Our workshop project has some good exposure this week in Hand/Eye Magazine, a publication about connecting cultures and inspiring action, goals we can really agree with. Read more here:
We’ve launched a project on Kickstarter, the creative arts crowd-funding site, to help us fund our East meets West fiber arts workshops, in Istanbul’s Sultanahmet, starting March 2011.
Can fiber arts bridge cultures?
Will women from multiple countries knit up new versions of traditional skills?
Is there a common language of craft?
Read the whole story here and spread the word. Thanks!
Nationalism.Ethnicity. Religion. Economic status. Politics. If I had to pick a way to save our troubledworld, to guide us beyond these barriers that divide us, the tool I’d startwith to bring us together is music.
Monday night, I was among the 50,000+ people who made thelong journey to an isolated corner of Istanbul,to a stadium built for Olympic dreams yet unfulfilled. A good friend invited mealong when she realized she had an extra ticket; someone else’s ambivalence ledto my good fortune. As trite as it may seem to attend a concert by an iconicrock band, experiencing the phenomenon of U2 was a revelation I deeply needed rightnow, as Turkeydecides its future this weekend, and Abit and I reevaluate our personal andprofessional dreams as well. It’s a new moon, an auspicious time forbeginnings.
On the12th of September, 30 years to the day of amilitary coup, Turkey will be holding a complicated referendum in whichvoters are evenly divided about whether to lessen the power of the military andincrease the prime minister’s authority to appoint the judiciary, among manyother issues too convoluted to elaborate easily. After 12 years of living here,I’ve got my opinions but no vote, and concern about what will happen after thisSunday. Even aseasoned journalist may not quite get all the nuances of a culture afteryears of living and reporting from here, if some spirited commenters are to bebelieved. Is Turkish society so deeply divided that the referendum’s issues willfurther alienate and stagnate its forward progress?
But this situation is not as baffling as in my birthcountry, where the population is psychologically terrorized in these daysleading up to the 9th anniversary of 9/11 by a mainstream mediaobsessed by Koran burning ministers, Obama’s religion and the real motives of aSufiimam in NYC, because the concept that peace-seeking moderate Muslims existis impossible to fathom. Turkey’s political issues may be complex, but those in the US are well beyond belief.
This was U2’s first concert in Turkey. They’d stayed away in thepast due to Turkey’stroubled human rights record. It is symbolic that they relented during our EuropeanCapital of Culture year. Banners on the GalataBridge in Turkish and English currentlyproclaim that Istanbul“builds bridges between cultures.” That’sa message I’m sure resonated with the group, ambassadors that they are forfighting poverty, hunger and the eliminationof AIDS.
Turkeyhas cultural bridges to build within the country, as well as in our troubledneighborhood. Which was why Bono not only called on Washington DC to listen tothe people of Tehran and Palestine, and sent a candlelit message to Burma’sAung Sun Suu Kyi that she is not forgotten, but reminded a Turkish audience abouta Kurdish journalist, Fehmi Tosun, who ‘disappeared’ in the southeast in 1995,a public reminder that may get an average citizen prosecuted.
Bono then brought musical legend and UNESCO GoodwillAmbassador Zülfü Livaneli on to sing his “YiğidimAslanım”(My Brave Lion), about a man imprisoned and killed for hispolitical struggles. Livaneli wrote the haunting soundtrack for Kurdishactor/director Yilmaz Guney’s classic and controversial film Yol(The Road), about the aftermath of that September 1980 coup.
Livaneli said that he and U2 were “song makers”. That’s ahumble description for what these men do. Tostand among tens of thousands of people singing as one, many with tears streamingdown our faces, Bono with his hand over his heart and showing emotion himself, remindedme of the power of music. A song can link human hearts and let us feel thatstrong current of common connection we all share – beyond those barriers of politics,ethnicity, and religion.
