.  It is with a bit of glee and also a wee bit of guilt, then, that I move to today’s topic, in which I in many ways idolize macho behavior – and the way that said macho behavior resulted in something very good – namely, a reduced car price as our old car died last week (which you can read about here).

Fidgeting underneath the green-orange glow of the car dealership’s neon lights, I felt my chilly toes protest.  “They must keep it cold in here to unnerve people,” I thought to myself as I watched all of the puppets retreat into the warm confines of the pockets in my cashmere coat.  I was having a somewhat out-of-body experience while M. was engaging in the negotiation for a car price – something we had agreed he would lead ahead of time.  I found it interesting that the salesman (a man with a maroon shirt, caramel-colored tie, a blonde comb-over and as many salesman tricks as you can imagine) kept looking at me, instead of M.  Using all of my best social work skills, I played the ingenue, the lady, not letting on my smarts, and just looked over at M.  And M., well, for his part in things, all I can say was that he was playing it hard and tough.

“Am I confusing you?” the salesman asked M. in a rather demeaning tone, assuming, perhaps, that his English was not so good.  “I would never want to do that, you know.”  M. sat silent for longer than he should – showing he had tactics of his own.  “No, you are not.”  Stone cold response, that was.

I had never heard my story-filled, friendly partner quite so curt and silent.  I knew he was playing it up.  Usually, when M. is in dealings with someone – say a plumber who has come to rescue us from piping disasters, it’s all friendship, tea-offering, stories and camaraderie.  Not so today, this was a different man altogether.  This was the TURKISH TOUGH-GUY persona.  I haven’t seen him much in our years together, but I know that he descends from the infamous M Amca (amca means uncle, and is pronounced “ahm-jah”).

Ottoman empire refugees heading to the relative safety of Istanbul during the Balkan Wars…I imagine M.’s family, led by M Amca, may have looked somewhat like this (although with more family caravans) as they crossed the wintry corn and sunflower fields of what is now Bulgaria… (Image via Wikipedia)

Let me digress a moment, to explain that M Amca was one tough dude.  Faced with the realities of the crumbling Ottoman empire during the Balkan Wars, M.’s family fled Montenegro en masse for the relative safety of Istanbul.  Travelling in a caravan through unstable territory rife with marauding bands, M Amca proclaimed himself the family protector.  He was so tough, M. likes to say, that he didn’t resort to the relative ease of just shooting people, instead, he slit their throats with his knife, and left them to die as he forged the path to safety for the whole family.  Apparently, M Amca did not talk much for the rest of his life, and it is no wonder after engaging in murder.  And not just one person, a total body count that ranges from 13 to 33, depending on M.’s memory that day.  Regardless, this is a story I have heard from more than M., and I do feel it is grounded in significant truth, plus or minus a few body counts.  Can you imagine this being part of your family lore? M. always says it with such matter-of-fact reality.  I am sure it is the same way for many people from Rwanda or the Congo, for example. It is stern, tough stuff indeed.  And it was this stern stuff, this Balkan War-era operant conditioning that has somehow made it through the sands of time into the genetic makeup of my guy, who was sitting before me, the toughest Turk around in that car dealership and environs, I am sure.

Kenne, the Queen of Ladylike Behavior and Manners, is protesting at this moment, I should tell you, saying that this material is NOT AT ALL appropriate for a lady’s blog.  Zenne, the little nervous Nellie puppet, is cowering in the corner, horrified at the thought of all of that blood.  Hacivad Bey and Yehuda Rebbe are praying, thanking God together for watching out over M.’s ancestors so that he is here with me today.  Karagoz was taped up in my purse, to keep him out of trouble, given his impulsive and impish manners.

But back to the awful lighting in the car dealership, and the salesman extraordinaire, who was looking intently at M., who was just staring at him, not saying much at all. “So,” the salesman ventured, “are you a one car or two car family?”

“What’s the difference?” M. said coldly, “tell me the price.”

“Um, ok….” the salesman faltered, deciding on a different tactic.  “So, M. is that a French name?”

Without batting an eyelash, changing his cool-hand-Luke posture or moving a facial muscle other than the immediately necessary, M. said this: “No.”

Shifting in his chair, the salesman cocked his head to the left, doodling with the green pen nervously as he set out on another landing attempt. “Um, Armenian?”

“No.” Still no movement, and an unbroken stare. As ruthless as M Amca was murderous, M. was in it to win it.

“We have another M. here, so, um, I just wondered….” the salesman was left hanging, we were not helping at all.  I felt badly, but knew this was effective.

