My new home, being neighbors with Greece and having shared a long history, mixing of people & cultures, and many years of conflict and controversy over who invented whatever first, does share the custom of having huge weddings. Turkish weddings, the average size of which, just contemplating it, makes me enochlophobic. A few things enochlophobics fear will happen when around large crowds are: 1. being trampled to death 2. contracting a deadly virus 3. getting lost in a massive crowd of people 4. they themselves feel small and insignificant when surrounded by so many people. one of my "is arkadaslarim" (work friends) told me that she had 1000 people at her wedding. how can you even greet that many people in one day?
So our Istanbul wedding was tentatively planned for July. and my husband had done some research on places, all of which were prohibitively expensive. and as i have learned, since i have been here, things happen much more slowly here than where i am from. there is a natural evolution and sequence of events that need to occur before something can be accomplished. no prioritizing, skipping ahead, multi-tasking, internet research, calling ahead or time saving steps will make things happen any faster no matter how hard you try to push things along. So soon, July turned into August and then things fell by the wayside, and then the idea of not having a wedding at all entered the picture.
To be honest, I wasn't adamant about having a wedding, even though i had gone through the expense of having a dress made. and my husband's position was that since we would have to foot the bill, he didn't feel it was so important. So after resigning ourselves to not having one after all right before seker bayram, i noticed that his mother seemed sad having to explain our decision to the rest of his extended family, as i could imagine, since he was her eldest and only son. and it made me think that it would be sad for us and for our children to not have some small celebration. so my proposal, was if we could limit the guest list to the absolute minimum, we could afford it. the concept of coming up with the guest list in order to estimate the cost, was a bit of a new concept for everyone involved (hmmm) but to my husband's surprise, it only tallied to 100. so in true Turkish fashion, the wedding was on again, and we were able to find a place, add an overlay to my dress, find a hairdresser, have invitations printed & delivered all in 3 short weeks. a world record i am sure.
But things did not run smoothly, remember where i am. after getting a wide range of quotes to have an overskirt of organza (polyester) added to my dress, i finally decided on a shop in Bakirkoy, near our apt, not being able to stomach another trip to Fatih, which is the wedding dress district, and big business here. we decided somewhat spontaneously to go to a place recommended by a work friend, on independence day, so we took public transportation, the dreaded otobus, which i have never taken alone, not knowing the routes, nor possessing the communication skills to determine where i should get off, and have heard horror stories about how it takes forever, stopping everywhere, and going all over istanbul before taking you to your desired destination. not the most efficient forms of transportation here. but my husband refused to take his car, so we were forced to take a bus with my poor wedding dress stuffed into a shopping bag. trying to avert getting lost, i begged my husband to call the shop to find out its location in Fatih. he did, but somehow did not know its exact location, and where we got off the otobus ended up being quite far from the shop, so we had to fight our way through crowds, asking every few blocks for the landmark the woman at the shop gave us, a Roma ice cream parlor.
Now Turkish people are helpful to a fault. which means that they will give you directions even if they have no idea where you want to go. so be careful when asking directions because you could be sent very far in the wrong direction before you realize the error.
The shop was called Mimosa and the "tailor" was crude and manhandled my dress to the point where my husband noticed, and told me when she left the room, that she would ruin my dress. her granddaughter also was so intent on watching me undress, that after i insisted on being alone in the dressing room, she had to be physically carried away kicking and screaming. if she was minding her own little business, i wouldn't have minded her being there, but she had her eyes riveted to my naked body in a preternaturally creepy way, and so i had to draw the line. what a weirdo!
so we rushed out, relieved, but still undecided about where to have the simple addition made to my dress, which i could have done myself if i had the time or resources. so we decided to go back to the first place we randomly selected from one of the streets leading off the meydan (square) in our town. but we had forgotten to get their business card, and most businesses do not have listings on the internet or online yellow pages, in fact, they didn't even have their phone number listed in their 2nd floor window, which i found out after strolling over there a couple of times after work. so, being desperate, feeling the date approaching, i went to their door, rang the neighbors' bells and snuck in past the old busybody who lives on the 1st floor. I left a note on their door, as the busybody kept calling up to me in Turkish "who are you". i pretended i didn't understand and continued to write my note, as the light kept shutting off. i hastily stuffed it in the doorjamb, but the old lady must have removed it because they never received it and i ended up having to go back on a sat morning to get their number.
so i finally had my dress finalized, and decided to have my hair and makeup done at a nearby kuafor (hairdresser). they all do bridal packages, which include your hair, make-up and manicure/pedicure, and are also a huge rip off considering they charge 250-300 YTL and ala carte they only total about 70 YTL. I insisted on a hair test, and brought photos and my husband to translate. he seemed to understand, and from my experience with seeing the hairstyles of most Turkish women, I was prepared with a photo of fake, hard curly hair that is highly favored here (i have no idea why) and then the one that i wanted - soft, natural, loose waves.
i was instructed to come the day before to have my manicure & pedicure, so everything seemed fine, and we turned out attention to finalizing our wedding place. my husband and I had gone looking one day, and only went to one place. it was a small 2nd floor restaurant in Kurucesme, with a nice patio and view of the Bosphorus. it seemed nice and the price was close to what we wanted to spend but my husband wanted something closer to his mother's family. but we had no other leads, so i asked around at work, and as is the custom here, the men are the ones who choose the wedding place, since they are the ones paying, so i was given the number of one woman's husband to call, but my husband never did. we looked around at one other place in a nearby town called Floria, but it was very expensive. so after only looking a one other place, my husband decided that we should have it at the first place, mostly because he did not feel like looking anymore.
so everything was in place, we chose a photo studio to have photos taken before the wedding. and when i asked about the cake and music, i was told that the wedding locale arranges everything, but that the cake was chocolate cherry and the music would be Turkish. No room for suggestions, but i was just happy that things were actually going to happen. we even had a florist to do the bouquet, which was also outrageous in price considering the size and the fact that they only had roses and baby's breath to choose from.
