2011 Interlude: From hairy black radishes to sweet apples and the power of childhood memories

Posted on September 28, 2011 by lizcameron

Spicy black radishes from the farmer's market

Cross-cultural moments abound in my marriage. While I am not in Turkey right now, they still seem to come fast and furious seven years into this road trip together with M. – the road trip that I am narrating here on this blog as I try to take the tenets of “cultural responsiveness” learned in my professional life and put them into practice in my own life. Now that I am in tune with the Karagöz shadow puppets in my life, I find them very comforting.  These Karagöz puppets (known for their specific characters since Ottoman times) have embodied the confused voices in my head that battle it out for how to handle some small or large cross-cultural confusion in any given moment.  They have seen me through a lot.  This morning, they saw me through the somewhat scary presence of black, hairy turnips on my kitchen counter as these somewhat ominous images prove.

This morning, when I awoke, I did not know I was about to hit a cross-cultural moment.  I stumbled into the kitchen in search of some sort of warm caffeinated beverage with which to jumpstart my faulty engine, and I saw these.  At first, I thought they were black turnips, used to make  Şalgam Suyu – a very popular drink in Turkey especially when one is hung over, apparently.

Şalgam Suyu ve cig kofte

M. says it is totally delicious and that he used to drink it while he was in the army (required for all Turkish young men) in the southern part of the country).
Can you say “pucker up, anyone?” Şalgam Suyu is served cold with kebabs or cig kofte (“sig-cough-teh”) which is a delicacy (see the photo – that is kofte made with raw meat).

Creepy black radishes on my kitchen counter

But back to New England on this autumnal morning and to my kitchen counter with Halloween vegetables abounding and to my husband, ever the bright and sprightly morning person that I am not and never will be, made sure to let me know that this hairy beast of a vegetable was in fact a radish he had procured at yesterday’s farmer’s market.  As I stumbled about the kitchen, he shoveled the radishes into a plastic bag to take for lunch.  “What kind of lunch is that?” I said, simultaneously hearing the entire Karagöz puppet chorus cry out in unison – that’s a Turkish junk food, as you call it, be accepting! And it is healthy, too – what’s to object?”  It was too early in the morning for me to contemplate these hirsute items, so I commenced the tea making and studiously ignored them.

A lamacun with pickled cabbage from our trip to Kilis

Later in the day, when I sought some guidance from M. on what the hairy beasts are used for, he launched into the recounting of his afternoon walk home from school. The kuruş (derived from the German Groschen, 100 of which constitute one lira) jingling in his pocket all through the Cihangir neighborhood, his mouth would water at the thought of purchasing a forbidden lamacun (lah-mah-jun) that his mother insisted was made from cat meat in an effort to deter him from eating street food.  He talks lovingly of holding the hot lamacun in his hands, waiting for the seller to grate black radishes on top of it for some vegetal spice action.  It took us about a minute to find the word grate – he described it in detail, not knowing the English word though he is twenty years into this U.S. experiment of his.  We hit on “grater” after some interesting telephone pantomime. In any case, his loving memory of these childhood times reminded me of milky tea and apples with my mom on our back porch after school – raised in a suburban area, we had no street food around.  Inspired, I sat and prepared tonight’s lecture on the back porch, in the sun, replete with milky tea and fresh Fuji apples.  The power of childhood memories from two sides of the world led to a great morning.  The puppets snoozed in the sun around me as I planned my lecture, peaceful in their sleep.

A bevy of Fuji apples ready for crunch & munch

Related articles
Posted in Cross-cultural learning moments, Turkish Food!, Visits from the Karagöz puppets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Last night in Bodrum: Fish cheeks, rakı and coffee

Posted on September 28, 2011 by lizcameron

Grilled fish with tomato and arugula salad and rakı on our last night in Bodrum

Feeling faintly present during our last night in the gated compound near Bodrum, guests of Mr. X and family, I made my way through it all pleasantly enough.  The puppets were really nowhere to be found, not that I looked all that hard.  My brain hurt and I had given into the confusion.  I was allowing myself to sink into the background, much like I imagine Virginia Woolf did in a way vis-a-vis her yellow wallpaper.  Who says detachment from reality isn’t functional sometimes? See the previous few posts if you are wondering why I was detached on this night.  Let’s say that on this night, I did not refuse the rakı (rah-kuh, the Turkish version of ouzo).

