Thursday, November 06, 2008

A very Istanbul day

'Mr James', my wonderful ground floor neighbour whispered as I exited the building.

Perihan's kitchen window is right next to the apartment entrance. Nothing, but nothing, escapes her.

'James, come. I spoke with your landlady last night.' They are good friends.

'Oh yes, I'm late two days with the rent. I know.'

'I told her your fridge is broken' (It's not).

'Well, thank you.' This is Perihan's way of looking after me. She keeps in contact with the landlady and over tea and baklava reminds her what a good rent-payer, charming person and superb cat-lover I am. And then she works a few angles to further populate my apartment with furniture I don't need.

Truth is, my freezer doesn't really function so well these days. It ices up. I'd never noticed it or, at least, it had never bothered me until Perihan one day let herself into my apartment to move a pot plant that another neighbour suggested I'd placed to close to the edge of the balcony. I guess Perihan must've had a peek around because she then went on to admonish my cleaner for such oversight. I rarely even use the freezer and bought Swiss chocolate for the cleaner to let her know I wasn't bothered about the chunks of protruding ice that keep my ice-cream squishy. That was weeks ago.

I thanked Perihan for the possibility of new white goods and then remembered the actual conversation I'd had with the landlady daughter a few days previous.

'I want to talk with you about painting the apartment (it's beige), changing the light fittings (no word in any lexicon can appropriately describe their hideousness), and install new floor covering in the bedrooms (previous tenants have introduced questionable marks and a nice iron print). Oh yeah, the curtains have got to go (my cats have kind a ripped then into an Alexander McQueen monstrosity).'

After placating her gently, insisting I was more than willing to pay the costs, she promised to get back to me with a decision.

This afternoon I received a text message requesting I ensure keys were with the downstairs neighbour since two hefty lads with a wheelbarrow were on their way to deliver a bed.

A bed is not a fridge and is not a general passe-partout for minor renovations.

Puzzled? I think I was.

Returning to the apartment later in the afternoon, Perihan had already been informed of the new mattress.

'Don't worry, go and teach your lessons James, I'll be here to collect it.'

Which is great because this woman could single-handed re-organise Middle Eastern affairs and is possibly the very reason Arab and Middle Eastern countries are so frightened of pursuing equality among the sexes. If this octogenarian is anything to go by, women should actually be in charge of the entire region.

My lesson completed, I fell down some stairs and returned tired, bleeding and sore to the apartment, anticipating a minimum eight hour slumber on my new firm spring-loaded sleep-inducing mattress.

Disappointment was total. I sat down but recognised the stains immediately. This was my mattress (and that of many previous tenants, none of whom bothered with a protector sheet). I went downstairs.

'I know my dear. I was waiting here for hours and they never showed up'.

It turns out that Perihan, running late for her husband's own appointment at the hospital, stayed back until it was clear: something was amiss.

'I called your landlady. She was in a cafe... I said, what are you doing sitting in a cafe Ilknur? I'm waiting here for the mattress for this lovely boy James and I have to get Muharrem to the hospital'.

Well, it appears that while sipping her latte somewhere off in la-la land, she simply forgot. Forgot. So today the fridge I fleetingly hoped for, the painting, floor coverings and lamp fittings I requested became the mattress that never was.

I sank back onto the suddenly old, stained and sagging bed to nurse my aching elbow and knee, glared at my offensive light fittings and wondered 'why do I bother?'

I'm definitely, definitely paying the rent late this month.

I did it again.

There doesn't appear to be a simple Turkish equivalent of the term 'expatriate'. While this is of no concern to my cats, one of which has been sniffing the same spot on the couch for half an hour, the other chasing a small shiny metallic object about the hallway, I find it problematic.

In English, the word conjures up opinions and thoughts numerous enough to fill a couple of tomes. Good, and not so good anecdotes come to mind.

To face the not-so-attractive reality, we, the expatriates, are everywhere. And I, one of them, seem to have issues with some of the others, who recently, count themselves among people I'd like to maim in a painful manner. Damn, that's two sentences commencing with a conjunction... What kind of language teacher am I?

Have you ever walked down the street in a culture fairly dissimilar to your own, where the natives act, look, dress and generally go about their daily lives in a manner different to your own? Of course you have, since we've all travelled at some point and even a trip from the suburbs to the centre of town can bring the out-of-my-comfort zone sweat stains and accompanying unsightly rash.

And while making your way down that very same avenue, have you ever crossed paths with another from your world, your own culture? You can spot it in the eyes. When you've travelled a decent amount you can spot the tourist, spot the native, spot the lost tourist, spot the evil person with a moustache who is going to scam you, the person who needs help with directions, the pesky unavoidable thing who's going to ask you for some spare change. Nothing wrong with any of that though.

In Istanbul, I can spot Antipodeans easily. First, there are few of us in Turkey. Secondly, we generally dress appallingly. It seems to us that if you walk around in un-ironed garments and clothing more suitable for the beach, we hope that others will think us relaxed and easy-going. It's not for me to explain what my Turkish friends really think of they way we dress, but hey, it's not that complimentary.

Anyway, we expatriates are a sometimes funny breed. We come in contact with another of our kind and immediately look away. We did not see each other. Why is that? It's impossible to blend fully into the Turkish fabric for most of us, and what should that matter anyway, we're here to absorb the culture, hopefully learn the language and make a few friends along the way. I'm not the only expat in Istanbul and I couldn't care less about it. This is not a competition.

I passed another of my kind on Sıraselviler Caddesi this morning, an untamed, ramshackle thoroughfare with the world's most hilarious excuse for functioning footpaths. The expat guy looked at me and straight through me. But it was immediately preceded by that flicker or recognition, that you-look-just-like-me-and-that-makes-me-less-special-now. Yeah, go away quickly.

I'm not putting forward the idea that we should shake hands each time we run into another expat. I mean, granted, most of us would probably not get along to well if we were on our own soil. What's amusing here is the conscious decision to be annoyed with someone after making eye contact with them. for no good reason. I guess, chances are that expats engaged in conversation are often just moaning about Turkish food/currency/housing costs/weather/traffic/disorganisation ad nauseum. So, sure, move on. Just why the obvious displeasure in your demeanour?

I've even been guilty myself of acting the moaning expat. Hey, sometimes it is hard to live away from your native culture and, while I'm positive Turkish norms are not so different from what might be branded Western culture, there is language, customs, mores and morals that certainly differ from those which many of us grew up with. I'm sure I'd even suffer from culture shock in the United States, least of all because they('re about to) have a black president...

Anyway, expatriates do tend to hang out together because we sometimes need a dose of the familiar, and if living outside Australia has taught me one thing, it's that humour rarely translates gracefully or successfully between cultures. My apartment has known both Irish and American flatmates with their respective humours, and while we chuckled along quite well together humour often fails when you have to offer alternate cultural elements that can be summed up otherwise in a single word or short phrase.

I remember crying with laughter at a recent Australian mini-series or mockumentary or whatever the ABC was flogging it as, which naturally failed to impress or leave much of an effect on the flatmate. And I guess that's the very reason why so many of us do eventually suffer bouts of homesickness; we miss laughing. Well, I do.

So why completely ignore each other now when chances are you'll be at the same party in a few week's time? Just we just accept this town is big enough for the two of us?

The second part of the now overlong post deals with the nastier expat. There are quite a few. Those who consider themselves superior or inferior because a) they've landed a great job that pays them seven hundred times more that the average Turkish wage and have no need for you, b) they still haven't bothered to acquire even the most basic Turkish after an embarrassingly long period and believe after seven years that every Turk is still out to scam them, c) they're French by nationality or d), they can't live in their birthplace because they are hated by everyone, possibly already belonging to group c).

Man... today I was in the bank and that was already stressful enough - I loathe those institutions. However, this was going to be exciting for me as I planned to deposit instead of withdraw. Took my ticket. Waited in the queue. Over the next fifteen minutes, as I slowly lost the will to live, a tall man with hair that can only be described as a gross error in judgment twice jumped the line and decided that he wanted his customer service now.

In principal, I'm not against queue-jumpers, provided they offer the obligatory 'I'm sorry but (insert reasonably lame excuse) and have to get this done before my head falls off'. For example. During his second approach to the counter I politely demurred and asked what might be the issue, prey tell? I questioned him in Turkish but since he looked both blank and irritatable I understood French was the way forward. His response?

'This is not Paris. Things are done differently here.'

What the $%#* is that supposed to mean, other than my French accent is damn impressive?

So of course, I decided to let him know that basic rudeness is hardly culture-specific and all he had needed to do was ask if he could move forward in the queue. Basic politeness demands this.

And then he did something that he shouldn't have done. He moved his index finger to his mouth in a teacher/parent manner to silence me. He really oughtn't have done that. I think. I rather lost it, in fluent French fashion.

It all turned out satisfactorily, though designating him un clochard instead of un connard took something away from affair's general sucess. I don't think he cared that I called him homeless tramp instead of a #$%head, though with his haircut not all the effect was lost. Sometimes my savoir-faire amazes me.

Then he called me tourist - a little rich considering his Turkish made my French sound worthy of l'Academie francaise.

I uttered something very, very rude.

This evening I have a wallet stacked with un-banked lira. I guess it's back to Anger Management classes and the local branch tomorrow.

More comical yet, me and the Gallic turd will undoubtably cross paths at a party in the near future. Let's hope he's had a hair cut and wearing non-staining, inflammable clothing. I'm not going to shake his hand, and I will look right through him.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

Menemen! For single men!

I've never been a fan of the English breakfast. The vision of so much scorched flesh writhing on an overloaded plate hardly inspires the palate at any hour of the morning. The traditional English fare was always enough to send me back to the bedroom for another two hour's sleep, and if breakfast is supposed to prepare you for day ahead, well, I'm hardly needing gargantuan quantities of protein required for toiling in the fields, driving cattle or installing lifts in the tower of Babel.

My days consists of approximately three hours working on a computer, four hours reading and taking notes, and four hours talking.The most important meal of the day needs to provide only enough for these activities, plus sufficient reserve at the end of the day to feed the cats, load the washing machine and climb under the covers.

And while the traditional Turkish breakfast deserves a post all to itself, there is one dish of Anatolian cuisine that I am superbly excellent at preparing: voici menemen.

Yes, it is a silly name.

In the Western part of the country lies a small district of the same name, but not its namesake. There are even two events, the Menemen Massacre of 1919 and, eleven years later, the Menemen Incident. The incident in question was a distasteful affair during which an anti-secular Sufi and self-proclaimed prophet (aren't they always the latter) rode into town with his mates, and, with the goal of reinstating Islamic law in the newly secular nation, attacked a garrison, killed it's lieutenant and paraded the unfortunate's head about town on a stick. I really, really hate fundamentalists of every ilk.

Anyway, the whole incident probably put all the citizens off their breakfast for quite some time, though this doesn't really matter since there appears to be no connection between the town's beheaded lieutenant and the dish itself, which mysteriously looks like mashed up, decapitated head. Quirky.

According to another group of people I detest - purists - memenen has to contain egg. It also has lots of diced tomatoes and green pepper, onion and parsley. Season to taste. I like to add cheese and sometimes sucuk, lightly spiced but often yucky Turkish sausage, and here the purist would also interject.

Recipes state that you should score, peel and de-seed the tomatoes. Who the Hell has time for that? I simply cut the tomatoes and pepper into small bits and leave out the onion because we all know what effect that noxious bulb has on our bodies. Fry it all, add the cheese and egg (if you must), season to taste.

There are a number of menemen purveyors in my neighbourhood but, even as a part-time smoker, I object to scoffing breakie while inhaling a truck load of other diners' cigarette smoke. At nine in the morning. Turkey is the only place on the planet where men are truly addicted to nicotine on this level.

I also prefer to make and eat menemen at home because I can eat brown bread and not the poor white substitute offered in restaurants that contributes to the Turkish male's, and my belly. A close friend tells me the the glycemic index of white bread is startlingly high, so it's off the menu for good.

Anyway, breakfast is more fun when the cats join in and try to crawl over my plate, repeating the routine daily even though neither of them like hot food, nor any of my cooking for that matter.

Lastly, I saw this on a website:

This is a quick, fix dish for breakfast in Turkey. Menemen is commonly
preffered (sic) by single men since it is easy and quick

Yep, if a Turkish man's mother, girlfriend, sister, grandmother, aunt or any other female with tenuous filial link isn't in das Küche, he ain't gonna be taking long to cook. In fact, he'll go to join his cigarette-chuffing mates at the restaurant I mentioned earlier.

Turkish men don't cook. I guess they're right too. Moustache with apron has never been a fashion fad.

Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Does it make me a bad person?

For me, homesickness is practised in much the same fashion as religious observance. Half-heartedly. Sporadically. Non-committedly.

Prayer is reserved for time of need, times of admonishment for a life hurtling down the wrong cul-de-sac on a skateboard without brakes, for moments of dubious grievance. I'm not what the Pope might call a practising Catholic, and that naturally is because I was born and raised a diluted Protestant. Still, my point here is to demonstrate that I seem to think only of family and friends at home when my Istanbul existence has intermittently sapped me of the required energies to get out of bed and face another day in a city that never sleeps, let alone closes its eyes and dozes during a World Series Test Match on Easter weekend.

Like a un-Catholic guilt-ridden Calvinist, I think it rotten that I'm so self-involved, forgetting birthdays, bypassing anniversaries, avoiding milestones that in our age of instant messaging appears irrational and mean, self-centred and ungenerous. Unlike my grandmother, extensive lists for sending celebratory greeting cards have no place among possessions cluttering my desk and I have metamorphosed into the kind of brother who often cannot instantly remember the precise age of his siblings. When I sense a birthday, I call a third party for assurance, hang up after delivering sycophantic praise and then make the call that keeps me in everyone's will.

I think it does make me a slightly less-than-admirable humanistic type.

Homesickness rarely presents itself. I think I might even be a bad Australian. I don't miss the place, just its inhabitants who count themselves among friends and relatives. I almost envy people who miss their family home, mother's cooking, time spent with relatives, childhood picnic on white, sandy beaches. Unluckily I'm just not made that way and I long ago gave up hoping that by thinking I was, I would become somehow, well, more sensitive, more nostalgic.

Perhaps the ability to communicate in so many new and inventive ways allows all of us to indulge less in homesickness-type feelings. Maybe I'm never really out-of-touch, just never really rushing to buy a ticket back home for a visit.

And the saddest truth of all is the only thing from home I actually crave is meat pies.

I think it's time to look within. Personal development may be what the psychologist would have me order.

Monday, November 03, 2008

Sakin oldum

I'm mellowing. Anger Management Classes seem but a distant memory.

Why, I can't fathom. Perhaps age is finally teaching me that exploding aortas and bursting jugulars fail to keep me in a good state of mind.

I've never been proud of my temper, which, until age thirty, lay dormant like the pre-1883 Krakatoa. Family values instilled in me ensured I always smiled, no matter the situation and regardless how offensive, rude, barbarous and ignorant the person in front of me might be. Elder family members were the height of English hypocritical politeness, and from them I learned always to say nothing at the required moment but wait until, cup of tea in hand, complaints could surge forth vociferously around the kitchen table. Highly constructive.

At high school I never once remember losing my temper or speaking out against those who had wronged me. I was too meek and mild for my own good and can't imagine how much of a wimp I must have appeared to those around me. I was never in a scuffle at school and used to avoid anyone I found aggressive or threatening.

Then of course, as it always does, something snapped. Not in the kind of way that a North American might crack, leave the house, buy a gun and randomly shoot any living creature along the way. I learned to focus my anger like a guided SCUD, and rarely missed my target.

As the staff in the ANZ Bank Market St branch one day discovered, asking me to collect my new credit card and then not having it ready for the aforementioned collection was poor customer service. In hindsight it certainly wasn't acceptable to threaten to return with a sawn-off shotgun, and with foresight the whole thing might have been taken a lot more seriously had the event occurred post the Two-Big-Buildings-Come-Down-And-Governments-Retract-Civil-Liberties era.

Further, I'd like to remark that while intimidation and menace are hardly attractive in themselves, I've never since experienced garbage customer service at the hands of the Australian and New Zealand banking peoples. They always smile after swiping my card and I can't help but think there's something flashing up on the computer screen to caution them.

And the urologist deservedly had it coming. How special can a specialist doctor be if, two hours after the appointed time reserved one month before you are still sitting in a corridor wading through last year's TIME and Vogue and National Gun Association Family Excursion gazette? Out of patience, I remember knocking on the doctor's door and, receiving no answer, barging my through demanding an explanation for such tardiness. Unfortunately for him, telling me the first thing about being a patient is to be patient was not the desired rejoinder, so I told him where to stick his homonyms and the gathered storm clouds let forth a sub-continental downpour. It rained expletives.

Long after I was punching backpacking partners while ambulating through holy towns in India, throwing electric fans across hotel rooms in Vietnam, shouting at inhospitable hospitality staff all around the world and generally acting like an Israeli recently released from military service.

However, I've calmed right down. As I teacher of children I still need to raise my voice every so often. But the death threats and possible grievous bodily harm has come to a halt. I can maintain a calm state of mind, lucid thoughts and logical arguments when angry. Even when confronted by a repentant and terrified eleven year-old.

Istanbul is my medicine.

First, it is not possible to survive in a city of this many millions if you are going to throw a wobbly. To cope with the endless traffic and teeming, swarming crowd, you just have to chill. I learned this early on after discovering the average Turk cannot walk in a straight line. Exiting a shop, a Turk rarely looks neither right nor left to see if a person might cross his path. Taxi drivers are responsible for so many social faux-pas that to let it bother you would spell your doom. Turks do not say please or thank you easily and irresponsibly. And I've eventually beat my entrenched prejudice that my mother's way of dealing with the world was the only civilised one.

I've had to change my perceptions. Friendliness is conceivably even more important than politeness, though for a long time it was politeness, and the way I perceived it, that took the upper hand. I now believe them to be two separate and distinct things.

Naturally, particular aspects of la Comedie humaine still really do my head in. A few weeks ago, when the imam refused to open the mosque that my cat could escape and return home, I definitely uttered some atrocities under my breath about him, religion, and religious people, all regardless of denomination. But I didn't shout and my cat returned home safely the following morning, looking a little more ecstatic than usual.

And of course, I've become my own boss. This, more than anything else, has contributed to my state of chilled-out well-being. I don't have to attend any meetings, perhaps humanity's most pointless achievement.

Personally, I think the proof is my inability to cuss in Turkish. As an Australian, and according to transformational grammar theory, I would have been born with an innate capacity for swearing. And I was. In Paris I successfully managed to upset a lot of Frenchies too with Moliere's tongue but foul Turkic terms do not flow easily from my mouth.

Maybe these people are just a lot nicer to me.

Sunday, November 02, 2008

The little park that was no more.


A week or so ago, I woke up. As I do most days. However, this time, rather than to the wailing call to prayer, brawling felines, chamber music or my cleaner coming through the door, the dulcet tones of heavy machinery filled the air.

Crashing sounds followed by more things breaking, falling apart, and then crashing again.

Occupational Health and Safety are probably best defined in Istanbul as two nouns, an adjective and a conjunction. Town Planning could also be adequately interpreted in simplified terms. Someone got approval to initiate something but no-one can actually explain or be bothered to enlighten you about what they intend to do in the once-functional space that now resembles a disused quarry.

Welcome to my neighbourhood park in Cihangir, or as we clever Turkic-comprehending people might articulate, Cihangir Parkı. Home to well over the legally acceptable limit of cats, truant children and people who never pick up their dog's faeces, the park was previously the crowning glory in a neighbourhood of which other Istanbul residents were clearly jealous, in a metropolis where verdant foliage appears as frequently as drag queens at a brick-laying convention.

My thoughts are this: What in Allah's good name are they doing to the park, the only green space within spitting distance and beyond?

I've scoured the newspapers for information, hoping to discover the the park will be refurbished, refurnished with playground, lacquered benches and maybe one of those little metal contraptions that dispense plastic bags for all the selfish dog owners of Cihangir who think it's fine to allow their animals to defaecate in the park so that it might slowly putrefy and let the rest of us suffer and the park look and smell more like a sewer than an area where residents should be able to relax without smelling foul heaps of dog dung. I'd like to see one of those installed, pronto.