Several songs into their two hour performance, Bono commented that “What ishappening in Turkey now isimportant for the country, for Europe and theworld.” That statement was met with cheers and applause. He went on to saythey’d walked across the Bosphorus Bridge the day before with Minister of EUAffairs Egemen Bağış, a mention greeted with boos by much of the crowd, sinceBağış is part of the ruling party pushing the referendum reforms. A surprisedBono reacted quickly, saying, “Okay okay! I won’t mention any more politicians,but can’t I be a tourist and walk across the bridge? It’s a beautiful bridge.It’s not just from Europe to Asia, not just from the religious to secular, butfrom the past to the future, from where Europe has been to where Europe needs to go.”
Where Europeneeds to go. I wonder what leaders in the EU make of that statement? Realleadership requires visionaries, who sometimes come in the form of rock stars,while we the people get stuck with power-hungry politicians whose vision stops atthe size of a corporate donation. Bono meetswith politicians like Erdogan and Sarkozy, attempting to sway their viewswith his charismatic charm braced with knowledge. He champions that all-too-rarebelief that with fortune comes the responsibility to give back, setting anexample that democracy requires active involvement from all of us, regardlessof our economic status.
Massive events like this concert are theater, I know. But human beings havebeen brought together by drama, by comedy, though performance arts since beforerecorded history. Though melodies and languages change, story-telling throughsong is in our collective blood. No one is immune. Some showmen are all smokeand mirrors, little substance. We listen for a good time, to dance and sing, toforget our daily lives. But Bono and U2 speak to something much deeper thanmere entertainment. Not everyone may like their music, but it’s tough todisagree with the message: We’re all in this together.
Bono introduced “One” by saying, “We’re going to change the name of this songto ‘The Bridge’ “. That metaphor is a cliché to those of us who live here, but thatis the role that Turkeycould provide with its unique position in the world. “We are one, but we’re notthe same”, the song goes. It’s truly as simple as that. One planet, one human family in all its glorious diversity. That wefixate on those differences and ignore our commonalities is unfortunate humannature. But sometimes, even for two hours, a crowd of at least 50,000 people fromnot only Turkey but all over the world, can be on the same wavelength, can bereminded that there are many in this world we must help, can realize that we are in charge of removing those barriers.
Wherever we are, we are ONE. This is why I love U2 – the music is riveting anddanceable, yes – but they have the courage to speak their hearts, and ours.
Tuesday, early evening, the last full week of August,
in the month of Ramazan. Our window on the fourth floor faces east, overlooking the mouth of the Bosphorus. I've taken to working here each late afternoon until the sun sets. Sounds from outside float in over a strong, cooling breeze; after so many weeks of excessive humidity, I'm almost tempted to throw on a shawl. Above my head outside, hanging from the flat roof one level up, a drying carpet hits the side of the building, fringe dancing in the wind, clanging an occasional rhythmic chime as the corner hits the window glass.
The imam from the mosque a short distance away is softly singing the Koran; the acoustics of 600 year old bricks magnify his lilting voice. Waiters in the hotel garden below are filling glasses with tinkling ice cubes. Ferry boats and oil tankers are chugging through the strait 200 meters away; a buzz saw and hammers from a neighbor repairing his roof add their syncopated beats.
Over it all, the whirling seagulls cry in perpetual motion.
The imam at the Blue Mosque to our south bursts into the call to prayer; other mosques in this ancient holy district join in. The men's voices rise and fall in the same phrases, but all with differing inflections, timing and tonal skill. They harmonize in a communal chorus, for the third time of five a day. As the last voice disappears on the wind, a rooftop restaurant in the street below tunes up some cool jazz, in preparation for this evening's crowd.
My husband comes in and turns on an old film with a soundtrack of funky Turkish R&B, about gangsters, cabaret singers, frequent fistfights and gunfire, and predictably, a man in drag. The slowly setting fun bounces off the yellow wall opposite, the red tile roof sags from age and a profusion of squawking birds, searching for bread crumbs tossed there by the carpet repair man, who feeds them even though he himself will not eat for another few hours.