so i was relieved that everything was taken care of until i had my husband call to check when the hairdresser wanted me to come in for my manicure (it was now saturday, the day before my wedding). he was at work, and called me back and told me that the hairdresser was sorry, but his wife was sick and was not going to be able to do my makeup, and for some reason didn't think it was important to call us. i started hyperventilating, even though i wasn't thrilled with the test she had done, the thought of having to do my own makeup was making my blood pressure rise. i ran to the nearest shopping mall where there was a sephora and bought some makeup that i needed, and some fake, but natural looking eyelashes, after trying to explain to the shop attendant in Watson's that i didn't want eyeliner, i wanted eyelashes, not being able to find the word in my pocket dictionary.
so the next morning, i showed up at 8am, had my hair washed & set in curlers and sat under a deafening dryer (does anyone still use them?) for close to 2 hours and then was told that his wife was going to try to make it. she was not even sick, she was depressed! so after my makeup was finished, we were running a half hour late. when he removed the metal curlers, to my horror, the hairdresser didn't even try to brush out hard, fake looking curls that covered my head like a doll. i was speechless. my hair looked exactly like the photos of what i told him i did not want, as my husband tried to explain that all i wanted was it to look like what he had done in the test. so he tried to blow it out, but it ended up flattening it near the roots, and just flipping up at the ends. i was fighting back tears as he stuck my veil at the base of my head with a thousand hairpins (i had requested to be able to remove my veil) as i came to realize that he didn't have any experience with wedding hair, but was doing his best.
i ran out to change, as my husband was telling me that he needed a hair trim - why was he asking this now when we were an hour late for the photo studio? because he just thought of it.
his cousin was sweet enough to be our chauffeur and had the car washed & decorated and picked up my bouquet. they insist on putting bouquets on the cars here, and even though we told them that the tulle was enough, they insisted, like it would be bad luck or bad taste to not have it done. i was learning that weddings here are all about compromise.
so we made it to the studio, averted as many cheesy poses & backgrounds as possible, and then made it to the wedding on time, because i had scheduled in an hour of photos be the river before the wedding, which we had to skip.
more later...like the giant 5 tier fake wedding cake!
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
my NY visa sabotaged wedding
April 2008
Before I moved here back in June, I had planned a small wedding party in NYC to celebrate our marriage, allow Suleyman to meet my family & friends for the first time, and also act as a farewell party before my moving to Istanbul. This being my 2nd marriage, I was not obsessed with having the best of anything or consumed by controlling every detail. i had done that already, but being a neurotic New Yorker with an opinion, of course i had some requirements, and spent what little free time i had (when i wasn't packing and organizing my relocating) researching and arranging the event. but everything was dependent on one factor...my husband's visa. which the US govt had not yet granted him. We had applied in early March right after our nikah (Turkish civil marriage ceremony) but were still waiting, although still hopeful that he would receive it by the 4-6 weeks that the visa officer in Istanbul told my husband during his interview. so planning a wedding without having a definite date was slightly challenging. how can you reserve someone's services without giving them a date to work with? my one dear friend was kind enough to offer (or acquiesce when i asked) his apt & back deck for the afternoon event. the caterer was a friend of a friend and was gracious enough to hold the date and the date after that, and then the date after that, as it kept sliding from mid April to early June. i had an estimate from the bakery for the cake and planned to utilize friends to make cds to DJ the event. i even had a friend who was going to act as the wedding officiant. it was as homespun as is possible in nyc.
But the immigration gods had other plans, and week after week, we heard nothing about his visa. my husband periodically called the visa office in Istanbul, who told us to call the US visa dept. i called washington DC weekly and was flat out told to cancel my wedding. no one could give me any indication as to the status of my husband's application, and one visa officer told me it could take up to 4 months (not 4 weeks) but it all depends on the popularity of the person's name as they run it through their database, or whether his name was similar to anyone who was flagged in their system for questionable past behavior or worse, suspicion of terrorism.
great. so i held out as long as i could, but in the end as my one way flight to Istanbul drew near, i had to cancel it.
So as i boarded the plane at JFK with all my belongings having been shipped ahead on a container ship crossing the Atlantic, and all my remaining belongings crammed into 2 super sized checked suitcases (one well over the weight limit - but fortunately slipping past the check-in attendant) and 1 carry on bag, I also had slung over my arm a 6ft long white garment bag containing my wedding dress. so i consoled myself with having a wedding in Istanbul and hopefully a few dedicated souls who could afford to fly here for the event.
Before I moved here back in June, I had planned a small wedding party in NYC to celebrate our marriage, allow Suleyman to meet my family & friends for the first time, and also act as a farewell party before my moving to Istanbul. This being my 2nd marriage, I was not obsessed with having the best of anything or consumed by controlling every detail. i had done that already, but being a neurotic New Yorker with an opinion, of course i had some requirements, and spent what little free time i had (when i wasn't packing and organizing my relocating) researching and arranging the event. but everything was dependent on one factor...my husband's visa. which the US govt had not yet granted him. We had applied in early March right after our nikah (Turkish civil marriage ceremony) but were still waiting, although still hopeful that he would receive it by the 4-6 weeks that the visa officer in Istanbul told my husband during his interview. so planning a wedding without having a definite date was slightly challenging. how can you reserve someone's services without giving them a date to work with? my one dear friend was kind enough to offer (or acquiesce when i asked) his apt & back deck for the afternoon event. the caterer was a friend of a friend and was gracious enough to hold the date and the date after that, and then the date after that, as it kept sliding from mid April to early June. i had an estimate from the bakery for the cake and planned to utilize friends to make cds to DJ the event. i even had a friend who was going to act as the wedding officiant. it was as homespun as is possible in nyc.