“Well, then………Elizabeth? Um, who are you named after?” the salesman squeaked out, his voice cracking as he turned to me with hopeful eyes.  Interrupting in the calmest – and toughest – voice  you can imagine, M. said “I just want the price.”

“You just want the price, yes, I see, well, let me tell you about the 24 month and 36 month leasing options…”

“I just want the price.” M. stated again in a flattened monotone that hid his demonic negotiating glee from all but his catching on at ever quicker pace wife.

“Well, if you lease the car, you can get a new one in three years -” the salesman attempted to say..

“What is the price.” M. stared straight into the salesman’s eyes.

“You want the price, as in the price of the car?” the salesman said, nervously? A bead of sweat forming on his overly-pomade-swathed comb-over.

“Yes.”  M. said, not moving any muscle, a macho stance taken in his seat, legs akimbo, leaning back, letting the salesman know he was not to be toyed with.

“Well, then, let me go and talk to my manager,” the salesman said, as he slunk away in a hippo-footed plop-plop of a walk all the way across the room.

Once the salesman was out of earshot, M. turned to me ever so slightly.  “If my father were here, you can bet this guy would be sweating an awful lot.  This is nothing, Liz. ”

We sat in some sort of secretly buzzy silence, the game of M channeling M Amca known only to us.

Returning with a price, M. continued the long negotiation with flair, ending up with a very good deal for us and a whole lotta sweat for the comb-over salesman extraordinaire who told us his boss would thereafter refer to him as a “yellow-bellied flat fish and a 220 pound weakling.” M. didn’t even crack an iota of a smile at that one, and I played along.

After the paperwork was done, the salesman turned to M., saying “I’d never play poker with you, man!” to which M. did not respond, just looked on with what the rappers refer to as “the thousand mile stare” before standing up, shaking the man’s hand, offering a manly “thank you” as the quivery salesman led us to meet the “options salesman” who had no idea what was coming down the pike.   Settling in for the next wave of tough-guy Turk, M. settled in for M Amca, redux.  And surface he did.

Posted in Cross-cultural learning moments, Visits from the Karagöz puppets | Tagged , , , , , , , | 13 Comments

The Karagöz puppets celebrate International Women’s Day and honor Pınar Selek

Posted on March 8, 2012 by lizcameron

An image of Turkish feminist scholar and activist, Pınar Selek, who lives in exile in Germany, from her website

My dreams swirl in lilac, mauve and lavender before I start to hear the whispering.  These are, of course, the colors of the women’s movement. As usual, it is early morning and I am still asleep – or just barely so – when the Karagöz puppets begin to pepper me with thoughts, questions and actions, even before my eyes open from their purple velvet refuge.

Today, it is Esma the hippie puppet, who is whispering in my ear, tugging on the folds of the pillowcase underneath me to try to get my sleepy-as-cement-self a bit more aware.  Finally, she grows tired of the gargantuan but soft-hearted and soft-spoken effort to awaken me, instead opting for a power yell directly into my ear.

“Empower Women – End Hunger and Poverty!”  she cries as I awaken, startled, along with the dog at my feet who cocks his head at an angle – trying to see what this strange little puppet lady is yelling about – and whether it might relate to some yummy food, or a tummy scratch.

A blurry vision of Esma with her fist raised greets me before I can focus my eyes in on the crowd of the troupe of lady dancing puppets below her on the floor by the bed.  They are all still wearing their white ribbons from last week’s White Ribbon Campaign to end violence against women (you can read about all that here).  There is much merriment and jostling amongst them as they work collectively to pass me my first çay of the day. “You’ll need it today, m’lady, “one of the çenghi (shadow puppet lady dancers) explains, “not only is this another 12-hour teaching day, but it is also International Women’s Day! The theme for this year is ‘Empower Women – End Hunger and Poverty’ so perhaps you had better work that into your lecture on statistical regression analysis somehow!”

As I sip my çay, Esma makes sure I am in the know… “In case you are not aware, m’lady, International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated annually on March 8th ever since the early 20th century when the Socialist Party of America began the tradition in the United States. You can read more about all this at the UN website but suffice it to say that in 1975, International Women’s Day was adopted by the United Nations.”  Breathless, Esma turns to the crowd of dancing ladies, and says “OK, çenghi, what do you say?” and without missing a beat they say “Empower Women – End Hunger and Poverty!”  It is only after finishing my tea, only half my wits about me, that I let Esma and the çenghi know that I have been celebrating International Women’s Day since 1984, when I first learned of it from my high school history teachers.

