TURKEY FALL 2017 - 7 - A FRIEND LOST AND FOUND

The summary of my trip wouldn't be complete without the highlight event; meeting a friend, who had disappeared into my past, that resurfaced unexpectedly and in a very unexpected way… Several months ago one of my best friends from high school years had sent me an e-mail message and let me know with a “you won’t believe who is back in my life”  attitude how this friend of ours that neither of us had seen for decades and my best friend’s brother were in a romantic relationship for a year!

We didn't have computers when we were in college but our textbooks...

I had almost flown out of my seat with what unfolded before my eyes across the screen. My friend told me that the three of us should get together during my visit to Turkey. I couldn't wait for it as I had dove into memories of our friendship: My friend and SHE (the friend that had disappeared) were childhood friends. My friend and I were friends for over 12 years by the time SHE came into my life. Throughout college years we studied together, and most of the time we did so at HER little studio since SHE was the only one among us who was out of town and had HER own “house”.

We had studied in a small studio in the old section of town during our college years

Then we all fell in love, SHE was the first one of us who got married, and I followed suit! Once SHE got married our study sessions got less and less often, eventually my friend and I were studying on our own without HER. SHE had a baby, we didn’t see her, since we didn’t see HER. We didn’t quite understand what was happening, we just drifted apart... Once college years were over, I never saw HER, never heard about HER. She unfortunately faded into my past. When I heard about HER return, I couldn’t help but wondering whether my friend and I had handled the situation compassionately. We were all young, did we feel rejected, we must have; did we reflect this sense of rejection toward HER? Did we reject HER as much as we might have felt rejected? Force myself as I did, I couldn’t recall any of the details. I hoped I could ask her face to face this burning question: “Did we do anything to make you feel hurt in any way?”

Our high school Bornova Anadolu Lisesi was in a wooded campus in the outskirts of Bornova at the time, now engulfed by suburbs of Izmir

My friend and I will get together with our high school friends before I leave Turkey. I am hoping we could invite HER to that get together; we decide that is not appropriate for this first meeting across the years. How about if we meet a few hours before our class get-together; that won’t work, either since SHE is going out of town that day for a yoga retreat. SHE has retired and become a yoga teacher! I am getting more and more excited about meeting her, my friend keeps telling me it looks like it won’t work this time. However, passingly she tells me the days and times that SHE teaches yoga. My heart starts pounding in my chest: What if I go to HER yoga class? And my friend gets even more mischievous “Let’s not tell HER, just appear at the door…” We are back to our 20s in our crack up on the phone. I can hear that my dear friend is as excited as I am about this prospect. I am already beyond happiness and my friend is also clearly very happy just because she is helping two of her friends be happy!!!

It is very nice to see that yoga studios are spreading all over Turkey, just like the US

She gives me the address of the yoga studio, just a metro ride away from where I stay in Izmir. All set. I get up on Thursday morning, have an early breakfast and head to the metro station to get to HER studio before the 11 am yoga class. I find the address, a nice, new apartment building. I am a bit early, walk around the block. When I return, a car parks right around the corner by the sidewalk. Instinctively, I walk by it without looking into it considering she might be in it. I walk into the apartment building, get the elevator and push the floor key. Just as the door starts closing, I hear women entering the lobby. I recognize HER voice in the joyful chatter of the three women walking toward the elevator. My heart leaps, I hope, they miss the elevator, but they are quick, one of them catches the door before I can take off alone in the elevator. I put my sun glasses back on hoping with my now-white hair SHE won’t recognize me.

My attempt to remain indifferent to HER in the elevator didn't work!

