Eating and Fasting for God in Sufi Tradition

Valerie J. Hoffman

Journal of the American Academy of Religion LXIII/3 (1995) 

 Below passages are selected and paraphrased from Hoffman’s article based on my focus of interest.

The Qur'an says all the food of the Jews and Christians is lawful to the Muslims, as is the food of the Muslims lawful to them (5:5). Gratitude (shukr) to God for His provision is one of the main characteristics of the faithful, while unbelievers are characterized, in the typical Qur'anic literary style of assonance and antithetic parallelism, by ingratitude (kufr).

Feeding a poor person is so meritorious that it can be an expiation for failure to observe the fast of Ramadan or for breaking the taboo on hunting during the pilgrimage (2:184, 5:95).

The Qur'anic preoccupation with food and feeding goes beyond discussions of human sustenance and charity. Images of food and drink appear prominently in descriptions of the Garden of Paradise and of Hellfire. The believers who are rewarded in the Garden eat abundant fruit and are served non-intoxicating drinks (43:73). They drink from rivers of water, rivers of milk that does not go sour, non-intoxicating delicious wine, and clarified honey (47:15). On the other hand, those who conceal God's revealed truth or treat it lightly, trying to derive some financial gain from it, "eat nothing but fire into their bellies" (2:174). The wrongdoers in Hellfire have only filth (69:36) and thorns (88:6) and food that chokes (73:13). They fill their bellies from the tree of Zaqqum, which grows in the bottom of hell and produces fruit like the heads of demons (37:6266). They drink boiling water, which tears apart their bowels.

The overall attitude of Hadïth is that the Muslims should be neither too worldly nor too other-worldly: they should take from both this world and the next. For instance, Ibn al-'Arabi cautions disciples against both satiation and excessive hunger. "Keep your constitution in balance, for if dryness is excessive, it leads to corrupt imaginings and long, delirious ravings" (31). Balance and moderation are key words in this attitude.

Attitudes Toward Food in Sufi Tradition

Sufism began as a pious reaction against the growing worldliness of Muslims in the second half of the seventh century C.E., accompanied by an avoidance of government officials and rich people. It developed into a full-fledged mysticism in the late eighth and early ninth centuries, but the asceticism of the early Sufis remained an integral part of Sufi life.

Fasting: The spiritual benefits of fasting are abundant. One is the humbling effect of hunger. Another benefit is that it produces patience. The other aspect among early Sufis was the cultivation of an attitude of absolute dependence on God to provide for all one's needs, avoiding asking for provision from others or working for a living or worrying about where one's food would come from. Fasting is "a fortress and a paradise" for the "friends of God," who has granted them the method to repel the guile and trickery of Satan as in the lost Paradise (1:303-4).

There are some extreme examples of fasting as demonstrated in al-Maghribï’s words among Sufis: The one devoted to the Lord eats only every forty days, and the one devoted to the Eternal eats only every eighty days." Another Sufi commented, "If the Sufi says after five days (of fasting), Ί am hungry,' then send him to the marketplace to earn something" (Qushayrï 1990: 81-2)— implying that he is unworthy to live the Sufi life.

It is not just the quantity of food, but the type of food that affects spiritual well-being. One of the expected charismata of the saint, or friend of God, was the ability to tame wild animals and be on friendly terms with them. Valerie J. Hoffman cites two anecdotes/advice on avoiding animal-fat which were attributed to Rabia and Ibni Arabi.

Sufism and Food in Modern Egypt

Sufis who dress in colorful rags and live off the charity of others without regular employment may still be seen at the celebrations of saints' days (mevlids), but their lifestyle is not highly regarded even in most Sufi circles. They epitomize the "dervishism" that many Sufis feel has given Sufism a bad name with today's educated middle class. Many Sufi shaykhs, however, neither live off the charity of others nor work for a living.

Hospitality’s Link to Food: Sufis today in Egypt appear to delight in the assurance of their relationship with God, and enjoy this relationship while functioning normally in the world. Hoffman argues that rather than embracing hunger, Egyptian Sufis make the serving of food central to their devotional life. Hospitality has long been a prominent aspect of Sufism since the founding of Sufi retreat centers—as early as the eleventh century—that regularly welcomed traveling Sufis. Today, this custom continues in Egypt where Sufi shaykhs or other individuals establish centers for Sufi devotion, spiritual retreats, and hospitality, called sähas.

In contemporary Egypt, Sufi hospitality and devotion often revolve around the attendance of moulids—saint's day celebrations. Moulids/mevlits celebrate the anniversary of the death of a saint (can be any man, woman or child) who is believed to be close to God. Their tombs become shrines where pilgrims implore the intercession of the saint or, more Islamically proper, implore God by virtue of the baraka of the saint, for a variety of reasons such as healing, help with exams, the redress of wrongs, or simply for favor with God.

Some of the moulids/mevlids, like that of Ahmad al-Badawi in the town of Tanta in the Delta, have become such economic affairs that their religious significance becomes obscured by the secular pursuits.

Although food may be offered by a spiritual superior or by a person of lower spiritual rank to a spiritual superior, the meaning of the offering of food is interpreted according to the larger context. Any food offered at a moulid carries the baraka of the saint in whose name it is offered. When a shaykh offers food, he is offering his own baraka, and blessing is conveyed to the person who eats. When a shaykh/shaykha accepts an invitation to eat at somebody's home, he brings baraka to the house, and honors the host by tasting their food. Hierarchy and submission are expressed not by the mere act of offering food, but by the dispensation and receiving of blessing.

Among the drinks, milk seems to enjoy a special significance Sufism, signifying spiritual adoption if visions or dreams are related to it. 

Hoffman concludes with a balanced statement that in Sufism, eating to satisfy one's appetites leaves one open to Satanic insinuation, but eating for the sake of God can strengthen one for worship.

Wild Women Representations Part III _Agnes Varda

Sans Toit Ni Loi or Vagabond (1985)

 

The name of the main character of Agnes Varda’s Sans Toit Ni Loi  is Mona or Justine (because she changed her name from Justine to Mona, she says). Although the French title's translation is "No Shelter No Law" in non-Francophone countries it was released as Vagabond. I think I have first seen it at a film festival in Istanbul or Ankara but this revisit was glorious. I entirely enjoyed the mastery in it. Mona is 'the vagabond' whose seeming freedom is mostly but briefly envied by others who speak or report to the camera about Mona since the movie is the chronicle of a death foretold. It is a woman’s story via testimonies of others whom she came into contact one way or another. Mona’s indifference and unapologetic attitude can be compared to Joe (the protagonist of Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac) for the audience who are familiar with both.

