It appears to be a hub of activity at all times of the day and night. Trucks line the street waiting to be allowed into the compound, even at 3 am, coming from as far away as the very far east of Turkey. And anyone who has been here can attest that trucks here are rather colorful. They usually boast hand done paintings of rural scenes of their hometown. Trucks from the Göreme region always have chimney faeries painted on them, for example. Trucks from the Black Sea region usually display a message about being proud of being Laz (an ethnic group typically found in this region of Turkey).

There’s a small tea salon in front of the compound that serves as a trucker’s diner. It looks like your run of the mill men’s salon here. Yes, my foreign friends, we have men’s salons. This is usually where the men gather to hide out from their women. They drink tea and Turkish coffee, play tavla (backgammon) and okey (a game played with tiles that resembles gin rummy) and watch futbol matches, reveling in the stench of testosterone. I wouldn’t want to be a fly on the wall, really, I can assure you. I have learned by using public transportation that personal hygiene is not as strictly adhered to as it is back home (at least by the men), if you get my meaning. I don’t even want to imagine what a tiny diner full of sweaty truckers smells like!

But whenever we pass by the line of trucks, I wonder what goes on inside the gates of the Hal. I asked the Boyfriend what he knew about it. Granted he is neither a farmer nor a pazarcı, but he could provide me with enough to pique my interest.
Apparently there is a council of men known as the Kabzımal, which is a cool name for a powerful and mysterious coven, if you ask me. They are the brokers, the ones who decide what you are going to pay for tomatoes this week. This is one of those coveted positions in Turkey that resembles the way a mafia works. It is not easy to become a kabzımal because they make a buttload of money and have a lot of power. Just think of it in terms of the crack dealers’ hierarchy (as one does): the pazarcılars are like the foot soldiers and the kabzımal are the neighborhood gang leaders.

I think I get so excited when I see those trucks because I wax nostalgic about the truck stops of my youth. My family did its fair share of cross country travel and when you have four kids and a mother with a bladder the size of a chickpea, that means a lot of bathroom stops. And we loved us a truck stop, boy howdy! A truck stop after midnight is a thrill to behold, let me tell you. I would remind you that me and my siblings were raised in cushy suburban Ohio where we were generally sheltered from the seedier sides of life, much to our chagrin. So for us, the truck stop was like sneaking out of bed to watch a dirty movie when our parents thought we were asleep.
Truck stop diners were hole in the wall dives with grease stains on the walls and shower stalls down the hall for fifty cents. Bearded truckers strung out on over the counter amphetamines and sometimes even Berthas, too (that was the nickname we had for truckin’ wives/partners).

But the cherry on the top of the truck stop experience were the Wandas: the truck stop good time girls. Yes, scantily clad women for sale, right next to the gas pumps. Imagine how our eyeballs popped out when we got a load of those ladies.

Now I certainly don’t think that there are working gals behind the gates of the Hal, but if there aren’t, I think it’s mostly because they haven’t thought of it yet;)

My parents quit smoking over a year ago and my father put on a shocking amount of weight. I didn’t eve recognize him when he came to the airport to pick me up when I came home for Christmas. The ony person who addressed the subject with him was my mother. As his wife, she was afraid for his health and the way it had affected his mood. She made him go see his physician and he subsequently lost a lot of it in the end.
But even though he is our father and we are his children, ask me if either myself or any of my siblings EVER said anything about this issue to his face? We were raised better.

Yesterday when I got to work, the little lass had a Turkish tutor at the house. When I walked in the room she said (in Turkish), “Oh, hi Tara. You’ve put on weight.” and then she waited for my response. I have never exactly figured out what I am supposed to say to that, so I usually just return the comment with a frozen smile frought with the tension I am feeling.

People have even gone so far as to defend this behavior as such, “Oh, Tara, it’s actually a compliment coming from older women because they have much more of a Middle Eastern mentality about weight. If you’re fat, then you must be rich and happy.”

Sorry, but I don’t buy it.

The fact of the matter is that I do not have a complex about my weight at this stage in life. My weight has always yo-yoed five or ten pounds over the years. This is why I keep clothing in a range of sizes and have learned how to cleverly dress myself. You will never see me trying to squeeze myself into skinny jeans or wear leggings. I am a realist and work with what I’ve got.

There’s also the fact that when I have some meat on my bones, it means that I am feeling warm, happy and settled and secure. When I get depressed or my nerves get frayed, I lose my appetite and drop weight. When this happens, as it does after a bad breakup, people always compliment me on how I look and that feels terrible. It’s not as though I have any reason to be proud of that weight loss. I have not achieved it by working out, for example. What do I say? “Oh, thanks for noticing. Yeah, I am forcing myself to eat at least once a day and I usually can’t hold it down because I am crying too hard. But don’t I look great in these jeans?”

I know I shouldn’t take it to heart, but I just can’t seem to help myself. I think the reason it bothers me the most is this: for five years I have tried my hardest to be a good girl and not do anything that might be construed as offensive while being a guest in this country. I go out of my way to pay attention to my environment and behave accordingly because I try to always be respectful. So when someone comes at me with something that is considered quite offensive and sensitive in MY culture, it’s hard to deal with. I know that most Turks probably don’t realize that it is a social faux pas where I come from, but it stings all the same.

It’s just one of those feelings that I have not been able to compartmentalize here.

I spend quite a lot of energy lauding my adopted homeland with positive accolades about its people, its culture, and its cuisine. I have found myself in the position of having to defend my decision to live here to folks back home who cannot fathom why I would choose such a life. I think I have done a mighty good job of it, as well. Since I have lived here, I have had four friends visit me here and my brother even came for an extended stay of three months when I was going through a rough patch. All left with extremely warm feelings about Turkey, vowing to come back one day. Mostly I want to paint a positive picture of living here for the sake of my family, who worry about me being so far away in a land they can hardly imagine.

Now I do not mean to portray the fact that I am living in a dangerous place or that my health or well-being are at stake in any way. That would be far from the truth. I suppose what I am getting at is that once you have been a part of a landscape for long enough, you begin to see things as a native might in some regards. You start to pay attention to what’s happening politically, what’s going on in the society in a deeper way.

Let me attempt to get my point across on a microcosmic level as it is not in my interest to get too controversial about this.

I have made mention before about the state of the neighborhood where I am living currently. It is a satellite suburb of Istanbul that has been gobbled up by developers. It is now home to luxury high rise apartment buildings, shopping malls, fast food establishments and no less then three Starbuck’s within walking distance.

The problem is that this land was not vacant. There were already people living here. These people are living just across the street in a makeshift village in illegal housing cobbled together out of scrap building materials. Our post office is located in that neighborhood so whenever we need to make a visit there to pay a utility bill, I get an eyeful of life “on the other side of the tracks”.

There are families of who knows how many people living in what appears to be an average size gardening shed with nothing more to cover them than a piece of tin roofing. It is not unusual to see chickens and the occasional rooster strutting through the main road. Women sit outside and wash their rugs in an empty concrete lot next to their homes. Children play soccer in the streets wearing only house shoes, usually without coats on very cold days. There are even a few emaciated horses trying their best to find viable grass to nibble on in barren lots.

What will happen to these people when some developer decides that they want this land or that they do not want their well-heeled future tenants to have such a view? Where will they be pushed next?

This is not a unique experience that I am having in my part of town. One can see evidence of this in urban lanscapes all over Istanbul, on both continents. In my old neighborhood in Çengelköy, we had a gypsy village that even managed to steal our site’s electricity with some anarchistic electrical rigging. You almost had to admire their tenacity. There was a house there that was completely obscured in the summertime when the corn stalks all around the house towered over it. There were days when the air was completely polluted outside my apartment because they had chosen that day to burn the trash they threw on a hillside. The whole environment was a source of endless fascination for me in those days, but I knew better than to wander down there alone.