SHE does. I can feel HER eyes on me, I can feel a body next to mine in the elevator feeling the same excitement as I am immersed in with a difficult-to-control giddiness as I fight back a laughter. And it happens, I hear HER voice: “Resmiye?”  with an upward intonation that reflects her disbelief and hope at the same time. I can’t pretend any more… I turn toward her, take off my glasses, and find the happy sparks in HER eyes with the widest smile I have seen on HER face as I can't control as wide a smile spreading onto my entire my face, filling my heart' my soul in full bliss. We hug each other, I make a note that I hadn’t received a meditative hug like this either from HER or from anybody for a long time. When we pull back in chuckles, we can't help uttering “Oh my, oh my” not knowing what else to say… HER company is beyond stunned, not knowing what is going on. Finally, when we are on the floor where HER studio is, we have to untangle and SHE has the opportunity to tell HER customers what has been happening. Then it occurs to HER to ask me how in the world I found HER here. SHE chuckles again at the conspiracy my friend and I cooked up. SHE is a very elegant yoga instructor. This is my first yoga class in Turkey, hearing it taught in Turkish, what a pleasure to receive this gift from HER, my friend.

It was such a joy to do yoga with my friend's instruction

We do have some more time after yoga to spend together at a lovely coffee shop SHE takes me. I do ask my burning question. If we added to HER burden during those years, I would like to ask for HER forgiveness. SHE tells me it had nothing to do with what we did or did not do. I hope SHE is telling the truth. I am so happy to see HER as cheerful, fit, healthy, beautiful, and warm as the young woman I remember, whose traces I thought I had lost in 1983. I feel more connected to HER now seeing that our paths had converged through mediation and yoga. I can see the light on HER face that I see in some of my friends in my sangha in Iowa City. As we part, we promise to get together at HER house next time I visit Turkey that SHE shares with the brother of my best friend in a village in the outskirts of Izmir. I can’t wait my friend, both to see you again and also to continue connecting with you at this state of our lives through yoga, meditation, nature, and earth as well as our memories… Peace and joy.

Never before I had left Turkey with tears streaming down my face...

As I leave Turkey through Ataturk airport the next day, tears stream down my cheeks for some reason... I look deeply inside my heart, they are not tears of sadness but of joy and cleansing tears... I don't know if anybody looks at me or not, but I allow them roll down my face and wash away some of the "unlivedness" in my life, who knows what the future holds for the rest. Keeping Pema Chodron's words in my mind "this very moment is the perfect teacher", I walk up to my gate and smile at the young stewardess...

Can we all learn to be aware of what beauty is right before our eyes, under our feet as we explore the expansive wonders of the earth and the future?

 

TURKEY FALL 2017 - 6 - AFTER 40 YEARS

After 40 years

Kids we were…

40 years ago, playful, fun, mean, rowdy
Merciless in our labels for others

My father has put me in a box

All the kids are blurry through the box
All the friends of my youth…

The day comes at last

I tear apart the box
Father not a happy camper

Fly away

Find a tree
Fertilize the blossoms into an apple
Fly again the apple of my eye tucked in my wings
Far-far away, across the ocean

A new shimmer on my fur…

Paths parted, decades go by

One day I come back
A friend brings the old box
Was it this small?
All those years?
Try as she may
To fit me in the box
I am too plump to fit in its confines…

I look at the mirror deep and long

I smile, the box on my head
Looks like a hair pin
She must have played a sweet joke…

 

The question is...

Who am I still trying to keep in a box

Whether I do...

Of 40 years of age

What if the who might be

Bigger than life...

 

Curiosity

Hope

Patience

Tears washing my face anew...

Ataturk Airport, Istanbul 

10/16/2017

TURKEY FALL 2017 - 5 - PUTTING EACH OTHER IN CONFINING BOXES...

One more visit to Turkey is over. As I always do, reflection time. The main theme in my reflections over this visit happens to be around how we Turks (or is this cross-cultural?) lock each other into a box and interpret each other through the confines of that box, which may sometimes be decades old. That confinement we engage in at individual level certainly cannot be segregated from the macro level confinement the culture imposes on us. As the years go by, I realize more and more that I tried to escape this confinement process, this, in a way, imprisonment by leaving Turkey in 1998 and getting established in the US.