The film ends. Abit goes back to work in the shop downstairs. Another tanker rumbles along the Bosphorus, and I continue to write.
HYBRID AMBASSADORS: a blog-ring project of Dialogue2010 You met our multinational cultural innovators this spring in a roundtable discussion of hybrid life at expat+HAREM. Now in these interconnected blog posts they share reactions to a recent polarizing book promotion at the writing network SheWrites. Join the discussion on Twitter using #HybridAmbassadors or #Dialogue2010 Looking like a tourist while living in Sultanahmet, the touristy heart of Istanbul, it’s obvious I’m going to be taken for a visiting foreigner. Even though I walk like a Turk along the narrow cobblestone streets, someone is bound to say in English “Hello, the Blue Mosque is this way”. I’m perfectly comfortable being the only ‘one like me’ when I’m on the road.
But now I’m home. I don’t like to be a foreigner on my own turf.
This is not about my ability to speak the language or to behave as local women do. This is about the outside package: what I look like, and people’s reaction to me based on purely that. Multinational visitors to our shop show little hesitation in stating, “You’re not Turkish” before I’ve even opened my mouth. Do they expect an explanation, an apology? Is that a polite thing to say to someone you don’t know in any culture? And why can’t I be Turkish?I respond that I’m a hybrid, which stops most from asking further, and gets an excited reaction from those who know what I mean.
This week, as I was sitting in our shop, a Turkish woman about my age and her daughter came in to try on some vintage Turkmen clothing we sell. She sat down and launched straight into telling me about a gathering the next morning, a festival of sorts, about an hour’s journey up the Bosphorus from here, and asked if I would be free to come. For a Turkish woman I’ve just met to invite me somewhere was totally normal in my experience…until she continued, “There will be others there – from Spain, Germany, Italy, as well as some British friends who live in Capadocia. When I saw your face, I thought maybe you’d like to join us.” She even gestured to her own face to make sure I understood.
Granted the Turkish I speak is far from perfect, but I’d just been thinking as this woman and I spoke how lovely it was that we conversed in unhalting Turkish, that we could communicate. But she’d invited me because of my face, not because she liked what I’d said or even that I was a foreigner who speaks her language.
Perhaps I need to develop thicker skin. A funny phrase when it is indeed my skin, my features, at odds here. It intrigues me that she didn’t think it was wrong to call me out as the ‘other’; in fact, she was pleasant while direct – my face was why she was interested.
My appearance put me firmly in the category ‘foreign’, that large block of humanity that is anyone different than you.
Quite like a conversation the previous week, involving a black American author who’d posted an entreaty on a writers website asking for ‘White Ambassadors’ to promote her new book. At first, the post read as an awkward joke, until it became obvious that the author really did want to appeal to “White people”, another homogeneous block of humanity. The friend who called this anachronistic article to my attention had been deemed ‘uncivil’ when questioning the writer’s manner and motivation. Perhaps the post was meant to be a humorous way to draw attention to the very real fact that the US publishing industry pigeonholes writers by race, sex, religion…whatever narrow ways they have to define us. But here it was again – this time I was wanted not because I was foreign, but because I was white.
In an age when identities and boundaries are increasingly blurry and lifestyles are becoming hybrid, I understand the confusion and fear that arise. I wanted to comment to that author that I’d be happy to read and recommend her book if I liked the subject and her way of telling the story, but now I’d be averse to doing so because I don’t like someone who wants to put me in a box. Just like the Turkish visitor to my shop.
Is it just me, or are other human beings rankled when they are grouped like large herds of anonymous sheep, expected to follow the latest shepherd in any direction they are prodded?