Recently, I was reminded of Celebration, Florida. For those of you not familiar, this is a town that was built and maintained by the Walt Disney Corporation. I have never been there, but just reading about it gave me the creeps along the lines of the Stepford Wives. This is a city where leaf-shaped confetti streams out of the lamp posts in autumn to simulate the falling of the leaves and where a fountain foams over with soap suds in December to simulate snow falling. Reportedly, it is a community that has very strict standards about conformity, as is this is a city sponsored by a heavy hitting corporation, none of that should come as any surprise.

While I most certainly do not wish to see this sort of homogenization happen here, I do wish that there was a more proactive approach by local goverment and city planners for some sort of cohesive living plan. But really what can be done? Do we just erect walls and seperate the haves and the have nots like cities such as Los Angeles have managed to do? Do we push the poor further and further out into undesirable parts and let them form their ghettos away from our line of sight?

I certainly do not have the answers to these questions. I just wish I knew what to do with the guilt I feel as a relatively wealthy foreigner living in a country that seems content to leave so many behind.

So I just opted out of all of it. I made sure every new man in my life knew that I didn’t celebrate it and that he needn’t feel he had to make a big deal of it. If he were a particularly romantic soul who wanted to spoil me on said day, I tried to be gracious about it. Just imagine the one year a new beau gave me a giant stuffed teddy bear holding a heart that said, “I love you.” I was touched and horrified at the same time, which is a very confusing melange of emotions.

For some reason, I got to thinking about it all this year. What’s interesting is that I believe the impetus for this was having seen a horrendous movie. I probably don’t even need to tell you that it was the movie Valentine’s Day. I would just like to defend myself by saying that I saw it only because the girl I nanny wanted to see Taylor Lautner, whom she, and most twelve year old girls on the planet, is in love with. However, I cringed upon remembering that like Jessica Bel’s character in the movie, I once had anti-Valentine’s Day parties and they were well-attended every year!

While the movie itself was appalling in nearly every way, it made me open up a dialogue with myself about my attitudes towards this day.

I thought back to how much I loved it as a child. In kindergarten and first grade, it was one of my favorite days because we got to make cards for everyone in our class. I was a very artistically motivated child so whenever the teacher hauled those giant pots of paste out of the supply closet, my heart skipped a beat.
Even when the trend was just buying store made cards and those candy hearts with the messages, going shopping for those was a major highlight in my February.

When I started thinking about it, I realized that the person that always made Valentine’s Day the most special was my very own Dad. He started a tradition with his girls, my mother, my sister, and I. He spent a lot of time at perfume counters, testing perfumes in an attempt to find each of our signature scents. When I was fourteen years old, he gave me a bottle of Samsara for Valentine’s Day and I wear it to this day. In fact, at the age of thirty six, I have just now found another scent that I occasionally wear. He also always gave us a very sweet card, telling us how much he loved us, how we were all his sweethearts. My Dad is not a particularly mushy guy, either. I mean, like so many men, he is a total teddy bear, but damned if he’s going to show it. So these cards and tokens of his love meant the world to me.

Perhaps Valentine’s Day became a day in which I thought no one could ever measure up to my father? Paging Dr.Freud……..

The point is that, of course, this weekend, I told The Boyfriend that he needn’t bother even making dinner reservations. As usual, I was fine with not celebrating. Then something unexpected happened.

His father called us today and announced that he had made dinner reservations last week to my favorite restaurant, Develi. It was not just to mark Valentine’s Day, but to send off The Boyfriend’s grandmother who had been visiting them. Needless to say, I was delighted. I was further delighted when his father hugged me and gave me a little Valentine’s Day treat in monetary form.

As we sat eating, I allowed my eyes to wander around surreptitiously and I was very surprised by what I felt just then. I had been hit by cupid’s bow! As I looked around that table, I felt so much love for the people sitting there with me and felt loved by them in turn. I felt so fortunate at the moment to feel so welcome in The Boyfriend’s family, and not just tolerated, but adored by them. It is something that I neither take for granted nor ever wish to.

And so I hope that this feeling that I had at the dinner table will be the new happy memory that I have of Valentine’s Day; that I can draw on it fondly year after year. Feeling loved and included and cared for are not small things. In fact, their true value is inestimable.

So I say, “Bravo to you, Cupid!”

This year you reclaimed a lost soul.

Every now and again, I wonder wistfully how different my experiences here would be if I were flying solo. I don’t mean to romanticize it entirely or imply that I wish I were single.

What I mean is that I sometimes envy my single girlfriends here who get to set their own agendas. If they want to take a bus to Bulgaria, they do it and no one tries to stop them. If they want to go to a sketchy neighborhood and take pictures, they go right on ahead. Ditto with going out dancing.

But in my case, I am under the protection of someone. I certainly do not mean to imply that the Boyfriend is an overlord. He doesn’t boss me around or attempt to control my life on some sort of sick power trip. Indeed, he simply looks out for me in a way that no man in my life ever has. I think the fact that I am a foreigner living here only magnifies his chivalrous intent towards me. He knows I am hardly a delicate flower. But he also knows I can be a little naive, and knowing his countrymen all too well, knows I can easily be taken advantage of.

As I say, however, mostly a blessing. I get frustrated when I think of the parts of Turkey that I would like to visit, but have not yet had the chance.
I dream about Mardin, an ancient city on the Syrian border that has a distict Middle Eastern flavor (not that I would know personally). I so want to go there, but the Boyfriend is lukewarm about the idea at best. He’s been there, of course, has been through the whole region and his feelings about it are less than romantic.

It’s not that I can’t relate. Years ago, when I took my Turkish room mate home with me to Ohio, I had a hard time understanding his excitement. He ran around the incredibly flat yard taking endless photos of a grain silo on the horizon, fields of weeds, that kind of thing. To him, it was exotic and to me, well, it was flat. So I try to get it because I do, and yet I still can’t help but feel like I am missing out by not seeing places like Mardin for myself.

But then are the times when I realize that I am really benefiting from the Boyfriend’s native knowledge. Admittedly, I don’t always trust him on it, which I know must frustrate him, but I try not to be stubborn for merely sport.

This past Saturday night, he offered to take me out for a nice dinner. I am on holiday from work, but seeing as we are still on the financial rebound from the Christmas blow-out visit back home, we are laying relatively low. To combat my cabin fever and scratch an itch, he suggested an excuse for me to get all dolled up and I took the bait.

We decided to dine at the restaurant of a major hotel. After all, that is usually at least a consistent dining experience; something not to be taken for granted in a country like Turkey. We randomly selected the “Major Hotel” after looking at the very promising menu on their website.

When we finally pulled up in front of the hotel, I was very confused. There was no signage indicating that this was the “Major Hotel”. Everywhere I looked the signs said, “*%+ Plaza”. Immediately, the Boyfriend seemed to sense our doom. He probably wanted to do an abrupt about-face and find another restaurant, but seeing as I was already on the verge of a hypoglycemic coma, we went inside.

The first disappointing sign was the fact that the restaurant was just off the lobby. That’s fine for a cafe, but not for a fine dining experience. The boyfriend made some amusing comment about hotel guests shuffling down in their pajamas and slippers and our waitress suppressed a giggle. She did so again when some hotel guests from the Middle East asked where the Arabic menus were.