But the immigration gods had other plans, and week after week, we heard nothing about his visa. my husband periodically called the visa office in Istanbul, who told us to call the US visa dept. i called washington DC weekly and was flat out told to cancel my wedding. no one could give me any indication as to the status of my husband's application, and one visa officer told me it could take up to 4 months (not 4 weeks) but it all depends on the popularity of the person's name as they run it through their database, or whether his name was similar to anyone who was flagged in their system for questionable past behavior or worse, suspicion of terrorism.
great. so i held out as long as i could, but in the end as my one way flight to Istanbul drew near, i had to cancel it.
So as i boarded the plane at JFK with all my belongings having been shipped ahead on a container ship crossing the Atlantic, and all my remaining belongings crammed into 2 super sized checked suitcases (one well over the weight limit - but fortunately slipping past the check-in attendant) and 1 carry on bag, I also had slung over my arm a 6ft long white garment bag containing my wedding dress. so i consoled myself with having a wedding in Istanbul and hopefully a few dedicated souls who could afford to fly here for the event.
mutlu yillar
OK, i know this is going to sound snarky, but can someone please tell the Turks that they are welcome to appropriate other people's religious observances, especially in the name of religious tolerance, but please try to get it right. A Christmas tree replete with decorations (actually the star belongs at the top of the tree, not in the middle) santa hats and gift giving has no place on New Years Eve. You should be drinking champagne and celebrating the new year and making new year resolutions, you've got it all mixed up! You don't even know what day Christmas is (it is always December 25th) to wish your western Christian friends and colleagues "Iyi Noeller!" or ask them why they are leaving early for the day or not there at all.
I have done my part to understand the history behind Ramazan and seker & kurban bayram, and I although I don't see the need to fast, I probably know more about it than my Turkish husband, so please do your research and straighten things out!
OK, now that i've gotten that off my chest, this will be my 2nd new year's eve in Istanbul. the last one was spent prowling around Sultanahmet looking for a restaurant that would seat us, most being full of revelers by 9pm. we were still "dating" back then and i was visiting for a week, staying at my husband's hotel, and spending my Christmas sick in the hotel bed with some kind of gastrointestinal illness. this year, now that we are married, will be spent at my husband's parents apt, very far from and with no view of the Bosphorus fireworks - i guess that is what live broadcasting is for. I really tried to make some festive plans, knowing that if I was back in NYC, I would have tons of great parties to go to, and so feeling the pressure of having to do something special to celebrate, I made some suggestions, all of which were deemed too difficult, given the craziness & traffic in Istanbul. But I am looking forward to 2009, not that 2008 was so bad personally, except for the worsening financial doom that exploded right before the elections (I can't even look at my IRA - let's just say, i have AIG), and having to endure 4 more years of Bush and all his related incompetencies.
On the positive side, I got "engaged" sort of for 2 months and then married in March. left a successful career, sold my apt, shipped all my belongings and moved here all with the best intentions to start a new life in a place most Americans are afraid to travel to. and after much waffling about whether to spend the money on having a wedding, we did after all in November and that was an experience in itself. so all in all, not a bad year, but i am hopeful that 2009 will be even better.
I have done my part to understand the history behind Ramazan and seker & kurban bayram, and I although I don't see the need to fast, I probably know more about it than my Turkish husband, so please do your research and straighten things out!
OK, now that i've gotten that off my chest, this will be my 2nd new year's eve in Istanbul. the last one was spent prowling around Sultanahmet looking for a restaurant that would seat us, most being full of revelers by 9pm. we were still "dating" back then and i was visiting for a week, staying at my husband's hotel, and spending my Christmas sick in the hotel bed with some kind of gastrointestinal illness. this year, now that we are married, will be spent at my husband's parents apt, very far from and with no view of the Bosphorus fireworks - i guess that is what live broadcasting is for. I really tried to make some festive plans, knowing that if I was back in NYC, I would have tons of great parties to go to, and so feeling the pressure of having to do something special to celebrate, I made some suggestions, all of which were deemed too difficult, given the craziness & traffic in Istanbul. But I am looking forward to 2009, not that 2008 was so bad personally, except for the worsening financial doom that exploded right before the elections (I can't even look at my IRA - let's just say, i have AIG), and having to endure 4 more years of Bush and all his related incompetencies.
On the positive side, I got "engaged" sort of for 2 months and then married in March. left a successful career, sold my apt, shipped all my belongings and moved here all with the best intentions to start a new life in a place most Americans are afraid to travel to. and after much waffling about whether to spend the money on having a wedding, we did after all in November and that was an experience in itself. so all in all, not a bad year, but i am hopeful that 2009 will be even better.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
living in Istanbul is like camping in NYC
this phrase floats into my subconscious as i lie half-awake shivering in bed early one morning. it is winter now, and the days are shorter and today it is lightly raining, making the sky outside our bedroom window dark and making it feel like midnight instead of 7:45am. my husband's alarm is going off, a smooth brazilian riff that is far less jarring than the Nelly song that used to jolt me out of sleep.
but we've made progress i argue in my mind. we now have an oven, a washing machine and a dishwasher! but why is it so cold? because the yonetici (building manager) doesn't turn on the heat until 10:30am and as it is our heating bill is 175 YTL a month, i remind myself. seems pretty inefficient.
after my husband leaves for work, being recently unemployed, i sleep until 9:30 and then shuffle into the bathroom and splash my face with ice cold water from the tap. my hands were cold before, but now they are chilled to the bone as i try to wash & brush my teeth with the freezing water. my mind wanders to scenes from shows like Survivor and Frontier House as I wonder how the person lived here before us, and claimed he was an architect.
