On the 9th day of Christmas: Meet Safiye Rakkase, the vainglorious dancing girl

Posted on December 20, 2011 by lizcameron

Safiye, showing as much skin as possible - she loves Lady Gaga and Madonna (thanks to the Asian Shadow Theatre Exhibition's Flikr photostream for this image)

Safiye Rakkase (Sah-fee-yeh rah-kah-seh), that’s who you are meeting today.  As stated, she may be a hot mamma – but she is one vainglorious hot mamma.  She is the ringleader of the chorus of dancing ladies, often referred to in the Ottoman court as dancing girls, or çengi …according to the website www dot turkishculture dot org “during the time of the Ottoman Empire dancing was form of entertainment enjoyed both at court and amongst ordinary people. Unfortunately these dance traditions have not survived to the present day, and our information about them is restricted mainly to Ottoman miniatures and drawings and paintings by Europeans who visited Turkey in past centuries. When exploring the history of Ottoman dance it is important not to confuse such authentic documents with the works of European Orientalist painters, who depicted not what they had seen but what they imagined. Such fruits of fantasy include female slaves dancing naked in harems. Ottoman miniatures on the other hand, reflect the true nature of this dancing, as do pictures by eye witnesses, many of them not professional artists, whose job was to collect written and visual information about the Ottoman Empire for the monarchs of Europe. Ottoman dances had their origins in theatre, the performers enacting a subject by means of pantomime in the form of dance, using body language to convey their meaning. These dances were of three types. The first was performed by dancers known as çengi, who originally included both men and women, but in later times came to be women only. The word çengi is derived from çeng, a type of harp played upon the knees and no longer used today. The çengi dancers held a type of castanet known as çarpara in their hands, and sometimes also handkerchiefs. Their costumes were highly ornate, concealing every part of the body apart from the face and hands. Some çengis whirled china plates on the tips of their fingers while they danced, and were then known as kâsebaz or ‘dish jugglers’.”

Now, unlike the description above, Safiye Rakkase does not cover all but her face and hands…apparently her outfit morphed over time to include more of a modern-day belly dancing outfit.  She was never much for spinning china on the tips of her fingers, either, but she can do it in a pinch.  Safiye Rakkase, often referred to as just Safiye for short, is overly obsessed with her looks and tends to spend way too much time primping and preening when she goes out.  She is the puppet in my head who supports my Turkish family in encouraging me to dye my silver hair back to brown – though I don’t mind the silver, nor does M., not that I would ever act on it if he did.  M. gets upset, for example, when I succumb to the pressure of having every single family member consistently chant through the day “in Turkey, we dye our hair,” this is a true story.  In any case – Safiye Rakkase loves it when they do this – and plants seeds of doubt across my cerebellum on a regular basis.

English: Safiye Ali (1891-1952), first female ...

I wonder what Safiye Rakkase would think of Safiye Ali, the first Turkish doctor to treat the troops during the Balkan Wars - Image via Wikipedia

Safiye Rakkase scoffs at my feminist upbringing – and encourages me to use my “feminine whiles” to get what I need in life. She is clearly the voice in my head that actually, much to my shame now, wore a miniskirt to court one day at the request of the head lawyer on the team I worked for while in a public defender office.  That head lawyer was also a woman, who also wore a miniskirt that day, as she knew the criminal court judge in question liked to look at ladies’ legs.  That was total Safiye Rakkase territory. And yes, we got what we needed for our client that day.  Who knows if it was related.

These days, I let Safiye Rakkase worry about what I wear – but not much else.  She is still a major bit of noise in my head, as if those insane, negative body image magazines have set up a permanent loudspeaker in my head, much as everyday North Koreans have to put up with Kim Jong Il‘s propaganda broadcasts 24 hours per day – in their apartments!

I try to love Safiye Rakkase for who she is, but I do hope she will see the light one day.  As for her? Well, she still let’s me cut loose on the dance floor on occasion, it’s all her moves, not mine.