For years after I moved to the US, I thought, it was my family that practiced this confinement loaded with some elements of judgment, slight grandiosity, oppression in the name of protection, explosive expressivity, suffering over shame and guilt: My family has always been full of pride around being Cretan and having brought more western values to Anatolia, where most of native Turks had some decades ahead of them to catch up with the West, when the Cretans arrived in Turkey. They had kept their pride in hiding during the oppressive discrimination period in the early 1900s. Once they integrated into the dominant culture in the next couple of generations, more and more of that pride was released mostly in a benevolent manner, yet, still feeding into a subtle looking down on the native Turks and Turkish culture.

All the ornaments of this ethnic identification and confinement helped them stay who they were when they were confined into their own ethnic group: The truth be told, when the “Catastrophie” as Greeks call it, occurred it moved millions of people across the Aegean, Greek speaking Anatolians to Greece and Muslim Greeks, known as Turkos to Anatolia. Neither Turkos of Greece nor Greeks of Anatolia were welcome initially in their new country: Turkos were discriminated against by the derogatory nickname “The seed of Greeks” as well the Anatolian Greeks being called “Turkos”. Just as any ethnicity in a new land does under cultural pressures of othering, my people also kept it to themselves. They intermarried, they continued speaking Greek rather Cretan instead of rushing to learn Turkish that protected the Cretan identity at least for three generations.

I also was forced to identify with the high expectations of this subculture for at least for several decades. Some of these expectations were good, hard work, honor, honesty, family values, excelling in anything you did… However, some of these virtues were also entangled with judgmental-ism, slight (perhaps not so slight, who knows) grandiosity or pride, shame and guilt… It wasn’t until my 30s that I finally started seeing that something in this subculture was not right. Individual rights and need for happiness were being sacrificed in the name of the well-being of the group all around me, which started alienating me from my roots. Perhaps I carried a subconscious awareness of that even during my childhood, which might have led to my refusal to learn Greek, the mother tongue of my grandparents. My parents had already integrated into Turkish-ness and dominant Turkish culture that became my natural path for couple of decades, also. During my late 20s early 30s, I started recognizing through this process of becoming fully Turkish that there was no difference between the confinement through Cretan lens versus Turkish. That is when I had decided to preserve the good of both cultures and refuse the not so good in either. Little did I know then, that in another decade I would have to practice the same between American culture versus Aegean culture.  

One may wonder where all this contemplation comes from during this trip to Turkey: Some of my childhood connections that I encountered during this trip opened to path to deep listening and thinking… Unexpectedly, a different awareness surfaced in my cognition: Especially those friends, with whom we have not preserved an intimate closeness in continuity over the years may provide the best opportunity to recognize where we are at on the spectrum of openness to recognize and appreciate the evolution each one of us has gone through as we have sailed through life… When one spends 7 years of their lives in a special middle-high school complex day in day out, that may indeed set a box for each one of us in the minds of each one of us, the confines of which may have remained unchanged for the last 40 years. 

Reunions until before the last decade with my high school friends were all about having fun, running over our collective memories from our school years, sharing our hopes for the future, when we were still raising families and still had more of our careers ahead of us… At age 58, a lot of my high school friends have retired, completed raising their children, diving into grandparenthood, things started having slightly changed. Are we approaching the stage to look back and assess what have lived and what we have not? How do we handle the lived-ness and unlived-ness of life’s wonders? How many of us will be able to process our pasts with the wisdom of impermanence, calm recognition, loving embrace, and peaceful carpa diem? Are we able to generate equanimity, loving kindness, and compassion toward each one of us and find true joy and peace in each one of us? Is all the laughter we savor around our raki table genuine and out of joy and happiness, or is some of it to escape the ache of some of our lived-ness and unlived-ness? How many of them do I truly know in depth to understand their joy and pain in full truth? How many of them know me in depth as the true me on this very day with all the growth struggles and joys of life gifted me with?