 

As a young woman wanderer, Mona spreads unease. Through the small talk that most drivers or men who give her daily or hourly cash-in-hand jobs had with her, we learn that Mona quit her job as a secretary and took off on the road to nowhere with her tent on her back, sleeping in fields, on roadsides, deserted houses. We witness some hard times when she most likely sells sex and gets raped too. She remains always defiant, faintly mutinous, uncaring, enigmatic. As she says, “I don’t care – I move on”.

 

The amazing Agnès Varda renders the audience as her observers, and we are (I as for one) led to feel uneasy with our helplessness and detachment from a character whose life has been detailed by the others; yet, whose thoughts remains buried. Mona is a “rahat” woman but doesn’t give the impression that she is comfortable or at ease with herself or with the world except a few occasions.

 

Among the dozens of characters whom she meets on the road, I will remember particularly the two. A stylish academic (Macha Méril) encounters Mona and agrees to drive her around, lets her sleep in the car, buys her good food etc. Her job is to diagnose the sick trees in Southern France and report to her team so that the diseased trees can be logged and cleared (anything symbolic there?). She is disgusted by Mona’s smell but is too polite to ask her to get out of the car, yet, also fascinated by her. Not once we hear Mona thanking her or showing appreciation, not even after she hands Mona groceries and some money before the drop off.

 

The second one is a hippy with an MA in Philosophy and his girlfriend. They raise goats and make cheese, and they happen to like Mona who asks for a place to crash for one night. They offer her some land to work and a caravan to live in because earlier, Mona tells the guy that she wants to grow potatoes for future, an almost shockingly simple dream. But they are deeply irritated and disappointed when Mona shows no inclination to get out of bed in the mornings. This man tells Mona that, for all the romantic notions, life on the road, combined with its ruthless poverty, is a kind of living death. I agree and consider the family’s offer as a truly missed opportunity. In fact, that setting seems to be only place where she could combine her readings and daydreaming with gardening. I even thought of Voltaire’s Candide ou l'Optimisme when Mona too was surprised that the guy was once a traveller like herself and studied philosophy. He managed to find a mid-way (as is clearly expressed) and was empathetic with Mona’s ways.

 

Whether Mona is a determined free spirit or just a lost soul is up to the viewer to decide but it is not an easy conclusion to make. Her story's end (or the movie’s beginning, that is, a frozen corpse) is nothing like the attractive hitchhikers in Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (Gus Van Sant, 1993) or In July (Fatih Akın, 2000). Mona is an unusual and memorable one who defies most women representations in movies or in real life for that matter. 

"Wild Women" Representations_ Part II_Roseann Quinn and Maryse Holder

Sisterhood is Complicated

Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1975) by Judith Rossner

The novel was inspired by the murder of Roseann Quinn and examines the underside of the seventies sexual liberation movement.  The protagonist, Theresa Dunn, is a young woman who spends her days teaching first grade to a classroom of deaf-mutes and her nights hanging out in singles bars of New York in the 1970s. She is a beloved and dedicated school teacher who loves her job but very anti-marriage and want no children of her own makes, which renders her a complicated woman.

For centuries, women weren't allowed to be complicated: They were ladies or tramps. Of course, that binary doesn’t work for all women on the planet. So what happens when they don’t mind being both and even enjoy it? The sequence of “the good boy at family dinner scene” which raises her parents’ hope for a possible marriage is  followed by the scene at the bar with another and clearly bad boy (Tony) who jokes about the Bible that Theresa finds her in purse (stuck by her mother). The answer is -as long as the movies are made by and for the patriarchal system- their end is not the happiest. Even worse, these products can send signals or messages to the audience that women better not complicate life and roles for their own well being and safety!

Janis Joplin’s poster on the wall is significant at T’s flat where Tony inflicts physical abuse on her and becomes a stalker after a one-night-stand. The bloody end that Theresa faces can be interpreted as a punishment for many conservative viewers but also refreshingly criticized by several other readers from the opposite end of the spectrum.  And hey, what’s with Janis Joplin?

Give Sorrow Words – Maryse Holder’s Letters from Mexico (1979) 

I came across Maryse Holder’s Give Sorrow Words - Letters from Mexico at a giant secondhand book fair in San Francisco in 2014, and picked it out of the hundreds books that I scanned on that wonderful day at Fort Mason. Despite the book’s cheesy Harlequin style cover, its foreword was written by Kate Millett so it was more than enough for me.

Holder’s experiences and adventures with men are expressed in letters in a language that an average reader would call unsettling. Some sections can be said to border pornography and f-words are generously used, which LA Times referred to as intellectual erotica. Without being judgmental, based on the letters, one can call Maryse self-destructive and enigmatic. Her style is compared to Jean Genet and Henry Miller at the time. Like Roseann Quinn/Theresa, Maryse too paid the price of being ‘rahat’. She was murdered in Mexico at the age of 36 in 1977.

For a woman with a degree in literature from Cornell, the seventies sexual liberation movement must have triggered several ideas, probably along with expectations of some sort. However, at some point, Maryse’s anger turned to herself, as hinted by Kate Millett. I do share Millett’s regret that Maryse’s inferiority complex regarding her physical being could have been curable in women’s collectives or consciousness raising groups at the time. To Edith Jones, recipient of Maryse’s letters, Maryse describes her time in Mexico as her "vacation from feminism." Why would anyone need a vacation from feminism, and furthermore why bother with the patriarchy’s radical representatives, the machos of Mexican bars during this so called “vacation”? Millett’s reference of Mary’s self-destruction in regard to Janis Joplin is telling (ix).

According to Millett, most women have hard time to shake off the “guilt” of freedom and turn them into a self-destructive form, killing themselves factually or metaphorically. As a reader, I keep thinking “wow, the notion of sisterhood is indeed complicated.” In “Feminist Sexual Politics and the Heterosexual Predicament”, Lynne Segal describes the book as “gloomily absorbing” and finds it hard to decide whether it was Holder’s notion of feminism or her own predatory view of sex which was the more depressing. Even more dispiriting for Segal is “the fact that many feminists would confidently endorse Maryse Holder’s dual depiction of feminism as anti-heterosexual pleasure and heterosexual pleasure as anti-woman” (77).[i]

Janis Joplin, Theresa (Roseann in real life), and Maryse Holder’s choices to make themselves available to men probably was a way to cover their "unfitness" according to the beauty standards of the times (thus feeling insecure and unwanted). However, because they were smart women, ability to discern between the reasons why daily partners were around at any time took away the spiritual satisfaction. If only they could have tasted the empowerment and the comfort of being supported by other women friends or strangers who are sympathetic and compassionate under any circumstances! Millett laments that the nonjudgmental girlfriend Edith was not considered a potential partner, for instance. Being backed up by women’s solidarity is the cure for patriarchy's damage, and women who are aware of this solidarity and choose to extend it over never would feel weak or lonely. It saves one from sinking into many demoralizing and destructive relationships or moods.

