The Madame Bovary Syndrome Part I

Pardon me in advance. I must begin with a flowery extended metaphor.
If you have ever dared to move beyond the black and white squares of the circumstances of your birth on the grand chessboard that is life, you have experienced the joy of anticipating an idealized otherworld and the letdown when the fantasy becomes reality. What looked like the pinnacle is merely a plateau, and climbing higher, further, faster becomes a strange intoxicating addiction. You become dependent on constant injections of freedom and really living, knowing that the next summit or curve in the road is it. But once again turns out it isn’t. You will have finally arrived. But you won’t. Not now, not ever.

Last night, as I sat at an outdoor café, I was flanked by the many faces of Istanbul: Behind me: two contentious looking middle-aged men up in each other's grills arguing about something I couldn't understand. In front of me: my rum and coke, which came as a can of diet coke and, fifteen minutes later, an icy glass of rum. To the right: a butcher shop with a window display of hearts (I'm guessing of the bovine variety) the color of vamp nail polish hanging on a string, one above the other, like those cheesy chili pepper decorative lights gracing shop windows in lands far away. To the left (to the left - gotta love Beyonce): A mass of fascinating humanity I must view as a large group for fear of accidentally giving a man the eye. Below: foul smelling water coursing its way over my left heel through a shallow indentation between the street and the sidewalk (I think one of the fish sellers had poured a bucket of pescified water down the street). Above: the naked sky and those scintillating stars, as far away as ever. Oh, Istanbul.

So here I am. This is it. This is what the scattered seeds of an idea look like when they have come to fruition. They are planted firmly in space and time. I can put a date on it. I have a memory. I can point to the concrete, the physical. Then you say to yourself and your friend, do you ever think, gosh, we're in Istanbul? It never feels the same as when you imagined because between the dream and the reality you've had the pain of applications and visas, you're trying to avoid getting fish water on your shoe, you are asking yourself why you wore such uncomfortable shoes in the first place, thinking about which bar to go to next, if you really have to get up the next morning, and wondering when the rum half of your rum and coke will arrive. When you break it down into its components, its just another day. But I bet the stars look down and think, how wonderful.

Currency

Why must I continue to wax on about my cultural experience? Seven months in and that new car smell is gone. The thrill of novelty is waning. I have more “normal” days and fewer substantially different or what I’d consider quintessentially Turkish days. Besides, what makes an average day of living – riding the bus, going to work, eating breakfast at the organic market, nearly getting run over by a motorcycle – less authentic than a day spent experiencing Istanbul in one of two extremes - some touristy version of the city that everyone recognizes, or the hard to find nooks and crannies nestled in back alleys and sides streets that only locals know about? Will the real Istanbul please stand up?

Here’s the truth: I still have diet coke and chocolate for lunch sometimes instead of the hot Turkish cuisine served at my school. I still hate smelly buses, being fawned over at restaurants, and I’d rather do my squats at the gym than over an Asian style oriental toilet. Most nights I’d rather pop something in the microwave and turn on CNN than experience the city. Or maybe go to McDonalds for one of those sundaes in a cup. I’d rather go to the supermarket and pick things out from the shelf myself than go to the fruit stands and have to interact with another human being.

At this point, I am in a strange adolescent phase of being abroad somewhere between tourist and feeling at home. Yet you cannot inoculate yourself against cultural adaptation. Nor can you go through some genetic mutation to become something other than what you are. You can develop an adaptation, like a cactus in the desert that needs little water to survive, but never, ever will you change your stripes. (I’m not trying to be profound here – just setting you up). I’ve often thought there was a window of opportunity during which a person becomes who they are. You grow and evolve, but become a stubborn curmudgeon about your views and beliefs by the time you hit 30. The same can be said for tastes. You can acquire a taste for sushi, or learn to love putting yogurt on everything, but nothing will ever be as satisfying as what you have grown up learning to love.