the built in bookshelves in our bedroom are packed with my clothes, and i pull out a sweater that it damp and cold. investigating further, i pull a stack of clothes from the shelf and see that the wall is slick with cold condensation. my eye travels to the wall of our bedroom where mildew has grown along the baseboard and the chill from the floor is traveling up through my slippers to my feet and legs. what is going on here? there must not be any insulation in the wall. very typical.
i could go to the freezing cold balcony and flip the switch open on the top of the propane tank, and then light the water heater flame, but then i have to shut it off after i am finished using the hot water, because i am afraid to leave it on too long, or else the gas fumes will fill the balcony, which i neither want to inhale or have lingering around ready to ignite.
more later...have to go cook dinner now...
but we've made progress i argue in my mind. we now have an oven, a washing machine and a dishwasher! but why is it so cold? because the yonetici (building manager) doesn't turn on the heat until 10:30am and as it is our heating bill is 175 YTL a month, i remind myself. seems pretty inefficient.
after my husband leaves for work, being recently unemployed, i sleep until 9:30 and then shuffle into the bathroom and splash my face with ice cold water from the tap. my hands were cold before, but now they are chilled to the bone as i try to wash & brush my teeth with the freezing water. my mind wanders to scenes from shows like Survivor and Frontier House as I wonder how the person lived here before us, and claimed he was an architect.
the built in bookshelves in our bedroom are packed with my clothes, and i pull out a sweater that it damp and cold. investigating further, i pull a stack of clothes from the shelf and see that the wall is slick with cold condensation. my eye travels to the wall of our bedroom where mildew has grown along the baseboard and the chill from the floor is traveling up through my slippers to my feet and legs. what is going on here? there must not be any insulation in the wall. very typical.
i could go to the freezing cold balcony and flip the switch open on the top of the propane tank, and then light the water heater flame, but then i have to shut it off after i am finished using the hot water, because i am afraid to leave it on too long, or else the gas fumes will fill the balcony, which i neither want to inhale or have lingering around ready to ignite.
more later...have to go cook dinner now...
pearl finish
ok, so i'll admit that i am not a big fan of people airing their dirty laundry in public, but the point of this blog, for me, is part therapeutic, and most of you are my friends and family who have heard this all from me before, so i feel i would be remiss to leave out the biggest and hopefully last blow out fight i had early on with my sweet husband over a paint color. actually, a paint finish to be exact.
being a neurotic new yorker, i had mailed ahead paint chip reference colors for each room (wall & trim) of our new apt in Istanbul, complete with inspiration tear sheets and finish samples, instructing my husband to paint the apt or have it painted before my arrival, so it would be sufficiently aired out, imagining there were probably no low VOC or solvent-free organic paints there. I knew it was a bad sign when he called saying that he had to go to a few paint stores to find the paint finishes I had specified, saying that the first store he went to did not even know about finishes at all. This sounded worrisome, and somewhat inconceivable to me, coming from a world where redecorating is a sport and national past-time and everyone is an amateur architect. sharing the passion, i have renovated past houses and apartments and would go to all the design shows in the spring, like the ICFF, architectural digest, brooklyn design, etc. i naively thought that there would be a version of home depot where they could scan the paint chips i sent & computer match & mix the color, but i was only half right. they have bauhaus (the origin of the name i had to explain to my husband) which is their DIY home project store, but at their small paint dept you must choose a color from 2 small fans of color ranges. and they don't have paint chips that you can take home to check with the room lighting, in fact you have to pay for paint stirrers.
so everything started to go very wrong when my husband asked them for "pearl" finish instead of matching to the finish sample that the US manufacturer called "pearl" but was actually just a very slightly higher gloss version of eggshell, but not yet sateen. so in addition to the colors being not very close, the finish was not even pearl, it was metallic.
unaware of any of this and having been told that his father had helped him paint, i entered the apartment in anticipation and before the paint colors and finishes had registered, i immediately noticed that the apt was much smaller than i remembered. which would not normally be such of a concern, except that all my belongings were on their way in a container ship crossing the Atlantic, and all i could think was that maybe half of it would fit. not only was the apt smaller than my apt in nyc, but it was painfully lacking any closets. where were the built in closets? i wondered as my spatial abilities frantically tried to configure how the movers would even be able to fit all the boxes into the apt.
already lost in panic about my impending shipment, the shine of the metallic walls caught my eye. "hmm, it looks a little shiny", i said weakly, as i noticed that the trim was not painted, nor the baseboards. and the kitchen walls, that i had instructed him in an act of faith, to pick a light blue color from the glass wall tiles to match to, were strangely a slightly lighter shade of the metallic blue of the living room. "oh, i just added some white to the living room color," my husband casually told me. I basically had to stop looking because the more closely I looked the more I found, such as swipes of paint on the door frames and fixtures from not removing them or taping as I had requested.
so after his parents came over to have dinner in our unfurnished apt, sitting on the floor around their borrowed coffee table, they asked how i liked the paint colors. I told them they were a mistake and belonged on a car, and that i planned to repaint, all of which my husband refused to translate. so i tried to convey the message in my limited Turkish, and they all looked at me like i had 3 heads, especially his father, who had helped, and seemed amazed that i would want to undo his hard work. it was beyond their comprehension that i could dislike it so much to want to repaint. i think people here are more used to living with their mistakes.
so when i brought up the subject again with my husband, because i needed him to drive me to bauhaus to buy new paint, he said flat out, "you are not repainting," and then refused to discuss it further after i tried to protest. after being told that i made a big deal out of everything, i emailed all my friends for a reality check - was i crazy? but they all confirmed, without even seeing it and without hesistation, that they would of course repaint as well. later after the dust settled, fueled with conviction, we had to have a discussion about what was ok and not ok. such as, it is not ok to tell me that i can't do something. and that it is ok to say that you don't want me to, and give an explanation why. all of which made me realize that we were coming from 2 very different cultural backgrounds, which at the moment were clashing head on.
