hadi, hadi (with a flick of the hip)

I don't know if taking belly dancing lessons in one of the art form's countries of origin is any more authentic than the cardio belly sculpting class I once took at LA fitness, but what the hell. I'm going to do it anyway.

I googled "belly dancing Istanbul" and came up with a page of women in gauche costumes catering to Western fantasies and idealizations of the East.(Cue Edward Said)

As far as I know, the quintessential tableau of an exotic belly dancer in a smokey, dimly lit tavern adorned with colorful tapestries, romantic candle-lit lanterns and enthralled men does not exist. A voluptuous, mysterious woman emerging from some incense-heavy corner to tempt men with her exotic eyes seems like something out of a bad 70's porno. The closest I've come to uncovering the belly dancing mystique was seeing exotic dancers dressed in Santa mini-skirts at a club on New Year's, or the tacky belly dancing costumes with faux gold coins hanging from furry bra tops sold at the bazaars, clubs for tourists playing off of some ancient riff about Oriental spice roads and Ottoman Sultan's harems. Its just so hard to hold onto the mis-en-sen of the past when you're a country trying so hard shed misconceptions and rightfully stake your claim in coordinates of time and space: 21st Century, The Industrialized Western world.

Basically, I put the belly dance right up there with people who think Turkey is accurately represented in Oriental Express and everyone wearing fezzes.

If anything, the culture I live on a daily basis - the culture I will take away and remember when I leave - is one overcrowded streets and over attentive waiters, political propaganda trucks blaring recorded messages and live phone calls to constituents through the streets at all hours, stuffed buses where covered women more often garner scorn than exude mystique, taxi drivers who find my attempt at Turkish cute and endearing, conflicts between secularism and democracy, men who stare not necessarily out of or overt sexual desire but merely out of curiosity, because everything is everyone's business. That doesn't sound very romantic, exotic, cultured, or even like very much fun. It sounds like real life.

Yes, Istanbul is rife with history, but much of it is muted, hidden or downright rejected. Besides, I live here in the present day, and that's what matters.
I was drawn to belly dancing for the same reasons I enjoyed burlesque; it is subtle, subdued, and much more appealing in an MTV world of overt sexuality and public displays of physicality. But perhaps the other doesn’t exist. We are always copying each other, until we can no longer recognize the original.

Tom Thievery

Theft is a crime on multiple levels; it violates the ten commandments, the law, social codes of decent behavior and the cycle of karma.

My leather jacket wasn't anything special. I'd only waited a year and a half to buy it, scouting out every leather establishment from the bazaar to the mall to find the perfect fit. I finally opted for a form fitting black bomber jacket from Mango - of all places - and of all places, it was recently stolen from my yoga studio.

The scoundrel who robbed me would either have to be a student at the studio or a random passerby who decided to go up four flights of stairs, walk in surreptitiously and have the gall to walk out with another person's item in hand. If you ask me, it's a risky way to go shopping.

I'm still giving the strangers at my yoga studio the benefit of the doubt. When I reached for my jacket and it wasn't there, I assumed it was a case of mistaken apparel identity. Perhaps in post-yoga euphoria someone had mistaken my leather jacket for theirs. In fact, as I began searching beneath the many coats on the wall of the dressing room I found a similar black bomber, distingushed from mine only by tacky snap button pockets. Otherwise the two were almost identical.

Theft was bound to happen at some point during my stay in Istanbul. Up until now, I've been quite lucky. I once left my wallet in a taxi, only to have it returned to my work with everything inside. The cabbie did request a 50 lira tip, but whether he was taking advantage of my foreigness or merely asking for a well-deserved thank you I'll never know. I gave it to him, justifying the tip as my way of keeping the incentive for honesty higher than the incentive to steal, and perhaps inadvertently adding to my own dwindling supply of good karma.

When I first started taking yoga classes, the owner warned me about the potential for theft. "This is Beyoğlu, after all. You just never know." I bought a cheap lock and always keep my personal items in a locker; the thought of my jacket being stolen never even occured to me. When I called this morning, he suggested that it was an accident - people had even walked out wearing the wrong shoes in the past. Still, I'm loosing faith - fast.

Stealing perplexes me. The stolen item is forever tainted with someone else's past - and not the good kind of taint, like the musty smell of my Belmont Avenue vintage store or the fading white movie star elbow legnth gloves I bought at an old costume shop in Hollywood, but a bad, foul taste in the robber's mouth that would prevent me from stealing ever again. But then again, I wouldn't know. I'm no theif.

Bun in the Oven*

At any given point in time, there are at least 5-10 women in various stages of pregnancy at the school where I do this soul-testing and occasionally spirit-crushing job called teaching. Subtle hints indicate their status: they begin taking the elevator instead of the stairs, they stop drinking coffee or heading out to the "fag cottage" for a smoke and start wearing loose fitting clothing. I do not know many women my age or older at work who don't have children or aren't trying to get knocked up. Pregnancy always starts with the ambiguous 'is she preggers or just fat stage,' and then boom! The itty-bitty baby bump emerges. Small, but its strategic location in the lower abdomen gives away the contents: a fragile, doughy, placenta-nourished bun of a baby. The women stay on at work until they are ready to pop, have a few months paid leave, and then return to school, their ovens barren and cold, waiting for the next little biscuit, or glad they got the first one out.

In Turkey, most women give birth via c-sections; they are quicker and cheaper for both the mother and the hospital. A woman with child is pampered beyond belief. I've heard that normally callous husbands wait on the mommies to be hand and foot. Turkish mothers are put on a pedestal - no prodding, poking or agitating allowed - and their offspring are no less pampered...or perhaps some would consider it coddled. Children should be spoiled and indulged, should they not? They are gifts, blessings, and the future of the family and the nation. This little fact explains quite a bit.

I have never spent so much time with pregnant women nor had friends with children up until now, and the whole watching kids grow and change before your very eyes phenomena got me thinking. I am unabashedly fascinated by the entire process, so I did what any normal single woman without the slightest chance of being pregnant at the moment but paranoid about the potential down the line (albeit the small potential and way down the line) would do: I borrowed my friend's books about pregnancy and learned everything I could. I read up on the various symptoms during each trimester and the side effects, like that my hair could get curlier or straighter, thicker or thinner. I might even feel like eating a hamburger. I might get fat. I might be an emotional basket case. I might never have to worry about it.

So yes, watching pregnant women in Turkey has made me think quite differently about baby birthing and child rearing. I don't know if American women actually feel differently about the whole situation, or if we are too modern, too egalitarian, to ready to criticize both the childless by choice woman and crazy Octo-mom for being too selfish and indulgent, too sterile a culture to admit that we like having babies for what they give us that is so hard to get from other people: unconditional love.


*bun = baby
oven=womb