The world keeps going round

Small Miracles

Before coming to Turkey, we heard a lot about the hospitality of the people here. We heard stories about people on buses inviting you over to dinner, strangers talking to you and welcoming you and about the general niceness and openness of everyone. Although we have met a handful of incredibly wonderful, kind and helpful people, overall we have felt pretty alienated from the general population. It is no help that we did not learn more Turkish before we came and that is something we need to work on. Needless to say, in some ways the transition has been hard. Two things happened in this last week that have really changed my perception of Turkey and of generally being here.

While I was at work last week, I went to take a sip of my coffee and instead of reaching my mouth it spilled all over the front of my cream colored dress. Not only was I out of my much-needed caffeine fix, but it was only 9:30 am and I faced a day of walking around with a huge brown spot that somewhat resembled Florida on my front side. (On my best quadrant I dare say, for the 30 Rock lovers). I went to the bathroom and promptly made the stain twice its size as I tried to clean it out. Then there was a great blast of light as the bathroom door opened and I think somewhere in the distance I could hear angels singing. In walked the bathroom assistant lady. She took one look at what I was doing and shook her head and came over and grabbed the front of my dress and pulled it under the sink. She promptly soaped it up, scrub-scrub-scrubbed, wrung-wrung-wrung and like magic my dress looked better than when I first bought it! Then she took me under the dryer and waited until it was dry before she left me to my own devices. And then, just like that, before I could even properly say my broken ta-shakraylar (thank you), my angel was gone!

This past weekend we went to the Prince’s Islands and when it was time to pray, Feraz and I set out to find a mosque. Eventually, after Feraz asked someone every ten feet which way the mosque was, we were able to find it. Unfortunately once I got there there were no hijabs (head scarves) for me to wear while praying as there typically are in mosques in Turkey. I sat there for a while thinking I wouldn’t be able to pray when I saw one of the girl’s there pulling a scarf out of her bag. Well. This was a very big bag. And if there was one hijab in it I thought, there might be two! So I tapped her and asked, “Hijab? For me? To pray?” (Sometimes you have to become frugal with your words when most of the people in the country don’t know English!) And to my delight she did! I wanted to hug her and kiss her for being such a prepared Patty but instead I accepted the hijab and gave her a big smile. “Where you from?” she asked me. “Originally from Pakistan but now I live in the US,” I replied. She didn’t hate me immediately! She didn’t yell at me about the financial crisis! She just smiled and said, “Oh, very nice.” Then she giggled and walked away and I went off to pray. After praying I set down the hijab next to her because she was still praying and went out to meet Feraz. As we were leaving I hear an “Excuse me!” behind me and I turn to see my new friend. She says, “Just one minute please!” I wonder if I have gotten my post-biking sweat all over her white hijab or if I left it with the wrong girl. I wonder if she just remembered that she has to yell at me for being American. Instead she comes out with a present!! She tells me that she wants me to have a little reminder of Turkey as a gift. She gave me a small travel prayer rug and this small but very, very big gesture filled me up and made me so happy. I will never forget her act of kindness and how it made me feel welcome in a country that has been so scary and intimidating because of my foreignness.

So, Turkey isn’t perfect. Neither am I, and neither is anything else. But the more I open my eyes the more beauty I see and I realize that this experience is going to be more amazing than I can imagine.

(The image is what came up when I googled Nice Turkish Person on google images...)