I could have posted this opinion while defending my friend’s truthful and direct criticisms. But since living in Turkey I’ve learned to stifle my strong opinions about controversial subjects in public forums, though in private I rarely keep my mouth shut. Not because I’m a foreigner here and will always be considered so, but because my husband is also an outsider of a different kind: an ethnic Kurd. Now, while Turks will claim that there is no second tier of citizenship in this country, there is an underlying and easily understood rule that everyone here must be Turkish, end of discussion, no hyphenated ethnicities need be added. “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk”.
Not such a different situation than black Americans have, when they assert they have their own culture, way of speaking and want to keep both that heritage as well as fit in and be accepted as a part of the larger American whole. But when I’ve questioned looks of consternation after I mention my husband is Kurdish (from my husband as well, for he’s been conditioned to keep ethnic issues private), or equate Kurdish identity in Turkey with any ethnic civil rights struggles that I’ve seen in the country of my birth, those looks become stony and cold.
After all, I’m a foreigner from a very young country. What right to an opinion should I have?
Worse yet have been reactions online, when I’ve posted my thoughts about anything pertaining to the Kurds in Turkey. I’ve been told by Kurds (especially those living in Europe), by Turks and by Americans that I can’t possibly know or understand, that no one would honestly tell me the truth of their feelings or beliefs, that I’m unable to walk a mile in their shoes.
After more than a decade living with my husband and to a large extent his numerous Kurdish family, spread out all over not just Turkey but the globe, I find it heartbreaking to again be the ‘other’, the perpetual foreigner.
So that may be why I left the defense of my ‘uncivil’ friend to other mutual friends and writers: to our strong-willed woman of color, who could state what we all thought, though we ‘White people’ could not; or to our two European sisters, who could compassionately or cleverly say what we as Americans must not, or be considered ‘uncivil’, a catty comeback women use to bat down assertive female behavior. Insiders, outsiders, each in our own boxes.
Will we ever be able to state what we feel without all the identity baggage attached, and leave those boxes curbside?
I don’t want to develop a skin so thick that such subjects no longer rankle me. If that 1% difference that we human beings have in our various facial features and skin colors is enough to keep us at odds, what hope do we have of ever reconciling cultural, moral and religious differences? It’s been 18 years since I watched Rodney King utter that famous cliché on the TV in my Los Feliz living room during the Los Angeles Riots, but truly, “why can’t we all just get along”?
More thoughts on this subject from my fellow HYBRID AMBASSADORS:
The Romans thought of artists as “having a genius”. Unlike the modern humanist idea that artists ARE geniuses, they believed that artists were visited by entities that gave them a spark, an idea that either burst into creative flame or was dumped on the ash heap. Whatever happened, the artists had a partner in success or failure. Their “genius” brought them divine inspiration. This notion, learned from a TED presentation by Elizabeth Gilbert of “Eat Pray Love” fame, makes total sense to me. Great ideas do seem to spark out of nowhere…or more likely, from everywhere.
My genius brings me vintage textiles, imbued with the spirits of the women who made them so long ago. These bits and pieces are sometimes buried in other works or in plastic garbage bags in the corners of carpet shops. They wait for my genius to strike a match, to bring them back out into daylight.
Like the small Uzbek embroideries I’ve been carrying around with me for the past 7 months.Originally parts of hats, belts and robes, these painstakingly hand-stitched wonders came to me as part of a poorly executed new patchwork quilt, used as centers of cheap bright polyester squares. Such small pieces, less than 8”square by the time they come to me, are often from a larger original work, so some of them ‘match’. They are of little value to wholesalers no matter how detailed the handwork, in comparison to other complex pieces like a silk carpet. But a woman still poured many hours of her life into designing the intricate patterns and stitching each tiny stitch.
So I save them,until I decide what new life they’ll have. These red remnants just called out to be slippers. There is a certain magic to red, the color that represents love and prosperity here in Turkey, in fact all over Asia. What better color to dress your feet?