More and more, I am finding more satisfaction in one on one meeting with friends and those I’d like to spend time with. Even a third person in the conversation changes the rhetoric so drastically, let alone in a group of 15-20? That is why I tried to spend 5-10 minutes of one on one time with each friend at my high school reunion. That was the best time of the entire evening with each one of them. Until I received the question when a group of us was thoroughly enjoying themselves as 58 year young rowdy kids! I was asked whether I had ever lost myself in such adventurous joy, ever taken risks without thinking of what would have followed, essentially, whether I had had fully lived or not at some point in my life. I remembered the value of pause. Especially, when something unexpected is thrown at us, pause becomes the space we may gift ourselves with before we respond to the surprise with mindful, kind, and compassionate speech.

In the past, I would have taken a question like this as the person criticizing me and that perception would have made me upset, disappointed, and to a certain extent angry. I bet all these emotions would have reflected in my speech. This time, the question he posed made me simply curious. Multiple questions went through my mind: Is this a question or a statement? If it is a statement, what does he base his perception on? When did that perception become solidified in his mind? Is he willing to learn me as who I am now? Are all of us full of similar solidified perceptions, most of which might be wrong? Thich Nhat Hanh states for true happiness, we should be committed to practicing generosity in our thinking, speaking, and actions. It is possible only with understanding and compassion. Loving speech and compassionate listening are two tools that not only relieve suffering in others but also promote reconciliation and peace both in ourselves and in others.

I didn’t know if my friend knew any of this. I didn’t know if he was simply inviting me to “letting it go” or confronting me with something that I have confronted myself long long time ago… I wanted to believe that he was compassionately letting me know that in case I had not let it go ever, it was time to do so… The little Resmiye in this 58 year old body and history is grateful to you my friend, luckily, she has already led the way to the adult Resmiye to learn to enjoy the joys of life sometimes in laughter with little things, sometimes in exertion of a hike to a mountain top, sometimes in dancing to a melody in trance, and at least one time in making the leap across the Atlantic with a 13 year old between her wings… And we are open to many more opportunities of letting go in the years to come…

 

TURKEY FALL 2017 -4 - CRETAN-TURKISH BREAKFASTS

I had a very peaceful sleep with no jet lag for a change. After feeding my family as is expected of an “abla” (older sister) in a typical middle class Turkish family... Not only because it is a sweet and welcome duty and fulfillment of being the oldest sibling, especially sister but also I love it. I wonder if meditation practice will change my relationship with jet lags, too! I wake up around 7 am, well-rested and take to the streets:

Mimkent neighborhood where my mother lives is a hilly set of up and down streets looking down on the Izmir Bay with beautiful sunsets

My mother and younger brother live in a very hilly area of Izmir, with lots of steep slopes that makes even a morning stroll in the neighborhood a good work-out. Every time I visit my mom, I take advantage of this and shopping for breakfast becomes part of my daily exercise: My brother doesn’t accept gevrek (baked good similar to American bagel, yet less dense and more crispy than bagel) from any store but one particular neighborhood “firin”.

Turkish bagels "gevrek"s being delivered into a wood burning oven in a firin to be baked before dawn

Firins in Turkey are part of the cultural fabric. They are stores with a huge built-in wood burning oven that can bake hundreds of loaves of bread at any time as well as other baked breakfast goods, mostly savory rather than sweet ,a diversion from what we are used to in the US. In the old days, my mother would make stuffed vegetables (tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini, etc) and send the big copper tray to the neighborhood firin to be baked although she had an oven in her kitchen. She claimed it tasted much better if baked in a wood-burning stone oven…

My mom's tray of dolmas would probably sit next to burning wood logs in our neighborhood's firin like these pots

I know for sure that my childhood tastes are irreproducible today, who knows what changed… Another gourmet delicacy was her spinach borek: She would prepare her own dough and using a rolling pin she would make some 20 filo sheets and spread them on top of one another across a huge tepsi (our tin-plated circular copper tray of 3 ft diameter), layering spinach with ricotto cheese after the tenth layer. Each layer would be generously basted with olive oil.