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On the 8th day of Christmas: Meet Mercan, the spice trader from Arabia

Posted on December 19, 2011 by lizcameron

Meet Mercan, itinerant trader from the Arabian Peninsula - here he is sneaking up to me to let me know of a new spice in the market - he is my major spice and zest for life supplier (image thanks to the Asian Shadow Theatre Exhibition's Flikr photostream)

So, we move from yesterday’s introduction to Zenne, the former dancing girl now in love with her fragrant herbal garden, to an introduction to Mercan Bey (pronounced mehr-jahn bey), a spice trader from the Arabian peninsula. Now, I only became aware of the presence of the Karagoz shadow puppets in my mind in 2004, when M. and I got into a relationship, and I started to experience confusion in our cross-cultural relationship. However, I have a sneaking suspicion that Mercan Bey has been with me for a lot longer than that. As a tradesman well-versed in spice, he peddles everything from tumeric to cassia cinnamon and cayenne pepper. I have loved spice since I was small – and embraced every chance I had to lean more – there was always a tiny voice in my head, encouraging me to do so.

I can remember climbing up on the salmon-colored wooden chair painted by my mother in order to step onto the harvest golden-colored linoleum counter so that I could gingerly step over to open the spice cabinet, twirling the triple-decker lazy susan around to see what treasures lay there. I had my share of sour moments, such as when I tried the alluringly-titled “cream of tartar” or got too much nutmeg up my nose or had the bitter taste of too-old marjoram under my tongue for the rest of the day…but I had many wonderful discoveries as well – cinammon, ginger, clove, thyme, basil, oregano and many more…

All my life, I think Mercan Bey has been tracking me. It first started with the first snack I cooked for my parents, aptly named “Italian toast,” which was essentially buttered bread sprinkled with “Italian seasonings” which was a blend of green herbs – marjoram, thyme, oregano and basil. It continued on with the trick my friend’s Swedish mother taught me when I had trouble sleeping, namely, to grind up a bit of cardamom and add it to warm milk. Later in my life, it was the lady who hired me to work in her herb and spice shop, and taught me to make spice necklaces by soaking allspice, star anise, cardamom and cinnamon until it was soft enough to pierce. The romanticism of this was seductive to an imaginative, old-fashioned yet difference-seeking “tween.”

And yet later, it was my Bohemian neighbor, who taught me about how a tiny bit of cayenne adds a whole lot to the standard white sauce my Grandma taught me to cook out of flour and butter. My mother, an adventurous on and off vegetarian was especially adventurous, and put a lot of coriander into her infamous tofu-nomeat-balls, get it? This spice exploration went on for years and years, through the introduction of ajwan by a boyfriend referred to by my father as “the old Indian,” asafoetida as the mystery ingredient used in much southern food, as revealed by a friend of a friend from New Orleans and finally to pul biber (the sweet to hot, non-bitter red pepper) and island-grown kekik (thyme) introduced to me by my own beloved M. once in Turkey for the first time. It is my belief that all of this spice exploration is at the silent hand of Mercan Bey, who loves nothing more than to show up with a new spice for me to sample.

An image of the stereotypically myopic American care of this link at the School Library Journal

Mercan Bey is the rarely-present puppet (due to his ramblings along the spice route in Anatolia) who encourages me to seek broader horizons, explore the unknown, to embrace the experience of difference and learn as much about the world as possible. While he is rarely physically present, he is ever-present in my mind as I seek to do my best to break out of the myopic ectoplasm of my American upbringing to look beyond. I love Mercan Bey and am grateful to him for his part in opening my eyes to the rest of the world.

