April Showers

Today I found myself caught in a torrential downpour, unarmed with my şemsiye (an umbrella, which, according to my host mother, should be carried with me at all times to prevent getting wet and thereby getting ill) or any other kind of weapon to ply against the elements. On my way from teaching English at the Gençlik Merkezi (Youth Center) with Sophie, we tried to shield ourselves under various coverings included but not limited to a tunnel made of fake rock in a small park, an overcrowded bus stop, and a shop awning before our savior, a young man, beckoned us into a small cafe, where the power had gone out. Once inside, we shook ourselves off and perched at a table looking out onto the rain, thunder, lightning, and hail outside. The cafe owners kindly offered us erik, a small, green fruit, which I believe is a young plum, and strawberries, along with a Türk kahvesi, the delicious, espresso-like coffee for which Turkey is famous.

We sat there sipping our coffee, not really wanting the rain to abate, as we were settled quite cozily indoors. We entertained ourselves by reading our fal, which is a special way to read the coffee grounds to sort of tell fortunes. A little while later, the other American girls came in, even wetter than we were after evidently wading through gigantic puddles that had accumulated. We sat around for awhile longer until the rain somewhat subsided, then proceeded to run across the street to the bus stop, board the extremely crowded bus, fight through terrible traffic, and make our ways home.

After the forty-five minute ride (standing/slipping around on the wet floor), I got off at my bus stop. I ran into my classmate Ayten there - a coincidence to be sure, but not a surprising one. Though I really know few people in this city, I seem to always running into acquaintances. That makes this rather large city feel like a small town in some ways. She was delighted to see me, for in the front of her nearby apartment building, there was a "wild dog" that she was terribly frightened of, and she wanted me to frighten it away. I walked to her apartment and shooed the dog, a big, yellow mutt, away easing open the gate and coaxing it out while Ayten hid herself around the corner. When I looked up, the rain had completely abated. The sun was shining strangely brightly - perfect rainbow weather, if all the apartment buildings hadn't been blocking me on every side.

Turks talk about "April showers" too, and tomorrow we shall see if they will in fact bring May flowers. And as my childhood joke goes: what do May flowers bring? Pilgrims! As I found out, though, that joke doesn't translate very well into Turkish!

Scrub-A-Dub-Dub

The hamam, or Turkish Bath, is widely known around the world, but most people know it by name only. Not many people know exactly what goes down inside a hamam. After visiting the baths several times, I want to share my impressions of the experience.

To begin with, most of the really traditional hamams were built by the Ottomans. And yes, they still exist, and they look just the same! The same buildings have been used for centuries. Maybe there is a little bit more modern plumbing (this is just a maybe, though), but both the exterior and the interior look straight out of Ottoman times. The one I have been to here in Adana was built in the 15th or 16th century. Located in "Eski Adana"  ("Old Adana"), it is a marble construction topped with several domes. Sounds like it would stick out, right? But you could almost miss this building, which is nestled into a crowded and bustling older neighborhood, between tiny kebab restaurants, tailors, small hardware stores, and a small yet lovely mosque and park. The Big Clock (the tallest clock tower in Turkey!), one of Adana's landmarks, stands just down the street, within view from the entrance.

The hamams have separate days, or times of the day, for men and for women. On one of my recent visits, I came bright and early on a Saturday morning with my friend Charlotte and her host mother and sister. We brought with us the necessary towels (one big one for the body, one small one for the head), terlik (flip-flop-ish shoes), shampoo, conditioner, soap, a loofah, and a change of undergarments. Upon arriving, we were ushered into a large changing room where women in various stages of undress mill around, chatting, drinking tea or water, and preparing to either enter the baths or exit the building. We took of our outer clothing leaving only our undergarments on. Some women choose to wear bikinis, but most just wear their underwear and an optional bra.

Let me just take a moment to correct what could be a possible misconception: the women who go to the hamam are generally not harem-like, youthful, buxom beauties. They are mostly older women. Let your mind imagine what it will. You must be ready to shed all preconceptions of body image or modesty before walking into a hamam!