Typical tin plated copper tray "sini" my mother used to make borek

She would then score the entire circle into small diamond shaped slices each one of which would be sprinkled with sesame seeds before my dad carried the tray to the neighborhood firin. My dad would wait at the firin and supervise the baking of the borek or the dolma (stuffed vegetables), probably annoying the h… out of the baker with his perfectionism and impatience… What came home, though, would be indeed something that royal Ottomans wouldn’t be able to dream of… Such childhood tastes and aromas, all still on my palate and in my nostrils…

Here is how my mother's borek out of the firin looked like!

My replication of my mother’s cuisine feels almost fake. I didn’t learn from my  mom how to make the filo dough sheets. Part of it was I never believed as an adolescent and young woman, the effort was worth the difference since I always needed time to read more than anything. Now that I have audiobooks that speeds up reading at unimaginable speed, I sometimes wonder if I should still learn how to make my own filo sheets. All I can do nowadays is buy the filo dough from the market and try to replicate what my mother used to make, with little chance! However, I still make spinach borek at least once every visit here in Turkey, since all ingredients required for borek are much fresher more delicious than those found in the US. Moreover, all ingredients come from specialized stores in Turkey: ricotto “lor” in Turkish from “mandra” that sells only breakfast goods; filo dough from charcuterie and spinach of course from the farmer’s market…

Borek with filo dough; this variety is called "Arm borek" since spinach and cheese are wrapped into a tube and laid into the tray starting from the center...

With these thoughts, I start walking down the 1 mile slope that will take me to one of the throughways of the city, where I will find my favorite “mandra” and charcuterie to buy filo dough, cheeses, olives, and other breakfast items. Everybody must be asleep, the stores are not open yet; it is Sunday after all. I walk by store after store lining the street leading to my mother’s house. Each store has an open porch in front of the actual store. These porches are secured by an iron floor-to-ceiling fence under lock in addition to the deeply seated store door being locked. The cases on the porch containing fruits, vegetables, beer, or other goods are covered with tarps. Some stores are mini-restaurants or eateries with their outdoors tables and chairs behind their outwardly fences.

Picture of trust in the residents and passersby of a busy street

Something interesting catches my eye: A small convenience store “bakkal” in Turkish, has secured its porch as expected, but there is something hanging on the outside of the fence: a large plastic bag full of some 50 loaves of French bread this particular store will sell to its customers all day long. Each such small store that provides simple items that are used daily in Turkish culture have a bread delivery service in place from one of the firins in the neighborhood. Firins usually start baking their bread around 3-4 am and deliver their orders to retail stores by 5-6 am every day.

Loaves of freshly baked bread coming out of the oven in a neighborhood firin long before dawn

It is clear that the bread delivery guy must have come and gone already. As I look at the bag of bread with warm feelings, thinking of families that will enjoy it day long, I can’t help but feel mesmerized with the level of trust not only between the professionals but also of the store owner with his neighborhood! I know now better than before that my mother and brother live in a neighborhood with a sense of community. My heart warms up…

Early rays of the sun lighting the tops of apartment buildings as I shop for our breakfast

 

TURKEY FALL 2017 - 3 - FARMER'S MARKET AND "HORTAS"

One of the best features of the urban areas of Turkey, which I look forward to with every visit is their farmer’s markets, called “pazar” in Turkish, a version of bazaar. Interestingly, Sunday is also called Pazar in Turkish, perhaps because pazars are held on Sundays… The first day, I wake up in my brother’s apartment in Izmir is Sunday, a gift for me. I can spend hours at the farmer’s market. My dear brother Mehmet is so kind he always drives me to the farmer’s market at least once when I visit and allows me get lost in bliss among the rows of fresh produce and in his benevolent words “bring half of the market home” that accompany a loving grin on his face…

One of the pazars in Turkey with its fresh produce stands, most likely late fall looking at the variety of produce

Izmir, the third largest city in Turkey would probably have at least 30-40 if not more of Sunday farmer’s markets. Each neighborhood has its own designated farmer’s market site, usually a covered open air market area with vending platforms, all waiting at attention for their bosses and customers all week long.  Come Sunday, they lie in submission under colorful tarps or large wooden trays or baskets that are laden with all kinds of and all colors of fresh produce. Many if not all farmer’s markets are held once during the week as well, either on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday.