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On the 7th day of Christmas: Meet Zenne, nervous nellie like a bowl of jelly

Posted on December 18, 2011 by lizcameron

The shy and reserved Zenne, image from the Asian Shadow Theatre Exhibition's photostream at Flikr

Today, it is time to meet Zenne, the Karagoz puppet that I refer to as “the nervous nellie like a bowl of jelly.”  I realized that this moniker was befitting of her when I passed by Nervous Nellie’s Shop – in Deer Island, Maine.  They have some delicious, albeit wobbly and shaky jelly.  Zenne was so nervous about trying this new jelly, that she shivered and shook and worried that she might stain her silken veil with the wild blueberry jelly I was encouraging her to try, and the nickname was born.

So, Zenne, she is a very sweet and well-meaning lady, but very timid.  She wants to make a good impression.  She wants to do “the right thing.”  As Tiryaki Bey is addicted to opium – she is addicted to the worry about “doing the right thing” even if it is something that leads to her undoing.  So, how did Zenne come to be the way she is? And why is she here in my mind?  Rumor has it that her first words as a child were “Mummy, I wowwy about dat” but that is the extent of what we know about her origins other than that she was brought into Sultan Selim I‘s court as a Çengi from the Aegean region after being noticed in the village market by the entourage.  She worried about whether she would be chosen, whether she should go back to her family after being chosen and about whether she would please the Sultan since being chosen.  So, since that toddler-infused sentence was uttered, she basically has not stopped since then with the worrying, it is just part of who she is.  She does her best to put her worry to good use – reframed as an analytical mind on steroids, thinking multiplicatively about all possible options on any given matter.  She really drives people nuts, but there is a sheer genius to her brain sometimes – like juggling with concepts.  Her worry, though, can devolve into dysfunctional in a hot minute.  Generally, the other puppets are tender with her – except for the merciless Karagöz, who taunts her without end.

In the depiction of Zenne above left, we see a rather proper-looking lady with a veil – no?  Sniffing disdainfully as she throws her chin towards the chorus of little dancing ladies, (Çengi) , Kenne interrupts me here, “she is most certainly a proper lady, unlike that other lot!”  Zenne was also a Çengi for many years – due to her nervousness, she was usually the puppet that would start the pre-puppet-show on screen, which always starts with a scantily clad dancing girl – she had to start, because she was too nervous to wait.  But she gave this all up, as just before she drank from the fountain of youth with Khadijah, she had converted to Islam, and to a life of pious service to others.  This led to her use of the veil in the stereotypical sense we think of today – the veil as a guardian of female modesty.

While in reality, this image above may likely be a 19th-century re-imagination of the women of the Karagöz puppet troupe, we like to keep her this way over here at slowly-by-slowly.  So, let’s talk about that.  Now, the stereotype about the women amongst the traditional Karagöz puppet troupe is that they are temptresses extraordinaire, always being “unabashed flirts” and “setting snares for men,” at least so says Dror Zeʼevi, whose 2006 book, entitled Producing desire: Changing sexual discourse in the Ottoman Middle East, 1500-1900 covers all sorts of unexpected topics, as described here at this link.

A close up of a rose geranium flower from Zenne's summer garden

Zenne stays with her human relentlessly, she worries about her A LOT.  It’s just part of the territory with her, 99% of the time.  The only place she finds some solace is in her summertime scented garden – full of fragrant herbs, the most abundant of which is rose geranium – there is nothing more calming, she tells me, and it even makes a fantasically romantic jelly, the recipe for which she provides us here:
“Cut off all spots and decayed places on the apples. Do not core or peel them. Use abut 8 dozen apples. Fill the preserving pan and cover the fruit with spring water, cook until pulpy. Pour the fruit into a cotton bag and let them strain all night. Do not squeeze the bag too hard or you will get cloudy jelly. Next day add 1 pound sugar for every pint of juice; put in several plum fresh rose geranium leaves. Let this mixture boil 20 minutes. Take out and discard the geranium leaves. Skim it well. Put either into shapes or pots, cover it the next day. It ought to be quite stiff and clear.”  We see, sadly, that Cooks.com copies this recipe without any attribution to the little shadow puppet lady herself.  😦
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