The boyfriend asked why there was not a restaurant on the roof. This building probably commands one of the more spectacular views of the city, after all. The answer he received made him blanch. Somehow, the waiter told him everything he needed to know.
He had said that the hotel actually occupied only the first fourteen floors of the building and that the rest were offices and residences.

The boyfriend then gave me the low down. Most likely this *%+ family has gotten a serious amount of cash in some nefarious capacity, either mafia connections or scamming the government perhaps. And they bought not only the building, but the brand name of “Major Hotel”. I innocently assumed that if you were running a “Major Hotel” anywhere in the world, you should be subject to the systems and checks of that chain. That surely a regional manager of some sort who worked for the corporate office would occasionally drop in to see that everything was ship shape. How very naive of me.
It seems that if one offers enough money, they can buy themselves the “Major Hotel” brand name and then proceed to run it like a kebap shop.

He then broke it down for me further. The owner of the building obviously saw a much greater profit for himself by selling the top portions of the building, the ones with the commanding views, as luxury apartments, maybe even to the likes of Turkish pop stars.

All of a sudden, the tacky brick-a-brac on the tables made so much sense. The lackluster overcooked, over salted food that followed was an obvious conclusion. We had been scammed.

The Boyfriend is not one to gloat. He’s a humble sort. But I honestly can’t understand how he manages time and time again to not say to me, “I told you so!”

I have picked a random selection of some of the many, many movie disappointments I have suffered in recent months. There really have been too many to mention, unfortunately. I have chosen a few for which my immediate objections spring to mind.

One of the biggest recent let-downs was our viewing of Funny People. Never before has a movie title been so inappropriate. This is one of those movies that proves that even if you like the director and the cast seems promising, you can still be led astray. Not only was this movie prfoundly UNfunny, but it was also ridiculously long. It seemed not to have been edited at all, with so many long-winded scenes stretching endlessly to no avail.
It also seemed to have been highjacked, a trend that has become all too common. This is when the tone of the movie completely switches midstream. The first half is often an inventive storyline that pulls you in. But halfway through, the mood completely shifts and it drifts into a mundane Hollywood ending. You can almost hear the gnashing of the writer’s teeth when his interesting plot is ransacked by hack writers hired by the producers.

The Lovely Bones is a perfect example of another problematic issue in Hollywood. Just because the book was great doesn’t mean you can make a movie out of it. This poor film was a heap of meandering trash that squandered not just good actors doing their best with what they had, but gorgeous CI effects, as well. Why Peter Jackson was chosen to direct this is anyone’s guess. His lack of passion about the material is apparent to the end. I heard that Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt bought the rights to this movie before they were released to the public. Shouldn’t that have been reason enough not to have made this?

Sometime’s you’re just in the mood for something delightfully cheery and formulaic. So was my inclination when I popped in Four Christmases just before the holidays. I wasn’t expecting movie magic here. I just wanted some mindless entertainment. Again, the cast seemed promising (Reese Witherspoon, Vince Vaughn, Sissy Spacek, Robert Duval, Jon Favreau, John Voigt and Mary Steenbergen). And true, there were immensely entertaining moments, but the overall message was what steamed me. You see, Reese and Vince’s characters are young yuppies who lie to their families about where they are every Christmas to avoid spending time with them. Eventually we learn that their seemingly perfect relationship is actually quite shallow and that after living together for three years, they barely know each other. What really annoyed me was the fact that all of that got tied up neatly when the couple got married and had a baby, even though Vince’s character made it clear he never wanted to get married or start a family. This was another movie that seemed highjacked into telling the audience what it wanted to hear: getting married and having babies makes it all better. How original!

Invictus was a perfect example of how I am forever being suckered by reviews. The Boyfriend tries to tell me all the time that which seems quite transparent: that movie reviews have been bought up like every other commodity in this world. Try to find an honest one these days. There is no greater example of my embarrassment spawned by this trick as when I hauled The Boyfriend to see Australia (I don’t even have the strength to go there!). “They’re saying it’s the next Gone with the Wind!” Oh, Tara! Shame on you!
You’d think I would have learned my lesson, but no! Once again, I forced my boyfriend to watch a movie because it was receiving “Oscar buzz”.
Not only was this movie rather bland, but if either Morgan Freeman or Matt Damon receive Oscar nominations out of this, I will stage some sort of protest on principle. Morgan Freeman couldn’t even be stuffed to use a South African accent consistently. Just because you are black and have freckles does NOT mean you can convince me you are Nelson Mandela. This movie may be rife with moments you are supposed to find uplifting, accompanied by a soaring soundtrack, but it feels very manipulative. We have been down that road many a time.

The Hangover was the movie that made me wonder if The Boyfriend and I had 1) gone crazy or 2) become movie snobs, or 3) both.
We wanted so much to like this movie. We had spent big money to see it at the outdoor cinema this summer. Not even getting to watch it in a chaise lounge under the stars redeemed this flick. I really thought it was preposterous and juvenile. You cannot win me over with just a tiger in the bathroom, a Mike Tyson cameo. And the Hooker with the Heart of Gold bit played by none other than Heather Graham! Really, Hollywood? Seriously?
This movie was so bad that I had to run out and buy Old School just to remind myself that Todd Phillips once made a great movie and that frat humor can be done well.

After the cashier gave me the total, I passed her the money, which included coins. She then said something back to me and I didn’t quite get it. I was working and with the little lass and she offered a free translation. “She is asking you if you have any new money. She can’t take the old ones.” Well, even after having had the benefit of translation, I was still at a loss. “New money?”, I asked. The little lass then rolled her eyes and sighed wearily at my ignorance. “Yes, Tara! It’s 2010. You had until 2010 to use the old money. You have to trade it in at Ziraat Bankası. Where have you been?”

Where had I been indeed?

I knew that the money had changed yet again, of course. I remember when the new bills came out. I got paid and I looked at each new bill and exclaimed, “Ooooh! Look at the hundred! Is that Yunus Emre? ”, and “Ooooh, the fifty is so pretty now!” Yes. Isn’t it pretty? (sigh)

When I first moved here, the Turkish currency was absurd. There were all of these superfluous zeros. One lira was actually one million. So when I went to the grocery store, a bottle of olive oil was 13,000,000.00 lira. You can imagine how mind-boggling that was. Everyone said, “Just cut off the zeros in your mind.” And I thought, “Why can’t they just cut off the zeros at the Treasury?”

I finally got my wish the following year when they rolled out the YTL, or Yeni Türk Lirası (new Turkish lira). Gone was the bir milyon (one million) note which looked like fake Monopoly money. I cherished the new zeroless landscape on the store shelves. I became annoyed when people still quoted me prices with the million attached. Amusingly, to this day, some old timers insist on keeping with the tradition. At the pazar, it is not unusual to hear someone shouting, “Bir milyon! Bir milyon!”, announcing that their goods are a mere lira. I do admit that “bir milyon” does have a nice lyrical ring, but I digress.

Just when we were getting used to the zeroless YTL, they switched it up on us again. They redesigned the money, giving it a rather Euro appearance. Rumor had it that in anticipation of Turkey possibly entering the European Union, the money was changed accordingly. Only that theory had a serious plot hole. If Turkey were to become a member, our currency would almost certainly be rendered obsolete and replaced by the Euro, anyway, right? I mean, I suppose we could be one of those lucky countries that gets to keep their currency, and as bull-headed as Turks are, they probably will insist on it. After all, no one is going to be putting Atatürk on the Euro, are they?

After the embarrassing incident at the bookstore, I came home and repeated the story to the Boyfriend. He was also unaware of the whole bank trade-in situation. His thoughts then turned to the treasure chest and what was to be done about it.