Another farmer's market in the summer time: water melons are telling the season

However, Sunday farmer’s markets are by far the largest and most well-attended by the residents in every neighborhood since vendors of Sunday markets bring everything from fresh produce to dairy products, to grains, to fish, to clothing, to shoes, among other goods. Majority of the population does their fresh produce shopping as well as that for seafood and cheese/olive (staple foods for Turkish breakfast) from farmer’s markets! It is the authentic Turkish culture still resisting globalization: Although global supermarket chains along with national chains have dotted the country from north to south and from east to west, people have still not given up making their Sunday farmer’s market their must-visit-destination every Sunday.

Notice the shoppers shopping cart loaded with bags hanging from all its hanging parts

Thus, every Sunday, the refrigerators in town are filled with vegetables and fruits for the week. Chicken and meat usually come from either local butchers or, mostly from modern supermarkets, greater share to the latter, which is the reason behind local butcheries’ gradual and unfortunate disappearance from neighborhoods. The families then are ready to face the week with a heavily vegetarian diet enriched with small amounts of meat and chicken and some fish. Most families consume fish at least once a week, considering Izmir being on the Aegean with a very long coastal line. My younger brother being the most devout fish monger in my family is proud to report that they eat fish 2-3 times a week. He is one, who could eat fish even at breakfast!

Fish stands at a farmer's market

Farmer’s markets have two types of sellers: The professional “manav”s that buy their goods from vegetable/fruit wholesale centers in town that are perhaps at least the second intermediaries between the producer and the buyer, thus, they sell their goods at relatively higher prices. Their produce, displayed on elevated platforms is similar to what you would find in any supermarket around the world, same size-same shape-same color fruits and vegetables, almost manufactured under fully controlled conditions, almost always non-organic. Throughout the day, their prices will remain fixed unless they have visibly poor quality goods that they have to get rid of at all cost that day. Otherwise, these gentlemen (always males) sell whatever they can and at the end of the day, repack the left over and go to the next day’s farmer’s market all over the city to continue selling the same produce until their next wholesale purchase.

Supermarket produce section at a modern supermarket

Thus, there is no guarantee that these mobile manavs’ produce will be fresh although they shower their produce throughout the day, or wipe each one of their fruit to make them shine and look good on the outside.  Bring them home and take a bite, the inside may not turn out to be what you expected at all. Just as I type these lines, I can’t help but reminisce this to mankind: How many times we get impressed with someone’s appearance, charisma, rhetoric and promises and find out all to be fake with no reflections on the inner core, once we reduce the personal space between them and our soul?

Notice the uniformity of fruits at a professional seller's stand at a pazar

The type of seller on the other hand is peasant women, my favorite, who bring their produce from neighboring small towns and villages for that one day. They usually spread a tarp on the floor in between platforms usually with permission from the professional manavs. Their produce may not be in uniform shapes and sizes, sometimes not even as good looking as that of the manavs:  Their fruit may have imperfections, their quince may look brownish, their tangerines warped…

Notice the peasant women at the pazar are traditional, yet not fundamentalist muslims: their head scarf is not burka style

However, a knowledgeable female shopper knows which one to prefer: I have never been failed by these “koylu kadin”s (peasant women). Not only the freshness of their produce but the innocence, the natural attitude with nothing fake in their demeanor, and their generosity have always appealed to me. My mother coming from farming background and being the best cook I have ever met would instantaneously kneel down in front of one of the “koylu kadin”s and start picking tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, apples, oranges, whatever they have brought to the market.