Happy to hear this news, the lady puppets are eager for me to turn on the iPad so that they can check on the news back home in Turkiye to see how the day is being celebrated there.  As they hop around the iPad, Esma begins yelling out statistics to me, saying things like – wow – we know education has a lot to do with women living in poverty – but did you know that the U.S. is only 19 points better than Turkey in this regard? While 70 percent of secondary-school-aged young women are in school – 89% of American young women are in school – so much for mandatory schooling laws!”  As she tires of reading off statistics – which the puppets repeat through the crowd as Esma announces them – she slowly moves on to googling “feminism in Turkey” resulting in a range of un-cited but interest piquing websites such as this one which addresses the century-old women’s movement in Turkey and this one which is a bit better on the sources front.  Through Esma’s googling, I learn that:

“At the end of the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century educated women began organizing themselves as feminists within the elites of Istanbul. These feminists fought to increase women’s access to education and paid work, to abolish polygamy, and the peçe, an Islamic veil. Early feminists published woman magazines in different languages and established different organizations dedicated to the advancement of women. Also during this time the first women association in Turkey Ottoman Welfare Organization of Women was founded in 1908 and became partially involved in the Young Turks Movement which was a driving force in the founding of the Turkish Republic. During the turn of the century accomplished writers and politicians such as Fatma Aliye Topuz (1862-1936), Nezihe Muhiddin (1889-1958) and Halide Edip Adıvar (1884-1964) also joined the movement not only for advocating equality of Muslim women, but for women of all religions and ethnic backgrounds.”

I read on and on, learning more and more, ignoring the tight time frame I have to get ready for my commute and long day – and then I hit on the Amargi Feminist Collective’s blog…and I am enraptured right along with the puppets, male and female, who flock around me on my shoulders, in my hair and on the table around the iPad.  We all read with sadness about the prosecution of Pınar Selek, a feminist sociologist, who while studying the reasons behind the adoption of violence amongst Kurdish separatists in Turkey, was imprisoned and still faces legal harassment despite her two acquittals.  The Amargi Collective recounts the tale as follows:

“Pınar Selek was born in Istanbul in 1971. She graduated from the Sociology Department at Mimar Sinan University and completed her Master’s degree in Sociology at her alma mater. She also studied economy-politics relation at Sophiantipolis UDEL University in France and is currently a doctoral candidate in political science at Strasbourg University.

Since the late 1990’s Pınar Selek has faced life imprisonment for a charge she has been acquitted on three times. In 1998 as a sociologist, Selek was working on a potentially controversial book about the Kurdish separatist movement and why they had chosen a path of violence in their struggle for independence. She carried out a research project that involved interviewing members of the PKK, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party. On return she was apprehended by the Turkish security services and, when she refused to reveal the names of her informants, was tortured.

Selek was accused of belonging to the outlawed PKK, and committing a terrorist bomb attack in their name in Egyptian Bazaar of Istanbul two days before her arrest that killed seven people and injured over one hundred more. Pınar Selek spent two and a half years in custody, even though numerous experts had confirmed that the explosion on the Bazaar had not been caused by a bomb but by faulty gas pipes. Furthermore, the main witness for the prosecution admitted that his testimony, which named Selek as an accomplice, was obtained under torture.

In the twelve years since the explosion Selek has been subjected to continuous unresolved prosecution. Selek has been tried twice in the Istanbul local court (in 2006 and 2008) and each time acquitted. On both occasions the prosecution has refused to accept these verdicts and appealed to the Supreme Court which has found Pinar guilty of the charges against her. Fearing another jail sentence, Selek left Turkey and took up offers of financial support from charity organizations in Germany, including the German P.E.N. – an association for poets, essayists and novelists. On 9 February 2011 she was acquitted for the third time in an Istanbul court. Next day the prosecution appealed for the third time to the Supreme Court to over-rule the finding.  To get more information about the newest developments in Pınar Selek’s legal prosecution check out her homepage.”

I am saddened to read this, but not surprised to read this.  Stories of the at-times oppressive nature of the Turkish state and court systems are ever-present in the news (and in the stories M. tells me).  Esma turns to me and makes a proclamation “So, m’lady, today, on International Women’s Day, let us remember not only the honor killings and increased prevalence of intimate partner violence in Turkey, but let us also remember one brave Turkish woman who was leading the life of a scholar, interested in understanding one particular social movement, who has been nothing if not punished for this effort at promoting peace. And, m’lady, you see, peace is the root of empowering women, ending poverty AND ending hunger.  Work for that today with your students.”

