White Baboon

We are at the end of the beginning. On the road for over fifty six days, our life is predictably unpredictable. Here’s how one day unfolded:

7:00 Michael’s watch alarm goes off.

7:25 We get up. High energy costs mean bedrooms are typically pretty cold, so unless there’s a room heater, I sleep in my clothes. No need to get dressed. I brush my teeth and hair and put the blankets back on the bed (we have long since stopped mourning the lack of sheets). It has rained quite frequently on our trip, so I retrieve my windbreaker and make sure my half-gloves are in the pockets—the kind that homeless people usually wear. It is Saturday. Last time I showered? Wednesday night.

7:45: Tejad asks us if we have everything. He does not live here. Fuat does. But we stayed with Tejad the night before we moved here and he slept over. And yesterday, another guy, Oz, gave us a tour of the mosque, explained why it was $130 to fill up a car with gas here and found us rain ponchos. Tejad is a tall, half-bearded 22-year old studying economics in Adana and is very inclined to laugh. He can recite the Denver Nuggets roster and until last night thought that they were named after McDonald’s famous chicken meal. He’s also a huge fan of the show How I Met Your Mother. We’d never heard of it yesterday, but by now have seen six episodes.

8:00: We are on a city bus to the train station. Tejad insisted on accompanying us there because we are helpless tourists.

8:30: At the station, we buy two tickets to Iskendar for about $10. It’s not much, but we wince as this is the first time we’ve paid for transportation since Day 14.

8:45: Tejad leaves us and Michael goes to get breakfast. Small cheese pastries and a cup of plain yogurt.

10:09: Pretending to read. A complete stranger gives her baby to six college-age kids on the train and they pass the baby around, cooing and giggling before handing him back.

10:15: Having bonded over the child, the kids begin to ask us questions by first huddling over a pen and newspaper then presenting us with sentences they have formed in English. They go something like this:Are you want US be in Iraq?You like Amedinijad?Rapport quickly develops as they giggle and practice their English. They are all cousins—Emre, Ibrahim, Inur, Fudya and Hussein—coming home for the weekend from University.You want come our house?

11:30: We are sitting on the floor in Fudya’s living room with eight Turkish kids eating spinach burek, cabbage, and potato soup. There is a lot of laughing and giddiness. THIS is traveling. Her home is in a small village—a walk, taxi and minibus ride from the train we got off in the middle of nowhere.

11:45: We are introduced to the ram they will slaughter next week for Korban Bayrami, the Muslim holiday.

12:15: We visit their football stadium, the village river, their parent’s orchard and more family members. Friends come by. Tea is served. There is a lot of cheek touching—the physical greeting here in Turkey. When Ibrahim see’s his grandfather, he kisses his hand.

3:30: Using our SIM card in their phone, we call our hosts in Antakya (friends of a couchsurfer in Antalya) and have the kids explain our schedule.

4:30: We are on sitting on $5 bus to Antakya, a bag of 25 oranges in hand as well as a free new pair of socks (you have no idea how exciting that is) and a warm fuzzy feeling, looking out the window at three of our hosts who will not leave the station until we have safely departed. A horror movie (American of course) is playing on the bus television. We are soon offered chocolate cookies and Coke by the bus attendant.

6:00: Standing in a very dark parking lot, only a barber’s lights in sight. We need a phone to call Sakine.

6:02: After two phone calls, a lot of confusion, a barber shop visit, hovering taxi drivers, we are riding in a small white car through a very dark Antakya. We do not know the driver. He will not speak to us.The whole thing would have been very sketchy, but only because why would a very grumpy guy with a broken hand and no gas in his car be willing to drive total strangers to meet another total stranger in another part of town unless he was getting something out of the deal? But the answer to that is “because that guy is Turkish.” And that’s why there is nothing sketchy about this at all.

6:30: We meet smiley, energetic Sakine and Jaylin, two of the three sisters who will host us for two nights (which turned into four) in this much more Middle Eastern city near the Syrian border which claims to be home to the very first church in the entire world. Peter and Paul apparently hung out here.

Night 56 will have to be another blog.

So whaddya think this means?Okay, so it means no honking. Maybe this is obvious. But when we first saw it, we were trying to picture the council meeting which could have instigated such a sign:

“I’m serious, Sezgin, I’ve had enough of that ridiculous orchestral rubbish and I want something done about it!”

“Now, Erkan, there’s no reason to get all worked up about a little trumpet playing.”

“He’s got a point,” said Ibrahim. “After fifty-seven renditions of the theme from Lawrence of Arabia, even music connoisseurs have a limit . .”

“Okay, okay, I hear what you’re saying,” said Sezgin. “I’ll get a few signs up and give word to the band director at Izmir Musical Academy to give it a rest.”

Our hostel hostess Yoomi, in Pamukkale was a fabulous cook and a motherly presence. I”ll miss her. (Photo by Michael)

What’s that language at the top right?????