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[i] Lynne Segal (1997). “Feminist Sexual Politics and the Heterosexual Predicament.” In: Segal L. (eds) New Sexual Agendas. Palgrave Macmillan, London.

“Wild Women” Representations_Part I

“Wild Women” Representations and The Costs of Being Untameable by Choice

This essay deals with the concept of “loose women” or in Turkish “serbest/rahat kadınlar” through an analysis of selected female characters’ representations created after the 1970s. Maryse Holder’s book Give Sorrow Words, Judith Rossner’s novel Looking for Mr.Goodbar and Lars von Trier’s film Nymphomaniac provide the context in which the main characters are compared. Normativity of single and free woman’s sexuality is reconstructed on a variety of levels including proposals on changes in daily language. Janis Joplin’s name and image recur as a nymphomaniac and a wild woman both in media and in the selected works for the essay. Despite its complexity, the notion of sisterhood remains an option in its inclusion of “loose women” and of women who are determined to survive in a patriarchal and heterosexual world, dealing with body-image and self-esteem issues.

==

Give sorrow words; the grief that does not speak /

whispers the o’er-fraught heart and bids it to break / Macbeth, Act IV, Scene III.

“I always demanded more from the sunset. That is perhaps my only sin.” Joe, the protagonist of Nymphomaniac

Let me begin with an explanation on language: “Serbest” in Turkish means “free” so in most cases it has a positive or neutral connotation except that when it is used in describing a woman or a young girl. If you cannot ever bring yourself to use swear words (bitch or whore,) or the attitudes that are associated with these two words, you may use “serbest”. Examples: “She is raised ‘serbest’, she comes from a ‘serbest’ family”. Although the word’s connotations may vary from one perceiver to the other, it means the following: She hangs out with guys without being monitored, she dresses tank tops, mini-skirts, shorts, maybe uses lots of makeup etc. It is likely that she doesn’t avoid drinking, flirting, or smoking and dancing in public. I suspect that for a conservative family whose women are all covered, the same word is used for another series of actions (which may not at all included in your bag of “serbest”).

            I celebrate essay as a hybrid form with no strict tradition of its own, thus allowing transparency and emotions along with cultivation of ideas and fact-based observations. To use Adorno’s words: “It evokes intellectual freedom” which I immensely value (3).^[i]

Janis Joplin once sang: Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…

           The other word which is used interchangeably is “rahat” which means comfortable. When it is used to describe a woman, this one is even more mind-blowing. Could you guess that a “rahat” woman in Turkish means “too liberated”? As a child, not knowing this second, negative meaning of “rahat,” I focused on the literal meaning. When I overheard conversations of women in the family or among the neighbors, I carefully recorded the word and decided to put it into use in a naively proud manner as most children do. We didn’t have the imported phrase “free-lance” at the time. I was probably dreaming of an outdoors job where I can hang out in fresh air in a ‘rahat’ manner, and not spend my life inside office walls.

            One day, our primary school teacher asked ‘what do you want to be when you grow up?’, I answered “I want to be a ‘rahat’ woman”. She did not laugh. In fact, she called my parents, once this career plan was made public. Then my mother told me that I should consider other future plans, and being a “rahat” woman is not a profession. Furthermore, it is not something that a good girl should aspire. Her tone implied that no further questions were to be asked at the time.

Now, as an adult woman, I ask myself how I should be responding if a 6-year-old girl tells me that she wants to be a “rahat” woman in the future because the word sounds so sympathetic. The opposite of rahat is rahatsız (1. uncomfortable, 2. ill) in Turkish. If someone is “rahatsız” you feel sorry for him/her regardless of gender.  

            Constructing an anti-mainstream language in any culture is challenging. Even when one dares the attempt, her audience is used to and is using the old language and thus cannot help contrasting, and measuring the acceptibility of the new language accordingly. As a consequence, what one may promote as novel or revolutionary is likely to get ‘lost in translation’ (yes, in the very same language) or understood by only a few. I realized however that whenever ‘serbest’ women’s stories are materialized for mainstream consumption, a happy end for them is rare. I don’t think it is a coincidence that ‘serbest’ woman is singled out, marginalized, and punished in a heterosexual system so that women in general and women’s sexuality in particular can be monitored. Can it be due to a concern of not creating bad role models by any chance, and thus better not to empathize with ‘wild women’ of any kind? Or is it because art is imitating life?

            I like to politicize and appropriate the term ‘wild women’ and change it into “untamed women” in a positive sense. It is my hope -utopic as it may sound- that both words gradually turn into compliments when used for women because these words are the opposite of imprisoned and uncomfortable as mentioned earlier.

            Most women in the modern world are not even aware of the matriarchal societies such as the one in  Bijagos Islands of West Africa.^[ii] Thus, their gender roles range from feeling like a loser to feeling guilty about assertiveness or leaving a relationship. We need to remember  how limited our vision of the world can be due to our socialization and the five senses that we are bound to in experiencing the world. There are always alternatives: One needs to be bold and have a Plan B.

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[i] Theodor W. Adorno, “The Essay as Form.” Notes to Literature. Trans. Sherry Weber Nicholsen. New York: Columbia UP, 1991. 3-4. 

[ii] See Leyla Assaf Tengroth's documentaries: “Our God is a Woman” and “Women’s Island”.

Field Work_Gaziantep Notes

After a smooth flight from Istanbul to Gaziantep, I took the shuttle to the city center, then a taxi whose driver was very grumpy to say the least, and boldly criticized the president and the sinking economy. After checking in to a room on the 4th floor, I looked out of the window to the piles of gray concrete buildings without any patch of green in sight. I felt cold, and realized that the A/C in the room was not working so I called to report the problem and went down to wait for Zizi. She moved to Gaziantep for work after a short episode in Istanbul and her detailed story can be found in Syrian Women Refugees. In January, she turned 40. 

Zizi was a bit late to the hotel but cheerful to see me after two years. In the back seat, her 11 year-old daughter Selin scanned me with her large and curious light blue eyes. I already knew a lot about her due to writing her mother’s life story for my book, but she probably didn’t know that. She could easily pass as a Scandinavian girl with her platinum blond hair and pale skin yet her Syrian ID and Turkish residency permit belie this impression quickly. She is only allowed to live in Gaziantep and needs permission to travel across cities even within Turkey. 

Selin has almost no recollection of Syria and speaks fluent Turkish. Her mother enjoys our quick bonding, and I know she is very proud of her two daughters. First, we go to a cafe that is run by Turks and Syrians. We can skip small talk since Zizi shared a lot with me already even after the book was out. There was a time she cut our communication off and today, she tells me why: “You reminded me of things that I was trying hard to forget. We Syrians want to begin a new life but it is almost impossible. I’ve been attending a therapy group in Istanbul, organized and funded by the Swedish Consulate, and it’s doing me good.” She shows me a picture of a Nordic-looking woman whose face radiates “like an angel,” in her words. I took her name since I may need her advice on vicarious trauma, a common issue experienced by hearing accounts of traumatic experiences.

