On Being a Turkish Housewife!


When I open my eyes these mornings in my new home, I am surprised that most of the noise is outside and not inside my head.  There are the familiar seagull sounds and the not so familiar sounds of green parrots, the sounds of cats–lots of cats here, dumped on campus and then they reproduce freely plus the pet ones–and the call to prayer in the predawn gray light, otherworldly and beautiful.

There are not lists of things to do, people to call, problems to solve, work to be done.  So my first job of the day is to make tea and breakfast for Tommy who is working hard to create harmony among the higher mathematicians and to teach higher mathematics in his new department.

So the Turkish housewife drill: shopping, cleaning, cooking, gardening, family, what else, fashion? It has been awhile since I looked at a Redbook or a Good Housekeeping!


Shopping: Today I went to the Tuesday market in the village of Arnavutköy, our town; picture a small parking lot size area with long trestle tables set up on saw horse legs like we used to have for public suppers, piled high with beautifully arranged fruit and vegetables, everything you would expect plus okra, extra long leeks and lots of fresh figs.  There was a fish table with styrofoam boxes with  whole fish in them on ice. The fish seller scaled,cleaned and filleted the fish I chose and even wrote down the name of it in Turkish in my moleskin book that I carry around with me. Looked like Mackerel to me, tasted like it, and was delicious!  I bought way too many walnuts from the nut and dried fruit man because I couldn’t remember the word for half, as in half a kilo.

Not too difficult really to shop for produce when I am looking right at it and can point, although I don’t always understand the numbers I am told when I ask “Ne kadar”, how much. But imagine going with me to the local hardware store down a couple of stone steps off the narrow cobbled street to a small store crowded with goods to try to buy some screws! Okay, so I got across the pantomime of screwing something, and he produced screwdrivers and then power screwdrivers!  I finally saw a screw head on the face of a drawer and we had it!  Last week I bought a spade from this same store; the owner attached a wooden handle too while I waited. That went so well that I got a rake the same time and today bought a small hand-size mattock for 10 Lira about $6.  Hardware stores are my favorite, right after plant stores, of course!

Shopping is an adventure, not the least of which is the hike back through the village and up the very big hill to our house with my bags in hand or in my backpack. Some people take taxis; maybe I will need to do that one day, but not yet!

Gardening is easy, I know how to do that, but haven’t yet figured out how to get manure or compost besides making the latter, not the former, that might not go over too well although they are progressive here and have installed a whole new system that recycles grey water to flush and water with.  I have some rough ground to work with since they renovated this house for us this summer. They also planted a strip of garden with shrubs that I will shuffle around when the fall rains come. But so far I have rearranged the driveway with a spade, rake, and 2 plastic pails, done some pruning, planted spinach seed, the only seed I have since our shipped boxes haven’t arrived yet, and planted some new shrubs I bought into new containers. I have plans for a small stone wall, and more vegetables etc.

There are horse chestnuts, and fig trees, lots of holly and ivy, some huge weeds that look like fennel, black raspberries, small plums in shades of purple and yellow, maples, oaks, pines, beautiful sycamores and  lots of other trees I don’t know.  Some weeds I know and some I don’t. It is pretty hot and dry here, but today it showered some and the other bank on the Asian side disappeared in the rain!

Cooking is easy after I get the food home up that hill. There are regular type supermarkets as well as the outside and small shops but I prefer doing what I can’t do at home. Even the supermarkets come with challenges. From the pictures on the labels can you tell which cleaning product you are buying?  The food is lovely; fantastic vegetables, and fish, lots of kinds of feta type cheeses as well as others, lots of olives, fruit, meats, real bread and gooey sweets if you want them.

Cleaning? Well, I could buy a vacuum or hire a cleaning lady but I am doing fine with a mop and broom. This house is so newly done that it seems easy to take care of. I did buy an iron because people seem to appreciate looking spiffy.  Which brings me to fashion.

In Ikea, where we went on a faculty trip, mostly for the newly hired foreign staff–apparently it is an annual affair–there were a few matrons in full black burka with their faces, however, showing. They were happily shopping in the sleek modern monster mall that held Ikea and many others stores including Starbucks! On the street men are all wearing the usual from T shirts and jeans to suits. Women wear the latest styles complete with cleavage showing and high heels all the way to full length duster type coats and carefully arranged headscarfs. Often a mother will be dressed the latter way and her teenaged daughter in shorts and tee shirt.  It must be a challenge for them, but family seem to be everything and I have seen men caring for their children often as well.

Family is very important to the Turks. There are many Turkish and American or Turkish and English marriages that have occurred at Robert College and most of them talk a lot about visiting their families on both sides.

So we have entered the family of Robert College which is stretching it a bit in familiarity since we are still figuring it all out and don’t hope to be able to fathom this complex place and culture in the rest of our lives even if we wanted to spend that long, but the adventure is great, we are making friends and I promise more photos for the next installment.

After 22 years at Islesboro Central School I began to search for a new position and Robert College found me.  Sue agreed to leave her landscaping business in the capable hands of our son Dan with help from his partner Kim Lockrow and brother T.L. and we left home and friends to find our way 5,000 miles to our delightful house over looking the Bosphorus on the 65 acre campus of Robert College (RC), preserved and managed for 150 years since the founding in 1863 by two Americans, philanthropist Christopher Rhinelander Robert and Cyrus Hamlin, its purpose to offer an "American style" education under the Ottoman Empire; Robert College has been in operation longer than any other American-sponsored school outside the United States.

In this midst of the rambling city of 13 million, the campus is lush, and though densely developed, the buildings and infrastructure are tucked among the steep ravines so that there is an omnipresent sense of seclusion.
Our house, Power House, named for once being a power station for the school, was completely redone prior to our arrival: new appliances, new tile bath and kitchen, new floors, new insulated windows.  We have been told several times how lucky we are to move in here and we totally agree: our view of the Bosphorus from our terrace is divine!  And with the newly pruned shrubs and trees, Sue has an opportunity to get her hands dirty.
On our first free afternoon, Sue and I walked the perimeter, a good habit in a new locale, apt for island dwellers.  Making a complete circumnavigation of the campus (there is a concertina-wire topped fence hidden away) is an arduous walk, up and down draws and gullies, enough to tighten your calves.

Outside the Yalı (wooden houses that line the waterfront, and, yes, that is an "i" without a dot) Gate is the Bosphorus, 25 miles of natural strait connecting the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara, thence to the Aegean Sea and on to the Mediterranean.  Here, it is less than two miles across but it varies from a little more than two miles wide to just under a half mile.  On one side lies Europe, while the far side is Asia.  East meets West.  The familiar confronts the exotic.  And here we are.

Yesterday we took a left outside the gate to walk along the waterfront; there, the first neighborhood is Arnavütköy, an Albanian fishing village settled around 300 AD, retaining the feel of an old village subsumed by a modern city, containing many seafood restaurants as well as a cobbler.

In our first night, not sleeping, I wandered to the bathroom and at 4:30 AM the first call to prayer began.  I stood, transfixed at the foot of our bed, as one voice, pleading and intense, was followed by another and another and another each more distant, not echoing, not the same words even, but each thread weaving together; while one paused another emerged an octave higher layered with a third fainter but more plaintive, a chorus not from another culture but from a different world.
A different country, a different culture, a new house, a different job and thankfully, the same partner.