Well, when we finished undressing, we left our clothes and towels hanging on a hook on the wall and walked up a couple of stairs, through a door, and immediately cascaded into a hot, overwhelmingly humid room. The huge room is made of white and cream marble. The domed ceiling lets in light through small holes. All along the walls are giant marble sinks with faucets running water. Off the large room are many smaller and more secluded rooms where there are more sinks. We perched ourselves in one of the smaller rooms and turned on the faucets, one for hot water and one for cold water. We let the sink fill with warm water and used small plastic bowls to dip out water and pour it onto ourselves, fully wetting ourselves from head to toe, letting our skin relax and pores open.

After a few minutes of this, we walked out and up a couple more stairs into another room, where a giant marble slab lay in the middle of the room, under the biggest dome. We lay upon the heated slab, looking up to pinpoints of sunlight coming through the dome. Occasionally warm drops of water would plop down from the ceiling onto my forehead. Women are always talking as they lie there on the slab - gossiping, story-telling, and sometimes attempting to arrange marriages. In previous times, women would go to the hamams to find wives for their sons. It makes sense - they really get to see the entire bride-to-be! Some women still do this today, or at least semi-joke about it. I actually had a pretty convincing offer from one woman, who described to me her son - his education, his job, and told me he had lots of money, a car, and a summer house! Alas, I declined...maybe next time I visit.

Now we move on to the scrub-down. I walked back into a large room I'd passed through on my way to the marble slab. In this room hamam workers take complete control of you, and what interesting characters these hamam workers are! They are middle-aged and older women who spend all their time in the hamam pretty much naked, scrubbing down the women. Two words come to mind when describing them: gruff and saggy. One took me by the hand and told me to sit on a plastic mat on the ground. I removed my bra and the scrubbing began. The woman took a special, rough cloth out and began grating it against my skin, beginning on my arms and working her way all over my body, leaving basically no area untouched. The first time I had this done, I felt pretty violated. After it was over, though, it was amazing to see how much disgusting, dead skin had come off my body. I was left feeling extremely smooth, especially after rinsing myself off once more in the sinks. That's when we took out the soap and shampoo to finish washing ourselves. After washing myself, I was ready to get out - the heat and humidity take a toll after awhile. I left to go out into the cool dressing room, where I sat for a little while in my towel drinking water before changing back into my clothes, feeling clean yet exhausted.

The whole experience lasts about forty-five minutes to an hour and costs, I believe, eight Turkish lira for the entrance fee and five or so more for the scrub-down. All in all, it's about ten American dollars. The traditional hamam is no deluxe spa. There are more modern, fancier spa facilities in town, but I prefer my hamam to be traditional - full of women of all shapes and sizes doing what they've done, their mothers, their grandmothers, and so on have done for hundreds of years.

A (Brief) Turkish Love Story

This weekend I heard the story of how my Turkish grandparents fell in love.

It was Saturday morning at the summer house in Mersin. My grandparents had graciously agreed to host both me and three of the other American girls from Adana for the weekend. We were sitting at breakfast, a typically large and delicious meal: eggs, tomatoes, cucumbers, fresh bread, green olives, black olives, cheese, honey, and so on. We sat on the spacious, open porch at a round table, the morning Mediterranean air hovering, the sun shining little rays onto our table and refracting reddish-brown light from our clear tea glasses. The conversation was lively already, mostly thanks to my grandfather, who is somewhat of a philosopher in his own way - doling out savory morsels of timeless wisdom that sound even fresher to my ears when they come from a new language. The tea was being poured by the glass: "It helps the conversation," said my grandmother as she leaned over with the shiny silver teapot to refill my glass for perhaps the fourth time. After a brief lull, the conversation, as always in Turkish, turned to go like this:

"You know, your grandmother and I have been together for forty-five years," my grandfather said. He held up his bronzed, toughened hand to make a four and then a five. His words rumbled into the air in his deep voice. The entire table of girls cooed in appreciation. "We met in middle school." My grandmother let out her little cackling laugh, her eyes crinkling into a wide smile. "How did it happen? We were playing outside. I saw her from aways away." He smiled and fixed his deep brown eyes on mine. "It was like a bucket of water was poured on my head. I knew right then." The image struck me so clearly that it was as if the metaphorical bucket of water had once again been poured upon my head. "But it took awhile! Her family said I was too poor. It took many years before we were married. But we were. And now we are!" And they turned to each other and laughed and smiled. The entire table sat in a brief second of silence with giddy smiles on our faces. The story had been told so simply yet to such great effect.