The Eskici Cafe was huge,  lively with young men and women, and next to a kindergarten. Smoking bothered me a lot but since Zizi herself was a smoker, I didn’t say anything. It was also a shisha (water-pipe) place and restaurant. Over our coffee chat during which Selin intervened from time to time, Zizi mentioned her new job, how she could no longer suppress the urge to go back to NGO work, and this time, it involved more direct interaction with real people. Then she asked me whether I’ve heard of the movie “for Sama” and I said yes. I even shared that the trailer triggered something in me, and caught me off guard only a few days ago so I decided to postpone watching the documentary. “well…” she says, “the director is a very good friend of mine,” and shows me the pictures taken when she drove them to the airport for their flight to London last month, where Waad and her family now live, and that is where they flew to Hollywood for the Oscar Ceremony as “for Sama” was among the Best Documentary nominees. Zizi was proud with her friend, and told me how modest Waad remains, and sees the whole thing as an ‘opportunity’ to create more awareness with what has been going on in Syria.

Then, Zizi showed me the dress that Waad wore for the Oscars, a sharp and elegant political statement. As Zizi translated the Arabic script on the dress into English for me, her large green-blue eyes got teary but she was able to hold them. We simultaneously glanced at Selin who seemed oblivious to our conversation, fully immersed in her smartphone. Syrian children are used to their parents talking about ‘the situation’, and switching from a massacre story to the kind of crepe or waffle to choose on the menu (as we did!) in multiple languages. Syria is a vague motherland (‘vatan’ is a shared word in Turkish and Arabic) and Turkey is the concrete one that they go to school and socialize. Selin gives a big hug to the Turkish manager of the cafe who greets her by name, and they joke back and forth in Turkish. I order coffee with cardamom (kahwat al-hail) and because of my bad pronunciation it sounds like ‘coffee with hell’! Selin looks very confused, we all begin to laugh, and I can already tell that it will become an insider joke in coming years.

Another Revisit: Pelle The Conqueror (Highly Recommended)

Some films age beautifully like some women do. Pelle The Conqueror is one of them. I vaguely remember seeing it in a movie theater as a teenager and still carry a good feeling about it, but nothing else.  Now with this revisit after 30+ years, I wouldn’t hesitate to call it a masterwork (of Swedish director, Billie August) and I wish I could see it on a larger screen as I did in the past. It received the Best Foreign Language Film in 1989, and that probably explains why and how it made it all way to the Istanbul theaters.

The film is an adaptation of Martin Andersen Nexø’s novel. The main character Oscar nominee Max von Sydow who played the all-talk-little-action old father named Lasse died this spring. The little boy is played by Pelle Hvenegaard who continued with acting career if you google. In the movie, he is dreaming of living in America one day from the small Danish island where he lives under horrible poor conditions like most refugees today. The son and the father uproot themselves from their native Sweden at the turn of the 20th century in hopes of finding better work and save some money on the Danish island of Bornholm (so they are not refugees). I know it is hard to imagine this today that there had been quite some  waves of immigration and hardcore exploitation as a result within the Nordic countries before they became the most developed and built the best welfare system in the world. Even to challenge one’s stereotypes and make some sad temporal and special comparisons of poor Swedish immigrants, the movie is worth seeing.

The workers are paid near-slave wages to work on a farm by a very brutal boss with an owner that is driving his wife insane with his adulterous actions. As is the case with most child protagonists, Pelle acts as voyeur to many heated acts of lechery and genuine love; and witnesses the worst the human beings can do to each other. Despite the high number of characters to explore after the movie is over, Pelle the Conqueror always brings us back to the father-son dynamic, a constant source of compassion and deep disappointment.  In fact, I cannot think of any other movie which captures a series of disappointments with fathers that most boys experience and cannot express as a child so movingly and successfully. I feel there is something so universal that will touch many male viewers’ hearts and they won’t even be able to tell why. Pelle slowly turns to more forceful personalities on the farm whom he can look up to including one worker who speaks out against harsh treatment and low wages (but he pays the price for it).  I couldn’t help but constantly think of refugees today except that the faces in the movie are all pale and get very red, and hair color is blond or red.

It is a two-and-a-half-hour work, just so know and plan ahead. I post this recommendation particularly to the younger generation so that they can practice some attention-focusing and also appreciate the beauty of epic movies.

PS: If you like this movie, I also recommend Antonia’s Line and Babette. 

Fun fact: Berkeley’s BAMPFA's beautiful second floor café is named after the movie Babette.

“All the Loves in the World” or Normalizing to Expose One's Intimate/Mahrem Life

I have never associated marriage with romance, not even as a girl-child, but always believed in love. In fact, some of my college friends used to analyze me that I was probably in love with the concept of love itself since I came back with romantic stories after each summer. As a student of literature, I was exposed to some of the best expressions of love ever documented in different genres, and I feel enriched by, and remain proud of that.

When I fell in love with a Vermonter in the heart of Istanbul in 1999, my first response was to flee. I was only 25 and life was just beginning. I wouldn’t let the illusions of love ruin it. There were also some major complications. The Turkish society’s utmost pressure on guarding one’s mahrem (privacy) prevents me from going into details here.

I turned 45 last December. In retrospect, I am glad that despite the fact that I literally fled the country thanks to a prestigious graduate grant in women’s studies by the German Government, he followed me. I shake my head now to the immature woman who rehearsed farewell speeches more than once. He listened patiently, and told me that our love was too precious to quit due to fears of commitment. Instead, he quit his academic position, packed his suitcase and bicycle before taking the plane to Kassel roughly one month after my departure. He was 33, a nomad in heart and soul, a good lover with a fit body and writing skills, plus a degree in English Literature. He too was familiar with the best expressions of love and romance in English.

My first visit to the U.S. was to meet his family and celebrate a white Christmas. I still joke that Scott took advantage of my first jetlag when he pulled in at a mysterious parking lot in a small town Vermont whose name I fail to remember after 20 years. I assumed the building we began walking towards was a small museum, and I was confused when he asked me if I had my passport. I nodded. Better to carry it 24/7 in this wild country whose images I acquired only from the movies and literature, and those didn’t assure me of much safety or comfort. Who knows what could happen in the middle of nowhere in Vermont during a Christmas break? The answer was… Well, one could end up getting married!