But I digress. Carpets are to Istanbul what the Eiffel tower is to Paris. Actually, that’s not true. They are simply in every glossy tourism ad picture you see of Istanbul, along with minarets and the Bosporus. Usually they’re flying with little tassels on the end, and maybe there’s even some distant cousin of Aladdin smiling in the foreground. Oops, now I’m infringing on Middle Eastern stereotypes. I guess it doesn’t really matter. If you’re coming for culture, does it matter which one it is?

The difference is what you’re after, right?
Carpet shopping is an art, not an errand you run between groceries and the hardware store. You have to put aside at least two hours if you want to do it right and get what you came for: That personalized touch. That authentic taste of Turkish culture. That brush with past. That genuine I am so satisfied with my product feeling. You won’t find that at Ikea or Cost Plus. So when you buy a carpet from a bazaar, you are not just buying a rectangle of woven wool. You are buying cultural connotations, iconography, symbolism. (What does the carpet represent?) It is about paying a price for what can’t be bought. But then again, it wouldn’t have value if it didn’t have a price. As disciples of modernity, at a couple hundred dollars a pop for a rug we need to work hard to show how much we value the quaint, the old world and the kitsch. The commodification of the intangible is what you get, even if you don’t really want a rug.

This is how it’s done: First, you can’t rush into anything. You have to go through the process and engage in warm up conversation before you even being talking carpets. Shopping for carpets begins with brief chit chat and a request for coffee or tea. Then the Carpet Guy’s right hand man (in this case, a striking male Turkish version of Vanna White) begins to unfurl the carpets like the majestic banners of history that they are. You inhale the dust. You stare at the intricate geometric patterns until you go cross-eyed. The rugs accumulate in piles on the floor. You listen to Carpet Guy’s brief description: This is a cotton on wool rug that comes from the town of Kasyeri. You have no idea what that really means. You state the obvious: The borders on that one are so unusual. How ever did they weave antelopes into this one? You sneeze from all the dust. You order another round of tea. The “maybe” pile is growing at a rate twice that of the “no” pile. You can’t really afford a carpet, but you’re in Istanbul. The carpet guy steps out for a cigarette. Your friends tell you what they really think. You want everything and nothing at all.

If you go to the right carpet guy, every carpet will be beautiful. Therefore, you need some kind of criteria for narrowing it down besides your good judgment: Sorry, I’m out on the floral pattern. Nope, not interested in rugs with antelopes, or any other horned creature. Only rugs with wool died by hand, please. And so it goes.
Maybe when people buy a carpet, they feel they are purchasing a piece of the Spice route or gaining access to an ancient Harem. But that Istanbul has become but a subtle layer of the city, one that is dwarfed by traffic, Turkish flags and multi-national fast-food chains.

If ever I earn enough disposable income to buy an item off my unnecessary and materialistic list, a Turkish carpet will not be first. A really comfy mattress with a remote control to alter my sleep levels, a fine piece of art, one of those George Clooney endorsed espresso machines – all things on my needless materialist list before a rug. But you can’t leave Istanbul without one!

There once was a time, long before the internet and transatlantic flights, when you couldn’t get certain things even in certain developed corners of the Earth. A thing is precious because it is rare. It is rarity, not preciousness, that is becoming obsolete. So the whole “this is special because you can’t get it anywhere else argument doesn’t hold water anymore.” Nor is it hard to access – someone reappropriated flying across the Atlantic to skipping over the pond long ago. You can do a search Ebay. You can find a million knockoffs. The desire to make ones home into a global smörgåsbord comes in tandem with a particular social status. Instead of conquering new worlds, you can have domestic imperialism right in your own home. So instead of buying rarity, what do we do? We create it – in the form of genetically engineered glow in the dark bunnies and fusion cuisine. A different sort of uniqueness has evolved – that of the hybrid. But that is another blog for another day.

I still don’t think I’ll leave Istanbul without a carpet.