we are all products of our home environments, and i realized that his reaction was very similar to his father's that i had witnessed before. some reprogramming was in order here, and suffice it to say that the key to harmony is compromise. we repainted the living room, after hours of having to sand off the old paint, and i am living with the main room & kitchen. sometimes is it just too exhausting to be a perfectionist, especially when you have to fight the battle alone.
being a neurotic new yorker, i had mailed ahead paint chip reference colors for each room (wall & trim) of our new apt in Istanbul, complete with inspiration tear sheets and finish samples, instructing my husband to paint the apt or have it painted before my arrival, so it would be sufficiently aired out, imagining there were probably no low VOC or solvent-free organic paints there. I knew it was a bad sign when he called saying that he had to go to a few paint stores to find the paint finishes I had specified, saying that the first store he went to did not even know about finishes at all. This sounded worrisome, and somewhat inconceivable to me, coming from a world where redecorating is a sport and national past-time and everyone is an amateur architect. sharing the passion, i have renovated past houses and apartments and would go to all the design shows in the spring, like the ICFF, architectural digest, brooklyn design, etc. i naively thought that there would be a version of home depot where they could scan the paint chips i sent & computer match & mix the color, but i was only half right. they have bauhaus (the origin of the name i had to explain to my husband) which is their DIY home project store, but at their small paint dept you must choose a color from 2 small fans of color ranges. and they don't have paint chips that you can take home to check with the room lighting, in fact you have to pay for paint stirrers.
so everything started to go very wrong when my husband asked them for "pearl" finish instead of matching to the finish sample that the US manufacturer called "pearl" but was actually just a very slightly higher gloss version of eggshell, but not yet sateen. so in addition to the colors being not very close, the finish was not even pearl, it was metallic.
unaware of any of this and having been told that his father had helped him paint, i entered the apartment in anticipation and before the paint colors and finishes had registered, i immediately noticed that the apt was much smaller than i remembered. which would not normally be such of a concern, except that all my belongings were on their way in a container ship crossing the Atlantic, and all i could think was that maybe half of it would fit. not only was the apt smaller than my apt in nyc, but it was painfully lacking any closets. where were the built in closets? i wondered as my spatial abilities frantically tried to configure how the movers would even be able to fit all the boxes into the apt.
already lost in panic about my impending shipment, the shine of the metallic walls caught my eye. "hmm, it looks a little shiny", i said weakly, as i noticed that the trim was not painted, nor the baseboards. and the kitchen walls, that i had instructed him in an act of faith, to pick a light blue color from the glass wall tiles to match to, were strangely a slightly lighter shade of the metallic blue of the living room. "oh, i just added some white to the living room color," my husband casually told me. I basically had to stop looking because the more closely I looked the more I found, such as swipes of paint on the door frames and fixtures from not removing them or taping as I had requested.
so after his parents came over to have dinner in our unfurnished apt, sitting on the floor around their borrowed coffee table, they asked how i liked the paint colors. I told them they were a mistake and belonged on a car, and that i planned to repaint, all of which my husband refused to translate. so i tried to convey the message in my limited Turkish, and they all looked at me like i had 3 heads, especially his father, who had helped, and seemed amazed that i would want to undo his hard work. it was beyond their comprehension that i could dislike it so much to want to repaint. i think people here are more used to living with their mistakes.
so when i brought up the subject again with my husband, because i needed him to drive me to bauhaus to buy new paint, he said flat out, "you are not repainting," and then refused to discuss it further after i tried to protest. after being told that i made a big deal out of everything, i emailed all my friends for a reality check - was i crazy? but they all confirmed, without even seeing it and without hesistation, that they would of course repaint as well. later after the dust settled, fueled with conviction, we had to have a discussion about what was ok and not ok. such as, it is not ok to tell me that i can't do something. and that it is ok to say that you don't want me to, and give an explanation why. all of which made me realize that we were coming from 2 very different cultural backgrounds, which at the moment were clashing head on.
we are all products of our home environments, and i realized that his reaction was very similar to his father's that i had witnessed before. some reprogramming was in order here, and suffice it to say that the key to harmony is compromise. we repainted the living room, after hours of having to sand off the old paint, and i am living with the main room & kitchen. sometimes is it just too exhausting to be a perfectionist, especially when you have to fight the battle alone.
surviving in istanbul
now that i am unemployed, i have finally found the time to start a blog, as you have all urged. in order to stay chronologically correct, please excuse me for starting at the beginning and slowly catching up to the present.
June 26, 2008
at long last, here is an update on my life in Istanbul. i apologize for the delay, but i've been busy trying to set up our empty apt with the essentials while my husband, suleyman, has been working 6 days a week, and i was waiting until i had been here long enough to give a more thoughtful impression - one that would not have been so positive earlier on.
to sum things up, my life is so completely different, i don't even recognize it, but in the same breath, i'll say that finally being with my husband makes up for it all. and i am confident things will improve over time, but things are not quite as i had envisioned or expected. i'm not sure why i thought that my nyc version of a housewife would be the same thing as one here...
a few things i've learned:
1. visiting here and living here are two very different things.
a woman - esp. a married woman & a foreigner - has rules to follow in dress & behavior.
ex: i had to run out & buy new clothes, because my tank tops, shorts & short skirts or even fitted pants were not acceptable for me to wear by my new husband & his family.
**note: his family is not super religious - being muslim in istanbul is like being jewish in nyc - it is a cultural thing, not necessarily a religious thing.
good thing i have a fashion degree & years of market research (ie: shopping) experience - as i scoured the local markets and shopping malls for lightweight cropped pants & cotton batiste long sleeve tunics to try to keep me covered but cool. an easier task in nyc, but here there is much less of a selection to choose from and most of what you find is either not appropriate (ie: short - so who is wearing this stuff?) or not to my taste level.
ex: we needed an electrician, whose shop was just at the corner of our street, to do some work, and it was not acceptable, to my husband, for him to come to the apt during the day, because i was alone. we had to wait until my husband could come home early from work to be here.