I cannot recall whether I was asked for my hand in any traditional manner. Surely, that would have been already a big turnoff. I vaguely remember that he told me getting married this way would be less scary for me since the time between the proposal and “I do” part was about 10 minutes. I wouldn’t be in my right mind to give it a second thought. Or any thought for that matter. I later learned that Scott checked the state-specific requirements and VT was indeed among the quickest road to tie the knot and competes with Vegas! Otherwise he would have chosen NYC where his oldest friend was living. We went there for the New Year’s Eve.

I had no intentions of getting married only after one year of dating, and five months of cohabitation. Did I mention that I was jetlag? By that time, my parents stopped talking to me for transgressing the rules of the society although our cohabitation took place in Germany. My brother was our only liaison and wasn’t sure what to do about this tension over the cohabitation issue. He was only 20, and never judged me or asked questions about my love. After several cohabitations and partners, he has managed to remain single up until now. Coolest Turkish brother ever! He too is Sagittarius like Scott and I, so blame astrological signs if you like.

Once we got married and settled into the reality of it, that is, a piece of paper with names and signatures announcing us ‘married’, my panic subsided. We were very much in love and the best would be to deny the marriage thing (I thought) which doesn’t make sense now since they are not closely related to each other in the first place. We had no plans of settling in anywhere soon. After my parents and the society were off our shoulders due to the marriage license from Vermont, we moved to Turkey: I went to grad school in Ankara, he rented a place in Alanya and began to run a bike shop. We lived apart except holidays until we moved to Toronto for my PhD studies in 2002. Thus, marriage didn’t and doesn’t necessarily mean cohabitation. It took us some time to get a wedding ring, and I lost two in 20 years.

All these came back to me on a Sunday in July 2019 after touring the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection (its spectacular claret red building is known as the Haunted Mansion) in Istanbul. I was so moved by some of the pieces, particularly the new forms of experiencing TurgutUyar, one of the most important representatives of Modern Turkish poetry, that I needed time alone at the museum café after my young friend left. Almost all tables offered some breathtaking scenery of the sea and the ferries crossing the Bosporus but I had my eye on a particular spot for my afternoon coffee.

The waiter was talkative and flirtatious when he told me that the table was reserved by a guy who was about to pop the question to his girlfriend. He sure was going to have fun with the scene so why didn’t I join the audience? I shook my head that told him that this must have been a new trend of the Facebook or Instagram people who no longer care about mahrem. The waiter agreed and made faces about the couple’s friends right across the street. They were ready with a “Please say yes!” banner and would be cheering and taking pictures during this performance. I wondered if any of them knew about the exhibition inside entitled “Söylenir ve yarım kalır bütün aşklaryeryüzünde/All the loves in the world are uttered and unfinished” or Turgut Uyar. The museum manual in my sweaty hands explained the choice for these famous lines: “In our day, the rapidly changing economic, political and social developments have a profound impact on the creation processes of artworks.”

I thought “on the processes of loveworks too!” I feel sort of proud with the fact that “in our day” I have refused to become part of these so called developments and would be embarrassed if not angry to see myself on FB or Instagram after a marriage proposal. My questioning will continue as my own (old) friends and (former) students keep becoming part of these processes of “romantic love” constructions and its links to the institution of marriage. Somewhere along our socialization as humans, some ridiculous expectations and performances are created and marketed in such powerful ways that many people cannot dare to step out of them. Doesn’t honesty feel blocked as the couples are trying to keep up with these changes as they face the risk of estrangement while performing and wasting their savings on the processes? Behind their back, a waiter and an academic may be teasing them as we did on that Sunday, and I am sure we were not the only ones. However, we are too polite to say anything “at-yer-face” style.

After all these years and traveling, I am still the only person in my circle of friends and family who got married secretly and without giving it much thought. The irony of the Haunted Mansion's hosting Turgut Uyar's striking and long-lasting love poetry inside and the couple who was to show us a trendy-marriage-proposal outside led me to share another irony: As an anti-marriage person, I experienced one of the longest and strongest relations in my circle. There were no performances, lies or small games from the very beginning, and those things are real energy-suckers in any relationship even if they may appear to be fun at first. We were/are lucky to have met early in life. I cannot deny the star alignments or God’s favoring me over other women in love. But denying the impact of women and gender studies, volumes of studying women’s literature and feminist theories since I was 14 would simply mean ingratitude to dozens of bold and liberated female souls across time and space. They all made me who I am today.

I didn’t wait for the proposal scene on that Sunday afternoon. I am more interested in the journey itself, not its baby steps or showbiz. If only I could, my words to the woman who was put into the role of uttering ‘aye or nay’ would be: Be aware of the romantic love’s mystification of power dynamics in life. There is (almost!) nothing wrong with the marriage itself as long as both partners are in tune with each other’s sensibilities rather than the society’s or media’s prompting them to act in “proper” or trendy ways.

Oh, and the talkative waiter? He told me that he was single and in no rush to get married:) 

“Had Enough to Get Your Head Explode?”[i] Don’t Worry, the System Got a Green Fix for You!

 An ironic title? Well, maybe, so let me begin by revealing my affinity with Jeff Gibbs' sense of humor throughout the documentary. In Planet of the Humans (POH henceforth), he reveals much more than I do here, together with Ozzie Zehner and other experts including the bold Vandana Shiva in regard to green energies in the U.S.

I feel related to Jeff Gibbs not only by a shared sense of humor while facing serious matters, but also through a sense of love and respect for trees. As a non-native speaker of English, the term tree-hugger is anything but derogatory to me.  It sounds so loving  and something to be proud of so I too am a tree-hugger. Yet, I also learned thanks to this documentary that some cute-sounding-words can serve as a veil to cover the evil (e.g., woodchip).

I am a writer whose academic background is in literature and women studies; therefore, when it comes to viewing and reviewing POH, I am just a lay person with a trust and sympathy toward the name Michael Moore since 2004 (as a legal alien from Turkey at the time, I was one of the victims of post-9/11 during  my naturalization process but it’s another story).

This introduction is also to say that I have no conflict of interest to declare, although receiving a documentary as a gift from the team on the 50^th Anniversary of the Earth Day through YouTube was special. POH is a collective gift that I want to share with others by forwarding the link and by my writing.

POH begins with some history including a footage that says clean and green energy was the talk of the town in 1970 already! The document pays tribute to the early green movements, initiatives, and activists in the U.S. before revealing the duplicities of the recent events (mimicking flower power era) in Vermont and elsewhere. Even the Earth Day events can be funded by the companies which have been destroying forests, mountains, and indigenous people’s habitats. Short and basic questions are posed by Gibbs to expose the hypocrisies that the respondents are being complicit to. The audience can clearly see the shrugs, the expressions or the averted eyes (hopefully with some embarrassment!) of the organizers, the technicians or the salespeople while acknowledging the truth and facing lies. While some big and familiar names (CEOs, NGO leaders, and politicians) claim confidently that their facilities run on 100% renewable energy (solar, wind or biomass) you/the audience are shocked by how people are being fed lies all along while making decisions of consumption or attending an event. A cheerful male voice of the ads ‘informs’ that solar panels are made of sand while a scholar (Ozzie Zehner) is showing HQ quartz and coal pieces that the panels are made of (by being melted!)