To no avail. The only iota of news suggests that the multi-story car park upon which the park lies is riddled with concrete cancer and presently unable to withstand an earthquake. At this I rudely chortled. Man, the day an earthquake hits this town we're all going for a long, fatal slide into the Bosporus.
So people with moustaches and yellow trucks moved the gate, or more correctly flung it about three metres from where it stood. All trees have been uprooted, and in my opinion, ransacked for firewood. Fencing from the basketball courts sits huddled and unloved on smashed concrete slabs. It looks miserable.

The people with moustaches and yellow trucks have moved on, probably to wreak havoc elsewhere and sell firewood to poorer inhabitants of Istanbul, and the Cihangir Park gate sleeps uncomfortably in its shallow grave. For two weeks now, nothing.

In another country someone would trip over the wreckage of the gate, sue the municipality and then get a massive stack of cash. Back home you'd make sure you were really intoxicated before you stumbled over it ensuring your negligence case would be rewarded even more generously.

In the neighbourhood life goes on. Dog owners continue to allow their pets to soil the grass and people care even less about it than they did(n't) before. And maybe they're right.

My cynical self even thinks the whole thing was done so that the park might appear a suitable backdrop to the burnt-out car that has stood next to the park entrance for the past three months.

Saturday, November 01, 2008

Good Mourning Istanbul

Today the sun was positively shining, a blue, cloudless sky burst forth provocatively to 16 million Istanbullites and I excitedly popped on my regulation shorts and T-shirt before trotting off to endless hours of traffic jams through fifty-three neighbourhoods on public transport to teach some English.

This week, me and the kids are focusing on irregular forms of the simple past. In English, this requires discarding notions of logic and modern teaching methodology and instead resigning oneself to memorising a rather tedious list of verbs.

Deciding against to forbid and to beget among others, my eyes soon glazed over and I leaned against the bus window to examine instead the faster-moving world outside the 42M Levent-Bahçeköy un-express-yet-clean-gas-powered otobüs. Black. More shades of black. This is not Saudi Arabia or pre-war Sicilia, so why the fascination with wearing a colour that makes you look like a dirty rotten gangster?

I'll never understand it. Growing up in sunnier climes, I never, ever remember wearing a single garment the colour of death and mourning my entire childhood. To be honest, I cannot recall donning once a Grim Reaper-inspired number for any occasion, no matter how sober the event.

Turks love wearing black. Far too much.

I've never worn a tuxedo. I've never dressed as a Carmelite nun. I've never wanted to wear a hue I associate with depression, gloom and nasty, ominous things. Black looks good on evil omens; the crow, for example. It's a great colour for ink, a pentacle, and also, in my opinion, computer keyboards. But on people black looks, well, dark. Gloomy. Shady. Mafia-esque. Alla Camorra. People from Naples called Carlo and Donatello are supposed to wear it brazenly. But for me, black belongs in funerals, on over-ripe bananas and up chimneys.

There's clearly a link here between the Turkish addiction to melancholy and their choice of garments. In a nation where ninety percent of citizen's hairs waver between ebony and soot, ninety-five percent of moustaches charcoal and all five o'clock shadows jet-black , the all-encasing chador-wearing women of the city's more conservative neighbourhoods just look a little too over-the-top.

I just checked my wardrobe. No simple cocktail dress. One black item. It's a belt, and that's more correctly classified an accessory than a garment.

Someone needs to explain to me why people choose to wear this hue. I mean, think about this: when someone wearing lime-green Prince of Wales check shorts and a dark blue Quicksilver T-shirt (for example) smiles at you, you're going to return the warmth, right? While someone smothered in funereal garb doing the same, well, it's not smiling - it's a leer, a sinister warning, an I-know-what-you-did kinda oblique look that makes you turn away in fear and cross to the other side of the road.

And another thing. Have you ever wondered about a stange yet likely correlation between those who wear black and missing teeth? I have. And it makes me shudder.