2. what they call a washer/dryer is not actually a dryer.
ex: the washer/dryer here is actually just an expensive washing machine - that spins the clothes really fast at the end & then the housewife is expected to hang the laundry to dry on a clothes line. **ahhh, so that is why his mother gave me the clothes pins - i almost threw them away, not knowing what they were for. not sure what they do on rainy days and don't try to do laundry at night, expecting to wear something the next morning because it won't be dry. you might also want to check the weather report and not do 2 loads of laundry before 4 days of straight rain. i almost cried when i had to rewash everything because after 4 days on our clothes line in our balcony, instead of drying, it got mildewy.
3. people still iron sheets here.
i have never ironed a sheet in my life. if you buy good quality, high thread count, long staple, cotton sateen sheets they come out of the dryer perfectly fine. try it with the local sheets here - the wrinkles don't come out from the spin cycle after hanging them to dry. good thing the wrinkles get a little lost in the carnival of print & colors that seem to be favored here. now i know why his mother irons his boxer shorts - i thought she was just being a bit overzealous.
4. washing dishes with cold water is not very effective.
ex: our apt has a hot water heater, powered by propane, that you have to manually light to work so that you can have hot water flow from the faucets. you can't leave it on all the time because of the odor & risk of igniting. although running hot water is not a new concept, it seems to have escaped our apt building. and yes, we don't have a dishwasher. **in Turkish the definition for dishwasher is housewife. i told suleyman that living in our apt feels like camping in NY.
5. husbands don't need their own set of keys.
ex: i learned this lesson after i got locked out of the apt on day 2 & inadvertently also left my new cell phone in the apt (i was just running to buy a few groceries). i say "locked out", not that i "locked myself out" because strangely i had my keys with me, but they didn't work, because he left his key in the door on the other side - i had to contact my husband from our old retired "busybody" building manager's apt to come with a locksmith - all while my groceries, including ice cream were melting in the Istanbul summer heat. **reminder: no one in my neighborhood speaks English & my Turkish at this point is very limited. while my groceries were stored in the neighbor's refrigerator & my husband & i were waiting outside for the locksmith to arrive, i asked him why he didn't have his set of keys with him, and he told me because i will always be home when he gets home from work (not "maybe" or "i hope"). and so my immediate reply was WHY??? which did not go over very well. i guess the men here expect their wives to be anxiously anticipating their husband's return at the end of the day?
6. high heels are not required.
i launched a major search for comfortable, stylish, affordable flat shoes which turned into a week's journey. basically you have to take your shoes off when you enter someone's house, including your own home, and many people live in walk up apt buildings, so i've realized it doesn't make sense to put on high heels just to walk up 6 flights of stairs, and then take them off & don a pair of vinyl sequin slippers provided by your host that aren't quite your size and don't coordinate with your outfit at all. i understand the hygienic defense for not bringing all the outside filth into your home, but what about sharing house slippers with countless strangers that have come to visit before you?
since i am limited to where i can walk to, i looked at about 25 local shoe shops - there are a lot here - with no luck (when are DSW & Zappos going to make it over here?). so after days of window shopping the local stores down back streets & shopping malls, i finally walked into Nine West and found a pair in 5 min.
7. family is paramount.
it's not like i don't love my family or wouldn't visit them periodically, but here, you do everything together & spend lots of time with them, and even though i love them dearly, and appreciate their warmly welcoming me into their tight family unit, nevertheless
1. they are my inlaws
2. they don't speak English (and my Turkish is far from conversant yet)
3. i need some personal space & time alone.
here, you are never alone & i am sure they think i am a bit freakish (his mother was worried about what i was doing all day by myself - she could not even imagine why i would prefer it or what i would be doing) but i need time to email, write this blog, read, study, do yoga/pilates, meditate, wander around by myself to get oriented to my new neighborhood, in my spare time when i am not food shopping, making dinner, cleaning or doing laundry & ironing in the stifling summer heat. i had to risk insulting his mother to keep her from coming by a 30 min. taxi ride every day to help me adjust & keep me from being alone. it is like a rotating cycle of dinner visits at various relatives' apts and they all want you to sleep over even though you haven't brought a toothbrush or a change of clothes. and they are all waiting until my belongings arrive before they will start expecting me to host.
his mother & i actually spent one day together which was really amusing, where she helped me iron about 50 meters of curtains that she had washed to cover all the windows we have, so that god (or allah) forbid anyone should see inside our apt. she also showed me how to cook some of suleyman's favorite dishes (Turkish of course), as we passed my pocket dictionary back & forth while chopping & stirring. she is an amazing woman, and not just devoted, but extremely resourceful, intelligent & interested in learning about new cultures & travelling, although she has never been outside of turkey.
8. working does not excuse women from household responsibilities.
i'm not quite sure if he was joking or not, but when we discussed the possibility of me working, my dear husband was very supportive of me working if it made me happy, but not open to having a housekeeper (or later a nanny) or sharing the housework for that matter - all of which made working seem far less desirable, but there needs to be more discussion in this area. i'm still interested in keeping this option open or looking into part-time work/consulting, and i am sure i will be able to get some compromise - i am not giving up on this one. i realize that this stems from a cultural difference. i was not raised with the single goal of getting married & being a housewife and mother. i had a successful career and want to have interesting life experiences and evolve spiritually. those life plans do not include scrubbing the toilet or the floor every day. believe me i have done it, but it gets very old fast, and i stand solidly behind the importance of a clean home, but i don't believe that i have to be the one to clean it.
