Yabancı

I am yabancı. The Turkish word for foreigner, yabancı, is derived from the word yaban meaning savage. Just as the ancient Greeks would refer to foreigners as barbarians, the Turks, at least linguistically, consider those unlike themselves to be savages.
I am just such a savage. I am uncouth and at times, yes, even barbarous to these people. For instance, I rarely anounce my gratitude with the force of a Turk. Turks generally entone thanks with an epic sequence of thank yous--çok sağ olun, teşekkür ederim. My short thank yous rarely measure up.
Aside from my failure to express proper gratitude, my appearance can often offend the refined Turk. It has always been my manner to spend as little of my own money on clothes as possible. The great majority of my wardrobe is composed of either gifts or give-aways that family and friends were kind enough to contribute. Of these pieces of vestiture I customarily find a favorite and wear it to tatters. This habit does not mesh well with the Turks. At the work place I am hopelessly out of place. The men are clad in the finest dandy manner. And the women? Well with their six-inch heels and perfectly applied makeup they strut through the school halls like a movie star on a red carpet. Then there's me. Wearing the same frayed and frazzled pants for a week, I probably look more like a hobo than a teacher.
The list goes on but to avoid any more self defamation I will make an end to my examples. What I've come to recognize in these two short years is the impossibility of socialization at an old age. I am savage and will forever remain as much. My social programing runs deep and cannot merely be uprooted and modified even with the greatest of effort. It is there, below the surface, and it persists.
It thus comes as little surprise that the impulse both indigenous and foreign to reprogram Turkish society that has been de riguer in Istanbul since the 19th century has failed to secularize and nationalize the great majority of Anatolians. Even though traditional Islam seemed to have been expunged under the auspices of Kemalism, it remained below the surface and continues as the most viable political and social force for mobilization in Turkey. Tribalism endures in eastern Turkey and defies the forces of nationalism. Kurdish separatism resists fracturing Turkish solidarity despite incessant military interventions. The foreigner, whether he be American, Kurdish, Islamist, or Kemalist, congregates in Istanbul in the very convergence of continents and reminds us that we may forever remain savage.

Thanks

Some five years ago my wife stopped being just a wife and became a mother. Over the time I have known my wife, about 11 years now, she has gone through many such changes: girl to girlfriend, fiancee to wife, etc. Note that women seem to do this often. Men, on the other hand, tend to reach a plateau and any growth beyond that is often slow, gradual, and requires enormous effort. For instance, I am still attempting to adopt the habit of picking up my clothes from the floor after declothing myself. Women can transform or mutate with such suddenness that I'm certain it must stun them as much as it consternates and bewilders their male companions.

My wife went through just such a change the day our first born shot from her loins. Although this mutation, like the many that had preceded it, appeared subtle at first, after time its effects became more apparent. She began to worry. That was the first change I noticed. Despite the sleep deprivation imposed by the incessant pumping to supply our screaming fetus's insatiable appetite, she began to awake in what few minutes of sleep she had to assure that her loaf of a husband had not rolled onto the newborn in his deep and sound slumber.

To me this tiny and shriveled newborn, this odd organism that could do little but scream in agony was barely human (I still maintain that babies are not homo sapiens), to her it was a precious appendage of her own life and spirit. She could empathize with its pain, discover its desires, and calm its aching heart (notice that I refer to my son as 'it'). My wife like so many of her gender had become a mother.

Now this change was welcome but it also represented a great challenge for me. My wife became a selfless creature, a veritable saint, and I remained an oafish man. Men, you will remember, are slow to change. Change has been hard and I must admit that I miss that woman that I once married. Fortunately though, unlike the "change" preached by political candidates, this change was as rewarding as it was palpable. I needed my wife to be a mother because it was the only way I could ever learn to be a father. I learn from the way she lives. She is my example. Her goodness is that cold bucket of water that I desperately need to awaken me from my spitirual lethargy. So on this Mother's Day I thank her. Thank you for waking me up. Thank you for teaching me. Thank you for your patience and sacrifice. Some day you won't have to wait any more.

For Love or Money?

Yes, yes, this is a tired cliche that couldn't even be resurrected by the likes of Michael J. Fox. For those of you who may have forgotten, For Love or Money was the title of actor Fox's 1993 sappy but oh-so-touching romantic comedy that incisively depicted the inveterate consumerism of New York life. If you haven't watched it, do yourself a favor and look it up. You won't be disappointed. The film, however, may have been better situated in the bustling simit-selling metropolis of Istanbul--a city where the consumerism may be more recent but is well on its way to being just as entrenched as that of New York.

You see, for well over a year now I have been offering courses at the local dersane (a private academy for students to supplement the little learning they do in school with a little but equally as useless after-school learning). In my efforts to foster my students' English I often assign them simple writing topics to elicit their thoughts on a variety of ideas. One topic I always give is our aforementioned cliche. The results are always unanimous: money. It seems that no Turk in his or her right mind would ever be compelled to marry someone for such a silly reason as love.

I know, I know, this seems very odd to us Westerners but if examined with more scrutiny we can see where our two societies depart. First of all, in America we have the luxury of not worrying about money. Many a blue-collar worker can afford a house, a car and even a college education for a child--with the help of government assistance that is. And even if we can't afford the house, we buy it anyway and blame the rich bankers when we can't make the payments. We can even hide behind an all-giving government who promises to subsidize our payments for us when we come up a little short. But in Turkey, there is no benevolent government with deep pockets. A skilled laborer can hope, if he or she's lucky, to make a monthly salary of $500, a sum which doesn't go very far in a city as expensive as New York. Match this subsistence living to a culture with a deep-seated tradition of arranged marriage and its plain to see why money is always the champion in Istanbul. Its very rapacity may extend from the omnipresent paucity which encircles the city. Its now rampant consumerism may very well originate from this fiscal catastrophe. Economic need perpetuates this buying frenzy whose end is to secure a wealthy mate and thus ensure financial sufficiency.

A year and a half ago I stumbled into this pecuniary madness full of ideals. I scoffed at this consumerism but now I feel I may be "going Turk." Over these months of scarcity I have been gradually developing a sense of what money can do for a family. Thus, when I was offered a job last week in Qatar that would pay three times my current salary, I found myself all too ready to pack up our bags. I have grown to love Turkey, its people, and our little branch here. But is love enough for a family of five in Istanbul?