As a professor of literature, I have been very conscious of the power of narratives. One part of me may feel and act like Doña Quixote at times but in fact, I remain suspicious of what I am being fed through words and images. Knowledge making and distribution mechanisms are suspects so I keep rolling my eyes and shaking my head throughout the documentary but the other half in me whispers: “It has always been like this around the world, not just America, not just now.” Probably I am not be the only one feeling fragmented and cheated, but I do welcome other narratives besides POH as well. That is why I have read several (some were quite harsh) criticism and attacks against the film already, and nevertheless, decided to add my share to the debates.

While keeping on breeding and consuming at the same time and at this pace today, it is futile and irresponsible to expect a miracle emerging out of a lab in the Bay Area. My image of a savior is far from elephant poop, crocodile fat, or sea moss; rather, it is a self-restraint, altruistic human being with a strong will.

A tongue-twister when I was learning English was “How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?” My dislike with Bill McKibben has grown as he talked of the “incredibly beautiful” woodchip’s use as if he was giving a salad recipe: “We can toss it in there if we can chip it down to the right size.”  I began repeating an alternative twister to divert my anger from a person to a thing/money: “How many bills would a woodchip chuck if a woodchip could chuck bills?” It worked, I am pretty calm as I am typing this review.

Although POH is mainly criticizing a narrative that is constructed and sold in the U.S., I think it can still capture a wider audience. The non-American viewer may not know 350 and Sierra Club’s “beyond coal” campaign but the whole game is still very intriguing, and unfortunately can be applied to their own countries under different names and brands.  “The System” in my  title refers to the monstrous capitalism and the blood for feeding it is drawn across the whole planet (also see the documentary Anthropocene: The Human Epoch) so everyone needs to be super aware! We can no longer afford the time or money on lies thinking that we are acting “green” while shopping! POH’s message is clear: There is no such thing. Cut the population growth and consumption, and just stop there before reaching out to your credit card.

Gibbs begins and ends POH with a question, and poses more in between. I want to add mine to the list:  Why can’t we just buy less and instead reuse things, and move less in 4-wheeled-vehicles and instead move more on two legs or leg-powered-vehicles? Fly less? Adopt or foster children instead of making them?[ii] Why can’t we train our willpower be a better version of ourselves?(now that it is the fasting month/Ramadan for millions, why can’t consider practicing different versions of fasting?)

I consider POH as an engaging lecture since I learned a lot about the intricate connections among the environmentalist groups, companies, and politicians. We can include POH in our syllabus regardless of the country we are teaching, it falls right under environmental or ecological humanities. I also got informed on the science and terminology behind all these debates: How biomass plants can serve as euphemism for a solid-waste incinerator like in Michigan or how the super(!) green Tesla Gigafactory in fact pollutes the desert with radioactive waste disposal and is still hooked up to the city grid like the Apple in North Carolina. All these striking examples will affect the young minds who aspire to be the next Elon Musk or Steve Jobs in any developing country. The documentary clearly shows that it is high time to look for and look up to other role models who are more honest and earth-friendly, even tree-huggers!

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[i] From the documentary.

[ii] I completely disagree with Leah C. Stokes who thinks that POH's “pushing population control is completely disrespectful of women’s reproductive autonomy” although I also realized that the number of  the white male experts featured exceeds the women in the film. It is a big risk to take as three white men (the team) to point fingers at overpopulation (but of course they are risk takers or else they would be no such film) but as a naturalized non-white, non-privileged woman, I have advocated the very same idea for years. In fact, if I could, I would have passed a law for prospective  parents (of any sexual orientation or race) to take a test before they make babies, similar to a driver’s license.  https://www.vox.com/2020/4/28/21238597/michael-moore-planet-of-the-humans-climate-change

Surreal Times_Part II

(...)

Soon we are surrounded with many others from the neighboring tents, “which channel is it?” is the first question we get. Before the camera rolls, Jonathan takes out a small mirror out of his pocket and combs his hair. The expressive/animated woman says in Turkish “You’ve become very handsome, maşallah,” and laughs. She makes others around her laugh as well. We shoot the same scene three or four times (I repeat the same translations) before we continue our hunt in the heavy mud. We witness a fight in one of the waiting lines, I overhear the accusation of someone shouting at another that he was in the same line before and thus getting the same aid twice. The moment they see the cameras and western-looking guys, a man hushes the crowd: “Let’s not embarrass ourselves in front of the foreigners, ayıp.” But it is too late, this time Michael took the shots without permission of any sort. It was an authentic fight scene.

Before we go in the taxi that was hired for the day, Jonathan approaches an old and dark man and asks: “Do you speak German?” He nods and they begin chatting in German. The old man is very calm, thankful, and submitted to God’s will.  I can still hear his last words in response to Jonathan’s words of appreciation and goodbye: Mach nichts (you are welcome). I can’t help my curiosity and ask him once in the car: “How did you know?” Jonathan shrugs, “maybe intuition, maybe because of the Turks I met in Germany, I have developed a feeling about a certain type.” I am still very impressed, what a good observer!

Another man in the crowd approaches and asks me: “How is Zeytinburnu?[i] Is there much damage?” I learn that he lost everything here, and the only other property he has was a flat in Zeytinburnu. He couldn’t get hold of the contractor so he wants to learn the situation from me!

We return to the “base” where the buses and other media channels are parked for montage and other technical stuff. Sara notices me wandering rather aimlessly while waiting for the next stop and suggests that I go inside a big bus a bit further away before I get fully soaked. “That bus belongs to us too.” Good idea, I rush to the bus while thinking that people act very conflicted over wearing masks. I notice the very picky BBC team are not wearing them, I also observe that a few other European channels’ staff don’t have any face masks. I decide not to wear one either. I greet the guy in the big bus before finding a seat where I can rest a little. He has a heavy accent and looks like a Turkish guy. He says he is a freelance cameraman from Israel, and hands me some old newspapers to clean the mud under my shoes. A very blond guy (platinum-blond!) turns out to be a Turk named Haluk, and translating some reports about illegal housing in the area into English. The Israeli man’s name is Boaz, sounds  unusual but nice, I actually don’t know how to spell it. I tell him that I am thinking of living on a kibbutz[ii] once all this is over. I want to leave Turkey for some time and experiment a communal living on a farm, explore the holy lands before grad school. I get out of the bus, wishing for something to feel useful and keep me busy. At that moment, Sara comes and asks whether I would like to visit one of the newly setup hospitals with the two other team members. Of course, says I!