so now i know why most of my turkish female friends exclaimed proudly "i don't want to be a housewife" like they were referring to 2nd class citizens with leprosy. things are pretty sexist here - most women are very dependent (socially & financially) on their male family members. when we went to the bank because i wanted an atm & credit card, the female bank associate told Suleyman that i could just use his ATM card & asked why did i need my own? & most families can't afford or don't even consider buying modern appliances that will help save them time. his mother joked that i was the first person to notice that she needed a dishwasher. they are going through what we have already gone through in the 50's - sometimes i feel like i have been sent back from the future. they don't have A LOT of what we have in NYC, but they do have some things which surprised me, but for a surprising number of the people they don't know they exist or more often, can't afford them.
so my days have been filled with wandering for hours at the local markets & large supermarkets in the basement level of every shopping mall, trying to figure out all the new, interesting food, and planning dinner menus (as my husband told me - one night we can have Turkish food, and the next night we can have "your" food) and comparison shopping for appliances and other household items. i still haven't found a dish drainer i like - there was one stainless steel one that i found, but they had somehow configured the side supports into the shape of a heart. and i am on a crusade for a dishwasher & dryer & oven (yes, i have been challenged to trying to devise turkish dinner menus solely based on what i can cook on the stove top), all of which will not fit in our small apt, without expensive major plumbing & electrical work - and i'm not entirely sure that it is feasible, but i need to protect my free time & make sure that my days are not wholly consumed by household drudgery. i need to study Turkish, and i was going to brush up on illustrator & photoshop & scan all my negatives from my pre-digital travels, and get more into photography, and take up painting, etc. etc. etc.
for the sake of humour, i hope i haven't painted a negative picture of my husband. as far as i know, his expectations & cultural standards are not much different from the majority of Turkish men. but he is the most loving, devoted & caring person i ever could have wished to be with, and even though he will call me 4x a day to check where i am - it is all because i am so precious to him and he worries about making sure that i am safe, knowing that i don't speak the language yet. and he is just beginning to realize that i am really resourceful & good at getting what i want & have already made friends with all the local shopkeepers & managed to navigate my way around & get what i need so far on my own.
so i am confident that the universal truths about a successful relationship will hold true, that with a little compromise, if you love & respect each other, there is no limit to what you can accomplish.
i miss you all very much!!! pls let me know how you are all doing.
June 26, 2008
at long last, here is an update on my life in Istanbul. i apologize for the delay, but i've been busy trying to set up our empty apt with the essentials while my husband, suleyman, has been working 6 days a week, and i was waiting until i had been here long enough to give a more thoughtful impression - one that would not have been so positive earlier on.
to sum things up, my life is so completely different, i don't even recognize it, but in the same breath, i'll say that finally being with my husband makes up for it all. and i am confident things will improve over time, but things are not quite as i had envisioned or expected. i'm not sure why i thought that my nyc version of a housewife would be the same thing as one here...
a few things i've learned:
1. visiting here and living here are two very different things.
a woman - esp. a married woman & a foreigner - has rules to follow in dress & behavior.
ex: i had to run out & buy new clothes, because my tank tops, shorts & short skirts or even fitted pants were not acceptable for me to wear by my new husband & his family.
**note: his family is not super religious - being muslim in istanbul is like being jewish in nyc - it is a cultural thing, not necessarily a religious thing.
good thing i have a fashion degree & years of market research (ie: shopping) experience - as i scoured the local markets and shopping malls for lightweight cropped pants & cotton batiste long sleeve tunics to try to keep me covered but cool. an easier task in nyc, but here there is much less of a selection to choose from and most of what you find is either not appropriate (ie: short - so who is wearing this stuff?) or not to my taste level.
ex: we needed an electrician, whose shop was just at the corner of our street, to do some work, and it was not acceptable, to my husband, for him to come to the apt during the day, because i was alone. we had to wait until my husband could come home early from work to be here.
2. what they call a washer/dryer is not actually a dryer.
ex: the washer/dryer here is actually just an expensive washing machine - that spins the clothes really fast at the end & then the housewife is expected to hang the laundry to dry on a clothes line. **ahhh, so that is why his mother gave me the clothes pins - i almost threw them away, not knowing what they were for. not sure what they do on rainy days and don't try to do laundry at night, expecting to wear something the next morning because it won't be dry. you might also want to check the weather report and not do 2 loads of laundry before 4 days of straight rain. i almost cried when i had to rewash everything because after 4 days on our clothes line in our balcony, instead of drying, it got mildewy.
3. people still iron sheets here.
i have never ironed a sheet in my life. if you buy good quality, high thread count, long staple, cotton sateen sheets they come out of the dryer perfectly fine. try it with the local sheets here - the wrinkles don't come out from the spin cycle after hanging them to dry. good thing the wrinkles get a little lost in the carnival of print & colors that seem to be favored here. now i know why his mother irons his boxer shorts - i thought she was just being a bit overzealous.
4. washing dishes with cold water is not very effective.
ex: our apt has a hot water heater, powered by propane, that you have to manually light to work so that you can have hot water flow from the faucets. you can't leave it on all the time because of the odor & risk of igniting. although running hot water is not a new concept, it seems to have escaped our apt building. and yes, we don't have a dishwasher. **in Turkish the definition for dishwasher is housewife. i told suleyman that living in our apt feels like camping in NY.
5. husbands don't need their own set of keys.
ex: i learned this lesson after i got locked out of the apt on day 2 & inadvertently also left my new cell phone in the apt (i was just running to buy a few groceries). i say "locked out", not that i "locked myself out" because strangely i had my keys with me, but they didn't work, because he left his key in the door on the other side - i had to contact my husband from our old retired "busybody" building manager's apt to come with a locksmith - all while my groceries, including ice cream were melting in the Istanbul summer heat. **reminder: no one in my neighborhood speaks English & my Turkish at this point is very limited. while my groceries were stored in the neighbor's refrigerator & my husband & i were waiting outside for the locksmith to arrive, i asked him why he didn't have his set of keys with him, and he told me because i will always be home when he gets home from work (not "maybe" or "i hope"). and so my immediate reply was WHY??? which did not go over very well. i guess the men here expect their wives to be anxiously anticipating their husband's return at the end of the day?