“Merhaba,” I say to the bartender.He smiles wide, ready to take my request, customer service hugging him like an aura.“Do you have a pen and a paper?” I ask in English, following Michael’s advice to at least begin communication in full sentences rather than the toddler style of pointing and blurting.But he doesn’t speak any English and shakes his head in confusion. No problem. I try again with pantomime by drawing a square on the bar, then pretending to write something upon it.Aha! He seems to say, a look of recognition on his face. And promptly brings me the salt.I laught pretty loud before I just start looking for a pencil behind the bar and quickly find one.And I thought I was good at charades.

Sitting here talking about love life issues. Just ordered a Dominos pizza. Celine Dion’s French voice is in the air.

But first having cigarettes and coffee. Tea will be after the meal. How does anyone sleep here?

When Sez’s couchsurfing profile told me that his motto in life was: “take the blue pill,” I knew he would be a good host. But I had no idea what we were in for. By day, while Sez went to work, we read, wrote, cooked and wandered his neighborhood of apartments, patisseries and dirt soccer fields. When he returned home, we fell into conversation about Bush, the PKK (see video here) and the troubles of his Iranian friend, Sara. He played Arabesque Turkish love songs for us. His friend Erkan improved his English. We taught him the words to They Might Be Giants rendition of the Istanbul-Constantinople song.

One night, we saw live Turkish music, clapping along with immersion beneath the ceiling-wrapped vines of tulip lights, green wavy walls and round tables of testosterone. We drank Tuborg and took pictures. We ate a traditional cig kufte appetizer of spicy raw meat sprinkled with lemon and wrapped in a lettuce leaf. And then, we were forced to sing what words we knew of Hotel California into a microphone. In front of the bar.

Here in Denizli, where he lived, there was nothing to see. He knew that. We knew that. But we didn’t care. We were interested in speaking with the real Turkish people about life. What they ate for breakfast (olives, bread, jam). How much vacation they got (two weeks). How they dated (a lot of very formal set ups).

And even Lonely Planet, the bible of all guidebooks, with its boxed vignettes of anecdotes about regional cuisine and historical legends, has become, shall we say, “quaint” after the cultural exchange which is possible from couchsurfing. . . .

So many experiences, so little time. . . .six months will never be enough.

1. Seeing a live and very unruly black ram led out of the cargo hold of a passenger bus.
2. Basking in the inspirational energy of a Ani Pierpont who just wrote Sinan Diaryz—a walking tour book of Istanbul’s Ottoman architecture. God, I miss American female bonding.
3. Watching Turkish woman avoid “regular” toilets in favor of the stand-up squat variety. But, I guess when you’ve been going touch-less you’re whole life, a plastic seat seems gross. (Yes, Christine, of course I’m hovering!)
4. Learning what a real supernova is.
5. Attempting to sink into the floor as a violent movie called “The Marine” began playing on a bus ride through Turkey.
6. Having a conversation about time machines with Michael over our umpteenth (Mom, this is your word!) donner kebab and ayran (something like buttermilk).
7. Time spent with Kirdir–the rug-selling, bike-renting, triathlon-coaching guy with a moustache.
8. Being served coffee, water, tea and cookies. On a bus. Does Greyhound do this?
9. The inescapable irony of having to explain that we were in the “Peace Corps”, to Turkish people, at this present time.
10. Joking with Sez, our second Turkish couchsurfing host, about the Seinfeld Soup Nazi.

For our first couchsurfing experience, we stayed with Meriç (pronounced Merich) in Bursa. He lived in a farm of landscaped, pastel apartment buildings in the suburbs. He commuted to work, drove downtown to go bar-hopping, ate lunch and dinner in a company food court and shopped at a massive grocery store built just for his subdivision. The grocery store looked a lot like Albertsons. If it weren’t for the flags, it could have been any American suburb.

Honest, sincere and accommodating, Meriç was an angelic host. He took us to dinner, drove us around, helped us fax and print and picked us up from the ferry. We stayed two nights, but he would have let us sleep in his college-like flat for a week. Mer?ç and his easy-going, Facebook-belonging friends drank wheat beer and smoked Marlboro Lights. So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when they said to us, upon hearing about our Peace Corps service and future plans: But what about security? What about your future? Aren’t you worried? How could you just abandon your jobs? And Syria? Be careful!The same comments we get from fellow Americans.You just never know what you’re gonna get. . .

These Turkish promenade-placed shrubs are like a cross between egg-dyed romaine lettuce heads and those trendy crocheted broches found at Urban Outfitters . . . .

From the Esisehir-to-Afyon bus. As a farmers daughter, I’ve been there before.

I’ve been looking for an antique-white, cherry-themed serving plate. Um, no. But if I was, I could find one in Turkey. The grocery stores here have just as many wicker cd racks, painted teapots and Elv?s twizzler sets as any Safeway. Ack. More stuff.

After much mourning I had accepted the fact that we would be traveling when the next season of Lost came out . . . .but can I help it if Sawyer is following me around the world?

When you think of Turkey what comes to mind? Prison? Constantinople? East Meets West? The toilets? Well. . .it sure seems more like P-R-I-D-E.I’ve never seen so many flags at once. Even after 9/11.