I cut the embroideries into toe shapes – this is always an approximation, starting larger until I get it right to fit a small to medium sized woman’s foot in this case.Dense woven pieces like these have no stretch to them, which is why I make the rest of the slippers from pieces knitted in cotton so they will conform to the wearer’s foot. I especially love the floral patchwork on the backs of the embroideries. No scrap was left unused in the household of the woman who stitched these!
The soles are a double-ply of true tomato red and black cotton in my favorite alternating rib pattern. The backs are in red cotton ‘lace’; using delicate patterns in thick,sturdy yarns compliments the delicate looking but durable embroidery. Finally, I knit an I-cord drawstring to ring the top so the wearer can securely keep the slippers on her feet.
The first slipper goes together with some trial and error, but that’s part of the fun.The pieces are hand-sewn with cotton thread, then all seams are chain-stitched for extra strength. As with all two-piece projects, my greatest challenge once the first slipper is made is finishing the second one. If only my genius knew how to use a needle!
Outside our 5th floor window, thewhite cruise ship with the huge red star and crescent flag in the nearby Bosphorus Strait loomed over Sirkeci Station. Inthe week I’d lived here, I was used to seeing ferry boats docking, but anyvessel this big was usually across the Golden Hornat the larger Karakoy docks. For quite some time that afternoon as I worked inour apartment, I could hear various people on a sound system, occasional musicand organized chants. Helicopters circled overhead. I was just far enough awaynot to really hear what was said, but by the sounds of it, the mood wasfestive, with a more than a ting of expectancy. This could not be a normalholiday sendoff, but I was too tired to leave my ivory tower to check it out.Eventually, to fireworks and the Turkish national anthem, the ship left harbor.
Later when Abit came home from work, heturned on the news. “What was that event at Sarayburnu Port?”I asked, pointing out the window toward where the ship had been. “Oh, that wasthe Mavi Marmara. It’s full of people taking aid to Gaza.” And there it was, on TV.
I’d been proud of Prime Minister Erdogan’sefforts to speak for the majority of his Turkish citizens, to focus the world’sattention on the 2008 military operation against Gaza and later the UN-outlawed blockade.Erdogan became a national hero when he had the guts to speak his mind and walkout at Davos.Perhaps he lacked a certain diplomatic polish, so passionately and publicly cursingShimon Peres like he did, but I admire a politician who’s not afraid to speakhis mind to the world. Turkeymay have been Israel’sclosest ally in this fractured neighborhood both countries live in, but being areal friend means telling that ally when they’ve done something wrong.
I remember thinking, “What brave people onthat ship – I hope nothing happens to them.”
Then I completely forgot about the MaviMarmara, the aid workers and the Gazans, until this past Tuesday afternoon.Caught up in our new Istanbullife (and a problematic wireless connection), I was oblivious to events untilthen.
I now wish I’d had enough curiosity to walkthe short distance to the Bosphorus shore. If I’d known what the rally was about, would Ihave felt comfortable mingling with the crowd? Just as I wish I’d had enough courageto walk the 20 minutes west to the Fatih Cami on Thursday, where huge crowdsheld a service for the nine Turkish men, ages 19 to 61, murdered on the Mavi Marmara,their plain wooden coffins draped with the red star and crescent flags that hadgraced the side of the cruise ship. One crowd, jubilant, yet with fullknowledge that they may never return. The other, in deep mourning and askinghow in God’s name another country believed they had the right to kill as they did.How would either crowd have felt to have this American woman in their midst?
I don’t have the guts to put myself inharm’s way, even though I know that one person can make a difference. I stillperhaps naively believe that dialogue, elections and leaders can bring aboutchange their citizens want, but this year that belief has been sorely tested. Iwish President Obama had Erdogan’s audacity. Obama needs to speak the truthabout the United States’dysfunctional relationship with Israel.