We first stop by the Canadian Military hospital which originally is a stadium. It is almost 9 pm now and soon it will be dark. I realize that there is no need for a translator since the guard at the gate is Canadian and there are no patients inside yet. It is raining very hard. They tell me to stay in the taxi and lend my raincoat to Jonathan. The driver and I began a conversation. He lost his house so they are staying in a tent but life goes on and he likes to work and bring some cash back to the tent. Suddenly, we are surrounded by hundreds of mosquitos in swarms. A bug-repellent was the last thing in my mind when I left home very early in the morning. I get a bit nervous but there is nothing we can do about it. Then, they leave as fast as they arrived, very weird these post-earthquake creatures…

I decide to go out and soak myself into the beauty of the surroundings. Tranquility and breathtaking scenery calm me down.  So quiet. Right across me is a huge, empty amusement park. A large iron gate has the sign which says: Sporcu girişi/Entry for sportspeople. A Canadian soldier is guarding it now. There is a giant willow tree behind which the sun must soon be about to set, based on the first gray, then purplish dark pink-orange tones of all kinds. It is one of those very memorable moments. I fail to get around the willow tree because of the amount of mud. I am aware of a unique presence; yet, I feel like a commonly agreed but vulnerable reality is lost. A military vehicle approaches the gate and after an exchange of a few words in English, it passes through. If only I could ignore the collapsed buildings not far from where I am, I can get convinced easily that I am enjoying a movie set visit whose staff is very busy preparing the final stage before the shoot. First time in my life, I see heavy-built blond women soldiers in uniforms. They wander around the stadium, probably fulfilling their guard duty.

A few bold locals approach the gate, waving at the Canadian soldier whose merhaba was well pronounced but met with their “hello, hello!”s nevertheless. He drops the trash bags and returns to his spot. Alan comes back to the gate, apologizes that they left me in the car all that time, not realizing that the rain stopped a while ago: “Would you like to take a look at what is going on inside the makeshift hospital?” I eagerly walk in with him, literally dazzled with the brightness of the lights inside the moment I step in. The very same stadium at nights of soccer games must exude a similar feeling before the audience’s admission, except that there are dozens of soldiers around now, working on setting huge tents, installing more lights and many stoves for the communal meals in the coming days. I climb up to the stairs in the tribunes to enjoy a full view of the place. I see Boaz, Alan, and Jonathan in the middle of the green playground still filming. I am impressed by the extent of technology for this particular occasion. From where do all these huge water-purification systems, electricity grids, sewage disposal pipes and generators come? Even imagining the military’s transportation network beats me. All the jeeps around have Canadian plate numbers so does it mean that they brought their vehicles too or just install the plates here?

A soldier comes to chat, asks whether I work for the BBC as well. I tell him only for the day, and I work as a translator. He is friendly and sounds genuinely interested in the wellbeing of my family and how I have been feeling since the earthquake. In return, I ask him how he feels about visiting a country like Turkey under these circumstances and “for work” whereas the ideal would be to explore the ancient sites and especially the West coast for a holiday. “Sakarya, believe me, doesn’t make our top 10 list,” I joke. Another soldier comes close but with a flashlight to check each and every screw of the setups including the old tribune that was already there when they arrived. Some time later, another soldier comes and checks them again, to make sure. I admire the meticulousness and the professionalism that I see all over. They probably don’t let illegal housing and thus won’t have the blood of thousands of dead and injured bodies on their hands in case of a big earthquake in Canada.

The trio bring another man in uniform under the BBC spotlights, probably the highest rank possible, and interview him too. After this final shooting is completed, we thank everyone and finally leave the premises. We have been treated really kindly which I attribute to the prestigious name of the media channel. Having a BBC ID card allows one through many official doors as I witnessed today ranging from Sakarya Deputy governor’s office

The taxi driver hands in a receipt of 80 dollars. Alan hands him a 100 dollar bill and tells him to keep it. I can never forget the driver’s face. He asks me a couple of times so that there is no misunderstanding or mistranslation. I say it is okay, and yes, 20 dollar is your tip for the day. I feel sorry and awkward about this, that the gap between Turkish Lira and the USD is not something that the dollar-owner and earner cares much about. It is always the other way around.

We are back at “the base” in Adapazarı, everyone is asking each other “so... how was your day?” all in tired but more or less satisfied tones. The final editing of the news is done and it is ready to be aired for the 9 pm news, London time, of course. The sound engineer who was the first person I met this morning checks with me “so... what do you think? How are you feeling?” to which I answer: “I feel very tired but it was exciting and unforgettable.” In fact, I am very hungry and in need of sleep. Yesterday, Sara told me on the phone that I should be at home by the sunset. I call home at 10 pm and tell my parents that soon we’ll hit the road to Istanbul. The drivers keep complaining too. I try to fall asleep at the back of one of the empty buses. The fragments of the day pass through my mind, my eyes, my heart… I am in that half-awake half-asleep zone and I decide to be fully awake. The whole team gets together to watch their work, what’s been aired on the screen in a clear excitement. I could almost hear the invisible thoughts running in the air: We did it, we made it on time! We had images of the sea of mud, crying women, running children who piss inside their tent, the deputy gov. who failed to present the right papers, and more… Yes, all these we have cut, pasted, recreated a reality to your taste, and here we go. Hey, the world, stay tuned!

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[i] A district of Istanbul on the European side.

[ii] A collective community, traditionally based on agriculture. 

Surreal Times in 1999: A Post-Earthquake Story Part I

Dear Reader,

If you think that you are going through surreal times that you could never have imagined due to COVID-19, pause for a few minutes and see what you think of other surreal days back in time. The details are as new to me as they are to you since I have translated them from my diary. If I hadn’t written, hardly any memory of such a traumatic event would have stayed with me. I enjoyed translating it from Turkish into English as I realized how it helped me (and hopefully others will feel the same) to put things in perspective. 

The Izmit earthquake (also known as Marmara earthquake) occurred on 17 August 1999 at 03 a.m. local time in north-western Turkey. The shock had a moment magnitude of 7.6 and a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). The event lasted for 37 seconds. Pretty darn long when you are woken up and shaken like that!

24 August 1999- Tuesday.  I woke up at 10 a.m. to the clean scent of my light blue sheets and pillow and I thought yesterday must have been a dream. It was so unreal and intense. Yeah, it was just a dream and sometimes - when they are very impactful and vivid - I tend to write my dreams so I decided to record this one as well. That’s all.

