Recently, I discovered that my blog has gotten a few hits
from Turkey. I suspect that the mentioning of Derya Turkan’s recording Letter
from Istanbul, which is listed in the sidebar, has been sending people to my
blog.
I enjoyed the time I spent in Turkey, beginning at the age
of nine and lasting until I was twelve. As an officer in the US Navy, my father
was stationed for two and half years in Istanbul, from January 1960 to the
summer of 1963. We spent about two months in a hotel before we found an apartment
to rent. Later, we rented a stucco house down the street, with a mulberry tree
in the side yard and which overlooked the hills that prevented us from seeing
the Bosporus except for a sliver visible from our second-floor balcony.
My elementary school, one meant for military dependents
whose parents were stationed in Istanbul, was several miles outside of the
city. The bus used to pass a training facility for the Turkish army. During the spring, we often took excursions
to some of the historic sites in the city, including Hagia Sophia, the Sultan
Ahmed Mosque (the Blue Mosque), Topkapi Palace, Dolmabahce Palace, and Rumelihisari,
a fortress overlooking the Bosporus. It was a great place to be a kid.
My parents often spent a few hours on Saturdays visiting the
Grand Bazaar and accumulated a sizable collection of rugs and copper. My sister
and I played with the kids on our street, some of whom were Americans and some
of whom were Turkish. I often roamed the neighborhood with Sherif, my Turkish
friend. One summer afternoon, for some reason, we decided to help pull loaves
of bread from the oven at the local bakery. We weren’t offered any money or a
loaf of bread to take home. His mother served us cucumber sandwiches for lunch
sometimes but didn’t take kindly to his breaking a leg when we were jumping off
a hillside next to the footpath. I had to run and get my mother to help get him
to his house.
What I probably remember the most from Turkey are the
sounds. We lived close enough to one of the local mosques to hear the calls to
prayer, which is especially pretty, even after hearing them five times a day.
The man selling Turkish pretzels and walking through the neighborhood in the
afternoons called out what he had to sell. The man who sharpened knives walked
through the neighborhood carrying his sharpening stone and yelling out what he
had to offer. When I moved back to Maryland, I at first thought the screaming
from the kids playing outside was in Turkish. It takes time to re-adjust.
Toward the end of our time in Turkey, after having absorbed
some of the culture, we attended a dance and music festival and had a great
time. What we were seeing and hearing wasn’t nearly as foreign as it might have
been two and a half years earlier. Wanting to keep those memories fresh, my
father bought some Turkish music when we returned to Maryland. My interest in
hearing Turkish music began in earnest once I started listening to the music of
Anouar Brahem, whose albums brought back those memories and associations from my childhood.
Sometimes, now, while grading my students' essays, I listen to Turkish classical
music. I discovered Derya Turkan’s recording of Letter from Istanbul soon after
I started listening to Sokratis Sinopoulos’ Eight Winds. About ten years ago, I took my family to hear
Salaam, an ensemble playing North African and Middle Eastern music, at the
Nelson Gallery of Art in Kansas City. It was soon after the American invasion
of Iraq and proved to be solemn occasion for the musicians who were celebrating
a culture that was being destroyed.
Personally, I think that it takes education and/or travel to
be more tolerant of other cultures. We Americans certainly could use more
tolerance of others.
Once, as an undergraduate, I was in the cafeteria and behind
one of my Middle Eastern classmates who was pouring sugar into her cup of
coffee, the only thing she was purchasing for her lunch. “Are you fasting now?”
I said.
“You know about that,” she replied.
“Yes, I spent two and a half years in Turkey,” I said.