I have no ties to Israel, only good memories of design tripsthere, the same itineraries taking me to Istanbuland Tel Aviv before heading east to Hong Kong.I have no ties to the Palestinians, yet have had my view of the conflictcompletely changed by living in Turkeyand hearing their side – a perspective sadly missing from the American MSM. Israel all too frequently calls itself “the onlydemocracy in the Middle East”. They are not. BecauseI too live in the neighborhood, what happens between my two countries with Israel and thePalestinians matters greatly to me.
These past days the opinions I’ve read onlinemade my head reel. The television coverage here has been comprehensive; theinterviews with the survivors riveting. There is hand-wringing, flag-waving andplenty of emotion; in all my years here, I’ve never heard “Allahu akbar”chanted in Turkeyas much as this week. If the West is worried about Turkeybecoming increasingly Islamist, Israel’sactions added fuel to that fire.
But Turks are talking about this from allsides, and as I’ve seen happen before with big issues (like whether to grantpermission to the US to use Turkey asaccess from the north in the buildup to the Iraq War), truly taking the time todeliberate what the country’s reaction should be. One late-night news debate hada closing song over images of the injured returning to Istanbul: Sting’s Desert Rose, with the haunting vocals of Cheb Mami. One tellinglyric: “These dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire.” I could notthink of a better way to sum up the will and strength of the Turkish people.
Yes, Turkeyhas much in common with Israelbesides democracy and military partnership. Turkey has treated its minoritypopulations with the same paranoia, fear and violence. True, those minoritieshave also used violence in attempts to make themselves heard. In fact, the PKKattacked and killed 6 Turkish solders in Iskenderunthe same day as the ‘flotilla fiasco’. At least one of the solders killed wasKurdish. Nothing is black and white in this part of the world.
31st May 2010 will be a day longremembered here for more senseless deaths in this troubled neighborhood. “Aneye for an eye leaves the whole world blind”, Gandhi said. Will blindness inthis region prevail? Or will we someday be able to mark this week as the one inwhich we all truly began to take seriously the words “Never again?”
What Israeldid Monday was wrong, just as Turkey’spast actions have been wrong. The difference between the two countries is that Turkey has hadthe courage to start looking at its history, to open public dialogues, and to makereal change.
In 1890, the newly opened Sirkeci Stationwas the last stop on the Orient Express, that fabled train route that led from staid Vienna to exotic Istanbul. Then and now, it is as far east as one may travel by rail, arriving in the Old City along the shore of the Bosphorus, skimming the outer edge of Europe.
The building itself is small. But the ornate, eclectic architecture – compass rose windows under variegated stone arches, vivid plaster echoed in the solid red brick and white marble façade – does not hint at the final decades of a crumbling Empire, but of the entrance to another world. 120 years later, Sirkeci Station is the anchoring point to our currently charted journey, as new residents of Istanbul.
Abit and I have taken up temporary residence at the end of the line. Literally, as the Sirkeci train tracks end just beyond our street (that narrow space to the right of the ‘hotel’, above). It’s somehow welcoming that those tracks, which long travel east and finally circle the Old City, end up heading west for their last few hundred meters, since we frequently find ourselves traveling in multiple directions.
The end of the line has become our beginning. The hustle and bustle that encircles us will invigorate our days here, after long times in quiet, out-of-the-loop places. The trains to the north of us and the trams that endlessly wind their way through this ancient neighborhood remind us to keep going forward, their (thankfully) near-silent electric powered movement the backdrop to planning our future in this megacity.
If the streets become too hectic, we can look toward the water, just beyond the station, from our 4th-floor windows. Or walk the few blocks to Gulhane Park, the rose-filled green oasis surrounding the Topkapi Palace and the Archaeological Museum.
Beyond the roofs to a compelling view of rolling if densely populated hills, massive bridges and a busy waterway, though this photo is atypically devoid of traffic.