Then, I changed my mind. My favorite procrastination strategy was to pick a book randomly and begin to read a few pages. It was Tutunamayanlar by Oguz Atay ('The Disconnected') and the random page was: Mısra 11: Word and Loneliness. Okay, I am going to write this, but where to begin? With the phone call from Prof. Aysel Ekşi whose NGO I once volunteered for, or should I jump right into the morning, 8:15 to be specific where I knocked on the door of the Hilton Hotel room no. 757 in Elmadağ near Taksim? “Sorry, I arrived a bit early, I commute from the Asian side so…”, ‘Come in, no worries! Excuse our mess.” I look around. The huge suit room is indeed messy with piles of cables like spaghetti, coffee cups, empty candy and potato chips bags, newspapers…

A friendly bespectacled British man with a goatee is the only person in the room (or so I think). “Sara will be here in a minute, you can wait here,” he says. I thank him and ask whether he is a reporter. “I am an engineer, but that guy over there is a reporter,” pointing at someone in the corner. Tall, pale face with thin lips, an unhappy looking man, forces a smile: “Hi, I am James.” I ask both of them about the shots since I got a tetanus shot the day before when I signed up for volunteering as a translator on any earthquake damaged site.  They shake their heads: “There is nothing really against malaria, and we bring our own food and water”, pointing at the two boxes with Hilton stickers on.

Sara Beck shows up. She is young, hyper, blond, tall and skinny, generously providing me with tips and information, and is thus aware of my not knowing what to expect or how to behave in that setting while they are going to film and interview, and I will translate. After they finish their coffee, we go down and I meet the driver named Mustafa. We are all waiting for someone  called Jonathan Charles for some time already. Sara is full of praises for him, assuring me that he is a nice person to work with. Someone else introduces himself as the camera man (Michael) with a very subtle German accent. I mention my stay in Germany the year before, and make some small talk on the way to Adapazarı. Long after we cross the Boğaziçi Bridge, they suddenly decide to go back to Atatürk Airport, also on the European side where we started our journey from Hilton. What the heck, I wonder, and feel disappointed for lack of planning. Sara tells me that it is much better to follow a humanitarian aid convoy. It begins to rain again in the middle of August. As we are crossing the bridge, Michael mumbles into the blue-gray scenery and sighs: “Very beautiful place! It must be so nice to live here and witness this scene often. What a beauty…”

We have about 2 hours of drive (160 km) so we chat. They ask me many questions: What is the real population of Istanbul? Military coup d’états of the past decades, the importance of Atatürk today, politics in general etc. Michael and Jonathan arrived from Frankfurt this morning on the same flight, and I soon find out that almost everyone on the bus met this morning. They explain that the BBC has such a huge media network that when something happens anywhere around the world, the staff in that region is informed immediately and get together like they did in Hilton Hotel, and they begin working to cover that particular situation. Once the news is covered, each heads to their own direction to catch the next series of excitement. Radio reporter James who flew from Scotland tells me that it is pure coincidence that he ended up in Istanbul because the assigned staff’s wife just had a baby. He says that he is already the proud father of two kids, not knowing that I would never even consider dating people who lead such lives: “Hey, look at your daddy, just reporting live the latest earthquake zone!” I gag my imagination on the spot.

After we arrive in Adapazarı, my initial nervousness subsides. The buildings reduced to rubble and the despair on the locals’ faces are just like what I’d seen on the screen. Repeated heavy rains for the past days created a city of mud. People look desperate. More than one staff on the bus ask me why the city has two names and which one they should be using (I couldn’t tell but I guess Adapazarı, not Sakarya). Sara has no clue. In fact, she just flew from Russia. I know so because whenever she gets a call, she responds “hi, yeah, I am not in Russia… I am somewhere in Turkey…” and talks more about Russia than here. Stories from Turkey have to wait for the calls in her next destination. She is beautiful. She seems to be content with her image. I keep this mental picture of her eating some cold fried potatoes stuck together while listening to someone on the phone, nodding. She is easy to smile and friendly with everyone but also keeps a clear healthy distance. She looks so fresh and full of energy as if she just walked out of a beauty salon. I cannot get upset or ironic with her thinking that she will be back to her luxurious hotel room at the end of the day, can enjoy a nice shower or body lotions, perfumes even, put on her pajamas and crawl into a comfy bed unlike the people around us. She does a good job, enjoys being the bright program producer, modestly comments that “Ozlem, see the real face of BBC, our lives in mud and bus corners, don’t you think it’s pretty desperate looking?” (as the bespectacled British engineer’s comments).

Sara must have done with self-interrogations regarding her job, switching worlds between room-service calls to emergency calls in a flood.  She probably got used to it. The other Turkish interpreter who tells me that he worked for a private TV channel for three years is more critical than I am. He thinks the team members are acting so British that imagining their base in the U.K (unlike nomads) so much so that when he asked the time, one guy just told him the London time by mistake. However, he too appreciates their work discipline and professionalism. The permission before turning on the camera or taking a picture from each and every person and the style of asking questions (calm and polite) are worth mentioning and not very common in Turkish media.

My first task is to translate the conversation between the deputy governor of Sakarya and Sara Beck in an ugly concrete government building. The sleep-deprived dep-governor grants us his time and heavy smoke of his thick cigar.  Sara aims to learn what happened to the British aid which seemed evaporated or  distributed to the locals without the proper signatures and records. After looking at the list of items that Sara handed in, the man says they never received it. Everything is recorded at the Atatürk Airport when the aid passed through the customs, she says. She insists on getting a few names at least to track the aid further. He diverts fully and mentions the young volunteers who came to help from Ankara on their motorcycles. I keep on translating without facial expressions but I don’t have a poker face. Finally, we are told to inquire the state hospital authorities or village affairs unit.

Our next stop is one of the tent-cities as they are commonly referred to. Everything and everywhere is covered with mud. People made raincoats out of large trash bags and some of them tied plastic bags in a way that covers their summer shoes. Most kids have no shoes, just running around barefoot. There are many long lines around, each serving a different item such as soap, food, cigarette, and donated clothes. One woman who is sitting in front of a tent gestures, “Come over here, tape this so that the whole world can see the situation, I am not ashamed of this, the ones who put us through this should feel ashamed, not me!” We get closer and Jonathan is observing and listening carefully. She introduces two of the kids running around, one is ‘hers’ and the other one belongs to ‘her in-laws’ She says “I don’t care about myself but what do we do if these children get infections?” Her in-law comes and asks: “Where is the government? May God be pleased with the foreign aid we received from many countries but look at the tent-city that the government quartered us. Didn’t anyone consider rain by any chance?” One of the kids wants to have my pen, and his mom reproaches, “Abla is busy taking notes, don’t you see?” turns to me and apologizes: “They are playing all day long, so oblivious of what has happened”  She is very articulate indeed, manages to communicate with Jonathan when talking about the kids, their age, and which one belongs to who by using body language. I compliment her that I am not needed because she is very good at expressing herself.  

TO BE CONTINUED...