I am sure the grilled fish, smoky and light, was, as usual, spectacular, but all I remember about that dinner is the honor of receiving the fish cheeks, served by Mr. X. himself.  Fish cheeks, quite soft, tender and tasty, are a delicacy for those not in the know.  Mr. X.’s children sniggered a bit at this old fashioned sign of respect from Mr. X. before they wolfed down their food in haste to get out of the house and down to hang out with friends, as teenagers are wont to do.  I vaguely remember feeling very middle aged in that moment.  I heard a mocking snore from Karagöz at this point, somewhere in the haze.  I took another swig of rakı, the instant burn a comfort to my hurting mind.  One of the dancing ladies called out from the purse, reminding me that ladies traditionally did *not* engage in the pursuit of rakı consumption.

Deciding on the plans for the evening, Mr. X. waived Kalinka’s offer of tea off, and pronounced that we would walk down to the cafe by the water to see how the kids were getting on at the dance party, the evidence of which was wafting it’s way up the hill in bass form.  In our late evening amble down to the cafe by the water, I remember letting myself get lost in the lovely, enveloping warmth of the Aegean evening.  I am sure that I even enjoyed some of the sweet mellowness of the Cuban cigar smoke from Mr. X.’s side of the table, and do have a faint recollection of his wife’s commentary on what to do and what not to do in Selcuk the next night (it was along the lines of “there are no decent 4 star hotels, but you will live”).  My detachment was pierced, ever so slightly, by the throwing up of hands amongst the little lady dancing chorus over in my purse.  The eye rolls were evident, though I couldn’t see them.  I just kept sipping my rakı.

Down at the cafe, the chatter flowed out of my mouth as if I was not myself.  I just went with the flow, trying to focus on the positives around me as opposed to the sea of confusion and rakı my brain was floating in.  Hacivad asked me “What’s not to love about a late night drink by the Aegean with a new love?” but it fell on somewhat deaf ears, so to speak.  At one point, we went over to the balcony to catch a glimpse of the kids dancing, without their shock and disapproval at the horror of the presence of their adults in parent form.  Standing to the side of Mr. X. and his wife as they spoke with their friends engaged in the same observation, M. and I watched Mr. X.’s son dance to arabesque music, hands up, in Turkish man dancing style.  He cut a dashing figure at 13 years old (going on 30 if you asked me given his behavior, but that I

Turkish men dancing at a wedding near Marmaris (From Star of the Sea's blog - wonderful sellers on Etsy.com based in Marmaris)

shall share on another occasion) and even from our distance to the dance floor, we could see the girls swooning from the sidelines, all eyes on him, though he was surrounded by other young men. Turning to M., I asked “Did you ever dance like that?” before I realized that a joke response would ensue – which it did in the form of a spastic goat on it’s last dancing legs before slaughter emerged before me.  Karagöz squealed in approval – “what a joker, with him, his dance is better than a coker!”

Mr. X.’s wife swooped me up and saved me (whether I wanted saving or not) from my flailing boyfriend who was grinning from ear to ear.  She took me by the crook of the arm to go and watch – in the way that only a mother enamored of the beauty exhibited by the very being of her newly adolescent son can do, “he has not,” she snorted, “obtained the terrible dancing genes of our men, the bad dancing gene dies with them! Let’s go find some hot guys to dance with to make our men jealous!”  (Side note, for an hysterical recounting of an actual played out version of this story in another part of Bodrum with other characters, see Perking the Pansies blog post here).

How I extricated myself from that pseudo-teenaged dare I do not recall, likely as a result of the cumulative impact of my rakı consumption, but I do recall ending up at a table with Mrs. X.’s wife who was not, apparently, the same person who shunned my slightly pudgy self at the beach now – I was her friend from America, a potential gelin (bride) for the family – who needed schooling in the art of reading coffee grinds.  Absent since the afternoon’s tumbleweed melee between Hacivad and Karagöz, the dancing lady chorus cooed happily from my purse. “Yes, m’lady, you do need schooling in this regard.  The closest to coffee grinds you get is something along the lines of a green tea latte, whatever that is.”