The story stuck with me throughout the day as the sun rose higher into the sky and we made our way to the beach to swim in the Mediterranean. I thought of the many love stories I've heard from my American family throughout the years - stories that also evoked powerful images or sensations. Now this story, from across the world, from my "grandfather" who is no blood relation to me, is joining the ranks of the numerous stories I already know by heart of my great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents back in America. For no matter what language or what part of the world they come from, love stories strike a chord; they become a part of the collection of stories that I'll remember and save to one day share with future generations, too.

Fast Food

Burger King and McDonald's may seem about as American as it gets, yet these fast food restaurants also abound over here in Turkey. Turks eat the same burgers, fries, and Cokes enthusiastically (and for a much higher price), and they consider the mass-processed meals almost a delicacy. There is, however, another version of Turkish fast food, the fresh and traditional counterparts to the influx of Americanized fast food. Today I learned how to make one such popular item, namely "sıkma". 

I went with the four other NSLI-Y girls in Adana around noon to the house of...well, I'm not really sure. One of our AFS volunteers, Funda, took us to the house of some of her friends and/or relatives, who live in an older part of town called Denizli. We pulled up to the house, on a busy street tucked behind a store that displayed everything from kites to shoes. Several women, wearing the traditional "şalvar", loose pants with a low crotch, and head scarves came out to enthusiastically greet us. They brought us şalvar and heads scarves to wear, too (we never pass up an opportunity to wear these comfortable pants). They laid out a cloth on the concrete in a little courtyard area and brought out a big tub of dough they had kneaded, some flat trays, and some thin rolling pins (about the circumference of a broom handle). One woman sat and rolled the dough into little balls, and then she would hand us a ball. We used the small rolling pins to roll each ball out into a tortilla-like bread: round and thin. 

A couple of feet away, the women set up a small fire. Around the fire they placed several concrete blocks to use as a stand for a convex, metal tray. After the dough was rolled out, we brought the tortilla-like substance to the fire and cooked it quickly on this metal tray, flipping the dough rapidly from side to side. This takes probably only thirty seconds or so. After it was satisfactorily cooked, we brought it back to the cloth, where we quickly spread butter over the steaming bread, and then added one of three other toppings: a cheese/parsley mixture, a potato/onion mixture, and sugar. We then rolled them up into a thin roll, rather like an enchilada, and ate them with our hands. The savory cheese and potato mixtures were delightfully filling, while the sugar-filled ones made a wonderful dessert. It was so rewarding to make this food - sıkma - ourselves - rolling out the dough, cooking it, filling it, and eating it - all outside on a beautiful, spring day.

This is sold on the streets and in the open markets by women who sit out rolling this dough and cooking it right in front of you. This is just one of the many kinds of Turkish "fast food" that I much prefer to the Burger King or McDonald's that many Turkish youths seem to prefer. Making it myself gave me new appreciation for the women who make it - it's difficult to roll those perfect circles out quickly and cook them just the right way!

I write often on my blog about activities that I do that seem more "traditionally" Turkish to me. This is in part because my day-to-day life had become so standard for me that it seems "normal". I want to write a little bit soon more about my school and family life, my day-to-day schedule, and so forth. To do this I'll have to look at my life the way someone looking in from another place would see it. If anyone has any specific questions about my life here, please let me know, so I can make sure to address them when I write about this subject. Thanks!

Adana'da İlkbahar

In the streets: vendors plying their wares; fresh, plump strawberries piled high atop wooden trays; the tiny, green, fuzzy fruits that spring from almond trees; boys on bicycles deliver kebabs; old women wear flower patterned şalvar and squint in the sunlight; dogs sleep in patches of grass or directly on the cement; children run and shout and sing; music plays from store fronts; ice cream stands abound; trees in bloom; smells of freshly mown grass and dust.

Sprıng has sprung! Get ready for more blog posts!