Our street is lined with buildings soon to be torn down to make way for the new underwater tunnel that will connect Sirkeci to Hadarpasa, the station that links greater Istanbul with Asian Turkey…in other words, 97% of the country. But for now, we can see the dome of the station as we walk home to our small studio, a nondescript but extremely affordable interim home (with the window open and hinting pink, top left corner)
Five minute walks south takes us to the tourist mecca of Sultanahmet or the vast shopping area of the Grand Bazaar. Places we’ll be spending time in by day, researching and developing, or being inspired by the Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque, to name just two on a very long list of nearby wonders. And by night, mingling in the restaurants and listening to the Babel of languages spoken in this crossroads of the world.
Otherwise, while we’re getting our bearings within the coiling lanes of this timeless place, I’ll be here by the window, gazing out across Sirkeci Station and the Bosphorus and plotting new directions.
SFO International Terminal. The flowery taste of jasmine tea takes my mind back to those years I spent traveling to Hong Kong, Osaka, or Seoul from this very airport. 16-hour slogs across the Pacific, flying most often into the old Kai Tak, coming in so close between the highrises you could almost see what families were eating for dinner.
Today, I’m also headed back to Asia, but to the other side of that vast continent. No, wait. I’ll only be seeing Asia at the end of this journey, 14 hours airtime, inshallah and volcano willing. I’ll see it when I look out the windows of our new apartment in Istanbul’s Old City.
After years of living in Anatolia, technically Asia, we’ll be living for now in Eminonu, near Gulhane Park and the Topkapi Palace, at the mouth of the Golden Horn. Technically Europe, within the 3% of Turkey that sits on that continent. Within sight of the massive San Francisco-style bridges that span the narrow waters between Europe and Asia. A more profound concept than merely connecting San Francisco and Oakland, though visually there’s not much difference.
Another six months spent working away from Abit behind me, with any precious downtime spent plotting our next move, I’ve plenty of grist for my mental mill. Inexplicably tethered to another winter toiling amid the grapevines of Napa’s lovely valley, I constantly found myself drawing comparisons in appearance to our Aegean valley. But I realize now that both valleys, while enticingly full of comforts, offer little in terms of long-term sustenance.
I’ve determined to leave them both behind, to pursue a vision that better suits us. No more skimming along the surface of our creativity…time to dig deep in a place that better provokes our muses. No more half-years tending to the whims of clients, no matter how spectacular those before-and-after interior photos may be. My interior renovation, another new space that Abit and I will create together, may be a work in perpetual progress, but it’s work that is so much more satisfying.
So, after one last sumptuous almond croissant at Bouchon, and a few macaroons for my family, who are the major bright spot of any time spent in California, I’m leaving this golden state with its current economic woes. Like that old song, I do leave my heart here when I go. Or maybe I have multiple hearts, because high on a hill in the Old City, that one’s calling me back to Turkey. More than one heart, more than one home, more than one way to live. Seeking out places where parts of me blend, yet other parts don’t. Instead of viewing it as various parts of me though, I’d rather see myself as being a cultural chameleon – having the ability to recolor myself, wherever my heart takes me.
And to keep building bridges across continents, and between cultures.
The world’s a small place, even here in the Napa Valley. Yesterday I helped with an annual charity event called Kitchens in the Vineyards; this year one of the homes on tour was none other than the lovely residence where I’ve been working and living these many winters. Not only does the event showcase the house, but it includes 2 chefs and an author at each location.
As I wandered into the large kitchen shortly before 9am to make some more coffee, I encountered a petite woman in gauzy sari attempting to plug in a rice warmer, while the docent in charge of explaining the kitchen’s aesthetic attributes struggled to find an unused outlet. This must be the morning chef. I already knew the afternoon one quite well, since she’s a friend and I’d helped her wipe up the messiest, most scrumptious chocolate batter from the white Carrera countertops the night before.