After downing the aromatic warm bullet of coffee in one fell swoop, Mrs. X. placed the lid of the demitasse set on top of the cup, circle indent side down.  With great dexterity, she flipped the cup over, and set her fragile and precariously positioned cargo down.  “Now, you wait for it to cool, you must do the same.  Now we chat.”  Karagöz chimed in at this moment “now you wait for her to heat up, or run up the hill like a goat in a bleat-up.”  Hoping that the strong coffee would counteract the fog of rakı around me so that I could walk up the hill to bed, I complied with her order. There are many different approaches to this folk tradition, but I didn’t notice more than what is written here due to my tipsy state at the time.  You can read more about coffee fortune telling in Turkey here).

Hacivad, freshly re-cut from waxy paper after getting a bit frayed this past afternoon was exhibiting his usual composure.  “Just listen and learn, don’t reveal too much, just take it all in like an anthropologist in New Guinea in the 1800s.”

“Now,” Mrs. X. said, “I’ll tell you what I know, you tell me what you know.”  Khadijah spoke out from the purse “it’s always something with this one.”  Shifting in her chair a bit, Mrs. X. leaned in to me, snaking her arm around the cooling coffee cup to take my hand in hers.  “We women,” she said with an air of mystery, or at least I thought that’s what she thought, “we women need to stick together in this life.  So, you tell me what you know about M. and I will tell you what I know of M.”  All of a sudden, my rakı fogginess was gone and I was wide awake, or maybe it was the jolt of caffeine running through my veins.  Hacivad, Karagöz, Khadijah and all the other puppets leaned in from their various positions around me, wondering what I might do.  Turning towards the now-dark sea, I sighed.

To be continued.

Related articles
Posted in Cross-cultural learning moments, Gendered moments, Turkish Food!, Visits from the Karagöz puppets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 10 Comments

After the storm: Karagöz puppets gone wild

Posted on September 24, 2011 by lizcameron

Aegean Sea Pan

Panoramic image of the Aegean Sea (Ege Deniz) at sunset from Clara S. via Flickr

It was an otherwise glorious scene, blue skies heading to sunset, hot sun fading towards evening, smooth teal Aegean sea with the beginning pink twinges towards twilight, a litter of white adobe houses taking on the pastel hues of nature as they lay splayed across the arid landscape covered in sweet-smelling herbs – and the blessed evening breeze.  What could be wrong when the world around me looked just like this?

When I last left you, I was sitting on the terrace of M.’s brother X.’s summer home near Bodrum.  X had just delivered what I am referring to as a “Sicilian message” about what would ideally happen to women who cheat his brother – and by his definition – the family.  It was a jarring statement that took me completely off guard.  The statement did not seem to fit right in this otherwise “modern” and from what I could see “western-oriented” home full of English and French speakers, all with master’s degrees from European universities.

As the bead-laced door into the kitchen swirled with the exit of X., I sat, a bit dumbfounded.  Silent.  Part of me in shock and part of me so imbued in trying hard to accept the culture around me in this family that I almost did not register that X. had talked of “taking a (cheating) woman to the mountain to rape her a thousand times.” This was not some tribal village.  This was not Eastern Turkey where stories of honor killings filtered out from in the media.  This was not the 1800s, what the heck was going on?

The shoes Karagöz left in the purse once he commenced sliding across the tile floor

I soon learned that my shadow-puppet friend Karagöz was more than happy to fill me in on what was going on as I sat, log-like, confused, torpid even.  Karagöz had at first emerged from the purse where all of the puppets had been hiding during my conversation with X.  Instead of launching into a crazed, alliterative diatribe as was his usual wont, he commenced sliding across the tiled floor, row by row, at breakneck speed, screaming bloody murder at the top of his waxy-papered lungs.  He was sliding in his socks, having left his fancy shoes back in the purse, I presume.   Then, stopping at a dead halt, he turned to face me from the middle of the terrace floor, and he said this “Watch out for this guy.  Yes, he’s acting crack-cocaine high.  But he says this not on the fly.  My oh my.  You may be asking why.  You’re only answer comes from drinking rye.  Just let the conversation die.”

At this point, Hacivad crawled out of the purse.  I watched him with almost blank eyes as he made his way across the floor, up the white canvas couch and on up my dress and onto my right shoulder.  I turned to my left, leaning my head on my shoulder, remembering finding some comfort in my Granny’s house by the herb garden there, the scent of sage intermingling with mid-summer tanned-skin smell.  “M’lady,” Hacivad prodded gently, “you just need to take space and time to understand this.  You need to talk to M. about this.  He will help you to understand.  This is nonsense talk, unacceptable talk from X., but you need to understand it and where it comes from. Do not expect to understand today.  Also, do not expect to be X.’s equal, which I think you did.  You think of him as one of your age cohort, as one of your generation, but it is clearly different for him.”

Karagöz and Hacivad resembled a tumbleweed as they fought, their wax-papery selves getting shreded and intertwined in the process

Karagöz let out a screech.  Back to his old mnemonic tricks, he exclaimed with more of a fevered pitch than usual “you need to kick his ass, tell him who’s the lass, no raising of the peace glass, tell him he must not be so crass!”  Annoyed, Hacivad began to display a set of uncharacteristic behaviors and verbalizations.  “You fool, do not encourage this!  Serious business we have here and you must cease and desist!  She does not know what she is up against here!” Before I could even imagine it, Hacivad had, in his uncharacteristic ire, leaped off of my shoulder and jumped full-force onto the jokerish Karagöz.  The two were fighting, whirling in the process, flailing all over the cool tiles like a raggedy-edged tumbleweed gone wild.

The chorus of shadow puppet dancing ladies began to emerge from the purse by the beaded door in huddles of two and three.  “Oh!” they cried to a one, “oh, horrors, this is a terrible, terrible thing.  Such things that men do.  Such words that men say.  So misguided they all are. Shame on them all.” The melee and audience continued as Kalinka arrived through the beads with a glass of strong black tea.  She sat next to me for a moment after looking around furtively to make sure her boss was not about to come back and see her sitting with me, or at least that is what I imagined the look to be about.  She began to talk to me in her own Moldovian (limba moldovenească or лимба молдовеняскэ) language which, of course, I understood nary a word of.  She smoothed her hand up and down my back, clearly seeing some upset on my face.

While my conversation with X. had been in English, and I know she could not have understood it, she had seen a bit of the affect involved in the interaction, and so she had a sense that something bad had gone down.  Her soothing led to my tears letting down like breast milk responding to a baby’s cry. Kalinka wiped my tears away with a cold washcloth and got me back into a presentable state by starting to do whatever she could to get me to laugh.  First, she amped about like X., imitating his movements to a t.  Second, she just began dancing around in the goofiest manner possible.  She had no idea that at one point, she stepped clearly and firmly on top of the tumbling testosterone duo comprised of Hacivad and Karagöz, who crumbled to dust under her foot whilst the little ladies sighed and fainted.  I felt as though she must be employing the tactics used on a two year-old child to distract them from whatever the upset of the moment was.  It worked.

All of a sudden, she stopped at the sound of a door shutting downstairs  Turning to listen, we heard X. and M. walking up the stairs into the terrace-kitchen area.  Kalinka winked at me and scuttled back into the kitchen.  The laughter and joking felt clear and easy between them as futbol-related words emanated from their conversation into the part of my brain that understood some Turkish.  As X. went to get his tea, M. jumped onto the sofa next to me, planting a big kiss on my cheek before saying  “X. said you had a good conversation, really got to know each other, while I was asleep.  That’s great!”  I could tell beyond a reasonable doubt that he had no idea about the rape comment.  I leaned towards him and stared out at the dimming light over the sea, wondering how such ugly words and mixed-up feelings could possibly be present in such a lovely place.

Related articles
Posted in A Karagöz puppet battle, Cross-cultural learning moments, Visits from the Karagöz puppets | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 16 Comments