6. high heels are not required.
i launched a major search for comfortable, stylish, affordable flat shoes which turned into a week's journey. basically you have to take your shoes off when you enter someone's house, including your own home, and many people live in walk up apt buildings, so i've realized it doesn't make sense to put on high heels just to walk up 6 flights of stairs, and then take them off & don a pair of vinyl sequin slippers provided by your host that aren't quite your size and don't coordinate with your outfit at all. i understand the hygienic defense for not bringing all the outside filth into your home, but what about sharing house slippers with countless strangers that have come to visit before you?
since i am limited to where i can walk to, i looked at about 25 local shoe shops - there are a lot here - with no luck (when are DSW & Zappos going to make it over here?). so after days of window shopping the local stores down back streets & shopping malls, i finally walked into Nine West and found a pair in 5 min.
7. family is paramount.
it's not like i don't love my family or wouldn't visit them periodically, but here, you do everything together & spend lots of time with them, and even though i love them dearly, and appreciate their warmly welcoming me into their tight family unit, nevertheless
1. they are my inlaws
2. they don't speak English (and my Turkish is far from conversant yet)
3. i need some personal space & time alone.
here, you are never alone & i am sure they think i am a bit freakish (his mother was worried about what i was doing all day by myself - she could not even imagine why i would prefer it or what i would be doing) but i need time to email, write this blog, read, study, do yoga/pilates, meditate, wander around by myself to get oriented to my new neighborhood, in my spare time when i am not food shopping, making dinner, cleaning or doing laundry & ironing in the stifling summer heat. i had to risk insulting his mother to keep her from coming by a 30 min. taxi ride every day to help me adjust & keep me from being alone. it is like a rotating cycle of dinner visits at various relatives' apts and they all want you to sleep over even though you haven't brought a toothbrush or a change of clothes. and they are all waiting until my belongings arrive before they will start expecting me to host.
his mother & i actually spent one day together which was really amusing, where she helped me iron about 50 meters of curtains that she had washed to cover all the windows we have, so that god (or allah) forbid anyone should see inside our apt. she also showed me how to cook some of suleyman's favorite dishes (Turkish of course), as we passed my pocket dictionary back & forth while chopping & stirring. she is an amazing woman, and not just devoted, but extremely resourceful, intelligent & interested in learning about new cultures & travelling, although she has never been outside of turkey.
8. working does not excuse women from household responsibilities.
i'm not quite sure if he was joking or not, but when we discussed the possibility of me working, my dear husband was very supportive of me working if it made me happy, but not open to having a housekeeper (or later a nanny) or sharing the housework for that matter - all of which made working seem far less desirable, but there needs to be more discussion in this area. i'm still interested in keeping this option open or looking into part-time work/consulting, and i am sure i will be able to get some compromise - i am not giving up on this one. i realize that this stems from a cultural difference. i was not raised with the single goal of getting married & being a housewife and mother. i had a successful career and want to have interesting life experiences and evolve spiritually. those life plans do not include scrubbing the toilet or the floor every day. believe me i have done it, but it gets very old fast, and i stand solidly behind the importance of a clean home, but i don't believe that i have to be the one to clean it.
so now i know why most of my turkish female friends exclaimed proudly "i don't want to be a housewife" like they were referring to 2nd class citizens with leprosy. things are pretty sexist here - most women are very dependent (socially & financially) on their male family members. when we went to the bank because i wanted an atm & credit card, the female bank associate told Suleyman that i could just use his ATM card & asked why did i need my own? & most families can't afford or don't even consider buying modern appliances that will help save them time. his mother joked that i was the first person to notice that she needed a dishwasher. they are going through what we have already gone through in the 50's - sometimes i feel like i have been sent back from the future. they don't have A LOT of what we have in NYC, but they do have some things which surprised me, but for a surprising number of the people they don't know they exist or more often, can't afford them.
so my days have been filled with wandering for hours at the local markets & large supermarkets in the basement level of every shopping mall, trying to figure out all the new, interesting food, and planning dinner menus (as my husband told me - one night we can have Turkish food, and the next night we can have "your" food) and comparison shopping for appliances and other household items. i still haven't found a dish drainer i like - there was one stainless steel one that i found, but they had somehow configured the side supports into the shape of a heart. and i am on a crusade for a dishwasher & dryer & oven (yes, i have been challenged to trying to devise turkish dinner menus solely based on what i can cook on the stove top), all of which will not fit in our small apt, without expensive major plumbing & electrical work - and i'm not entirely sure that it is feasible, but i need to protect my free time & make sure that my days are not wholly consumed by household drudgery. i need to study Turkish, and i was going to brush up on illustrator & photoshop & scan all my negatives from my pre-digital travels, and get more into photography, and take up painting, etc. etc. etc.
for the sake of humour, i hope i haven't painted a negative picture of my husband. as far as i know, his expectations & cultural standards are not much different from the majority of Turkish men. but he is the most loving, devoted & caring person i ever could have wished to be with, and even though he will call me 4x a day to check where i am - it is all because i am so precious to him and he worries about making sure that i am safe, knowing that i don't speak the language yet. and he is just beginning to realize that i am really resourceful & good at getting what i want & have already made friends with all the local shopkeepers & managed to navigate my way around & get what i need so far on my own.
so i am confident that the universal truths about a successful relationship will hold true, that with a little compromise, if you love & respect each other, there is no limit to what you can accomplish.
i miss you all very much!!! pls let me know how you are all doing.
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