We have a little chest on the counter where we chuck all of our loose change. It’s very handy for paying the delivery people that ferry wordly goods to our doorstep. Just as an experiment, the boyfriend attempted to pay the water delivery guy with old money. He was denied outright. Dang! It seemed that someone was going to have to deal with this issue and tonight, that person was me.

I was in a mood. I was even annoying myself, perhaps even mostly myself. The Boyfriend has endless patience and finds even my bitchiness charming. I decided to engage myself in a mindless task so as to minimize the annoying I could do for awhile. I turned my attention to the treasure chest.

When the boyfriend became curious about the clinking of metal coming from the living room, he found me industriously sorting piles. I had old money over there, foreign money over here, and new money on the other side. New money would go back into the chest. Old money would go to the bank. And I haven’t yet figured out what to do with all of the foreign money, but we both enjoyed the trip down travel memory lane by looking at it, anyway.

Then came the part when I transitioned from enduring a mindless sorting to relishing my task. The boyfriend announced that the old money was mine to keep. In other words, I was free to take the spoils! Oh, boy! I suddenly felt like a kid counting out her piggy bank; fantasizing about what I was going to buy at the mall this weekend. And because I am horrible about doing adult things like saving money, I did begin fantasizing about how to blow it, so I guess not much has changed in that department.

When I finally finished the job, my hands were ash grey and I had made 167.50! Not bad for an hour’s worth of zombie-like activity. I was not only satisfied that the job was finally done, but that I was the one who had done it. And I would be lying if I didn’t add that suddenly finding myself flush didn’t perk up my mood, as well.

So I did what I had to do and learned how to navigate the pazar. That wasn’t an easy task, either. Not knowing the metric system, I had no idea how much to ask for and struggled to find the Turkish words to ask for much of anything at all. It was no use imitating the other women around me. They seemed to be buying for a small restaurant for the most part. No, I was completely on my own and would have to sort it out somehow. Eventually, I figured it out and now I can walk through a pazar like an old hand. In fact, pazars are even a guilty pleasure to me now. Just try to get me out of one!

I should be grateful, I suppose, that I did not move to Japan. I have seen the shelves of Japanese grocery stores. Hundreds of bags with Japanese characters and sometimes not so much as a picture to guide the language ignorant. Add to that the fact that they eat all sorts of odd things that it would never occur to me to eat at all, let alone buy at a grocery store.

No, at least in Turkey, it’s easy enough to get the lay of the land. The aisles are arranged logically and items you would expext to go together are grouped as such here: flour and sugar are lined up together with general goods for baking, which is entirely logical. You can safely pick up a bag of flour without knowing the Turkish name for it because, well, a bag of flour is easily identifiable and almost always has a little wheat symbol featured somewhere.

The hard part was getting those things home and figuring out what to do with them. I mean, I was a career gal back home; not a homemaker. I am sure I used actual flour to roll out a crust for something at one point or another in my life, but more often than not, I’d settle for a ready made crust. I was into convenience food like that. But now I lived in a country with no ready made crust, so I could either forgo or make do. To my credit, I chose to make do, often with comical results.

I eventually got brave and started buying little packet meals, like rice dishes. I wanted so desperately to return to the freedom of convenience food. I was tired of soaking lentils overnight and cleaning up my kitchen after what appeared to be a flour explosion.
But even those packets were a new form of hell. I would look at the directions on the back and just sigh. Just try to painstakingly translate those directions word for word. Not only is it thanklessly laborious, but it is practically impossible. Add to that the general confusion regarding measurements.

Now I know how spoiled we are in America, what with our Pampered Chef parties and our Williams Sonoma stores. But I just assumed that all civilized cultures would use measuring cups and spoons, right? I mean, at the very least. Oh, how wrong I was!

Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that I come from one of the only countries on earth that still clings tirelessly to the Imperial System. No doubt having knowledge of the Metric System would really have come in handy. (and yes, I am aware that I can teach myself!) But only a Turkish housewife could save me from the measuring predicament I found myself in.

You see, Turkish recipes are actually tailored towards a housewife that has come from the village. It is assumed that she has no fancy modern-day devices or appliances. What is assumed is that she has cutlery.

When cooking from a recipe here, you will find the following forms of measurement: tea glass (which is a little tulip-shaped vessel that tea is served in), water glass (which is a glass that holds about 6 ounces), tea spoon (which is actually a tiny little spoon used to stir sugar in tea), dessert spoon (which is actually our teaspoon), and soup spoon (which is actually our tablespoon). I can’t tell you how many recipes I warped by thinking a teaspoon was a dessert spoon. I believe it all came crashing down on me one day when I was putting the dishes away. “We don’t have a lot of………(wheels turning)tea….spoons.” (light bulb burning brightly)

These days, I’ve got it all worked out. I can just as easily make dolma (stuffed grape leaves) as I can pad thai in my Turkish kitchen. Learning a new language is something that can wait. Learning how to cook and eat? That is an entirely different story to this gal!

Signed,

A Perfectly Innocent Resident

I have ranted in these missives in the past about the appalling lack of physical education in this country. In fact, here in Turkey, it can even be said that exercise is just another socio-economic divide. To wit, the well or better-to-do exercise; the lesser fortunate just gawp. Here, only the finanically stable can join gyms. And I would guess that most of the people with gym memberships enjoy at least an undergrad degree if not also a Masters. It seems also to be people in their late twenties and early thirties. Those who recognize that their metabolisms are slowing down and that they live in a country where three or four carbohydrates are routinely served at least once a day in a single meal.

I know it may strike one as ironic that an American is ranting about fitness. After all, my countrymen are among the fattest in the world and diabetes in children is rising at an alarming rate. Maybe I was just lucky having grown up at a time when the school systems valued and took physical education quite seriously. It probably also helps that I was a natural at sports and took part in as many as I could growing up. Many Turkish children will never know the benefit of either. The little lass goes to a very exclusive private school, one modeled after Western schools, and even they do not have sports teams. I say that I was fortunate because I know that even in America, now that states are in such financial straits, physical education and extra-cirricular activities are being slashed from the budgets. And at a time when our children have grown fatter and lazier, that’s just plain dangerous.

I fear I may have run off the rails here a bit, so allow me to come back to the point:

Exercise is great, people; not only for your body, but for your brain. I was sitting here, feeling somewhat despondent, when I heeded the call to get outside in the fresh air. Guess what? The resulting endorphin rush dissipated the storm clouds in my mind.

I would also like to add that I got sweaty and that that felt great. And I don’t fear for a moment that I will now get sick because of it. Superstitious pseudo-science has no place here.

We started our trip back with a weekend in New York City. A weekend is hardly long enough for such a place, but our visit was especially short and sweet. Some cherished friends took trains from Connecticut, Maryland and DC to come and see us. We only passed a few hours together, but the huggin’ and the gigglin’ and the drinkin’ was just the restorative tonic my heart had been in need of.

Walking the streets of Soho, I had a thought, “I feel at home here.” True, it had a lot to do with being back on American soil after another year had gone by, and being in such an iconic city at that. But I also had a sense of how effortlessly I move through big crazy cities and it made me feel proud of myself. For such a small town girl, I have managed to acquire some city smarts over the years, and mostly, I just feel comfier in my own skin, thus at home wherever I happen to find myself. I paused to give myself some kudos for that.

Coming Home, Part Two: arriving at the airport in Ohio to the welcoming arms of my dear Mumsy. In fact, I think one of the best things about having moved so far away is how damn good it feels to be reunited with those I love the most after a year’s seperation. The emails, the pictures, the Skype calls are great for trying to bridge the gap, but nothing can take the place of her happy eyes and her warm embrace.

Ohio is my birth home and I feel a lot of love for the place. But home would be wherever my family happened to be. For awhile now, that’s been Ohio and it has tied me to that place.
But I don’t feel that Ohio is the place where I belong necessarily. I have no doubt that were I to move back there, I could make myself a little nest and begin to build my happiness up twig by twig. After all, I am just an adaptable creature that way.
But on my last day, I had a very strong feeling. We were over at my sister’s house watching the Buckeyes play in the Rose Bowl. My sister and her hubby are huge Bucks fans (as is my family in general) and they loves them a football party.
In a scene that felt eerily Turkish, the party was segregated by sex. The men were out in the garage with the deep friers, the beer coolers and the space heater. The women were in the living room with all the crazy kids zipping around. And the matriarchs (my mother and my sister’s mother in law) were in the kitchen; dishing out food, doing the dishes.
As I sat on the couch between these two suburban mommies sipping my margarita and trying to ignore the queso dip, my mind wandered. I felt like I should feel out of place and yet I didn’t. I mean, if my sister and I were not related by blood, we wouldn’t even be friends. She and I are entirely different people. And though suburban mommies are perfectly nice people, we often don’t have much in common. It may be in part due to the easy going ways of Mid -Western folk. They may think I am a total oddball living on the other side of the world in a country they have never even thought about, but they don’t let on. In their presence, I was just another woman and that felt nice.

At the same time, I could never live the life my sister lives. Her universe makes so much sense to her and it sustains her. But if I lived in a little subdivision with a parcel of kids and a small dog, his and hers Toyotas and a raging Starbuck’s habit, I would probably heat up the oven and pull a Sylvia Plath. Not to judge, but it just ain’t for me, that whole scenario. Yet seeing my sister so settled, so loved, fills me with joy somehow.

Waking up at my parents’ house, looking out the window at the fresh snow and deer tracks on the peaceful landscape filled my soul with wonder. The house was never quiet for long, as it is chock full of an endless stream of visitors and party-goers, little people and animals of all varieties. It’s kind of a mad house, which is exactly how my parents like it.
But being able to go back into the woods on New Year’s Eve and just sit around a campfire with my Dad, my man, my brother and random folks was a truly priceless experience. The simple childish pleasure of roasting a hotdog on a stick. Watching nails from a pallet shoot green flames through the fire. Enjoying a fine Kentucky bourbon in a snugly sweater on a bright warm moonlit night in one of my heart’s homes. Ahhhh!

And coming home today was another revelation. When we pushed open the door and turned on the light, my eyes lit up at the sight of our place. I love our cozy home and I missed it. There’s just something so precious about having your own little space filled with familiar things, just waiting patiently to be filled with your joy, your sorrow, your energy. I wouldn’t trade that feeling for the world.

2009 was a very rough year for me. I came out of an emotional tailspin and tried desperately to right myself before I crashed headlong into the side of a mountain. I believe I succeeded. And yet, there are still some mighty big questions left for me to explore as a result of this dismantling/healing/dismantling.

I am not sure what it is I really want. I am not sure where it is I truly belong. And those feel like weighty questions at my age.

Anyhow, I may not know where I am headed in the big picture, but in the meantime, I intend to enjoy the heck out of wherever I am!

I have kind of come to the position that Turkish mothers, for the most part, are over-bearing. They are very draconian, have extremely particular beliefs about how children should be raised. Working for them and adapting to these regulations has been no garden party.

I also think as a result, Turkish kids are just not having as much fun as I had growing up and that makes me sad. When the little lass’s parents go out of town, we do unspeakably forbidden things, which is why I am “the coolest nanny ever”. We climb trees, run around in the grass with no shoes on, jump in puddles when it rains. And whenever we do these things, the little lass has to remind me, “Don’t tell my Mom!” She also instructs the staff not to tell on us. Sad, sad, sad.

Turkish mothers are also incredibly strict about the body temperature of their children. “Don’t let her get cold!”, and “Don’t let her get sweaty!” are spoken with an implied vehemence akin to, “Don’t sell her to the gypsies!” or, “Don’t ride on the roof of the car!”
When we go to birthday parties, I always have a change of clothes for her lest she become sweaty while having fun. When we go swimming, I take about three bathing suits so she can immediately change upon getting out of the water. This is especially crucial when she is wearing a one piece. Should she remain too long in a wet one piece, her stomach can get cold, which can lead to digestive problems. Granted I never went to medical school, but that pretty much sounds insane to me. The little lass once said to me, “What did you guys do when you were little?” “Um, laid out in the sun and then jumped back in.” She was astonished by this.

Once I said to the mother, “You know in Scandinavia, they throw babies into the snow.” The look I received and the accompanying gasp told to me that what she actually heard was, “You know in Scandinavia, they feed babies to the wolves.”

The reason all of this has come to mind is because Mumsy has joined me on the nostalgia wagon that has been hitched up for my birthday. She sent me an email reminding me of goofy things she let us do as kids. I couldn’t help thinking how fired I would be if I ever let the little lass do any of these things. Such as:

Being pulled behind our Dad’s riding lawnmower on a big snow shovel at mach 5;snow or no snow. The little lass could never know this kind of fun. The gardener would never allow it.

Getting the baby crib mattress out of my brother’s bed and using it to slide down the stairs even though we slammed into the front door at the end of the ride. The little lass has marble stairs in her house. Her sister once slipped and broke her tailbone. There is no playing on those stairs.

Putting just a tad of liquid dish detergent on a big roll of plastic garbage bags and letting us slide down the hill. This is pretty much a ghetto Slip’n’Slide. Nothing like this is ever happening on the manicured grounds where I work. Ever.

Letting my brother Nick build the world’s most powerful potato guns and letting us blow everything from trees to the garden up with potatoes that traveled at supersonic speed.

Letting us drag each other through mud puddles on our bellies with just a garbage can lid for protection…usually in some new clothes we just got for school. As I mentioned before, rain puddles are forbidden. You can forget about mud puddles. Mud isn’t even permitted on the manicured grounds.

Using a giant sling shot to hurl water balloons at each other even though it felt like being hit with an AK47 and bruising ensued as a result.

Letting us make huge forts using the sofa cushions and the dining room table and anything else we chose to tear apart to make the fort complete. We made veritable fort cities all over the house and Mumsy never complained. She just vacuumed around them. The little lass has a whole wing of the house that is forbidden to us, unless her parents are entertaining and we are invited. We could probably make a fort in her room, but the maids would probably mumble about it.

Swimming during a rainstorm: the only rule was that once we heard thunder, everybody had to get out. We sometimes waited until we saw lightning like true rebels.

Letting us jump from the top bunk onto the mattress from the bottom bunk with our eyes closed so we could pretend we were flying. I’m pretty sure one of us even chipped a tooth this way. Man, that was good times! The little lass is not even allowed to jump on her bed, which is very close to the ground. So, guess who lets her jump on the bed when her parents are out of town? That’s right: the coolest nanny ever.

2) I am afraid of the Amish. I know it is an irrational fear. After all, they are just people, too. But I fear them all the same. Where I finished high school, there was an Amish community not too far from where we lived. My senior year, my friends and I would sometimes skip school and eat at a restaurant called The Flying Dutchman. They had the most amazing pancakes and waffles. But there were more horse-drawn buggies than cars in the parking lot. I had to sit there with blinders on. If I looked up and spied a woman in a black bonnet, or a solemn-looking man with a long beard, I had a mini panic attack. It’s a cross to bear, this ridiculous fear.

3) I have an inordinate love of goats. There is no explanation for it. I was not raised on a goat farm. I have never fed a baby goat a bottle. I have always been an animal lover by nature. I even once owned a Burmese python; one of the more ill-advised decisions of my youth. But for some reason, goats tug my heart strings to the point of excess. Turkey has done much to cultivate this love affair. One of my favorite things in the world is to hear the approaching sound of tinkling bells. This is usually followed by the sighting of a kangal (Turkish sheepherding dogs), a shepherd and a whole lotta’ goats a’ prancin’. In fact, my dream in life is to one day have a herd of my own. I want six alpines goats who I will happily milk for making goat cheese. I already have their names picked out.

4) I am obsessed with abandoned buildings. As a kid, I was always finding my way through fences to reach buildings that were clear safety hazards. I would walk across rotten beams, sit on moldy furniture, look for lost treasure. When I was fourteen, my friend Typhanie and I found an old cabin in the woods near her house. It obviously belonged to an old man that had died long ago. The house was like a ramshackle museum. His name was Henry Higgins and he had served in World War II. Every day after school, we went back to Henry’s house and poured through his personal things. Everything was moldy and rusty and dank, but we felt at home there. We read love letters that his wife had sent him during the war. We looked at photos of his family in what looked like Ireland. We re-constructed his life on those afternoons. I still have several keepsakes of Henry’s in that hopechest, including an old pipe, a silk scarf and a perfectly rusted Chock Full O’Nuts coffee can.

5) I am petrified of drowning. Don’t get me wrong: I am certainly not shy about the water. I am part mermaid. I am a very strong swimmer and could probably drag a grown-man to shore if I had to. But for some reason, the idea of death by drowning is one of my greatest fears. I simply cannot bear underwater scenes in movies. I automatically hold my breath and my chest tightens. I especially cannot deal with scenes where people attempt to swim through underwater caverns and misjudge how deep they are. Or how about when people fall through a hole in an iced over lake, and they rise up only to be greeted by solid ice? Seriously. I die a little.

6) I am a schitzophrenic magnet. I don’t know what it is about my energy, but schitzophrenic people gravitate towards me wherever I go. They befriend me and let me into their muddled worlds. They enter into deep conversations with me, sometimes getting totally lost and frantic before resurfacing. And the sense of calm I feel when that happens is inexplicable to me. I have not had any sort of psychological training. There have even been times when I could have been physically harmed. Years ago, a very lost soul named Charles took me to his camp. It was in the ruins of an old paper mill. We would wander around looking at glittering piles of partially melted glass and wild vines choking out the sunlight. Sometimes he was there with me; sometimes not. But we always left together.

7) I really, really love being on mushrooms. In fact, every time I ingest mushrooms, it takes about forty minutes for me to exclaim the following, “I wish I could always be on mushrooms!”. And I think I mean it. I am sure that it wouldn’t take too long to adjust my center of gravity to the constant hallucinations. There is just something so pure about the way I feel about the world under the influence of the fungi. All of my inhibitions melt away, all of my baggage completely disappears, and I just open up so willingly. The beautiful simplicity of everyday objects is magnified. I remember having a very significant conversation with my brother about our love of drinking water; the necessity and the pleasure thereof. Of course, ten of those minutes were spent trying to locate and open the refrigerator, find a glass and manage to pour the liquid inside. But no matter the fun that has transpired, at around Hour Eight, I get a little weary. Then I remember why I can’t really be on mushrooms every day.

As a child, my prized possession was my Hot Wheels collection. I obsessively collected them from about age 3. Forget dolls. Stuffed animals? No thank you. All I wanted were those tiny cars! I think I was actually given my first one by my teenaged uncle when I was 2 and a half. But I ended up swallowing it. My mother frantically pulled it out of my throat, saving my life, but scratching the back of my throat with her nails. My absolute favorite car was my fire engine red Pontiac Firebird with the black phoenix across the hood; a replica of the car my uncle owned. I kept them safe in a Hot Wheels carrying case that resembled a tire with a shiny spoked rim. My relationship with Hot Wheels was the first step in my process of becoming a gear head. I soon moved on to the King Cobra bigwheel (which was king of the playground) and later my Evel Knievel hot rod. My poor mother thought she gave birth to a girl!

Salep

The first of these is one of my favorite Turkish delicacies. It is a beverage called salep. It is made with a powder that is derived from the ground roots of several species of wild orchid. These roots contain a starchy substance that makes the drink rich and creamy. The powder is mixed with hot milk and sugar.
Unfortunately, the drink’s popularity has led to over-harvesting of these particular wild orchids and as a result, it is now illegal to export true salep powder. On the market today, artifical varieties have mostly taken its place.
Salep is primarly served in the cold winter months as it is thick and creamy and served warm. One can find salep vendors in the streets decanting this heavenly concoction from an old-fashioned copper urn with a spigot. It is typically sprinkled generously with cinnamon and enjoyed by yours truly, as often as possible.

Salep has been around for ages and even enjoyed brief popularity in England as a result of the mania for all things “Oriental” back in the 1700’s. It was served in coffeehouses before coffee and tea replaced them as the thing to drink. It was even carried on ships in those days because it was believed to be so nutritious and hardy as to constitute a sailor’s daily needs when rations became low.
Amusingly, it is also considered an aphrodisiac because the orchid tubers resemble testicles. (!) It was given by village healers to men who experienced low libido.
The word itself is derived from the Arabic word sahlap, meaning “orchid”, which is fitting.

Boza

Another beverage that makes its appearance in wintertime is boza. Various types of boza are popular throughout Eastern Euope, consisting of fermented millet in Bulgaria and Romania and fermented corn and wheat in Albania. The version consumed in Turkey is made from fermented wheat. It is traditionally served topped with cinnamon, like salep, with roasted chickpeas (leblebi in Turkish) on the side.
It has a slightly acidic sweet taste and a rather thick consistency. I, myself, do not care for it due to the oddness of its texture. To me, it sort of feels like drinking apple sauce that has gone south, but most people in Turkey look forward to seeing it come winter.

Şalgam

Speaking of beverages that are an acquired taste, there’s also something called şalgam. Şalgam is lazily called turnip juice, but it is actually made from the juice of black pickled carrots that is then flavored with aromatic turnip and fermented in barrels. It comes from the Southern region of Adana and as a result, is a popular drink alongside Adana kebap.
It is also sometimes consumed as an accompaniment to rakı (the anise seed liquor). Turks also believe that şalgam is a good hangover cure, although I have never tested that theory myself. I pretty much stay away from the stuff. (şalgam, that is, not booze)

Ayran

Ayran is another extremely popular drink here in Turkey. It is basically yogurt mixed with water and salt. It is thought to have its origins in the adding of salt to yogurt in order to preserve it. It is tradionally offered by the hostess to guests in rural regions of Turkey.
Ayran is more readily consumed than sodas and even juice and as a result, even major fast-food chains operating here, such as McDonald’s, offer ayran in their menu options.
During my first months of living here in Turkey, I can remember saying to a curious Turk of my extreme passion for the drink: “I wish I could be hooked up to an I.V. of ayran.” Consider the grossness of what I have just said, and move on.

Pişmaniye

Pişaniye is another delicacy unique to this region, although apparently the Chinese also have a version of it (called dragon’s beard candy). The word comes from the Persian pashmak, which is their name for the candy. It is essentially delicate strands of spun sugar made from flour and butter and sugar. It is often sprinkled with ground pistachios, like many desserts here.
Naturally, kids are crazy about the stuff as it is nearly pure sugar. I have only tasted it once, and the consistency took me back to a field trip to the Science Center in elementary school and tasting “astronaut ice cream”.

Mastic gum

Another unusual taste that is unique to the Mediterranean region is mastic gum. This is a resin that comes from a tree or shrub, Pistachia Lentiscus, a relative of the pistachio tree. The bark of the tree is scored and the milky resin leaks out. Then, it is cleaned and laid in the sun to dry.
It is very popular in Greece where a special variety of the shrub grows on the Greek island of Chios. In fact, mastic gum became popular when Chios was part of the Ottoman Empire. It is said that it enjoyed special importance in the Sultan’s harem both as a breath freshener and also as an additive to cosmetics.

Today, mastic gum (damla sakız in Turkish) is used primarily in desserts. You may notice that many Turkish desserts have an almost chewy consistency and have a distictive white color. Both of these attributes are directly connected to the properties of gum mastic. It is used in Turkish ice cream (dondurma) and in puddings, especially the popular muhallebi.

I hope one day you, too, have the opportunity to eat your way through Turkey. Boredom is not an option.

What were you doing when you were twenty-one years old?

If I had to highlight just one apsect of my life at that age, I would choose the most amusing. I was attending Rastafarian prayer meetings. No, really.
There were about thirty dreadlocked Rastas and two white kids from Ohio crammed into an efficiency apartment in the ghetto in Baltimore, Maryland. You can probably guess why we were there. I can assure you it had little to do with Marcus Garvey.

Sultan Mehmed II conquered the city of Constantinople, effectively sticking the proverbial fork in the Byzantine Empire and, in fact, ending the rule of the old Christian guard, all at the age of twenty-one.

I think most of us agree that the Sultan wins THIS death match.

Sultan Mehmed became Sultan at a very young age and quite frankly, no one expected very much of him. They thought him too green. Even his enemies believed him to be no threat to the Christian strongholds in the nearby Balkans and Aegean. Guess he showed us, eh?

On May 29th 1453, Sultan Mehmed II took control of the city of Constantinople; a massive blow to Christendom and to an empire that had survived 1,100 years. This is the story that is told at the Panorama 1453 History Museum.

I will give you a helpful note right off the bat: when you approach the window, do not speak any language besides Turkish. Turks pay 5 lira and foreigners pay double that. When we were told this, I jokingly protested in Turkish,which got me some giggles, but not a reduced fare. That ship had sailed.
Also, there is no English on the panels, but you can purchase one of those pre-recorded tour guide systems for another 5 lira. This worked great for me except when I was in the middle of listening to a story and I noticed the boyfriend was talking to me. There was thusly a lot of pausing and head phone removal throughout my tour.

I’d like to provide some basic details for those who are unfamiliar with this moment in history and/or may never visit this museum.

The seige wasn’t an easy task despite the fact that the Ottoman troops (80,000) far outnumbered the Christian defenders (7,000). Constantinople was believed to be the most fortified city in the world thanks to about twenty kilometers of walls protecting it.

In a lesser-known detail, the fate of Constantinople might have laid in the hands of a Hungarian founder named Orban. He had built a giant cannon, the likes of which had never been seen, and he went to Emperor Constantine XI offering it to him. But when the Emperor could not come up with the funds required to purchase the weapon, Orban took his business elsewhere.

It was Mehmed II who found the means.

By April 2nd 1453, the Ottoman army was camped outside the city walls. Because the Christian forces were so sparse, they concentrated the majority of their forces at the middle section of the land walls, where they feared attack was most imminent.

The Ottoman fleet could not pass through the Golden Horn to approach the city by water because a heavy chain had been placed across the bay.
Eventually, this was cleverly circumvented by the Sultan. He ordered the construction of a road of greased logs and on April 22nd, the troops rolled their ships in.

Fire ships had been sent by the Christians to take care of what was left of the Ottoman fleet. Unfortunately for them, they had already heard about the plan and were laying in wait. The Christian troops suffered great losses here.

This had a two-pronged negative effect for the Christians. For starters, the presence of the Ottoman fleet cut off their relief supplies from Genoese ships. And two, more forces then needed to be sent to the Golden Horn, thus weakening sections of the wall.

Serbian engineers built tunnels for the Ottomans in an attempt to gain entrance to the city. But the Emperor Constantine hired a German engineer who constructed counter-mines and many Ottoman troops were killed this way. Eventually, two Turkish officers confessed the locations of all of the tunnels under torture and they were all destroyed.

The Sultan could sense that morale was low inside the city walls. He offered to end the seige if the city would be handed to him. Emperor Constantine declined that offer. He was still under the hope that relief would be arriving from the West.

As the war raged on, there was also some dissent amongst the sultan’s viziers (main advisors). Halil Pasha, known to be a dedicated servant, vehemently urged the Sultan to end the seige and retreat. It was later discovered that Halil Pasha was being bribed by the Byzantines and he was put to death.

And here are a few key dramatic scenes for the blockbuster movie based on this event:

On May 22nd, the moon (the symbol of Constantinople) emerged as a dark eclipse; seemingly fulfilling a prophesy of the city’s demise.
Four days later, the city was enveloped in a thick fog, which was unheard of in that part of the world at that time of year. The very next day, Constantine XI received the news that no relief ships were coming to their aid. Doom seemed ever looming on the horizon.

On May 26th, the Ottoman war council met to make the preparations for the final assault. On May 28th, Ottoman soldiers were given a day of prayer and rest. Behind the city walls, the Christians engaged in large scale religious processions in the streets. A solemn ceremony was held at Hagia Sophia. And some time after midnight, the final attack began.

It is said that the Christians were successfully holding even the sultan’s elite corps, the Janisseries. But when the Genoese general was killed, the troops panicked and scattered. It is reported by some historians that the Ottomans found an unlocked gate and gained entry, at last, into the city.
It is thought that Emperor Constantine cast off his regal garments and joined his soldiers for the final assault and that he was killed alongside them. But his body was never found and so we can never know for sure.

The panorama itself is the crowning achievement of the museum. After reading the panels, you walk up a spiral staircase into a dome. There you will find a mural representation of this dramatic world event; breath-takingly painted, complete with audio recordings of Turkish battle music (Mehter). We lingered for quite a long time soaking it all in. It was well worth the visit.

One of the remnants that survives from that golden era is Osmanlı Mutfagı, or Ottoman Cuisine. It is a cuisine that is cloaked in romantic history, to be sure. In fact, one could even say that the prevalance of this style of cooking still today in the Balkans and the Middle East is standing evidence of a once great empirical power.

One need only visit Topkapı Palace in Istanbul to understand the importance of food in the times of the sultan. The palace grounds house areas that were once elaborate kitchens where a kitchen staff of 1,300 people perfected their recipes. Palace chefs didn’t just cook for the sultan and his court. They also cooked two meals a day to be served on the palace grounds to the general public. They were also responsible for festival feasts and also prepared food that was sent to various parts of the city on royal command. Chefs were interviewed in a very simple manner. They were judged on how well they made pilav (rice); a very simplistic, but essential, staple.

There is also historical evidence to suggest that food played an important role in the Ottoman military elite, known as the Jannisaries. The commanders of the main divisions were known as the Soupmen. Other names for high-ranking officers were the Chief Cook, Scullion, Baker, and, amusingly, the Pancake Maker.
The huge cauldron that was used to make pilav doubled as a political symbol. Whenever the Jannisaries decided that there ought to be a change in the Sultan’s cabinet, the pilav cauldron was overturned. In fact, “overturning the cauldron” is still an expression used in Turkish meant to indicate a rebellion in the ranks.

There aren’t many restaurants around that prepare true Osmanlı Mutfağı, so it has become somewhat of a lost art. It is a more complex cuisine utilizing a vast array of spices and herbs in delicate fashion. But I thought I would offer up a unique opportunity for all of you: a way to recreate the glory and deliciousness of a bygone time right in your own modern day kitchen. Sounds like fun, right?

In all fairness, I should add that the following recipe comes from the fantastic cookbook by Ayla Algar, Classical Turkish Cooking: Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen.

Keep in mind, this recipe does have a long cooking time. If you properly arrange yourself, however, you will be treated to a very distinctive and clever taste sensation. I recommend wowing your friends the next time you have them over for brunch.

And because the Ottoman chefs kept such meticulous records, we not only have an idea of their provisions and recipes, but we also have little gems of stories to go along with them. Here’s the gem that goes along with the recipe I am going to give you. You get additional wow factor for regaling your guests with this story. After all, Turkey is an oral culture, even today, so by passing this story along, you will be continuing a fine tradition.

The recipe is for a dish called soğanlı yumurta, or carmelized onions with eggs. It is a relatively modest dish given its few ingredients, but the preparation of this dish had weighty repercussions. You see, this dish was made for the sultan on the fifteenth day of Ramadan, (the Muslim period of fasting), after he had returned from seeing a cloak that was allegedly worn by the Prophet Mohammed. It was a solemn occasion and the cooking of this dish on such a day was seen as a demanding task. However, if the sultan was pleased with the way the dish was prepared, the cook responsible was often appointed as head of the royal pantry; a coveted position in those times.
Without further ado, here is your recipe:

2 large red onions
4 tbsp unsalted butter
salt
water
1/2 tsp mild vinegar (such as balsamic)
1/8 tsp ground allspice
1/4 tsp ground cinnamonfreshly ground black pepper
1/2 tsp sugar

4 eggs
salt and pepper

Quarter the onions and cut into paper thing slices. Heat butter in a heavy skillet and add onions. Sprinkle with salt and cook over very low heat, stirring occasionally, for at least forty minutes, until onions turn reddish-brown and become slightly crispy. Be careful not to burn them! As onions cook and begin to dry, sprinkle in water. When onions are carmelized, add the vinegar, spices, pepper and sugar and mix thoroughly.
Make four depressions in the onions and crack an egg into each. Sprinkle with salt and pepper, cover, and cook gently until eggs are covered with a thin transparent film. Serve immediately.

I have made this dish myself and I was really pleased with the outcome. I love both eggs and carmelized onions, but never in my wildest dreams would I have thought of combining them. I find it’s never a bad thing to attempt to broaden your horizons. No matter what the outcome, you have learned something and can put it away for safe keeping.

Afiyet olsun (enjoy your meal), as we say here in Turkey!

I’ve had a good haul on this train, that’s for sure. Hard life lessons were learned on this route; invaluable lessons that have moulded me anew. It also goes without saying that a whole lot of fun was had on this train. And I certainly don’t mean to imply that I am fearful of a future free of fun. (Hey! Alliteration is fun!) I suppose that in my deeply introspective (and retrospective) mood, the gravity of my situation, past, present and future, is giving me meaningful pause.

When I first came to Turkey in the spring of 2005, I felt that I was on the verge of an amazing adventure. I turned out to be spot on about that. I had always dreamed of living abroad and, even though Turkey herself had never figured into my dreams, I was entirely keen on what lay ahead; even though I hadn’t the slightest idea of what might.

You could say that I was born with little fear. I have always been the sort of person to ask few questions and charge in, head first. I didn’t know very much about Turkey when I arrived here, but that didn’t make me feel at a disadvantage. I figured I could have had all the facts and figures I pleased at my disposal and it wouldn’ have helped much. In the end, the whole experience would be subjective, anyway. We all have to make our own way in this life. And life affects us all differently according to our own belief systems and experiences.

In the end, there has been suffering and there has been even more joy. Things have certainly blown up in my face here over the years, but instead of getting bogged down in my disappointment, I picked myself up and kept on going. I have a right to be proud of that.

I realize now that the life I have managed to carve out for myself here is enviable. As a nanny, to say I have been well-payed is putting it mildly. In fact, I learned that I made more than a university professor and a Turkish manager, respectively. Most of my expat friends are struggling English teachers. They either work at language course centers that jerk them around and underpay them, or they get out there and hustle for independent lessons, which can be dog eat dog.
At least I can say that my personal financial security has protected me in sour times. I have never felt helpless or cornered in large part because of my steady employment/income, and for that, I feel blessed.

Even though at times my job has been exhausting and thankless, I have always been grateful for this opportunity. Being a part of a family that is not your own can be both claustrophobic and overly-intimate at times. I am an emotional sponge; someone who absorbs the feelings of those around her. So for me to have such a job where I have essentially become a defacto member of a family, has been challenging at times.

But I would be remiss were I not to admit that this job has provided many a sweet perk. The family has been most generous towards me over the years. For the last three winters, they have taken me skiing in an adorable Swiss village near the French border. They have taken me to London several times, where my job included shopping at Harrod’s, high tea, fine dining, Madame Toussaud’s and the theatre district. I have spent every summer on their yacht in Southern Turkey, traveling to the Greek Islands, bobbing without a care in gorgeous seas, staying at a world class beach resort.

And I have been extremely lucky in this field. There are plenty of nannies out there that have enjoyed such benefits as luxurious travel, but so many of them are treated poorly to a distressing level. I, on the other hand, have been lucky enough to have been placed with an exceptional family. They are old money types; classy and refined. They treat me as though I were one of them. When we travel, they introduce me to their friends, not merely relegate me to a corner, the forgotten help. I eat with them and not in the servants’ kitchen. (Yes, they have one of those!) When I get sick, they send me to a doctor and pay for it. When I injured my neck, they sent me to a physiotherapist and, yes, paid for it.

I try not to harbor regrets because I know that behavior will get me exactly nowhere. But one of the only regrets that sometimes nags at me in the dark is that I did not properly take advantge of my economic situation while I was here. Instead of putting all of that money away for future use, I had the time of my life on it. Wherever I traveled, I threw money around with abandon. When my sister got married in Las Vegas, I partied like an heiress for the duration. I had a solo trip to Amsterdam where I whipped out the credit card so much, I swear it smelled as though it were burning. I developed a shopping habit wherein I acquired an impressive wardrobe and enough accessories to open a boutique.

I also came into my feminine side in a major way. For the first time in my life, I spent time and money on my physical appearance. I began going to the salon for manicures, pedicures, waxing, hair coloring (something I always did from the box at home), the works. I bought dresses and heels, started wearing makeup and generally saw myself as a beautiful woman for the first time in my life.

In all fairness, I did manage to dig myself out of a substantial amount of debt that I had accumulated prior to my life here. It felt good to finally shed that weight, and for this, I have allowed myself some pride.

I have, at last, become more fiscally responsible. Unfortunately for me, this has coincided with my work hours and salary having been drastically reduced. I still make enough to live comfortably; just not to enjoy my former lifestyle. And I am alright with that. I had my fun.

I find myself now in the position of trying to wean myself off of these habits. I am most likely going to return “home” next summer, and who knows what life will hand me. I have no idea of what I will choose in the way of work, what I can hope to make, where I might live. But I do know a few things for certain:

I will no longer have a cleaning lady, so it’s back to cleaning my own toilets. I will no longer have much disposable income, so it’s back to discount shopping and dying my hair from a box. And I wil no longer be flitting around the world, dining in the best restaurants for free, or spending summers on a yacht.

I know I will go through some culture shock moving back. And I know I will even have the occasional pang for my exciting expat existence. But in the end, I sleep well knowing that, as always, I will be just fine.