The woman with the rice warmer, which was nearly half her size, seemed a bit frustrated in her explanation to the docent in her lilting Indian-British accent that “no, this is not a rice cooker – that would never do for proper Indian cooking, since it would make a crust. This is to warm the food, not cook it.” As she opened the lid to show us the steaming contents, that food and its aroma threw me right back into my Kurdish mother-in-law’s kitchen, thousands of miles away.
“Bulgur!” I jumped into their conversation, in my eagerness to see what she had combined it with. “No, this is daliya, cracked wheat… not the same as bulgur.” Well, perhaps they are slightly differing versions, but hers looked very familiar. The chef explained that this was a common breakfast food, cooked with small bits of whatever vegetables were on hand, plus ginger and finely chopped chilies – serrano in this case, since we were in California. Daliya is eaten after a cup or two of coffee, around 10am. “My favorite time for breakfast,” I interjected, a comment met with the rolling eyes of the owner of the house, who revels in telling me each new day that she’s been up since 4am.
The chef explained that she’d had to learn to cook more than 40 years ago when she moved to the US. “Indian women don’t know how to cook because it’s ‘done’ for them. They only learn to ask the cooks for what they want.” She was quite vocal in her views about how the ‘help’ are quite well provided for in Indian homes, and could not understand why they would prefer working in factories and offices when they could be taken under the protection and support of an Indian family. Ahem. Now it was my turn to roll the eyes: but hadn’t she brought simple village food as her offering today, I thought?
As if she’d heard me, she said, “But my favorite meals are in the villages. We once had the most amazingly flavorful meal of daliya, cooked outside over an open flame with the herbs and berries from the sparse trees that grew in the arid landscape where we were, in Rajasthan. We ate it with a simple roti” – turning to me to explain, “bread.” Not to be rude, but I had to let her know that I’d left the Napa Valley before and knew my roti from my naan. I had my village stories too.
I told her about Yade’s foraging the hillsides for greens to cook with her bulgur, on Ayasuluk Hill where we live in Turkey. “My husband’s family is Kurdish. This daliya is very similar to what my mother-in-law makes; no ginger but with chilies too, though she would flavor it with bits of chicken. And she frequently cooks outside, though she has a modern kitchen.”
She looked puzzled. “But the Turks don’t use such hot chilies”. Perhaps not, but the Kurds do, I said, relating my theory that since the Kurds were a Indo-European people, if you went back far enough, you’d find cultural connections to their cousins in Rajasthan. I forgot to mention to her that the Kurdish word for bread is also naan – that information may have tempered her obvious skepticism.
Later that morning, as I sampled a plate of her daliya in the courtyard crowded with a homogeneous crowd of middle-aged wine country residents, she related her theory of parallel worlds. “I find it intriguing that Indian cuisine relies so much on ingredients that are not indigenous to the sub-continent. Of course, we had black pepper, but chilies, tomatoes, potatoes, corn – all came from the Americas in the 15th and 16th centuries. What did they eat before then?” I’d often had that thought as well: “What had cooks in Anatolia used before the arrival of those ingredients we think of as quintessentially Mediterranean and Middle Eastern?” Though I did not really understand what she meant by “parallel worlds”, I did feel the connection of the food she’d prepared with the food I knew from my Selcuk home. That cooks everywhere, by using the simplest of ingredients, can create bridges between cultures by what they create. Anyone, from any part of the world, could eat a simple bowl of daliya and be comforted by thoughts of home.
Today I discovered that this chef, who I only knew has a restaurant in downtown Napa, was the creator of one of my all-time favorite restaurants, the Bombay Café in Los Angeles. If I’d known, I could have thanked her for the worlds she opened for me in the ‘90’s when savoring the most intriguing combination of flavors and textures. She took Indian food to another level, taking us beyond mere curries and introducing us to imaginative street food. Her restaurant was nearly a place of pilgrimage, an event we all looked forward to, the jewel in an anonymous strip mall. Her restaurant was the very reason I knew roti from naan.
Now that I know there are sev puri in Napa, I will have to visit her again before I return to Turkey.