Turkey flies their red and white with side-of-a-building-sized gestures and in the strangest spots. Everywhere. Which, to be honest, makes everywhere feel just a little bit more festive. As if you might run into a pageant, parade, or cotton candy stand around the next corner.Thing is, I’m trying to picture, say, New York like this. A flag at Macys. Dozens more from East side apartment balconies. Stars and stripes down the Empire State Building. Strung in tiny triangles from telephone poles in the village. In the back window of taxis along fifth avenue. It’s probably Old Navy’s attempt to make the flag a fashion statement and the lack of support for the current administration, but this vision seems both impossible and cheesy. And American gets so much shit for being patriotic—especially from the Brits! We’ve got nothing on Turkey!

But the flags are only a beginning. Turks actually “scurry” to find someone who speaks English for us. They walk us to where we want to go. Invite us back to their place for beers. Carry our bags. Pay for our tickets. Give us extra tea. They are the most hospitable people we’ve ever encountered and we get thefeeling it’s because they are proud. They want us to leave their country andspread the love. Who are we to say no?

We are now in Syria.Although there were stories or interrogations and bright overhead lights, none of that happened. But we had our own initiation–we were taken “hostage” by an overly hospitable border family for 36 hours in what we’ve come to call the Will of the Collective.It all started when “the girls” put us on a dolmush (a minibus) headed for Reyhanle, a Syrian-Turkey border town, with instructions that the family of their friend, Guler, would help us get on a bus to Syria. In Reyhanle, we were intercepted by a guy who we could only assume was the right one. Hussein led us away from the bus stop to his home, where we were served breakfast of bread, olives, jam, cheese and tea in a carpet picnic with the rest of his family staring in awe. It was 9:00 AM. Two hours later we learned that we would be sleeping there and tomorrow we’d go to Syria.

Mmmmhmmmm.

But this kindness killing was nothing new. And these days we were choosing the shabby, often neglected door marked “Time” over the hundreds of fancy French double doors marked “Money”. So it was okay.

Sort of.

The rest of the day, we were treated like a mix of celebrity, toddler and Christmas toy–never left alone. We were explained how to wash our hands, taught to dip our bread in our cheese and told that we definitely wanted another cup of tea. Hussein repeated to us in VERY minimal English, roughly every seven minutes (I say roughly because it felt like every four seconds), these three messages: 1) that we were all one–that Hussein’s father was our father, his sisters were our sisters, his brother our brother 2) that we would go tomorrow to Syria and 3) that all of us would chat via Windows Instant Messenger so we could continue these fulfilling conversations beyond today.

There was a village tour, a bread-making demonstration and a lot of Arabic music before it became apparent that I was to hang out in the girl’s bedroom with Fatmah, 25 and Selva, 19, and somehow find conversation even though neither of them spoke any English. Michael’s place was on the couch next to brother Ali, Hussein and their father or in the computer room, using the translation software to have very caveman-like conversations. That night I stayed with the girls and I’m still not sure where Michael slept. The next morning when we hugged in a relieved embrace, the show of affection was a spectacle. Luckily, they all thought it was really funny instead of really disrespecting.We finally made it across the border that day. Although the three men’s presence (there was no bus, we were forced to hire a taxi) helped hurry the border patrol along with their tapping fingers and Arabic jabber, we had no idea what they were explaining about our visit, our visa, anything–and we didn’t like that one bit. How, we thought, could it be possible that getting by in a foreign country could be so much more stressful WITH help than WITHOUT?But mostly, we are puzzled by what seemed, regardless of culture, a complete lack of respect for our own schedule or preferences. We were never asked if we wanted to stay over. We were told. And a few days ago, the hotel clerk, Ahmed, a nice guy who we’d become friends with over the past few nights of wine and conversation, did not invite us to his home to meet his family for dinner, he told us we would be going.Let’s be clear. I am very appreciative of this hospitality. But I’m still curious about its roots.In both Turkey and Syria, the dinner table is one big appetizer platter. Almost all food is communal. One or two water glasses serve a group of seven. Bedrooms, due to energy costs and space, are divided only between sexes. The idea of privacy. . .of the individual. . .is missing. These people assume that because we have no friends or family, we will be grateful for the “comfort” of a group. No matter what.

It is simply the Will of the Collective.

“We have fish. Very nice fish. I can cook for you with corn, wheat corn.”Fish sounds dreamy but is usually way beyond our budget. We exchange concerned glances.”How much?”"I make whole meal for $12 together. We have very nice wine here in Anamure.”"How much?”Ten lira for you”(Alcohol is a big splurge for us. It’s been a long time since we’ve had a beer. We don’t say anything.)”We have breakfast here in morning.”"How much?”"Ummm, 3.5 Lira”(We consider. We just bargained the pension for 20 lira, down from 30, because we skipped breakfast and heat. Now he wants 7 lira for breakfast?)”You are American?”"Evet. Ben Americaleem,” we say in Turkish.”Because usually America my best customers, spend lots of money, (he pantomimes throwing money into the air). Where are you from? Homeless part of America?”"No,” we say, looking at each other and realizing just how cheap we’ve become. “We’re from Denver.”