Another group of koylu kadini selling the season's produce in small batches

My mom would also have a favorite koylu kadin or two that she looked for every Sunday: After all, koylu kadins also come in a variety of personalities. My mom being an angel on earth would also look for the more friendly and generous ones. They would recognize my mom as their loyal customer and would add to her kilo of apples a few extra for free. Especially, those who brought to the market one of my mom’s favorite “hortas”, wild greens in Greek, would always earn a visit from my mom every Sunday.

Radika is one of the staple edible wild greens in Cretan cuisine, also known as hindiba in Turkish

Hortas have been the major determinant in all my siblings and I identifying ourselves more Cretan than Turkish. All my ancestors having migrated to Turkey in early 1900s from Crete, and Crete being known with its some 1400 wild edible greens, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. When I first moved to Iowa City, I was delighted to find out that my health food store New Pioneer Coop carried cultured greens similar to some of the greens I used to savor in Turkey: Variety of dandelion greens, fennel, and curly endive. When I discovered deadly night shade and purslane growing as weeds in my own yard I was in heaven!

A woman foraging for edible wild greens

I recall a beautiful memory around deadly night shade, which we know in Greek as “stifno”. When I fixed it as a steamed salad one day for dinner for Bill, my late partner and I and our best friends Nukhet a Turkish woman and her American husband Don, I didn’t even know it had a name in English and was known as a plant in America! Sure enough my safety oriented loved American bred-and-raised friend and partner went online and somehow they found the very plant I showed them: The name certainly was scary, more so for them than I: As we read on, it became clear to me why my mom and grandmother taught me to remove even the smallest flowers let alone the green seeds.

Deadly night shade or stifno in Greek with its benign flowers, semi toxic green seeds and verrrry toxic purple/black seed: the green leaves on the other hand are delicious and very healthy!

I had never seen stifno picked when it had purple black seeds that are apparently loaded with strychnine! No wonder their faces had turned pale gray as if they had already eaten a cup of the seeds. The two men chose to stay safe while Nukhet and I thoroughly enjoyed the salad as they were rationalizing their deference with “As Americans we may have a different sensitivity to even the leaves of the plant that you may be immune to because of your origin. Nukhet had never eaten this green, either, and she is still enjoying a happy life… This story filled many dinner parties to come in our core circle with laughter and loving embraces. To make the long horta story short, Aegeans on both sides of the “water” steam hortas in boiling water briefly, then dress the wilted greens with some of the boiling water, olive oil, lots of lemon juice and salt. When served cold, hortas are the best accompaniment to fish, which invariably was purchased every Sunday in my house from the farmer’s market along with hortas. Once my mom used to lay out the fresh hortas onto the kitchen table to be sorted (fresh from not so fresh), we knew with watering mouths that escalated our excitement what was to follow in the evening.

Cooked, ready to go radika salad shimmering with olive oil and lemon juice

There are other hortas in Cretan cuisine that are cooked with lamb, the best part of lamb at that, the lumbar chops. As soon as meat enters a dish, it becomes the main dish, preceded with soup and followed with rice. My younger brother Mehmet takes me to the first farmer’s market of the week as soon as I arrive in Izmir, every time I visit Turkey. When I get into a trance, lost among all the greens, reds, purples, yellows of all the gifts of the holly earth in these parts of the world, my dear brother becomes my porter until he exclaims “sister, enough already, we can’t take the entire market home!” or “sister  let’s leave the other half of the market to the rest of the shoppers.” with all the good humor in his heart and a loving smile on his face. I then, awoken from my trance realize, “OK, time to go home and spread all this in delicious dishes on the dining table.”