As I finished dressing for work and headed for the car, I began to plan for the ways I would work the topic in to my lecture on statistical regression analysis.  Where there’s a will for peace, there’s a way.  Certainly Pınar Selek knows that.  Let’s hope I can nurture such sentiments amongst my students as well.

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Çay emergency: The puppets riot, the car dies

Posted on March 7, 2012 by lizcameron

çay yok

When I realized we were out of tea (çay), I should have known it was a harbinger of things to come that day...

When I last left you, I was musing on the White Ribbon Campaign which addresses violence against women – and was quite happy to see the dialogue that ensued (thank you, my e-friends).  Our campaign was a success and the puppets’ artfully-crafted ribbons were a big hit with my students.

After a long, 12-hour teaching day last Thursday, full of White Ribbon Campaign events, I wearily made myself a cup of çay in my office with my new hot pot to perk myself up for the long commute home.  After slumping into the seat of my car, puppets splayed everywhere around me with a lot of snoring, I heard it,  the unmistakeable sounds of a car problem.

After calling M., I decided to try to get home, and made it.  We resolved to check it out that weekend unless something more emergent happened.  I got home with a funny engine sound, but no incident. On Friday, we consulted with the resident parental car expert, and decided something or other was loose…and kept on driving the great green lady who has served me so well for the past 12 years.

Saturday morning I awoke early to a great cacophony emanating from the kitchen.  I should have known it was the harbinger of challenges to come that day, but at that moment, I had forgotten all about the green car and all of her odd sounds.  Instead, I was focused on great squeals of horror and cabinet doors slamming and drawers bashing in and out of their spaces, and it left me confused. What in the heck are those puppets up to now?

Still asleep, as of course he can’t hear the puppets and their goings on, M. was sleeping heavily, his face mashed into the pillow in a manner sure to leave creases that might rectify themselves in a hot shower followed by a brisk frigid walk to work.  Sneaking out of bed so as not to disturb M., I tip-toed into the kitchen to see what was what. My dog’s radar ears followed me before he deigned to leave the warmth of his spot at the foot of the bed in favor of loyalty.

I walked in to shattered glass glitter all over the floor – and a çay tabağı (tea saucer) cracked in half. It was then that I noticed that the Write-a-matrix was back (you can read about her here, but to make a long story short, she is the academic writing whip-cracker in my mind). And there she was, in my kitchen, cracking the whip.  “I thought you would never get up, you slovenly, slothful professor wannabee!” she said in the deepest, most disappointed tone ever.  “Liz, you really are a loser.  You have at least 3 manuscripts you are totally ignoring – and 2 “revise and re-submits” that are languishing, untouched, get your sh@@ together!”  She was on one side of the room and Haciyatmaz was on the other side of the room, rocking on as he always does.  As you may recall, he is the guardian of my work-life balance efforts on the writing front, a big fan of me keeping this blog.  Clearly, their battle was being played out in the early morning kitchen (it was only 4:45 a.m.) and the çay tabağı were the casualties thus far…

After cleaning up the mess, I set to brewing tea for the morning – hoping to achieve the just-right “rabbit’s blood” consistency that M. likes so.  You may recall the post on moving from vegetarianism to rabbit’s blood tea, if not, click here.  Of course, as soon as I opened the tea tin, all I was met with were a few strands of forlorn Assam and a few tiny nuggets of Rize çayi.  No dice, no other loose tea in the house.  I settled for a peppermint teabag instead.  While we made it through the morning without caffeine, it wasn’t until mid-morning, when M. took the car to go to his art studio, that I realized we had a much bigger problem on our hands.

As I picked up the phone to speak with M., all I heard was “it’s going to be $923.00.”  To make a long story short, it’s time for a new car.  Hanging up the phone, I decided I needed caffeine desperately, and walked down to the local, expensive market to get my fix – much to the chagrin of BOTH the Write-a-matrix and Haciyatmaz, who have been YELLING IN MY EAR for days now to get writing on something or the other.  Many glasses of çay and car discussions later, we’ve settled on a plan to purchase a new car. We have done the preliminary negotiation – with M. breaking out the major Turkish hard-as-nails negotiation and intimidation tactics, much to the chagrin of a salesperson who finally yelled “uncle,” saying “I’d never play poker with you!” and “my boss will call me a yellow-bellied flatfish and a 220 pound weakling” (whatever that means).

Now that we are back in business on the transportation front, it’s time to brew some çay and get back to writing.

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Posted in A Karagöz puppet battle, Gendered moments, Turkish Food!, Visits from the Karagöz puppets | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments