Banal Details

I have absolutely nothing to say.

At least that’s what I thought before I started writing.
Today I read TimeOut Istanbul for the first time since I arrived. I was struck by how incongruous my lived experience here is from the glossy magazine version – or the hefty travel guides I brought with me. Not to say that I haven’t been to my fair share of trendy tourist spots that label themselves as cafés in lieu of kave or çai baçesi thus far. Still the most salient features are those that comprise my everyday existence.

Sitting on the couch reading a magazine and eating microwaved leftovers, I was struck by the lack of interesting facts I had to share. My weekend was spent at a teacher’s conference, which was followed by drinks at a bar called Beer City. (I know, how exotic and authentic.)
My Sunday was spent going out to brunch, grocery shopping, cleaning my apartment, and preparing large pot of lentils so I wouldn’t have to cook later in the week. Not too different than a Sunday in the states.

Needless to say, my experience here is different - albeit hard to pinpoint at times. I tried to extract all the things that distinguish my life here from my life back home. I came up with a semi-satisfactory list that may seem trite and unworthy of a blog entry, but these comprise some of my day to day activities that make up my “real” life, which now feels oh so distant from my past one.

• 
  I order my water: I call nestle and give them my address. They deliver a huge water cooler type jug for the equivalent of about five dollars. It is brought straight to my door and I exchange my empty one for the full. In theory, there is nothing wrong with the water here (it is the pipes that are old and rusty) but of course I am unwilling to take my chances. This may not seem like a big deal, but placing an order in Turkish always seems slightly monumental.
  · I go to the store nearly everyday. My day doesn’t seem complete without spending a bit of time wandering around my neighborhood. Perhaps it is out of loneliness that I get a thrill out of seeing familiar faces – and being recognized by people I can’t exactly call friends. Maybe it is practical, since although there are massive U.S. style supermarkets that sell anything and everything, the bazaars are still the best place for fruit, the bakaals are the place to shop for odds and ends, and I certainly wouldn’t go anywhere but the many bakeries for fresh desserts and breads. Maybe it is merely egoism for me to go places where I am known. Or maybe it just reminds me that this is my home and there are human landmarks that indicate time has passed and I have progressed since my first days here.
  · I watch a lot of television. The shows that I found mildly amusing back home- Heroes, Desperate Housewives, Ghost Whisperer – but could never seem to get into like the rest of the country suddenly hook me the way fishermen along the Bosphorus casting their lines pick up smelts. It is somehow satisfying to vegetate in front of familiar accents. I am aware that there are better things to do, but it just doesn’t seem like it. (Did I just admit to watching Ghost Whisperer?)
  · I spend a lot of time alone. My nights are generally quiet, and those whom I speak to regularly are generally people whom I have yet to forge deep connections with. I still don’t have internet access at home and therefore I can’t connect in my off hours. In my 4-5 hours between Turkish lessons or the gym and sleep, I have mostly my thoughts to keep me company. There is simply not as much to keep up with. The majority of my power and water bills are paid by my school, and there is no press one to speak to an operator that I have to deal with (not that it doesn’t exist – I just don’t speak Turkish).
  · Random occurrences are normal. Generally, I am in the know about what is happening in my surroundings, but here I don’t seem to figure things out until after the fact. I didn’t understand all the rituals surrounding Ramazan until a few weeks into into it. Tonight a group of students was marching through my neighborhood with Turkish flags chanting something that I assume is related to the conflict with the Kurds in the Southeast. It is these sort of things that strike me the most, things I try to investigate but always seem to bump up against a wall.

Fast Times

Never before have I been in a predominately Muslim country during Ramazan (aka Ramadan). The difference is palpable, yet the various rituals specific to the month of Ramazan have only affected me peripherally: At rush hour, traffic goes from mass chaos to total insanity, making it difficult to catch a bus and nearly impossible to find one that isn’t stuffed to capacity. I am able to buy fresh bread when I come home at 6:00 p.m. from my superintendent, who goes around to all the apartments on my block with a basket of the special round loaves that are used to break the fast each night. There is a drummer who walks through the neighborhood at 3:30 a.m to wake up those who must prepare food before the first call of prayer. (I don’t know why I never got around to buying earplugs the entire month.) Unfortunately, he also wakes up an unsuspecting foreigner who need to get up for work a mere three hours later. I thought perhaps the rat-ta-tat-tat was merely a figment of my imagination until I saw the elusive drummer boy on the corner, his drum strapped to his chest. Perhaps by next year these seasonal changes will feel as meaningful as Christmas carols blasting through the mall, but somehow they felt laden with meaning and significance that I was not privy to, nor did I completely understand.