The Black's hair in English, Arapsaci in Turkish, Maratha in Greek: this pile must have cost an all day's work with bleeding hands since this green is usually found mixed with thorny bushes 

As I am cruising through the market this very day, I am not only searching for the produce that I cannot find in the US to satisfy my own palate but also for goods that I can serve my older brother and his wife, my mother, her care taker, and Mehmet and his wife, who will come to a family reunion for dinner tonight. I was planning to make a special lamb dish for them as the main dish; lumber lamb chops baked in the oven under a cover of a yogurt-eggs-flour dressing that keeps the meat extremely moist and tasty. However, I still have an open mind, you never know. All of a sudden I see something with disbelief, which is “Maratha” in Greek, arap saci in Turkish, that can be translated into English as “Black’s hair” (black as in skin color), in fact the term literally translates to Negro’s hair, political correctness is still not as infused into Turkish culture as it is in American culture, perhaps because Africans brought to Anatolia by Ottoman’s did not suffer as gruesome and severe slavery as their American counterparts did.  Thus there is no perceived stigma on either part of the equation in calling colored people from Africa “Arap”, which is a term between negro and black in English in terms of its derogatory attribution. I wonder when the discrimination against Kurds will be eliminated at least in the laws that may trigger a need for political correctness toward all ethnic minorities.

The woman selling Arapsaci among other wild greens made my day!

The moment I see the “Negro’s hair” in front of a peasant woman, Mehmet will tell everybody throughout my stay there, “She turned around with a childish delightful grin on her face uttering in disbelief “Oh my, Negro’s hair!!”. It must be true, I recall the happiness and the anticipatory sense of delight I felt in my heart and in my mouth, respectively! I buy three pounds of it with an abrupt but not-surprising change in my dinner plans. Now we urgently need the right kind of meat… We will end up going to three butchers until finding it, it will soon be very well worth all the wandering.

The lumbar chops that is the most preferred cut of lamb in Cretan cuisine that is a must for Arapsaci

I fill the market carriage twice until I am satisfied that the family and I have all the produce we will need throughout the week. Little do I know that we will consume most of it by Wednesday and will need to visit the mid-week farmer’s market for our Thursday dinner party with the entire family including my niece and her husband. One may wonder and in fact my friends can’t believe why in my one week of stay in Izmir, I do so much food shopping and cooking. It is all about my mother and family that I just can’t have enough of due to this dual life of mine between two continents.

My brothers, mother and one of my sisters in law around breakfast table in my brother's summer house in Foca (Phokai), a unique town that shouldn't be missed during a visit to Turkey

My mother has been disabled both physically and mentally for 15 years now and cannot do anything in the kitchen. It hurts me to see the elaborate dinners she used to cook for all my friends, all our extended family members over monthly family get-togethers that earned her the “best and most generous-ever cook in Izmir’s hollow!”. Now that she is not able to do that, I find delight in doing that in her stead, which continues her tradition of bringing not only my brothers, sisters in law and our kids to her house around her dinner table but also my closest friends over the week. A bonus is to see her devour some 6-8 different kinds of dishes on her plate with no complaints with the delight she takes in seeing her house one more time enriched with all her loved ones at the same time.

Arapsaci after being cooked with lamb: A pure delicacy in Cretan cuisine

Another goal I have for this visit is to introduce mindfulness and meditation practices to my family and inner circle friends. The first attempt around the dinner table in the presence of my two brothers and their wives doesn’t create too much excitement. As is usual, in Turkish culture, everybody knows every solution to every problem better than everybody else! I am not disappointed, though. This first attempt is just the first pebble dropped into the lake to create mild ripple effects. Although they see this politely and respectfully as “Another new idea sister brings from America…”, it is clear that they are all skeptical even if they may also be thinking about these ideas deep down! Nobody shows it to me, yet… I let it be, let it go; it took me over ten years to get bought into studying these concepts, they need time, too.  

freedom is possible even in this political climate

Throughout the week, I send them links related to what I read such as teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh, Pema Chodron, Dalai Lama, and others. I receive the best responses from texting lovely quotes about inner peace, freedom from fear, insight, self-compassion. At least my older brother sends me approving texts, let’s see when he will be able to internalize them into his daily life. I hope I can find credible websites in Turkish to refer them to upon my return to USA and let them explore on their own, if they do… Even if they don’t, carrying the positive energy of mindfulness will, I believe, reflect upon them even when I am far away. I trust that…

I wish half the world population could understand this and learn how sometimes the darkest happenings are for better futures.