As I listened to the drums and the call to prayer throughout the month, I thought about the way the president has to swear on the bible, In God we Trust on the dollar bill, and of course, the Commander in Chief’s references to the almighty that are invoked on a consistent basis.

I know a few people who fasted out of religious reasons at work without any apparent distraction. I also know a handful of people who fasted, at least part of the time, to ‘try it out.’ It seems to me quite disingenuous to use fasting as a psychological exercises or even to do it “just because” and compare it to those who are doing it for the sake of a higher authority. Still, I do not know if there is more power in actions, or the meaning behind them.

On my way home from work, I passed by “my” little cafe. In my mind, it has sort of replaced the comfort of deli food or eating pancakes at a greasy spoon at three a.m. The brother and sister who own the joint were standing outside waiting for the day to end so their meal could begin. They invited me to join them for iftar (the breaking of the fast), and as I looked inside the restaurant and saw the table set with fresh dolmes, borek, and the yogurt that is served with everything here, I found it hard to say no (plus it is considered rude to refuse an invitation). We sat at the table with the food beckoning us to start until Imam’s voice could be heard blaring from mosques in four directions. It was much nicer than the alternative (eating my dinner with the cast of Heroes or CNN keeping me company).

Perhaps this is the real reason the fast must be broken according to the voice of the Imam. People will need to eat at the exact time everyday, and if we are all hungry, and all at home, it will inevitably be done together.

Where in the World is Alizah Carmen San Diego?

In my Alizah Travels the World and Lives a Glamorous Life fantasies, I am able to speak the language of the land that I’ve simply picked up while dining at the bistro or chatting it up at the taverna. It’s like I’m on that show Heroes, but instead of healing or extracting traumatic memories, I can simply understand everyone. Plus I am as cool and mysterious as Carmen San Diego.

Perhaps I have an inflated sense of my linguistic abilities because of past successes. While in Central America, Spanish came very naturally to me and I was often complimented on my aptitude for language. I must keep in mind that reaching a point where my subconscious had picked up on the slight subtleties and I was dreaming and thinking in Spanish was preceded by four years of study and intensive immersion. Plus, I must add that this “natural” ability faded as soon as I was I back on American soil and able to order burritos in English once again.

I am well aware from prior experience that communication – not merely learning to speak – is far more complex than sentence structures and verb conjugations. Still, fantasy and reality often collide when one is living a life far removed from the “real” reality of home. (Or if you are a person who often envisions yourself as t.v. characters)

The last thing I feel like doing after a day of extracting every bit of English from students who dissolve into the comfort of their native Turkish unless constantly reprimanded is to impose the same painstaking process of language aquisition upon myself. However, simply thinking of all my cringeworthy language mishaps thus far and I am motivated to squeeze out the mental energy to attend Turkish lessons after school two days a week. Furthemore, I understand that language is one gateway I must pass before I am ushered into a threshold of culture, and therefore I am willing to give it a go.

Its been a long time since I have learned anything new and therefore my brain felt a little rusty. Research shows (I find this phrase highly questionable and overused, but this is a blog and therefore I am allowed be subjective and contribute to the erosion of the foundation of journalism) that transitioning from Turkish to English is one of the hardest linguistic changes. Still, I don’t have to worry about the tones that denote different meaning as in some languages, and the Turks have basically the same alphabet, so it can’t be that difficult, right?

Turkish is a language that uses suffixes, rather than separate words, to create meaning. Therefore it is difficult to distinguish where one word ends and the next begins when you have a long chorus of sounds strung together with minute pauses and inflections. It sounds like sltıüüüheoöööçıhsüdsheoıişşğ (I have emphasized the ö and ü becaue those are sounds my mouth is physically unable to create).

Anyway, my friend said she finally understood why things take so long here – because the language is inefficient and drawn out without many shortcuts and abbreviations. I don’t know if I am willing to make this quite large leap off the safety of the politically correct platform on which I currently stand...but I will say that language explains the way people think, and therefore, to an extent the way they act. Which I suppose is why I want to to learn it, and perhaps why one day I hope my desire to understand everyone is not just a fantasy after all.